ABUSE TRACKER

A recent investigation in Spain revealed more than 200,000 endured sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy. The 700-page report, ordered by Spain’s Congress, unveils the “devastating impact” on victims, criticizing the Church for its inaction and attempts to conceal or deny the abuse. Is the situation different in Africa? Child Safety Investigator Philip E. Morrison says no.

Morrison has been a missionary in Kenya since 1992. He received training as a child safety investigator with the Child Safety and Protection Network in 2014 and went on to research this topic for his Doctor of Ministry. In 2017, he published For Our Children! For Our Church! Addressing the Issue of Child Safety in the African Church, a book based on his doctoral thesis. He also lectures on Child Safety Awareness (CSA) because he believes implementing proactive child protection policies in places of worship is pivotal.

The focus of Morrison’s research…

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It’s ironic that in a movement built on prophetic dreams where God supposedly reveals the secrets of the world, apparently nobody ever receives a dream about the credible allegations of sexual abuse going on in the church.

Mike Bickle is the latest example of such allegations, following in the steps of his former fellow leaders Paul Cain and Bob Jones in what Matthew Taylor says, “bespeaks a leadership culture where charismatic authority has utterly overtaken institutional or communal accountability.”

Previous leaders of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City — known commonly as IHOPKC — released a statement  Oct. 28 saying they told IHOPKC’s leadership team about “serious allegations spanning several decades concerning its founder, Mike Bickle.” According to their statement, they believed the “allegations of clergy sexual abuse by Mike Bickle to be credible and long-standing” and based “on the collective and corroborating testimony of the experiences of several victims.”

…

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Thank God, Paul Pressler has lived to the ripe old age of 93.

That’s long enough to expose the Southern Baptist Convention’s most malevolent hypocrite to the shame of his reported double life.

Just before the end of the year, the SBC reached a settlement in a lawsuit that claimed Pressler began raping a teenage boy in Houston in 1977 and continued the sexual abuse across decades. It started two years before Pressler, then a Texas appeals court judge, and Paige Patterson, then an academician, launched the “conservative resurgence” that allowed fundamentalists to take control of the SBC.

Duane Rollins filed the lawsuit in 2017, alleging Pressler started raping him when he was a 14-year-old in Pressler’s church youth group. The lawsuit led to an investigation of sexual abuse within the SBC by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. Those articles resulted in heated internal conflict over reform within the nation’s second-largest religious group.

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• Summary

• Catholic charitable order faced 94 lawsuits
• Alleged abuse occurred at least 27 years ago
• Franciscan Friars listed up to $50 million in liabilities

Jan 2 (Reuters) – The Franciscan Friars of California, a Roman Catholic organization devoted to serving the poor, has filed for bankruptcy after facing nearly 100 lawsuits related to decades-old sex abuse claims.

The Oakland, California-based organization said in a Tuesday statement that it was driven to bankruptcy by a change in California state law that allowed sex abuse survivors to file decades-old complaints that were otherwise time-barred under the state’s statute of limitations.

The Franciscan Friars of California joins a growing wave of Roman Catholic organizations that have filed for bankruptcy to address sex abuse lawsuits.

Most of the 94 lawsuits filed against the Franciscan Friars were filed in California, where a 2019 law revived older sex abuse claims and led to the bankruptcies of the…

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The Roman Catholic order of the Franciscans is facing 94 claims involving events that took place between 1940 and 1996. Most of the accused are now dead

The Franciscan Friars of California have joined a long list of religious orders and dioceses to file for bankruptcy to face an avalanche of legal cases involving sex abuse against minors committed decades ago. The Roman Catholic organization filed for Chapter 11 on December 31, in a restructuring that allows the organization to meet its financial obligations in the face of 94 claims of sexual abuse against its friars. The alleged crimes occurred between 1940 and 1996. The Franciscans, who announced the move this Tuesday, stated that most of the accused have died and that only six are still alive.

Provincial minister Father David Gaa, the head of the order in the United States, said the decision to file for bankruptcy…

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Bruxy Cavey was previously charged with sexual assault in June 2022

The former pastor of The Meeting House — an Ontario megachurch — is facing two more sexual assault charges, CBC Hamilton has learned.

Hamilton police Const. Krista-Lee Ernst told CBC Hamilton Bruxy Cavey was charged with two counts of sexual assault on Dec. 22.

Ernst didn’t say what prompted the new charges or provide detail about when the alleged assaults took place, but wrote in an email on Thursday afternoon that Cavey will appear in court in January. 

Cavey, who was the primary teaching pastor at The Meeting House and worked there from 1996 to 2021, was charged with sexual assault in June 2022. He was 57 when he was first charged.

The Meeting House church is headquartered in Oakville, Ont., but has locations throughout the province. It also streams its Sunday service at several cinemas in southern Ontario.

CBC Hamilton contacted Cavey and the church for…

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“This wasn’t just about Epstein. This was also about all those who permitted, profited, and participated in his crimes. It’s time for transparency and exposure.” – Jeff Anderson

(New York, NY) – Tomorrow, over 150 Individuals mentioned in court documents regarding the late financier Jeffrey Epstein will be publicly exposed. We applaud Judge Loretta A. Preska and courageous survivor Virginia Roberts Giuffre for making this valuable disclosure happen.

When these names surface, we hope that every single person who ever turned a blind eye to child sex crimes will pick up the phone, regardless of how long ago the wrongdoing may have happened, and tell the police, prosecutors, and journalists what they believe they know about crimes against children.

“Epstein’s trail of abuse only continued as long as it did because there were so many people in positions of power, money, and influence that participated and permitted it. Transparency about the…

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List could be released as soon as Tuesday after deadline for objections to unsealing of names passes midnight Monday

Nearly 200 names connected to the Jeffrey Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking conspiracy could be released by a New York judge as soon as Tuesday, exposing or confirming the identities of dozens of associates of the disgraced financier that until now have only been known as John and Jane Does in court papers.

A deadline for objections to the unsealing of name passes at midnight on Monday, nearly nine years after victim Virginia Giuffre filed a single defamation claim against Maxwell, daughter of the late British press baron Robert Maxwell, in 2015, that in turn produced the names in legal depositions.

A year later, in 2016, US district court judge Robert Sweet rejected Maxwell’s motion to dismiss the case, finding that “the veracity of a contextual world of facts…

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Former President Clinton, Prince Andrew and others are expected to be named.

Hundreds of sealed court filings pertaining to the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein are set to be made public this week, and several prominent names — including Britain’s Prince Andrew and former President Bill Clinton — are expected to appear in the documents.

U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled earlier this month there was no legal justification for continuing to conceal the ex-president’s name and more than 150 names other “John and Jane Does” mentioned in the records. Preska ordered the unsealing to begin after Jan. 1.

The documents stem from a 2015 civil lawsuit centered on allegations that Epstein’s one-time paramour, Ghislaine Maxwell, facilitated the sexual abuse of Virginia Giuffre, an alleged trafficking victim. Giuffre also accused Epstein and Maxwell of directing her to have sex with Prince Andrew and several other prominent men. Prince Andrew denied the allegations and…

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The nation’s largest Protestant denomination has settled a sexual abuse lawsuit against one of its prominent leaders who had been accused of allegedly molesting young men for decades. Retired Texas Judge Paul Pressler, a Southern Baptist lay leader long considered a hero of the denomination by many, was one of the architects of the rightward shift that took control of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980s and 1990s.

In 2017, Pressler’s former assistant, Gareld Duane Rollins Jr., sued the lay leader and conservative activist along with the Southern Baptist Convention and several of its entities, alleging that Pressler had begun abusing him while he was a teenager in a Bible study at a Houston church. The suit accused SBC leaders of knowing about Pressler’s alleged abuse and covering it up.

Earlier this year, former SBC leader Paige Patterson (a close ally of Pressler) and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (which Patterson…

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The Tennessee Church of God has suspended Rick Sentell, a senior pastor at a church in Cleveland, following his indictment by a Bradley County Grand Jury on charges of possessing over 100 images of child sexual abuse on his laptop.

T. Wayne Dority, the Administrative Bishop of the Tennessee Church of God, confirmed the suspension to News Channel 9, which quoted Dority as saying that the church was informed about Sentell’s indictment last week.

Sentell, who served at the now-inactive Cornerstone Church of God in Cleveland, Tennessee, has been suspended from all ministerial activities in line with Church of God policy.

Sentell was found with more than 100 images of child pornography. He was still listed as a senior pastor on the Cornerstone Church of God’s website which was subsequently taken down after his arrest was reported by local media outlets, Channel 9 noted.

The indictment specified…

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The murder of Buffalo Diocese Monsignor Francis J. O’Connor was front-page news across New York State in 1966.

O’Connor, who was the 44-year-old editor of the diocese’s weekly newspaper, was found in Scajaquada Creek drowned, with fractures to the larynx and hyoid bone in his throat and contusions and abrasions to his scalp.

Who killed the monsignor? Exploring the murder of Monsignor Francis J. O’Connor, its investigation and its legacy

Revealed in the 56-year-old reports on the murder of Monsignor Francis J. O’Connor were shocking secrets – a priest and a diocese journalist had been suspects – and a cache of other never-before released details. 

