ABUSE TRACKER

VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast

Barbie Latza Nadeau

A growing chorus in Rome, straight and LGBT, echo Pope Francis as they ask the assembled bishops at a critical summit, “Who are you to judge?”

VATICAN CITY—Hundreds of celibate men from the Roman Catholic Church have spent the last week hearing people who actually have sex actually talk about it. The topics range from who should have it to when they should have it and how they should have it, which, according to British Bishop Vincent Nichols, is “not what we bishops talk about mostly, quite honestly.” Novelty aside, the real question is whether these avowedly chaste men of the cloth are listening.

The last time anyone at the Vatican openly obsessed about sex as much we’re seeing at the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops being held in Rome was back in 1968 when Pope Paul VI penned Humanae Vitae. That encyclical letter on the heels of the Second Vatican Council became the how-not-to manual of Catholic sexuality for some, and what amounted to a theological cold shower for others. The letter reiterated the unbendable teachings of the Catholic Church during the height of the sexual revolution, essentially banning everything that was revolutionary at the time, starting with The Pill, but hardly ending there. While the rest of the Western world explored free love, Catholics were instead told “no” to premarital sex, birth control, masturbation and homosexuality.

Pope Paul VI and the Church at that time could be forgiven for puritanical idealism. Humanae Vitae was in response to unbridled sexual liberation, written well before the advent of the Internet or sexting, when pornography was either pulp or peep show, and when “50 Shades of Grey” was what happened when priests accidentally washed their white clerical collars with their dark cassocks. So it is little wonder that Pope Paul VI’s Church defined sex as nothing more than a sort of marital perk between men and women that was “noble and worthy” with a special emphasis on the sins of using contraception. It was not necessary to try to avoid pregnancy, the pope said, because the Church teaches that sex is meant only for the purpose of procreation. Essentially, anyone having the type of sex that isn’t open to giving life—like gays and lesbians—shouldn’t be having sex at all.

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UNITED STATES
Minnesota SNAP

By Vinnie Nauheimer

Dear Bishop: ________________
Almost five hundred years ago on October 31, 1517, Dr. Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Cathedral of Wittenberg. At the turn of the second millennium the church once more finds itself in dire need of major reform. St. Paul admonishes us in Cortinthians 1: 5-6 “Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump.” The survivors of Clergy Sexual Abuse, their families, friends and the Catholic laity demand change, justice and reform. These are the Forty Theses of Clergy Sexual Abuse and we demand their immediate adoption by the Roman Catholic Church. We urge you and all members of the Roman Catholic clergy to forward these to the Vatican. Without the immediate implementation of these Forty Theses by the Roman Catholic Church neither the victims of clergy abuse nor the church can move forward.

FORTY THESES OF CLERGY ABUSE

1. The Pope must immediately release and open for public inspection all secret files contained in dioceses throughout the world including the Vatican that have information relating to the abuse of children.

2. The Catholic Church must release and make public the names of all priests, bishops, and cardinals who have had credible accusations of sexual abuse made against them, their current status as well as their current location.

3. The pope must, in writing, free all those survivors from their confidentiality agreements “Gag Clauses” with any dioceses around the world in order to let victims of clergy abuse speak freely.

4. The Vatican should demand of all clergy, as applicable, that as an act of atonement, they will, in writing, declare null and void all private confidentiality agreements made between them and their victims.

5. The Pope and the Vatican must release and forever disavow keeping any secrets of the “Holy Office” related to clergy or any other form of abuse perpetrated by the clergy.

6. All secret letters and instructions issued to cardinals and bishops worldwide such as “Crimen Sollicitationis” are to be declared null and void.

7. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church must change its policy on clerical abusers to demand under penalty that they report cases of abuse to their local civil authorities.

8. The pope will issue a Papal Bull reconfirming the love of Jesus for children and that none should be harmed as they, and not the clergy are our greatest treasure.

9. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church must recognize that the children are our future and if the church is to have one, their future too.

10. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church must recognize that all children have the inalienable right to grow up without fear of being sexually abused by any cleric or lay minister.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

By Patrick Sawer
12 Oct 2014

The husband of a woman involved in a close relationship with the Bishop of Arundel is to make an official complaint to Catholic leaders about his behaviour and is calling for him to be barred from the priesthood.

His intervention coincides with new claims about Bishop Kieran Conry’s intimate friendships with women in recent years. It has been claimed he may have had relationships with as many as four women in total, raising questions as to whether the Catholic church hierarchy turned a blind eye to what he was doing.

Simon Hodgkinson, whose wife Olivia is the woman most recently linked with the Bishop, is now compiling a formal complaint against him. It will be submitted to the Papal Nuncio, the Pope’s representative in the UK, along with Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the head of the Catholic church in England and Wales, and the Vicar General, one of the church’s most powerful figures.

Citing canon law, the complaint will state that Bishop Conry not only broke his vows of celibacy, but in so doing flouted the church’s central teaching on adultery and the sanctity of marriage and family life by having such an intimate friendship with Mrs Hodgkinson, a mother of two, along with an affair with another married women.

It will also claim that the Bishop took advantage of his position of authority with both women, who had turned to him for spiritual comfort and advice after going through problems in their marriages.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

OCTOBER 12, 2014
BY ABBOTT KOLOFF AND JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITERS
THE RECORD

The impact of dozens of sex-abuse allegations against North Jersey priests has reached just about every corner of the region since 2002, when victims say they became emboldened to step forward because of an unfolding national sex-abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church.

A review by The Record of dozens of cases since 2002 shows at least 21 North Jersey municipalities have been affected in some way, including Englewood, Fair Lawn, Ho-Ho-Kus, Mahwah, Montvale, Oradell, Ridgewood, Ridgefield, Ridgefield Park, Rochelle Park, Paramus, Rutherford, Wyckoff, Park Ridge, Fairview, Edgewater, Paterson, Passaic, Clifton, Wayne and Pequannock. In many cases the priests were subjects of credible allegations, and in a few, priests were convicted of crimes. In rare instances, priests have been cleared of any wrongdoing.

Officials from the Newark and Paterson dioceses say they have removed at least 30 priests from active ministry and defrocked seven of them because of such allegations since 2002, when they say they changed their policies as part of a national bishops’ initiative. The clerics often had moved from parish to parish, spreading the impact beyond the communities where alleged sex abuse took place.

Twelve years later, church officials say they have made great strides in the way they handle abuse cases. Some top church officials admitted in 2002 that they kept quiet about some cases of abuse. That year, they agreed in a document called the Dallas Charter to provide more information to parishioners and the public.

Still, victims’ advocates say the Catholic Church often remains too secretive about what happens to priests who are removed from ministries because of sex-abuse accusations, including where they are living. Accused priests who have not been defrocked typically continue to receive pensions. In at least one case in North Jersey, a defrocked priest receives a stipend because he is destitute.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mail on Sunday

By OLLIE GILLMAN FOR MAILONLINE

The cuckolded husband of a woman involved in a ‘close relationship’ with the Bishop of Arundel has called for him to be sacked from the Catholic Church.

Simon Hodgkinson, whose wife, Olivia, 43, is the latest woman to be linked to the bishop, is compiling a formal complaint against Kieran Conry over his intimate friendship with her.

It has been claimed that Bishop Conry had relationships with up to four women, breaking his vow of celibacy.

Mr Hodgkinson’s complaint will be sent to Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, the Papal Nuncio, the Pope’s representative in the UK, and the Vicar General, one of the Church’s most powerful figures, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

As well as stating Bishop Conry broke his celibacy vow, the complaint will say he has gone against Church teachings on adultery, marriage and family life by having a close relationship with Mrs Hodgkinson, a 43-year-old mother-of-two, and an affair with another married woman.

Mr Hodgkinson also claims the bishop abused his authority, taking advantage of both women after they turned to him for help with their marriages.

Graham Baldwin, from the charity Catalyst – which helps individuals whose family life has been affected by religious or cult groups – said: ‘Bishop Conry has … by his own admission on at least one occasion, committed adultery with a married woman, which in the eyes of the Church is a mortal sin.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

Oct 11, 2014 21:11 By Grace Macaskill

Widespread child sex abuse and rape by church members has been covered up by Jehovah’s Witnesses, it is claimed.

Elders have been accused of brainwashing abused women and girls into not going to the police so the church can maintain its squeaky-clean image, reveals the Sunday People.

The Christian religion, known for its door-to-door preachers, is said not to have taken enough action against suspected paedophiles in its ranks.

But now two women who were sexually abused are filing papers with the High Court saying the church failed in its duty of protection.

Their lawyer has warned this could be the tip of the iceberg – likening it to the sex scandals which have rocked the Catholic church.

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ROME
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor October 12, 2014

ROME – Heading into an Oct. 5-19 Vatican summit of bishops to discuss the family, the single most controversial question was whether Catholics who divorce and remarry outside the Church ought to be allowed to receive Communion. Since the meeting reaches its halfway mark Sunday, it’s logical to wonder where things stand.

Alas, the answer is: We really don’t know.

To be sure, the divorce and remarriage debate is hardly the only iron in the fire at this Synod of Bishops on the family. African prelates have talked about the challenges of polygamy and witchcraft, while Middle Eastern voices have pointed to the impact of war on family life. Westerners have pondered how to overcome a pervasive cynicism about making a lifetime commitment to anything.

In addition, there are a couple of things we actually do know about the Communion question. One is that there’s no push for changing Church teaching that marriage is for life. As Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, Ireland, put it Saturday, “Nobody’s talking about Catholic divorce.”

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

Documents show NSW Police Service warned twice that intelligence sharing arrangement with Catholic Church on child abuse claims was illegal

ABC

BY THE NATIONAL REPORTING TEAM’S LORNA KNOWLES – EXCLUSIVE
October 12, 2014

Documents obtained by the ABC reveal the NSW Police Service was warned twice by one of its own lawyers that an intelligence sharing arrangement with the Catholic Church on child abuse claims was illegal.

In explosive evidence expected to emerge at a Police Integrity Commission (PIC) hearing this week, an officer from NSW Police Service’s Crime Agencies Legal support sounded the warnings in 2001 and 2002 about a draft Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the church and NSW Police.

Under the draft MOU, a police sex crimes squad officer sat on an internal church body, known as the professional standards resource group.

Set up by Catholic bishops, the expert panel was created to advise the church on specific cases of child sexual abuse involving clergy and others.

The officer’s role was to advise whether church practices had breached the law. She would also advise on whether priests should be removed from their positions.

The PIC will investigate whether the participation of this officer, between 1998 and 2005, amounted to police misconduct.

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VATICAN CITY
John Thavis

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin had some interesting things to say at today’s press briefing for the Synod of Bishops on the family. Archbishop Martin was present at the 1980 synod on the family (and at synods after that), and he reflected on what has changed – notably, the very open debate at this session, and the willingness to look at new approaches.

“On some of the subjects, the theological debate has been going on for years, and I don’t expect this synod is going to bring that to a conclusion. But this synod cannot simply repeat what was said twenty years ago. It has to find new language, to show that there can be development of doctrine, and that there has been a willingness to listen to what emerged in the questionnaires that went out and what emerged in the synod itself,” he said.

Archbishop Martin said that in general, there’s a movement away from seeing the church’s teaching on marriage as something that is “taught” to people, and a better understanding that the church itself learns through the experience of the sacramental marriages of its faithful. Catechesis is essential, he said, but the church also has to recognize that while many couples could not explain the theology of marriage and the family, they “understand it, and live it.”

The synod heard a lot about truth and mercy, and Martin said it was important to find real ways of bringing the two together. Because of the strong canonical tradition in the Catholic Church, he said, “we’re not good at dealing with exceptions.” He said we have both “rigorism” and “laxism” in the church, but “most people fall in the gray areas between those two, and we have to exercise our pastoral responsibilities in the gray areas, not falling into either extreme.”

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VATICAN CITY
Crux

By Josephine Mckenna
Religion News Service October 10, 2014

VATICAN CITY – From questions of welcoming a gay son home for Christmas to denying the sacraments for the children of gay and lesbian parents, an ongoing debate on the Catholic Church’s approach to homosexuality has raised the hopes of some LGBT advocates and provoked the ire of the church’s right wing.

At the two-week Synod on the Family convened by Pope Francis here, the issue of homosexuality is competing for air time with similar questions of denying Communion to divorced and remarried Catholics or how to respond to couples that live together outside of marriage.

But with a rapidly shifting legal landscape, and a pope who famously asked “Who am I to judge?”, the debate over homosexuality is eliciting personal and charged reactions from all corners of the church.

The controversial debate was unwittingly fired up by Australians Ron and Mavis Pirola, the parents of four and delegates to the church family summit.

The Sydney couple told nearly 200 bishops about friends who had invited their gay son and his partner home for Christmas.

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UNITED STATES
POPE FRANCIS the CON-Christ

Paris Arrow

DOUBLE VICTORY! Pope Francis defeated again! Vatican Mammon Beast aka Opus Dei Beast defeated again! Hail to our chief, St. Michael the Archangel for defeating Pope Francis and thus justice and truth triumph and prevail for the children of humanity.

The youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, said in her acceptance speech in England where was healed from the gunshot wound and where she now resides and goes to school, “We change the world, one girl at a time, one book at a time, one pen at a time”. Likewise we too say, we change the world, one blog at a time.
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The announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize winners – 17 year old Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan and 60 year old Kailash Satyarthi of India – feels like the FIFA victory of Germany over Argentina – when 22 year old Mario Goetz made the single winning goal that saved the face of Brazil and saved its people from humiliation and pain especially from the rowdy 100,000 Argentinians who descended in Brazil and took over Rio de Janeiro and occupied Copacabana Beach.

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UNITED STATES
PopeCrimes& Vatican Evils.

Paris Arrow

The Nobel Peace Prize sided with children this year and not with old Pope Francis the head of complicit cardinals and bishops of the JP2 Army – John Paul II Pedophile Priests Army, read more in Cold-blood-ed John Paul is no saint for children because he said nothing and did nothing to save and protect them for 27 years http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2014/05/cold-blood-ed-pope-john-paul-ii-is-no.html

The Norwegian Nobel Committee chose the two winners of the Nobel Peace Prize “for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.” The Nobel Committee did not choose Pope Francis because he is the head of state of the Vatican fake country, the Holy See that has been found guilty of crimes against humanity’s children twice by the United Nations. Read our related article, UN condemns Vatican for crimes against children. HOORAH. 10 Reasons to abolish the papacy and why there should never be another pope http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2014/02/un-condemns-vatican-for-crimes-against.html

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UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Posted on October 11, 2014 by Betty Clermont

The head of the notorious Society of St. Pius X, Bishop Bernard Fellay, met with Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, prefect of the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on Sept. 23, 2014, “with a view to the envisioned full reconciliation” with the Catholic Church. Known by its acronym, SSPX, the society “does not have a canonical status in the church [and] its ministers do not exercise legitimate ministries in the church.” Nevertheless, a French SSPX priest was allowed to say mass in St. Peter’s Basilica a month earlier.

The Vatican initiated “non-official” contact with the SSPX leading to an “informal meeting” between Fellay and church officials on Dec. 13, 2013, despite SSPX offering to hold the funeral Mass of a convicted Nazi war criminal the previous October and disrupting a November ceremony in Buenos Aires marking the anniversary of the beginning of the Holocaust.

Former S.S. Captain Erich Priebke had said he wanted a Catholic burial. Like thousands of other war criminals, he had escaped Europe via one of the Vatican ratlines and lived quietly in Argentina for the next 50 years until he was exposed by an ABC News investigative team.

Priebke was extradited to Rome and convicted in 1997 of participating in the 1944 Ardeatine Massacre of 335 Italian resistance fighters but remained unrepentant. He was put under house arrest due to his age where he died at age 100 on Oct. 11, 2013. When the Diocese of Rome, German and Argentine officials refused to bury him, SSPX offered to hold the funeral Mass but was prevented from doing so when “protesters surrounded the car which was carrying the body to their church.” Priebke was buried in an Italian prison cemetery.

In Buenos Aires, Catholics, Jews and Protestants hold an annual ceremony in the Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral “to mark Kristallnacht, the Nazi-led mob violence in 1938 when about 1,000 Jewish synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews were forced into concentration camps, launching the genocide that killed 6 million Jews.” SSPX members disrupted the Nov. 13, 2013, ceremony by shouting the rosary and the “Our Father” and distributed pamphlets stating, “followers of false gods must be kept out of the sacred temple.” Fr. Christian Bouchacourt, leader of the SSPX in South America, said his organization had the right to feel outraged when rabbis preside over a ceremony in a Catholic cathedral.

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VIRGINIA
New York Daily News

SEE IT: Videos show teen brutally attacked by Christian boarding school workers — leading to assault, battery convictions

BY NINA GOLGOWSKI
Friday, October 10, 2014

As a 14-year-old boy was viciously pummeled to the ground at a Christian boarding school surrounding witnesses not only turned the other cheek but their eyes as well.

Newly released video from Virginia’s Abundant Life Academy in Milford reveals two such brutal scenes which led to the convictions of four former workers who took a plea deal for misdemeanor assault and battery Thursday, WTVR reported.

The three life coaches and a program instructor — identified as Liam Galligan, 44, Jovany Rivera, 22, Timothy Jordan, 26, and William Honea, 49 — had been charged with assault by mob and assault after the video shot in April surfaced.

In one scene the boy is seen being tackled in the academy’s sanctuary hall while in another he’s flipped on his back from behind while standing in the cafeteria.

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VIRGINIA
The Raw Story

SCOTT KAUFMAN
10 OCT 2014

Video obtained by CBS 6 shows four Christian boarding school workers chasing down and beating the trouble youths they were supposed to be helping.

In the video, which was taken in April, three life coaches and a program director at Abundant Life Academy in Caroline County, Virginia can be seen beating a 14-year-old in their charge. He attempted to run away, but the four employees chased him down and began assaulting him again.

According to The Free Lance-Star, the teen was tackled and then violently restrained because he had been caught “talking to a girl.”

The investigation into abuse at the Christian center began in April, when four teenagers escaped from the facility. When authorities captured them, they claimed that they had fled the facility because of rampant abuse.

The boarding school’s mission, according to its website, is to “equip students and families to live a life of love, acceptance and forgiveness through modeling and training of biblical principles, bridging the gap between parents and children.”

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VIRGINIA
WTVR

[with video]

BY JON BURKETT

CAROLINE COUNTY, Va. — It’s shocking video of four boarding school workers assaulting a teen boy they were supposed to be helping — and their crimes were caught on camera.

The images were taken inside the cafeteria and sanctuary hall at Abundant Life Academy in Caroline County back in April.

The video shows a 14-year-old boy making a run for it, only to be snagged and then assaulted by three life coaches and a program director.

The four boarding school employees were arrested and charged with assault by mob and assault.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis, as an elderly “interim pope”, had about three years to go until his 80 year old normal Cardinal retirement age, when he admirably and reluctantly agreed last year to serve as interim pope. He projected a very friendly public image, but had little international or even Vatican experience, as the Vatican was in the midst of an unprecedented and unexpected crisis triggered by the first papal resignation in 600 years. Francis’ challenge was and is to preserve an unaccountable top down leadership structure and its wealth.

In 225 years since the French Revolution, no other European absolute monarchy has been able to evade democratic oversight of its actions and finances. Neither will the Vatican much longer, despite Francis’ and his Vatican cliques’ well funded and desperate efforts.

Francis then established, likely with the guidance of the ex-Pope and Cardinal Sodano, a two step process to convene (1) an interim Synod of Bishops, now under way, at least to discuss Church changes after a year and a half, and (2) a larger Synod of Bishops next October to discuss further potential final changes. This process in 2016 would allow Francis then, in his eightieth year, to implement as pope whatever changes evolved at the final Synod that he decided he wanted to approve. Francis then could retire and pass the papacy on to his much younger (now 59 years old) likely successor, Sodano’s protege, Cardinal Parolin, who is evidently being groomed as the top prospect to be the next pope.

This two step Synod plan would then for three years also enable Francis to contain mounting pressure from many Catholics for long overdue changes. In the meantime, other Vatican Cardinals could deal with the Synod charades, like disregarding lay Catholics’ questionnaires and locking out independent lay participation at the Synods. And ecstatic Catholic “reformers” and “wishful thinkers” and opportunistic papal cheerleaders could endlessly recycle all the “happy talk” of change, until Francis is finally flushed out in 2016.

Francis’ three year plan is, however, in real jeopardy. Reality has finally overtaken Pope Francis’ well funded myth makers. Marketed last year as the new “Francis of Assisi” and TIME’s Man of the Year, the new pope has this past week faced a confluence of bad news and resistance relating to more hierarchical scandals and uninspiring change proposals.

Pope Francis, with the ex-Pope’s and Sodano’s apparent concurrence, if not direction, as seemingly originally planned, could then let Sodano’s “man”, Cardinal Baldisserri, run the Synod, and the ex-Pope’s “man”, Cardinal Mueller, run the Vatican’s doctrinal and discipline department, as has already occurred. Pope Francis could then, as he has for 19 months, focus mainly on the Vatican’s No. 1 priority — trying to salvage, by political alliances with powerful elites, by massive media campaigns and otherwise, some cardinals and bishops who may be facing potential criminal investigations relating to child abuse and financial scandals that exploded under the mismanagement of the ex-Pope and his actor predecessor, Pope John Paul II.

Like Dumas’ Three Musketeers, the Catholic hierarchy is “all for one and one for all”, especially since, with their many shared secret sins, if one falls publicly, a domino effect may be triggered taking down many more, as happened with another secretive international all male group, the Mafia.

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ROM
Spiegel

[Oh what were the good time for a cardinal! The Vatican was all around. We met with friends in bars and restaurants and shared what they had. Even the Vatican bank with its secretive accounts was open to worldly customers when they came with a recommendation. Then came Jorge Mario Bergoglio and the quality of life of the eminences went downhill.

The Papal States once had about 100 cars in the service fleet but then came the pope, characteristically named Francis after St. Francis of Assisi, the go-googer and poverty preacher. Soon you could no more climb into a Mercedes sedan without receiving negative attention. And then the new dress code! Gorgeous silk robes that eminences wore that cost 10,000 euros or more. When Francis came with work shoes and the Francis dress, no one dared to shine in gold and purple.]

Von Hans-Jürgen Schlamp, Rom

Ach, was waren das für schöne Zeiten für einen Kardinal! Im Vatikan und rundherum! Man traf sich mit Freunden in den Bars und Restaurants und teilte, was man hatte. Geld hatten die Kirchendiener zwar nicht viel, aber zum Beispiel Eintrittskarten für das Kirchenreich, wo die Freunde steuerfrei tanken und einkaufen konnten. Auch die Vatikanbank mit ihren verschwiegenen Konten stand weltlichen Kunden offen, wenn sie mit einer Empfehlung aufwarteten.

Dann kam Jorge Mario Bergoglio, und mit der Lebensqualität der Eminenzen ging es bergab.

Etwa hundert Dienstwagen standen im Fuhrpark des Kirchenstaats, als Bergoglio am 13. März vorigen Jahres zum Papst gekürt wurde und sich bezeichnenderweise Franziskus nannte, nach dem heiligen Franz von Assisi, dem Weltverbesserer und Armutsprediger. Bald konnte man keine Mercedes-Limousine mehr besteigen, ohne gleich negativ aufzufallen.

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AUSTRALIA
News Mail

Emma McBryde | 10th Oct 2014

A WOMAN told the royal commission she was only one of 63 children who came forward about sexual abuse they suffered at Victorian teacher Kenneth “Ken” Sandilands’ hands.

Emma Fretton chose to testify without a pseudonym at the public hearing in Sydney today.

Ms Fretton said she was in Mr Sandilands class for years 1, 2 and 3 at Northside Christian College in the mid-1980s when he abused her.

The commission is examining the response of the church body in charge of the college – Northside Christian Centre – and Australian Christian Churches, then known as the Assemblies of God.

Ms Fretton testified she told two teachers Sandilands was touching her inappropriately and writing sexual stories about her family then forcing her to sign them.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

AAP OCTOBER 11, 2014

HILLSONG senior pastor Brian Houston consulted a lawyer about his father’s position when abuse allegations were raised but didn’t mention that meeting in his statement to the royal commission into the matter.

The man who is a leading light in the evangelical movement in Australia was in the witness box for a second day at a hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney yesterday.

The commission is examining how Pentecostal churches responded to complaints of child sex abuse by its pastors.

It has heard that Frank Houston admitted in 1999 to abusing children in Australia and New Zealand, when his son was national president of the Assemblies of God in Australia, the umbrella organisation for more than 1000 churches. Frank Houston died in 2004, aged 82.

It has emerged in evidence that Brian Houston consulted a lawyer at prominent firm Mallesons about his father’s position. Mr Houston said: “Where I went as my father’s son to go to see a lawyer about my father — this commission is about institutional child abuse so in that sense, I don’t see that it was particularly relevant that I went to see a lawyer. It was something that was between a father and son.”

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AUSTRALIA
Religion News Service

Sarah Pulliam Bailey | October 10, 2014

(RNS) The founder of Hillsong, an Australian megachurch that has exported its influence to major global cities and into churches’ music across the U.S., is facing strict scrutiny for what he

In 1999, Brian Houston’s father, Frank Houston, who was also a minister, confessed to sexually abusing an underage male at his New Zealand congregation 30 years before. In response, the younger Houston, who was then president of the Assemblies of God in Australia, fired his father, took control of the church and merged it with Hillsong.

The elder Houston died in 2004.

On Thursday and Friday (Oct. 9-10), the son took the witness stand in Sydney and denied any attempt to cover up the allegations. Next week, Brian Houston will be in New York City for the church’s c, at Madison Square Garden.

In his testimony, Brian Houston denied trying to hide his involvement in a $10,000 compensation payment made to a man who was abused as a child by his father.

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ALABAMA
Heavy

An Alabama pastor told his flock during a sermon that he has full blown AIDS and, despite knowing of his HIV infection for years, continued to have sex with numerous parishioners. In further bombshells, Reverend Juan McFarland of the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Montgomery revealed his cocaine abuse and the embezzlement of church money. Even so, he was allowed to preach for two more Sundays before church deacons finally yanked him from the pulpit.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. One of His Partners Is Being Tested for HIV

In September, McFarland told the parishioners at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church that he had AIDS. He described how he was diagnosed with AIDS in 2008 and HIV in 2003.

