ABUSE TRACKER

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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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

To say it’s been a bad week for the Home Office is a gross understatement.

The Border Agency admitted losing track of 50,000 illegal immigrants and failing to expel 175,000 more, a second huge sham marriage trial collapsed amid claims of perjury, and the backlog of asylum claims has soared by 70 per cent.

But most egregiously, it has emerged that Home Office civil servants – with a flagrant disregard for the truth – tried to conceal the close links between Fiona Woolf, head of the public inquiry into historic allegations of child abuse, and Leon Brittan, a key witness in the probe.

Mrs Woolf was already under pressure over her friendship with the former Tory minister – who as Home Secretary in 1983 ‘lost’ a dossier detailing the abuse claims.

But after it was revealed that the Home Office had helped her rewrite a formal letter no fewer than SEVEN times with the express intention of disguising how close that friendship really was, her position was untenable.

At best this was dissembling, at worst downright lying. Mrs Woolf – whose predecessor Lady Butler-Sloss also quit over concerns about her establishment links – has rightly resigned.

But shouldn’t the Home Office officials who colluded with her in this debacle also be identified?

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ALASKA
News-Miner

FAIRBANKS — A federal magistrate judge granted bail on Friday to a Fairbanks priest accused of trying to make child pornography.

Clint Landry was released to the care of two third-party custodians after a bail hearing Friday morning, according to federal court records.

Landry, 57, had been in federal custody at Fairbanks Correctional Center.

He was arrested last week on charges of attempted production of child pornography and one count of attempted coercion and enticement of a minor for crimes that allegedly took place in May.

Landry had been a priest at Sacred Heart Cathedral, Fairbanks’ largest Catholic congregation.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia Daily News

RONNIE POLANECZKY, DAILY NEWS COLUMNIST
POSTED: Sunday, November 2, 2014

THE BANISHMENT of the Rev. Thomas Chang Soo Cho back to South Korea is meant to heal a Catholic community divided by gossip and fear.

But it can’t happen unless those in Cho’s community summon the will to behave like the Christians their faith calls them to be.

Everyone was excited when Cho arrived in August 2013 from Seoul, South Korea, for a five-year stint as pastor of St. Augustine Lee Kwang Heon Catholic Community.

Part of the Philadelphia Archdiocese, the 250-member community holds services in the basement of Holy Cross Church in Springfield, Delaware County. It also rents the rectory, where Cho lives, which is attached to a big community room.

Cho replaced a pastor who was beloved, but left some members hungry for more spirituality.

So they were delighted when Cho, 60, began offering Bible classes that drew as many as 100 participants. He also arranged pilgrimages to the Holy Land (everyone paid their own way) so parishioners could walk where Jesus once did.

“He made our faith feel alive,” says parishioner Jongtaek Park.

But early on, Cho noticed gaps in the parish’s finances. Tens of thousands had been paid in reimbursements to church members whose expenses were not validated with receipts. Weirdly, the amounts were in round numbers: $250 here, $1,000 there.

And records showed that the total collected in church offerings didn’t always make it into the church’s bank account. No one could account for the discrepancy, Cho said.

So he created a finance committee to track spending. He also asked the Archdiocese to audit the parish, whose accounting didn’t follow procedures required by the Archdiocese.

And that, say Cho’s supporters, is when some parishioners began spreading lies about Cho.

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AUSTRALIA
YouTube

Published on Oct 30, 2014

“The Role of Church Law in the Child Abuse Issue: Help or Hindrance”.

Discussion on Wednesday 29 October 2014, jointly sponsored by Catholics For Renewal Inc. and Catalyst For renewal in front of an audience at Pumphouse Hotel Fitzroy.

Part 1. Speaker: Kieran Tapsell, Retired Lawyer and author of Potiphar’s Wife.
Part 2 Responder: Canon Lawyer Rev. Professor Ian Waters (speaking in a private capacity.
Part 3. Audience interaction with presenters.

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AUSTRALIA
YouTube

Published on Oct 31, 2014

“The Role of Church Law in the Child Abuse Issue: Help or Hindrance”.

