ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

Quote for Day: “UN’s Message to the Church Is Stark. If You Want to Be a State, You Need to Act Like One”

In the Irish Independent Brendan O’Connor argues that we must not allow our “outrage fatigue” amidst a ceaseless stream of reports about the cover-up of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic authority figures to obscure the importance of the U.N. report on the Vatican:

That’s why the latest UN report is important, because it takes all that baggage out of it and treats the church as what it is – a de facto state, geographically dispersed throughout the world certainly, but a metaphysical and legal entity, and therefore, “a sovereign subject of international law having an original non derived legal personality independent of any territorial authority of jurisdiction.”
While some will argue about the Vatican’s claim to statehood, the UN uses the church’s claim to independent statehood against it. The UN is basically treating the Holy See as a state, subject to the same duties and responsibilities as other states. And what the UN finds is a rogue state.

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OKLAHOMA
KTEN

[with video]

By Rick Springer, Exec. Producer

MCALESTER, OK — New developments in the case against a former McAlester Jehovah’s Witness Church elder accused of molesting children 30 years ago.

The McAlester District Attorney’s Office now claims the “entire body of the Jehovah’s Witness Church” covered up child molestation crimes.

Ronald Lawrence was charged in November with multiple counts of lewd molestation, forcible sodomy, and rape by instrumentation.

Two women claim Lawrence touched them inappropriately and bathed with them on several occasions between 1977 and 1982.

Back when Lawrence was an elder at the Jehovah’s Witness Church in McAlester.

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OKLAHOMA
NewsOK

BY DYLAN GOFORTH, Tulsa World • Published: February 4, 2014

McALESTER — The Tulsa World reports that Pittsburg County prosecutors have filed a motion alleging a church coverup in the case of a church elder who is accused of molesting multiple children more than 30 years ago.

Ronald Lawrence, an elder at the Jehovah’s Witness Church in McAlester, was arrested in November following a long investigation, McAlester police said at the time. The case stems from allegations made by three accusers who told police Lawrence abused them in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

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OKLAHOMA
McAlester News-Capital

By Jeanne LeFlore
Staff Writer

McALESTER — “The entire church body of the Jehovah Witness Church” allegedly concealed child molestation crimes alleged against a man identified as a former church elder, according to a motion filed in Pittsburg County District Court.

The motion was filed Jan. 28 by the District 18 District Attorneys office in connection with molestation charges against Ronald Lawrence, 76.

Ronald was an elder in the McAlester Jehovah Witness Church, according to McAlester Police Dectective Sergeant Chris Morris.

“He is no longer an elder but he is still a member of the church,” Morris said.

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OKLAHOMA
The Global Dispatch

The top leadership of the Jehovah’s Witness worldwide organization could face criminal charges in a cover-up of alleged child sexual abuse.

The District 18 District Attorney’s Office in the State of Oklahoma filed a motion on Jan. 28, 2014 in the case of accused molester Ronald Lawrence that alleges the top leadership of the Jehovah’s Witness Church knew about claims of child rape and molestation and deliberately concealed them.

“The actions of the church, their banishment of Lawrence on one or more occasion and the directives of the governing body toward the victims and their family members regarding these crimes were actions of concealment and further actions preventing the victims from reporting the crimes to law enforcement,” the motion states.

In November 2013, Ronald Lawrence a former church elder was charged in Pittsburg County Oklahoma District Court with 19 felony counts, including 11 of molestation, seven of forcible sodomy, and one of rape by instrumentation against two preteen girls and one 5-year-old boy.

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CANADA
London Free Press

By Randy Richmond, The London Free Press
Sunday, February 9, 2014

John Swales is happy, but hesitates to use the word.

After decades of fierce battles against church, state and all the bureacrats, lawyers and counsellors in between, the outspoken survivor of childhood sexual abuse has got one thing he’s always wanted — a voice at the table.

The Londoner and other men and women who were abused as children are helping lead a novel, $180,000, two-year plan to improve the help they get in London and Middlesex County.

“I’m excited, I don’t know if I like the word happy,” Swales said. “I don’t know if happy is in my vocabulary.”

The project, called Opening the Circle, is funded by the federal government and coordinated by the Sexual Abuse Centre London (SACL), an agency Swales targeted only a few years back.

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UNITED STATES
New York Daily News

Editorial

Down through the years, various arms of the United Nations have passed resolutions condemning what the world body calls defamation of religion. Now, the UN has committed the very offense it so heartily condemns.

The target was the Catholic Church, the one religious faith that is open to bashing in the best of circles. The perpetrator was the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

The committee used an investigation into the Vatican’s troubled history of dealing with child sex abuse cases to roam far and wide into church doctrine. The church views homosexual sex as sinful, thus the church has contributed to “the social stigmatization of and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adolescents and children raised by same sex couples.”

The church’s moral teachings hold against contraception and abortion, thus the church is complicit in the abandonment of unwanted babies.

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COLORADO
TribTown

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First Posted: February 09, 2014

BOULDER, Colorado — A Longmont youth pastor accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a teenage church member over several years has pleaded not guilty.

The Daily Camera reports (http://bit.ly/M2o7vp ) 35-year-old Jason Roberson appeared in Boulder District Court on Friday and denied charges of sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust and invasion of privacy. He is scheduled to go to trial July 14.

The alleged victim, now 24, went to police in April and told investigators she and Roberson had an inappropriate relationship that began when she was 15 and continued for seven years.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

BY ANNETTE BLACKWELL AAP FEBRUARY 10, 2014

THE Salvation Army is willing to discuss being part of a national redress scheme for victims of child sexual and physical abuse in its homes.

Commissioner James Condon, head of the army’s eastern territory, told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse it already had a People First redress program in place.

However, it would take part in talks on a national scheme, proposed by the Catholic and Anglican churches.

“We are more than prepared to enter into dialogue regarding that,” Mr Condon told the hearing in Sydney on Monday in reply to a question from commission chair Justice Peter McClellan.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Salvation Army Commissioner James Condon apologises for child sex abuse cases

DAN BOX THE AUSTRALIAN FEBRUARY 10, 2014

A SALVATION Army commander broke down in tears today as he apologised for dozens of cases of child sexual abuse in its homes across Australia, describing it as the organisation’s greatest failure.

Commissioner James Condon, who reports directly to the army’s general in London, said the often brutal mistreatment of children in at least four boys’ homes between the 1950s and 1970s was “a betrayal … of everything the Salvation Army was meant to be.”

“Evil and damaged people were able to get away with child sexual abuse for too long. I think that is the Salvation Army’s greatest failure,” he told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

To date, 157 former residents have complained of being sexually abused while living in the homes, Commissioner Condon said, and he believed other victims had not yet contacted the organisation.

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UNITED KINGDOM
MSN News

More than nine out of 10 people support the introduction of mandatory reporting of abuse in the wake of the Jimmy Savile revelations, according to a poll.

Staff at schools, care homes and hospitals should have a legal requirement to report sexual and other forms of abuse if they discover them, according to 94% of people surveyed by legal firm Slater & Gordon.

A host of child abuse charities have already called for the law change, alongside former director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer.

Liz Dux, head of abuse at Slater & Gordon, which represents 70 people who say they were victims of Savile, said mandatory reporting could have prevented many crimes being committed.

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CALIFORNIA
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on February 9, 2014

According to the Riverside Press Enterprise, two victims of convicted priest Alejandro “Alex” Castillo settled their sex abuse and cover-up lawsuits against the Diocese of San Bernardino for $3.8 million.

In a statement, the diocese called Castillo’s acts “sinful and unlawful.”

They also added this:

The diocese acknowledges and deeply regrets the sinful and unlawful actions of Castillo, while noting it took immediate action to remove him from ministry and notify police as soon as the allegations … were known.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Thomas Oriti

A Salvation Army leader says the organisation no longer considers its reputation a priority when dealing with victims of child sexual abuse.

Commissioner James Condon is the leader of the Salvation Army’s Eastern Territory, covering New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT.

He has sat through two weeks of disturbing evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which is examining abuse at four boys’ homes in NSW and Queensland.

Former residents of the homes say they were raped by Salvation Army officers and “rented out” for sex between the 1950s and the 1970s.

The commissioner heard that whistleblowers were dismissed as liars and boys were bashed if they reported the abuse.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times

EDITORIALS

February 9, 2014

The Vatican could learn something from the Chicago way, and we mean that in a good sense.

On Wednesday, a United Nations human rights panel ripped the Vatican for not doing enough to prevent abuse of children by priests. The committee said a decades-long code of secrecy and the silencing of abuse victims to protect the church’s reputation let priests sexually abuse tens of thousands of children worldwide.

The blistering report by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child sounds a lot like what we’ve heard over the years about the Archdiocese of Chicago, where for years allegations were hushed up and priests known to have abused children were quietly switched to different parishes, where they resumed their predatory behavior and added to the horrific annals of painful human tragedy.

But in the early 1990s, the archdiocese changed its approach from combativeness, foot-dragging secrecy to greater openness and a strong emphasis on prevention. Its record hasn’t been perfect since then — the Rev. Daniel McCormack pleaded guilty to criminal sexual abuse crimes that took place in 2006 and later, and the pastor of a Schaumburg parish from 1994 to 2006 has just been added to the list of clergy against whom there are substantiated claims of abuse. But since 1992, the trends all have moved sharply in the right direction. Known abusers all are out of the ministry, all known incidents since 1996 have been reported to authorities; the number of new allegations has dropped dramatically, and therapeutic services have been made available to victims who have come forward. As part of a mediated settlement, the archdiocese also has released 6,000 pages of documents from case files of 30 offending priests. All adults, including volunteers, who work with children are trained to recognize and prevent abuse, and children are taught how to deflect inappropriate behavior. A 12-person review board makes recommendations to the cardinal on whether accused priests should remain in the ministry.

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CALIFORNIA
The Press-Enterprise

FEBRUARY 9, 2014 BY RICHARD BROOKS

A $3.8 million settlement has ended two child-abuse lawsuits brought against a newly defrocked Catholic priest, though a third lawsuit lingers, parishioners were told during weekend Masses.

“The Diocese of San Bernardino has reached a settlement in … two civil cases involving allegations of sexual abuse of two separate minors by Alex Castillo,” Father Gerald O’Shaughnessy told hundreds of people Sunday at a 9 a.m. Mass at St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church in Rialto. “The settlement of $3.8 million for both cases was paid through a combination of insurance and diocese resources.”

Alejandro “Alex” Castillo, now age 60, served eight months in jail after pleading guilty to lewd and lascivious acts involving a 12-year-old boy. As a result of that conviction, he is a registered sex offender. And parishioners were told that the Vatican recently ordered him permanently removed from the priesthood.

He served at Our Lady of Guadalupe in Ontario from 2003 to 2010 and at St. George parish in Ontario from 2006 to 2008.

Before that, Castillo was at St. Catherine’s in Rialto from 2000 to 2003, and at St. Anthony’s in San Bernardino in 1988 and 1989, church officials have said.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on February 9, 2014

There have been a number of things about the recent UN committee report on (and the global response to) the Vatican’s role in clergy sex abuse that have given me pause.

The first issue has been the one to which Vatican and global Catholic officials have clung : The report’s inclusion of language about the church’s teachings on homosexuality and abortion.

The church struck back hard, saying that the Vatican was “trampling on religious freedom.”

Even I had some issues with it. When I was asked for a comment by CNN International, I declined, saying that the focus of victims is clergy sexual abuse. And, really, it is. It is not the victims’
movement’s place to comment on other issues, because victims come from all beliefs. But personally, I believed that the committee had overstepped.

But late last night, it dawned on me: I’m wrong.

As far as the UN is concerned, the Code of Canon Law is not a religious document. It’s a constitution. The church’s teachings about abortion, homosexuality, etc., aren’t religious views—THEY ARE THE LAWS OF A NATION-STATE.

I was clouding my views on the report with American thinking about religious freedom. And that’s exactly what the Vatican wants.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2014 LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY FEBRUARY 9, 2014

BY JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

A day after the Rev. Michael Fugee signed an agreement with prosecutors in October in which he confessed for a second time to having sexually abused a teenage boy in Wyckoff, two of his most ardent supporters say he proclaimed his innocence to them, possibly violating the agreement and risking jail.

As part of the agreement with the prosecutors, Fugee had promised to stop denying the abuse, which took place over several years more than a decade ago.

Two of the priest’s supporters, Michael and Amy Lenehan, said that on Oct. 31, the day after Fugee signed the agreement with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, led by John L. Molinelli, Fugee told them in a telephone conversation that he had never abused the boy. He said he had agreed to confess so he could avoid conviction on charges that could have sent him to jail, they said.

Fugee’s remarks to the couple represented his second recantation during a legal entanglement that has endured for more than a decade. The twists and turns have disturbed congregants in several dioceses who discovered that a priest who’s been accused of molestation was again in their midst and again in contact with young people — despite a legal agreement that he no longer work with children. It also ensnared the Archdiocese of Newark, which had agreed to enforce the accord and to monitor the priest.

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MEXICO
La Jornada

[Summary: Victims of sexual abuse by priests will continue on their paths to justice and reparation to end decades of impunity for crimes by priests around the world. This time 10 experts on the United Nationals torture committee will question authorities of the Holy See on April 28 to determine if they are complying with that international treaty. In an interview with La Jornada, Pamela Spees, a lawyer with the Central for Constitutional Rights, a non-profit organization, that along with the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests have reported the Vatican to the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and to the UN for sex crimes and cover-up of pedophile priests.]