But within two months of the death, Buffalo police suddenly shut down their investigation, without telling O’Connor’s family, friends or the public why.

In 2023, The Buffalo News published stories over 18 consecutive days about the unsolved murder of O’Connor after two reporters and their editor…

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A years-long case continues involving Patrick Stephen Miller, a former First Moore Baptist children’s ministries employee who was alleged to have sexually assaulted two young girls in a different church.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported on the case out of Arkansas that spread into Oklahoma when Miller decided to leave one church job for another.

Miller worked as Associate Children’s Ministry Director for Immanuel Baptist located in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Gazette showed he worked there from 2014 – 2016.

During his time in that position, allegations came about that Miller had played a game of “hide-and-seek” with young kids in his class. He allegedly had them come into a dark closet where the victim response statements say he touched them inappropriately. These events were alleged to have occurred in 2015.

An investigation would eventually be launched on those allegations with at least one victim coming forward at the time.

At…

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Attorney General Josh Stein’s state Justice Department backs the General Assembly in a legal dispute targeting the SAFE Child Act. The state Supreme Court will decide whether the act violated the constitution by reopening a window to file child sexual abuse lawsuits.

Solicitor General Ryan Park of the Justice Department filed a brief Thursday in McKinney v. Goins. In that case, the Gaston County school board is asking the state’s highest court to overturn a ruling from the state Court of Appeals.

Appellate judges upheld the SAFE Child Act’s two-year “revival window” for child sex abuse lawsuits that were otherwise barred by the statute of limitations. Plaintiffs had sued the Gaston school board under the act’s provisions.

“In 2019, every member of the General Assembly voted to pass the SAFE Child Act, a landmark piece of legislation to help protect our state’s children from sexual abuse,” Park and his colleagues wrote….

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Richard Sentell is charged with sexual exploitation of a minor and possession of child pornography. He is out on a $75,000 bond.

Sentell was the lead pastor at Cornerstone Church of God in Cleveland. The church has not responded to our calls and the church’s website was taken down sometime today.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NMEC) helps find missing children and fights child victimization. They received a report of suspicious internet activity at Sentell’s home. Then, the investigation started.

Detective Matt Landolt with the Cleveland Police Department explains their relationship with the nonprofit.

“From there, we do a follow-up investigation. We were able to collect some evidence at the suspect’s home. From there, we do a forensic analysis on that evidence,” he explains.

The department says that led to the discovery of a large amount of images depicting the sexual abuse of children. A Bradley County…

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The new charges are related to a second complainant and are part of a separate investigation.

The former pastor of one of Canada’s largest megachurches is facing two new charges of sexual assault, according to Hamilton police.

Bruxy Cavey, the longtime pastor at The Meeting House, is awaiting trial for sexual assault charges laid last year after a former congregant came forward alleging she was abused.

The new charges, filed Dec. 22 and sworn in on Dec. 28, are related to a second complainant and are part of a separate investigation, according to court documents and Hamilton police. The new charges are related to two alleged assaults of the same person, one in 1997 and another in 2007. 

“It is unfortunate that a new and unrelated allegation has surfaced on the eve of Mr. Cavey’s trial,” said Cavey’s lawyer, Megan Savard.

“Mr. Cavey maintains his innocence and will…

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A former pastor of an Oakville megachurch has been charged with two new counts of sexual assault, according to Hamilton Police.

Timothy Bruce “Bruxey” Cavey, 58, was the lead pastor at The Meeting House, an Anabaptist church in Oakville. The Meeting House flock is among Canada’s largest, with more than 5,000 people attending weekly Sunday mass. It’s based in Oakville but has 22 satellite locations through out the GTA.

Cavey joined the church as a teaching pastor in 1996. However, he resigned from the church in 2022 after a third party investigation concluded, “what became a sexual relationship between Bruxy and the Victim, which lasted over an extended period of time, constituted an abuse of Bruxy’s power and authority as a member of the clergy,” per Meeting House board chair, Maggie Johns.

Police formally charged Cavery with sexual assault on May 31, 2022. Following the charges more allegations of sexual impropriety came…

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The suit prompted a major newspaper investigation into Southern Baptist sexual abuse and seven other men to come forward with allegations against Paul Pressler, an influential conservative activist and former Texas judge.

The Southern Baptist Convention and others have reached a confidential settlement in a high-profile lawsuit that accused a former leader of sexual assault, ending a six-year legal drama that helped prompt a broader reckoning over child sexual abuse in evangelical churches, expanded victims’ rights in Texas and showed that a prominent conservative activist and Texas House candidate repeatedly downplayed abuse allegations.

In 2017, Duane Rollins filed the lawsuit accusing Paul Pressler, a longtime Southern Baptist figure and former Texas judge, of decades of rape beginning when Rollins was a 14-year-old member of Pressler’s church youth group in Houston.

Rollins claimed in court documents that the alleged attacks pushed him into drug and alcohol addictions that kept him in prison…

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A confidential settlement has been reached in the lawsuit accusing prominent Southern Baptist figure Paul Pressler of sexually abusing a teenage member of his Houston church multiple times beginning in 1977, the Texas Tribune reported Dec. 29.

Duane Rollins filed the lawsuit in 2017 accusing Pressler, a former Texas judge and a key architect of the conservative resurgence of the Southern Baptist Convention, of molesting him numerous times beginning when he was 14. Rollins said the sexual assaults included oral and anal sex which began after he enrolled in a Bible study led by Pressler.

Documents uncovered during the six-year court case disclosed that leaders of First Baptist Church of Houston were aware of Pressler’s alleged sexual activity with young men dating back to 2004, the Tribune reported in March.

The publication reported in November that Jared Woodfill, Pressler’s former law partner, also knew of the of the allegations about Pressler without reporting them….

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Bishop T.D. Jakes, senior pastor at the non-denominational megachurch The Potter’s House, denied allegations he engaged in gay sex at wild parties hosted by embattled music producer Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs, aka “Diddy.”

Unconfirmed reports on TikTok and YouTube allege that Jakes had sex with men at Combs’s parties and groomed a former mentee.

The 66-year-old preacher appeared to respond to the claims during the Christmas Eve service at The Potter’s House, calling the accusers “liars,” according to a video of the service posted on the church’s website. Jakes added that even “if everything was true, all I got to do is repent sincerely from my heart.”

Jakes urged his congregation in Dallas not to worry about him because “I’m good.”

“Would y’all please do me a favor and stop worrying about me and give God some praise and honor and glory?” Jakes said in a public livestream which…

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Military sexual assaults and harassment have increased almost every year since 2006, prompting Congress to pass new legislation

Incidents of sexual harassment and assault have been on the rise across the US military for roughly the last 15 years. Now, a new law has been passed that will change how they are dealt with, putting independent lawyers in charge of decisions and sidelining commanders.

“It’s the most important reform to our military justice system since the creation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 1950,” the US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, said in a statement.

Under the new system, which was made effective on 28 December, special counsels will have the power to make prosecution decisions on several offenses such as murder, rape and domestic violence within the military.

These special counsels are in effect legal organizations within each military service and will be spread nationwide. There will be more…

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2023 TOP STORIES: Hundreds of lawsuits filed under New York’s Child Victims Act are hanging in the balance as the parties seek a path to resolve them and pay abuse survivors

Cynthia LaFave, an Albany attorney whose firm is working with Anderson’s firm on the cases, said it’s “a very good thing that it’s moving forward.”

“Everybody needs closure. Everybody needs this to move forward,” LaFave said of the mediation.

It’s unclear whether the mediation will immediately include any claims from the roughly 1,100 former employees of the now-closed St. Clare’s Hospital in Schenectady, whose pension plan was shut down in 2018 with a $50 million shortfall. St. Clare’s closed in 2008 and merged with Ellis Hospital. The former employees’ retirement portfolios were wiped out by the hospital’s depleted pension fund, which they allege was mismanaged by top officials associated with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany.

The pension plan was…

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This year brought news of revival and tragedy, with ongoing coverage of denminational divides and allegations of abuse in ministry

This past year may be defined for some evangelicals by the bits of duct tape put over the word United on so many United Methodist Church signs. Or the 152 bullets fired at a Christian school in Nashville, killing six people. Or by the
hymns that Tim Keller chose to have sung at his funeral.

There were moments of grace amid a lot of darkness. There was also a lot of darkness. There were tragedies, prayers, votes, big decisions, and little decisions made with great determination, contributing to the ongoing, unfolding shifts in evangelicalism.

As 2023 draws to a close, here are 10 stories that stood out to us as pivotal.

10. New York City Christian College Closures

A number of evangelical colleges saw record enrollment in fall 2023, but…

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The Israel-Hamas war, along with the rise in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents in the U.S. and around the globe, were named the top international and domestic religion stories of 2023 by members of the Religion News Association.