Discussion on Wednesday 29 October 2014, jointly sponsored by Catholics For Renewal Inc. and Catalyst For renewal in front of an audience at Pumphouse Hotel Fitzroy.

Part 1. Speaker: Kieran Tapsell, Retired Lawyer and author of Potiphar’s Wife.
Part 2 Responder: Canon Lawyer Rev. Professor Ian Waters (speaking in a private capacity.
Part 3. Audience interaction with presenters.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CANADA
CNW

Assembly of First Nations Pushes for Deadline Extension on Indian Residential Schools Personal Credits

OTTAWA, Oct. 31, 2014 /CNW/ – The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) will continue to assist former students of residential schools to submit their applications for personal credits for education – a compensation program offered by the Government of Canada as set out in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA). This comes after a willingness expressed today by the Government of Canada to extend the current deadlines for the personal credits application process. Currently, the first deadline is midnight today – October 31, 2014.

“In response to some of the administrative challenges and time constraints expressed by former students, the AFN has been pushing for an extension to the deadline for applications for personal credits for education, and it is our hope that all parties will agree to this extension,” said AFN National Chief Ghislain Picard.

The decision to extend deadlines is not yet finalized as it requires agreement by all parties to the IRSSA as well as a court order. More information is expected early November.

“We welcome the move for an extension in the personal credits for education process, and look forward to reviewing the process prior to agreeing on new deadlines,” said AFN Regional Chief for NWT Bill Erasmus who is the national executive member who leads work in this area. “AFN will continue to assist Common Experience Payment recipients in the application process, as the intent of the personal credits as negotiated and agreed to in the Settlement Agreement is to try to regain what was taken away during residential schools, and we think it’s important for all common experience payment recipients to have the choice to apply for funding through this program. It is our hope that the extension becomes final and that former students have adequate time to submit their applications. This is just another step toward healing and reconciliation in this country, and we continue to encourage Chiefs and former students to outline their concerns related to personal credits to assist advocacy efforts.”

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SCOTLAND
Herald Scotland

Saturday 1 November 2014

THE parish of a controversial Catholic priest is expected to close under a major church re-organisation.

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

His parish, St John Ogilvie, in Blantyre, is now one of about 40 parishes in Lanarkshire facing merger or being shut due to both dwindling numbers of priests and falling congregations.

A report by the Bishop of ­Motherwell Joseph Toal states the parish is likely to merge with St Joseph’s, Blantyre, which has a much larger Catholic population within its vicinity.

It comes amid further evidence of divisions within the parish, with supporters of Fr Despard claiming they were told by his stand-in, Fr Willie Nolan, effectively the general manager of the Diocese, that they had “no permission” to pray for the priest.

The Herald also understands Fr Despard is facing further legal action relating to his accommodation, which is due to come before the Sheriff Court in the coming weeks.

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CALIFORNIA
10 News

[with video]

Steve Fiorina, Joe Little
Oct 31, 2014

SAN DIEGO – A $13.5 million judgment was handed down in San Diego Superior Court against Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, which oversees Jehovah’s Witnesses.

It is specific to allegations of abuse of a 7-year-old boy who attended the Spanish Congregation bible study at the Jehovah’s Witnesses church in Linda Vista.

Team 10 uncovered the story last year; Gonzalo Campos, a leader of those classes, admitted abusing children on a video deposition and avoided prosecution by fleeing to Mexico.

Attorney Irwin Zalkin said there are many victims protected by secrecy within the church.

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IRELAND
Drogheda Independent

Fiona Magennis
PUBLISHED
01/11/2014

The Franciscan Order in Ireland has ‘apologised unreservedly’ for the first time to those who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of Ronald Bennett, a former spiritual director and bursar of Gormanston College.

Speaking during a Mass to mark the 60th Anniversary of the founding of the college, Minister Provincial of the Franciscans in Ireland Fr Hugh McKenna said the order must acknowledge the ‘shameful reality’ that they had failed those students abused by Ronald Bennett.

