ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Jonathan West

Tuesday 4 November 2014

Trust. That’s the issue. Child abuse survivors, particularly those abused in institutional settings, are often highly mistrustful and obsessively motivated. It’s hard for those not abused in childhood to understand how devastating it is to be so thoroughly betrayed by the very adults and authorities on whom you depend for your care, and how profoundly that affects your ability to trust anybody in later life.

The home secretary Theresa May’s conduct in setting up the inquiry falls far short of building the trust necessary to gain the confidence of these extremely and justifiably mistrustful people. It is clear from her statement in parliament on Monday that she isn’t close to understanding how much transparency is really needed.

Let’s start with the powers of the inquiry. May insists that the right course is a panel inquiry, which “if the chair requests” can later be converted into a statutory inquiry. And yet she claims to be absolutely determined to get to the truth on this issue. The two statements don’t go together.

Her “intention and expectation” that all government bodies will voluntarily cooperate with a panel inquiry will be met with a hollow laugh by the many people who were abused or otherwise failed by those same government bodies. Think of the trouble Alexis Jay had getting documents out of Rotherham council.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Berger’s Beat

. .Congrats to Fr. Bruce H. Forman and his Young Catholic Musicians, celebrating their 40th anniversary, according to the latest issue of the St. Louis Review. Forman works at Sts. Peter and Paul parish in Soulard. He’s one of three priests in our town who have been sued for alleged child sexual abuse but remains on the job. (The others: Fr. Vincent Bryce and Fr. Alex Anderson.) Back in 2002, Fr. Forman appeared on page one of The New York Times because a civil suit accused him of sexually abusing a minor at a drive-in screening of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”. . .

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor November 4, 2014

In the dying days of the Nixon administration, the discovery that the White House maintained an enemies list was, for many Americans, the last straw. It seemed to reveal an administration using power not to advance policy or defend the nation, but to settle political scores.

Although any comparison between Nixon and Pope Francis is obviously an apples-and-oranges exercise, nonetheless many Catholic conservatives and traditionalists these days are asking if the pontiff has an enemies list of his own.

Recently, news has surfaced that the Vatican is either contemplating or has launched investigations of three bishops in different parts of the world:

* Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano, who has already been removed from the small Paraguayan diocese of Ciudad del Este.

* Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, who’s currently awaiting the conclusions of an apostolic visitation that’s already taken place.

* Mario Oliveri of the small Albenga diocese in northern Italy, where a Vatican spokesman this week said that an investigator may soon arrive.

In each case, there are specific motives for the inquests.

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NEW YORK
National Catholic Reporter

Jamie Manson | Nov. 4, 2014 NCR Today

Bishop William Murphy of the diocese of Rockville Centre, N.Y., has written a letter to Catholics on Long Island advising them that a proposed bill in the New York State Assembly, called The Child Victims Act, “seeks to penalize only the Catholic Church for past crimes of child sex abuse must also be recognized for what it is.”

Murphy’s letter, which was sent to all pastors in the diocese of Rockville Centre last week and reprinted in many parish bulletins over the weekend, was intended to advise Catholics on today’s elections. Even though the bill is not on the ballot, Murphy used the letter as an opportunity to condemn proposed law (a condemnation he has offered regularly since 2009).

The Child Victims Act (which is also known as the “Markey Bill” because it is sponsored by State Assemblyperson Margaret Markey) would serve to protect children by removing the statute of limitations for crimes of sexual abuse of children and minors. It would also open a one-year period for victims previously shut out by New York’s outdated statutes of limitations to bring forth charges in civil court.

Murphy, who called the bill an “annual threat,” seems to believe that sexual abuse in the Catholic church has been “effectively and permanently … remedied,” writing in the letter:

Those who support [the bill] should be opposed by those of us who know how effectively and permanently the Church has remedied that horrific scourge of the last decade. …

Bishop Murphy is no stranger to controversy. Before coming to Long Island, Bishop Murphy was second in command at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese in Boston which was led by Cardinal Law. He denied accusations that he helped to protect abusive priests while in that position. However, Murphy’s denials contradicted a July 2010 report by the Massachusetts Attorney General that stated that Murphy “placed a higher priority on preventing scandal and providing support to alleged abusers than on protecting children from sexual abuse.” The report also stated: “There is overwhelming evidence that for many years Cardinal Law and his senior managers had direct, actual knowledge that substantial numbers of children in the Archdiocese had been sexually abused by substantial numbers of priests. Any claim by the Cardinal or the Archdiocese’s senior managers that they did not know about the abuse suffered by, or the continuing threat to, children in the Archdiocese is simply not credible.”

BishopAccountability.org, a non-profit project that tracks sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, says Murphy is a “key figure in the sexual abuse crisis, both because of his earlier role in the Boston archdiocese and because of conditions in Rockville Centre.

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CALIFORNIA
Orange County Weekly

By Gustavo Arellano Tue., Nov. 4 2014

This morning, the Vatican press office announced that Diocese of Boise Bishop Michael Driscoll was resigning his position due to reaching the Holy See’s mandatory retirement age for bishops. Too bad Pope Francis couldn’t have booted Driscoll much earlier for his notorious career of protecting pedophile priests in Orange County.

We’ve reported extensively on Driscoll’s love of helping pedophiles during his time in Orange, from the diocese’s foundation in 1977 until he was promoted to Boise bishop in 1999, replacing fellow pedo-priest fan Tod D. Brown, who was becoming the head bishop in Orange; that was the worst trade since the Chicago Cubs got rid of Lou Brock. Instead of retelling all of Driscoll’s sins, we invite you to take this 2005 quiz on his evil ways to give you insight into what a creep he was. And now we pray to God to visit multiple boils on Driscoll’s nether regions, since we have mercy. Heckuva job, Brownie!

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ITALIA
Repubblica

[Death threats have been made against Father Giampiero Peschiulli, who is accused of pedophilia.]

di SONIA GIOIA

Minacce di morte contro il prete accusato di pedofilia. Don Giampiero Peschiulli ha presentato nelle scorse ore una denuncia in Procura cui parla di due persone che si sarebbero avvicinate ad alcuni parrocchiani dicendo loro che stavano cercando il sacerdote per ucciderlo. I due uomini avrebbero agito in pieno giorno e a volto scoperto, ma nè il destinatario delle presunte minacce nè i parrocchiani saprebbero dire di chi si tratti. Gli unici nomi contenuti nella denuncia consegnata alla magistratura sono quelli dei testimoni, oltre a quello del denunciante che per sottrarsi ai presunti tentativi di aggressione oltre che alla pioggia di ingiurie a cui continua ad essere sottoposto anche per strada, ha deciso di lasciare la città rifugiandosi da alcuni parenti.

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ITALIA
Voce Per le Donne

[Giada Vitale, who was abused for years by Father Marino Genova, said she wants nothing to do with the Catholic Church since they declined to defrock him because he is said to have “regretted” what he had done.]

3 novembre 2014 By Viviana Pizzi

“Faccio questo perchè non voglio avere più niente a che fare con la chiesa cattolica …. Dio non c’entra con questa mia scelta” . E’ la brevissima dichiarazione di Giada Vitale, 19enne di Portocannone abusata per anni da Don Marino Genova (prete che non è stato ridotto allo stato laicale perchè “pentito di quello che aveva fatto”) per annunciare che ha chiesto quello che si chiama “sbattezzo dalla Chiesa Cattolica”.

Tutto questo vuol dire che Giada, delusa dal comportamento dei tribunali ecclesiastici, ha chiesto la cancellazione della registrazione del suo battesimo con il quale è stata registrata la sua adesione alla religione cattolica. Da oggi non è più cattolica e le autorità le devono inviare una risposta entro 15 giorni, che attesti la sua cancellazione dal registro dei battezzati. Qualora non si adempisse alla sua richiesta il caso passerebbe al tribunale competente.

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GROSSBRITANNIEN
idea

[The York archbishop, John Sentamu, has questioned whether the confessional seal should apply in cases of abuse.]

London (idea) – In England ist eine öffentliche Debatte über die Beichte entbrannt. Der anglikanische Erzbischof John Sentamu (York) hat sich dafür ausgesprochen, das Beichtgeheimnis in bestimmten Fällen zu lockern. Wenn sexueller Missbrauch von Kindern eingestanden werde, sollte der Beichtvater die Möglichkeit haben, dies der Polizei zu melden. Dagegen erhebt der katholische Kirchenhistoriker John Cornwell (Cambridge) Bedenken, wie die Londoner Zeitung „The Times“ berichtet. Denn Täter würden erst gar nicht zur Beichte gehen, wenn sie mit strafrechtlicher Verfolgung rechnen müssten. Cornwell – selbst Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs durch Priester – schlägt stattdessen vor, Tätern die Freisprechung von ihren Sünden zu verweigern, wenn sie sich nicht der Polizei stellen wollen.

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DEUTCHLAND
Westdeutche Zeitung

[The priest known as George K., 56, will go on trial on Jan. 9. He is facing 26 charges of sexual abuse. He was extradited from South Africa in July.]

Willich. Am 9. Januar beginnt vor dem Krefelder Landgericht der Prozess gegen Georg K. (56). Das bestätigte am Montag die Pressedezernentin des Landgerichts, Richterin Simone Rühl, auf Anfrage der Westdeutschen Zeitung. Dem aus Willich stammenden Priester wird Missbrauch in 26 Fällen vorgeworfen.

K. hatte von 1994 bis 2007 unter anderem in St. Tönis, Kempen und Lobberich als katholischer Priester gearbeitet. Danach wurde er für eine Auslandsseelsorge in Südafrika freigestellt. Ein Jahr später soll sich der Geistliche in einem Kommunioncamp Kindern sexuell genähert haben.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News

BY MORGAN ZALOT
Philadelphia Daily News Daily News Staff Writer
zalotm@phillynews.com, 215-854-5928 November 03, 2014

ALBERT A. YOUNG was a wolf disguised as a sheep, lying in wait for an opportunity to use his role as a religious leader to perpetrate the sickest of crimes, authorities believe.

The 49-year-old self-styled “apostle” of Total Deliverance Ministries, at 22nd and Norris streets in North Philadelphia, was jailed late last week, accused of using his ministry not only to preach the Gospel but to perpetrate a sexual crime against his 15-year-old mentally challenged niece, police sources said.

Young was with his niece in the ministry office on the evening of Aug. 12 when he made her sit in his lap and began touching her sexually, putting his hands inside the girl’s pants, fondling her buttocks and kissing her neck, according to a police affidavit obtained yesterday by the Daily News.

Young continued to touch the girl, at one point pressing and rubbing his clothed genitals against her and taking her hand to make her touch him, the document says.

When he was finished, the document says, the pastor warned the girl not to tell anybody about it.

But she did – launching an investigation into Young, who is referred to as an “apostle” on the bright, yellow sign posted outside his purple-stone corner church.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 4 November 2014 (VIS) – The Holy Father has appointed:

– Bishop Peter F. Christensen of Superior, U.S.A., as bishop of Boise City (area 218,272, population 1,584,985, Catholics 174,348, priests 91, permanent deacons 75, religious 91), U.S.A. He succeeds Bishop Michael P. Driscoll, whose resignation from the same diocese upon having reached the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Brighton and Hove News

Posted On 04 Nov 2014

By : Frank le Duc

The trial of a retired bishop on sex abuse charges has been put back until next year.

The case against the former Bishop of Lewes, Peter Ball, 82, of Langport, Somerset, has been adjourned until Wednesday 14 January.

He appeared at Hove Crown Court by video link from Taunton Magistrates’ Court in May.

He was accused of misconduct in a public office, indecently assaulting a 12 or 13-year-old boy and indecently a 19 or 20-year-old man.

The misconduct charge faced by Ball, of Langport, Somerset, accuses him of misusing his position and authority to manipulate and prevail upon others for his own sexual gratification.

He now faces another charge of indecently assaulting a boy under 16 in 1984 or 1985 and a man over 16 in 1990 or 1991.

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NEW YORK
Times Herald-Record

New York Archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling provided answers to the following questions about the Catholic parish consolidations and mergers announced Sunday. Several parishes in our region will be closed for regular services next August. More than a dozen other parishes will consolidate and merge, but are not required to close churches.

Are the decisions to consolidate or merge – in particular to close – parishes reversible?

…(T)here has been a tremendous amount of information gathering and consultation that went into this process. It is hard to imagine the circumstance under which there may be new, previously unconsidered information that would have a significant impact on a parish’s status, but if there was such information, that would be looked at. Otherwise, these decisions are final.

Will the consolidated and merged parishes take new names?

They may choose to hyphenate the name of the two former parishes that now make up this new parish, or they may choose a new name – for instance, a parish might want to take the name of one of our new saints, like Saint John Paul II parish, or Saint John XXIII parish, or Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Parish.

What happens to the assets and in particular the debts of the parishes consolidated or merged?

If there is any money that comes to the archdiocese, Cardinal Dolan has made it clear that the money will be used for endowing special ministries, like religious education, which we have not been able to adequately support since we were putting so much money ($392 million in the last 10 years alone) into propping up half-empty schools and parishes. Debts and liabilities also follow the people to their new parish, but we will be working with the individual parishes in this regard.