Pope Francis was named the top religion newsmaker of the year. He kept active despite health problems, traveling widely, convening a historic synod, denouncing anti-LGBTQ+ laws, overseeing the Vatican repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery and facing various controversies. This is the fourth time Pope Francis has been voted top newsmaker, having previously been selected 2013, 2014 and 2015. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the runner-up for newsmaker after facing massive protests over a proposed judicial overhaul and criticism over Hamas’s Oct. 7 surprise attack as well as for Israel’s heavy military response. He was followed by U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson, whose election as House speaker elated many conservative evangelicals who saw…

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I was born and raised Catholic and, yes, I still practice my faith. Those clergy who committed abuse deserve to be recognized and punished, and the victims most certainly deserve recompense (“Maryland Catholic Church abuse database: Search the list,” Dec. 15).

I am curious when The Baltimore Sun will publish an article that deals with abuse by the clergy in other religious denominations. I cannot imagine these incidents were isolated to Catholic clergy alone, even though your paper would make it seem so.

— Timothy Madgar, Nottingham

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Charges involve seven victims dating back to 2007.

The former pastor of a church in Lancaster, Kentucky, has accepted a plea deal to drop 12 charges related to the sexual abuse of children in exchange for pleading guilty to one charge of sexual abuse of a child.

Thomas Wall, former pastor of Pentecostal Fellowship Church and former head of Fellowship Christian Academy, was arrested on January 30, 2022, on multiple charges of sexual abuse and sodomy of a victim under 12, involving seven different children beginning in 2007.

Wall has maintained his innocence leading up to his guilty plea last week. In the days after his arrest, Wall sent out the following text message, obtained by WHAS 11, to his church members:

“Dear church and school family, As you may have heard, a legal matter has arisen. While I very much look forward to the day when I am fully…

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A Washington County pastor was arrested and indicted for sex crimes, including rape, for alleged incidents that began in 2008.

Seferino Tosie, 46, was indicted by a Washington County grand jury following a 2-month investigation with the Canby Police Department that identified multiple juvenile victims.

Detectives say Tosie’s victims likely attended Missionary Memorial Church in Aurora, where he worked as a pastor.

So far, the cases reported have occurred in Washington, Clackamas and Marion counties between 2008 and 2016, authorities said

Tosie was indicted by a grand jury on 16 charges:

• 3 counts of first-degree rape
• 3 counts of first-degree sexual penetration
• 4 counts of first-degree sex abuse
• 6 counts of first-degree sodomy

However, detectives with the Violent Crimes Unit say they also believe there are other victims yet to come forward, as Tosie has worked in other churches in the area, as well as in Kansas, Minnesota, Hawaii and…

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A 46-year-old former pastor at a church in Aurora was indicted Wednesday on 16 counts of sexual assault, and at least some of the victims were children, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office said Sunday.

According to deputies, Seferino Tosie’s victims attended Missionary Memorial Church in Aurora where he worked as a pastor. Following his indictment, another victim from the church has come forward.

A Washington County grand jury indicted Tosie on:

• Three counts of first-degree rape.
• Six counts of first-degree sodomy.
• Four counts of first-degree sexual abuse.
• Three counts of first-degree sexual penetration.

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A pastor in Cleveland has been indicted after detectives discovered the man had over 100 images depicting child sex abuse material, NBC affiliate WRCB-TV reports.

A Bradley County Grand Jury indicted Richard Sentell, and he was arrested by the Bradley County Sherriff’s Office on Christmas Day.

An investigation was launched into Sentell after a reported cyber tip, leading to the search of his home and personal laptop, which revealed a large amount of child sex abuse-related images. He was booked the day after his arrest and remains in custody on a $75,000 bond.

Rick Sentell is listed as a senior pastor for Cornerstone Church of God. The church has been contacted for comment.

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Francis has continued to push for changes in the church, braving daunting opposition and several medical scares.

In a year that began with the funeral of his predecessor, Pope Francis, who marked the 10th anniversary of his own election in March, stepped up his reforms of the Catholic Church, and by year’s end he could point to a series of wins in shoring up Vatican finances, reducing corruption and enacting his plan for a more welcoming and inclusive church. He had also marginalized several outspoken critics.

But 2023 also exposed the weaknesses of this pontificate. Under Francis, the church continued to stumble in dealing with sexual abuse, extending the perception the hierarchy still doesn’t take the problem seriously. Despite concerted diplomatic efforts, the pope failed to project real influence over foreign affairs, especially in the major conflicts in Ukraine and the Mideast. His age and his medical scares, meanwhile, had…

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A former teacher and Christian Brother has been charged with 60 counts of indecent assaults at a Dublin school around 50 years ago.

Jack Manning, 87, with an address at a nursing home at Dunsink Lane, Blanchardstown, Dublin, was remanded on bail on Friday.

Mr Manning was charged with indecently assaulting six males on various dates in the mid-1970s. The incidents allegedly occurred at CBS Westland Row, South Cumberland Street, Dublin 2.

The pensioner has nine charges involving one complainant: 12 charges against the second male, 12 against the third, three charges against the fourth, 12 charges against the fifth, and another 12 charges against the sixth alleged injured party.

There was no objection to bail during his hearing before Judge Fiona Brennan at Dublin District Court.

She ordered the accused to appear again on March 15 for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to complete a book of evidence…

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Many bishops issued clarifications following local reaction to the document, but these varied considerably in their explanation of the text.

Bishops across the world have issued responses to last week’s publication of a Vatican document on blessings for couples in “irregular” relationships, Fiducia Supplicans.

Numerous bishops, particularly in Europe and the US, welcomed the document’s “new idea” of blessings, though many emphasised that it did not provide approval for any “irregular” situation, including same-sex couples.

The document’s chief author Cardinal Víctor Fernández, the prefect of the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), said that Fiducia Supplicans recognised “the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage”.

Many bishops issued clarifications following local reaction to the document, but these varied considerably in their explanation of the text.

The Archbishop of Salzburg Franz Lackner, who heads…

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COMMENTARY: The pastoral concessions the Vatican’s latest document gives for the blessing of people in same-sex relationships and other irregular marriages is imprudent and does not reflect reality ‘on the ground.’

The great joy of a parish priest is to be with the people of God, elbow deep in the midst of their joys, sorrows and sufferings. The fatherly vocation of the parish priest is to teach, govern and sanctify his parishioners in Christ’s name. This is done by teaching and shepherding, exhorting and consoling, absolving and admonishing, guiding his parishioners to greater conviction in their discipleship, encouraging them, accompanying them, crying and laughing with them, and — in all things Christian — to love them as a reflection of Christ’s own love for the Church.

The corridors of the Vatican dicasteries are very different from the trenches of parish life. Magisterial declarations can be promulgated (perhaps even with good…

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Enormous change for the Catholic Church in the opening of the synod on synodality, and Pope Francis’ appointments and removals of bishops and church officials participating in the culture wars were among the topics that NCR’s opinion, commentary and editorial writers took on in 2023.

These 10 pieces were NCR’s most read — not necessarily the most important — opinion articles and commentaries of the year. They are listed in order by the number of site visitors who read the story, with short summaries of their contents. We posted a separate article about our most read news stories on Dec. 26. 

1. Pope Francis’ new Vatican doctrinal chief signals enormous change for Catholic Church 

Pope Francis’ naming of Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández as the new prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith marks the most consequential curial appointment of this pontificate,…

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Seeing the Vatican’s recent declaration on blessings for (among others) same-sex couples, I remembered a story Pope Francis told back in May. He was sharing a stage with Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni at a conference to highlight Italy’s birthrate crisis. He recalled that at the Ash Wednesday general audience a few weeks earlier, he had been approached by a middle-aged woman. “I greet the lady, and she opens a bag, and says, ‘Will you bless my child!’ It was a little dog!” The Pope flipped.

“I lacked patience, and I scolded the lady. ‘Madam, so many children are hungry, and you with this little dog!’” he told her. The lady went away without a blessing.

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith’s December 18 “Declaration on the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings,” Fiducia supplicans, says that blessings “remind us that, even in the use of created things, human beings are invited to…

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The Vatican publishing house announced it will release a book of some 130 homilies given by the late Pope Benedict XVI at private Sunday Masses — 30 given while he was pope and more than 100 given to members of his household once he retired.

The homilies were recorded and transcribed by the consecrated women, members of Memores Domini, who lived with him and ran his household, said Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, president of the board of directors of the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation.

Announcing the publication Dec. 23, the foundation and the Vatican publishing house did not give a date for its release, but they published a homily Benedict had given Dec. 22, 2013, the fourth Sunday of Advent of his first year of retirement.

The homily focused on St. Joseph and the biblical description of him as a “just man,” which, before the birth of Jesus, would…

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When asked to sum up the state of the American priesthood, Catholic University of America sociologist Brandon Vaidyanathan describes it as “fractured,” in that individually priests are doing well, but their assessment of the institutional Church “is not very good.”

What’s more, research conducted by Vaidyanathan and others has found that not only is there a striking deficit in the trust priests feel in their bishop, but there’s also a significant generational mistrust priests have in each other that relates to differing theological and political alignments.

“There’s a mutual distrust of each other that is driven by political differences, and so young priests view older priests with suspicion and vice versa,” Vaidyanathan told Crux. “The younger priests are more conservative, and don’t see the older priests as sort of a part of the same program.”