He said the criminal acts carried out by Bennett on repeated ocasions and over meany years meant that innocent pupils were ‘profoundly harmed’.

‘On behalf of the Franciscan Order I want to apologise unreservedly to each and every survivor for the pain and harm inflicted on those who suffered abuse while under the care of the friars,’ he said.

‘I apologise for the breach of trust and the suffering victims and their families endured,’ he said. ‘I also know that no apology of mine can ever be sufficient. I acknowledge with deep shame that the Franciscan Order failed you.’

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BELGIUM
De Redactie

The West Flemish Priest found guilty 5 years ago of sexually assaulting an underage teenage boy has decided not to take on the post of parish priest in the coastal resort of Middelkerke. The Bishop of Bruges Jozef De Kesel has apologised for having appointed the 40-year-old clergyman. Meanwhile, the Mayor of Middelkerke says that she is pleased with pleased with the Priest’s decision.

The Bruges Diocese’s Peter Rossel told journalists that “The Priest has informed the Bishop of Bruges that given the situation he cannot take on his appointment in Middelkerke. Understanding his situation, the Bishop has accepted this.

Monseigneur De Kesel realises that this appointment has hurt victims of sexual abuse. The Bishop would therefore like to take this opportunity to offer his sincere apologies.”

The priest’s appointment to the Middelkerke unleashed a storm of protest, not least from the Mayor of Middelkerke and her team of Aldermen. The Municipal Cabinet sent a letter to the Bruges Diocese asking for the Priest’s appointment to be revoked.

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CALIFORNIA
U-T San Diego

By Kristina Davis
.OCT. 31, 2014

SAN DIEGO — A San Diego judge has found that the governing body of the Jehovah’s Witness church covered up years of sexual abuse by a local church leader and continued to put children in danger of being molested, a ruling likely to echo across the country as alleged victims from other congregations take similar cases to court.

The church’s hierarchal body, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, was ordered Wednesday to pay Jose Lopez $13.5 million in damages for the abuse he suffered in 1986 at the age of 7 as part of the church’s Linda Vista Spanish congregation.

Six other men and one woman who said they also were molested by the same man, church leader Gonzalo Campos, have also sued the Watchtower but settled their cases out of court.

Mario Moreno, associate general counsel for Watchtower, denied the cover-up allegations in a statement: “Jehovah’s Witnesses abhor child abuse and strive to protect children from such acts. The trial judge’s decision is a drastic action for any judge to take given the circumstances of this case. We will seek a full review of this case on appeal.”

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CALIFORNIA
San Diego 6

[with video]

By Nancy Aziz
Story Published: Oct 31, 2014

A San Diego Superior Court judge entered a $13.5 million judgment Friday in a sexual abuse case against the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Jose Lopez was awarded the money nearly 30 years after he says he was sexually molested by his Jehovah Witness bible-study teacher who later went on to become a church minister and elder.

The suit alleged the church knew Gonzolo Campos had abused another boy before he molested Lopez, but elders continued to allow Campos to teach bible study to children at the Linda Vista Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

At a news conference today Lopez said the award will never relieve his pain.

“It’s never going to be over for me. It was just a horrible thing and I want people to know what happened to me,” he said.

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NEW JERSEY
South Jersey Times

By Alex Young | South Jersey Times
on October 31, 2014

SALEM — Rev. Jonathan H. Smith, former pastor at Salem First Presbyterian Church, was sentenced Friday to four years in New Jersey State Prison for aggravated sexual assault of a child.

Smith, 59, pleaded guilty in July to sexually assaulting a victim that was less than 13 years old. At Smith’s arraignment in April, Assistant Prosecutor Lisa Rastelli revealed that the victim was a member of Smith’s family that spent time at Smith’s home on Market Street in the summer of 2013.

The boy’s mother reportedly became concerned when he returned home after his time in Salem, and something didn’t seem right. The victim told his mother about the incidents, and the mother alerted the authorities.

Charges of first-degree aggravated sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child were dismissed as part of a plea agreement.