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FINLAND
Uutiset

The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ so-called “judicial committee” is dealing with criminal cases, according to some former members of the Christian religious denomination. The committee has refused to reveal sexual abuse cases to the police. Minister of the Interior Päivi Räsänen of the Christian Democrats is asking for clarification on how police could better serve victims in such cases.

Kirsi-Maria Aho, a former member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses denomination, faced sexual abuse some twenty years ago. Cases of abuse are heard by the faith’s judicial committee. The abuser was not part of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

“It was a crime. First, the man raped me and then he abused me sexually. This would have been a matter for the police, but the elders banned me from going to the police because the name of Jehovah couldn’t be dragged through the mud,” Aho says.

Aho had to appear before the committee several times. She describes it as cruel and accusatory.

“It was really cruel. A young girl under fire in front of three men,” she says. “The men asked confusing questions, such as whether I had indulged in group sex. The Committee emphasized that I had done wrong and that I was wicked and adulterous. No one defended me.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
Road to Recovery

Road to Recovery, Inc.
P.O. Box 279
Livingston, NJ 07039
862-368-2800
roberthoatson@gmail.com

November 4, 2014

Rev. Richard McCormick, S.D.B, former head (Provincial) of the Salesian Fathers and Brothers Eastern American Province, based in New Rochelle, NY, is scheduled to go on trial today November 4, 2014, at 9:30 AM in Essex County Superior Court, Criminal Division, in Lawrence, MA for the sexual abuse of a minor boy who is now an adult.

Fr. Richard McCormick is a serial sexual abuser of young boys. In 2009, the Salesian Fathers and Brothers settled a sexual abuse case of three men who claimed that Fr. Richard McCormick sexually abused them at the Marian Shrine in Stony Point, New York. More than ten separate claims alleging that Fr. Richard McCormick sexually abused minor boys have been settled.

In the current sexual abuse case against Fr. Richard McCormick, one man has alleged that he was sexually abused as a child by Fr. McCormick at Camp Salesian in Ipswich, MA which was operated by the Salesian Fathers and Brothers. Fr. Richard McCormick’s criminal trial is set to begin November 4, 2014 at Essex County Superior Court in Lawrence, MA.

Contact:
Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., Co-founder and President, Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity based in New Jersey that assists victims of sexual abuse and their families. Road to Recovery is advocating on behalf of several sexual abuse victims of Fr. Richard Mc Cormick.

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UNITED KINGDOM
ITV

The UK Home Secretary has today confirmed a forthcoming inquiry into historical child abuse in England and Wales WILL also look at evidence gathered by the Jersey inquiry.

Theresa May’s announcement follows an ITV News report last week revealing NAPAC, a charity which represents abuse victims, wanted the move.

She said, though the Westminster inquiry has no jurisdiction over Jersey, it will look at the findings and recommendations from what happens in the island.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Sky News

Theresa May has apologised to victims of historical child sex abuse after losing a second chair of an official inquiry.

The Home Secretary faced MPs to explain how she would proceed after Fiona Woolf resigned on Friday because of her links to Lord Brittan, who is accused of failing to act on abuse allegations while home secretary in the 1980s.

Mrs Woolf’s predecessor, Baroness Butler-Sloss, stood down in similar circumstances in July.

Mrs May said she would meet victims next week before deciding on a new chair – and would establish a liaison group.

She told MPs: “Almost four months after I announced my intention to establish a panel inquiry it is obviously very disappointing that we do not yet have a panel chairman and for that I want to tell survivors that I am sorry.

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GERMANY
Independent (UK)

Germany’s 11th-century Neresheim Abbey is normally an oasis of calm where monks guide city dwellers in religious contemplation and offer an opportunity to dine on country fare in the monastery’s rustic Swabian restaurant.

But the Benedictine abbey set in the hills of the southern state of Baden Württemberg was immersed in an embarrassing scandal yesterday involving the discovery of unaccounted-for millions and allegations of systematic money laundering.

The source of the trouble was traced at the weekend to part of the estate left by the late abbot, Norbert Stoffels, who was Nereseheim’s guiding spiritual light from 1977 until his death in 2012.

His successor, Father Albert Knebel, admitted that he had discovered an unaccounted-for “fortune” amounting to €4m in the estate left by Abbot Norbert. “The fortune was neither registered on the abbey’s accounts, nor was anyone in the administration or any of my fellow brothers aware of its existence,” declared Father Knebel. “Our foremost concern is to find out where this money comes from,” he said in a statement.

The plot surrounding the unaccounted-for millions assumed sinister proportions yesterday: state prosecutors in Krefeld in northern Germany confirmed they had opened an investigation on suspicion the cash stemmed from a money-laundering operation.

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MALTA
Times of Malta

It is “unacceptable” for the Church to take eight years to investigate allegations of priestly abuse, Gozo Bishop Mario Grech said.

He said that all cases of abuse should be referred to the police, when asked for his reaction to the inconclusive investigation by the Church’s Response Team into a woman’s allegation of abuse by Dominican friar Fr Charles Fenech.

The woman had reported the case to the Response Team in 2006 but the investigation was never concluded.

Response Team head Judge Victor Caruana Colombo did not respond to questions when asked about the delay yesterday.

Subsequently, the woman also reported the matter to the police and charges were filed against the priest in court.

“These cases should be treated by the police because they have the competence to deal with them and the Church has to abide by the law,” Mgr Grech said, without entering into the merits of the case.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Belfast Telegraph

BY JOAN SMITH – 04 NOVEMBER 2014

How could this happen? Almost four months ago the Government announced a wide-ranging inquiry into explosive allegations of historical child abuse. Since then two chairs have been appointed; both have resigned and the inquiry hasn’t even started work.

On Friday the embarrassment spread to David Cameron when he backed Fiona Woolf, the current Lord Mayor of London, only hours before her resignation as head of the inquiry was announced.

She lost the confidence of victims when it was revealed that she is a friend of the former Home Secretary Lord Brittan, who was at the Home Office in the 1980s when, it is alleged, a dossier on child abuse compiled by a Conservative MP went missing. It emerged last week that a letter setting out her contacts with Brittan went through seven drafts.

The inquiry needs to be exceptionally wide-ranging, shining a light into just about every area of the Establishment. Yet the Home Office seems not to have realised that the usual approach – announcing an inquiry and picking one of the great and the good to chair it – would be entirely inappropriate in this instance.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Caroline O’Doherty

A Catholic priest found not guilty of sexually assaulting a teenage girl is embroiled in a row with his order and the Archbishop of Dublin over claims they are punishing him for being accused.

Carmelite father Chris Conroy, 81, who is banned from saying public Mass and is defying orders to leave his family home and live in a monastery, says the Catholic Church has its own “Guantanamo Bay” for falsely-accused priests.

The former missionary from Co Wicklow, who was the subject of an award-winning documentary about his work with the Indians of the Peruvian Andes, says he has been in limbo for the last 10 years since his court case ended.

In his memoirs, to be launched next month, he accuses Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of interfering without authority to have him prevented from saying Mass and says his Order has shown undue deference to the Archbishop in attempting to impose other restrictions.

“This is why I wrote the book. I had to make a stand,” he said. “I spent my time in Peru fighting and putting my life on the line for the poor Indians and the suffering and injustice that they were enduring.

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MICHIGAN
Fox 17

[with video]

NOVEMBER 3, 2014, BY ANN MARIE LAFLAMME

OTTAWA COUNTY, Mich.- Two church congregations were recently warned during mass that their youth minister is accused of sexually assaulting a minor more than a decade ago.

The church pastor says the suspect, 61-year-old William Miller, has grown up in St. Catherine’s parish in Ravenna and St. Francis Xavier parish in Conklin and had been a youth minister for at least 7 years.

This decade-old allegation has shocked the church communities.

“What the research is telling us is that probably less than half percent childhood abuse victims actually disclose during childhood, most of them are disclosing actually when they’re adults,” Tom Cottrell Vice President of Counseling Services at the YWCA said.

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MICHIGAN
WHTC

Monday, November 03, 2014

by Dan Spadafora

UNDATED (WHTC)-61 year old William Miller, a youth minister with two West Michigan parishes, was arraigned last week in Hudsonville District Court on first degree sexual assault charges. The alleged assault happened several years previously according to the unnamed victim who only recently informed local law authorities. Ottawa County Sheriff’s Captain Mark Bennett suggested that victims will often wait several years before bringing allegations to authorities, and that investigation into the alleged assault is still currently in progress.

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ROME
CounterPunch

by CESAR CHELALA

American Cardinal Raymond Burke, the former archbishop of St. Louis, led a new attack on Pope Francis’s reformist agenda when he likened the Roman Catholic Church to a “ship without a rudder.” In an interview with the Spanish Catholic Magazine Vida Nueva, Burke stated that he was not speaking against the Pope personally but only questioning his leadership. Burke’s snide attack doesn’t take into account Pope Francis’ considerable achievements that have made of him a figure of worldwide respect.

Pope Francis took an uncompromising stand against war. Calling the war on Syria “a defeat for humanity,” Pope Francis reiterated his opposition to the war, denouncing at the same time “the commercial wars to sell arms” and demanding that political leaders find a “just solution to the conflict.” During the traditional Angelus ceremony in St. Peter Square Pope Francis stressed that world leaders should choose the way of peace, in what many interpreted as a message to the United States and French presidents.

The Grand Mufti of Damascus thanked Pope Francis for his efforts on behalf of peace in Syria, and invited Muslims to join an invitation from Pope Francis to fast in solidarity and opposition to outside military intervention in the conflict. Pope Francis also appealed to the world leaders at the G20 meeting in Russia, and urged them to abandon the “futile pursuit” of a military solution for the Syrian conflict.

He has confronted head on accusations against sexual abuses committed by priests. On July 7, 2014, in a homily given during a private Mass with six victims of sexual abuse by priests, Pope Francis apologized for the priests and bishops’ misconduct and asked for forgiveness, pledging that Catholic bishops “will be held accountable” for failing to protect children.

As proof of his determination not to allow clerical sexual abuse to continue, Pope Francis removed Bishop Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano from his post as Bishop of Ciudad del Este in Paraguay. Bishop Livieres Plano has been accused of protecting and promoting an Argentine priest named Carlos Urrutigoity who had been called a “serious threat to young people” by Joseph Bambera, the Bishop of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

This move followed the arrest of former Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, who faces up to seven years in jail if he is found guilty that he sexually abused children while he was papal nuncio in the Dominican Republic.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Post Elections Obama, Kids, the Catholic Church, The Salvation Army, et al. & “Child Abuse, War, and the Need for a National Commission of Inquiry into Child Abuse”, by Aletha Blayse

Jerry Slevin

N.B. From Jerry Slevin — Aletha Blayse, the respected and brave Australian advocate for abused children, in her below article is calling on President Obama, with his final election campaigns now behind him, to heed his own advice and to “step up” at last for millions of abused children in the USA. What better legacy could he ask for than helping to save countless kids from being sexually abused in institutional settings? He needs to do more than he has done so far. Now is the perfect opportunity for him to do so. Please “step up”, President Obama. National epidemics require national solutions. Neither individual states nor the institutions themselves are doing enough in too many cases to protect kids where parental oversight has been insufficient.

Aletha Blayse is very persuasively and wisely calling for a US national commission to investigate child abuse, especially within US nationwide institutions like the Catholic Church, The Salvation Army, et al. She indicates, in effect, that concerned citizens in Australia and other nations now expect Obama (1) to influence, by the United States’ powerful example, many of the the world’s other democratic nations, and (2) to follow the bold steps that Australia has already begun taking with its unique and effective nationwide Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Obama faced significant indirect resistance in the recent US Congressional election campaigns from some of these institutions. His party’s candidate in the 2016 US presidential election will likely face similar resistance. Will Obama now, free of some political constraints, face the challenge and stand up to these institutions, at least to protect children?

In my view as an international lawyer, it is disgraceful that a smaller but noble country like Australia is addressing this scandal crisis effectively, while no national political leader of either party in the USA even acknowledges it in any meaningful way.

And why isn’t this unprecedented scandal crisis on the top of Pope Francis’ agenda at the Final Synod of Bishops to be held in less than a year from now? Why ???

It is time for Pope Francis publicly and effectively to pay attention to the “elephant” sitting in the middle of the Vatican’s crisis center !

Pope Francis can, of course, address the crisis and related challenges that he increasingly faces with Synods, “go slow” advisory commissions and diversionary media campaigns, and otherwise as he sees fit. If he fails, however, to curtail this abuse crisis soon and to hold priests and bishops fully accountable, the Vatican will not likely survive much longer, given the building pressure from outside government investigators and prosecutors.

But Pope Francis has already shown after over a year and a half that he cannot really be expected to address, anytime soon at least, the greatest crisis for the Catholic Church since the Reformation that has been presented by priest child abusers and bishops who facilitate them by covering up.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Emily Gurnon
egurnon@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 11/03/2014

The case of a priest convicted of having sex with a woman he was counseling came before the Minnesota Supreme Court once again Monday.

Christopher T. Wenthe, who turns 50 on Tuesday, was assigned to Nativity of Our Lord parish in St. Paul in 2003, when he became sexually involved with a college student who had sought his spiritual advice.

She testified at trial that she told the priest about her struggles with an eating disorder and prior sexual abuse, and that he agreed to serve as her confessor. She said he exploited her vulnerability and trust in him as a priest.