Sanjuana Martínez
Especial para La Jornada
Periódico La Jornada
Domingo 9 de febrero de 2014, p. 9

Las víctimas de abusos sexuales por sacerdotes continúan en su ca­mino hacia la justicia y la reparación para terminar con décadas de impunidad en torno a los crímenes de curas en el mundo. Esta vez, 10 expertos del Comité Contra la Tortura (CAT) de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU), con sede en Ginebra, interrogarán a las autoridades de la Santa Sede el próximo 28 de abril, para determinar si están cumpliendo con dicho tratado internacional.

Los días de impunidad del Vaticano están contados, dice de manera categórica en entrevista con La Jornada, Pamela Spees, abogada del Centro de Derechos Constitucionales (CCR), organización sin fines de lucro, que junto a la Red de Sobrevivientes de Abusos Sexuales de Sacerdotes (SNAP, por sus siglas en inglés) han denunciado al Vaticano ante la Corte Penal Internacional (CPI) por crímenes de lesa humanidad y ante la ONU por crímenes sexuales y el encubrimiento de miles de sacerdotes pederastas y desprotección de niños.

Spees es el cerebro legal de la demanda internacional y los informes presentados en la ONU, primero ante el Comité de los Derechos del Niño y ahora ante el Comité Contra la Tortura: El Comité es muy claro: la violación y los distintos tipos de violencia sexual constituyen una forma de tortura, trato cruel e inhumano. El Vaticano ratificó la Convención contra la Tortura y otros Tratos o Penas Crueles, Inhumanos o Degradantes, y existe claramente una preocupación de que realmente la Santa Sede esté cumpliendo con ese tratado.

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BOSTON (MA)
Irish Central

JAMES O’SHEA @irishcentral February 09,2014

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston, who is personally close to the pope, says he worries that people expect too much from him, especially on visits he makes outside the Vatican, stressing he was not a young man.

He was speaking in a lengthy interview in the Boston Globe.

The cardinal joined 77-year-old Francis on a visit to the Italian city of Assisi on Oct. 4, and saw the incredible pressure he was under.

“They dragged him to every cave, every altar, and every crypt,” he said. “Everywhere he would go, someone would stand up and say, ‘This is the first time a pope has ever come here.’ I kept thinking, ‘He shouldn’t be here this time!’ ”

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

The Royal Commission is holding a public hearing in Brisbane commencing 17 February 2014 into the response by the Catholic Education Office, Diocese of Toowoomba, to allegations of child sexual abuse.

The scope and purpose of the public hearing is as follows:

The response by the Principal and other members of staff of a Catholic primary school in Toowoomba, Queensland, to allegations of child sexual abuse made against a teacher at the primary school, in September 2007.
The response by officers of the Catholic Education Office, Diocese of Toowoomba, to information supplied by the primary school Principal regarding the allegations of child sexual abuse received in September 2007.
The adequacy and implementation of systems, policies and procedures of the Catholic Education Office, Diocese of Toowoomba, and the primary school for the prevention, detection, investigation and reporting of allegations of child sexual abuse since 2007.
Any related matters.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry

The next hearing will be on Monday 10th February 2014.

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CANADA
Sylvia’s Site

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Sylvia

It’s been an interesting 10 or elven days. No, I have not been out of circulation at all – still keeping busy writing, and on the phone, and doing a lot of thinking. Those who know me have heard me say time and again that I don’t write easily. I don’t. I envy those who sit down and everything flows. For me, it’s a bit of a hair -pulling struggle. As you know some days back I was settling in to write about Father Joe LeClair ‘s days in court. I had to set it that aside when other things cane up which I had to deal with then and there. Then I’d get back to writing and pondering. Obviously it’s not done 🙁 I will get it together as soon as I can. Ditto a few details about the Father Rene Labelle trial which I really do want to pass along.

And, yes, then came word of the new charges against former Cornwall School teacher Marc Lalonde.

Those who have taken the time to read The Marcel Lalonde investigation will get a very small taste of the Cornwall debacle. I found myself wading through testimony and documents and Justice Glaude’s final report to, as they say in court, “refresh” my memory. And all the dirt and the dirty details come rushing back.

What a tangled web.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

by BRIAN FRAGA 02/08/2014

UNITED NATIONS — A U.N. committee’s report that said the Holy See should change its moral teachings in order to comply with an international treaty on children’s rights is the latest example in a 20-year history of U.N. bureaucrats trying to coerce member states into accepting secularist values, according to several Catholic observers of the international body.

“This was a ‘gift from God,’ and the reason is because it points out to a huge audience the radicalism of the United Nations’ treaty monitoring bodies, who have been doing things like this for years,” said Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), a non-governmental organization that monitors the United Nations.

Since 1994, when the Holy See successfully fought back efforts to declare abortion an international human right during a U.N. conference in Cairo, abortion advocates and their allies, according to a C-FAM white paper, have looked to further their agenda by relying upon U.N. committees, known as treaty bodies, to interpret international human-rights treaties to cover topics not mentioned in the actual treaties, such as wider access to birth control, permissive abortion laws and the legalization of same-sex “marriages.”

“These treaty bodies have been sort of inclined to aggrandize for their own power, and they’ve done it by controlling the process by which countries report on their implementation of these treaties,” said Stefano Gennarini, the director of C-FAM’s Center for Legal Studies.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

BRENDAN O’CONNOR – 09 FEBRUARY 2014

WE CAN tend to outrage fatigue when it comes to reports about the crimes committed within the Catholic Church in recent years. So when the UN Committee on the Rights of Children reported last week on its ongoing engagement with the Catholic Church regarding the rights of children within the Vatican and the Holy See, many people will have been tempted to ignore it.

After all, there wasn’t much new in it. The church has a history of trafficking babies, of discriminating against children based on their sexuality or that of their parents, and of allowing children to be abused, of protecting their abusers from the law, of moving abusers around –allowing them to abuse again, and when it came to abuse, of “consistently placing the preservation of the church and the protection of the perpetrators above children’s best interests”. The church has even protected priests from their own children, denying children the right to know the identity of their fathers and “only agreeing payments from the church until the child is financially independent only if they [the mothers] sign a confidentiality agreement not to disclose any information”.

We knew all that stuff already, didn’t we?

Except it is a little different this time. Because previously our engagement with the church has tended to stay within the family. There has been an emotional attachment that has clouded the issue for us. Because there is always a sense, in this country, that everyone was complicit in all this because, after all, we are, or were, the church.

And because the church was so intermingled with the State here, and with the provision of health, education and welfare, the crimes themselves became intermingled with social norms of the time and so on.

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NEW YORK
Buffalo News

By Jay Tokasz | News Staff Reporter | Google+
on February 8, 2014

A group of local Catholics battling Bishop Richard J. Malone over the future of an East Side church has found an unexpected ally – the Vatican.

St. Ann Church just six months ago was on track to be demolished.

But the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy, in a recent ruling on an appeal by St. Ann parishioners, has made it clear that repairs of up to $12 million are not a good enough reason for the building to be demolished or converted into something other than a Catholic church.

“Rome is saying it should be a church,” said Ronald Bates, part of the group fighting to keep the church going. “We can’t throw it away. It’s craziness.”

The Vatican decision marked a rare and resounding win for Catholic lay people objecting to a bishop’s decision.

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CANADA
Toronto Star

A tough new United Nations report challenges the Vatican to move decisively to curb clerical sex abuse, and advance child rights.

It’s a scathing report, bound to shake up Catholics who are comfortable in their pews. But the United Nations committee that has just lambasted the Vatican for letting clerical sex abusers get away with their crimes will help amplify Pope Francis’ message that the church in its entirety needs to clean up its act because its credibility is on the line.

Three popes now have forcefully condemned clerical abuse of children. John Paul II denounced it as “appalling sin” and outright “crime.” Benedict XVI promised to rid the church of such “filth.” And Francis has ordered Vatican prosecutors and bishops to “act decisively” to make sure that minors are protected and abusers are held to account. The Church’s moral witness and credibility is riding on this, he warned.

It is indeed, and the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child has forcefully reminded Catholic clerics and laity alike of just how harshly the wider world judges the church’s tragic failings in this area, including here in Canada, and its slowness to come to terms with past abuses. Stinging as it is, the high-profile UN report issued this past week serves to highlight some of what remains to be done. It stems from a routine review of how signatories to the Convention on the Rights of the Child are living up to their obligations. The Holy See signed on in 1990.

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Washington Post

Pope Francis faces church divided over doctrine, global poll of Catholics finds

By Michelle Boorstein and Peyton M. Craighill, Updated: Sunday, February 9

Most Catholics worldwide disagree with church teachings on divorce, abortion and contraception and are split on whether women and married men should become priests, according to a large new poll released Sunday and commissioned by the U.S. Spanish-language network Univision. On the topic of gay marriage, two-thirds of Catholics polled agree with church leaders.

Overall, however, the poll of more than 12,000 Catholics in 12 countries reveals a church dramatically divided: Between the developing world in Africa and Asia, which hews closely to doctrine on these issues, and Western countries in Europe, North America and parts of Latin America, which strongly support practices that the church teaches are immoral.

This global poll of Catholics was conducted by Bendixen & Amandi International for Univision. Find more details here.
Click here to subscribe.

The widespread disagreement with Catholic doctrine on abortion and contraception and the hemispheric chasm lay bare the challenge for Pope Francis’s year-old papacy and the unity it has engendered.

Among the findings:

●19 percent of Catholics in the European countries and 30 percent in the Latin American countries surveyed agree with church teaching that divorcees who remarry outside the church should not receive Communion, compared with 75 percent in the most Catholic African countries.

●30 percent of Catholics in the European countries and 36 percent in the United States agree with the church ban on female priests, compared with 80 percent in Africa and 76 percent in the Philippines, the country with the largest Catholic population in Asia.

●40 percent of Catholics in the United States oppose gay marriage, compared with 99 percent in Africa.

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VATICAN CITY
Al-Arabiya

By Philip Pullella | Vatican City
Sunday, 9 February 2014

A year after his shock resignation, Pope Emeritus Benedict has no regrets and believes history will vindicate his tumultuous and much-criticized papacy, the man closest to him told Reuters in a rare interview.

Archbishop Georg Ganswein, who now works for the former pope as well as being the head of Pope Francis’s household, shed new light on how Benedict spends his days, his health, his feelings about his momentous decision and the relationship between the two popes.

“Pope Benedict is at peace with himself and I think he is even at peace with the Lord,” said Ganswein, whose twin roles bring him into contact with the current and former pope daily.

Benedict announced his decision to resign, the first pope to do so in 600 years, on Feb. 11, 2013, citing the physical and psychological strains of the papacy. He stepped down on February 28 and Francis was elected on March 13 as the first non-European pope in 1,300 years.

His eight-year papacy was marked by mishaps and missteps, often blamed on a dysfunctional Vatican bureaucracy, and intrigue befitting a Renaissance court. The “Vatileaks” scandal, in which Benedict’s butler was arrested for leaking the pope’s private papers to the media, alleged corruption in the Holy See, something the Vatican denied.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

February 10, 2014
Cathy Kezelman

Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is a global first. Its private sessions and public hearings, including those into the Catholic Church’s Towards Healing Process, have given a voice to victims. The royal commission, Australia and the world are listening and bearing witness to a litany of abuses and failures within the church as well as other institutions. More is to come.

The commission is helping to bring the deep-seated, pervasive and devastating issues of child sexual abuse into the light. It is an open and transparent process to uncover the systemic failures of institutions to protect children and respond appropriately to these alleged and established crimes. It is leading the way in how these investigations should be handled. Hopefully, this will be reflected around the globe.

Another world first is the unprecedented and scathing report from the United Nations into the Vatican’s handling of child sexual abuse. The UN has deemed the Catholic Church to be in breach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a human rights treaty prioritising the rights of children, to which it is a signatory. This finding confirms what survivors and survivor groups have long known: tens of thousands of children have been betrayed, harmed and violated within and by the church, its clergy and workers.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

By John L. Allen Jr. and Lisa Wangsness | GLOBE STAFF FEBRUARY 09, 2014

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley says he shares in the sense of wonder at how swiftly Pope Francis has captured the world’s attention and softened, with his sometimes startling words and personal gestures, the image of the Roman Catholic Church.

But he cautions that those with high expectations that the shift in tone presages major changes in church teachings on contraception, abortion, homosexuality, and other flashpoint issues are likely to be disappointed.

“I don’t see the pope as changing doctrine,’’ O’Malley said in an interview with the Globe, though he said the pontiff’s focus on compassion and mercy over doctrinal purity has reverberated powerfully throughout the church.

The Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston and the closest American adviser to the popular new pontiff, O’Malley said says it would also be unrealistic to expect the church to consider allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments, even though Francis himself once appeared to signal openness to the idea. …

O’Malley, who has built a reputation as a reformer on clergy sexual abuse, expressed “distress” over a Feb. 5 report from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child charging the Vatican’s policies allowed child abuse to continue and let perpetrators go unpunished.

He said Vatican could not be held responsible for policing the entire Catholic world — it is only in direct charge, he said, of its own citizens in Vatican City.

“I think the competence of the United Nations would have been to look at how they’re managing child protection with their own citizens,” he said. “I think that would have been a very positive contribution, because I think it’s very important the Holy See become a model of what we would like to see in other nations.”

Citing the UN panel’s call for the church to reverse its teachings on abortion, contraception, and gay marriage, he said the committee members had “allowed their ideological positions to enter into their judgments.”

Still, O’Malley said he thought the committee’s report would put new pressure on the Vatican to take stronger steps to prevent abuse. He agreed with the UN panel that the church must develop methods of holding bishops accountable when they fail to abide by a “zero tolerance” policy.