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CALIFORNIA
Daily Mail (UK)

By Marty Graham

SAN DIEGO, Calif., Oct 31 (Reuters) – A Californian judge has ordered the Jehovah’s Witnesses to pay $13.5 million to a man who was sexually abused in the 1980s by a church leader, attorney for the victim said on Friday.

Church elders had assigned a man to work with Jose Lopez on bible studies, even though they knew he had admitted to molesting another boy in 1982, because they felt he was “repentant”, Lopez’s attorney Irwin Zalkin said.

Lopez, who filed the civil suit in 2010, first went to the Spanish-speaking Kingdom Hall church in San Diego in 1985 at the age of seven, according to the complaint.

Mario Moreno, a lawyer for the church – whose parent group is the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York – told the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper that the church will appeal Superior Court Judge Joan Lewis’ judgment.

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OHIO
Daily Caller

Betsy Rothstein 10/31/2014

AKRON, OHIO — When you bring down a TV evangelist, chances are high that you’re going to be told you’re going to hell. You’ll get a quasi-death threat or two. You’ll be told you made stuff up and worse, that you exploited people for your own gain.

So it is for Bob Dyer, a longtime columnist and reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal, who recently wrote a series of stories uncovering the weirder and possibly illegal actions of Ernest Angley, the famed 93-year-old evangelist who presides over Grace Cathedral in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. The list of accusations is short but extremely bizarre: He allegedly covered up sexual abuse within the church and personally examined the swelling genitals of his male parishioners who had vasectomies at his urging. Angley readily admitted to Dyer he doesn’t believe the world is a worthy place for children — his wife died in 1970, they had no children and he encouraged his congregants to do the same.

Oh, it gets worse. Women were encouraged to have abortions. There was also a murder in the Church cafeteria — a male employee had an unrequited romantic interest in a colleague. So he murdered her. The eatery was comprised of volunteer employees even though it was operating as a for-profit business. This is a no-no with the IRS. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Labor Department or the IRS didn’t start poking around,” said Dyer. “But I’m not in a position to initiate and it’s not my role.”

Sitting in the newspaper’s dingy, windowless conference room in downtown Akron a few weeks ago was Dyer, a grizzled, old-school journalist who refused to join Facebook until this summer and who has all his tweets automated so he doesn’t have to deal with it. He has worked at the paper for the last 30 years because “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” He explained how he uncovered such a behemoth of a story, what the reaction has been and if he has regrets.

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MALTA
Malta Independent

Sexual abuse by priest: Eight years before Curia Response Team is too long – Bishop Scicluna

Auxiliary Bishop Charles Scicluna said that having a case of alleged sexual abuse by a priest taking eight years or more before the Curia’s Response Team without a decision being taken is way too long, both for the victims as well as the priests involved.

Speaking on Xarabank on Friday following the story published in The Malta Independent on Wednesday about Fr Charles Fenech – accused of sexually abusing a number of women – Mgr Scicluna said that there should be an effort for such cases to be resolved in a more expedient way.

He said that he had learnt about the case via the media and said that it was a shock for him to hear that one of his colleagues was in such a predicament. He said that he had spoken to the acting commissioner of police about the case in the past days.

The name of the priest was not mentioned during the programme, with presenter Peppi Azzopardi referring only to “a priest” although the Dominican Priory, in a statement following the publication of the name by The Malta Independent, also named the priest involved.

Asked whether it is true, as reported by this newspaper, that one of the alleged victims was offered a six-figure sum to keep her mouth shut on the abuse, Mgr Scicluna said he was not aware of this but said that any offer to buy someone’s silence is wrong.

He said that the Church is obliged to pass on information regarding alleged abuse by priests to the police, but it was not clear when this should be made. Whether the case should be passed on to the police once the Church hears about it, or during or after the investigation is still a matter that is not clear.

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UNITED STATES
POPE FRANCIS the CON-Christ.

Paris Arrow

October 31, 2014

REBUTTAL to the Vatican Insider’s article on the General Audience speech of Pope Francis last October 29, 2014, “Francis: When Christians become a source of scandal, people choose atheism”.