Wenthe countered that the relationship was a friendship that went awry and that the 21-year-old woman was a willing participant.

The case has bounced around the courts since Wenthe went to trial in Ramsey County in 2011.

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KENTUCKY
The Courier-Journal

Matthew Glowicki, The Courier-Journal 5:07 p.m. EST November 3, 2014

Convicted sex offender Rev. James Schook will learn in December if he will be released early from prison on shock probation after serving six months of a 15-year sentence for molesting an altar boy in the 1970s.

Sixty-six-year-old Schook, who is dying of cancer, filed a request for shock probation, which allows offenders to be released after serving one to six months of their sentence.

“Mr. Schook now realizes the importance of obeying and conforming to the community’s rules,” defense attorney David Lambertus wrote in a motion filed in October.

Monday morning, Jefferson Circuit Court Judge Mitch Perry set a shock probation hearing date for Dec. 19.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Hamilton and Griffin on Rights

Nine organizations who share a mission to protect children and vulnerable adults from sexual abuse and assault–BishopAccountability.org, Children’s Healthcare is a Legal Duty, The Child Protection Project, The Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse, The Freedom From Religion Foundation, Jewish Board of Advocates for Children, Inc., Male Survivor, Survivors for Justice, and The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests– filed an amicus brief last week in support of the cert. petition in John Doe B.P. v. Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, No. 14-344.

Amici curiae argued that after thirty years of sexual abuse litigation, it was time for the Court to resolve the constitutional issue wrongly decided by the Missouri Supreme Court in Gibson v. Brewer, 952 S.W.2d 239 (Mo. 1997). To protect the survivors of sexual abuse as well as to deter the abusers and their enablers from future harm to children, amici asked the Court to rule that allowing religious organizations to be held liable for their negligent supervision of abusers does not entangle the courts with religious doctrine or infringe upon religious freedom.

Shortly after the brief was filed, the parties settled the case and the cert. petition was withdrawn.

Whatever the status of this particular litigation, victims of child sexual abuse continue to rely on the courts’ neutral enforcement of tort laws against all abusers and their enablers. The First Amendment should never be interpreted to protect the wrongdoers at the expense of their victims.

Read the amicus brief here: 30281 pdf Griffin

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NEBRASKA
World-Herald

By Michael O’Connor / World-Herald staff writer

A support group for clergy abuse victims is criticizing the Omaha Archdiocese for not making a quicker public disclosure of a local man’s allegation of sexual abuse by a priest.

Chicago-based SNAP called the delay “reckless and callous, and said Archbishop George Lucas should explain why it occurred and apologize.

The archdiocese announced Friday that an Omaha man alleges that a priest sexually abused him 30 years ago, when he was in his early teens.

The archdiocese identified the priest as the Rev. Anthony Palmese, who was associate pastor of Omaha’s Holy Ghost Parish in 1984-1985 when the alleged abuse occurred.

Palmese, who died in 2012, belonged to the New Jersey-based Order of Augustinian Recollects, according to the archdiocese.

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MICHIGAN
MLive

By John Agar | jagar@mlive.com
on November 03, 2014

OTTAWA COUNTY, MI – A part-time youth minister at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Conklin and St. Catherine Parish in Ravenna has been charged in a sexual assault that allegedly occurred years ago, unrelated to his church activities, authorities said.

William Miller, 61, is charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct.

The alleged victim came forward several weeks ago. The alleged victim said the sexual assault occurred while working on a farm, Ottawa County Sheriff’s Capt. Mark Bennett said Monday, Nov. 3.

Bennett said the case is an “open, active investigation.”

The allegations did not involve Miller’s work with the churches.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washingtonian

By Harry Jaffe
Published November 3, 2014

Moving trucks are scheduled to show up at the Georgetown home of Rabbi Barry Freundel Monday, according to signs posted in front of his home on O Street, not far from the Kesher Israel synagogue that provided the house for its longtime religious leader.

Freundel was arrested October 14 and charged with six counts of voyeurism for allegedly hiding video cameras in the synagogue’s mikvah, a ritual bath, to record women as they undressed and showered before entering. Police officers were seen carting computers and hard drives out of Freundel’s house on the day of the arrest.

Freundel, 62, pleaded not guilty and was released on his own recognizance, while police and prosecutors investigate videos and forensic evidence. He is scheduled to appear before a status hearing on November 12. The US Attorney’s office has set up a website for potential victims.

Signs posted on the street listed Freundel’s wife, Sharon, for contact information. Calls to her were not returned. The O Street home, which is owned by a trust with ties to Kesher Israel, has been the Freundels’ home for at least 16 years. Fruendel has been rabbi at Kesher Israel, a modern orthodox synagogue, since 1989. The congregation includes such luminaries as former Senator Joe Lieberman and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Herald

By: Associated Press

GARDNER, Mass. — The bishop of Worcester has announced that two of Gardner’s four Roman Catholic churches will close.

Bishop Robert McManus announced Saturday that Sacred Heart Parish and St. Joseph’s Parish will shut their doors next summer. Both are more than a century old.

Their congregations will be integrated into Holy Rosary and Holy Spirit parishes, which will remain open and consolidated into one parish.

Names for the new parish are still being considered.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

We Are Losing the War

On the eve of the November 4 election, America is at war. I’m not talking about the war in the Middle East. I’m talking about a different war. On the one side of the battle lines are those who abuse children or allow children to be abused. On the other are those who have declared war on these monsters in a fight for a world in which children are safe from all forms of predation. If ever the doctrine of jus bellum iustum applied, it is here and now. Because the statistics are horrifying. This year, the US Department of Justice cited figures from the Centers for Disease Control that approximately 1 in 6 boys and 1 in 4 girls are sexually abused before the age of 18. Rates of other forms of abuse are also high. This is the here and the now. This is not historical. And it is totally and utterly unacceptable.

We do not live in a child safe society. Predators and those who protect them are winning the war. As dismal as may be is to say this, it’s true, and we have to face it. Here, I hasten to add that in stating this, I am not denigrating or minimizing the extraordinary efforts of survivor groups, individual survivors who speak out about their experiences (even when it means exposing truly frightening individuals – see this blog for the voice of a very brave Australian survivor), outspoken supporters, advocates, and hard-working frontline staff of various governmental and non-governmental organizations who combat child abuse on a daily basis. The importance of their efforts cannot be understated, and I do not do so. However, as I note, we cannot get away from the fact that we are failing children, and failing them miserably. We may be winning several battles, but that doesn’t mean we’re not losing the war.

So what is going on? Why, despite the valiant efforts of all these fine and dedicated people, are we failing on a massive scale? In trying to find the answer to the question myself, I found the best way forward is to think of society as a huge, woven piece of fabric. This fabric is made up of laws, individuals, societal attitudes and norms, and institutions. Child abuse continues to occur because there are ‘holes’ in the fabric. We can continue to round up and put away child abusers as they come to light, as we are doing reasonably well at present, but until we find all the critical failure points, the rents in the fabric of our society that allow abuse to flourish, we will never move forward, forever stuck with the present horrifying rates of abuse. Only by examining every thread of society can we find where the holes are and fix them.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Josephine McKenna Religion News Service | Oct. 31, 2014

VATICAN CITY American Cardinal Raymond Burke, the feisty former archbishop of St. Louis who has emerged as the face of the opposition to Pope Francis’ reformist agenda, likened the Roman Catholic church to “a ship without a rudder” in a fresh attack on the pope’s leadership.

In an interview with the Spanish Catholic weekly Vida Nueva, published Thursday, Burke insisted he was not speaking out against the pope personally but raising concern about his leadership.

“Many have expressed their concerns to me. At this very critical moment, there is a strong sense that the church is like a ship without a rudder,” Burke said.

“Now, it is more important than ever to examine our faith, have a healthy spiritual leader and give powerful witness to the faith.”

Burke is the current head of the Vatican’s highest court known as the Apostolic Signatura, but he said recently he is about to be demoted. There is speculation he will be made patron of the Order of Malta, a largely ceremonial post.

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MALTA
Malta Independent

In a way, Malta is not that important for the Universal Church. But the Church is important for Malta. At least, so far.

The Catholic Church is an important part of Malta’s DNA. Even without taking into account the shady years until the 11th century, the Christian faith, and later the Catholic faith, became so intertwined with Malta’s real essence they were for a long time one and the same.

That, we all agree, is slowly changing, glacier-like. The recent divorce referendum has shown a disaffection that has finally erupted into open defiance. Prior to that, there was a steady falling-off in church attendance. The monolith began to crumble.

That may have been the run of things, the normal course of evolution as a small insular island opens up to modern times and catches up with the rest of Europe.

But, as happened in other countries as well, this process is developing faster and perhaps irretrievable by the appearance in the public forum of scandals involving people associated with the Church.

There is today a new consciousness and awareness that was simply not there in past years. People are no longer ready to turn a blind eye to sins and mistakes just because those who committed them are, for instance, priests. People today have a heightened sensibility where sins of the flesh are concerned, especially where children or people with needs are involved. There is also increased encouragement for people who have been victims, maybe many years ago, to speak up and demand justice.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Minister loses bid to reverse big verdict
Two have accused high profile Protestant preacher
One alleged victim issues her 1st public statement
Clergyman was on State Board of Education recently
One abuse case against him went to trial in August
A second lawsuit – alleging child sex abuse – was resolved
His church was ordered to pay $350,000 to one alleged victim
Group urges that his board fire him & other clerics ostracize him
SNAP: “If you’ve seen, suspected or suffered abuse by him, come forward”

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will

–disclose that a prominent pastor’s drive to toss out a $350,000 verdict has failed, and
–read a statement by one of the minister’s victims who has not spoken publicly before.

The group will also

— urge the pastor’s church colleagues to suspend or fire him,
— ask the KC religious community to shun him, for the safety of church-goers, and
— beg anyone who may have knowledge of or suspicions about misdeeds or crimes by the minister to “call police officials, not church officials” and “speak up, rather than continue to suffer in shame, silence and self-blame.”

WHEN
Monday, Nov. 3, at 1:00 p.m.

WHERE
Outside Christian Fellowship Baptist Church, 4509 Troost Ave. in Kansas City, Missouri

WHO
Two-four clergy sex abuse victims who belong to a support group called SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests). One is a St. Louis man who is the organization’s long time executive director.

WHY
In August, a jury awarded $350,000 to a woman who said that a KC MO Baptist minister, Rev. Stan Archie, abused her when she was an adult. Now, SNAP is disclosing that the judge in that case is refusing to overturn that award.

A second suit against Rev. Archie, brought by another woman, has been resolved, according to the KC Star.

[Kansas City Star]

It accuses the minister of “having sexually inappropriate conversations with a female minor whom he was counseling, giving her money and gifts, and later harassing her after she ended their relationship,” according to KWMU Radio in St. Louis. It was filed “by a Kansas City-area woman identified as Jane Doe” and “alleges that the Rev. Archie began committing repeated acts of sexual misconduct against (her) when she went to him for counseling at age 15,” according to the KC Star.

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NEW YORK
News 12

NEW CITY – The sexual molestation case against an internationally known rabbi from Rockland has been delayed.

Rabbi Moshe Taubenfeld was set to face a new judge this morning so a trial date could be set, but the hearing was postponed until Dec. 3. No reason for the delay has been given yet.

The New Square father of 20 is accused of sexually molesting a 9-year-old boy over a five-year period after the child came to him for counseling after 9/11 terror attacks.

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NEBRASKA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, Nov. 3

Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 503 0003, SNAPdorris@gmail.com )

For 11 months, Omaha’s Catholic Archbishop George Lucas hid a child sex abuse allegation against a priest in one of his parishes. That’s stunningly reckless and callous. Lucas should explain and apologize for his irresponsible delay. And parishioners at that parish – and throughout the Omaha archdiocese – should be outraged.

[KETV]

On a Friday evening, Halloween in fact, Omaha’s Catholic Archbishop George Lucas disclosed that he learned on 12/30/13 that Fr. Anthony Palmese was accused of abusing a child years ago. Lucas “passed the buck” and asked Fr. Palmese’ direct supervisors, a religious order called the Augustinian Recollects, to carry out an investigation, even though the order is based in New Jersey.

Then, for months and months, Lucas kept quiet. Despite repeatedly pledging to be “open and transparent” about clergy sex crimes, Lucas kept quiet. Despite a US national bishops policy that promises “openness and transparency” in such cases, Lucas kept quiet.

Finally, on a day when the revelation was most apt to get little public attention, Lucas announced the allegation.

Church officials claim the alleged victim was reluctant to cooperate with the order’s investigation. Given the Catholic hierarchy’s long and continuing track record of deceit in these cases, who could blame him or her for not trusting church officials.

But that’s a dodge. Lucas knows that the quickest, easiest and best way to help determine whether an accusation against a priest is true or not is to publicly disclose it, as church policy mandates. All he has to do is put announcements in church bulletins, archdiocesan website saying “We have an allegation of abuse against Fr. X. If you have any information that might help prove or disprove the accusations, please call police, prosecutors or church officials immediately.”

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NEW YORK
The New Yorker

After a Hasidic man exposed child abuse in his tight-knit Brooklyn community, he found himself the target of a criminal investigation.