In December, O’Malley announced on Francis’ behalf that the pope was creating a new Vatican commission to lead the anti-abuse charge. In the Globe interview, O’Malley said that developing ways of holding bishops’ feet to the fire should be part of its mandate, but he did not indicate how long that would take.

“The first order of business is getting national policies in place, to have some clarity about what the expectations are throughout the world,” he said. “Once the policies are in place, what the [Vatican] might do to intervene where bishops are not following those policies has to be part of a future plan.”

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

Quote for Day: “When Tribalism Takes Over” (with Commentary on the Tribalistic Reaction of Catholic Journalists to U.N. Report on Vatican)

William D. Lindsey

Steve Benen at Maddow Blog:

It’s amazing what tribalism can do to public perceptions.

Indeed. Case in point: just have a look at what the lock-arms, tribalistic reaction to the recent U.N. report is doing to the perceptions of one centrist Catholic journalist after another these days–to the folks who claim to offer us “balanced” and “objective” analysis of Catholic news, which describes rather than prescribes.

Same old stupidity, same old meanness, same old parochial insularity, same old casual, callous reading out of the Catholic circle of the huge percentage of fellow Catholics who question the teachings of which these centrist arbiters of the Catholic conversation have made a shibboleth.

A great deal of it driven by unacknowledged presuppositions about gender and sexual orientation . . . .
This is why I have said for some time now that, if something has really changed under Pope Francis, I simply can’t see it, when these same old, same old voices parse and determine Catholic meaning for me. Because they certainly aren’t new in any way.

The wine may be new. But the old wineskins are very shopworn and dried out.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Spiegel

[Summary: Investigation of Limburg Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz van Elst is nearing completion and should be completed this week. According to information received by Spiegel, the five-member ecclesiastical commission of inquiry seems to have succeeded in documenting information that could lead to a prosecutor’s investigation. The church investigators first located forensic clues in the secret records which were stored in specially rented rooms, a kind of safe house in Limburg. Some previously unknown finance papers carry the episcopal signature and the investigators found the construction costs of the bishop’s new house were most costly than estimated. It was previously estimated that the cost of the bishop’s new house was 31 million euros but the actual costs are much higher. The entire report of the commission will go to the German bishops conference and to Rome and only then will a decision be made on fate of the bishop. At several meetings of Catholics in the diocese, it has been said they want a rapid final disposition on the bishop. One priest warned that every day he remains in office, it is at the expense of the credibility of Pope Francis.]

Die Ermittlungen zum Limburger Bischof Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst stehen nach Informationen des SPIEGEL kurz vor dem Abschluss. Die Untersuchungskommission belastet den Geistlichen schwer. Unter anderem sollen die pompösen Bauvorhaben mit Stiftungsgeldern finanziert worden sein.

Die Ermittlungen zum Limburger Kirchenbauskandal werden voraussichtlich schon in dieser Woche mit überraschend klaren Ergebnissen abgeschlossen. Sie sollen Bischof Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, 54, nach Informationen des SPIEGEL stark belasten. Der fünfköpfigen kirchlichen Untersuchungskommission ist es offenbar gelungen, justitiable Ergebnisse zu dokumentieren, die zu einem staatsanwaltschaftlichen Ermittlungsverfahren gegen den Geistlichen führen könnten.

Die kirchlichen Ermittler waren bei ihrer Spurensicherung zunächst Hinweisen auf eine Geheimregistratur nachgegangen, die in den eigens angemieteten Räumen einer Art konspirativen Wohnung in Limburg lagerten. Dort fanden sie die wichtigsten Unterlagen zum kirchlichen Protzbau. Wegen fehlender Schlüssel verzögerte sich zunächst der Zutritt. Einige bislang unbekannte Finanzierungspapiere tragen beweiskräftig die bischöfliche Unterschrift.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

BY ALF MCCREARY – 08 FEBRUARY 2014

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child did not miss its target when it claimed this week that the Catholic Church is more interested in protecting its image than in the welfare of children subjected to sexual abuse.

The Church has reacted forcefully and has claimed – with some justification – that it is tackling the issue, but much has yet to be done. The UN statement, plus the inquiries taking place into child sex abuse in Catholic institutions in the north, will mean that a dark cloud will continue to hang over the Church here for a very long time to come.

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SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
The Examiner

Sex-abuse scandal at North Beach church the latest dust-up that has garnered worldwide attention

By Chris Roberts @Cbloggy

In a time of trials that have tested the will of the faithful worldwide, the Roman Catholic Church in San Francisco has emerged relatively unscathed.

The sex abuse scandals staining archdioceses in Boston, Los Angeles and now Chicago have had no parallel in San Francisco. Instead, the local archdiocese’s reputation has recently been sullied across the world by lurid claims of sexual battery and harassment, all allegedly committed within one of its most sacred spaces.

Late last month, a lawsuit filed late by a 33-year-old woman formerly employed by the church accuses her ex-bosses of harboring a veritable den of sin underneath the roof of a shrine dedicated to The City’s patron saint. Jhona Mathews alleges that one of the men, who is in his 60s, hired and used her for sex. And a charming and popular priest who wielded significant influence as the archdiocese’s second-in-command let it all happen, the suit claims.

The lawsuit contains lurid details, including paddling the woman’s bare bottom, and comes after years of chaos at the North Beach church, including a fight over interring dead pets and a holy order’s dismissal from the chapel.

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PUERTO RICO
Sacramento Bee

By DANICA COTO
Associated Press
Published: Friday, Feb. 7, 2014

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Prosecutors in Puerto Rico are investigating six priests who face sex abuse allegations and have been expelled by church authorities from a diocese in one of the island’s north coastal towns.

Government prosecutor Yolanda Pitino said Friday that she and other attorneys are interviewing several people who have accused the priests of sodomy, lewd acts and sexual harassment.

She said the Arecibo Diocese has provided prosecutors with information related to the six priests, but that they need more details.

“We are not satisfied with the information that the church gave us,” Pitino said in a phone interview, adding that the diocese has not responded to requests for more information.

The Diocese of Arecibo said in a statement that it is working with authorities and sharing information about the six priests that Bishop Daniel Fernandez expelled starting in 2011.

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UNITED STATES
These Stone Walls

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald of A Ram in the Thicket.

A troubling back story in the trial and lawsuits against Father Gordon MacRae has been in open view for two decades, but overlooked by both Church and State.

In an article I wrote last September entitled “Judge Arthur Brennan sentenced Father Gordon MacRae to Die in Prison,” I aimed a spotlight at the glaring injustice of the 1994 prosecution of Father Gordon MacRae. Last week in these pages, Fr. George David Byers aimed another spotlight at a Church hierarchy morally paralyzed by litigation. A full and transparent view of justice now requires unveiling a related story in the background of the troubling case against Father Gordon MacRae. It’s a story, as the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus once described in the pages of First Things magazine (June/July 2009), “of a Church and a justice system that seem indifferent to justice.”

This account begins in tragedy. Shortly after noon on Friday, May 11, 1979, Peter Linsley, 35, and Jane Linsley, 28, both of Concord, New Hampshire, walked unannounced through the open door of the rectory at Saint Rose of Lima church in Littleton, NH, a town of (then) about 5,400 in the north of that state. A year earlier, in May, 1978, Peter Linsley was discharged from the state psychiatric hospital after he was declared no longer a danger to himself or others. He previously entered a plea of innocent by reason of insanity to a charge of aggravated assault on a police officer in July, 1977.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

How a Pope called Pius turned the confessional box into a paradise for paedophiles: From a leading Catholic writer, a devastating exposé of a Vatican ruling

By JOHN CORNWELL

At my Catholic boarding school in the late 1950s there was a jolly priest who heard my confession in his room rather than in a vacant confessional box. After I had recited my laundry list of petty sins, he asked if I was ever tempted to ‘commit a sexual sin by myself’.

He suggested that I take out my penis so that he could examine it to see whether I was prone to sudden erections. I left the room immediately. The next year, his proclivities discovered, he was removed by his bishop to another school.

As a child barely out of infancy, I had joined the long queues in our parish church every Saturday to confess my sins. The confessor sat behind a grille inside a dark box like an upturned coffin, smelling of stale perfume and nasty body odours.

I did not realise that we child penitents were guinea-pigs in the greatest moral experiment ever perpetrated on children in the history of Catholicism.

When I started my investigation into Catholic confession I was shocked to discover that young children were not allowed to go to confession before the 20th Century – in previous eras children did not make their first confession until their teenage years.

It was the anxious and pessimistic Pius X, Pope from 1903-1914, who decreed in 1910 that children must make their first confession at the age of seven. Evidently he had taken to heart the Jesuit maxim: ‘Give me a child at seven and it’s mine for life’.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
My Fox Philly

By Dave Schratwieser, Reporter

PHILADELPHIA –
It was Tuesday afternoon when police say a 16-year-old male student at Saints John Neumann and Maria Goretti High School allegedly committed an indecent sexual assault on a female classmates in a third floor stairwell.

Parents, who spoke to us off camera, said they were angry to hear about the alleged assault on the 15-year-old girl and even more upset when they found out that school’s officials “inadvertently” sent out an email to staff and students containing a police report with sensitive information about the attack.

A spokesman for the archdiocese admitted the school sent out the sensitive information, but said a second email was sent out within 30 to 40 minutes asking anyone who received the first email not to read it and to delete it immediately. The school also sent a follow-up message home to parents about the incident and the email communication mix-up.

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NEW YORK
Post-Standard

By Jeff Stein | jstein@syracuse.com
on February 08, 2014

North Syracuse, N.Y. — A former youth pastor at a North Syracuse church was sentenced last week on charges of sexually abusing a minor in Maryland.

Shaun Michael Ross, 33, pleaded guilty to the charges. He is accused of groping a 16-year-old girl when he was in a position of authority over her from April 2008 to April 2010.

Ross was put in charge of youth programs at the Victory Christian Center in North Syracuse in April. Three months later, he was charged with crimes in Maryland, where he was director of a youth ministry.

Ross was sentenced on Jan. 29. As part of a plea agreement, he will serve 18 months behind bars and face five years of probation. One of the initial two child sex abuse charges was thrown out as part of the plea deal.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on February 8, 2014

No matter your take on the recent UN committee report on the problem of sex abuse in the Catholic Church and no matter how you feel about the recent public argument involving Woody Allen and his daughter Dylan Farrow, two things are clear:

The more we talk about sex abuse as a crime, the more likely it is that victims will come forward.

The more we make ourselves aware of the problem, the easier it will be to protect our children.
Everything else is just semantics.

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UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Betty Clermont

“Worldwide banking and financial activities” is a Vatican industry as noted in the CIA Factbook. While the pope has announced one commission to study his Church’s global sex abuse of children, he has created four commissions, hired 6 internationally-renowned consulting firms, and appointed additional clerical allies to make sure that not only his treasure is suitably-managed and expertly-reported but also that every penny is under his control.

Unanimously termed as “cleaning up,” “cleaning house,” “reforming” Vatican finances by the corporate and Catholic media, none have reported whether any of the above has a track record ensuring moral or ethical business practices. Neither have they noted why the pope made changes nor what alternatives were available.

Following 9/11, international bankers and financiers agreed to stop facilitating terrorists. Regulations were approved to prevent terrorists from hiding their financial backers and fund transfers. After the 2008/2009 financial crisis, governments also became more interested in curtailing tax evasion. Pressure was applied on countries known to be offshore havens for illicit transactions, including the Vatican.

An up-to-date account of how this affected the Vatican – including a background in the Holy See’s recent financial history – was expertly presented in the December 6, 2013, issue of The Financial Times.

Those familiar with the early 1980’s Banco Ambrosiano scandal already know that Pope John Paul II allowed the Vatican Bank to be used to benefit criminals, rightwing terrorists, Latin American military dictators, tax evaders and the world’s oligarchs and plutocrats because he wanted the facility left available for clandestine funding of Poland’s Solidarity movement.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Berliner Zeitung

[Summary: Jesuit Father Klaus Mertes said bishops involved in abuse cover-ups should lose or resign their office. Archishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, now prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, cover-up in Regensburg. Soon to be a cardinal, Mueller is the number three person in the Vatican and is still telling stories about malicious press campaigns against the Catholic Church, said. Father Mertes said Archbishop Mueller shows no trace of remorse and has not shown willingness to engage in structural problems of the church in context of abuse, he added. Mueller simply continues as if nothing happened. The situation is unbearable for the victims, he said. Mertes asked how Mueller could actually be credible regarding abuse. The issue goes behind Mueller and others in the Vatican show unwillingness to confront the problem in all its depth.]

Jesuitenpater Klaus Mertes spricht im Interview mit der Berliner Zeitung über Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche und die fehlende Bereitschaft, sich den Fällen zu stellen.

Die Kritik der Vereinten Nationen am Umgang des Vatikans mit Fällen sexuellen Missbrauchs hat am Donnerstag ein geteiltes Echo ausgelöst. Tenor der Aussagen ist jedoch, dass die Opfer ein Recht auf Transparenz und Aufklärung haben. Das sagt auch der Jesuitenpater Klaus Mertes.

Pater Mertes, gehen Sie mit der Kritik der UN an der katholischen Kirche konform?

Nicht jede Kritik ist sachlich und sachdienlich. Zum Beispiel kann ich nur den Kopf schütteln, wenn der UN-Bericht immer noch auf einer zwingenden Meldepflicht von Missbrauchsfällen an die staatliche Justiz herumreitet. Darüber sind wir in der Diskussion längst hinweg. Gerade die Opferschutzverbände warnen vor solch einem Automatismus.

Warum?