The Opus Dei Beast PR Deceits Team is at it again making their Vatican Circus puppet fattest-clown-in-white Pope Francis babble false statements and preaches down against the laity, the lowest hoi polloi members in the Vatican Pyramid. In his General Audience last Wednesday, Pope Francis spoke one the most fallible speech ever twisting facts and blaming “Christians” or the laity – for atheism – which is really caused by Pope Crimes and Vatican Evils especially in the 20th and 21st centuries’ scandals that have propelled massive exodus of millions of Catholics quitting hundreds of churches thereby forcing their closures and sales.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

Dominic Casciani
Home affairs correspondent

Who would be the chair of a formal inquiry?

The catastrophic double-failed launch of the historical abuse inquiry raises serious questions for the Home Secretary over how she and her officials have managed this process to date – but it also demonstrates how difficult it can be to find someone capable of doing one of the toughest jobs in public life.

Right from the get-go, an inquiry chair is under massive scrutiny. They would be naive in the extreme not to realise that they run the risk of being accused of failing to get to the bottom of things or, worse, penning an official whitewash.

And that’s why Fiona Woolf has quit: She realised that without the confidence of victims and survivors of abuse, the inquiry she had hoped to lead would not command the support of the very people she wanted to help.

There are a number of key criteria for selecting an inquiry chair. They need some serious intellectual and analytical skills because they may have to wade through thousands of pieces of evidence and hundreds of statements from witnesses.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Newsday

October 31, 2014

By The Associated Press DENISE LAVOIE (Associated Press)

BOSTON – (AP) — A watchdog group that documents the clergy sex abuse crisis on Friday added four names to its public database of priests and other religious leaders accused of sexual abuse.

BishopAccountability.org, an online research site that has chronicled the clergy sex abuse crisis since it erupted in the Archdiocese of Boston in 2002, named clerics with the Congregation of Christian Brothers, the Dominican Order and the Salesians of Don Bosco.

One of the alleged victims, now a 48-year-old man, said in a recently settled lawsuit that he was abused by three clerics, starting when he was 12. Two of the clerics — the Rev. Sean Rooney and Brother Alan Scheneman — were members of the Salesians.

The man said Rooney molested him in 1980, when he was 14, while they were on a bus traveling from Don Bosco Technical High School in Boston to Sacred Heart Retreat House in Ipswich, during a school trip for students from the Salesian Junior Seminary, in Goshen, N.Y., where Rooney was a teacher and the boy was a student. He said Rooney also repeatedly sexually abused him at the junior seminary, according to the lawsuit filed by Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian.

The same alleged victim said Scheneman repeatedly sexually abused him in 1981 at the junior seminary, where Scheneman was a faculty member.

John Kelly, a Massachusetts attorney who represents the Eastern Province of the Salesian Society, confirmed there was a monetary settlement, but declined further comment. …

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, said the group publishes the names of accused clerics “to advance transparency in the Catholic Church and to help protect children.”

“We are told by many survivors that seeing their perpetrators names made public is a source of tremendous validation and healing,” she said.

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NEBRASKA
World-Herald

By Michael O’Connor / World-Herald staff writer

A local man alleges a religious order priest based in Omaha sexually abused him 30 years ago when he was a minor, the Archdiocese of Omaha announced Friday.

The archdiocese said the Rev. Anthony Palmese was associate pastor of Omaha’s Holy Ghost Parish in 1984-1985 when the alleged abuse occurred. The priest was a member of the New Jersey-based Order of Augustinian Recollects.

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NEBRASKA
KETV

[with video]

OMAHA, Neb. —An Omaha man is alleging a religious order priest sexually abused him 30 years ago when he was a minor, the Archdiocese of Omaha reported Friday.

Video: Man alleges priest sexually abused him three decades ago

The Rev. Anthony Palmese was associate pastor of Holy Ghost Parish in 1984-1985 and a member of the New Jersey-based Order of Augustinian Recollects when the alleged abuse took place. The man and his family were members of the parish at the time. Palmese died in 2012.