The insight became apparent to Vaidyanathan and other researchers in an analysis of data compiled for…

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The Vatican this week prompted widespread debate among bishops and other Church leaders, after Monday’s publication of Fiducia supplicans, which offers a framework for clerical blessings of same-sex couples.

While some have praised the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s text, others have raised serious concerns, and some bishops’ conferences have pushed back on the implementation of the document in their countries.

Fiducia supplicans was authored by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, who was appointed to lead the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith earlier this year.

But Cardinal Gerhard Müller, who led the Vatican’s doctrinal office from 2012 until 2017, said in an essay Thursday the text is “self-contradictory” and “requires further clarification.”

Müller sent that essay, with exclusive permission to publish, to The Pillar, and to publications working in Italian, Spanish, and German.

In light of the ongoing debate over Fiducia supplicans, and Müller’s role in the Church, The Pillar publishes his essay below,…

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In his annual Christmas address to members of the Roman Curia, Pope Francis urged the Church’s governing bureaucracy to be open to change and to resist “rigid ideological positions” that prevent them from moving forward.

Speaking to members of the curia during a Dec. 21 audience, Pope Francis stressed the need to “remain vigilant against rigid ideological positions that often, under the guise of good intentions, separate us from reality and prevent us from moving forward.”

“We are called, instead, to set out and journey, like the Magi, following the light that always desires to lead us on, at times along unexplored paths and new roads,” he said.

Referring to something he said was once told to him by a “zealous priest,” the pope said “it is not easy to rekindle the embers under the ashes of the Church. Today we strive to kindle passion in those who have long…

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District Attorney Raymond Tierney offered more details about the Babylon man who taught in Bay Shore schools for years.

Forty-five lawsuits were filed by alleged victims against the Bay Shore school district and retired elementary school teacher Thomas Bernagozzi under the New York State Child Victims Act, Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney said Thursday.

Bernagozzi, who taught elementary school in Bay Shore for years, was not only a beloved teacher but also is alleged to have run school plays and after-school sports, and would, on his own time, take groups of children to the local beaches, pools, gym, Broadway shows and sporting events, the DA’s office said.

The 76-year-old was arrested Thursday. He faces one count of first-degree course of sexual conduct against a child and one count of first-degree sodomy, both Class B violent felonies.

He is being represented by Eric Besso, Esq. and…

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A New York judge has ruled that the “plain language” of Chubb Insurance policies dictates that the insurer must cover the Archdiocese of New York parishes and schools as they contend with thousands of sex abuse lawsuits.

Chubb has balked at providing coverage for the Archdiocese of New York (ADNY) and sought declaratory judgments relieving it of responsibility. The insurer argued that the alleged incidents of sex abuse did not trigger coverage because they were not accidents or occurrences caused by negligence but were instead the result of intentional, known or expected occurrences and thus fall outside of the policies.

The archdiocese insisted Chubb was obligated to provide coverage, arguing that the insurer’s wholesale denial of coverage is based on prematurely concluding without evidence what the results will be in the underlying claims when 99% are still in discovery.

The lawsuits at issue were filed under the state’s Child Victims…

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Police in Suffolk County have arrested a retired teacher who is accused of sexually abusing students.

According to the Suffolk County DA, 76-year-old Thomas Bernagozzi of Babylon has been named in 45 individual civil lawsuits under the New York State Child Victims Act.

A spokesperson for the DA’s office said the complaints were initially filed against the Bay Shore School District and the district countersued and brought Bernagozzi into the claims.

Robert Hubbard filed one of them. He says he was a student of Bernagozzi’s in 1976.

Hubbard said Bernagozzi would fondle him in the classroom and at baseball games. He said Bernagozzi should be behind bars.

Jenny Rossman with Herman Law represent Hubbard and 42 other men, most of them former students of Bernagozzi, who have filed child victims act complaints.

“Bernagozzi operated with a clear modus operandias a trusted teacher in the lives of these boys. He used…

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A man who said he was abused by a priest at a County Down school will receive £500,000 in damages.

The High Court hearing centred on alleged sexual and physical abuse over a five-year period in the 1980s, when the man was a pupil.

According to court papers, the plaintiff was sexually assaulted in a series of locations.

These included the vestry, priests’ corridor and lounge, the nuns’ chapel and the president’s business office.

A statement of claim said he was targeted and groomed by the priest, who has since died, for the purposes of an abusive sexual, physical and emotional relationship.

The man, who is not being named, sued the diocese and the school’s board of governors.

‘A welcome vindication’

Claire McKeegan, of Phoenix Law, said the settlement is “a welcome vindication” for the man, who was “repeatedly sexually abused”.

Ms McKeegan added that “there was no escape from…

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Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal is the sponsor of the Child Victims Act, which passed in 2019. The law provided a two-year lookback window for those sexually abused as a child to sue their abuser

“We arbitrarily set the age at which you have to go to court to age 55 in a civil trial and 28 in a criminal,” explained Rosenthal.

She has authored a bill to make the legislation permanent by getting rid of the statute of limitations in New York.

“The fact is, you might not be ready to come forward, so why should reaching the age 55 dictate that your chance of justice in the court is eliminated?”

Roughly 11,000 lawsuits were filed under the Child Victims Act.

Michael Polenberg, Safe Horizon Vice President of Government Affairs, supports this legislation saying it can take decades for some victims to process the trauma.

“Survivors need time to be able…

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The Michigan Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal surrounding a sexual abuse case with priest Richard Lobert who was with the Diocese of Lansing.

The attorney representing Brian McLain says Lobert sexually assaulted him on multiple occasions back in 1999.

McLain says the sexual abuse took place at the WJ Maxey Boys Training School in Livingston County where Lobert was also a priest.

The lawyer representing McClain, Ven Johnson, said the Michigan Supreme Court will now decide if the lawsuit was timely under the state legislature’s 2018 amendment to the statute of limitations.

In 2018 Michigan increased the statute of limitations to 28 years old. This was in response to the conviction of Larry Nassar who abused hundreds of female athletes.

Johnson says because the highest court in the state agreed to hear the appeal to McLain’s case, this will set a legal precedent for future sexual assault…

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Supreme Court will have to decide if 2018 change to statute of limitations applies to this case

The Michigan Supreme Court is set to review a case that could set a precedent for victims of childhood sexual abuse.

Attorney Ven Johnson, with Ven Johnson Law, says his client, Brian McLain, was sexually abused by a Roman Catholic priest in 1999 when he was a minor attending W.J. Maxey Boys Training School in Whitmore Lake.

Father Richard Lobert, the priest in question, has connections to the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the Archdiocese of Lansing, and Father Gabriel Richard Catholic High School in Ann Arbor.

Local 4 obtained a release dated January 2021, stating that Father Lobert had been removed from all of his priestly duties following an investigation.

The state Supreme Court will have to decide if the 2018 change to the statute of limitations applies in this case.

…

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A Catholic priest who preyed on girls and vulnerable young women for decades has finally been jailed after his international web of abuse and deceit was exposed by The Sunday Post.

Father Joseph Dunne sexually assaulted and harassed a string of young women and girls in Glasgow, Los Angeles and Ireland during the 1980s – but church authorities repeatedly failed to stop him.

Earlier this year he was convicted of sexually assaulting a young woman in Ireland, but received just a four-year suspended sentence. Last week Dunne, 82, was finally jailed for two years after Ireland’s Court of Appeal overturned the earlier sentence.

Dunne’s abuse went unchecked because, despite numerous victims and their families complaining about him to church authorities, he was simply allowed to move to new parishes. And it was only when Dunne, known in his hometown in County Offaly, Ireland, as “Father Joe” was tracked…

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Writing about my Christian faith has always seemed dangerous for some reason. Politics and economics seem less complicated and an easier link to the world around us.

Yet, it seems that the Christian Church has been in the news for all the wrong reasons in areas associated with education, tax reform, immigration and right-wing fringe politics.

When someone in the broader church does something completely counter to the teachings of Jesus, it is quite easy for a reporter to get a negative reaction from the reader. In the news recently, we learned about a pedophile priest and a school that would rather forfeit a football game than play a team with girls on it. The news media seems to perpetuate the belief that any conservative leader who somehow fails…

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When I began writing a column for this newspaper, I was by no means its first Catholic columnist, but I was probably the first representative of conservative Catholicism, a partisan of both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, to write regularly for The Times’s opinion pages. This created an expectation — in my own mind, at least — that when I wrote about my own religion, it would be mostly as a defender of the faith, championing church teaching and papal authority to a readership inclined to a certain skepticism about both.

Instead, the major Catholic story of my early years as a columnist was the sex-abuse crisis, where there were ideological arguments about causes and cures, but far more to lament than to champion or defend. Then in 2013, Pope Benedict resigned, a decision that I firmly believe supernaturally jolted the entire world off its comfortable end-of-history…

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The Vatican’s latest declaration bombshell, authored by one of the most senior clerics in the Roman Curia, has duped the international press and its readers alike into believing that the Catholic Church has softened its position on homosexuality. It hasn’t. 