WSFA News reports a member of the flock saying, “The church was very accepting of Reverend McFarland and was willing to help in any way possible.” It isn’t known if McFarland told his sexual partners that he had AIDS, although one woman he was with is being tested.

Al.com reports that McFarland isn’t taking medicine for his illness.

In addition to divulging his AIDS diagnosis, McFarland told his followers that he was a cocaine user.

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ILLINOIS
Chicago Tribune

By Sally Ho,
Tribune reporter

A former River Forest church official is again facing charges of sexually abusing a child — this time a 9-year-old boy from the church with whom he was watching a movie last year, authorities said.

John Hays, 57, of Chicago, was ordered held on $150,000 bond Friday on a second charge of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, according to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office.

The alleged incident happened in Oct. 2013, when Hays visited the boy after he had surgery, prosecutors said. Hays had jumped into the same bed with the boy and allegedly touched the child inappropriately as he was falling asleep, prosecutors said.

At the time, Hays was working as the director of congregational life at First Presbyterian Church of River Forest. The victim and his family attended worship services there. Hays was an ordained minister, but did not serve as a pastor at the Presbyterian church, according to Kevin Murphy, an elder at the church. He was dismissed May 26, Murphy said.

Local police learned last month that a child may have been sexual abused last year in a River Forest home. Detectives interviewed the victim and witnesses with help from the Cook County state’s attorney’s advocacy unit and Proviso Children’s Advocacy Center.

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AUSTRALIA
News Mail

Leah White | 11th Oct 2014

FOUR decades after David McNamara was sexually abused as a young boy by a “ring” of Catholic Church paedophiles, the Northern Rivers man has filed his allegations, for the first time, with police after being officially released from a church “gag” order last month.

Mr McNamara claims he was first sexually abused by Father Roger “Gabriel” Mount in a sick bed at the Kendall Grange home for intellectually disabled boys near Newcastle when he was 12 years old.

“Just before I was pubescent, I was sexually abused, by Roger Mount, when I was in a sick bed,” he said.

“And then after that, he would sort of abuse me whenever it was convenient.

“He would come to my bed at night and touch me again, and after a while, he got me to touch his penis.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
NBC Philadlephia

By Vince Lattanzio

Editor’s Note: This special project features explicit content that may be disturbing to some readers. NBC10 does not identify victims of sexual abuse. To protect against further victimization, names — including those convicted — have been changed. Because of the nature of their work, NBC10 agreed to only use the first names of Homeland Security agents.

PHILADELPHIA — The photos are disturbing.

Children as young as infants forced to undergo sexual acts. Their assaults captured in time and then traded over the internet.

The videos are horrifying.

But it’s the audio that’s haunting.

“It makes you almost want to cry,” said Joe, a veteran special agent with Homeland Security Investigations’ Child Exploitation Unit in Philadelphia.

Part of a virtually unknown arm of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division, the unit granted NBC10 exclusive and unprecedented access revealing how they bring to justice the worst-of-the-worst pedophiles operating online and identify and rescue their victims — wherever they may be.

Their fight is relentless.

CP, as the unit is nicknamed, receives new leads every week at its offices inside the U.S. Customs House in historic Philadelphia about people consuming, distributing and producing child porn in Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia.

The unit’s six male and three female federal investigators are broken into two types: Case Agents, who are similar to traditional detectives and Computer Forensic Agents, who scour computers, smartphones and other electronic devices for evidence.

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CANADA
The London Free Press

By Randy Richmond, The London Free Press
Friday, October 10, 2014

For years, John Swales battled social service agencies over how they treat men.

Next week, he’ll realize a long-held dream, built with the help of those agencies: A place for men.

“Something along the way had to shift. I decided to do my part and shift a bit,” said Swales, an outspoken sexual abuse survivor.

D4Men — Destination for Men — launches Thursday at the Goodwill Centre conference room. …

Swales and his brothers were sexually abused by Roman Catholic priest Barry Glendinning in the 1970s. That began a long struggle with alcohol and drug abuse that led Swales into prostitution and trouble with the law.

Swales successfully sued the Catholic church, but continued to fight what he saw as ­discrimination against male ­survivors. That battle peaked in 2010, when the province announced $2.2-million for male survivors that prompted competition for the dollars from some of the same agencies that Swales felt ignored his and other survivors’ troubles.

After the tempest eased, leaders of London social agencies and Swales struck a truce that has led to an increasingly friendly collaboration on several projects, including D4Men.

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

By Nic Rigby
BBC News

The senior investigator looking into claims of physical and sexual abuse at a former Catholic orphanage says a new suspect has been identified.

Retired detective chief inspector Mark Ross has been brought back to head up an inquiry into abuse at the St Francis Boys Home in Shefford, Bedfordshire.

The abuse took place between the late 1940s and the early 1970s.

Mr Ross said 80 “potential victims” had been identified and 35 statements taken in a worldwide
Police have already interviewed two suspects.

“Each week, we are identifying more victims,” said Mr Ross.

“If they are still alive they should be brought to justice. These victims have been battling for justice for years.

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MARYLAND
Associated Baptist Press

By Bob Allen

Maryland’s highest court of appeal declined Sept. 22 to review what has been described as largest evangelical sex-abuse case to date, leaving intact lower-court decisions dismissing the class-action lawsuit on legal technicalities.

The Court of Appeals, the highest tribunal in Maryland, declined without comment to review a June 26 decision by the Court of Special Appeals dismissing Doe v. Sovereign Grace Ministries.

The lawsuit, originally filed in October 2012 in Montgomery County, Md., alleged a culture of enabling and covering up pedophilia in churches associated with Sovereign Grace Ministries, a Calvinistic church-planting network based in Louisville, Ky.

Special Court of Appeals Judge Deborah Eyler ruled that a group of alleged abuse victims and their families did not follow proper procedure in filing their appeal of an earlier dismissal in circuit court, and therefore her appellate court could not legally consider their argument.

In May 2013, Montgomery County Circuit Judge Sharon Burrell ruled that plaintiffs had missed a window of opportunity to sue for sexual abuse damages within three years of turning 18.

In their appeal, the plaintiffs said they were suing not over the abuse, per se, but alleged collusion by church leaders that didn’t come to light until 2011.

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VATICAN CITY
The Raw Story

DAVID FERGUSON
10 OCT 2014

The former Archbishop of St. Louis and current Cardinal Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, Cardinal Raymond Burke said in an interview published Thursday that families have a responsibility to protect their children from exposure to LGBT people. Family members or not, he said, people who “suffer from same-sex attraction” are “inherently disordered” and their relationships are “always and everywhere wrong, evil.”

David Badash at The New Civil Rights Movement reported that Burke made the series of bigoted statements in an interview published Thursday on antichoice website LifeSiteNews.com. …

In July, Burke’s former diocese — the Archdiocese of St. Louis — settled out of court with a woman known as Jane Doe 92, who alleged that the church hierarchy enabled and shielded from prosecution a priest who molested her from the age of 5 to the age of 9.

As part of the discovery process in the Jane Doe suit, the Missouri Supreme Court forced the St. Louis diocese to hand over a list of all of its priests who have been accused of sexual misconduct with children.

The list is sealed, but court records show “a matrix of 240 complaints against 115 priests and other church employees dating back decades.”

Jane Doe’s sex abuse case was only the second suit against the Catholic church in St. Louis history to make it to trial.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Burke’s former archdiocese “has spent more than $10 million on costs related to sexual abuse since 2004, according to its 2013 annual report.”

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ROM
Zeit

[It went quickly in recent weeks. First came the news of the arrest of former Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski for sexual abuse of boys in his time as ambassador to the Vatican. Then it was announced that Wesolowski had oodles of child pornography stored on his computers. In between a bishop had been deposed in Paraguay, who had promoted an alleged abuser to an important post in the diocese.

The bad news was good news for the church for these are steps toward a uniform legal culture. The Vatican is acting with unprecedented consequence. The church, with its 1.2 billion members, still has no consensus about abuse education and prevention. But in countries such as the USA, Australia, Ireland or Germany there are now comprehensive guidelines for dealing with victims and perpetrators. Unfortunately abuse of minors is still considered a problem of the West in parts of Eastern Europe and West Africa.]

VON HANS ZOLLNER

10. Oktober 2014

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In den vergangenen Wochen ging es Schlag auf Schlag. Zuerst kam die Nachricht von der Verhaftung des ehemaligen Erzbischofs Józef Wesołowski wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs von Jungen in seiner Zeit als Botschafter des Vatikans. Dann wurde bekannt, dass Wesołowski Unmengen kinderpornografischen Materials auf seinen Computern gespeichert hatte. Zwischendurch war ein Bischof in Paraguay abgesetzt worden, der einen in den USA verurteilten Missbrauchstäter in ein wichtiges Amt seiner Diözese befördert hatte. Mal wieder bad news für die katholische Kirche und good news für Presse?

Die bad news waren good news für die Kirche, denn beide Verhaftungen sind Schritte zu einer einheitlichen Rechtskultur. Der Vatikan agiert mit nie da gewesener Konsequenz, ohne bad news zu fürchten. Zwar kommen die Anklagen um Jahrzehnte zu spät. Und in der Weltkirche mit ihren 1,2 Milliarden Mitgliedern gibt es noch keinen Konsens zu Missbrauchsaufklärung und Prävention. Aber in Ländern wie den USA, Australien, Irland oder Deutschland gibt es nun flächendeckende Leitlinien zum Umgang mit Opfern und Tätern. Leider gilt in Teilen Osteuropas und Westafrikas der Missbrauch Minderjähriger noch als “Problem des Westens”. Doch die wichtigsten Entscheider im Vatikan haben begriffen, was nottut. Franziskus schuf eine Päpstliche Kommission zum Schutz von Minderjährigen, die nicht nur den Papst berät, sondern auch die römischen Ämter, die Ortskirchen und Ordensgemeinschaften. Zwar hat die Kommission keine direkten rechtlichen Befugnisse, denn entsprechende Organe gibt es schon. Doch nun wird überprüft, ob sie funktionieren. Die Kommission soll Gerechtigkeit für die Opfer erwirken, Prävention, Ausbildung von Personal und eine theologisch-spirituelle Auseinandersetzung mit dem Missbrauch.

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MISSOURI
National Catholic Reporter

Brian Roewe | Oct. 10, 2014

INDEPENDENCE, MO.
On a day of downpours in the Kansas City region, the real thunder rang here in a Jackson County courtroom, where lawyers on both sides of a lawsuit alleging sexual abuse by a priest struck to discredit each other’s expert witnesses on the issue of repressed memory.

On Thursday, Dr. Harrison Pope, a research psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, retook the stand to continue what he stated the day before: There is no scientific evidence supporting the idea of repressed memory. The notion has so far been a central aspect of the suit brought by Jon David Couzens against the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese.

Couzens has alleged that Msgr. Thomas O’Brien sexually abused him and three other boys on several occasions at Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Independence when they were children. Two of the other three boys have since died, and the third has denied any memory of abuse. O’Brien died in October 2013 at the age of 87.

Couzens has testified that memories of the abuse had remained buried in his mind until a May 2011 phone call from a friend, who was worried that her daughter had been sexually abused by a priest, resurrected them.

The Kansas City Star has reported that the case is the first for the diocese involving sexual abuse to go to trial.

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CONNECTICUT
The Connecticut Law Tribune

Isaac Avilucea, The Connecticut Law Tribune

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Roman Catholic Church was rocked by allegations of rampant sexual abuse by priests. Since then, millions of dollars have been paid in settlements to victims. Now a string of lawsuits against Jehovah’s Witnesses shows sex abuse problems may be nondenominational.

Four accusers are suing East Spanish Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses New Haven and the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, saying they were sexually assaulted by Orlando Afanador, who held a leadership position in the New Haven congregation for five years starting in 1988.

The four lawsuits were filed by siblings Sybelle Almodovar, Evelyn Selimaj and Ferdinand Almodovar, and another woman, Bianca Martinez. The suits trace Afanador’s ascension in the church, detail the Witnesses’ internal hierarchy, and describe practices the plaintiffs say prevented followers from going outside the church to report abuse and that allegedly allowed Afanador’s actions to go unchecked for years. (In 2010, Afanador was criminally convicted of sexually assaulting a Nebraska boy.)

The Connecticut plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Thomas McNamara, of McNamara & Goodwin in New Haven, and Irwin Zalkwin, of San Diego, who plan to pursue the cases in state court. McNamara said church leaders got around legal obligations to report suspected sexual abuse to authorities by loosely asserting priest-penitent privilege, which protects pastoral communications that take place in confessionals. The problem, McNamara said, is church officials “stretched” application of the privilege to the point that “everything is confidential.”

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TEXAS
KVUE

LEANDER — Police arrested a man for an alleged sexual assault on Wednesday, according to the Leander Police Department.

Police said Kristopher Michael Kloc, 25, allegedly met the victim through a church where he works with the victim’s youth group. On September 8, Kloc arranged to pick up the victim outside the victim’s residence and they went back to his house, located in the 700 block of Camino Alto, the affidavit said.

After talking for a while, Kloc assaulted the victim, the affidavit said.

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MONTANA
The Raw Story

TRAVIS GETTYS
10 OCT 2014

Nearly a dozen Catholic nuns sexually abused at least 95 students at boarding and day schools run by the Ursuline Sisters of the Western Province, according to a lawsuit scheduled for trial later this year.