Man kann nicht an den Opfern und ihren Wünschen vorbei melden. Als die bayerischen Bischöfe vor drei Jahren in Panik die Meldepflicht einführten, beklagten sich Missbrauchsopfer bei mir, dass ihnen damit vertrauliche und vertrauensvolle Gespräche mit Kirchenvertretern fast unmöglich geworden seien. Für einen staatlichen Ermittler steht an erster Stelle die Unschuldsvermutung zugunsten eines mutmaßlichen Täters. Das heißt, er muss die Angaben der Opfer zunächst einmal bezweifeln. Dann kommt die ganze Maschinerie mit Befragungen, Glaubwürdigkeitsgutachten et cetera in Gang. Davor haben viele Opfer Angst. Aber das sieht der UN-Bericht in seiner Naivität nicht.

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POLEN
Kipa

Warschau, 7.2.14 (Kipa) In Polen hat erstmals ein Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs durch einen Priesters die Kirche auf Schadenersatz verklagt. Marcin K. (26) fordert nach eigenen Angaben von Donnerstagabend vom Bistum Koszalin-Kolobrzeg (Köslin-Kolberg), einer Pfarrei und deren zu einer Haftstrafe verurteilten ehemaligen Pfarrer insgesamt knapp 58.000 Franken.

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SPANIEN
Katholisches

Es geht los: Erstmals Kardinal wegen „Homophobie“ angeklagt – Papst-Freund Sebastián Aguilar soll vor Gericht

[Summary: Here we go. For the first time in history a cardinal of the Catholic Church is being prosecuted because of homophobia. The prosecution in Malaga brought charges on Feb. 6 against Cardinal-elect Fernando Sebastian Aguilar.]

(Madrid) Es geht los. Erstmals in der Geschichte wird gegen einen Kardinal der Katholischen Kirche wegen „Homophobie“ ermittelt. Am 6. Februar erhob die Staatsanwaltschaft von Malaga Anklage gegen den von Papst Franziskus zum Kardinal ernannten emeritierten Erzbischof von Pamplona, Msgr. Fernando Sebastián Aguilar. Der 84jährige Claretinerpater und Freund des Papstes, der in zwei Wochen das Kardinalsbirett aus dessen Hand empfangen wird, wurde kurz nachdem Papst Franziskus im Januar seine Erhebung in den Kardinalsstand bekanntgegeben hatte, interviewt. Bei dieser Gelegenheit wurde er auch zum journalistischen Dauerbrenner „Homosexualität“ befragt. Der ernannte Kardinal sagte dabei, daß Homosexualität „durch eine angemessene Behandlung geheilt werden“ kann.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Finanzen

Mitteldeutsche Zeitung: Sexueller Missbrauch in der Kirche Zentralkomitee deutscher Katholiken hält Kritik der UN für zu pauschal

[Summary: Alois Gluck, president of the German Catholics central committee said criticism of the church is handling sexual abuse cases is not completely unjustified.]

Halle (ots) – Der Präsident des Zentralkomitees der deutschen Katholiken, Alois Glück, hält die jüngste Kritik der Vereinten Nationen an angeblich mangelnder Aufarbeitung sexuellen Missbrauchs in der katholischen Kirche für zu pauschal, aber nicht für vollkommen unberechtigt. “Das ist in dieser Pauschalität nicht angemessen”, sagte er der in Halle erscheinenden “Mitteldeutschen Zeitung” (Freitag-Ausgabe). “Die katholische Kirche in Deutschland hat in einem Ausmass Konsequenzen gezogen, wie es der Situation entsprochen hat. Für Deutschland ist die Beschreibung sicher nicht mehr zutreffend.” Glück fügte hinzu: “Andererseits ist Kritik mit Blick auf die Vergangenheit und Wirklichkeiten in der Weltkirche nicht völlig unberechtigt.”

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DEUTSCHLAND
Augsburger Allgemeine

Hunderte Geistliche, die Kinder missbrauchten, wurden in den vergangenen Jahren ihres Amtes enthoben. Über die höchste Strafe im Kirchenrecht und was sie für Kleriker bedeutet. Von Daniel Wirsching

Der Fall macht 2012 Schlagzeilen: Der Trierer Bischof Stephan Ackermann entlässt am 10. Juli einen Ruhestandsgeistlichen aus dem Klerikerstand. Der Priester hatte zwischen 1966 und 1980 fünf minderjährige Jungen sexuell missbraucht. So steht es in einer Pressemitteilung des Bistums. In ihr steht ebenfalls: „Der Priester verliert damit sämtliche Rechte, die mit seinem Priesteramt verbunden sind….

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DEUTSCHLAND
Aktuell

[Summary: Jesuit Father Klaus Mertes said bishops who were involved in cover-ups of abuse should lose their office or resign. He specifically called out Gerhard Ludwig Mueller who now heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. As bishop of Regensburg, Mueller cover-ups abuse cases, Mertes said. Instead of losing his position, Mueller continued to climb in the hierarchy and continues as if nothing happened, Mertes said. The priest said Vatican is still unwilling to control the abuse problem in depth. Father Mertes was rector at Canisius College, Berlin, when he went public to say abuse had happened at the school.]

“Bischöfe, die an Vertuschungen beteiligt waren, sollten ihr Amt verlieren oder zurücktreten”, sagte Mertes, der 2010 den Missbrauchsskandal in der katholischen Kirche öffentlich gemacht hatte, dem “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” (Freitagsausgabe). Konkret nannte er den Präfekten der römischen Glaubenskongregation und designierten deutschen Kardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller. Als Bischof von Regensburg habe Müller “an höchster Stelle vertuscht und vernebelt”.

Statt sein Amt zu verlieren, klettere er “mir nichts, dir nichts auf der römischen Karriereleiter nach oben”, kritisierte Mertes. Er halte es vor allem für die Opfer für unerträglich, dass Müller “einfach weiter macht, als wäre nichts gewesen”. Das Bistum Regensburg hatte in Müllers Amtszeit einen Priester trotz einer Vorstrafe wegen Kindesmissbrauchs erneut in einer Gemeinde eingesetzt. Dort verging sich der Geistliche erneut an Kindern.

Den Vatikan sieht Mertes anders als die katholische Kirche in Deutschland erst am Anfang einer gründlichen Aufarbeitung der Ursachen für sexuellen Missbrauch. Es fehle in Rom “immer noch an der Bereitschaft, sich dem Problem in seiner ganzen Tiefe zu stellen”. Das Kernproblem sei die Unabhängigkeit der Aufklärung und der Aufklärer: Der Vatikan müsse sich “in den fraglichen Fällen einer externen Prüfung stellen, also unabhängigen Ermittlern und Gutachtern”.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

By Dan Buckley

“He is tackling the structures of the Church and that is exactly what needs to be done,” Fr Flannery said yesterday, in advance of an address at the Kinsale Peace Project in Cork last night.

While Fr Flannery said it was too early to say whether Pope Francis would prove the most radical reformer of the modern Church, he was going about things the right way.

“He has been criticised for not making headway on issues like married priests and the ordination of women, but I think he is right. He is moving to change the Church’s structures, starting with the Vatican Bank, and I think he is right in doing that.

“While changes made by Pope John XXIII and Vatican II made great strides, they did not tackle the structures which meant that when the bishops went home after the Council, the power structures within the Vatican reasserted themselves. Pope Francis is very politically astute and knows that in order to secure real and lasting reform you have to change the structures.” …

“He also faces opposition outside the Vatican. There is, for instance, a strong traditionalist movement emerging in the United States and it has enormous money behind it and are determined to oppose him. So Pope Francis has his work cut out. He is 78, but appears to be very clear-sighted and sure of what he wants.”

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VATICAN CITY
Columbia Daily Tribune

By NICOLE WINFIELD The Associated Press
Saturday, February 8, 2014

VATICAN CITY — New surveys commissioned by the Vatican show the vast majority of Catholics in Germany and Switzerland reject church teaching on contraception, sexual morality, gay unions and divorce, findings remarkable both in their similarity and in the fact they were even publicized.

The Vatican took the unusual step of commissioning the surveys ahead of a major meeting of bishops that Pope Francis has called for October to discuss family issues. The poll was sent last year to every national conference of bishops with a request to share it widely among Catholic institutions, parishes and individuals.

This week, German and Swiss bishops reported the results: The church’s core teachings on sexual morals, birth control, homosexuality, marriage and divorce were rejected as unrealistic and outdated by the vast majority of Catholics, who nevertheless said they were active in parish life and considered their faith vitally important.

Also surprising was the eagerness with which the bishops publicized the results. The German bishops’ conference released them simultaneously in German, Italian and English on their website, and the Swiss held a news conference.

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CALIFORNIA
The Record

By Kevin Parrish
Record Staff Writer
February 08, 2014

SACRAMENTO – A retired bankruptcy judge from Reno has been appointed mediator in the Chapter 11 reorganization case of the Catholic Diocese of Stockton.

Gregg W. Zive, 68, is expected to convene mediation sessions between diocese attorneys and those representing creditors within 30 days. He retired from the federal bench in 2011 but serves when needed.

Zive was appointed by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher M. Klein, who is overseeing both the diocese’s bankruptcy and the Chapter 9 bankruptcy of the city of Stockton.

Read all about it

Court filings in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy case of the Catholic Diocese of Stockton can be viewed on the website of the Sacramento law firm of Felderstein, Fitzgerald, Willoughby & Pascuzzi. Here’s how:

Last month, Stockton’s became the 10th diocese in the United States for file for bankruptcy protection. It took the dramatic legal step because of the financial drain from continuing court settlements stemming from sex-abuse lawsuits. Over the past two decades, the diocese has spent $32 million in legal fees and settlements.

Zive, past president of the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, helped mediate the bankruptcy cases of the Diocese of Spokane, Wash., and the city of San Bernardino.

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UNITED STATES
Truth-Out

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Now that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has delivered its report condemning the Vatican for aiding, abetting & covering up the Church’s sexual abuse scandal, WWPFD (What Will Pope Francis Do)?

Since Pope Francis (formerly Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina) took dominion over the Holy See, there has been much speculation about which direction he might move the Catholic Church; how he was going to modernize and make the Church more accessible to more people.

Liberals have lauded him for his comments about income inequality and his openness and apparent willingness to usher in a new way of going about the business of being Pope. Some conservatives, however, have scorned him for his economic pronouncements, while maintaining that he isn’t focusing enough on such culture war issues as birth control, homosexuality, and abortion.

With so many difficult issues to deal with, he has recently been handed a golden opportunity to deal with one of the most vexing of those issues: Child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, and its aiding and abetting and subsequent cover-up by Catholic Church officials.

The most prudent move for Pope Francis to make in this regard is to accept the recommendations of the report by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and, at the same time, open up the Vatican archives.

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ITALIA
Lettera 43

[Summary: What has the pope done against abuses by the clergy? Nothing. Francesco Zanaardi was molested by a priest when he was 11. The church does not denounced the abusers but relocated them.]

di Giovanna Faggionato

Chissà se durante la funzione liturgica, quando la litania del Confiteor si alza fino alle volte vaticane, i cardinali mettono l’accento sull’ultima parola: «Confesso a Dio padre e voi fratelli che ho molto peccato in pensieri, parole, opere e omissioni».

E di omissioni, secondo il rapporto del Comitato Onu sui diritti dei bambini presentato il 5 febbraio a Ginevra, il Vaticano ne ha compiute molte: «Non ha riconosciuto la portata dei crimini commessi, non ha adottato le misure necessarie per affrontare i casi di abusi sessuali su minori e per proteggere i bambini». Ha invece usato «politiche e pratiche» che hanno permesso la prosecuzione delle violenze e favorito l’impunità degli autori.

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AUSTRALIA
UCANews

[On the manner of proceeding in cases of the crime of solicitation (1922) via BishopAccounability.org]

[Crimen Sollicitationis (1962) – via BishopAccountability.org]

Kieran Tapsell, Sydney
International
February 6, 2014

It comes as little or no surprise that the Vatican has been accused of covering up cases of priests committing child sex abuse. What may be more surprising is the fact that, since 1922, secrecy and cover-up have been official Vatican policy, instigated by nothing less than papal decree.

There was hardly a news source in the world this week that did not give headline coverage to the UN’s scathing condemnation of the Vatican’s testimony on child abuse to its Committee on the Rights of the Child. The condemnation came in the UN’s official response, released on February 5, to the Holy See’s submission. The language was unstintingly blunt.

“The Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, has not taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted policies and practices that have led to the continuation of the abuse by and the impunity of the perpetrators,” was one of its most damning sentences.

The UN is, of course, an organization that normally deals in diplomatic niceties. But here it effectively endorsed vociferous victim groups such as SNAP (Survivors Network Of Those Abused By Priests), as well as the massed ranks of Church-baiters, and accused the Vatican of a cover-up.

The fact is, though, that this cover-up has not been caused by underhand dealings or the incompetence of bishops – although it cannot be denied that, in some cases, they too have played a part. It is the direct result of papal decrees issued since the time of Pius XI in 1922.

Since the 4th century to varying degrees, clergy had the legal right not to be tried in the civil courts for their crimes but to be tried in the Church’s own canonical courts. That right had virtually disappeared by the 19th century. Secrecy under the papal decrees created a de facto privilege of clergy that had the same effect. If the State courts did not know about these crimes, there would be no State trials and the matter could be treated as a canonical crime in the Church courts.

Relatively speaking, this was something of an innovation. For not far short of a millennium, canon law used to decree that after degradatio – the Church equivalent of a dishonourable discharge – priests found guilty of child sex abuse were to be handed over to the civil authorities for further punishment.