BY RACHEL AVIV

Sam Kellner’s reputation in the Hasidic community of Borough Park, Brooklyn, began to suffer in 2008, when his teen-age son told him that he had been molested by a man who had prayed at their synagogue. Kellner’s first instinct was to run the man over with his van, but he didn’t know if his anger was justified. Molestation was rarely discussed in the community, and it didn’t seem to Kellner that any of the prohibitions in the Ten Commandments explicitly related to it. The most relevant sins—adultery and coveting a neighbor’s belongings—didn’t capture the depth of the violation. Kellner couldn’t pinpoint what was lost when a child was sexually abused, since the person looked the same afterward. But he sensed that molestation was damaging, because he knew a few victims, and they had gone off the derech, or religious way. “They became dead-enders, lost souls, outcasts,” he told me.

Kellner, a heavyset man with hazel eyes and a long, graying beard, never spoke about sexual matters with his six children. They would take classes about the human body (with a focus on how to get pregnant) only after their marriages were arranged. Kellner took his son to a modesty committee, called vaad hatznius, which enforces standards of sexual propriety among Borough Park’s hundred thousand ultra-Orthodox Jews, the majority of them Hasidic. Vaad hatznius disciplines residents who freely express their sexuality or behave lewdly. In a community where non-procreative sex is considered shameful, molestation tends to be regarded in roughly the same light as having an affair. When children complain about being molested, the council almost never notifies the police. Instead, it devises its own punishments for offenders: sometimes they are compelled to apologize, pay restitution, or move to Israel.

Kellner had once been a top administrator at the Munkacz synagogue and yeshiva, in Borough Park, but he had fought with other leaders about financial and educational policies. He had left the job and started a toner business, collecting discarded cartridges and reselling them. His son’s alleged abuser, Baruch Lebovits, was the descendant of a rabbinic dynasty, a prominent cantor with twenty-four grandchildren. Kellner told vaad hatznius that he wanted to report his son’s abuse to the police, because he didn’t trust that the issue could be dealt with internally.

The committee granted him permission, as long he had the approval of a rabbi. The rabbi would have to make an exception to the Talmudic prohibition against mesirah, the act of turning over another Jew to civil authorities. According to some interpretations of Talmudic law, a Jew who informs on another Jew has committed a capital crime. He is a “wicked man,” who has “blasphemed and rebelled against the law of Moses,” the twelfth-century Torah scholar Maimonides wrote. The law was meant to protect the community from anti-Semitic governments. Kellner said, “The way history tells it is that if a Jew was arrested he was thrown in jail and never heard of again.”

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MALTA
Malta Today

Jurgen Balzan 3 November 2014

A Curia spokesperson has denied that Archbishop Emeritus Paul Cremona offered money to a woman who claims to have been violently sexually abused by Fr Charles Fenech, a former provincial of the Dominican order in Malta.

Reliable sources have told MaltaToday that some months ago one of the alleged victims of sexual abuse by Fenech was offered a “hefty sum” by Cremona to remain silent.

However, in reply to questions sent by MaltaToday, a Curia spokesperson said “your assertion is completely false. Archbishop Emeritus Paul Cremona never offered any sum of money to persons claiming abuse.”

The reply followed a brief appearance by Auxiliary Bishop Charles Scicluna on PBS’s Xarabank on Friday, in which the Maltese Church’s temporary leader described any attempt to buy somebody’s silence as “the biggest insult to the Church.”

Fenech is now facing charges of violent sexual abuse against a mentally unstable patient and holding the woman against her will and committing indecent acts in public.

While deploring the Church’s slow reaction to alleged cases of sexual abuse by members of the clergy, Scicluna said that he could not ascertain whether any money was offered to one of Fenech’s alleged victims, “but any attempt to buy somebody’s silence is the biggest insult to the Church.”

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INDIA
Financial Times

NEW DELHI: The Centre today assured the Delhi High Court that it will not extradite to the US till November 10 an Indian Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl there during his stay in 2004.

The submission made before Justice Pratibha Rani has come as a relief for Reverend Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul as he was scheduled to be extradited to the US today evening on an United Airlines flight.

Jeyapaul, 59, moved the court after his representation to the Centre challenging a trial court order recommending his extradition was rejected by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on October 30 and order to extradite him was issued on October 31.

The court listed the matter for further hearing on November 10, by when MEA will file its response to Jeyapaul’s plea.

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MALTA
Malta Independent

Priest accused of sexual abuse sends SMS to friends, asks them to pray and says God will win

Father Charles Fenech, the Dominican friar accused of sexually abusing a number of women, has sent an SMS to several people on his contacts list and insisted he is innocent, TVM is reporting. The full SMS reads: “The accusations made in media are all false truth will come out. God will win pray 4 me and i for u.”

It is being reported that Fr Fenech sent out the SMS after The Malta Independent on Sunday yesterday published parts of a sworn affidavit by one of the alleged victims regarding alleged sexual abuse by the priest. The affidavit contained details of her relationship with him. The woman gave a chronological account of the various times she and Fr Charles Fenech were involved sexually.

She said that after her marriage was annulled, she threw a party to which Fr Charles Fenech was invited. It was here that he tried to kiss her for the first time.

Fr Fenech’s case has been before the Curia Response Team for at least eight years.

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MISSOURI
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas C. Fox | Nov. 2, 2014

KANSAS CITY, MO. — In a day-long gathering, Rockhurst University educators and National Catholic Reporter journalists dissected the theological and pastoral implications and challenges of the still emerging Pope Francis pontificate.

The event, promoted as a “conversation”, used the theme “Becoming a Church of Mercy,” drawing 200 locals and students who filled a Rockhurst campus auditorium Saturday on a chilly autumn morning here.

It was the first time the two institutions joined forces to bring their vantages and insights to the Catholic scene and came just days after NCR began to celebrate its 50th anniversary as a publishing company.

Speakers concurred that Pope Francis is taking contemporary Catholicism into uncharted waters. Not because his message his fundamentally new, but rather because of his unique style and pastoral emphasis following decades of pontificates that stressed strict orthodoxy. …

The journalists then listed a number of what they called “unanswered questions,” troubling observations they’ve filed in stories and analyses the first 19 months of the pontificate.

Their list began with the way Francis’ has spoken about and dealt with women. The list includes what they said are inadequate steps he’s made in facing clergy sex abuse, his unwillingness to reexamine certain Catholic teachings, beginning with aspects of sexual morality, and, finally, the continued opaque and arcane methods by which bishops continue to be appointed.

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KENTUCKY
WKLY

By Colin Mayfield

LOUISVILLE, Ky. —A Louisville priest convicted of sexual abuse will appear in court.

He wants out of prison, but he’ll have to face survivors of those abused first.

In April, James Schook was found guilty in Jefferson Circuit Court for offenses committed in the 1970s.

He was sentenced in late May to 15 years – but now Schook wants to be let out on shock probation.

Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests plan to be in the courtroom Monday morning for the hearing.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Ekklesia

By Savi Hensman
3 Nov 2014

A BBC documentary in late October 2014 revealed the damage resulting from a rush to judgement over the failure to protect ‘Baby P’. A kneejerk reaction to the Church of England’s child protection failings may also do more harm than good.

Anger is understandable over failures to safeguard children. However in the wake of the appalling death of a child, the furore whipped up by politicians and sections of the press made it even harder to recruit professionals to help keep children safe.

The Church of England must do more to counter abuse. But there is a risk of acting hastily in ending the ancient practice of confidential confession without evidence that it will make things better for children. Indeed it might put them at greater risk.

Meanwhile, in church and society, the focus can be diverted from examining why procedures were not properly followed, as well as the culture surrounding abuse.

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CANADA
iPolitics

By Michael Harris | Nov 2, 2014

Sex, lies, and perhaps videotape.

The Jian Ghomeshi story took me on a bullet train back to the past — to Easter Sunday 1989 to be precise.

On that day, the newspaper I was managing in St. John’s, the Sunday Express, broke the Mount Cashel orphanage story.

It was the story of children at the orphanage and their sexual and physical abuse at the hands of a lay order of the Roman Catholic Church. The Irish Christian Brothers were legendary across the province as teachers and caregivers. They had also, as it turned out, been infiltrated by a coven of pedophiles.

It was a story of abused innocence versus overwhelming institutional authority — for in the Newfoundland of those days, still a denominational society, there was no more powerful institution beyond government itself than the Roman Catholic Church.

The nightmare of Mount Cashel began as a sensational newspaper story and ended in a police investigation, a court case, federal prison terms for the perpetrators, a royal commission, and multi-million dollar compensation for 422 victims across North America. And yes, finally, after 25 years, an apology to the victims from the Irish Christian Brothers. I should also say that it all started with a single victim whom I happened to believe: Shane Earle.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

On Sunday morning, a solemn-faced Dolan released his list of 112 parishes in the Archdiocese of New York that would be merged in 55 new ones in the face of shrinking congregations. Empty churches, Dolan says, are not caused by a shortage of priests, but ‘a shortage of the faithful.’

Denis Hamill

Timothy Cardinal Dolan walked slowly into the Catholic Education Building on First Ave. at 12:45 p.m. on Sunday with an Irish tweed cap pulled down over a face as sad as that of a man who’d just had to put down an old and very faithful dog.

In the morning he’d released his long-dreaded hit list of 112 parishes in the Archdiocese of New York that would be merged into 55 new ones. Parishes in Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx, and in Westchester, Rockland, Ulster and Orange counties felt the pain.

“Thanks for coming in and letting me ruin your Sunday,” says Dolan, plopping down at a table in a 20th-floor conference room. He asks which parish I grew up in. I say St. Stanislaus Church in Park Slope, Brooklyn, long ago closed.

“Heartbreaking,” he says. “Whenever I meet someone in New York, they usually start by telling their parish is gone. And now we have a whole new slate of others today.”

The numbers are alarming: Just 12%, or 346,000, of the 2.8 million Catholics in Cardinal Dolan’s New York Archdiocese still attend Sunday Mass. In the 1980s, there were 1,200 priests; today, 365. …

Didn’t the priest sex scandals lead to that shortage of the faithful?

“Some of it did,” he admits. “Yes, some problems, like sex abuse, are internal. Did it drive people away? Yes. But external causes are also responsible. The slogan today is, ‘I believe; I don’t belong.’ Faith is important, not the church. We have to win back those people.”

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SCOTLAND
Daily Record

Nov 02, 2014 By Marion Scott

Investigators have been told that the documents which run in to the hundreds are no longer available.

Government files containing claims of abuse of some of Scotland’s most vulnerable children have disappeared from national archives.

The secret papers contain allegations of physical and sexual abuse in homes and residential schools over four decades.

Some of the papers prepared by a task force set up by the-then Secretary of State for Scotland Bruce Millan in the late 1960s were seen by Sunday Mail in 2002.

But the vast majority of the papers, relating to abuse claims from the 1930s to 1960s, have never been made public. …

Campaigner David Whelan, 55, a member of the joint government and survivors think tank, the National Confidential Forum for Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, said: “Those missing files weren’t where they should have been. They need to be found.”

He says the papers may have included claims about serial abuser Jimmy Savile, a regular visitor to Fort Augustus Abbey School in Inverness-shire.

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KENTUCKY
WHAS

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) – Attorneys for a Louisville priest who was convicted on child molestation charges will be back in court Monday to request an early release from prison.

Father James Schook was sentenced to 15 years in prison for molesting a teenage boy for years in the 1970’s.

His attorneys asked the jury to sentence Schook to house arrest because he is suffering from end-stage melanoma.

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CANADA
Winnipeg Free Press

By: Murray Sinclair and Stuart Murray
Posted: 11/1/2014

In 2008, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights began its formative work by travelling across the country to listen and learn from people about their human rights experiences. In the same year, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada began its work of listening and learning from Indian residential school survivors and their descendants. The stories people told both the museum and the TRC were powerful and reflected different ways of understanding justice and equality. The stories provide a foundation to approach the challenging issues and conversations around both human rights and indigenous rights.

Since the TRC began its work, the public conversation around residential schools and the devastating effects of colonization has grown. Survivors have been vocal in rejecting a society marred by racism and exclusion, and the result is that all Canadians are looking for new ways to listen and understand each other. There are many unknowns, but what we do know is we cannot continue as we have in the past and that reconciliation will be a long journey. After all, Indian residential schools operated for more than 100 years in Canada, but it’s only recently people have begun to listen.

In 2008, the Canadian government delivered a formal apology to residential school students for the abuses they endured, for the schools themselves, and committed itself to a new relationship.

In 2010, the first national event of the TRC took place in Winnipeg, which marked the beginning of a five-year process and six more national events. These events are important steps in publicly acknowledging and taking responsibility for the damage these schools inflicted on indigenous communities and individuals. On Nov. 12, 2010, Canada endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, further reflecting the ongoing need in Canada to take indigenous rights seriously.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

NOVEMBER 03, 2014

Mark Coultan
State Political Correspondent
Sydney

THE NSW government has told its agencies not to use the statute of limitations to avoid claims of child abuse, as part of its response to the royal commission into institutional child abuse.

The royal commission has heard the NSW Crown Solicitor’s office pursued a strategy of trying to deny claims on the basis of the passage of time, suggested spying on those making claims, and spent almost $1 million on legal fees before paying about $100,000 in compensation.