The suit — which was filed in 2011 in Lewis and Clark County, Montana – lists 95 plaintiffs but includes placeholders for up to 105 potential victims, reported the Global Sisters Report.

The trial is scheduled to begin Dec. 1, and the plaintiffs’ attorneys will attempt to prove 11 nuns who served from the 1940s to 1970s at St. Ignatius Mission School physically, sexually, and emotionally abused students from the Flathead Indian Reservation.

“It affected a whole generation of Native American kids,” said Vito de la Cruz, an attorney for the plaintiffs.

About 5,000 U.S. priests and deacons have been accused of sexual abuse in cases dating to the 1950s, but only an estimated 88 other female religious figures have been accused of abuse, according to the online database Bishopaccountability.org.

The database shows about 400 alleged victims of female religious figures, not including the Montana case.

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

He made one of the most stunning and memorable courtroom blunders in US history. But thanks to the generosity of Kansas City Catholics, and the viciousness of Kansas City’s bishop, a therapist is getting paid $800 an hour (a total of $55,000) to try to undermine the credibility of a man who says he was sexually abused by two priests.

Of all the mental health professionals in the land, Bishop Robert Finn and his lawyers picked this therapist as an “expert witness” in a clergy sex abuse and cover up trial that’s happening now in Independence, Missouri.

Park Dietz, who earns as much $400,000 a year, disputes the widely-accepted reality of “repressed memories.” (Think repressed memory is “unproven?” Talk with doctors and therapists who treat war veterans. Or nearly any psychologist, psychiatrist or social worker who deals with trauma.)

He’s help the diocese defend itself against a child sex abuse and cover up lawsuit brought by Jon David Couzens. It involves Missouri’s most prolific predator priest, Msgr. Thomas O’Brien. (Couzens was also abused by Fr. Isaac True. That part of his case has settled.)

Dietz is best known for his discredited testimony in the 2002 trial of Andrea Yates, a woman convicted of drowning her five kids. Under oath, Dietz claimed that before Yates committed the crime, the TV show Law & Order had aired an episode about a woman who drowned her children.

But there was no such Law & Order episode. When Dietz’ error was exposed, Yates’ murder conviction was overturned . According to Wikipedia, “the negative publicity following the Yates trial led Dietz to be dropped as an expert from Marcus Wesson’s murder trial.”

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UNITED STATES
Washington Square News

Lena Rawley, Staff Columnist
October 10, 2014

Two high school teachers in Louisiana were arrested on Oct. 1 after they videotaped themselves having a threesome with a 16-year-old student. Although the boy claimed the act was consensual, he was under the age of consent in Louisiana. Accordingly, the case was deemed a sexual assault and both teachers now face felony charges.

However, a different perception of the case is circulating on the Internet. A few days after the incident occurred, VICE published a piece highlighting the disgusting comments made regarding the situation, which included, “Nice,” “Atta boy,” “Best.Teachers.Ever” and “Damn…lucky dude!” Had the case involved a teenage girl and two male teachers, it is likely that the public would have demanded blood, calling for justice for the victim and for the predators to spend their entire lives behind bars. However, because the student is male and the two teachers are female, some think it is appropriate to make Van Halen references and treat the case like the tired plot line of an adult film.

Unfortunately, this reaction usually happens when cases involve male victims. Demonstrated by the reaction to the Louisiana case, many in the public do not consider sexual assault against men to be serious. Despite this perception, the problem is prevalent. One in six men are sexually assaulted before they turn 18. Studies conducted from 1996 to 2005 have consistently shown that 14 to 16 percent of American men have experienced sexual assault. The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network reports that 10 percent of sexual assault victims in the United States are men.

Men who are sexually assaulted face issues similar to those faced by sexually assaulted women. They are just as likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, intimacy issues and suicidal thoughts. They are also just as likely to underachieve in work and academics.

Yet, male sexual assault is rarely discussed. A 1998 study found that the problem is “common, underreported, underrecognized and undertreated.”

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NEW GUINEA
Radio New Zealand

The Catholic Church in Papua New Guinea says it has been trying to get a priest accused of paedophilia to return to Australia for the past three years.

Father Roger Mount is accused of sexually abusing boys in children’s homes in Australia in the 1960s and 70s.

Father Mount has been conducting Sunday Mass at the Sogeri Parish despite receiving a letter of suspension from the Archdiocese of Port Moresby in 2011.

The General Secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference in PNG Father Victor Roche, says arrangements have finally been made for the priest to arrive in Port Moresby before departing for Australia.

“The church is not hiding him. It has been very open regarding this and the church has been all the time issuing that he should go back. The church on the whole takes this quite seriously and we want Father Roger Mount to go back to Australia and face the charges.”

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

BY JUDY L. THOMAS
THE KANSAS CITY STAR
10/09/2014

Two psychiatrists on Thursday attacked a former altar boy’s claims that he was sexually abused by a priest and then repressed the memories of it for decades.

One told Jackson County jurors that there is no such thing as repressed memory. The other called it “pseudo science” and “science fiction.”

“There’s no scientific evidence for that phenomenon,” said Harrison Pope, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “It was a bit of a fad in the 1990s, but now it has largely vanished.”

Emotions ran high on the ninth day of a priest sexual abuse trial in Jackson County Circuit Court in Independence. The case stems from a lawsuit filed in 2011 by Jon David Couzens alleging that he suffered sexual abuse by Monsignor Thomas O’Brien when Couzens was a student at Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary School in Independence in the early 1980s. Couzens says that the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph was told repeatedly that O’Brien was a danger to children but failed to prevent the abuse.

O’Brien, who has been the subject of dozens of sexual abuse lawsuits, died last fall at age 87.

Jurors have listened to three days of testimony on repressed memory, including that of a psychiatrist hired by Couzens’ attorneys. He said earlier in the week that Couzens was so traumatized by the abuse that he repressed the memories until 1988, when his mother sent him to see another priest at Nativity for anger issues.

That meeting — in the same rectory where some of the abuse allegedly occurred — triggered fragmented memories and led Couzens to blurt out that O’Brien was “touching us boys,” the psychiatrist said. But those memories were shut back down when the priest dismissed Couzens with a vulgar comment, he said.

On Thursday, the diocese’s two witnesses disputed that explanation.

Pope said there were only two logical explanations for Couzens’ story of sexual abuse.

“Some or all of the abuse did happen, but in reality Mr. Couzens was always able to remember it,” he said, “or some or all of the abuse did not happen and so it wasn’t there to be remembered in the first place.”

Pope said statements made by Couzens to the media in 2011 and to the priest in 1988 indicate that he did not repress memories of the alleged abuse.

“Mr. Couzens made comments on TV that clearly suggested” — telling reporters he’d long been haunted by memories — “that he was able to remember,” he said.

The statement to the priest in 1988 that O’Brien was sexually abusing boys, Pope said, shows that “he was in fact able to remember incidents of abuse at that time.”

Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist who said he was billing the diocese $800 an hour for his work, dismissed the notion that meeting the priest in the same rectory where the alleged abuse occurred had triggered Couzens’ memories in 1988.

“That’s nonsense,” said Dietz. “That’s something out of ‘The Exorcist.’”

He also disputed that the priest’s alleged harsh response shut Couzens’ memories back down. “It can’t be re-repressed,” he said.

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UNITED STATES
Global Pulse

Thomas Baker
October 10, 2014
United States

Emerging Adults In, Out of, and Gone from the Church by Christian Smith, Kyle Longest, Jonathan Hill, and Karl Christofferson, Oxford University Press

Here’s the bad news for Commonweal readers, and we may as well get right to it: Just over half the young people raised by parents who describe themselves as “liberal” Catholics stop going to Mass entirely once they become “emerging adults”—a new demographic category that means either prolonged adolescence or delayed adulthood, defined here in Young Catholic America as ages eighteen to twenty three.

But now, let’s put that sad trend in perspective: The picture isn’t all that much better for the children of “traditional” Catholics. Although only a quarter of those young adults say they’ve stopped going to Mass entirely, only 17 percent say they’re going every week, and in general, their allegiance to church membership and participation seems nearly as faded as the kids of so-called feckless liberals.

The fact is: In this discouraging book, the future looks bad for just about every flavor of Catholic. For those who remember Commonweal’s series on “Raising Catholic Kids” last November, the worry expressed by those dedicated, well-meaning parents seems here to be fully justified. You may hear about pockets of enthusiastically “orthodox” young adults out there somewhere, but as my old mentor in the market-research business used to say, the plural of the word “anecdote” is not “data.” Smith (a sociologist at the University of Notre Dame) and his co-authors have the data, and it tells us that the majority of Catholic “emergers” are, by our historical standards, not what we are used to thinking of as practicing Catholics at all. …

But never mind the post hoc theorizing—what do these young people themselves report about the reasons for their weakened ties to Catholicism? There is little evidence from the authors’ interviews that the issues so neuralgic for many Commonweal readers—the male hierarchy, bad preaching, sexual abuse, the church’s position on gay Catholics and marriage, the alliance of so many bishops with Republican political agendas—are at the top of their list of problems. (Other studies, such as those cited by Robert Putnam and David Campbell in American Grace, do suggest a recent trend of young people abandoning religion because of its closer alignment with conservative politics.) Instead, the most obvious factor identified in both the interviews and the survey data in Young Catholic America seems to be disaffection from Catholic sexual teaching, dramatically so with respect to both premarital sex and birth control.

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ROME
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor October 10, 2014

ROME – In the 2013 conclave, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was considered a long shot and yet emerged as Pope Francis. Today he had the opposite experience, going into the announcement of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize considered a front-runner and yet finishing as an also-ran.

The award instead went to Indian Kailash Satyarthi and Pakistani Malala Yousafzay, with the Nobel committee citing their struggles on behalf of children’s rights, especially the right to education.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee cited the two “for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.”

Malala, 17, is the youngest ever winner of a Nobel Prize. A schoolgirl and education campaigner in Pakistan, she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman two years ago.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 9 October 2014)

This Broken Rites article is the most comprehensive account avalable about the background of Christian Brother Ted Dowlan. Despite Dowlan being jailed in 1996, the Christian Brothers did not expel him. Instead, they said that they would be prepared to continue looking after Dowlan in the future. Dowlan later changed his surname to Bales and, helped by the Christian Brothers organisation, he moved into a private house of his own. In October 2014, after more of his earlier victims finally contacted the police, “Ted Bales” pleaded guilty to some more of his crimes and was remanded in custody to await a new sentencing.

It was Broken Rites that first documented the Christian Brothers policy of keeping sex-offenders if the offender wished to remain as a member. A Broken Rites researcher was present in the Melbourne County Court in July 1996, taking notes, when Brother Edward Vernon Dowlan was jailed for indecently assaulting boys in Victorian Catholic schools.

According to submissions made in court, Dowlan was openly molesting boys (in the presence of other boys) at his first two schools, so the Brothers’ Victoria-Tasmania administration moved him from his second school to a boarding school (St Patrick’s College, Ballarat), where Dowlan assaulted more boys. The parents of at least one St Patrick’s victim confronted St Patrick’s head Christian Brother about Dowlan’s offence. The Christian Brothers’ headquarters then kept transferring Dowlan to more schools, where he found yet more victims — until the police finally caught up with him in 1993.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 9 February 2014)

A convicted pedophile Christian Brother who changed his name from Ted Dowlan to Ted Bales to avoid publicity has admitted to another 55 offences committed during his long career as a Christian Brother in Victorian schools. Ted Bales, 64, is now behind bars after more of his earlier victims contacted the police.

Ted Bales pleaded guilty to these additional charges of sexual assault at the Melbourne Magistrates Court on 9 October 2014 and was immediately taken into custody. He will be sentenced in early 2015.

Originally known as Brother Edward Vernon Dowlan, he belonged to the Victoria-Tasmanian province of the Christian Brothers. He worked at Catholic schools in Melbourne, Ballarat, Geelong and Warrnambool.

In 2014, under his new surname of Bales, he was charged with indecently assaulting males in Ballarat, Forest Hill (Melbourne) and Warrnambool between 1970 and 1975 and in East Melbourne and Lower Templestowe (Melbourne) between 1980 and 1984.

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MICHIGAN
The Detroit News

The pastor of a Catholic church in Metro Detroit has been ordered to step aside in an investigation of church finances.

The Rev. Thomas Belczak, 60, had been pastor at St. Kenneth in Plymouth Township for 10½ years.

His removal comes less than six months after his brother, the Rev. Edward Belczak, was arraigned on similar charges involving a church in Troy.

Archdiocese of Detroit spokesman Ned McGrath said the cases aren’t related.

In a statement, the archdiocese said investigators are looking into possible “improper use” of money at St. Kenneth. McGrath declined to elaborate, saying the parish was not in any financial distress.

“It is anticipated that Fr. Belczak’s status will continue until this matter is resolved,” the archdiocese said in a statement.

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AUSTRALIA
Radio Australia

[with audio]

An Australian man who says he was sexually abused by an Australian priest currently living in Papua New Guinea says he would like to confront Father Roger Mount about what happened in the 1960s.

Father Roger Mount was rushed from his small rural parish in Sogeri to a hospital in Port Moresby, after a suspected drug overdose.

It came just hours after the elderly priest was made aware of plans to deport him to Australia.

David McNamara says he was sexually abused by Roger Mount when he lived in a St John of God facility in New South Wales in the Sixties.