Decrees to this effect were issued by Pope Innocent III (1198), Pope St Pius V (1566 and 1568), the Fourth and Fifth Lateran Councils (1215 and 1514) and the Council of Trent (1551).

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Christian Post

BY MICHAEL GRYBOSKI, CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER
February 7, 2014

Names of over 100 priests and employees of a Missouri archdiocese that have credible accusations of sexual abuse against them have been released to a person suing the institution.

In response to an order from the Missouri Supreme Court, the Archdiocese of St. Louis turned over the list of individuals and complaints Wednesday to the plaintiff of a lawsuit leveled against them. The move came as the state’s highest court denied a writ by the archdiocese to keep the records private for the sake of all involved, according to a statement.

“The archdiocese had litigated to protect the privacy rights of all involved, including victims who had no connection to current litigation and who had come forth confidentially regarding their reported allegation,” reads the statement in part.

“We appreciate the concern given this case throughout the appellate process, and although we share the disappointment of the many innocent individuals who will be affected by it, the Archdiocese of St. Louis will comply with the court order entered by the Missouri Supreme Court.”

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UNITED STATES
dotCommonweal

February 7, 2014

Grant Gallicho

On Wednesday, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child published a report strongly criticizing the Vatican for its handling of the sexual-abuse crisis. It hasn’t gone over very well. John Allen argued that it might actually hurt the reform movement within the Catholic Church. Austen Ivereigh called the committee a “kangaroo court.” (While I don’t agree with everything Ivereigh has to say about the report–for example, he claims the Holy See has been a “catalyst” on abuse reform “at least since 2001”–he’s catalogued its many mistakes.) Michael Sean Winters declared, “To hell with the UN.” Mark Silk criticized the report for treating the Holy See as it would any other state, calling it “worse than idiotic. It’s counterproductive.”

Apart from that significant error, the report foolishly wades into doctrinal waters, suggesting the Vatican revise its teachings on abortion and contraception. The committee urges the Holy See to provide “family planning, reproductive health, as well as adequate counselling and social support, to prevent unplanned pregnancies.” At one point the UN committee asks Rome to remove from Catholic-school textbooks “all gender stereotyping which may limit the development of the talents and abilities of boys and girls and undermine their educational and life opportunities.” At another it complains that the Code of Canon Law refers to chldren born out of wedlock as “illegitimate.” The report says that in canon law instances of sexual abuse ought to be “considered as crimes and not as ‘delicts,'” seemingly ignorant of the fact that “delict” means crime. (The committee’s work is so sloppy that it doesn’t even seem to know where to cut off a quote: That part of the report reads, “Child sexual abuse, when addressed, has been dealt with as ‘grave delicts against the moral’ through confidential proceedings…”)

Even when the committee bumps up against a good idea, it seems uninterested in context. For example, it asks Rome to establish “clear rules, mechanisms and procedures for the mandatory reporting of all suspected cases of child sexual abuse and exploitation to law enforcement authorities,” but fails to note that the world’s law-enforcement authorities are not all made in image and likeness of North America’s and Europe’s. That’s why some diocese–in Africa, for example–haven’t implemented mandatory-reporting rules. Shouldn’t a UN committee show some awareness of that?

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The former Vatican Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone, has commented on the Vatileaks scandal saying there may still be some documents that are about to come out

ANDREA TORNIELLI
VATICAN CITY

“I hope the Vatileaks scandal is now a closed the book although there may still be some documents that are being held, ready to be thrown out there,” said the former Vatican Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone in a statement to Italian news channel TgCom24. In his interview with journalist Fabio Marchese Ragona, the cardinal said that the “the whole Vatileaks affair represented a time of great suffering, a period of suffering that went on too long for the Pope and his closest collaborators.

Particularly because of the lack of love shown towards the Church, a sentiment that was reflected in all Vatileaks-related actions and documents that should have been kept confidential in order to allow the Church to internally discuss and put right certain attitudes.”

“But I must say that this incredibly difficult moment inspired a powerful current, a high voltage power line I would say, of closeness and solidarity towards the Pope and the Holy See.” Speaking about the possibility of other documents being brought to light, Bertone said: “I believe that the times, climate and relationship network have changed significantly. I see that there is great trust within the Church.”

In the interview, the former Vatican Secretary of State announced the publication of “a booklet on faith and sport” and revealed his intention to write his memoirs: “I have a very archive, so I am in a position to review and look over on these past years with objective documentation on the facts and provide another reading of events that may be useful in setting the record straight on certain off-the-mark interpretations.”

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SCOTLAND
Scottish Catholic Observer

Fr John Keenan, 49, parish priest at St Patrick’s Church, Anderson, and chaplain at Glasgow University, has been chosen as the next Bishop of Paisley. He will become Scotland’s youngest bishop in Scotland following his Episcopal Ordination on March 19.

Pope Francis’ selection was announced this morning.

“While nervous at my appointment, I have been very uplifted at the congratulations and good wishes I have received so far which have given more confidence,” Bishop-Elect Keenan (above) said. “Everyone I speak to says Paisley is a wonderful diocese with good priests and people full of faith. I am looking forward to being with my brother priests, many of whom I already know really well, and getting to know the people and the parishes of the diocese. I hope just to settle in and listen a lot.”

“At the same time I leave Glasgow with a heavy heart. I have loved my priesthood there from the very beginning and know I have family and many friends who will continue supporting me.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By WOODY ALLEN
FEB. 7, 2014

Last Sunday, Nicholas Kristof wrote a column about Dylan Farrow, the adopted daughter of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. Mr. Allen has written the following response to the column and Dylan’s account.

TWENTY-ONE years ago, when I first heard Mia Farrow had accused me of child molestation, I found the idea so ludicrous I didn’t give it a second thought. We were involved in a terribly acrimonious breakup, with great enmity between us and a custody battle slowly gathering energy. The self-serving transparency of her malevolence seemed so obvious I didn’t even hire a lawyer to defend myself. It was my show business attorney who told me she was bringing the accusation to the police and I would need a criminal lawyer.

I naïvely thought the accusation would be dismissed out of hand because of course, I hadn’t molested Dylan and any rational person would see the ploy for what it was. Common sense would prevail. After all, I was a 56-year-old man who had never before (or after) been accused of child molestation. I had been going out with Mia for 12 years and never in that time did she ever suggest to me anything resembling misconduct. Now, suddenly, when I had driven up to her house in Connecticut one afternoon to visit the kids for a few hours, when I would be on my raging adversary’s home turf, with half a dozen people present, when I was in the blissful early stages of a happy new relationship with the woman I’d go on to marry — that I would pick this moment in time to embark on a career as a child molester should seem to the most skeptical mind highly unlikely. The sheer illogic of such a crazy scenario seemed to me dispositive.

Notwithstanding, Mia insisted that I had abused Dylan and took her immediately to a doctor to be examined. Dylan told the doctor she had not been molested. Mia then took Dylan out for ice cream, and when she came back with her the child had changed her story. The police began their investigation; a possible indictment hung in the balance. I very willingly took a lie-detector test and of course passed because I had nothing to hide. I asked Mia to take one and she wouldn’t. Last week a woman named Stacey Nelkin, whom I had dated many years ago, came forward to the press to tell them that when Mia and I first had our custody battle 21 years ago, Mia had wanted her to testify that she had been underage when I was dating her, despite the fact this was untrue. Stacey refused. I include this anecdote so we all know what kind of character we are dealing with here. One can imagine in learning this why she wouldn’t take a lie-detector test.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

08 FEBRUARY 2014

* The recent report issued by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has said what many within and beyond Ireland have long felt: that the Vatican protected the perpetrators of child abuse at the expense of the victims.

Weighing up the evidence from across Europe and elsewhere, this conclusion was inevitable. On the heels of the Strasbourg ruling in the O’Keeffe v Ireland case, reflective of the Ryan, Murphy and Clones inquiries into clerical child abuse in Ireland, there are now substantive findings that the Catholic Church, like other religious organisations, perpetuated a code of silence to preserve the reputation of the church and the clergy.

This need not be interpreted as anti-Vatican clergy-bashing but an opportunity for the church to make good on its promises to co-operate with secular authorities on behalf of children.

The underlying issues are too important for the church to now play the part of victim. By removing all paedophiles from its ranks and reporting them to law-enforcement agencies, it helps ensure existing and future school children can be educated and trained in a safe environment.

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BOSTON (MA)
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston has added his voice to those speaking out about the recent report on child protection by a United Nations committee.

In a blog post, Cardinal O’Malley said, “I was surprised to read the accounts of the report issued this week by U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, because I would have thought that the competency of this commission is to examine the policies and practices of their member nations, of which includes the Holy See.”

Had the commission focused on that mandate, the Cardinal said “they would have been able to make what I would consider a valuable contribution, because the Holy See needs to model policies for child protection for the rest of the dioceses in the world.”

Instead, he said, “they extrapolated to the life of the Church, which is not their competency, and interjected many of their own ideological preferences. They also appear to have not taken into account the hard work that has been done in many parts of the world. It is very easy to get the headlines when you criticize the church, however, I do not think the commission’s report has been either fair or particularly helpful.”

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

[with video]

From Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on “Duck Dynasty” to Vatican Enablers Attacking U.N. Report: Protection of Heterosexual Male Power and Privilege as Nexus

William D. Lindsey

Here’s what fascinates me in this Media Matters video in which Gretchen Carlson of Fox News interviews Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and Wendy Griffith about “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson and his anti-gay comments:

Boteach says, “We have to stop making religion in America about bashing gays,” and no one appears to object.

But when he goes on to say, “See, the problem in America is that we overlook all the heterosexual guys who are raping women one in five,” all hell breaks loose.

The problem with religion in America today is clearly both about bashing gays and about protecting heterosexual male power and privilege. The two are intrinsically connected.

But when people go there–to the underlying objective of the gay bashing, which is the screening of heterosexual male power and privilege from all analysis or critique–hell breaks loose. And isn’t that fascinating to note?

In her book Out of the Depths: Women’s Experience of Evil and Salvation, trans. and intro. Ann Patrick Ware (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), Catholic feminist theologian (and nun) Ivone Gebara states,

Institutionalized violence against women is not just one specific act of violence but a social arrangement, a cultural construct geared to degrade one pole of humanity and exalt the other (81).

And she also notes,

In one sense, patriarchy is a societal form of male narcissism (a love of anything that is like me), manifest in every cultural, political, and religious institution. Thus it is easier for men to fight for any other cause of social justice than for the cause of equal rights for women (141).

I think neither of these observations is beside the point as we think about why we’re not permitted to observe that gay bashing is deeply rooted in systems that enforce heterosexual male power and privilege–since the ultimate objective of those systems is to keep the feminine (as in women and males seen as feminized) under total subjection to the masculine.

It is hardly beside the point, is it, that the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, about whose recent report media enablers of the Vatican are now going ballistic, is chaired by a woman–Kirsten Sandberg? Read the heated rhetoric of Catholic Vatican enablers about how “gender ideology” drives the U.N. Committee’s work, and about the “ignorance,” “gross misunderstanding,” and “arrogance” that inform this work, and, if your eyes are open even a tiny bit, you’ll realize that you’re reading a thinly disguised screed about uppity women.

And what they must not be allowed to say. Not to men. Not to an institution headed by men, which protects heterosexual male power and privilege.

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UNITED STATES
Independent Catholic News (UK)

Posted: Saturday, February 8, 2014

NCR assesses Vatican abuse report | Tom Reece SJ, UN committee report on the Rights of the Child, National Catholic Reporter.

Fr Thomas Reese SJ gives a thorough assessment of the UN committee report on the Rights of the Child in his blog published in the National Catholic Reporter on 7 February. Fr Reese writes:

The UN committee report on the Vatican’s role in sexual abuse was a missed opportunity. It could have played an important role in improving the church’s handling of sexual abuse; instead, it was an editorial screed.

Any examination of the sexual abuse crisis needs to do three things: 1) Review the historical facts of sexual abuse and how it was handled by the church; 2) examine current policies and procedures and how they are being enforced; and 3) make recommendations for improvement.

The report by the UN Committee on the Rights of Children, like many other examinations of the crisis, skips the hard work of step two, which means the recommendations in step three are meaningless.

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CANADA
The Tyee

By BOB MACKIN
Published February 7, 2014

Three people who allege John Furlong abused them when they were elementary schoolers 45 years ago combined their lawsuits against the ex-Vancouver Olympics boss into one on Feb. 6 and are now also seeking damages for defamation.

Beverly Mary Abraham and Grace Jessie West originally filed separate B.C. Supreme Court lawsuits July 24, 2013, followed two months later by a male, against Furlong, the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation and Catholic Independent Schools Diocese of Prince George. All three aboriginal plaintiffs said they attended Immaculata Catholic elementary school in Burns Lake, B.C. where Furlong taught physical education in 1969 and 1970. They claimed to be victims of verbal, physical and sexual abuse who continue to suffer.

The new filing alleges Furlong defamed the trio at a Sept. 27, 2012 news conference, in October 2013 interviews on CTV and Dec. 12, 2013 on his website.

None of the allegations has been proven in court and Furlong claims innocence.

“The defendant denies that he sexually molested or physically abused or engaged in any inappropriate conduct,” said Furlong’s Sept. 23, 2013 defence statement.

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UNITED STATES
Renew America

By Matt C. Abbott

In typical pot-calling-the-kettle-black fashion, the morally corrupt, Antichrist-stage-setting United Nations – specifically, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child – has blasted the Holy See for its handling of the clergy abuse scandal. And it has blasted the Church for being, well … Catholic.

I write this as a (practicing) Catholic commentator who has, over the last nine years or so, covered various aspects of the clergy abuse scandal. It hasn’t been pretty, to say the least. My head is definitely not in the sand.