In describing how sinners, who may be in a same-same relationship, may ask for a “spontaneous blessing” from a priest – a type of blessing that has never been denied to any, nor been given on a discriminatory basis – Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez in “Fiducia Supplicans: On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings” has introduced nothing new.

Same-sex couples, as individual souls, may receive a blessing from a cleric. Their relationship may not. An important distinction.

To clarify the mess and misunderstanding, it must be explained what the endorsed blessings are and aren’t. 

Firstly, those “spontaneous” blessings which have been authorised. This summer, when I was among some 1.6…

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[VIDEO]

Over the past 20 years, religious organisations from the Catholic Church to Jehovah’s Witnesses have had a reckoning with cases of child sexual abuse. Many states have tried to tackle the abuse by making clergy mandatory reporters of abuse to officials, just like doctors, therapists and teachers are. However, more than 30 states in the United States do not require church officials to report knowledge or allegations of child abuse if the information is deemed privileged, specifically coming from confession or counselling. It means that abuse can all too often be hidden – and survivors are left without recourse or justice. Fault Lines investigates how state laws in the US can lead to child sexual abuse in religious communities going unpunished.

Senior Producer: Kavitha Chekuru Correspondent: Natasha Del Toro Director of Photography: Erik Ljung Editor: Leslie Atkins Executive Producer: Laila Al-Arian Production Manager: Anabelle Rojas Fact-checking: Abdulai…

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This isn’t the first time an Arlington Catholic High School staff member has been accused of inappropriate conduct.

A teacher at Arlington Catholic High School has resigned amid allegations of “inappropriate contact” toward students, according to school officials. 

Writing to families and staff Tuesday, school administrators said the allegations came to light last week, according to a copy of the letter obtained by WCVB. 

“On Thursday, December 14, allegations were brought forward before school regarding inappropriate contact from a member of the teaching staff towards students,” the letter read. “The students had reported the activity to a teacher/teachers after school the previous day, and, as mandated reporters, they notified the administration.”

The school alerted Arlington police and the legal department at the Archdiocese of Boston, according to the letter. School leaders also launched an internal investigation, which remains ongoing.

The teacher was placed…

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The pastor of a prominent Little Rock, Arkansas, church is under fire for not telling his congregation about an abusive former staffer, even after the person had been charged by police.

When leaders of Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, found out in 2016 that a former church staffer had been accused of sexually abusing a child, they called the police and reported the information.

Then they went silent for seven years.

An assistant director of children’s ministry, Patrick Stephen Miller was arrested, charged with second-degree sexual assault and later convicted of a lesser offense, Immanuel Baptist pastor Steven Smith and other leaders never informed the congregation.

In early December, Smith finally explained the episode to Immanuel Baptist’s members, but only after the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette had reported on Miller’s attempts to have his court records sealed. Smith apologized for withholding information about the abuse and Miller’s conviction.

“I wish we had…

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The pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, Steven Smith, told his congregation Sunday that he is willing to step down for failing to inform them that a former church official charged with guiding children had been credibly accused of abusing minors at the church.

“If at any point now [or] in the future, this church believes God’s anointing or call upon my service at Immanuel has been lifted, I will not resist the will of the church,” Smith, with his wife, Ashley, by his side, told congregants at the end of the 9 a.m. service in a statement that was not broadcast online by the church, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “Until then, we want to continue to press on in our mission to advance the kingdom.”

Smith told the congregation that a former member of the church staff, Patrick Stephen Miller,…

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My mom loved Christmas so much, she would sometimes leave the tree up until April.

She dyed a sheet blue for the sky behind the crèche and made a star of tin foil. The cradle would stay empty until Christmas morning; when we tumbled downstairs, the baby would be in his place, and the house would smell of roasting turkey.

Mom always took it personally if you didn’t wear red or green on Christmas, and she signed all the presents “Love, Baby Jesus,” “Love, Virgin Mary” or “Love, St. Joseph.”

(My brother Kevin was always upset that Joseph got short shrift, disappearing from the Bible; why wasn’t he around to boast about Jesus turning water into wine?)

We went to midnight Mass back then, and it was magical, despite some boys wearing Washington Redskins bathrobes as they carried presents down the aisle for Baby Jesus.

In 2005, when my mom…

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It never fails. Virtually every time anyone takes a closer look at a church’s ‘credibly accused’ abuser list, more new names emerge, names that the institution (whether a diocese or a religious order) has conveniently left off its list. It could be researchers like us at Horowitz Law. It could be a group like BishopAccountability.org (an archive organization) or SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (a support group.) It could be a prosecutor, grand jury, or attorney general. Or it could be a news outlet, as is the case here. It doesn’t matter. Virtually every single time somebody puts forth some effort and spends some time on Google, names turn up that SHOULD be but are NOT on the official church sex offender list.

So before we go further, let us express our deep gratitude to those who work diligently to warn others about child molesting…

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International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOPKC) Spokesman Eric Volz tonight announced that IHOPKC is “formally and permanently” separating from its founder Mike Bickle due to a level of confirmed “inappropriate behavior.”

Volz also announced that IHOPKC Executive Director Stuart Greaves has resigned his position both on staff and on IHOPKC’s board. Temporarily assuming the executive director position will be Kurt Fuller, a military general and a member of IHOPKC’s executive committee, who took over management of the crisis at IHOPKC on Sunday, Volz said.

The crisis at IHOPKC stems from allegations Bickle sexually abused multiple women over several decades.

On Nov. 30, The Roys Report (TRR) published an article with an exclusive interview with an alleged victim of Bickle’s who claimed Bickle used prophecy to sexually abuse her. Bickle responded by admitting to “inappropriate behavior 20 years ago,” but denying the “more intense sexual activities some are suggesting.”

Yet tonight, Volz said,…

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The Gabriel Byrne who sits for this interview has long since left behind the actor who suffered a panic attack after the successful screening of The Usual Suspects at Cannes in 1995. Terrified, he crawled into his hotel bed in Nice for several days. He is no longer the man who was sexually abused by the Christian Brothers as a child and, soon after, at age 11, by a Catholic priest at the seminary he attended in Liverpool. Nor is he the man who battled alcoholism for decades. He likely achieved peace after writing his second volume of memoirs, Walking with Ghosts (2020), which he adapted as a one-man show for the theater, and faced all his problems.

Now, at 73, Byrne leads a placid life in Maine. The Dubliner travels from the East Coast to shoot and promote films such as Dance First, a flawed biopic of writer Samuel Beckett’s life. But at least its…

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A South Korean religious sect leader whose sex crimes were featured in the popular Netflix series “In the Name of God: A Holy Betrayal” earlier this year was sentenced to 23 years in prison on Friday, court officials said.

The Daejeon District Court in central South Korea said that it handed the prison term to Jeong Myeong-seok after convicting him of sexual violence against three of his female followers from 2018-2021.

Jeong, 78, is leader of the Christian Gospel Mission in South Korea, which is also known as Jesus Morning Star, or JMS.

A court statement said that Jeong’s convicted crimes include “quasi-rape” and “quasi-imitative rape,” which court officials said meant illicit sexual intercourse with a person who was unconscious or unable to resist.

The court refused to provide details of Jeong’s convicted sexual crimes.

Dozens of Jeong’s supporters gathered near the court, shouted slogans and raised placards that say…

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Voice of the Faithful, a Catholic Lay Apostolate committed to promoting transparency in Church operations, has published its 2023 diocesan financial and governance transparency reports. This year marks the seventh year VOTF has reviewed all USCCB dioceses for their online financial transparency and the second year VOTF has studied their online governance transparency, as reflected by lay involvement in Diocesan Finance Councils. The overall results of both studies continue to be positive, report authors said, but much could be improved.

VOTF’s 2023 diocesan financial and governance transparency reviews of all 176 dioceses* comprising the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops was conducted during the summer of 2023 by independent reviewers. The reports are “Measuring and Ranking Diocesan Online Financial Transparency: 2023 Report,” and “Lay Involvement in Church Governance Through the Diocesan Finance Council: 2023 Report.” These and all previous VOTF reports on diocesan online financial and governance transparency can be…

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“Local church autonomy” is a Baptist distinctive selectively used.

As evidence, consider Al Mohler’s position on Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, Ark., 25 years ago when then-President Bill Clinton was a member there. Mohler, relatively new as president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., declared the Arkansas congregation should “church” Clinton because of his improper relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

A Baptist Press story published on Sept. 11, 1998, and written by none-other than Russell Moore — who at the time was working as Mohler’s apologist — said this:

Church discipline according to the New Testament, Mohler explained, aims toward the goal of restoration, not retribution. A church member’s sin, Mohler said, is not the problem of only the erring individual, but is in fact “a matter of accountability of the whole congregation.” He said a failure to exercise church discipline would demonstrate “a very superficial view…

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The International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOPKC) is disputing an allegation that IHOPKC Executive Director Stuart Greaves pressured a woman not to go to police about an alleged rape.