Father Mount has previously denied the allegations but refused to be interview by the ABC this week.

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MICHIGAN
USA Today

Niraj Warikoo, Detroit Free Press October 10, 2014

PLYMOUTH, Mich. — A popular Catholic priest in Plymouth was removed Thursday as law enforcement officials investigate whether he improperly used parish funds — just as his brother, also a priest, is accused of doing at a Troy parish.

In a letter sent Thursday to parishioners at St. Kenneth Parish, Auxiliary Bishop Francis Reiss wrote that the Rev. Thomas Belczak, 60, “has been required to step aside as pastor of St. Kenneth Parish, effective October 9. This action results from a law enforcement investigation into the alleged improper use of St. Kenneth Parish funds.”

His brother the Rev. Edward Belczak, 69, and his church administrator were indicted in April for stealing about $700,000 from St. Thomas More Church in Troy over eight years, according to federal prosecutors.

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VATICAN CITY
ABC News

VATICAN CITY — Oct 9, 2014
By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press

The Legion of Christ religious order has suffered another blow with the announcement Thursday that its training center for consecrated women in the U.S. is closing because of poor enrollment.

The Mater Ecclesiae College in Greenville, Rhode Island, had catered to women who were deciding whether they wanted to live like nuns within the Legion’s Regnum Christi lay movement.

The consecrated branch of the Legion was plagued by serious spiritual and psychological abuses, requiring a Vatican-mandated overhaul just as the Legion itself was taken over by Pope Benedict XVI after revelations that its late founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel, had fathered children and sexually abused his seminarians.

In a letter Thursday, the head of consecrated women in North America, Nancy Nohrden, said that the “difficulties and institutional changes” of the past few years had resulted in fewer vocations and lower college enrollment. She said the school would close at the end of the academic year.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Brian McDonald

A Christian Brother has been jailed for sexually abusing young schoolboys in his classroom.

Brother Thomas McCarry, aged 66, had admitted a series of sample charges of indecently assaulting four boys as young as 10 at a national school in the midlands between 1984 and 1987.

McCarry, of Clareville, Finglas Rd, Glasnevin, Dublin, displayed no emotion as he was handed concurrent sentences of two years at Mullingar Circuit Court sitting in Tullamore yesterday.

The court had earlier been told that the assaults all took place during school hours while the boys were aged 10 to 11 and in fifth and sixth class.

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AUSTRALIA
The Standard

By Genevieve Gannon Oct. 10, 2014

A convicted paedophile who changed his name to avoid publicity has admitted to another 55 offences committed while he was a Christian brother teaching in Victorian schools, including at Warrnambool.

Ted Bales, 64, was taken into custody yesterday after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting boys over a 16-year period in the 1970s and 1980s.

Bales, now a defrocked layman living in Thomastown, was formerly known as Edward Vernon Dowlan.

The name ‘Dowlan’ has frequently appeared alongside some of Australia’s most notorious clergy paedophiles, including Robert Charles Best and Gerald Francis Ridsdale.

A court hearing in April was told Bales changed his identity to avoid publicity because his name came up whenever the media reported on crimes involving the Christian Brothers.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

The Christian Brothers have expressed deep and enduring regret for the sex crimes of one of their former Victorian brothers.

Ted Bales, 64, this week pleaded guilty to 55 counts of indecent assault spanning 16 years during the 1970s and 1980s.

The Christian Brothers Oceania apologised and expressed sorrow that children had been abused in its care.

“That children were abused and continue to bear the scars of those traumatic events is a matter of deep and enduring regret,” The Christian Brothers said in a statement on Friday.

Bales, now a defrocked layman living in Thomastown, was formerly known as Edward Vernon Dowlan.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

ANNETTE BLACKWELL
October 10, 2014

Should the sins of the father be visited on the son?

There is a certain biblical resonance to the current case before the child sex abuse royal commission.

It is looking at how the Pentecostal movement and its then leader, Hillsong founder Brian Houston, responded to his father Frank Houston’s admission that he molested children.

Brian Houston has spoken of his humiliation at having to face the cameras and answer questions about his father’s “indefensible” crimes.

He stresses how deeply he feels for the victims.

Apart from Brian Houston’s suffering, what is certainly clear after the first week of evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is while some evangelists might be good at spreading the word of God they’re not so hot at spreading the word one of their own is a pedophile.

Not doing so in a timely and clear fashion robbed churches of the power to keep Frank Houston at bay, not to mention leaving possible victims to cope alone, never knowing that their pastors could and would have helped.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

Hillsong Church is a haven of a thing called prosperity theology. But does God really want you to be rich?

WE’VE all heard the phrase ‘worshipping the almighty dollar’.

But there are some people who take the phrase literally. To them, the almighty, as in God, is the key to wealth and riches. Serve him well and material wealth will be the reward.

This philosophy is the cornerstone of an American movement called “prosperity theology”, and one man who preaches its message to his Australian flock is Hillsong Church leader Brian Houston.

Pastor Houston, who is in the news this week over his response to child abuse allegations against his late father, William, at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, has not always taken kindly to being associated with the so-called “prosperity gospel”.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Michael Safi
theguardian.com, Thursday 9 October 2014

The head of Sydney’s Hillsong Church, Brian Houston, has denied trying to “hide” his involvement in a $10,000 compensation payment made to a man sexually abused as a child by his father, the high-profile Pentecostal preacher Frank Houston.

The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse is investigating the way Australian Christian Churches, formerly the Assemblies of God, responded to allegations of abuse against Houston and two other men.

Frank Houston, who died in 2004, admitted to molesting the man, known as AHA, in Sydney in the late 1960s and early 70s.

After the victim’s mother approached the church nearly three decades later, Frank Houston was suspended from preaching and approached AHA offering $10,000 compensation, allegedly saying, “I don’t want this on my head when I stand in front of God”.

Brian Houston, who succeeded his father as head of the Hills Christian Life Centre (now Hillsong), attended a meeting with Frank Houston, Gloria Jeans Coffee CEO Nabi Saleh, and a lawyer to discuss the allegations.

Following the meeting, the lawyer drafted a document offering AHA $10,000 compensation as a “final” payment.

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AUSTRALIA
3 News (New Zealand)

By Annette Blackwell

Hillsong church senior pastor Brian Houston consulted a lawyer about his father’s position when abuse allegations were raised but omitted mentioning his meeting with the lawyer in his statement to the royal commission into the matter.

The Auckland-born man who is a leading light in the evangelical movement in Australia was in the witness box for a second day at a hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney today.

The commission is examining how Pentecostal churches responded to child sex abuse complaints by its pastors.

It has heard that Frank Houston admitted in 1999 to abusing children in Australia and New Zealand, when his son was national president of the Assemblies of God in Australia – the umbrella organisation for more than 1000 churches.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Michael Safi
theguardian.com, Friday 10 October 2014

A six-year-old girl who complained she was being sexually abused by her teacher watched a Christian pastor make a phone call to inform her mother, only to discover later he was faking the call, a royal commission has heard.

Emma Fretton began giving evidence on Friday that she was physically and sexually abused for more than four years from the age of six while a student at Northside Christian College in Bundoora in Melbourne’s north-east.

Fretton told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse that a teacher, Kenneth Sandilands, would type out lewd stories about her family on a portable typewriter and make her sign the pages.

“He would make me repeat the stories and agree they were true,” she said, adding that if she denied the stories or asked him to stop, he would beat her with a wooden paddle.

She was also touched inappropriately by the teacher, along with at least six other girls.

The commission heard that at least 63 students considered joining a civil action against Sandilands, who was jailed for two years for indecent assault in 2001.

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AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury

By RACHEL BROWNE Oct. 10, 2014

Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston told a royal commission that there may be more victims of his paedophile father Frank Houston who have yet to come forward.

In his final day of evidence, the evangelical preacher told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse of learning the extent of his father’s alleged predatory acts in the 1960s and 1970s.

He told the commission he first became aware of allegations of abuse in 1999 but learned in 2000 there were further claims involving six boys in New Zealand.

When asked by counsel assisting, Simeon Beckett, whether he accepted that Frank Houston had abused other children, Brian Houston responded: “We probably don’t know how many. We may never know how far it went.”

Frank Houston, founder of the City Christian Life Centre which merged with the Hills Christian Life Centre to become Hillsong Church, died in 2004 without being charged with any offence.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Community Care

by Luke Stevenson on October 10, 2014

Guidance has been released advising frontline professionals on how to recognise signs that a child may be suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm from abuse linked to a belief in witchcraft and spirit possession.

A training film commissioned by the Metropolitan Police’s Project Violet team, which works to address ritual child abuse, has been launched to help train all professionals who work with and safeguard children.

The numbers of allegations of abuse linked to a belief in witchcraft and spirit possession have been rising steadily, with the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) receiving 27 allegations this year compared to just nine in 2011.

Examples of referrals investigated by the police included a child being forced to drink unknown substances to rid them of evil spirits, a pastor swinging a child around and banging their head to drive out the devil and parents removing children from school and taking them out of the country to attend an exorcism ceremony.

Speaking ahead of the multi-agency event in London, Terry Sharpe, from the Met’s sexual offences, exploitation and child abuse command, gave details about the abuse frontline workers were dealing with: “Families or carers genuinely believe that the victim has been completely taken over by the devil or an evil spirit, which is often supported by someone who within the community has portrayed themselves as an authority on faith and belief.”

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

HILLSONG senior pastor Brian Houston says it may never be known how many children his father Frank Houston abused.

On his final day of giving evidence at a royal commission into how Pentecostal churches responded to complaints of child sexual abuse, the popular Sydney preacher was asked if he now accepted his father had abused other children in New Zealand.

“I’ve no doubt, and we probably do not know how many. We may never know just how far it went,” he told the national inquiry on Friday.

Brian Houston outside the The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual

For the past four days, the focus of the hearing has been on how Brian Houston and the body he led — the Assemblies of God (AoG) — responded to revelations in 1999 that church elder and well-known preacher Frank Houston had abused a boy in Sydney in the 1970s. Frank Houston had confessed to his son of just one incident with that boy.

But the victim, now in his 50s, told the commission there were many assaults on him by Frank Houston, who died in 2004.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

THE chairman of Hobart’s exclusive Hutchins School has written to former students asking them to refer media inquries about child sex allegations back to the school.

David Morris sent an email to old boys of the school, which was passed on to the Mercury.
It concludes: “The School now has comprehensive policies and procedures to deal with such matters.

“If you have any further queries or if you are contacted by media, please direct them to the Headmaster’s office.”

The email referred to allegations of sexual assault against a former headmaster of school which will be examined at a public hearing of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse next month.

The 1960s allegations against the late David Lawrence and former teacher Lyndon Hickman (1942-49 and 1964-65) were known to the all-male boarding school.

Mr Lawrence (1960-70) resigned as headmaster amid a scandal involving a relationship with a former student.

It is understood allegations were made to the commission at recent private hearings.
Mr Morris and Anglican Bishop John Harrower said the school and the Diocese would co-operate fully with the royal commission.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By RORY CALLINAN Oct. 10, 2014

The Papua New Guinea-based Catholic priest ordered by the church to return to Australia after Fairfax Media revealed his alleged involvement in Australian child abuse cases appears to have stalled his departure by going into hospital.

The Catholic Church paid more than $100,000 to victims who alleged abuse by Father Roger Mount when he was a brother with the Catholic St John of God Order running children’s homes in NSW and Victoria in the 1960s and 1970s.

He moved to Papua New Guinea in the 1980s and became a Catholic priest – most recently in the Sogeri Parish about 45km north-east of Port Moresby – despite the allegations of child abuse being reported to the Catholic Church in Australia.

This week the Herald revealed that despite the abuse allegations, Mount was still operating as the priest in the remote parish and had been ignoring instructions to leave for more than two years and was living in the country illegally.

The Port Moresby Dioceses, which oversees Sogeri Parish, issued a statement saying Mount was to be sent back to Australia.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis, and the Family Synod sideshow, appear to be following Pope John XXIII’s earlier flawed synod strategy. John’s strategy, and now Francis’ approach, was simply to follow the classic politicians’ ploy and carve out topics that were especially embarrassing to or sensitive for the pope, like contraception or clerical rape of children, from the assembled bishops’ highly public agenda. These topics are then parked in secretive and “slow walked” Vatican controlled “advisory committees”, that are supposedly trustworthy because they have some carefully selected “showpiece” members. Currently, this may include the well respected and very brave Irish activist and priest rape survivor, Marie Collins.

Marie Collins has for many years been a leading Irish advocate for priest abuse survivors. She also had a role in setting up in Dublin the very effective One-In-Four organization. This group, now under the intrepid Maeve Lewis, advocates relentlessly for, and provides needed counseling to, Irish survivors of child sexual abuse. Marie Collins has since March been a member of Pope Francis’ Pontifical Commission on the Protection of Minors (or so-called “Child Abuse Commission”), that is still “under construction” after more than a year and a half of Francis’ papacy.

Pursuant to this synod strategy, a papal committee would then likely take years “quietly investigating” already well known priest child abuse issues and solutions. The pope, of course, would then be free to reject the committee’s secretive findings and advice, after the media frenzy subsides, as happened with Paul VI in 1968 with artificial contraception. But Paul VI failed dismally with this strategy and so likely will Francis.