The Order of Augustinian Recollects founded Holy Ghost in 1918. It provided the parish with a pastor from its ranks until leaving Omaha and transferring Holy Ghost to the archdiocese in 1986.

The archdiocese learned of the allegation on Dec. 30, 2013, said Deacon Tim McNeil, chancellor of the archdiocese. The allegation was reported to local law enforcement and the order’s headquarters. McNeil said that because Palmese belonged to the Augustinian Recollects, the order is carrying out the investigation.

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NEBRASKA
WOWT

An Omaha man is alleging a religious order priest sexually abused him 30 years ago when he was a minor, according to the Omaha Archdiocese.

The Rev. Anthony Palmese was associate pastor of Holy Ghost Parish in 1984-1985 when the alleged abuse took place and a member of the New Jersey-based Order of Augustinian Recollects.

The man and his family were members of the parish at the time. Palmese died in 2012.

The Order of Augustinian Recollects founded Holy Ghost in 1918. It provided the parish with a pastor from its ranks until leaving Omaha and transferring Holy Ghost to the archdiocese in 1986.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By Lilly Fowler lfowler@post-dispatch.com 314-340-8221

Saturday, John L. Allen Jr., a prominent Vatican correspondent for the Boston Globe, will discuss Pope Francis’ reign at National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows in Belleville. The talk, which starts at 9 a.m., will cover the three pillars of Francis’ vision for the church.

In this Q&A, religion reporter Lilly Fowler talks to Allen about his years covering the Roman Catholic Church, the Boston Globe’s new website, Crux, and Pope Francis’ leadership so far. …

What do you see as Pope Francis’ primary strengths and weaknesses so far?

The most striking thing is the way that he’s completely changed the narrative about the Catholic Church. Eighteen months ago, the big Catholic stories were sex abuse scandals, crackdowns on nuns and bruising political controversies. Those stories obviously haven’t gone away, but they are no longer the dominant Catholic narrative.

The dominant Catholic narrative today is more like rock star pope takes the world by storm. He has created a public perception of himself as a man of genuine simplicity, genuinely caring about ordinary people, who is trying to lead the church to be a friend to the world. That’s a very attractive narrative for a lot of people, which means people are taking a more sympathetic look at the Catholic Church.

He is also a serious reformer who has, among other things, thoroughly launched an internal house cleaning operation in the Vatican itself beginning with a push for greater financial transparency and accountability. Also in terms of the personnel that he’s elevating, he clearly has a preference for non-ideological, moderate, pastoral leaders. He is changing the composition of the leadership of the church. …

There’s still a lot of news about sexual abuse. Do you think there’s going to be a point when that’s going to become the dominant narrative again?

(Pope Francis has) said all the right things. He’s created a new commission to lead the charge for reform, and he’s staffed it with people who are seen as on the cutting edge of best practices in child protection. The test really will be is he serious about accountability and more precisely, are we going to see a bishop some place drop the ball on zero tolerance held accountable? He has launched an investigation of Bishop (Robert) Finn in Kansas City. If that process ends with a bishop resigning, that is, basically losing his job, then I think some people would be inclined to say that something meaningful is happening.

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OHIO
Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A well-known Irish priest who was suspended and muzzled by the Vatican is visiting Cleveland this weekend on an 18-city speaking tour.

The Rev. Tony Flannery, who is marking 50 years as a member of the Redemptorist order in County Galway, was suspended from public ministry in 2012 for suggesting that “the priesthood as we currently have it in the church” did not originate with Jesus.

He began to speak publicly on the need for church reform after refusing a year later to sign a statement saying that women can never be priests and that he accepted all the stances of the church on contraception, homosexuality and refusal of the sacraments to divorced and remarried Catholics.

