ABUSE TRACKER

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Newsworks

BY HOLLY OTTERBEIN

A Philadelphia judge set bail at $250,000 for Monsignor William Lynn Monday, following a Superior Court decision last week overturning his conviction.

Lynn was the first official in the Roman Catholic Church to be convicted in the United States for mishandling allegations of clergy sex abuse.

To be released, Lynn must post $25,000, relinquish his passport, as well as submit to electronic monitoring and weekly reporting.

A jury found Lynn guilty of child endangerment in 2012. Prosecutors said he transferred priests who were accused of sexual abuse to other parishes, rather than removing them.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
MSN News

A judge granted bail to Monsignor William Lynn, a Roman Catholic priest whose conviction in the clergy sex abuse scandal was reversed by an appeals court.

PHILADELPHIA — A Roman Catholic official whose novel conviction in the clergy sex abuse scandal was overturned by a Pennsylvania appeals court could be freed this week after a judge set his bail Monday at $250,000.

Monsignor William Lynn, currently an inmate at the state prison in Waymart, would have to submit to electronic monitoring and surrender his passport.

Lynn has been serving a three- to six-year sentence after being the first church official ever convicted over his handling of abuse claims against other priests.

A three-judge appellate panel threw out his conviction last week, saying Lynn was tried under a child-endangerment law that didn’t apply to him. On Monday, the defense lawyers asked Judge M. Teresa Sarmina to release the 62-year-old priest while prosecutors appeal.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WKZO

By Dave Warner

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – A Philadelphia judge on Monday set bail at $250,000 for a senior U.S. Roman Catholic Church official whose conviction in a high-profile child sex abuse case was overturned last week.

Monsignor William Lynn, 62, was convicted in June 2012 of endangering the welfare of a child for reassigning a priest with a history of sex abuse to a Philadelphia parish that was unaware of his past.

That priest, Edward Avery, later pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 10-year-old altar boy in the Philadelphia parish.

Lynn, who was not accused of molesting children himself, was the first high-ranking U.S. Roman Catholic Church official to be found guilty of covering up allegations of molestation by a priest. Lynn was secretary of clergy for the Philadelphia Archdiocese from 1994 to 2004,

Common Pleas Court Judge Teresa Sarmina ordered Lynn to surrender his passport, wear an ankle-monitoring bracelet and check in weekly with authorities as part of the conditions of his release from state prison. He is expected to be released from prison later this week, attorneys in the case said.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

DECEMBER 30, 2013 BY SUSAN MATTHEWS

As the judge set bail for Msgr. Lynn today, many are disheartened. However, justice isn’t the end game for many advocates and victims. It’s one of many means to an end. While many would like to paint victims as vengeful and money hungry, that simply isn’t the case for those I’ve met. Most lie awake at night worried that another child is enduring what they experienced. Protecting children is the victory.

Had Seth Williams not indicted Msgr. Lynn on child endangerment charges, no one would have seen the mountains of evidence proving a Church coverup of epic proportions. While Williams’ intentions have been called into question, they are irrelevant to me as a Catholic mother. What matters is that clergy child sex abuse will not continue completely unchecked in the Archdiocese if Philadelphia. At least now, many are carefully watching.

Now that we know there is a problem, we can seek solutions for our state and our Church. The first is difficult but doable. We will work together to strengthen Pennsylvania’s state laws. We will not settle for being a predator-friendly state. The latter leaves me with dwindling hope.

Msgr. Lynn may not be criminally liable but he is certainly morally liable. And shouldn’t that inform the next steps of the hierarchy? Yet, the archdiocesan press release falls woefully short of commenting on his actions. The Catholic Church will not call him or others involved in the cover up of clergy sex abuse out to the carpet. After all, he was just obeying his Bishop. And to date, no Bishops have been reprimanded or punished publicly by the Church. Will the Pope weigh in on this obscene clericalism that put predators in the midst of children? This isn’t about vengeance or even justice. This is about sending a message to the world that the Catholic Church values children – all children – above the institution.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

Whenever child sexual abuse by clergy is revealed, the church involved always says that these things happened decades ago, and that procedures are in place to ensure such crimes can no longer occur. This has been the theme at the recent New South Wales State government and Victorian State Parliamentary enquiries. It has also been used by the Catholic and Anglican churches, the YMCA and Scouts Australia at the hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

At the Royal Commission hearings, due to begin 28th January, the Salvation Army is most likely to say the same thing about abuses at its Children’s Homes.

However, such things are still occurring in recent years, not just recent decades. Further, since the Salvation Army is a multinational organisation, operating in 126 countries at last count, the total number of such recent offences is very large. Because a full coverage would constitute a book, a few cases have been selected, randomly (really!), from the many reported elsewhere.