Yes, the latest papal saint-to- be (the third in six months), Paul VI used this ploy in 1968, just before Francis’ ordination, when faced with John XXIII’s birth control commission’s strong endorsement of artificial contraception. Paul then suddenly and unexpectedly rejected his own commission’s strong endorsement after six years of “study”. Then, this earlier commission’s very influential married member, Patty Crowley, a leader of the Catholic Family Movement which had earlier initially advocated “natural family planning”, was shamefully shunned by the Church hierarchy, even by her own Cardinal in Chicago.

Let’s hope that Marie Collins will be very careful and wary to avoid being “used” by a pope, like Patty Crowley was used by Paul VI a half century ago in similar circumstances!

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MICHIGAN
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct 9, 2014
For more information contact:
Joe Kohn, Director of Public Relations
Kohn.Joseph@aod.org
313-237-5802

Effective today, Father Thomas Belczak has been required to step aside as pastor of St. Kenneth Parish, Plymouth, pending further steps by Church officials. This action results from a law enforcement investigation into alleged improper use of St. Kenneth Parish funds. It is anticipated that Fr. Belczak’s status will continue until this matter is resolved. During this time, Fr. Belczak, 60, will not be permitted to be present at St. Kenneth; he will not be working or serving there in any capacity. Fr. Belczak will be allowed to continue his public ministry as a priest only in circumstances with the expressed consent of the Archdiocese of Detroit.

Father Robert Blondell, a senior priest of the Detroit archdiocese, has been named as administrator of St. Kenneth Parish.

The Archdiocese of Detroit has fully cooperated with law enforcement authorities and will continue to do so.

Letter to St. Kenneth Parishioners from Bishop Francis Reiss

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MICHIGAN
Press and Guide

By Erica McClain
Digital First Media

Father Thomas Belczak, a former deacon at Sacred Heart Parish in Dearborn, has been ordered to step aside as pastor of St. Kenneth Parish in Plymouth.

Belczak will step aside as a result of an investigation of alleged improper use of funds at the Plymouth parish, the Archdiocese of Detroit stated in a press release.

The 60-year-old pastor will not be permitted to visit the parish in any capacity. Father Robert Blondell, a senior priest of the Detroit archdiocese, has been named as administrator of St. Kenneth Parish.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Thursday set Nov. 18 to hear oral argument on the Philadelphia District Attorney’s petition to reinstate the child endangerment conviction of Msgr. William J. Lynn, the first Roman Catholic Church official charged in the clergy child sex-abuse scandal.

The high court will hear the appeal in Harrisburg in the court’s main courtroom in the Capitol.

At issue before the state’s highest court is the contested key legal theory underpinning the landmark 2012 prosecution of Lynn, 63, who as the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s former secretary for clergy was the official responsible for investigating and recommending punishment for priests accused of sexual and other misconduct.

In July 2012, after a 13-week trial and 12 days of deliberations, a Common Pleas Court judge sentenced Lynn to three to six years in prison. He immediately went into custody.

The jury found that Lynn allowed the Rev. Edward V. Avery, who had a history of sexually abusing children, to live in a Northeast rectory where he later assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy. Avery pleaded guilty in the 1999 attack and is serving up to five years in state prison.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
TribTown

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First Posted: October 09, 2014

PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania’s highest court plans to hear oral argument next month in prosecutors’ attempt to reinstate the child endangerment conviction of a Catholic priest in Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported (http://bit.ly/1neTiEZ ) the Supreme Court on Thursday scheduled for Nov. 18 the city district attorney’s bid to reinstate Monsignor William Lynn’s conviction.

The 63-year-old Lynn was convicted in 2012 but the state Superior Court threw it out in December, agreeing with his lawyers that his role as supervisor didn’t meet standards in the law for criminal culpability.

He’d been convicted of letting a priest live in a rectory where he attacked a 10-year-old boy. That priest pleaded guilty and is serving time.

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MICHIGAN
The Republic

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 09, 2014

PLYMOUTH TOWNSHIP, Michigan — The pastor of a Catholic church in suburban Detroit has been ordered to step aside in an investigation of church finances.

The Rev. Thomas Belczak had been pastor at St. Kenneth Church for 10 1/2 years. His brother, the Rev. Ed Belczak, is under indictment in an alleged scheme to steal nearly $700,000 from a different church in suburban Detroit.

Archdiocese of Detroit spokesman Ned McGrath says the cases aren’t related.

In a statement, the Archdiocese says investigators are looking into possible “improper use” of money at St. Kenneth in Plymouth Township. McGrath declined to elaborate, although the parish is not in any financial distress.

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FLORIDA
ABC 7

[with video]

FORT MYERS, FL –
For the first time since allegations of bullying, lack of financial transparency, violating Canon law and a $5 million sexual abuse lawsuit broke, we asked Bishop Frank Dewane to publicly comment on the issues surrounding him and the Diocese of Venice.

Bishop Dewane was in Fort Myers Thursday for a prayer vigil supporting the pro-life movement “40 days for life.”

After numerous requests over several months for an interview on the allegations, we met up with the Bishop at the prayer session in front of Planned Parenthood to ask his side. We first asked him about the prayer vigil.

“I’m just here to pray with the group, ask the people about the vigil. I’m here to pray,” Bishop Dewane said.

We then asked him for his reaction to a $5 million sexual abuse lawsuit filed last month.

Reporter: “If you have comment, personally, as to the lawsuit that came out recently?”

Bishop Dewane: “It’s a lawsuit.”

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MONTANA
National Catholic Reporter

Dan Stockman | Oct. 9, 2014

A courtroom in Helena, Mont., could be the scene of a rare occurrence in the decadeslong crisis of sex abuse in the Catholic church: Roman Catholic women religious as defendants.

If the case goes to trial as scheduled on Dec. 1, the Ursuline Sisters of the Western Province will defend themselves against allegations that 11 sisters who served at the St. Ignatius Mission church and school on the Flathead Indian Reservation from the 1940s to the early 1970s physically, sexually and emotionally abused boarding and day school students.

While about 5,000 priests and deacons in the United States have been accused of sexual abuse since 2003 in cases stretching back into the 1950s, the best estimates of U.S. women religious accused of abuse — not counting the 11 in this case — is around 88, according to Bishop-accountability.org, an online archive established by lay Catholics to track abuse claims.

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ROME
Legionaries of Christ

At the end of the academic year, the college in Greenville, Rhode Island, will no longer be the formation center in North America for the Regnum consecrated women

Territorial Director for the Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi in North America, Nancy Nohrden, made an announcement today with what she described as a “heavy heart.” Mater Ecclesiae College (MEC), the formation center in Greenville, Rhode Island, will be closing at the end of this academic year.

“In a world where there truly is constant change, we sometimes must find new ways to carry out our mission,” she said in a letter sent today to the consecrated women in North America.

(Click here to read the letter.)

Citing fewer vocations and lower than expected enrollment at the college due to the “difficulties and institutional changes” during the last few years and the “reality of our current world,” Nancy said maintaining the college’s NEASC accreditation would be “unviable in the foreseeable future.”

She expressed her thanks to the many consecrated women who have served on the MEC team through the years, and emphasized that Regnum Christi will continue to form the young women in North America who are discerning a vocation to consecrated life in the Regnum Christi movement.

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VATICAN CITY
New Zealand Herald

VATICAN CITY (AP) The Legion of Christ religious order has suffered another blow with the announcement Thursday that its training center for consecrated women in the U.S. is closing because of poor enrollment.

The Mater Ecclesiae College in Greenville, Rhode Island, had catered to women who were deciding whether they wanted to live like nuns within the Legion’s Regnum Christi lay movement.

The consecrated branch of the Legion was plagued by serious spiritual and psychological abuses, requiring a Vatican-mandated overhaul just as the Legion itself was taken over by Pope Benedict XVI after revelations that its late founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel, had fathered children and sexually abused his seminarians.

In a letter Thursday, the head of consecrated women in North America, Nancy Nohrden, said that the “difficulties and institutional changes” of the past few years had resulted in fewer vocations and lower college enrollment. She said the school would close at the end of the academic year.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne
9 October 2014

The Hon Justice Peter McClellan AM

Chair, Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

In 1984, John (not his real name), an 11 year old boy, started as a Year 7 boarder at a prestigious Sydney school. He was, as you would expect, distressed from being away from his family for the first time. About two months into the school year, he was in bed asleep, when he was awakened to find his dormitory master sexually abusing him. The abuse was repeated with escalating severity on several occasions while John was in Year 7. After Year 7, John moved to the Year 8 dormitory. The abuse stopped.

John did not feel able to tell anyone what had happened to him until some years later when he was treated for injuries suffered in an armed robbery. John then told both his doctors and his parents. In 2001, he went to the police. Following an extensive police investigation, John told us that charges were laid against the dormitory master in respect of offences against seven boys, each of whom had at the time of the abuse been a Year 7 boarder.

A dormitory master or person in a similar role abusing multiple children in his care is a regular feature of the personal stories received by the Royal Commission.

The master denied the charges. What John said upset him the most was that the court ordered that each charge be tried separately.

There were eight separate trials. John’s was the last. When giving evidence, John of course could not refer to any factual matters relevant to the other allegations. Parts of his statement could not be discussed. John has since wondered what the members of the jury might have thought if, the day after they acquitted the dormitory master, they discovered through the media that this was the last of eight trials in which the accused was alleged to have offended against boarders. There were two hung juries and six acquittals. None of the juries knew that the accused was alleged to have engaged in the repeated abuse of multiple boys within his care.

We cannot know whether the outcome would have been different if any of the allegations had been tried together. What we do know is that John felt let down by the criminal justice system. His concerns would, I suggest, be shared by many in the community. John believes the jury did not hear the true story.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

OCTOBER 10, 2014 1

Nicola Berkovic
Reporter
Sydney

CHURCHES and other institutions that are in the wrong must give real apologies to victims of child abuse and not try to avoid liability, as this is a key part of the healing process, says the head of Ireland’s landmark child abuse inquiry.

Irish High Court judge Sean Ryan said he believed it was legally futile for institutions to issue an apology and avoid liability.

“My own view is that the quest for a formula of liability-free apology is hopeless because it is not a matter of picking words but of ­accepting a fact,” he said.

“If you’re in the wrong, apologise. Don’t ask your lawyer to do you up a nice apology.

“If you’re saying sorry, you’re in the wrong; if you’re in the wrong and you’re saying sorry, you’re admitting liability, in my opinion.”

Justice Ryan chaired Ireland’s commission into child abuse, which in 2009 issued a 3000-page report that exposed savage and depraved abuse ignored or covered up by Irish institutions.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

A Christian Brother has been jailed for sexually abusing young schoolboys in his classroom.
Brother Thomas McCarry (66) had admitted a series of sample charges of indecently assaulting four boys as young as 10 at a national school in the midlands between 1984 and 1987.

His jailing at Mullingar Circuit Court sitting in Tullamoretoday brought a conclusion to a ten-year investigation by detectives in the midlands town where the school is based.

The court had earlier been told that Brother McCarry, of Clareville, Finglas Road, Glasnevin, Dublin had deep shame and sorrow for his victims. The assaults all took place during school hours while the boys were aged 10-11 and in fifth and sixth class.

In statements to the gardai, four of his victims outlined how the Belfast native would approach from behind and lean over as if to help with schoolwork. Instead, he pulled up the jumper and shirt of each victim and rubbed either his lower stomach or flicked his nipples in a sexual way. In some instances, he put his hand inside his victims’ trousers and felt their private parts.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Liverpool Echo

Oct 09, 2014 By John Siddle

A former Catholic Brother at De La Salle school was sent to prison for a second time for abusing young boys.

Paul Davey, who served as head of music at the Croxteth school between 1983 and 1989, was jailed for 16 months for sexually assaulting a former pupil.

The 58-year-old had previously served 30 months in prison after being convicted in 1996 of abusing four boys in the late 80s.

Judge David Aubrey, QC, told him: “The purpose and principle and mission of the De La Salle order is to touch the hearts of their students and to inspire them.

“You betrayed that, particularly you betrayed your victim.”

Liverpool Crown Court heard how Davey’s fifth victim stepped forward in 2012 after the death of his mother.

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CHICAGO (IL)
SW News Herald

By JOE BOYLE • Thursday, September 25, 2014

Pastors on Chicago’s Southwest Side and in the southwest suburbs say they have a positive outlook after Pope Francis appointed Bishop Blase Cupich to replace Cardinal Francis George to lead the nation’s third largest diocese.

News began spreading last Friday night that Cupich, 65, who has served as bishop of Spokane, Wash., for the past four years, would replace the ailing George, 77.

A news conference was held Saturday to officially introduce Cupich, who was born and raised in Omaha, Neb. George introduced Cupich, who he said “brings a deep faith, quick intelligence, personal commitment and varied pastoral experiences” to the church. …

George had to deal with major issues during his tenure, including the closing of many Catholic schools as a result of dwindling enrollment and the sexual abuse scandal.

“As far as abuse, Cardinal George was an architect of the zero tolerance policy,” Furlan said. “There are groups out there that no matter what we do, it is not enough.”

One of those groups would be the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, who have questioned Cupich’s term in Spokane regarding abuse by priests. The group believes the bishop has not done enough to deal with the problem of sexual abuse among some priests.

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UNITED STATES
POPE FRANCIS the CON-Christ.