But no, the U.N. is not your friend.

Two respected priests are among a number of Catholic voices speaking out on this latest development.

Father Shenan J. Boquet, president of Human Life International, noted in his weekly reflection (excerpt):

The last century saw the unprecedented growth of governments and ideological systems that suppressed religious truth and human dignity. Yet, in the midst of such turmoil there were some willing to witness for truth and freedom of conscience – even at the cost of their lives. Martyrs give the ultimate witness and force humanity in every age to consider the truth placed before them and the seriousness of the duty to seek the truth. When man’s law is unjust, God’s law still demands our assent. ‘It is necessary to obey God rather than men.’ (Acts 5:29) Sadly we are seeing a new era of martyrs in Africa and the Middle East, as Christians are targeted by Muslim mobs and forced to convert or be killed.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times

BY FRANCINE KNOWLES Religion Reporter February 7, 2014

Shake-ups at the Vatican will reverberate this year within the Archdiocese of Chicago, where the next leader will play a major role in helping Pope Francis shape the future direction of the U.S. Catholic church, home to more than 75 million followers.

The stage is set for Francis to make what will be the first major U.S. appointment of his papacy.

And Francis’ choice to lead the third-largest diocese in the country will signal his plans for the U.S. Catholic church, which could be on the verge of significant changes.

“There are very few major appointments coming open in the immediate future in the U.S., [but] Chicago is the most important one,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, senior analyst for the National Catholic Reporter. “It’s a very large archdiocese. It’s one that’s historically played a leadership role in the church, and it’s one where everyone expects the archbishop to eventually become a cardinal.”

As required by church law, George submitted his resignation when he turned 75, just over two years ago. Experts expect Francis to accept it this year.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: RANDY FURST , Star Tribune Updated: February 8, 2014

Head of a chemical dependency program is charged with having sex with a client who was a sex offender.

A 39-year-old St. Paul woman who directed a chemical treatment program for the Salvation Army in Minneapolis goes on trial Monday in Hennepin County District Court on charges that she repeatedly had sex with a client who is a convicted sex offender.

Amy Andrea Horsfield, who is no longer employed by the Salvation Army, was also involved in intimate relationships with two other men who were under the jurisdiction of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, according to allegations contained in court documents.

Horsfield is charged with two gross misdemeanors — criminal sexual abuse of a vulnerable adult and criminal neglect, each of which carries up to one year behind bars and/or a $3,000 fine.

Horsfield exhibited “a pattern of sexual impropriety, abuse and manipulation against convicted felons,” wrote Minneapolis Assistant City Attorney Lisa Godon.

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MONTANA
Beartooth NBC

[with video]

By Charlie Misra

When he was in the 6th and 7th grade at Saint Anthony’s in Missoula, Michael Charles Allen was the only altar boy for the 6 AM mass.

It was during those years Allen says he was sexually abused.

“I have sleepless nights. Ever since I came forward on it, you know, I don’t sleep well.”
Allen says he was so scarred by it, he didn’t tell anyone until just a couple of years ago. His therapist has a theory as to why he held on for so long.

“They said sometimes when you’re abused and it’s very bad, you usually tend to want to bury it, quickly.”

Allen alleges he was abused 2-3 times per week at Saint Anthony’s School, which is now Loyola Sacred Heart. When he heard about the Diocese of Helena’s proposed $15 million settlement of 362 lawsuits of alleged child sexual abuse, he wasn’t happy.

“I think it’s kind of a slap in the face for the victims. There’s a lot of victims. And i can understand that’s a costly situation for the church. But you know, $44,000 for somebody whose life has been damaged and altered. That’s not very much.”

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UNITED STATES
Boston Herald

The authors of a new United Nations report on the Vatican’s treatment of children and its handling of sexual abuse by priests have allowed their contempt for core church teachings to cloud otherwise meaningful recommendations for how the church can improve. And that is a terrible shame.

In a progress report of sorts released this week the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child ripped the Holy See for its past actions to protect predator priests and for the church’s
 damnable efforts to protect its reputation over victimized children. The committee issued a slew of recommendations to both prevent future abuse and to ensure child victims come first.

One particularly strong recommendation is that the Vatican take action against members of the church hierarchy who themselves victimized children simply by reassigning their abusers to other parishes, where they were free to abuse again. Pope Francis could start right in his own backyard in Rome, where Cardinal Bernard Law now makes his comfortable home.

But given the opportunity to wag their fingers before a global audience the report’s authors simply could not pass up the opportunity, condemning church policies on abortion and contraception and recommending that the Vatican amend canon law to allow both.

Yes, really!

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ITALY
GlobalPost

Agence France-Presse February 7, 2014

The Italian supreme court has ruled the adopted daughter of an Italy-based Congolese nun raped by a priest must be returned to her natural mother, Italian media reported on Friday.

The woman had given the baby up shortly after her birth in 2011 because she wanted to stay with the “Little Sisters of Nazareth” congregation, but that request was turned down and so she asked for her baby back.

The little girl was being adopted by an Italian couple and another court had argued the nun no longer had rights as a mother because she only recognised her parenthood three and a half months after the birth.

The 44-year-old became a nun in 1996 and studied at a pontifical university in Rome, the reports said.

She said she was raped by a priest also from Democratic Republic of Congo in the city of Pesaro in central Italy in 2010 but never revealed his identity.

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AUSTRALIA
Dubbo Photo News

Saturday, 08 February 2014 Written by Natalie Holmes

Dubbo man Paddy* is haunted by the memories of his boarding school days, where he was abused and tortured at the hands of his primary educator. He talked to NATALIE HOLMES about the bitterness and the brutality.

Paddy* was just a kid when he was abused by a staff member at the Catholic college he attended. At first, it seemed like a lovely place, but the dream quickly turned into a nightmare. Now, more than half a century later, those memories still haunt him and Paddy recalls some of the horrors of that time at the hands of someone into whose care his parents had entrusted him.

“I was a skinny little boy all of 13 years old. He was a fully grown man; he must have been a coward to bash up a skinny little boy in this way. There was something wrong with him.”

Paddy recalls his first taste of violence at the hands of his educator.

“One day, I was walking with my hands in my pockets and he came up from behind and punched me in the back of the head. After that, every chance he got he would give me the cane.”

Singled out time after time, Paddy suffered countless bouts of humiliation, raps over the knuckles, hundreds of canings, beatings with a rubber hose, and even sexual assault.

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AUSTRALIA
Dubbo Photo News

Saturday, 08 February 2014 Written by Natalie Holmes

Di Frost was just four years old when abuse started at home. Her nightmare escalated when she was also abused by a member of the Catholic Church. She recently made a statement to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and was brave enough to share her story with NATALIE HOLMES.

Buried in the past

I grew up in Sydney – one of six children. We were a good Catholic family going to church all the time. My parents were involved in the church and, from the outside, we looked like a good, happy, healthy family but that was far from the dysfunction and domestic violence. There were various forms of abuse on each of us – physical, sexual and emotional abuse.

I saw it happen to my brothers and sisters as well as experiencing it myself. My father was undiagnosed bipolar and he could change very quickly from a happy, interactive dad who played with us to someone quite different.

He was a good dad in lots of ways but he would have very dark moods and I learned to read body language quite early on.

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NEW JERSEY
Asbury Park Press

Written by
Peggy Wright
@peggywrightDR

Apologizing and saying he had “no excuse” for his crime, a 39-year-old mentally ill man was sentenced Friday to probation and continued psychiatric treatment and ordered to pay $7,500 restitution for sledgehammering a monument in Mendham dedicated to victims of sexual abuse by priests.

Recognizing that former Mendham resident Gordon Ellis, who now lives in Morristown, has a documented history of mental illness, Assistant Morris County Prosecutor Anthony Scibetta last month had extended a plea offer of probation, restitution and continued treatment to the defendant.

Ellis accepted the deal and the Prosecutor’s Office downgraded an original third-degree charge of criminal mischief to a disorderly persons offense of criminal mischief. State Superior Court Judge Mary Gibbons Whipple, sitting in Morristown, on Friday sentenced Ellis to two years’ probation, continued treatment and $7,500 restitution to cover the damage Ellis caused on Nov. 18, 2011, when he used a sledgehammer to destroy a 400-pound millstone memorial erected outside St. Joseph Church in Mendham.

“I would like to personally apologize to St. Joseph’s and the support group they offer. They do a good thing and I put a black mark against that. I’m sorry and I have no excuse for it,” Ellis told the judge.

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UNITED STATES
Christianity Today

How can non-hierarchical denominations prevent child abuse in churches? | Ed Stetzer

I recently spoke at Liberty University convocation. While there, I had the privilege to sit down with my friend, Boz Tchividjian.

Boz is a prosecutor by background, specifically dealing with child sexual abuse cases. He has recently been engaged in advocacy for the protection of victims—first and foremost that there might not be victims. Second, he advocates that those who are victims might be heard and that the perpetrators might ultimately be prosecuted.

Sadly, this is an ongoing challenge in the life of the church. We are certainly all aware of the scandals within the Catholic Church. But increasingly people are asking questions about the Protestant and the Evangelical world. I’ve blogged on such abuse situations on several occasions—see here, here, and here.

For this reason, I felt that an interview with Boz would be worth our time.

Over the course of the next few weeks I will post parts of my interview with Boz and link them together. I recognize that I have written frequently on the subject of child protection, and this will just add more, but I think the protection of children is worth dwelling on since this blog is read mostly by pastors and church leaders.

Part One of our interview was posted a couple of weeks ago and can be found here, and Part Two can be found here.

Let me encourage you to check out Boz’ brand new Religion News Service blog. Also, be sure to check out this article from CBN, and this article on how churches can endanger children.
Part Two of our interview focused on how the leadership of hierarchical Evangelical denominations and Catholicism could help prevent child abuse. This part of our interview focuses on how non-hierarchical denominations may help prevent such acts.

So what could a non-hierarchichal denomination do? For Evangelical denominations who don’t have enforceable policies brought down from above, how can they tangibly act?

I think a starting place is for the leadership of these denominations to engage in personal dialogue with those of us who have already been directly addressing this issue and who really have a heart’s desire to equip the church in understanding this issue. I think it starts with that almost one-on-one dialogue, helping train and equip these leaders to understand the gravity of the issue.

I think sometimes the issue is not discussed at a national or denominational level by these leaders because they simply don’t fully understand it. These are theologians. I completely understand that these individuals have been called to focus on preaching and other aspects of ministry. They’re not called to be experts on child abuse, and that’s understandable. However, that is not an excuse to be un-teachable on a subject that impacts so many inside and outside the Christian community. So the hope is that they are open to begin a dialogue with those who are the experts in this area and who desire to serve Christ’s church in helping it better understand this issue.

Second, there are things that can come from a leadership level that can greatly influence churches to move in this direction. For example, if leaders are learning from the experts in the field, they will be in a better position to challenge pastors to read at least one recommended book a year that will help them better understand the dynamics of abuse. Anna Salter’s book entitled, Predators , is a very difficult book to read. However, if every pastor read that book I am convinced our churches would be safer because our pastors would have a much greater understanding of the gravity and prevalence of this issue. Recently, I recently wrote a Protecting Children from Abuse in the Church: Steps to Prevent and Respond. This is a short but very informative book that I hope can find its way into every church in this country.

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ALABAMA
AL.com

By Kay Campbell | kcampbell@al.com
on February 07, 2014

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – How can a congregation survive the arrest of one of its ministers on charges of child sexual abuse? And how can it prevent something like that from happening? Only through rapid response, open communication, humble re-assessment of its child safety policies — and faith, say local experts.

The recent arrest in Muscle Shoals of two ministers has prompted religious leaders and parents across North Alabama to ask those questions.

Join the waiting list for the next free, half-day seminar offered by the National Child Advocacy Center, “Preventing Child Sexual Abuse in Youth-Serving Organizations, at NationalCAC.org or call 256-533-5437. The seminar being offered by the NCAC on Tuesday, Feb. 11, from 8:30 a.m. until noon is full.

Sure, open communication is key, says Pastor Brian Mayfield, lead pastor at The Brook Church in Madison, but that doesn’t mean that he, as a pastor and a parent, doesn’t resent the necessity of initiating that kind of conversation.

“This kind of situation will rip a church apart – or pull it together,” said Mayfield, who dealt with the aftermath of sexual abuse as a pastoral intern when a member of his youth group came forward with allegations of abuse by a former pastor. “In a situation like that, parents have to figure out how to have a conversation that no one should have to have with their children.”

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COLORADO
Daily Camera

By Mitchell Byars, Camera Staff Writer
POSTED: 02/07/2014

Jason Roberson, a youth pastor accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a teenage church member over several years, pleaded not guilty and is set for trial this summer.

Roberson, 35, entered a plea of not guilty to sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust and invasion of privacy at his arraignment in Boulder District Court today. He is set to stand trial beginning July 14.

According to police reports, Danielle DesGeorges, 24, went to police in April and told investigators that she and Roberson had an inappropriate relationship that began when she was 15 and continued for seven years.

In an interview with police, officers reported, Roberson admitted to touching the victim inappropriately but said it only occurred after she began attending classes at the University of Colorado.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By Ben Horowitz/The Star-Ledger
on February 07, 2014

MORRISTOWN — A 39-year-old Mendham man who admitted destroying a Mendham church monument to victims of clergy sexual abuse was sentenced today to two years of probation.

Gordon Ellis pleaded guilty last month to a reduced charge of criminal mischief as a disorderly persons offense, admitting that on Nov. 18, 2011, he used a sledgehammer to wreck the 400-pound millstone memorial outside St. Joseph Church.