The NSW Attorney-General Brad Hazzard said that cultural change was required. Claims would be finalised as quickly as possible with agencies guided by an understanding that litigation could be a traumatic experience.

The government would issue guidelines to its agencies on how to respond to claims for child sexual abuse. The underlining principle would be compassion for the victims, he said.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Legal process will be easier but redress scheme for sex abuse victims in children’s homes a long way off

November 3, 2014

Rachel Browne
Social Affairs Reporter

The legal process for survivors of sexual abuse committed in state-run children’s homes and orphanages will be simplified under recommendations from the NSW government aimed at reducing the suffering for victims.

Victims advocates welcomed the move but continued calls for a national redress scheme that includes financial compensation.

Care Leavers Australia Network executive officer Leonie Sheedy commended some aspects of the state government’s interim response to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse but said much more work was needed.

“We need to have a national independent redress scheme for people who have been abused and used in orphanages in NSW and foster homes,” Ms Sheedy said.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

VICTIMS of child sex abuse have been promised a more “compassionate” approach from NSW government agencies processing their civil claims.

THEY will also be able to access state care records more easily as part of the government’s first official response to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

“No more government denial and ducking,” Attorney-General Brad Hazzard said.

He said the government would direct state agencies and their lawyers to avoid enforcing a six-year statutory time limit for survivors of child abuse to bring civil claims in court.

The Victorian government has recently gone a step further and pledged to remove the time limit altogether via a change in legislation.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Joanna Woodburn

Resources for claims made in response to a royal commission into child sexual abuse have been doubled by the New South Wales Government.

The move is part of a number of measures the Government has introduced to address some of the issues raised by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Five initiatives have been unveiled to support survivors and help them seek assistance in response to matters raised by inquiry.

The Government said it would boost resources at the Department of Family and Community Services to ensure people could access their care records quicker and to clear the backlog of applications by mid 2015.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

May facing questions over failure to publish explosive report into missing child abuse dossier handed to Home Office in 1980s

By Tom McTague, Deputy Political Editor for MailOnline

Theresa May is facing further questions over her handling of historic allegations of child abuse this morning – after it emerged she has failed to publish a crucial report on the Home Office’s record of dealing with paedophile claims.

Mrs May has been accused of delaying the release of the report, compiled by NSPCC chief Peter Wanless, into how the Home Office dealt with a dossier of child abuse allegations delivered to former Home Secretary Leon Brittan in the 1980s.

The revelation comes as Mrs May faces growing pressure over her handling of the wider inquiry into historic child abuse which has been left in chaos after Fiona Woolf became the second chairman to quit before its investigations had even begun.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Caroline O’Doherty

A relationship with a troubled teenage girl and the subsequent accusation of sex assault — of which he was cleared — has left a priest with a battle on his hands, writes Caroline O’Doherty

Fr Chris Conroy had a saying when he was living in the Andes Mountains in Peru: “Canon law doesn’t apply above 10,000 feet.”

By that, he meant the formal structures and strictures of the Catholic Church took second place to the practicalities of survival in a harsh environment among people living a primitive existence in grinding poverty, stalked by a guerrilla insurgency.

Back at sea level in his native Wicklow, however, Church law very much holds sway and Fr Conroy has found himself in difficulties for challenging it.

The 81-year-old entered the priesthood through the Carmelite Friary in Kinsale and after his ordination in 1959 he was based at the Order’s Whitefriar Street community in Dublin.

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MALTA
Malta Today

It is not the attire which makes you a worthy priest or a nun, but the personality and psychological make-up that lies beneath. Some are truly good. Others are truly nasty pieces of work.

Josanne Cassar 3 November 2014

I think I had better start this piece with a disclaimer: I know very well that there are very good, very worthy priests (and nuns for that matter) who are doing a lot of commendable missionary work in their chosen fields. I particularly admire the nuns who run the creches and the priests who work with the poor and disadvantaged in Malta’s problem areas.

Unfortunately, they do not compensate, in the public’s mind, for those who transgress. This is understandable, since it has been drilled and drummed into most of us from the time we attended our first catechism lesson, that those who represent the Church are (or should be) above reproach. Although the influence of religion on the mores of Maltese society has been greatly diluted in the last 50 years, it is still there, ever present, as part of our national social fabric.

One can hardly turn on a TV talk show without seeing a member of the clergy speaking on behalf of the Church. And even if their own lifestyle is far removed from the teachings of the Church, many lapsed Catholics find absolutely no contradiction in sending their children to a church school, packing them off to muzew in order to be able to do their Holy Communion and Confirmation, and basically raising their offspring as Roman Catholics, because….

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POLAND
The News

A Polish priest indicted for abusing children in the Dominican Republic and Poland allegedly forced boys to perform oral sex and photographed minors in drag carrying out sex acts.

Father Wojciech G. (full name withheld under Polish privacy laws) was formally indicted in October, with his case referred to a district court in Wolomin.

Prosecutors in Warsaw claimed that the “ample evidence” against the clergyman includes testimonies of over 100 witnesses, and over a dozen reports by experts.

According to the Gazeta Wyborcza daily, which has accessed documents connected with the indictment, about 91,000 images containing child pornography were found on the priest’s computer in the Caribbean republic, as well as 400 films of a similar nature.

A number of the pictures were allegedly taken in the priest’s vicarage in the highland village of Juncalito, where he led the Roman Catholic parish for close to a decade.

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MALTA
Malta Independent

Stephen Calleja

Monday, 3 November 2014

Those of you who know a little bit of Church history were not surprised when they watched the much-acclaimed television series The Borgias, which recounts the story of the most notorious pope, Alexander VI. Although the producers at times did exaggerate to add some more drama to the show, the series is based on facts that really happened – a pope with a wife and a mistress; four children, one of whom was appointed a Cardinal, and a life of scheming and luxury, far from spirituality. This pope’s life and times were even captured by Mario Puzo, well-known for “The Godfather”, in another famous book called “The Family”. It is no wonder that the word Borgia is now associated with nepotism and libertinism.

The Church has evolved since those times, but is still made up of humans, and humans make mistakes. It is always wrong to put everyone in the same basket. If one priest steps out of line, it does not mean that all priests are behaving improperly. Just as much as what happened in the News of the World some years back does not mean that all editors around the world are unethical or worse.

But the story that has emerged these past few days, since The Malta Independent named Fr Charles Fenech as facing court charges on alleged sexual abuse, has once again thrown bad light on what should be an exemplary institution. I’m not saying that what Fr Charles Fenech allegedly did is in any way comparable to what Pope Alexander did; far from it, but it goes without saying that the alleged abuse committed by Fr Charles is not something that should make him proud.

After two other priests were involved in a highly publicised scandal involving children a few years ago, this time round a priest who was already well-known to the public because of his involvement in Kerygma volleyball marathons has been linked to another scandal that is rocking the local Curia.

What has been uncovered so far raises more suspicions on why Mgr Paul Cremona, himself a Dominican friar like Fr Fenech, resigned from the post of Archbishop a few weeks back. It also adds to the speculation on why the Kerygma volleyball marathon was stopped so suddenly, with stories of how it was turning into an occasion for more than just aces and spikes now taking on a new meaning.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

FOR years there have been persistent rumours about a dark conspiracy to conceal child abuse within the political establishment.

By: Leo McKinstry
Published: Sun, November 2, 2014

But concern grew dramatically in the aftermath of Jimmy Savile’s death, when the horrendous scale of his predatory activities began to emerge.

In a move to quell these mounting public anxieties, the Home Secretary Theresa May set up an independent inquiry in July this year to examine historic allegations of abuse and cover-up inside our political system going back to 1970.

This panel, we were promised, would shine the searing spotlight of truth into the murkiest corners of the establishment.

Sadly, four months later, the work of the panel remains shrouded in darkness.

The spotlight has not even been switched on.

This is because the Home Office has botched the selection of the panel’s head, exasperating victims’ groups and undermining public faith in the whole process.

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NEW YORK
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York

Please click here for espanol.

Parish List 1 – Masses and Sacraments celebrated at both churches

Parish List 2 – Masses and Sacraments to be celebrated at the designated parish church; the other church may be used on special occasions.

“This time of transition in the history of the archdiocese will undoubtedly be difficult for people who live in parishes that will merge. There will be many who are hurt and upset as they experience what will be a change in their spiritual lives, and I will be one of them. There is nobody who has been involved in Making All Things New who doesn’t understand the impact that this will have on the Catholic faithful. It will be our responsibility to work with everyone in these parishes so as to help make the change as smooth as we possibly can.”

With these words, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, today announced the results of a multi-year pastoral planning process, Making All Things New, undertaken to strengthen and enhance parish life in the Archdiocese of New York and to assist the archdiocese in serving its Catholic faithful most effectively. This pastoral planning process, which had its beginnings in 2010, sought the input and suggestions of parishioners, the leadership of religious orders of women and men, and the clergy, resulting in today’s announcement.

The first phase of pastoral planning, directed by Bishop Dennis Sullivan, then the vicar general of the archdiocese, picked up on the good work begun by Cardinal Edward Egan prior to his retirement as archbishop in 2009. This initial work consisted in surveying the parishioners of every parish of the archdiocese; meeting with priests, deacons, and religious throughout the archdiocese; consulting with the archdiocesan pastoral council; and reviewing the observations offered by Cardinal Dolan from his own extensive parish visits since his 2009 appointment as archbishop. These elements were used to determine how pastoral planning should proceed, as well as to identify areas in which the archdiocese should concentrate its resources. Among the issues raised most frequently during these meetings were:

1. The need for a strategic plan for Catholic schools
2. Improved religious education and faith formation programs for children, youth, and adults
3. Greater outreach to various ethnic groups, in particular Hispanic Catholics and recent immigrants
4. Enhanced ministry to teens, college students, and young adults
5. Better use of technology for more effective communication with parishioners
6. Expansion of healthcare throughout the archdiocese
7. An emphasis on the works of charity, particularly in affordable housing
8. Enhanced transparency, especially on financial matters
9. Promotion of greater involvement of the faithful in the life of the Church, especially in attracting new people to the faith, and winning back people who have left

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NEBRASKA
JRN

By Rebekah Rae

OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) A former pastor who served at an Omaha church is accused of sexually abusing a minor. Two years after his death, the church announced a priest thousands trusted is accused of sex crimes.

“We treat it as a credible allegation,” said Deacon Tim McNeil. Friday, the archdiocese announced Reverend Anthony Palmese may have sexually abused a child in Omaha 30 years ago. Palmese served as an associate pastor at Holy Ghost from 1984 to 1985.

“We want parents and parishioners and the public to know about these men,” said David Clohessy. He’s the director of the survivors network of those abused by priests, otherwise known as SNAP.

Sunday, he passed out fliers at Saint Cecilia church, warning catholic parishioners of possible predators. He fears more victims may be hiding. “Even though some of the crimes may have happened a long, long time ago, we still believe it’s the civic duty and the moral duty of everybody who has information about child sex crimes to call law enforcement.”

SNAP asks victims to come forward and tell police. McNeil said the archdiocese wants victims to speak out as well. Sunday, Holy Ghosts announced the investigation in their weekly newsletter. “If there’s anybody here who had a negative experience with a priest, the priest in question, come forward. We want to make sure that you get all the love, attention and care that you deserve.”

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UNITED STATES
Vatican Insider

In the US, attention has shifted from anti-abortion battles to jobs and poverty. There is controversy over Francis’ choices. Meanwhile, neoconservatives are protesting

ANDREA TORNIELLI
VATICAN CITY

Blase Joseph Cupich represents the new face of the American Church. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1949, to a Croatian family and has eight siblings. Francis unexpectedly nominated him leader of the Diocese of Chicago, which has 2,3 million faithful and is the third largest diocese in the US. The fact he was chosen as replacement to the seriously ill 77-year-old Wojtylian cardinal, Francis George, is the sign of a significant change of course when compared to the past few decades, which saw “cultural warriors” being appointed leaders of the US episcopate. These “warriors” took part in tough public battles against abortion and same-sex unions. They were much less concerned with subjects such as immigration, social justice, peace and the consequences of what Francis in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium called: an economy “that kills”. When he was bishop of Rapid City, Cupich – whom the Editor-in-Chief of U.S. Catholic magazine, Bryan Cones, referred to as “the bishop who can speak without shouting” – transformed the local “pro-life committee” into a “social justice committee”: he did not stop speaking out against abortion, but widened the focus of his speeches, calling for immigration reform and taking an interest in the poor.

The difference in approach between the US Episcopate on one hand and Francis on the other, became all the more evident during the Synod on the Family. So much so, that Boston Globe Vatican expert John Allen said the US Church’s “honeymoon” with Pope Francis was over. Among the most shocking declarations made by prelates who were not present at the Synod assembly, were those published on the Diocese of Providence website by Bishop Thomas Tobin: “The concept of having a representative body of the Church voting on doctrinal applications and pastoral solutions strikes me as being rather Protestant. According to Tobin, “the Church risks the danger of losing its courageous, counter-cultural, prophetic voice”. Commenting on the distortions of the media, the Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles J. Chaput, said the “public image” of the Synod has created “confusion” and “confusion is of the devil”.