Paris Arrow

Pope Francis preaches what his police practise the contrary

Pope Francis in his opening speech told the all-male celibate misogynists bishops to “speak with parrhesia — meaning to speak candidly or boldly, and without fear – while outside at St. Peter’s Square lay demonstrators carrying a sign that says , “Families must have vote in family synods” are surrounded by police restraining and intimidating them.

Pope Francis is using the 8 powers to control his all-male oligarch bishops who are in the Vatican for the Synod on Families. In his opening speech he told the bishops that they should “speak with parrhesia and listen with humility.” What this means is, those bishops assigned by the Opus Dei Beast PR Deceits Team must speak without parrhesia and the rest must listen and simply say “Amen” humility as show of idiot-obedience for the 1.2 billion Catholics to emulate.

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VATICAN CITY
The Tablet (UK)

09 October 2014 13:40 by Christopher Lamb in Rome

The man picked by Pope Francis to sort out the Vatican’s finances admitted last night that details of the Holy See’s financial health remained opaque for many years to the very committee supposed to be overseeing them.

Cardinal George Pell, Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, who also sits on the Pope’s nine-member advisory body, recalled how he had sat on a 15-member committee of cardinals whose job was to oversee the finances of the Vatican.

“For seven or eight years I was on a committee that was supposed to be overlooking Vatican finances. The only thing that was absolutely clear is that we didn’t know what was going on!” he said last night at the Rome launch of the Crux website at the North American College.

He recalled that Cardinal Joachim Meisner, the 80-year-old Archbishop Emeritus of Cologne, explained to Cardinal Pell how he for 23 years had tried “to improve things”.

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SOUTH DAKOTA
Tampa Tribune

The Associated Press

A Sumter County real estate agent has been accused of having sex with a teenage girl from 2011 to 2013, when he worked as pastor at a South Dakota church.

A federal grand jury in South Dakota on Monday indicted Tony Haglund on counts of sexual penetration by a psychotherapist, sexual contact with a child younger than 16 and sexual contact by a psychotherapist.

He was being held Monday at the Sumter County Detention Center in Bushnell with bail set at $500,000, a jail spokeswoman said. Haglund could be brought back to face the charges in 10 days if he waives extradition from Florida, said Dennis Johnson, the sheriff in Lincoln County, South Dakota.

A woman who answered Haglund’s cellphone Wednesday told The Associated Press that he had no comment.

Authorities said Haglund had sexual contact with the girl between January 2011 and December 2013, while he worked as a pastor at Canton Lutheran Church in South Dakota’s Lincoln County. Investigators said the girl was 15 years old when the abuse started.

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ROME
dotCommonweal

Robert Mickens October 9, 2014
…

Pope Francis continues to mystify Vatican watchers by his episcopal appointments. On Wednesday he sent Archbishop Celso Morga Iruzubieta, the number-two official at the Congregation for the Clergy, back to his native Spain to be the coadjutor bishop of Mérida-Badajoz. Benedict XVI had appointed the now sixty-six-year-old priest to the secretary’s post at Clergy and then ordained him archbishop in 2011.

Since the Spaniard has spent the past twenty-seven years working in this Vatican department, one could argue it was well beyond time for him to be moved out. But the timing of Morga’s transfer remains confusing. Pope Francis had reconfirmed him in his Vatican job only about a year ago, and it was believed he would have remained there for at least the completion of the five-year term to which Roman Curia officials are usually appointed. These terms are routinely extended, but Archbishop Morga’s was not even due to end until December 2015.

The Spanish prelate is a member of the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, sponsored by Opus Dei. He’s also been a longtime collaborator of Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, the former prefect of the Congregation of the Clergy and one of the premier “Ratzingerians” in the Curia. When Pope Francis transferred the cardinal to the less important office of Major Penitentiary in September of last year, some said he was purging the Vatican’s most important offices of the former pope’s closest aides. Oddly, he moved out Cardinal Piancenza on the same day he reconfirmed Archbishop Morga.

So some might conclude that the Jesuit Pope has it in for Opus Dei, especially after recently removing an Opus Dei bishop in Paraguay. But that would be wrong. On Wednesday he also named an Opus Dei priest to be an auxiliary bishop in a diocese in Brazil.

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ALABAMA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, October 9, 2014

Statement by David Clohessy of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314-566-9790 cell, davidgclohessy@gmail.com )

An Alabama Baptist minister admits he misused church funds, took illicit drugs and seduced multiple female congregants while having AIDS. The real issue here, however, is clergy sexual misconduct. When a minister has any sexual contact with members of his flock, it’s wrong and hurtful and, in 17 states, illegal.

[The Raw Story]

Rev. Juan Demetrius McFarland of the Shiloh Missionary Baptist in Montgomery has been ousted from his church. That’s of course a good first step. But Baptist officials – in Montgomery, in Alabama, and across the US – must do more to educate their congregations about how many ministers manipulate adult church members – male and female – and sexually exploit them.

These are not ‘affairs.’ This is not ‘adultery.’ It is a horrific abuse of power. It’s called clergy sexual misconduct. The victims are vulnerable adults who have fallen prey to a shrewd predator who masquerades as a “man of God.”

These women who have been victimized need not feel embarrassed. They were tricked and manipulated and exploited. They need and deserve our sympathy and our understanding. And they need to speak up and get help so that clergymen like Rev. McFarland are quickly stopped in the future.

We hope and believe these revelations will prod others who have been hurt by ministers, rabbis, priests, nuns, deacons, seminarians, elders and other church employees to get help, come forward, expose wrongdoers and protect others. We hope this tragic case will prompt more discussion, education and understanding of adult clergy sexual misconduct and will help to prevent it, too.

And we urge Alabama Baptist church officials and members to aggressively seek out others who may have seen, suspected or suffered clergy sexual misconduct or cover ups. We strongly suspect that others who were sexually violated are still suffering as adults and feel trapped in shame, silence and self blame. It’s important that they be given help and consolation. And it’s important that they – and anyone else who may have knowledge or suspicions about clergy sexual misconduct – contact law enforcement immediately.

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CANADA
CBC News

The federal government is taking the Catholic church to court today over residential school money it claims is unpaid.

In 2006, churches that ran residential schools, including Catholic, Anglican, United and Presbyterian denominations, agreed to make reparations.

While most denominations settled their claims years ago, the federal government said the Catholic Entities charity still has $1.6 million outstanding.

“I think it’s very disappointing,” said Mike DeGagné, former head of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF).

The Healing Foundation was originally supposed to receive $29 million from the Catholic Entities.

However, DeGagné said over the years, that number was whittled down to about $18 million.

The Catholic Entities claim the remaining $1.6 million was spent on lawyers and legal fees and is a legitimate expense.

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ALABAMA
The Raw Story

DAVID FERGUSON
09 OCT 2014

The pastor of an Alabama Baptist church has confessed that he knowingly exposed women congregants to HIV by having sex with them while ill with AIDS.

Montgomery’s WSFA Channel 12 reported that now ex-Pastor Juan Demetrius McFarland of the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church made a series of revelations to the congregation in sermons that have left parishioners shaken, angry and confused.

McFarland has admitted to misuse of church funds, taking illicit drugs and seducing multiple women congregants, all the while knowing that he was suffering from full-blown AIDS.

On Sep. 14, McFarland preached a sermon in which he said the Lord had instructed him to reveal that he contracted HIV in 2003, which developed to full-blown AIDS in 2008.

“The church was very accepting of Reverend McFarland and was willing to help him in any way possible,” said one church member who wished to remain anonymous.

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ALABAMA
WWLP

[with video]

Tametria Conner
Published: October 9, 2014

(WSFA) A Montgomery, Alabama pastor has been removed from his church after a series of shocking confessions from the pulpit.

Former pastor Juan Demetrius McFarland confessed from the pulpit of Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church that he had full blown AIDS.

“The church was very accepting of Reverend McFarland and was willing to help him in any way possible,” a church member, who wanted to remain unnamed, explained.

Once the pastor, with 23 years of leadership, started revealing more and more on the following Sundays, members and leaders say they realized he had crossed the line.

In a resolution read aloud at the church, Pastor McFarland confirmed that he admitted to drug use and mishandling of church funds, along with what members say was the ultimate shocker, described by church deacon Nathan Williams Jr.

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ALABAMA
New York Daily News

Published: Thursday, October 9, 2014

BY MICHAEL WALSH

Well, I guess the truth will set you free.

An Alabama pastor reportedly kicked off a few sermons with litanies of confessions that shocked his congregation at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Montgomery.

From the pulpit, Juan McFarland allegedly admitted to adulterous-sex romps with longtime congregates on church-grounds, taking church money for business trips and not bothering to go, abusing illegal drugs while pastor, contracting HIV in 2003 and receiving an AIDS diagnosis in 2008, according to local media.

It is not clear whether McFarland, who has led the church since 1990, told his numerous sex partners about his STD status but at least one of them plans to take an HIV test, WSFA reported.

“Who does this to people, and you are the leader? Who does this?” a church member told the NBC affiliate. “I know a young lady who is a member of the church who says she has slept with him… and she running out now trying to find out if there is anything wrong with her.”

The first jaw-dropping sermon took place on Sept. 14 but two more followed. On Sunday, the deacons unanimously voted to remove McFarland as pastor.

Nathan Williams Jr., 80, who has attended Shiloh since he was just a boy, confirmed that many church-goers were stunned but not everyone was angry, AL.com said.

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POLEN
HPD

Von Lukas Plewnia

9. OKT 2014

POLEN. (hpd) Wesolowski vs. Hartman – der erstgenannte hatte Unmengen von kinderpornographischem Material auf seinem Computer, der zweite ist Philosophieprofessor, der die polnische Gesellschaft gerne mal mit schwierigen Fragen konfrontiert. Wie gehen nun polnische Medien mit diesen zwei – zugegeben ungleichen – Fällen um?

Wenig wird im deutschen Sprachraum über Polen geschrieben. Auf den Homepages der großen Onlinemedien wie FAZ oder SPIEGEL ONLINE sind Ereignisse jenseits der Oder und Neiße rar gesät. Doch nicht in diesem Fall: Jozef Wesolowski, der ehemalige Nuntius in Santa Domingo (Dominikanische Republik), brilliert auf deutschen Nachrichtenportalen. Da Wesolowski im Süden Polens geboren wurde und dort aufwuchs, ist Polen gleich mit vertreten. Auf diese Prominenz könnte das Land wohl verzichten, das aber wäre ein anderes Thema.

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POLEN
HPD

[Polish media are increasingly presenting stories about allegedly abusive priests. although the Catholic Church still holds power in the country.]
who abuse min

Von Lukas Plewnia

WARSCHAU. (hpd) Durch eine intelligente Strategie schaffen Medien Öffentlichkeit und üben großen Druck auf die polnische Regierung aus. Beispielhaft dafür steht der aktuelle Fall eines mutmaßlich pädophilen Priesters. Doch der Kampf ist längst noch nicht gewonnen.

Es ist die wohl mächtigste Institution in Polen, die Einfluss auf Sitten und Gebräuche sowie auf Einstellungen und die Gesetzgebung ausübt: die Kirche. In Ländern des “alten Europa” wie Deutschland wird ihre Bedeutung für das Land jenseits von Oder und Neiße oft unterschätzt. Kaum denkbar erscheint, dass rund 40 Prozent der Gläubigen regelmäßig den Gottesdienst besuchen, wie Zahlen des polnischen Institutes für Statistik der Katholischen Kirche SAC (ISKK) von Anfang Juli dieses Jahres nahelegen.

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SCOTLAND
BBC News

A Roman Catholic priest based in South Lanarkshire has been suspended from his duties while police investigate allegations of historical sex abuse.

A church spokesman said Father Paul Morton would not be living at St Bride’s parish in Cambuslang or undertaking any public ministry.

Mass will be said by another priest.

Police Scotland said officers had begun an investigation after receiving a complaint about Father Morton. Inquiries are at an early stage.

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NEW YORK
Miskayuna

By NED CAMPBELL
Gazette Reporter

CLIFTON PARK — A Niskayuna priest who pleaded guilty in August to having sexual contact with a 15-year-old girl was sentenced to pay a $1,000 fine and $255 in surcharges Wednesday in Clifton Park Town Court.

The Rev. James Michael Taylor, 31, who had been suspended as a priest by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany when he was arrested, was removed from the ministry Wednesday by Bishop Edward Scharfenberger, according to diocese spokesman Ken Goldfarb. This means he may no longer perform any priestly duties.

Taylor, who was convicted of one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child, will receive no jail time or probation for the charge, which is punishable by up to a year in jail.

Town Justice James Hughes also placed a five-year order of protection for the victim, effective immediately, barring Taylor from having any contact with the girl with whom he was accused of having sexual contact while serving as a youth minister at Corpus Christi Church in Clifton Park.

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NETHERLANDS
NL Times

Posted on Oct 9, 2014 by Janene Van Jaarsveldt

Residents of Buitenveldert are not happy that the controversial Rabbi Eliezer Berland has settled down in their neighborhood.

Residents worry about their safety because the rabbi is suspected in Israel of sexual offenses, Het Parool reports. Others complain about the cars with followers driving up and down and the supporters hanging around in front of the door. The men won’t talk to women, which leads to uncomfortable situations. One neighbor says the fling trash around.

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UNITED STATES
GlobalPost

Jason Berry

In 2002, on a sunny fall day in Rome, I asked a canon lawyer why the Vatican derailed a 1989 request by American bishops for a free hand to defrock sex abusers. Only the pope held that power — if bishops had more flexibility to dismiss abusers it might have preempted scandals to come.