The allegation, dating from 2014, was included in an article The Roys Report (TRR) published last month. TRR reported a woman claimed that Greaves questioned her account in several meetings with her and didn’t provide care. The woman also said Greaves pressured her not to report the matter to police, saying police wouldn’t believe her, and it would only result in bad press for IHOPKC.

TRR’s policy is not to identify alleged victims of sexual assault unless they request it. For this article, the woman asked that we refer to her as “Veronica.”

To dispute Veronica’s story, IHOPKC released screenshots of portions of an email thread from 2018—four years after the alleged rape.

TRR asked for the complete thread, but a statement…

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The Vatican’s chief prosecutor has appealed a court verdict that largely dismantled his theory of a grand conspiracy to defraud the Holy See of millions of euros but found a cardinal guilty of embezzlement.

Prosecutor Alessandro Diddi filed his appeal this week of the three-judge tribunal’s decision in a complicated financial trial that aired the Vatican’s dirty laundry and tested its peculiar legal system.

While the headline from the Dec. 16 verdict focused on Cardinal Angelo Becciu’s 5½-year sentence for embezzlement, the meat of the ruling made clear that the judges rejected most of Diddi’s 487-page indictment.

Diddi had accused Becciu and nine other people of dozens of counts of fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, extortion, corruption, abuse of office and witness tampering in connection with the Vatican’s bungled investment in a London property.

He sought prison terms of up…

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A bishop has ignited a debate by refusing to pay compensation to victims of sexual abuse, concerning cases that occurred within the context of the Catholic Church. This decision contradicts the expectations of many involved parties and victims’ associations, which demand appropriate compensation and recognition of the victims’ suffering. The situation sheds light on the ongoing challenges the Catholic Church faces in addressing cases of sexual abuse and supporting its victims.

Hans Joachim Ihrenberger, a victim of sexual abuse by a priest, is supposed to receive 150,000 euros in compensation. However, the responsible bishop has blocked the decision. Ihrenberger was sexually abused as a communion child by a priest, leading to severe mental and physical problems. A commission appointed by the church recommended the payment, but the bishop rejected the decision.

Independent Commission’s Decision Overruled

The UKA, an independent commission for recognition services, was established by the German Catholic bishops…

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A former Catholic priest who worked across West Yorkshire is facing 10 allegations of child abuse dating back more than 40 years.

Father Patrick Smythe appeared from custody via video link at Leeds Crown Court this afternoon where he denied all of charges and will stand trial next year.

They include nine counts of indecent assault and one of indecency dating between 1976 and 1989. There are four alleged victims who were young boys at the time.

Smythe, who was a priest with the Diocese of Leeds, spoke during the short hearing only to confirm his date of birth, and then repeated “not guilty” after each of the charges were read out.

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Spain’s Catholic Church said Thursday that an audit it had ordered into child sexual abuse by priests had found significantly fewer cases than an independent commission appointed by parliament.

At least 2,056 minors were victims of sexual abuse, according to an audit based on lawsuits filed against members of the clergy. It was however “obvious that the number is higher”, said the Spanish Episcopal Conference, which groups Spain’s leading bishops. The audit was prepared by the law firm Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo.

The figures from the audit are far lower than those cited in the independent commission published in October. It found that more than 200,000 were estimated to have been sexually abused in Spain by the Roman Catholic clergy since 1940.

That report did not however give a specific figure.

Instead, it extrapolated from a poll of over 8,000 people, which found that 0.6 percent of Spain’s adult population of…

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The deadline to submit a claim of sexual abuse against the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of Halifax and the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of the Yarmouth has now passed.  

From Dec. 14, 2022, to Dec. 14, 2023, the call was sent out across the Halifax-Yarmouth archdiocese for victims of abuse by diocesan priests from April 14, 1954, to March 31, 2020, to file their declaration and potentially receive compensation. This window opened exactly a month after the archdiocese settled the class action suit for $10 million.

“While the class action suit is a constant reminder of the damage and great hurt that has been inflicted on individuals by members of the clergy, it is necessary to provide an opportunity for justice and healing for all victims,” wrote Archbishop Brian Dunn in a November 2022 statement. “It is a hard thing to do but it is the right thing to…

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SÃO PAULO, Brazil – Chile has suffered one of the most anguished clerical sexual abuse crises anywhere in the Catholic world, which makes the recent choice of a new Archbishop of Santiago by Pope Francis unquestionably a watershed moment for the Latin American nation.

Yet a watershed in what sense is a matter of debate.

Admirers suggest that new Archbishop Fernando Chomalí Garib, who took office Dec. 16, is just the man to lead the rennovation of the Chilean church, an adept user of social media and a prelate committed to dialogue. Critics, however, say he’s part of the problem rather than the solution, as he allegedly covered up abuse cases in the past.

Now 66, Chomalí obtained a degree in civil engineering in 1981 and three years later entered the seminary, being ordained a priest in 1991. He completed a Ph.D. in Sacred Theology in Rome in 1994.

Since…

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After decades of battling debilitating depression, Brian McLain says he made a crucial connection in his late 30s as to why he was in pain for so long: His priest had molested him as a teenager.

To the chagrin of the Catholic Church, 41-year-old McLain is now suing over his childhood trauma, and the Michigan Supreme Court has agreed to hear his case.

In a legal feud that could open the door to scores of new clergy abuse lawsuits, McLain is testing for the first time a revised 2018 law that gives adult victims a retroactive right to sue for sex abuse they endured as minors. Here’s what has changed:

Under the old statute of limitations, Michigan sexual assault victims could file civil lawsuits for up to three years after the abuse occurred. But under the new law, passed in the wake of the Larry Nassar scandal, victims are now allowed…

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An investigation commissioned by the Spanish Catholic Church into child sexual abuse by members of the clergy and non-clerical staff has so far identified 1,383 complaints and 2,056 victims, an audit of the inquiry showed on Thursday.

The Spanish Church has been grappling with an abuse scandal since a 2021 investigation by El Pais newspaper uncovered more than 1,200 alleged cases. It follows similar scandals involving the Catholic Church in a number of countries, including the United States, Ireland and France.

The results of the audit of the ongoing investigation, pulled together by Cremades law firm, were included in a more than 1,000-page report the Church published on Thursday.

The Spanish Bishops’ Conference estimated around 1,000 cases of abuse after cross-referencing various reports, which it said showed that some cases may have been taken stock of several times, but acknowledged there were many unreported cases yet.

“The data contained in…

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The 2023 report by the Yellowhead Institute found that no calls to action were completed this year. It says that if Canada continues at this pace, it will not finish the work until 2081.

Canada has been so slow to carry out recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that an Indigenous-led think tank says it has decided to stop publishing an annual report tracking its progress.

“That hope, as those who have followed us on this journey may have noticed, has begun to diminish in the fifth year of this project.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission spent years investigating and documenting the history, and lasting harms, of church-operated, government-funded residential schools that more than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend, often far away from their families and communities.

Thousands suffered emotional, physical and sexual abuse and the Winnipeg-based National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation says more than 4,000…

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A man who claimed a paedophile priest subjected him to years of sexual and physical abuse at a Co Down school is to receive £500,000 in damages, the High Court has heard.

The settlement was reached in an action over alleged historical assaults by the late Fr Malachy Finegan.

The plaintiff, who is not being named, sued the Diocese of Dromore and the board of governors at St Colman’s College in Newry.

Proceedings centred on alleged attacks on him over a five year period while a pupil at the school during the 1980s.

A statement of claim said he was targeted and groomed by Finegan for the purposes of an abusive sexual, physical and emotional relationship.

He was sexually assaulted in a series of locations, including the vestry, priests’ corridor and lounge, the nuns’ chapel and the President’s business office, according to court papers.

Finegan also allegedly choked the…

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St. Michael’s Church in Marblehead held a listening session following its usual Sunday morning service last weekend after news of a charge of aggravated felonious assault against former priest Richard Losch was first reported in the Marblehead Current.

Losch, a former priest at St. Michael’s Church, will be going on trial in summer 2024 after being accused of assaulting a 13-year-old Marblehead boy in the 1970s.

Losch, 89, also a former Boy Scout leader in town and assistant headmaster at Tower School, was indicted back on Aug. 18 by a Grafton County, N.H. grand jury. According to the Current’s report, Losch took four boys, including the victim, who asked to be identified as “Jack,” to the Indian Pond Boy Scout Reservation, located in Piermont, N.H.

Losch, according to Jack, had groomed boys at the Tower School, as well as the Boy Scouts. He allegedly began with telling inappropriate stories, including ones that involved…

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The mothers were said to be anesthetized or covered with sheets during childbirth and barred from ever setting eyes on their own babies

The Belgian Catholic Church is accused of taking at least 30,000 babies from unwed mothers and handing them off to adoptive parents in exchange for money over the course of three decades.

The Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws revealed the extent of the alleged scheme, which spanned from at least the 1950s into the 1980s.

Sent by their parents, the young women were in some cases anesthetized or covered with sheets during childbirth and were barred from ever setting eyes on their own babies, the paper reported.

During pregnancy, the mothers allegedly lived and worked in homes operated by nuns. Some victims said they had been subjected to sexual humiliation and violence, including forced sterilization.