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NEW YORK
The New York Times

[list of churches that will merge]

By SHARON OTTERMAN
NOV. 2, 2014

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan announced on Sunday the largest reorganization in the history of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of New York, with 55 parishes from Staten Island to the Catskills to merge with neighboring parishes.

In 31 of those mergers, all Masses and other sacraments such as weddings and funerals will cease to be celebrated on a regular basis at one of the churches being merged. In the remaining 24 mergers, both churches will remain open for the regular celebration of Masses and other events.

Of the churches that will essentially be closed on a weekly basis for worship purposes, nine are in Manhattan, six in Westchester, six in the Bronx, four in Staten Island and six are in Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster, or Dutchess counties.

The churches that will cease to be used regularly in Manhattan include Holy Rosary, Holy Agony, and Saint Lucy’s in East Harlem, and Our Lady of Peace, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary and Saint Stephen of Hungary on the Upper East Side.

In the Bronx, churches no longer used regularly will include Visitation on Van Cortlandt Park South and Saint Ann on Bainbridge Avenue. On Staten Island, they include Assumption on Webster Avenue and Saint Mary of the Assumption on Richmond Terrace.

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NEW YORK
The Journal News

Elizabeth Ganga, eganga@lohud.com 10:01 a.m. EST November 2, 2014

The Archdiocese of New York announced Sunday that it will merge 112 parishes into 55 new parishes, with less than half of the merged parishes continuing to celebrate masses and sacraments at both churches.

Of the new parishes, 31 will only use one of the church buildings on a regular basis.

In Westchester, 12 churches will be merged and the Salesian community will keep two active churches in Port Chester at sites to be determined. In Rockland, four churches will be affected.

No parishes are merging in Putnam.

At St. Bernard Church in White Plains, which had been told it might merge but in the end was not on the list, parishioners Danuta and Don Zamora were happy and relieved as they walked into 9 a.m. Mass Sunday. They had sampled several churches before picking St. Bernard. They liked its diversity and that it seemed to be growing and thriving.

“We just moved into the area and we were just extremely hopeful that the church would stay open,” Danuta Zamora said.

Sunday’s announcement was in the works for several years. The church initiated a reorganization process called Making All Things New that involved self-evaluations by parishes and recommendations from an Archdiocesan Advisory Board.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mail on Sunday

Child abuse inquiry may begin WITHOUT a chairman as Theresa May scrambles to find a replacement for Fiona Woolf

By Tom McTague, Deputy Political Editor for MailOnline and Claire Carter for MailOnline

The Government’s beleaguered inquiry into historic child abuse could be ordered to start work without a chairman following Fiona Woolf’s dramatic resignation last week, William Hague said today.

Mrs Woolf stood down on Friday after victims unanimously attacked her appointment over her links to the Tory peer Leon Brittan, who is accused of failing to act on a dossier of child abuse allegations as Home Secretary in the 1980s.

Her resignation came after the first choice to head up the inquiry, Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, quit the role in July because he late brother Michael Havers was Attorney General in Margaret Thatcher’s government.

Mr Hague said the inquiry could start ‘temporarily even without a chairman’ while a replacement is found.

Speaking on the Andrew Marr show this morning, Mr Hague said inquiry into historic child abuse needed to get underway as soon as possible.

He said: ‘We’re determined that this will happen and will be able to do its work.’

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 1 November 2014)

This court case is an example of how it is possible for victims of church child-abuse to get their perpetrator convicted many years after the abuse. In the 1970s, Marist Brother John Skehan had multiple victims in Catholic schools in New South Wales and Victoria. Forty years later, one victim got Brother Skehan convicted in a New South Wales court in 2010 and another victim scored a similar victory over Skehan (aged 75) in a Victorian court in 2014.

Brother Skehan’s convictions were for offences committed while he worked at Marist Brothers schools in Broken Hill (NSW) and Shepparton (Victoria) but (according to Marist publications) he also worked at other Marist schools, including (in the 1980s) Marcellin College in Bulleen, Melbourne.

John Skehan (born in 1939) became a trainee Brother in his late teens in the 1950s at the Marist Brothers’ training institution in an old mansion, “Drusilla”, at Macedon, north-west of Melbourne. In those years, a new Marist Brother would adopt a “religious” name. Broken Rites has seen a photo of a group of Marist Brothers in 1959, one of whom is listed as “Brother Emilian (John Skehan)”, presumably named after a famous Saint Emelian. In later years, many of the Brothers changed back to their birth name. Skehan’s victims in the 1970s knew him as “Brother John”.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 2 November 2014)

Helped by Broken Rites, victims of Christian Brother “Neil” Richards have achieved justice. In the Sydney District Court in 2014, Richards has pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting four boys, aged 11, 12 and 13, at various schools.

Brother Richards (aged 75 when he appeared in court) had a long career as a Christian Brother, including as a headmaster, in Catholic schools in New South Wales. He was charged under his birth name, Desmond Eric Richards.

The court was told that, after the boys had been sexually assaulted by Brother Richards, they were regularly beaten with a strap.

One 12-year-old boy, who had never been the subject of any punishment before the indecent assault, was later strapped on more than 60 occasions at St Patrick’s Christian Brothers College in Albury, while Richards was headmaster there in the early 1970s.

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NEW YORK
News 12

[with video]

MAMARONECK – Catholic parishioners in one Westchester community are reeling from the news that their church is among the list of parishes that will be merged.

The Most Holy Trinity Church and Saint Vito’s Church in Mamaroneck will be merging as part of the Archdiocese of New York’s restructuring plan.

Parishioners at Holy Trinity first received word of the merger during a service Saturday afternoon. The merger would effectively mean the closing of the church.

Members of the church say their pastor spread the news through a letter from Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

News 12 is told many parishioners had been bracing for the news when Dolan announced last fall that due to low attendance and financial reasons, the Archdiocese would be restructuring 368 post-World War II churches.

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ITALY
Tradition in Action

Atila S. Guimarães

Due to a quite busy schedule, I have collected a pile of books and articles to read when spare time appears. In that mound was a long article published two years ago by the well-informed Rome bulletin Adista reporting on the pedophilia crisis in the Italian clergy. Recently I found time to read it. It was, in my opinion, very revealing of the duplicity of the Italian Episcopate, the Vatican included. They pretend that pedophilia does not exist around them: it is an American problem…

It seems useful to portray a sampling of the Italian reality for the TIA American audience. I am basing myself on the information presented in a report by Emilio Carnevali entitled “Pedophile Priests in Italy: The Hierarchy Minimizes the Problem, but It Exists – Data from the Last Years” (Adista, May 13, 2006, pp. 11-14).

We are all aware of the extreme complacency of the Vatican in dealing with the pedophilia crisis in the U.S. It has always covered for the priests and blamed the critics, as if they were trying to destroy the Church. I mention just two facts to refresh my reader’s memory.

The first was the Vatican veto of the first draft of the Dallas document (2000) drawn up by the American Bishops, which was considered excessively strong. Far from being so, it was quite weak, but still much better than the final imposed version that was approved in Washington. This veto and its consequences were duly analyzed in my book on pedophilia. (1)

1. A.S. Guimarães, Vatican II, Homosexuality & Pedophilia, Los Angeles: TIA, 2004, pp-56-78

The second was the official visit of Card. Tarcisio Bertone to the U.S in August 2007. During his stay, the Vatican Secretary of State made violent, demagogic declarations against those who had attacked the clergy and the cover-up of the Bishops.

These two important facts are characteristic of the Vatican approach to ecclesiastical pedophilia.

We know that on his U.S. visit in April 2008, Benedict XVI expressed his sorrow to the victims of clergy abuse and made some vague promises regarding punishing the guilty. But, so far, we still have not seen any concrete follow-up to those lamentations.

At any rate, the report on priestly pedophile abuse in Italy and the silence of both the Italian Episcopate and the Vatican about it may help to fill in the missing spaces in the picture.

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MALTA
The Sunday Times of Malta

Click here for the story

Former Archbishop Paul Cremona has categorically denied claims that money was offered to an alleged victim of clerical sex abuse to buy her silence.

A spokesman for the Archbishop’s Curia described as “completely false” the claims made by one of the alleged victims that Mgr Cremona had offered her money to bury the allegations.

The Sunday Times of Malta broke the story last week that the priest is to be charged in court after a woman claimed he sexually abused her during a relationship spanning a number of years. The Dominican Order on Thursday named the priest as Fr Charles Fenech, the 54-year-old director of the Kerygma Movement.

In comments to this newspaper, the victim, in her 40s, had claimed that a member of the clergy had offered her a six-figure sum in return for her silence. She alleged that the abuse took place while she was being treated at Mount Carmel Hospital.

Although she initially mentioned Mgr Cremona in connection with this claim, the alleged victim is now saying the former Archbishop had offered her money but never specified the amount.

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UNITED STATES
The Daily Beast

WRITTEN BY
Candida Moss

Conservative Catholics, angry at Pope Francis’s more moderate tone, are bucking the Church’s hierarchy.

Almost from the beginning, there have been rumblings of discontent about Pope Francis I. While the world’s media fell in love with him, there were more conservative bishops who felt that Francis’s popular appeal came at the expense of carefully worked-out Church rituals and teachings. They saw Francis as chipping away at established Church teachings on sexuality, kowtowing to the liberal media, and acting aggressively towards conservative church leaders.

Criticism of Francis has come to a head with the publication of the final report of the Synod on the Family. Despite changing absolutely nothing doctrinally, the Synod’s recommendations for a more understanding attitude to those in unconventional family arrangements have ignited a firestorm of controversy among conservative commentators. The possibility that Catholics who had divorced and remarried without receiving an annulment might be readmitted into full communion with the Church has made many apoplectic.

Writing on his diocesan website, Bishop Thomas Tobin accused Francis of being fond of “making a mess” and stated that the Synod voting concept “struck [him] as being rather Protestant.” A funny argument, since Catholic bishops have been voting on key issues since the Council of Nicaea in 325, but that’s beside the point. Tobin seems to be suggesting that with Francis at the helm, the Catholic Church is no longer acting like the Catholic Church.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Salem News

[Final Addendum to the Report to the People of God – Original source: Los Angeles Archdiocese]

Posted: Saturday, November 1, 2014

PEABODY: Brother Damien P. Chong, O.Carm, died Friday morning at the Lahey Clinic Medical Center following a long illness. He was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on June 5, 1938, the son of the late Libert and Hannah (Akee) Chong and attended Saint Louis High School in Honolulu, HI and Archbishop Carroll High in Washington, D.C.

He made his Simple Profession on September 8, 1958 and his Solemn Profession on September 8, 1961, both in Akron, Ohio. From 1961 until 1991, he was assigned from Crespi High School, Mt. Carmel, La. and taught Tying, Drafter and General Science and was Pastoral Associate at St. Gelasius in Chicago.

Brother Damien had spent the last 15 years living at Our Lady of Scapular Priory in Peabody. He served in many different capacities at the Carmelite Chapel at the North Shore Mall and at the Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Danvers. He maintained the grounds, decorated the church for the holidays and was an all around handyman, and he was a gourmet chef as well.

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SLOVENIA
STA

Ljubljana, 2 November (STA) – The two Slovenian archbishops who were forced to quit by the Vatican over the financial collapse of the Maribor Archdiocese have begun teaching since returning to Church life in Slovenia three months ago.

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NEW YORK
New York Times

By SHARON OTTERMAN
NOV. 2, 2014

Roman Catholics across the Archdiocese of New York are poised to learn the fate of their local churches on Sunday, as church leaders from Staten Island to the Catskills announce which parishes will be eliminated in the largest reorganization plan in the history of the archdiocese.

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop, said last week that Catholics should expect that about 14 percent — or just over 50 — of the archdiocese’s 368 parishes would be merged with other parishes by next year. The mergers will end the independent existence of those parishes and may lead to the closing and sale of church buildings.

Many of the mergers are expected in the Bronx and Manhattan, where Cardinal Dolan has said that a declining Catholic population means that there is no longer a need for 88 parishes, some only blocks apart. But the mergers will span the entire archdiocese, which includes Staten Island, and seven counties north of New York City.

“What we’re talking about is realism,” Cardinal Dolan, who is expected to address questions about the mergers on Sunday, wrote last week, describing the need for the reorganization. “Families do it, our schools have done it, corporations do it — now our parishes must do it. “

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BELGIUM
De Redactie

[Church jurist Rik Torfs said it was brave of Bishop Jozef De Kesel to give a second chance to a priest convicted of sexual assault. Appointment of the priest to Middelkerke has caused a lot of negative actions. The town mayor does not want the priest there. Torfs said he saw no problem with the appointment as long as rules were followed and balanced judgment is needed.]

Kerkjurist Rik Torfs vindt het “moedig” dat bisschop Jozef De Kesel de voor aanranding veroordeelde pastoor van Middelkerke een tweede kans geeft. “Hij weet dat hij heel het land over zich heen krijgt. Het zou veel makkelijker geweest zijn om de man gewoon te dumpen.”
lees ook

Gisteren raakte bekend dat een priester die 5 jaar geleden schuldig bevonden werd aan aanranding van een minderjarige, is benoemd tot pastoor in Middelkerke. De zaak maakt heel wat negatieve reacties los. Ook de burgemeester van de kustgemeente ziet de man niet graag komen.