The priest told me that US diocesan tribunals “violated grandly – terribly – the annulments of marriage.” What, I asked, did marriage annulments have to do with pedophilia?

“Laxity on annulments,” he fumed, showed an “antinomian mentality” – against moral law. Too many annulments let people freely remarry, weakening church law. Thus, Rome would give no ground on sex abusers, the logic went.

An earthquake has happened since then. Pope Benedict improved the procedure for laicizing sex abusers. But the Vatican moved so slowly, failing to confront complicit bishops, that the scandals took a huge toll on church moral authority – the issue that drew the ire of that canon lawyer.

Many divorced Catholics now remarry without annulments. No studies pinpoint how many take communion despite church prohibition but “antinomian” dynamics are a flashpoint issue at the synod, or international bishops’ gathering, that opened Sunday at the Vatican.

Most synods are boring. This one, on family issues, has at least two potent story lines: Pope Francis’s agenda of “radical mercy” for a changing church, and his shakeup of old-guard figures in the Roman Curia.

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MICHIGAN
MLive

By Gary Ridley | gridley@mlive.com
on October 09, 2014

GRAND BLANC, MI — A Grand Blanc priest will remain on administrative leave despite recently finding out he will not face charges over accusations that he inappropriately touched two children.

Diocese of Lansing Bishop Earl Boyea announced Tuesday, Oct. 7, that the Rev. Ken Coughlin of Holy Family Parish will remain on leave after Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton announced he would not file charges against Coughlin over claims he touched the hand and legs of two students earlier this year at Holy Family Catholic School in Grand Blanc.

Boyea claimed that the leave stems from Coughlin’s allegedly inappropriate relationship with adult women.

“… Father Coughlin has been undergoing an assessment and treatment to address his embrace of celibacy and its proper expression,” Boyea said in his statement. “The treatment is ongoing and will help me decide on the best course for the future. In the meantime, Father Coughlin will continue to be on temporary administrative leave.”

Coughlin’s attorney, Frank J. Manley, said Coughlin is an outstanding priest who has dedicated his life to the church.

“Unfortunately, the reality is that a term like celibacy when involving the church includes an allegedly improper thought to a peck on the cheek,” Manley said.

However, Manley said he understand the church’s desire to ensure everyone in the parish that Coughlin is not engaged intentionally in improper acts.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, October 9

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 )

Some will be offended by our saying this, but we hope the esteemed Nobel committee does not award the Nobel Peace Prize to Pope Francis.

[Huffington Post]

While he’s made strides in improving church governance and finances and speaks often about the poor, that doesn’t merit a prize of this stature. And he’s done almost nothing to protect kids, expose predators, punish enablers, and deter future child sex crimes and cover ups. And it would be very ironic were the Pope to win the Nobel Peace Prize in the same year two United Nations panels harshly criticized his institution for continuing cover ups of sexual violence by clergy. What other “head of state” who has been cited for non-compliance with United Nations treaties on torture and children’s rights is up for consideration?

Francis made a few well-orchestrated “feel good” gestures about the church’s on-going abuse and cover up crisis. Like his predecessors, he’s belatedly taken timid action against a high profile child molesting cleric. (Francis has disciplined Archbishop Josef Wesolowski, much like Benedict disciplined Fr. Maciel.)

Like his predecessors, he’s belatedly taken timid and vague action against a controversial bishop.

Like his predecessors, he has apologized for abuse and met with victims. But like his predecessors, he’s also done very little, if anything to make a single child safer, preferring instead to use words rather than deeds and symbolism rather than substance.

Unlike his predecessors, he’s slowly setting up an abuse commission, but to us, that seems like a paltry public relations move rather than a meaningful reform move. He needs no panel to guide him. He knows that every Catholic official who commits or conceals child sex crimes should be turned over to law enforcement and be disciplined harshly by the Vatican. But he refuses to take decisive action that will really make a difference, preferring instead soothing words that won’t really make a difference.

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Oct. 9

Statement by David Clohessy of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314-566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com )

A Rochester Catholic priest who hid clergy child sex crimes in Winona should be suspended.

Newly-released church records about pedophile priests in Winona show that Msgr. Gerald Mahon “dealt with cases of alleged abuse” but apparently did not ever contact law enforcement or issue public warnings to police, prosecutors, parents or parishioners about credibly accused child molesting clerics.

Msgr. Mahon claims he “always took claims of sexual assault very seriously.” Sadly, his words are meaningless. His actions are what matter. And his actions, according to his church’s own records, contract his claims.

For a decade in the 1990s, Msgr. Mahon

—was in the Winona diocese’s “inner circle” as vicar general, reporting directly to his bishop,
—knew child sex abuse was illegal,
—knew about or suspected child sex crimes and/or misdeeds by several colleagues and underlings (Fr. Joseph Cashman and Fr. Roger Taylor), yet
—apparently never once called the police or warned parishioners about known or suspected child sex crimes.

These are not allegations. These are facts, drawn straight from the church’s own files, made public only because brave clergy sex abuse victims are finding the strength to file lawsuits and force these long-overdue disclosures.

What else does Winona Bishop John Quinn need to know about Msgr. Mahon than this – that he repeatedly, through actions and inactions, stayed silent, concealed predators and endangered kids?

There are now 16 publicly accused Winona priests who have been publicly accused of molesting children. We can’t help but wonder how many of them Msgr. Mahon shielded during his ten years in the Winona diocese’s inner circle. We can’t help but wonder if any of them might now be in prison if only Msgr. Mahon honored his civic and moral duty and called 911. We can’t help but wonder how many innocent, trusting boys and girls might have been spared devastating pain if only Msgr. Mahon put their safety ahead of the reputations and careers and convenience of himself and his Catholic colleagues and supervisors?

We applaud the courageous Winona area families that reported abuse and helped to make others safer. But we are sad that Msgr. Mahon evidently did so little to help them stop predator priests – either years ago as vicar general or in recent years as a priest?

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NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Oct. 9

Statement by David Clohessy of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314-566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com )

We are shocked that a New York judge is giving a dreadfully light sentence to a Catholic priest who pled guilty of child sex crimes. Kids are safest when child molesters are imprisoned. It’s not about punishment, it’s about prevention.

[Saratogian]

[WNYT]

Yesterday, Judge James Hughes gave a fine and an order of protection to Fr. James Michael Taylor who pled guilty in August to one count of endangering the welfare of a minor, a misdemeanor.

According to WNYT TV, “the six-month-long relationship included inappropriate physical contact, along with phone calls, texts and photos.”

We applaud police and prosecutors for successfully pursuing this predator. (We disagree, however, with the prosecutor who said Fr. Taylor “failed.” His actions were deliberate. So he did not fail. He repeatedly chose to act in illegal, hurtful and inappropriate ways with a vulnerable teenaged girl.) Above all, however, we applaud the courageous family that cooperated with them to make others safer. To us, this sentence feels like a betrayal to all of them.

We’re glad Fr. Taylor must stay away from this family but we worry that he’ll hurt other families. He belongs in a remote, secure, independent treatment center, far away from parents and kids who have come to trust him.

We cannot say this often or loudly enough: this brave teen and her family heroes for exposing wrongdoing and protecting others. Though they have a long, hard road ahead, we are confident that this outcome will help them in their recovery.

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VIRGINIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Oct. 9

Statement by Becky Ianni, Virginia director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 703 801 6044, SNAPvirgania@cox.net )

We urge a Virginia judge to give the maximum sentence to a minister who was just found guilty of child sex crimes. Kids are safest when child molesters are imprisoned. It’s not about punishment, it’s about prevention. It’s not about vengeance, it’s about prudence.

[Roanoke Times]

[The News-Gazette]

Yesterday, a jury found Rev. Larry McKinley Clark of Pentecostal Outreach Church of Buena Vista guilty on all counts. We applaud police and prosecutors for successfully pursuing this predator. Above all, however, we applaud the courageous family that cooperated with them to make others safer.

We cannot say this often or loudly enough: this brave teen and his family heroes for exposing wrongdoing and protecting others. Though they have a long, hard road ahead, we are confident that this outcome will help them in their recovery.

We hope and believe this outcome will prod others who have been hurt by ministers, priests, nuns, deacons, seminarians and other church employees to get help, come forward, expose wrongdoers and protect kids.

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SCOTLAND
STV

A Roman Catholic priest has been suspended amid allegations of historical sex abuse.

Father Paul Morton, 54, has been removed from his duties at St Bride’s RC Church in Cambuslang, South Lanarkshire.

He will remain on administrative leave and will not live in the parish house as a police investigation continues.

The details of the allegation is not known but Police Scotland confirmed they had received a report in relation to sex abuse allegations and are investigating.

A police spokeswoman said: “We can confirm we have received a report in connection with historical sexual abuse allegations and the matter is being investigated.”

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AUSTRALIA/NEW GUINEA
The Age

[with video]

October 9, 2014

Rory Callinan
Investigative journalist

The Papua New Guinea-based Catholic priest ordered by the church to return to Australia after Fairfax Media revealed his alleged involvement in Australian child abuse cases appears to have stalled his departure by going into hospital.

The Catholic Church paid more than $100,000 to victims who alleged abuse by Father Roger Mount when he was a brother with the Catholic St John of God Order running children’s homes in NSW and Victoria in the 1960s and 1970s.

He moved to Papua New Guinea in the 1980s and became a Catholic priest – most recently in the Sogeri Parish about 45km north-east of Port Moresby – despite the allegations of child abuse being reported to the Catholic Church in Australia.

This week the Herald revealed that despite the abuse allegations, Mount was still operating as the priest in the remote parish and had been ignoring instructions to leave for more than two years and was living in the country illegally.

The Port Moresby Dioceses, which oversees Sogeri Parish, issued a statement saying Mount was to be sent back to Australia.

Port Moresby Diocese vicar-general Father Ben Fleming said Mount was to be collected on Thursday and taken to transit accommodation in Port Moresby where his return to Australia would be undertaken.

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UNITED STATES
Finger Lakes Times

By TOM MORGAN

Forgive me for my thickness, please, but there are items in the news a lot that I don’t understand.

One is how various institutions act as if they have their own laws. For instance, we know officials in the Roman Catholic Church ignored the law in various countries. They knew some priests were violating the laws, yet they chose to deal with the priests instead of calling in police. They disciplined some; they shielded others.

Point is that they acted as if they had their own laws, as if their churches were another country. They apparently believed the laws that applied to the rest of us did not apply to members of their clergy. They knew about child molesting and did not report it. Does this mean priests could have murdered kids and not been reported by fellow clergy? Simply because officials felt the church had better ways of dealing with the crimes?

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SOUTH DAKOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, 10/8

Statement by David Clohessy of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com

A former Lutheran minister in South Dakota is facing criminal charges of molesting a girl. Now, Lutheran officials have a duty to help police and prosecutors with this case and aggressively seek out anyone who may have seen, suspected or suffered crimes by the clergyman.

We applaud this brave girl and her family for cooperating with police and prosecutors. And we applaud law enforcement officials for investigating and pursuing this case. But church members and staff have an obligation to help too, by using pulpit announcements, bulletins, mailings and websites to reach out to anyone who might have information or suspicions about Tony Haglund that could be helpful to law enforcement.

[Keloland]

All too often, church officials proclaim their opposition to child sex abuse but act helpless when a cleric is accused of hurting kids. Church officials must be proactive and responsible and try to track down former congregants who may have been assaulted by alleged child molesting clerics.

We urge anyone in the Canton area – whether victim, witness or whistleblower – to speak up now and safeguard innocent kids and vulnerable adults by exposing wrongdoers. We especially call on current and former church employees to act responsibly and share what they know or suspect about Catholic clerics who commit or conceal child sex crimes with the police, prosecutors, parishioners and the public right away.

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NEW YORK
WNYT

A local priest who pleaded guilty to inappropriate contact with a 15-year-old girl has avoided jail time.

The Rev. James Michael Taylor was ordered Wednesday to pay a $1,000 fine. He’s also been ordered not to have any contact with the girl for five years.

Taylor met the 15-year-old girl while he was a youth minister at Corpus Christi Church on Route 9 in Round Lake. The six-month-long relationship included inappropriate physical contact, along with phone calls, texts and photos.

At the time of his arrest this past April, Taylor was a priest at St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish in Schenectady.

Taylor agreed to a plea deal last August in which he admitted to a charge endangering the welfare of a child. The plea deal allowed him to avoid jail time.

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AUSTRALIA
Roy Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

The Royal Commission will hold a public hearing at the Hobart Federal Court from 19 November 2014 at 10:00am AEST.

The public hearing will inquire into the responses by the Hutchins School and the Anglican Diocese of Tasmania to allegations of child sexual abuse at the School.

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

1. The Hutchins School’s response to allegations of child sexual abuse made against David Ralph Lawrence and Lyndon Alfred Hickman.

2. The role of the Anglican Diocese of Tasmania in respect of the Hutchins School’s response to allegations of child sexual abuse made against David Ralph Lawrence and Lyndon Alfred Hickman.

3. Any related matters.

Any person or institution who believes that they have a direct and substantial interest in the scope and purpose of the public hearing is invited to lodge a written application for leave to appear at the public hearing by 29 October 2014. See the application for leave to appear.

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