Ellis, who has a history of mental illness, will be required to undergo mental health supervision and counseling by Morris County’s probation department and pay $7,500 in restitution to the church, under the sentence announced by Superior Court Judge Mary Gibbons Whipple in Morristown.

“There are no other things in his past that lead us to believe he will do this again,” Whipple said.

Ellis told the court he has “no excuse” for what he did, but he offered no explanation.

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CANADA
Timmins Daily Press

By Jeff Labine, Timmins Daily Press
Friday, February 7, 2014

TIMMINS – Ray Lariviere never thought he would get control of his life back after being sexually assaulted as a child.

The 60 year old told his story of abuse to a crowd of more than 40 people at a fundraising dinner at the Dante Club. The dinner was held to bring more awareness of sexual abuse towards males.

“I’ve come a long way,” Lariviere said. “I have control of my own life. Before I would just give up. That means a lot to me. If I had a problem I would deal with it when I felt like it but I never did. Now when I have a problem I deal with it right away.”

Lariviere explained that when he was 14, a priest sexually assaulted him. His family was Catholic and went to church all the time. He became an alter boy and often went to church early to help out.

That changed when a new priest came to town.

Lariviere said the new priest became friends with the whole parish and even came to his home a few times. The man came over so often that Lariviere started going for car rides with him to get a snack.

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NEW YORK/VERMONT
Troy Record

By Larry Neumeister, The Associated Press
POSTED: 02/07/14

NEW YORK >> A federal appeals court directed a lower court to dismiss the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany from a Vermont sex-abuse lawsuit Friday, saying it did not have enough connection to Vermont to subject it to substantial confidentiality interests at stake in the litigation that would likely force the diocese to divulge sensitive documents about sexual abuse investigations.

The lawsuit was brought by a man who said he was abused by a former priest in Vermont in the late 1980s when the priest transported him from New York to Vermont to sexually abuse him.

Gary Mercure of Troy was sentenced in 2011 to 20 to 25 years in state prison after he was convicted of raping two altar boys in western Massachusetts between 1986 and 1989, while he was a priest in the Diocese of Albany. He was defrocked in 2008. Mercure had denied the allegations and his lawyers said the complainants were coached into making abuse claims.

In ruling, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Diocese of Albany did not have enough ties to Vermont to subject the diocese to the lawsuit. The appeals panel noted that the diocese operates no office or facility in Vermont and its percentage of contacts with Vermont compared to its activities in New York are trivial.

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NEW YORK/VERMONT
Albany Times Union

By Brendan J. Lyons
Updated 9:38 pm, Friday, February

Albany

The Albany Roman Catholic Diocese will not have to turn over nearly 40 years’ worth of sexual abuse records after a federal appeals court on Friday ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit filed against the diocese in Vermont by a Warren County man who was taken across state lines and raped by an Albany priest.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that a Vermont-based U.S. District Court judge, William K. Sessions III, erred when he ruled the Albany diocese had strong enough business ties to Vermont to be sued in that state, where the victim’s claim was not time-barred under the statute of limitations. The federal lawsuit, filed in Burlington, remains standing against the priest, Gary Mercure, who is in prison for raping two altar boys.

A three-judge panel that issued the decision also noted that had the diocese been forced release decades worth of internal sexual abuse files, that disclosure could not be undone if another court overturned the case on appeal following any trial.

“There is no evidence that this information has previously been disclosed. The cat is still in the bag, and the ensuing litigation will inevitably let it out,” the judges wrote. “Moreover, unlike a run-of-the-mill tort case, this litigation implicates significant confidentiality interests for the diocese, its priests, and (more alarmingly) other victims (and their families) who would likely be subjected to distressing depositions, revisiting pasts that would not otherwise be revisited in a case solely against Mercure.”

The judges compared their decision to dismiss the lawsuit to a 2010 ruling by the same court that barred pretrial disclosure of “confidential reports of undercover New York City police officers protected by the law-enforcement privilege.” They cited wording in the earlier ruling that “once the cat is out of the bag, the right against disclosure cannot later be vindicated.”

The 37-year-old man who filed the lawsuit was raped by Mercure in New York, Vermont and Massachusetts, beginning in the late 1980s when he was an 8-year-old altar boy in Queensbury, according to court records.

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POLAND
Fars News Agency (Iran)

TEHRAN (FNA)- A 25-year-old man identified only as Marcin K filed suit against the Polish Roman Catholic Church, alleging that the church is at least partly responsible for the sexual abuse the man suffered at the hands of a clergyman who is now serving a two-year prison sentence.

It is the first time in Poland that a victim sued not only his attacker but also the church as an institution, RT reported.

Higher-ups in the Polish church apologized to all victims of abuse last year but refused to offer financial compensation.

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UNITED STATES
San Francisco Chronicle

David D’Arcy
Published 3:43 pm, Friday, February 7, 2014

The Pope and Mussolini
The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe
By David I. Kertzer
(Penguin; 549 pages; $32)

As Benito Mussolini consolidated power in the 1930s, forging alliances with Hitler’s Germany and invading Ethiopia in a vainglorious bid for a new Roman Empire, the only consolation for Italians might have been that God was on their side.

This was anything but the case, writes David I. Kertzer, a Brown professor, in his captivating study of the uneasy bond between Pope Pius XI and Il Duce. Each man mistrusted the other, but the reclusive pope feared the march of communism, Protestantism and anything modern. Mussolini’s roots were in strident anticlericalism, yet church support in Catholic Italy was crucial for tightening his grip.

In exchange for fiery anticommunism and crucial backing of Vatican policy goals, Italian Fascism got a pass from a silent church on its political monopoly.

Long before the war with Britain and France started in 1939 (when Pius XI died), democracy in Italy was lost, along with many lives, with far more to come. If politics is about holding one’s nose while interests are served, the stench here is overpowering. You won’t learn about steel production or railroad strikes from Kertzer, but you will learn what men in power did and failed to do.

The story begins in 1922, when Italy was stumbling in the wake of World War I’s devastation. Benito Mussolini, once an anti-Catholic socialist (named for the Church-hating Benito Juarez), leveraged nationalism into mass thuggery and found that he needed the acquiescence of the Catholic Church to get Italians’ approval.

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NEW YORK/VERMONT
Westport News

By LARRY NEUMEISTER, The Associated Press
Updated 7:05 pm, Friday, February 7, 2014

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court directed a lower court to dismiss the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, N.Y., from a Vermont sex-abuse lawsuit Friday, saying it did not have enough connection to Vermont to subject it to substantial confidentiality interests at stake in the litigation that would likely force the diocese to divulge sensitive documents about sexual abuse investigations.

The lawsuit was brought by a man who said he was abused by a former priest in Vermont in the late 1980s when the priest transported him from New York to Vermont to sexually abuse him.

Gary Mercure of Troy, N.Y., was sentenced in 2011 to 20 to 25 years in state prison after he was convicted of raping two altar boys in western Massachusetts between 1986 and 1989, while he was a priest in the Diocese of Albany. He was defrocked in 2008. Mercure had denied the allegations and his lawyers said the complainants were coached into making abuse claims.

In ruling, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Diocese of Albany did not have enough ties to Vermont to subject the diocese to the lawsuit. The appeals panel noted that the diocese operates no office or facility in Vermont and its percentage of contacts with Vermont compared to its activities in New York are trivial.

It said the diocese served a total of 78 parishioners who lived in Vermont from 2002 through 2012, when six of the diocese’s more than 100 parishes were located near the Vermont border. The 2nd Circuit said those parishioners constituted 2.2 percent of the six parishes’ combined registered parishioners.

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ALABAMA
AL.com

By Greg Garrison | ggarrison@al.com
on February 07, 2014

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama – Commentators on EWTN Global Catholic Network, headquartered in Irondale, have been responding critically to a United Nations committee report this week on clergy sexual abuse that also urged the church to change its stance on abortion, contraception and homosexuality.

The Vatican, stung by the scolding report, responded today with spokesman Federico Lombardi on Vatican Radio accusing the committee of “grave shortcomings.”

Lombardi spoke about the report issued by an 18-member panel of independent U.N. experts who monitor implementation of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Their report on Wednesday accused the Vatican of disregarding the welfare of child victims of sexual abuse to protect abusers and the reputation of the church.

The U.N. committee ignored the church’s efforts to address the abuse crisis, as documented to the committee, Lombardi said. Although the Vatican objected to the report, Lombardi said the church is committed to continuing to work for the good of all children.

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UNITED STATES
PBS – Religion & Ethics Newsweekly

[with video]

BOB ABERNETHY, host: In a highly critical new report, a United Nations panel accused the Vatican of systematically putting protection of the Church’s reputation above the welfare of children who were sexually abused by priests. The nonbinding report by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child called on the Vatican to immediately remove all known or suspected abusers and turn them over to civil authorities. It also urged accountability for those who covered up the crimes. In response, Church officials said the report ignored recent measures to address the abuse crisis. They also rejected the panel’s criticism of Church positions on other issues, including abortion, birth control, and homosexuality. Joining me with more on this are Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program, and Father Tom Reese, author, expert on the Vatican, and senior analyst at the National Catholic Reporter. Tom, welcome. Welcome back here.

REV.THOMAS REESE, SJ (Senior Analyst, National Catholic Reporter): Thank you.

ABERNETHY: What did you make of this UN committee’s report?

REESE: Well, it was a missed opportunity. You know, I wish they had acknowledged the fact that the Church has done something. For example, Pope Benedict put in zero tolerance for any abuse. That means any priest involved in abuse is no longer allowed to be in the priesthood. He threw out 400 priests in the last two years of his papacy. I think they should’ve acknowledged that, and then said, “Okay, make sure you keep enforcing these policies that you have in place.”

ABERNETHY: So can it be expected that this committee report, it was only a committee report, will have any impact, will cause the Vatican to do anything it otherwise wouldn’t do?

REESE: Well it’s certainly drawing attention to the problem again, and it does have some good recommendations about, you know, making sure that bishops are accountable, that they fulfill and do the policies that the Vatican has now put in place.

KIM LAWTON: Well, and that’s one of the questions. That’s been a big issue is holding the Church leaders, bishops, archbishops accountable, making them pay consequences for their role in it, and that’s one thing that hasn’t happened. Why hasn’t that happened?

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NEW YORK
WHAM

February 07, 2014
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court has dismissed the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, N.Y., from a Vermont lawsuit.

The lawsuit was brought by a man who said he was abused by a priest in Vermont in the late 1980s.

A few New York priests have occasionally conducted worship services in Vermont. A judge there said the Albany diocese should be part of the lawsuit.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday that was “clearly erroneous.”

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NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, February 7, 2014

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

The Albany diocese will not have to release 40 years of sexual abuse records.

[Albany Times Union]

The victim filed suit in Vermont, which is where the abuse took place. The priest Gary Mercure was based out of the Albany diocese. The statute of limitations is less restrictive in Vermont than in New York and the victim’s attorney showed through business records that the Albany diocese has close ties with Vermont.

Mercure is currently serving a prison sentence in MA for sexually abusing an altar boy there.

We’re sad that Bishop Howard J. Hubbard will not turn over these documents and that he spent precious donations to pay for attorneys to appeal.

Hubbard should have publicly released those documents years ago. For the safety of kids, the healing of victims and the benefit of his flock, he should be transparent and work to help victims

But at the very least, he should stop these costly and hurtful legal maneuvers that contradict his repeated pledges to be sensitive to victims and forthcoming about abuse.

If you saw, suspected or suffered any wrongdoing by clergy – child sex crimes, adult sexual misconduct or cover ups of any sort – we beg you to stop being part of the problem and start becoming part of the solution.

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UNITED STATES
These Stone Walls

Petition for Writ of Habeus Corpus
Memorandum

The National Center for Reason and Justice announces a new federal court appeal filed by Attorney Robert Rosenthal for wrongly convicted priest, Fr Gordon MacRae.

Editor’s Note: The following is a TSW guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald.

I am once again pleased to write about a major step in the effort to free Father Gordon MacRae, a priest of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire now in his twentieth year of unjust imprisonment. In a memorable quote in “The Trials of Father MacRae” in The Wall Street Journal last May, Pulitzer-prize winning author and columnist, Dorothy Rabinowitz summed up an appeal to state courts to overturn the unjust 1994 sexual assault convictions of this falsely accused priest.

“Those aware of the facts of this case find it hard to imagine that any court today would ignore the perversion of justice it represents.”

That “perversion of justice” continued when New Hampshire state courts rejected this appeal without a hearing on its merits, its new evidence, or its documentation of gross ineffective assistance of counsel in the 1994 MacRae trial. In an upcoming guest post on These Stone Walls, I plan to write in more candid detail of that perversion of justice from documents I have recently obtained in this case.

But first, some hopeful news. The National Center for Reason and Justice, a Boston-based organization that reviews claims of wrongful conviction and now sponsors the appellate defense of Father Gordon MacRae, has announced a new federal court appeal. Attorney Robert Rosenthal, lead counsel for the defense, has written an extensive new habeas corpus petition filed in the United States District Court in Concord, New Hampshire seeking to overturn the conviction of Father MacRae. We urge readers to review this appeal brief published by the NCRJ and here at These Stone Walls.

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CANADA
Canada.com

BY MARK KENNEDY, POSTMEDIA NEWS FEBRUARY 7, 2014

OTTAWA — The federal government was warned in an internal report two years ago of “daunting” risks if it failed to locate archival documents connected to the aboriginal residential schools saga.

Among the dangers: the courts might strip the government of the task of finding all the records; there could be “increased anger” among Canadians about government delays; and many former residential school students might die before learning the full truth behind the scandal.