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AUSTRALIA
Jerusalem Post

Tzedek, which advocates for members of the Jewish community who have been sexually abused, issued a set of recommended guidelines on Tuesday.

Stricter oversight is required at ritual baths, known in Hebrew as mikvaot, in order to prevent child molestation, according to one Australian Jewish organization.

Tzedek, which advocates for members of the Jewish community who have been sexually abused, issued a set of recommended guidelines on Tuesday that it hopes will find widespread acceptance and that would overhaul the manner in which such religious facilities are managed.

Tzedek and its founder Manny Waks, himself a former victim, have been embroiled in a number of high profile disputes with Orthodox educational institutions accused of covering up past abuses and protecting the guilty parties.

In a document available in English and Hebrew, Tzedek recommended that youths attending the mikve should be accompanied by their fathers or a designated supervisor, that “alleged or convicted perpetrators” not be allowed within the facility while children are present and defining procedures for the admittance of children so that “their whereabouts are always known.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Observer

Jamie Doward and Daniel Boffey
Saturday 1 November 2014

Home secretary Theresa May is coming under new pressure to redraft the terms of the independent inquiry into child abuse so that it has powers to compel witnesses to give evidence and see those who give false statements prosecuted.

The potentially huge shift in the scope and the nature of the inquiry, hinted at by government-appointed lawyers to the inquiry when they met survivors of abuse on Friday, would go some way to addressing concerns that it will be little more than a whitewash.

The current inquiry has been plunged into chaos after its second chair, Fiona Woolf, resigned on Friday after accepting that abuse survivors had lost confidence in her ability to conduct the investigation impartially. Her resignation followed concerns over her links with the former home secretary, Lord Brittan, who has been accused of failing to act on a dossier of paedophile allegations in the 1980s. Woolf’s departure was a huge blow for the government after the inquiry’s previous chair, Baroness Butler-Sloss, also quit.

The former attorney general, Dominic Grieve MP, said on Saturday that May might need to look abroad for someone to chair the inquiry into historical child sex abuse, in order for the victims to have full confidence that it is independent of the British establishment.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mail on Sunday

Duped: What campaigners felt when they found abuse inquiry chief had secretly decided to resign – BEFORE emotional meeting

By Martin Beckford and Simon Murphy for The Mail on Sunday

Abuse victims last night angrily accused the Home Office of ‘duping’ them into attending a pointless meeting to discuss the Fiona Woolf controversy – after they found out she had decided to quit as abuse inquiry chairman days earlier.

Survivors, pressure groups and lawyers travelled from all over the country to make their voices heard at the showdown on Friday morning. Some got up before dawn and spent hundreds of pounds on train tickets.

Officials listened to almost all of the 21 people present declare that they would not support the inquiry into historical child abuse while Mrs Woolf remained chairman, because of her friendship with former Home Secretary Leon Brittan – a friendship first revealed by The Mail on Sunday.

But the campaigners later discovered that Mrs Woolf had told the Home Office several days earlier that she had decided to step down.

The three-hour meeting at Millbank Tower in Central London ended at 1.30pm, yet by 3pm corporate lawyer Woolf was recording a TV interview announcing her departure and giving her side of the story, as well as issuing a formal press statement at 5pm.

And she even admitted to the BBC: ‘I made my decision a few days back and warned the Home Office of it.’

Last night those present at the meeting said they were furious when they began to suspect that it had been hastily arranged simply to provide a ‘stage-managed’ way for Mrs Woolf to say she was quitting the inquiry after listening to their views.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mail on Sunday

Home Office’s chaotic approach to abuse inquiry marks an early start to the pantomime season… probably Snow White and the Seven Drafts

By Keith Vaz For The Mail On Sunday

Fiona Woolf’s resignation on Friday was more a reflection on the chaotic appointment process than her own integrity or judgement.

The Home Office failed miserably to perform the basic tasks of due diligence; to check carefully and check again the history of her knowledge of, and association with, key individuals whose names have been associated with the inquiry.

It was history repeating itself, not years, but weeks after the resignation of Lady Butler-Sloss.

Many factors in Mrs Woolf’s suitability for the post could have been ascertained earlier. Her role as Lord Mayor of London meant she could not start work until mid-November; her knowledge of child abuse issues is negligible; she had also not met the Home Secretary until the day she appeared before the Home Affairs Select Committee; and she never met the inquiry panel, the very people she was to lead.

To be fair to Mrs Woolf, she admitted all of these matters when she gave evidence to the Committee.

If that was not enough, the final blow came with the release of seven drafts of her letter to the Home Secretary which had been co-written by Theresa May’s own staff, and finally, the declaration of ‘no confidence’ from victims.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mail on Sunday

By CLAIRE CARTER FOR MAILONLINE

Two senior lawyers rejected the opportunity to lead the inquiry into child sexual abuse before ministers appointed Fiona Woolf, it has emerged.

Mrs Woolf stood down from her position as chairman of the inquiry on Friday after questions arose about her connections to Leon Brittan, who was Home Secretary in the 1980s.

Her resignation follows that of Elizabeth Butler-Sloss who quit the role in July over concerns about her late brother’s connections to Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

Two senior lawyers rejected the opportunity to lead the inquiry into child sexual abuse before ministers appointed Fiona Woolf, it has emerged.

Mrs Woolf stood down from her position as chairman of the inquiry on Friday after questions arose about her connections to Leon Brittan, who was Home Secretary in the 1980s.

Her resignation follows that of Elizabeth Butler-Sloss who quit the role in July over concerns about her late brother’s connections to Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

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MALTA
Malta Today

One of Fenech’s alleged victims who spoke to MaltaToday on condition of anonymity, said that though the Church has known about the allegations for years, Fenech has never been removed from his position as director of the Kerygma Movement

Jurgen Balzan 2 November 2014

A Curia spokesperson has denied that Archbishop Emeritus Paul Cremona offered money to a woman who claims to have been violently sexually abused by Fr Charles Fenech, a former provincial of the Dominican order in Malta.

Reliable sources have told MaltaToday that some months ago one of the alleged victims of sexual abuse by Fenech was offered a “hefty sum” by Cremona to remain silent.

However, in reply to questions sent by MaltaToday, a Curia spokesperson said “your assertion is completely false. Archbishop Emeritus Paul Cremona never offered any sum of money to persons claiming abuse.”

The reply followed a brief appearance by Auxiliary Bishop Charles Scicluna on PBS’s Xarabank on Friday, in which the Maltese Church’s temporary leader described any attempt to buy somebody’s silence as “the biggest insult to the Church.”

Fenech is now facing charges of violent sexual abuse against a mentally unstable patient and holding the woman against her will and committing indecent acts in public.

While deploring the Church’s slow reaction to alleged cases of sexual abuse by members of the clergy, Scicluna said that he could not ascertain whether any money was offered to one of Fenech’s alleged victims, “but any attempt to buy somebody’s silence is the biggest insult to the Church.”

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MALTA
Malta Independent

Alison Bezzina

Sunday, 2 November 2014

Every time a member of the clergy is accused of sexual abuse, exactly the same series of events is played out. First, the allegations are made public, then we learn that the case has been in front of the Curia’s (NON) response team for ages, then he is charged and arraigned, and then the ‘non-judgmental’ types come out from whatever dark corner they’ve been hiding in and start to defend the presumption of innocence. They argue, usually until they’re blue in the face, that we cannot try someone in the court of public opinion and that everyone should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. They even argue that the name of the accused should not be made public.

For reasons explained by the editor of this news portal, The Malta Independent chose to publish the name of the latest priest to be accused of sexual abuse. Other sections of the media decided not to and, legally, they are both in the right.

Whether to publish names or not is entirely at the discretion of every editor but, quite frankly, I’ve had it up to here with blind defenders of the Church who are only up in arms when the accused happens to be a priest.

In other cases, when the names of defendants are plastered all over the media before their case is decided, we hardly get anyone crying out for privacy or defending the presumption of innocence, do we?

Where are these people when Erin Tanti is being torn apart on discussion boards?

Where were they when the Mosta cat killer was charged?

Where were they when Minister Owen Bonnici was being told to resign before his case had even been heard, let alone decided?

Let me be frank from the start: I never, not even for a second, presumed that any of the priests accused of sexual abuse were innocent. If you think this is shameful, then so be it, but for me to assume them innocent I would also need to assume that our police force and Attorney General are idiots, which I don’t – at least not most of the time.

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MALTA
Malta Independent

I went to Fr Charles to adopt. He told me to leave my husband. Later he tried to kiss me – victim

Today, The Malta Independent is publishing parts of a sworn affidavit by one of the alleged victims regarding an alleged sexual abuse by a Dominican priest in which she gives details of her intimate relationship with him.

In her affidavit, she gives a chronological account of the various times she and Fr Charles Fenech were involved sexually.

She said that after her marriage was annulled, she threw a party to which Fr Charles Fenech was invited. It was here that he tried to kiss her for the first time.

The relationship developed into a roller-coaster of events, with the two at times close to each other and at other times staying apart.

She submitted a complaint to the Curia’s Response Team in 2006 and a decision on her case has

The following is an abridged version of the sworn affidavit submitted to the police by one of the victims about the way she was allegedly abused by Fr Charles Fenech. The names of other alleged victims mentioned by this woman were removed to protect their identity. The Malta Independent on Sunday has taken care not to publish the explicit details of what allegedly took place between Fr Charles Fenech and this particular victim.

“In 1991, as a young woman, a friend of mine took me to the Kerygma Movement where I met Fr Charles Fenech for the first time. After some time he became my spiritual director and he used to tell me to keep eye contact with him but I always felt uncomfortable doing it.

“In 1997, six years later” I got married and I left the Kerygma group. Fr Charles Fenech was still my spiritual director. My ex-husband and I could not have children so I decided to go to Fr Fenech, who at that time was responsible for the adoption of children from Albania. When I went, he told me that it is not worth it but it would be better if I leave my husband because I had no future with him. So I requested a (marriage) annulment which was given to me (in 2000). All this was a trauma for me and I had to seek treatment.

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MALTA
Times of Malta

The Church’s handling of the alleged abuses by Dominican priest Fr Charles Fenech was criticised today by former Curia official Fr Joe Borg.

Writing in The Sunday Times if Malta, he said public outcry following the reporting of yet another story of this kind was understandable.

“What is not understandable is how the Dominican Order – while fully respecting his presumption of innocence – deemed fit to relieve him of his duties only because now the allegations have become public.

“One of the two Response Teams of the Church has been investigating such allegations for the past eight years.

“This is totally unacceptable, nay it is simply scandalous. Such protraction by the Response Team is unfair to the accused, to the alleged victim and to the Church. The Response Team responsible for such delays is perpetrating great injustice to all concerned.”

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Victims to leaflet Cathedral
Two serial predator priests worked there
Both clerics were involved in recent settlement
They’re still priests, still alive and still in Kansas City
Group wants to warn parishioners & public about them
And victims vow: “After settlement, we’ll still be vigilant!”

SNAP: “Bishop should post predators’ names on his website

WHAT
As parishioners enter/leave mass, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will hand out fliers. The leaflets urge parishioners to ask their loved ones if they were hurt by

–two credibly accused serial predator priests who worked at the cathedral and were involved in the recent $10 million settlement, or
–any of the other 23 publicly accused KC area predator priests.

For the safety of kids, they will also urge ‘

–KC’s Catholic bishop to permanently post names of predator priests on his website, and
–anyone who saw, suspected or suffered clergy sex crimes to call police, not priests.

WHEN
Sunday, Nov. 2 at 11:30 a.m.

WHERE
On the sidewalk outside the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, 416 W. 12th in downtown Kansas City, MO

WHO
Three to four members of a support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org), including a KC man who recently endured the first pedophile priest abuse and cover up trial in Kansas City and a St. Louis woman who is SNAP’s long time outreach director

WHY
Last month, 32 clergy sex abuse victims settled with the KC diocese for nearly ten million dollars. Two of the accused priests involved in the settlement are Fr. Michael Tierney and Fr. Thomas M. Reardon.

Both are still priests, worked at the Cathedral, still live in Kansas City, and have been accused repeatedly of abuse and of working together, giving drugs and liquor and porn and ‘massages’ to the same boys, molesting them, and “rationalizing one another’s crimes to these scared and confused kids were taught since birth to respect, revere, trust and obey priests,” SNAP says. The group also maintains that “psychology and common sense strongly suggest that both Fr. Tierney and Fr. Reardon remain dangerous.”

Even after allegations against Fr. Tierney were made public in lawsuits a few years ago, Bishop Robert Finn did not promptly remove him from parish work. According to BishopAccountability.org, the “diocese learned of allegations (against him) in 2008” but “removed him in June 2011 for credible reports alleging sexual misconduct with minors in 1970s-1980s.”

[BishopAccountability.org]

SNAP says that Bishop Finn should use pulpit announcements, parish bulletins and church websites to disclose where Fr. Tierney and Fr. Reardon are now, again, so that kids will be safer.

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ITALIA
Il Piccolo

[The victim of the priest who committed suicide on Tuesday in Trieste said the church has known about the abuse since 1997 and covered-up.]