The church allegedly never disclosed to the mothers that it…

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Throughout the process, survivors have relived their darkest moments. But as they wait for the final report, question marks loom about whether transformative change will result.

This article is part of The Quarter Million, exploring the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care. Read the introduction here and the rest of the series here.

Content warning: This feature describes physical, sexual and emotional violence, child abuse and neglect. If this is difficult for you and you would like some help, these services offer support and information: Auckland specialist service Help, 0800 623 1700; specialist men’s service Male Survivors Aotearoa, 0800 044 334; and Snap (Survivors network of those abused by priests). Please take care.

“Hell on earth” is how one former pupil described Marylands School. Based in Christchurch and operated by the Catholic order of…

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A man who claimed a paedophile priest subjected him to years of sexual and physical abuse at a Co Down school is to receive £500,000 in damages, the High Court heard today.

The settlement was reached in an action over alleged historical assaults by the late Fr Malachy Finnegan.

The plaintiff, who is not being named, sued the Diocese of Dromore and the Board of Governors at St Colman’s College in Newry.

Proceedings centred on alleged attacks on him over a five-year period while a pupil at the school during the 1980s.

A statement of claim said he was targeted and groomed by Finnegan for the purposes of an abusive sexual, physical and emotional relationship.

He was sexually assaulted in a series of locations, including the vestry, priests’ corridor and lounge, the nuns’ chapel and the President’s business office, according to court papers.

Finnegan also allegedly choked the plaintiff, punched…

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Press Release: SNAP

Officials of the New Zealand Catholic Church “have failed to fulfil, and are not fulfilling their obligations to victims and survivors of clergy and religious sexual abuse under their redress scheme,” according to a new study on the New Zealand Catholic Church’s institutional response to clerical and religious sexual abuse.
 

The study published last week in Stimulus, a journal issued by Laidlaw College, New Zealand’s largest interdenominational theological tertiary institute, questions how the Catholic Church in New Zealand’s redress scheme Te Houhanga Rongo – A Path To Healing (APTH), has fared in light of its own criteria.

Conclusions based on independently verifiable evidence confirm that justice due to victims and survivors has not been delivered.

Outlined in the study were numerous examples of non-compliance with A Path to Healing’s principles and procedures by Church officials entrusted with implementing the APTH protocol.

Testimony of victims and survivors who…

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A Taunton man who says he survived childhood sexual abuse by a former Taunton priest came forward publicly for the first time after years of anonymity and litigation to recount his trauma and discuss the settlement he recently reached with the Diocese of Fall River.

“I don’t want a child going through 40 years of spiritual turmoil and hell, feeling ashamed to seek out the help they need,” Daniel Lewis of Taunton said Wednesday. 

Lewis was standing near the former St. Paul’s Church on Tremont Street in Taunton — the property now is the unaffiliated Silver City Baptist Church — as he spoke about the sexual abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of the man who served as the church’s priest at that time, the Rev. Edward J. Byington.

Buried trauma for decades

In 1976, Lewis, age 12 at the…

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Efforts continued throughout 2023 to tackle clerical sex crimes in the Catholic Church, with church or state reports being published in several European countries and the case of Father Marko Rupnik making numerous waves of headlines.

“There are very basic principles in crisis management that the church is finally learning to implement,” said Yago de la Cierva, communications professor who teaches at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome and author of a book on crisis management for the church.

“One of them is: investigate what happened and report it to your stakeholders, they have the right to know, so prevention starts on truth,” the crisis expert told OSV News. “But even more important is taking care of victims. Their first need is not economic compensation nor vengeance, but information about what happened and why.”

In de la Cierva’s native Spain, the bishops’ conference pledged amends when a parliament-appointed…

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On Oct. 31, Christian author and speaker Francis Chan and former International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOPKC) board member and pastor, Sam Storms, arrived at the home of their friend—embattled IHOPKC Founder Mike Bickle. Yet, instead of meeting with them, Bickle had a fellow preacher meet them at the door and turn them away, Storms said in an interview with The Roys Report (TRR).

Just three days prior to the planned meeting, several former IHOPKC top leaders had published a letter, accusing Bickle of clergy sexual abuse with multiple women over several decades. And as Storms explained in a call with The Roys Report (TRR), he and Chan were concerned about Bickle and wanted to speak with him face-to-face.

But when Chan and Storms arrived, charismatic preacher Chris Reed of Morningstar Ministries told them Bickle was in an important meeting and couldn’t meet, Storms said.

Storms added that Bickle told him separately…

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The Michigan Supreme Court is expected to hear an appeal in a sexual assault case involving the Catholic Diocese of Lansing.

Attorney Ven Johnson held a press conference Tuesday morning as he said the court’s decision will set a legal precedent as it will reinterpret Michigan’s statute of limitations for sexual assaults involving those who were minors at the time of the assault.

Johnson’s client, Brian McLain, claims he was sexually abused by a Roman Catholic priest in 1999 while he was a minor attending W.J. Maxey Boys Training School in Whitmore Lake. He is attempting to bring a lawsuit against the Diocese of Lansing, the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and Father Richard Lobert.

“Brian was working extensively with a therapist; that is when, if you will, the abuse and the causation, it is what the statute talks about,” said Johnson. “It is not just the assault, but it is the…

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Two very different versions of Catholicism played out on a Tuesday in October.

In Rome, Pope Francis presided over an unprecedented synod on modernizing the church, inviting not only clergy, but lay people from around the world to discuss issues such as theordination of women, ministry to gay and transgender people, empowerment of Indigenous communities and the rights of the poor.

In New York, meanwhile, a Catholic millionaire from Orange County led an event that seemed a throwback to the church of the 1950s: Priests in ornate vestments marched down Broadway with a police escort, the Eucharist held aloft under a gilded canopy and accompanied by wafting incense, candle bearers and nuns in habits and waist-length veils.

“We can retake the culture of America,” declared Tim Busch, an Irvine lawyer and hotelier who organized the procession as part of a Catholic conference aimed at…

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Today, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court District of Maryland, Judge Michelle M. Harner ruled that the claims bar date for survivors in the Archdiocese of Baltimore Chapter 11 bankruptcy is May 31, 2024. This means survivors abused in the Archdiocese of Baltimore have until May 31, 2024, to take legal action and file a claim. The Archdiocese requested a bar date of February 26, 2024, while the survivors’ creditors committee requested a date of June 1, 2024.

“The Archdiocese wanted a February deadline for survivors to file claims in Baltimore,” said attorney Steve Boyd. “Such a quick date would have potentially silenced hundreds of survivors.”

On September 29, 2023, the Archdiocese of Baltimore filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. This decision by the bishop to conceal assets and hide the truth from the survivors who were sexually abused by clergy members assigned to the Archdiocese of Baltimore is unfortunate and predictable. Now, because…

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On Monday, a federal bankruptcy court judge ruled that all sexual abuse claims against the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore must be filed by May 31, 2024, they will be forfeited forever.  The ruling sets May 31, 2024, as the “bar date,” or the very final day that anyone sexually abused and exploited by clergy, employees, and volunteers in the Archdiocese of Baltimore can seek accountability for what happened to them.

In late September 2023, the Baltimore Archdiocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, days before a new Maryland law would have allowed survivors of abuse to file lawsuits against the Archdiocese regardless of when the abuse took place.

In April 2023, Maryland’s Attorney General, Anthony Brown, released a report of his office’s investigation into child sexual abuse allegations at the Archdiocese of Baltimore.  The report listed nearly 160 priests and clergy who were the subjects of sexual abuse…

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An attorney is set to use the “Nassar bills” to argue why the Michigan legislature’s 2018 amendment to the statute of limitations should allow his client to sue the Catholic Diocese of Lansing for sexual assault.

Those Nassar bills come from the lessons the state learned from survivors of sexual abuse following former Olympic gymnastics and Michigan State University Dr. Larry Nassar’s sex abuse scandal, changing the statute of limitation laws to allow more time for victims to come forward.

One man’s accusation against the Catholic Diocese of Lansing is heading to the state Supreme Court to determine what Michigan’s statute of limitation laws will be.

“This is one of the first times that the Michigan Supreme Court, or any Supreme Court from across the country, is going to be hearing a case with a new statute of limitation that takes into consideration the delay childhood trauma has in these…

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The Michigan Supreme Court is taking up an appeal involving the Diocese of Lansing that will create a legal precedent for future sexual assault cases in the state, particularly concerning the time limit for victims who were minors at the time of the assaults.

Brian McLain says he was sexually abused as a minor in 1999 by a Roman Catholic priest, Father Richard Lobert, while at the W.J. Maxey Boys Training School in Whitmore Lake.

“I had spoken with him about something I had done as a juvenile, and I wanted to repent for it. And he ultimately used that against me and, on numerous occasions, used it against me to have him do things to him sexually,” McLain said.

He didn’t speak to anyone about it until decades later, unpacking the trauma with his therapist.

Wanting some accountability, McLain is trying to sue the Diocese of Lansing,…

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Arguments expected to be heard by the Michigan Supreme Court could determine how the state’s statute of limitations are used within future sexual assault cases involving minors.