This week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government came under fire for dragging its feet on a court-ordered obligation to provide millions of documents from Library and Archives Canada to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that is examining the residential schools scandal.

The records are needed by the commission to learn the truth of the decades-long saga, such as piecing together the role played by the federal government — including former cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats.

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ILLINOIS
Rockford Register-Star

By Chris Green
Rockford Register Star
Posted Feb. 7, 2014

ROCKFORD – Sexual abuse of minors by members of the clergy peaked in the ’70s, said Timothy Lytton who cited a 2002 study commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Lytton, an Albany Law School professor and author of “Holding Bishops Accountable: How Lawsuits Helped the Catholic Church Confront Clergy Sexual Abuse” said a three-decade onslaught of lawsuits starting in 1984 has implicated countless dioceses across the U.S. and abroad.

“The vast majority of victims who brought claims brought them years later,” he said.

One such person is Kathleen Gibbons, 46, of Rockford. She attended Holy Family Elementary School from 1972 to 1980.

A week ago, Gibbon’s attorney, Rene Hernandez, filed a $5 million lawsuit against Holy Family Catholic Church, the Catholic Diocese of Rockford, and three clergy members: Monsignor Al Harte, Father Bob and Brother Allen. Harte died in 2002. The last names of Bob and Allen and their whereabouts are unknown.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Lancaster Online

Column: A look at an archdiocese altering the way it addresses sexual abuse allegations

Posted: Friday, February 7, 2014

By ELIZABETH EISENSTADT-EVANS | Correspondent

I’ve been writing about sexual abuse among Christians for longer than I care to admit. But I don’t often write about a religious institution’s journey as it moves to reform the way it assesses allegations, holds proven perpetrators accountable and reaches out to help abuse victims.

First, an important caveat (and a point that sadly often gets lost in the turmoil about clergy sex abuse): Aberrant behavior that harms children and young adults isn’t only a problem for faith communities. The National Sexual Violence Center terms it “pervasive” and an “epidemic,” with one in four girls and one in six boys becoming sexual abuse victims (though the organization also says that the rate is declining).

According to statistics compiled by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, more than one-third of sexual assaults are by family members, close to 60 percent by acquaintances.

But that doesn’t excuse members of ecclesiastical hierarchies from taking responsibilities for the wrongs committed in the name of God. Part of the reason that abuse, frankly, draws more attention (or, paradoxically, is not revealed by the victim so that he or she may get help) is the sheer horror of a crime perpetrated by someone believed to be trustworthy, even sanctified. …

This past decade, however, has seen many dioceses in the United States make substantive changes to the process by which they handle abuse allegations.

Due in part to the impact of two grand jury reports, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia has been a laboratory for concrete change as it sought to follow the directives developed in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

The second grand jury report, alleging that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia had left abusive clergy in active ministry, also resulted in criminal charges against three priests and one lay teacher. In addition: “The report recommended that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia overhaul its procedures for assisting victims and for removing from ministry priests accused of molesting minors. The grand jury encouraged victims to report their abuse first to law enforcement.”

What has happened since the second grand jury report in 2011?

As part of its response to the scathing critiques leveled in that document, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia hired two district attorney’s office veterans. Now director of the archdiocesan Office for Child and Youth Protection, Leslie Davila previously served in the DA’s office of victim services. Al Toczydlowski, a former prosecutor from the DA’s office, was tapped to head the new Office of Investigations.

In extending its background check requirements to include anyone, lay or ordained, working with children in a parish or a school, the archdiocese has met and exceeded the state requirements, Davila says.

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PUERTO RICO
Washington Post

By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, February 7

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Prosecutors in Puerto Rico are investigating six priests who face sex abuse allegations and have been expelled by church authorities from a diocese in one of the island’s north coastal towns.

Government prosecutor Yolanda Pitino said Friday that she and other attorneys are interviewing several people who have accused the priests of sodomy, lewd acts and sexual harassment.

She said the Arecibo Diocese has provided prosecutors with information related to the six priests, but that they need more details.

“We are not satisfied with the information that the church gave us,” Pitino said in a phone interview, adding that the diocese has not responded to requests for more information.

The Diocese of Arecibo said in a statement that it is working with authorities and sharing information about the six priests that Bishop Daniel Fernandez expelled starting in 2011.

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UNITED STATES
Slate

Amanda Marcotte

On Wednesday, a U.N. human rights panel released its assessment of the Holy See’s responsibilities in the decadeslong child sex-abuse scandal and offered its recommendations to the Vatican on both how to prevent sex abuse in the future and how to deal responsibly with victims when it happens. The report is scathing in its judgment of the church’s past actions, but what is most startling is how aggressive the panel is in recommending that the church radically change its teachings and culture to prevent more child abuse.

Among the recommendations: “Abolish the discriminatory classification of children born out of wedlock as illegitimate children,” “support efforts at international level for the decriminalization of homosexuality,” “explicitly oppose all corporal punishment in childrearing,” “overcome all the barriers and taboos surrounding adolescent sexuality that hinder their access to sexual and reproductive information,” and “review its position on abortion which places obvious risks on the life and health of pregnant girls.” On that last one, the report mentioned the horrific story of that time the church excommunicated a woman for getting her 9-year-old daughter an abortion after the girl was raped by her stepfather.

The Vatican is not happy about this. On Friday, spokesman Federico Lombardi shot back, accusing the U.N. of being biased against the church. “More attention was devoted to well-known non-governmental organizations that are prejudiced against the Catholic Church and the Holy See than to the positions of the Holy See,” he complained, adding that the panel appears “to go beyond its competences and interfere in the doctrinal and moral positions of the Catholic Church.”

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Culture

In a sharply worded and detailed response to UN committee’s critical report on the Vatican’s response to sexual abuse, the Vatican’s chief spokesman has said that the committee’s recommendations “seem to go beyond it competencies and to interfere in the very doctrinal and moral positions of the Catholic Church.”

Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Vatican press office, released a lengthy response to the report by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on February 7. In his 3-page statement charged that committee had neglected to pay attention to information submitted by the Vatican, relying instead on reports from groups critical of the Church. The Vatican spokesman strongly suggested that the report had been drafted in advance, without waiting for the Vatican’s own report.

Most important, Father Lombardi charged, the UN committee had overstepped its jurisdiction to attack the Church’s moral teaching. He said that “the Committee’s comments in several directions seem to go beyond its powers and to interfere in the very moral and doctrinal positions of the Catholic Church, giving indications involving moral evaluations of contraception, or abortion, or education in families, or the vision of human sexuality, in light of own ideological vision of sexuality itself.”

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GENEVA
ANSA

(ANSA) – Geneva, February 7 – The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child on Friday defended its report on the Vatican’s child-abuse track record after the Holy See said it was biased. The Committee made its recommendations after “objectively examining all relevant information…as it (does) with all state parties,” said Committee head Kirsten Sandberg.

“As stated in its concluding observations, the Committee welcomed the open and constructive dialogue it had with the delegation of the Holy See, which made positive commitments in numerous areas. “In particular, the Committee regards as positive the willingness expressed by the delegation to change attitudes and practices, and looks forward to the adoption of prompt and firm measures for the concrete implementation of its commitments”.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic World Report

February 07, 2014
By Catherine Harmon

After the release of a report from the United Nations’ Committee on the Rights of the Child earlier this week that roundly criticized the Vatican’s response to clerical sex abuse worldwide, the Vatican’s spokesman today issued some “comments and clarifications” about the Holy See’s position on the report.

The head of the Vatican Press Office, Father Federico Lombardi, SJ, reiterated the Vatican’s commitment to the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the Committee on the Rights of the Child was established to implement: “The Holy See, therefore, as the Holy See’s Secretary of State, Archbishop Pietro Parolin has said, continues its efforts to implement the Convention and to maintain an open, constructive and engaged dialogue with the organs contained therein.”

Lombardi continues:

At the same time, one cannot fail to see that the latest recommendations issued by the Committee appear to present – in the opinion of those who have followed well the process that preceded them – grave limitations.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) Please find, below, Vatican Radio’s translation of the full text of Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ’s Note containing some punctualizations on the UN, the Holy See and the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

******************************

After the large number of articles and comments that followed the publication of the recommendations of the audit Committee of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it seems useful to make a few comments and clarifications.

It is not appropriate to speak of confrontation “between the UN and the Vatican”. The United Nations is a reality that is very important to humanity today.

The Holy See has always provided strong moral support to the United Nations as a meeting place among all the nations, to foster peace in the world and the growth of the community of peoples in harmony, mutual respect and mutual enrichment. Countless documents and addresses of the Holy See at [the UN’s] highest levels and the intense participation of the Holy See’s representatives in the activities of many UN bodies attest to this.

The highest authorities of the UN have ever been aware of the importance of the moral and religious support of the Holy See for the growth of the community of nations: so they invited Popes to visit the organization and direct their words to the General Assembly. In the footsteps of Paul VI, John Paul II (twice) and Benedict XVI have done so. In short, the United Nations, at the highest levels, appreciate and desire the support of the Holy See and positive dialogue with it. So does the Holy See, for the good of the human family. This is the perspective in which the present questions ought to be raised.

International Conventions promoted by the United Nations are one of the ways in which the international community seeks to promote the dynamic of the search for peace and the promotion of the rights of the human person in specific fields. States are free to join. The Holy See/Vatican City State has adhered to those it considers most important in the light of its activities and its mission. (It should be noted that adherence to a Convention entails a commitment to participation, reports, etc. , which require staff and resources – for which reason the Holy See must choose [to adhere to] a limited number of Conventions, commensurate with its possibilities for participation). Among these, in a timely manner, the Holy See joined – among the first in the world – the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in the light of the great work done in this field, in many different forms ( educational, charitable , etc. . ) and for so long, by the Catholic community in the world, and in light of the Magisterium of the Church in this area, inspired by the behavior of Jesus described in the Gospels.

Naturally, the operations of the UN are vast and complex, and like any large organization – and precisely because of its international and as far as possible universal nature – embraces very different persons, positions and voices. It is therefore no wonder that in the vast world of the UN different visions shall encounter and even collide with each other. Therefore, in order that the overall result be positive, a great willingness to be open to dialogue is needed, along with attentive respect for essential rules and procedures, and in preparing activities.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

Christa Pongratz-Lippitt | Feb. 7, 2014

“It is fascinating to see how Pope Francis is encouraging, reviving and renewing the church. Our meeting with him was an excellent lesson on how to live the Gospel today,” Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna said after a 90-minute audience with the pope during the Austrian bishops’ “ad limina” visit to the Vatican in the last week of January.

The Austrian bishops took the results of the recent Vatican questionnaire to Rome with them. Responses showed that 95 percent of those who had filled out the questionnaire in Austria were in favor of allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments.

The subject of family relationships today and how the church should deal with them played an important role at the Jan. 30 meeting with the pope, Schönborn said. “We cannot speak about people without speaking about families,” Francis said, explaining that was why the subject of the coming Synod of Bishops in October had been altered from bioethics to the family.

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NEW YORK/VERMONT
New York Law Journal

Mark Hamblett, New York Law Journal
February 10, 2014

A plaintiff who alleged he was sexually abused by a priest failed in his bid to bring sexual abuse allegations in Vermont against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany.

Taking the rare step of issuing a writ of mandamus, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said the fact that the diocese holds occasional worship services over the border from New York fell far short of giving a federal court jurisdiction over the case.

The Second Circuit ordered U.S. District Judge William Sessions to dismiss the case of Shovah v. Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, New York, 13-4736-cv, where allegations against the diocese in New York were defeated by the statute of limitations.

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NEW YORK/VERMONT
Albany Times Union

By Brendan J. Lyons
Updated 2:23 pm, Friday, February 7, 2014

The Albany Roman Catholic Diocese has avoided having to turn over nearly 40 years worth of sexual abuse records after a federal appeals court on Friday ordered a Vermont judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a New York man who was taken across state lines and raped by a priest.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit indicates that U.S. District Court Judge William K. Sessions III erred when he ruled the Albany diocese had strong enough ties to the state of Vermont to be sued in that state, where the victim’s claim was not time-barred under Vermont’s statute of limitations.

The diocese, on the heels of being ordered by Sessions to turn over abuse files dating to 1975, filed an unusual court action known as a writ of mandamus that asserted the district court’s ruling was so egregious that it warranted an immediate review by the appeals panel. The appellate court, after reviewing the decision, agreed with the diocese.

“The district court’s jurisdictional analysis is clearly erroneous,” states the order issued Friday. “Subjecting the diocese to suit and the resultant foray into sensitive documents — investigations into allegations of sexual abuse by its employees — when the case would be time-barred if brought in New York … constitutes ‘exceptional circumstances’ warranting the ‘extraordinary remedy’ of a writ of mandamus.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Argus

By Anna Roberts, Crime reporter

A former teacher and assistant priest has been charged with assaulting boys.

Christopher Howarth, 66, retired, of Rocks Park Road, Uckfield, is due to appear on bail at Brighton Magistrates’ Court on Thursday, February 20, charged with 24 offences, all allegedly taking place in the Uckfield area.

Howarth, who taught at Uckfield Community Technology College until 2007, was charged today.

He is accused of 12 counts of causing engagement in sexual activity with a boy now aged 19 between 2005 and 2011, two of sexual assault by penetration against the same boy over the same period, nine of sexual assault against a boy now aged 20 between 2004 and 2012 and one of causing the same boy to watch a sexual act.

A Sussex Police statement said: “The charges, authorised by the Crown Prosecution Service, follow an investigation by specialist Sussex Police child protection detectives.

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