La vittima del prete suicidatosi martedì a Santa Croce aveva già denunciato all’epoca, nel 1997, gli abusi subiti ai vertici della Chiesa triestina, che però allora non era intervenuta. Ora la donna ha parlato per proteggere da don Maks Suard una sua giovane parente

di Gianpaolo Sarti

Qualcuno sapeva. Sapeva delle attenzioni che don Maks Suard, il parroco di Santa Croce che si è tolto la vita martedì scorso, aveva rivolto tanti anni fa alla tredicenne triestina, ora trentenne. Molestie più che abusi veri e propri, par di capire dall’indagine, come se una parola o l’altra potesse togliere o alleviare il dolore. Quel qualcuno si trova all’interno della Chiesa di Trieste e, all’epoca, aveva un ruolo ben preciso nel clero. E non avrebbe fatto nulla. A pochi giorni dal suicidio del sacerdote della minoranza slovena, trovato morto nella sua canonica sull’altipiano, emergono altri particolari della drammatica vicenda che sta sconvolgendo, ancora una volta, la comunità cattolica e la città intera.

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ITALIA
Rete L’Abuso

[Dr. Mauro Acquarone, thee ex-husband of Dr. Luisa Bonello,the woman who revealed the sexual abuse and corruption in a northern Italian diocese, lived in fear and kept a gun on the bedside table. He said he doesn’t believe in suicide and believe that his former wife did not kill herself although she was being treated for depression. He added that his wife was not as crazy as they are trying to say.]

I dubbi del dottor Mauro Acquarone: aveva paura, teneva le pistole sul comodino

«Non credo al suicidio. Mia moglie non era pazza come ora viene dipinta ». Il dottor Mauro Acquarone, medico di famiglia e ginecologo, ex marito di Luisa Bonello, rompe il silenzio «anche perchè -aggiunge – ci sono cose che devono essere precisate».

Quali,dottorAcquarone?

«Intanto sulle armi che Luisa aveva in casa… Si è parlato di un arsenale… Non esageriamo… Erano quattro o cinque fucili da caccia del papà e del nonno di Luisa, senza cartucce. Poi c’erano due pistole non funzionanti.

E altre due, una a tamburo e l’altra semi automatica, che si era comprata per il tiro a segno».

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ROME
Crux

By Inés San Martín
Vatican correspondent November 1, 2014

ROME — The Vatican approved a new set of constitutions for the Legionaries of Christ on Saturday, a once-powerful Catholic religious order that fell from grace under Pope Benedict XVI after revelations that its founder had been guilty of a wide range of sexual abuse and misconduct.

The new rules do not specifically deal with sexual abuse, with the Legion asserting that its policies on that front are developed on a national level.

The constitutions, made available in Spanish by the Legionaries on Saturday, present the fundamental rules for the order founded by the late Rev. Marciel Maciel Degollado in Mexico in 1959. Every Catholic religious order has them, to define the order’s identity and to govern its activities.

The Rev. Eduardo Robles-Gil, general director of the order, defined the document “as the path that will guide us to holiness and apostolic fruitfulness in serving the Church and men and women.”

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BELGIUM
Rorate Caeli

The news comes from much of the Dutch-speaking media, that calls him the “Pedopriester” (no translation necessary). Details are brought to you by Dutch blog In Caelo:

Bishop Jozef De Kesel [of Bruges, Flanders, Belgium] has assigned a priest, who has been found guilty of at least one case of molesting a minor in the past, to the parish federation in Middelkerke, halfway between Ostend and Nieuwpoort on the Belgian coast.

Father Tom Flamez appeared in court in 2008 and 2009, where he was found guilty of sexual molestation of teenage boy. In January of 2009, the court, for reasons of its own, decided to waive any punishment, as Bishop De Kesel explains in a statement released today:

“For a period of five years, Tom Flamez was permanently monitored by the house of justice in Courtrai. Even during this time the probation commission had no objections to an eventual appointment as parish priest. Unlike the reporting of some media he never violated the probationary conditions. In January of 2014 the commission of the court of Courtrai decided that the trial period could be ended. Until this day Tom Flamez is sustainably and professionally supervised.”

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SCOTLAND
KaleidoScot

1 November 2014
Posted by: Dan Littauer

The Catholic Church is denying allegations by parishioners it is shutting their local Church in Scotland in an attempt at a cover up claims of gay sexual assault.

Father Matthew Despard was suspended last year after publishing allegations of gay bullying within the Church in the wake of the Cardinal O’Brien sex scandal.

A parish in Blantyre is now being closed in the wake of its former Father, Matthew Despard who was suspended from the Church after publishing allegations of gay sexual assault, reported The Herald.

Fr Despard published the allegation in the wake of the Cardinal O’Brien sex scandal, and was then suspended, last year.

His parish, St John Ogilvie, in Blantyre, is now one of about 40 parishes in Lanarkshire facing closure, bring forced to merge with St Joseph’s, Blantyre, which has a much larger Catholic population within its vicinity.

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ROME
Legionaries of Christ

Rome, November 1, 2014 – Fr. Eduardo Robles-Gil, general director of the Legion of Christ, announced in a letter to the Legionaries of Christ that the Holy See has approved the Constitutions of the congregation.

In his letter, Fr. Eduardo invited the Legionaries to “be grateful for the paternal care with which Popes Benedict XVI and Francis and Cardinal De Paolis and his councilors have guided our congregation’s steps in these years.”

The approval letter was signed on October 16th by Archbishop José Rodríguez Carballo, OFM, and Fr. Sebastiano Paciolla, O. Cist., respectively secretary and sub-secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. The new Constitutions are in force.

This approval fulfills one of the principal objectives of the renewal process that Pope Benedict XVI began in 2010, naming Cardinal Velasio De Paolis as Pontifical Delegate, and which Pope Francis has continued. The text is the result of a 3-year period of consultation and reflection in which all Legionaries had the opportunity to participate and contribute. Cardinal De Paolis’ task as Pontifical Delegate culminated with the Extraordinary General Chapter of the Legion of Christ, which was held in January and February of this year.

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MALTA
Malta Independent

Bishop ‘shocked’ on Xarabank: TMI has evidence he had documents on priest sexual abuse case in 2013

Auxiliary Bishop Charles Scicluna said on Xarabank on Friday that he learnt about the case involving an alleged sexual abuse by Dominican priest Fr Charles Fenech from the media, but The Malta Independent can reveal that Mgr Scicluna was informed about it in January 2013.

On Friday, Mgr Scicluna said it had been a shock for him to learn from the media this week that a colleague was in such a predicament.

But a document in possession of The Malta Independent shows that Mgr Scicluna received information about the case nearly two years ago.

A statement highlighting the case was sent to Mgr Scicluna in January 2013, and the person who sent it confirmed with Mgr Scicluna that he (the bishop) had received it.

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TEXAS
KHOU

[with video]

HOUSTON — Chad Foster admitted to soliciting sex online from one young girl and sexually assaulting another. The former youth pastor was convicted of those crimes in 2013 and is serving five years for those sex crimes. Now the family of one of the victims is taking legal action against the church years after the crime.

“We’re going to hold them accountable,” said attorney Cris Feldman.

Now Feldman, who represents one of the victims, is going after Second Baptist Church and Community of Faith Church. Foster was with one or the other at the time of both crimes. In a civil suit, lawyers claim Second Baptist “placed Foster in a position that allowed him to manipulate children.”

“Parents need to be cautious,” said Feldman. “This is a sophisticated marketing scheme targeting children.”

The suit claims Foster met his victim during lunch at a local Cypress Fairbanks middle school where Second Baptist sent their youth pastors to recruit pre-teens to church. It wasn’t long before Foster began texting the 12-year-old. They talked on Facebook, and then he exposed himself via Skype sessions where he asked the girl to “talk dirty” to him and “take off her clothes”. Feldman says Second Baptist failed to protect the child.

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TEXAS
Houston Chronicle

By Anita Hassan | October 28, 2014

The attorney for the family of a teenage girl who was sexually solicited by a onetime youth pastor at Second Baptist Church demanded on Tuesday that the organization temporarily stop sending youth ministers into public schools.

Cris Feldman, who is representing the parents of the girl in a lawsuit against Second Baptist and Community of Faith Church, called for Second Baptist to publicly disclose how it screens, trains and supervises its youth ministers and monitors their social media interactions with students. Until then, the church should suspend its practice of sending youth ministers into schools, Feldman said.

Parents sue churches

The girl’s parents have filed a lawsuit in Harris County against the churches, saying they were careless in their supervision and hiring of 35-year-old Chad Foster, who pleaded guilty to trying to pressure the girl, now 17, into having sex using the Internet in 2011.

The suit states the girl met Foster during her lunch hour at school, where he was able to get her involved in activities with Second Baptist. The two started a relationship as one of religious guidance, the suit states.

On Monday, each church filed a response to the lawsuit, denying all claims.

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TEXAS
Raw Story

DAVID FERGUSON
31 OCT 2014

The family of a teen girl who was sexually propositioned by a youth pastor she met at school have asked that the school suspend its clergy visit program, in which Christian pastors bring fast food to public school cafeterias during lunch with an eye to recruiting students and their parents into their churches.

“This is no different than a pedophile with candy in his pocket,” said the family’s attorney, Cris Feldman, to the Houston Chronicle. “It’s just someone who worked for [Houston Megachurch] Second Baptist and was told to go into school lunch rooms and recruit.”

According to the Chronicle, on Tuesday, the family asked that Second Baptist and Community Faith Church at least temporarily halt the pastoral outreach program after youth pastor Chad Foster, 35, of Second Baptist propositioned their daughter, then 14, online and attempted to pressure her into having sexual relations with him.

The family has filed lawsuits against Second Baptist and Community of Faith Church, both of which employed Foster during the period of time he was still allowed to have contact with young girls.

Furthermore, Feldman demanded that Second Baptist disclose the details of how is screens, hires, trains and supervises its youth ministers and whether the church imposes any boundaries on or monitors the way clergy interact with children through the Internet and social media.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Friday 31 October 2014

When Theresa May, the home secretary, stands up in the Commons on Monday to tell MPs what she intends to do about the child abuse inquiry in the wake of Fiona Woolf’s resignation she will face an almost impossible task.

The loss of Woolf after the resignation in July of her first choice, Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, in the face of similar nebulous allegations of a connection with an establishment figure who may face criticism in the enquiry means that the task has rapidly turned from being flawed to futile.

May is right to say that the child abuse panel should carry on with its work while a new chairman is found and that a pre-appointment confirmatory hearing should be held for the eventual candidate. But it is hard to see how a substantial figure can be appointed who will have sufficient legal or child protection expertise who won’t face accusations of being an establishment figure.

When Lady Butler-Sloss was forced to go it was because the Home Office had failed to do the elementary due diligence that would have established that the role of her brother, Lord Havers, a 1980s attorney general, was already the subject of criticism among child abuse survivors and their campaigners.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

Oct 31, 2014 By Jack Blanchard

Home Secretary May’s first two choices of chairwoman have been forced to quit over links to establishment figures at the time of the alleged cover-up

Furious victims’ groups tonight rounded on Theresa May after Fiona Woolf’s resignation left the ­Westminster child sex abuse inquiry stalled once again.

The bungling Tory Home Secretary’s second choice of chairwoman quit over her links to Lord Brittan, a key figure in the probe into an alleged establishment cover-up.

Mrs Woolf’s decision following days of pressure is a personal disaster for Mrs May after her first choice of leader, Dame Butler-Sloss, resigned in July because her brother was Attorney General at the time of the sex scandal claims in the 80s.

And in another embarrassing move, both David Cameron and George Osborne were today still backing Mrs Woolf, just hours before she quit.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Liberal Democrat Voice

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 1st November 2014

To me it had been clear that Fiona Woolf should step down as Chair of the Inquiry into historic sex abuse ever since it became clear that she had been on dinner party terms with Sir Leon Brittain. It’s not that she had done anything wrong, but it was clear at that point that it would be very difficult for everyone to have confidence in her impartiality. Once the victims had said that they didn’t support her continuing in the role, it was only a matter of time before she resigned, as she did this evening.

Back in July, Liberal Democrat MP Tessa Munt revealed that she had been sexually abused as a child. Tonight, she discussed Fiona Woolf’s resignation and what should happen next on Radio 4’s PM programme.

You can listen to discussion on the whole issue here from the start of the broadcast, or go straight to Tessa at 36:50.

Sad it’s come to this, but it might have been anticipated. She supported a lot of things that the previous interviewee, representing the victims, had said.

She was asked where she thought we should go next.

Tessa suggested that the pubic should have a role in choosing the next Chair. She suggested using social media to get potential names and then allowing people to express concerns which could then be investigated before any appointments were made. She said that we shouldn’t entertain the idea of people’s reputations being trashed on Twitter, but if people had serious concerns, they could be looked into. There needed to be a lot more transparency in the process.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Western Morning News

The Government is facing a search for a new head for the inquiry into historical child sex abuse after the chairwoman announced she was stepping down amid a barrage of criticism over her “establishment” links.

Fiona Woolf said she had no choice but to quit after accepting that the victims had lost all confidence in her ability to conduct the investigation impartially.

It follows sustained pressure over her links with former home secretary Lord Brittan, who is facing claims that he failed to act on a dossier of paedophile allegations in the 1980s.

Mrs Woolf has said she did not reveal her links to Lord Brittan as she did not think he would feature in the inquiry.

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