Back in 1999, as he attended W.J. Maxey Boys Training School in Whitmore Lake, Brian McLain said he was sexually abused by a Roman Catholic priest, according to attorney Ven Johnson.

“I was attending mass on a weekly basis and the priest, after he would have his mass, would have confession which was ultimately what was supposed to be going on,” McLain said.

According to McLain, he had talked with Father Richard Lobert about something that he had done as a juvenile and wanted to repent, but Lobert ultimately used that against him.

“On numerous occasions, used it against me to do things to him sexually,” McLain said. “I totally, totally went into a depression and I isolated myself for the next couple…

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Cardinal Angelo Becciu retains the use of a palatial grace-and-favor apartment in Vatican City, despite being convicted of numerous financial crimes. 

Becciu has been resident for years in an apartment on the top floor of the Palazzo del Santo Uffizio, the extraterritorial building adjacent to St. Peter’s square which also houses the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. 

Becciu previously served as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, before being asked to resign by the pope in 2020, following the preliminary results of a criminal investigation into his conduct as sostituto at the Secretariat of State.

Sources close to the Vatican City state’s governorate have told The Pillar that, despite changes in Vatican policy issued by Pope Francis earlier this year, Cardinal Becciu is not paying market rates for the property but instead only a nominal monthly rent, in line with privileges customarily extended to senior curial officials.

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In his first major media appearance since being convicted of financial crimes by a Vatican tribunal and sentenced to five and a half years in prison, Cardinal Angelo Becciu told an Italian TV host Monday that “I want to shout to the world that I’m innocent.”

“I’m going to do everything I can, everything to demonstrate my innocence through the legal system and in every way possible,” Becciu said, speaking on the program Cinque Minuti (“Five Minutes”), hosted by Bruno Vespa, one of the country’s most renowned television journalists.

“I want to shout to the world that I’m innocent,” Becciu said. “I absolutely did not commit any of the crimes of which I’ve been accused.”

With regard to the complex London property deal at the heart of the recent Vatican trial, Becciu appeared to suggest that primary responsibility rested with Italian Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, who headed an administrative office within the Secretariat…

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An Omaha minister was arrested last week and is being held without bail on allegations that he repeatedly sexually abused a young boy over a period of three years.

Tre’Shawn Abram, 26, was arrested Friday on three counts of first-degree sexual assault of a child. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.

An arrest affidavit for Abram says he is associated with several churches in the Omaha area. The abuse allegedly occurred when the victim was between 10 and 13 years old and Abram was between 23 and 26 years old.

Abram appeared in jail court Friday and was denied bail. He waived his right to a preliminary hearing and will face trial in district court.

The charges are not Abram’s first allegations of sexual misconduct. In 2019, Abram was charged with first-degree sexual assault of a child after a 15-year-old girl alleged that Abram had sexually assaulted…

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The documentary ‘Godvergeten,’ which aired on VRT and later on RTBF, has sent shockwaves through the public, particularly in Flanders.

The film features first-hand accounts of victims who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of the Church, prompting widespread anger and leading to the establishment of a parliamentary inquiry commission.

Public Outrage and Inquiry Commission

The testimonies in the documentary have sparked significant public outcry. The raw and harrowing accounts of abuse have left viewers aghast and seeking justice for the victims. The response has been so strong that it has led to the formation of a parliamentary inquiry commission to probe into the allegations.

Adding fuel to the fire, revelations surfaced last week that a considerable network of child trafficking was run by Catholic institutions from the end of World War II until the 1980s. In a shocking expose, it was revealed that children were forcibly taken from their…

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The Catholic Church sold around 30,000 children to adoptive parents without their mother’s consent or knowledge, new testimonies reported by Het Laatste Nieuws reveal.

Created just after World War Two, institutions run by nuns took in underage girls and pregnant unmarried women until the late 1980s. These women were subjected to unpaid labour, humiliating conditions, and in some cases, sexual abuse.

During childbirth, some women were given general anaesthetic while others had to wear a mask – all ways to prevent mothers from seeing their child, who were immediately separated after birth. Some women were even sterilised. Others were forced to sign a document renouncing their child or were told the child was stillborn.

The children were then sold for large sums – between 10,000 and 30,000 Belgian francs (roughly between €250 and €750), sometimes much more – to adoptive families.

Unkept or destroyed files are now making reunion processes…

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The Archdiocese of Baltimore will add a form to its website for people to fill out sexual abuse claims against the church.

In court Monday, the archdiocese confirmed a judge gave a May 31 deadline for victims and survivors to file an abuse claim.

The judge is setting a deadline because the archdiocese is going through bankruptcy proceedings.

Parishes, pastors, school presidents and other officials within the archdiocese will be required to notify people with ads on television, print media and social media.

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Survivors have until May 31 to file a claim in the archdiocese’s bankruptcy case. After that, civil sexual abuse claims against it will be permanently barred.

BALTIMORE — A federal bankruptcy judge started the clock on Monday for sexual abuse survivors seeking damages from the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, setting a date of May 31, 2024, for claims to be filed.

The deadline is a compromise between the Feb. 26 date the archdiocese requested and the June 1 date proposed by the survivors, who are represented by a “creditors committee” — a group of seven survivors selected to represent what are expected to be hundreds of others with abuse claims.

The archdiocese includes about 480,000 Catholics in Baltimore and Allegany, Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Frederick, Garrett, Harford, Howard and Washington counties.

The archdiocese is now mandated by the court to widely advertise the deadline, after which civil sexual abuse claims…

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Early this year, a retired phys ed teacher left her ranch house in Easthampton and drove down the interstate to tell her story of clergy abuse.

It wasn’t Nancy A. Dunn’s first time before the Springfield Diocese’s review board, which meets in the red-brick Maguire Pastoral Center to hear allegations of clergy misconduct.

But it was her last.

The board later informed Dunn she needn’t have come back. Why? The diocese had already written her a six-figure check, she says she was told, to compensate her for a North Adams priest’s misconduct in the 1990s.

Dunn still had questions.

She wanted to know whether the Rev. Warren Savage had been held accountable, as the diocese had said he would, for engaging in a year-long sexual relationship with her nearly three decades ago. Savage remains in active ministry at Westfield State University.

“My intention was never to destroy this man; it…

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The Vatican has decided to shut down a Slovenian-based female religious community founded by a controversial ex-Jesuit artist accused by some women of spiritual, psychological and sexual abuses.

The archdiocese of Ljubljana, Slovenia said in a statement Friday that the Loyola Community would have one year to implement the Oct.20 decree ordering its dissolution. The reason given was because of “serious problems concerning the exercise of authority and the way of living together.”

The dissolution of the community was the latest chapter in the saga of the Rev. Marko Rupnik, a once-famous Jesuit artist and preacher whose mosaics decorate churches and basilicas around the world.

He had founded the Loyola Community in the 1980s with a nun. But recently, former members of the community came forward to say he had spiritually, sexually and psychologically abused them. In 2020, he was declared excommunicated by the Vatican for committing View Cache

‘I join you in the prayer to guide those regarding your appeal,’ Gregory Aymond of New Orleans wrote to priest given life sentence

As he reached the end of his 41-year life, Kevin Portier had endured child rape at the hands of a southern Louisiana Catholic priest for whom he had served as an altar boy; a highly publicized trial that sent the clergyman to prison for the rest of his days; and the trauma associated with those experiences.

But one of Portier’s harshest ordeals came within his final two years alive. Representatives of the church that he had been raised to believe in approached him at his home, at his job and at a relative’s funeral to ask him to lend his support to efforts to secure an early release for his rapist, Robert Melancon.

“I don’t know what the real deal is,” Portier wrote in a fall 2017 email…

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This database shows individuals who have been accused of child sexual abuse or misconduct and have ties to Maryland and the Catholic Church. It includes a combination of 155 names from the Maryland “Attorney General’s Report on Child Sexual Abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore,” 47 from the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s list and 107 new names researched by reporters at The Baltimore Sun. Names from the lists of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington and the Archdiocese of Washington are also labeled.

The newly compiled section lists those with ties to Maryland but who are not included in either the Attorney General’s report or the Baltimore archdiocese list. The master list is derived from a broader set of names compiled by an aggregator who independently kept track of over 800 individuals. View The Sun’s process and methodology at the end of this page.

This table is searchable by title, name and tie to Maryland. Each row expands when clicked…

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For the first time in the history of the Catholic Church, a cardinal has been sentenced to prison by a Vatican court.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu, the most senior Catholic Church official ever to stand trial before a Vatican criminal court, has been convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to five-and-a-half years in jail.

The Italian prelate’s lawyer, Fabio Viglione, told reporters in the courtroom on Saturday that he would appeal, saying his client was innocent.

Becciu, 75, who lives in the Vatican, was expected to remain free for the time being.

In all, 10 defendants were accused of crimes including fraud, abuse of office and money laundering. All had denied wrongdoing.

Becciu, like most of the other defendants, was convicted on some counts and acquitted of others. Only one was acquitted of all charges.

London building sold for $153m loss

Becciu, a former adviser to Pope Francis…

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