He will speak on “Repairing a Damaged Church” at 7 p.m. Saturday at Independence Middle School, 6111 Archwood Drive, Independence. He is being sponsored by a nationwide coalition of reform and progressive Catholic groups including Lakewood-based FutureChurch.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Editorial

The home secretary’s all-embracing inquiry into historical child sex abuse has become a humiliating shambles. To lose Fiona Woolf, the second inquiry chair forced out before it has even started, is a disaster. Theresa May must get a grip on the idea that this is an inquiry into establishment and institutional failings. It cannot be led by someone from an establishment background. She should accept the resignation of Mrs Woolf and find someone the victims can trust. Then she must reset the inquiry with a sharper focus, and she must make it sure it is, and it is seen to be, genuinely independent of the Home Office and the wider establishment.

This is the inquiry Mrs May didn’t want. It was forced on her last July in a familiar piece of Downing Street crisis management, conceded in the face of the political firestorm triggered by the charge of organised abuse by prominent Whitehall and Westminster figures and the disappearance of files containing the allegations from the Home Office in the 1980s. After Jimmy Savile and Operation Yewtree, the years of clerical abuse and repeated scandals involving children in care, the demand for an inquiry that would mark some kind of public watershed became impossible to resist.

Yet the Home Office has appeared to be unable to grasp what the inquiry is for. Either that, or it is actively seeking to control it. It would appear obvious that an inquiry into systemic institutional failure that may well include government ministers and officials should seek to recruit people as remote as possible from their home turf. Instead, the first appointee was Lady Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, the sister of Sir Michael Havers, who was the Conservative attorney general during the 1980s. And after she was forced to withdraw, their choice fell upon Mrs Woolf, who not only lacks any experience of criminal, children’s or family law, but was at the least a close acquaintance as well as a neighbour of Lord Brittan, who was home secretary at the same sensitive period.

Once that connection was in the public domain, attempts were made to airbrush out the embarrassment. There were no less than seven different attempts to draft a letter that would present the relationship with the Brittans as inoffensively as possible. When that process was exposed, and the drafts published by MPs on the home affairs committee, Mrs Woolf was left in an impossible position.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

[with video]

31 October 2014

The founder of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, Peter Saunders, has welcomed Fiona Woolf’s resignation as chair of an inquiry into historical child sex abuse.

He said Mrs Woolf had “finally done the honourable thing” after calls for her to resign over social links with ex-Home Secretary Lord Brittan.

Peter Saunders said the process to set up the inquiry was “too important to get it wrong again”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

Fiona Woolf is to step down as the head of an inquiry into historic child sex abuse, she has told the BBC.

She said it had been clear for some time that victims did not have confidence in her, adding that it was time to “get out of the way”.

Victims’ groups earlier told government officials they were “unanimous” she should quit, citing her social links with ex-Home Secretary Lord Brittan.

Home Secretary Theresa May said she had accepted her decision “with regret”.

“I believe she would have carried out her duties with integrity, impartiality and to the highest standard,” she said in a statement.

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UNITED KINGDOM
London Evening Standard

Fiona Woolf tonight announced she had resigned as the head of the inquiry into historic child sex abuse after facing unprecedented pressure to quit.

Representatives of child abuse victims had urged her to stand down over after fresh revelations emerged about her links to former Home Secretary Lord Brittan.

They also criticised her lack of expertise on the subject of child abuse.

In a statement tonight, she said: “I did not think it was going to be possible for me to chair [the inquiry] without everybody’s support.”

She told the BBC that it has been clear to her for some time that she did not have the confidence of the victims and it was time for her to “get out of the way”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
International Business Times

By Lewis Dean
October 31, 2014

Fiona Woolf has resigned as head of an inquiry into historical child sex abuse after mounting pressure that she was unsuitable for the role because of her links to Lord Brittan.

The ceremonial Lord Mayor of London had been heavily criticised over her links to former Home Secretary Lord Brittan, whose role is expected to come under scrutiny in the investigation.

Woolf had faced calls to step down from her role investigating abuse from victims’ groups.

The groups questioned links between Woolf and Brittan who was home secretary in 1984, when ministers were handed a dossier listing alleged high-profile paedophiles.

Brittan was expected to be hauled in front of the inquiry after it emerged documents relating to alleged paedophilia in Westminster disappeared from his department. He denies failing to act on the dossier while in office in the ’80s.

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