When caught out in these more recent cases, the response has been altered to indicate, usually, that the organisation is co-operating fully with the relevant authorities, and reviewing its practices. It also is in the habit of claiming these are very rare, isolated cases. The Salvation Army’s many corporate business “partners” are having to review their associations with the organisation. For example, Target stores have banned the Salvo’s “red kettle” collections at Christmas outside its stores.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Steve Tawa

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A Philadelphia judge said today that she will order Msgr. William Lynn released on bail while his conviction on child endangerment charges works through the appeals process.

Today, at the Criminal Justice Center, Philadelphia Common Please Court judge Teresa Sarmina said that she wants Lynn, 62, to appear in person before her when she outlines the full conditions of his bail.

An appeals court last week overturned Lynn’s 2012 conviction in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia child sex abuse case (see related story), saying the particular law under which he was found guilty did not apply to him at the time (see related story).

Sarmina, who oversaw the 2012 trial, acknowledged today that she may have erred but thinks she will be upheld when the Philadelphia district attorney appeals the case.

Hugh Burns, from the Philadelphia DA’s office, told the judge today that the DA will be filing an appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The DA charged that Lynn routinely returned predatory priests to positions within the archdiocese where they continued to have contact with children.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

ALLISON STEELE, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
LAST UPDATED: Monday, December 30, 2013

Bail was set Monday at $250,000 for Msgr. William J. Lynn, four days after an appeals court ruled he was wrongly convicted of endangering children.

Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina also ruled that Lynn must surrender his passport and be subject to electronic monitoring and weekly reporting while on bail.

He must post $25,000 to be released.

District Attorney Seth Williams scheduled a noon news conference to respond to the ruling.

Convicted after a three-month trial last year, Lynn, 62, was the first Catholic church official in the country to be tried and imprisoned for covering up child sex-abuse by priests.

The monsignor has served 18 months of a 3- to 6-year term imposed by Sarmina, mostly at the State Correctional Institution at Waymart, in northeastern Pennsylvania.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
ABC News

By MARYCLAIRE DALE Associated Press

A Roman Catholic priest whose conviction in the clergy sex abuse scandal was overturned by a Pennsylvania appeals court could be freed this week after a judge set his bail Monday at $250,000.

Monsignor William Lynn, currently jailed at a state prison in Waymart, will also have to submit to electronic monitoring and surrender his passport, Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina ruled.

Lynn has been serving a three- to six-year sentence after being the first church official ever convicted over his handling of abuse claims.

A three-judge appellate panel threw out his case last week, saying Lynn was tried under a child-endangerment law that didn’t apply to him. On Monday, the priests’ lawyers asked Sarmina to release the 62-year-old priest while prosecutors appeal.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Monday, December 30, 2013

Vatican City, 30 December 2013 (VIS) – A letter was published today, dated 28 December, by which the Holy Father Francis appointed Bishop Nunzio Galantino of Cassano all’Jonio, Italy, as secretary general “ad interim” of the Italian Episcopal Conference.

In relation to this appointment, Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., director of the Holy See Press Office, published the following communique:

“The appointment of the new secretary general of the Italian Episcopal Conference has become urgent to the ordinary functioning of the General Secretariat, and for a series of duties that require his presence.

The appointment is on an ‘ad interim’ basis: Bishop Galantino will have all the faculties of the secretary general, but the duration of his mandate has not yet been established.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

NCR Editorial Staff | Dec. 30, 2013

EDITORIAL

It is a tale we have heard many times, too many times: Fr. James Spencer, testifying before Australia’s Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, said that in the 1990s and early 2000s when he was chancellor of the Brisbane archdiocese, he was concerned that the church’s response to victims of clergy sexual abuse wasn’t just. Priest perpetrators were going unpunished and lawyers were bullying victims.

“Did you ever say to the archbishop,” this isn’t right’?” the commission asked.

“I certainly inferred it,” Spence answered. “One doesn’t generally speak so directly to the archbishop. Perhaps one should.”

Indeed, one doesn’t generally speak so to the bishop, lord of his fiefdom, not if one wants to keep his job or advance in his career.

NCR has been reporting on the priest sex abuse crisis since 1984. It has been a soul-numbing experience, as we heard again and again of the pain of victims damaged by abuse and then re-victimized by bishops and chancery personnel and their lawyers who covered up abuse, stonewalled investigations and hid criminals “to protect the church,” as if the church were something other than its most vulnerable members. No, one doesn’t generally speak so to the archbishop, but thank God that some do.

Thank God for the courage of abuse survivors and the families of victims who will not let our bishops and leaders forget the abuse and their complicity in it. Thank God for activists who stand with survivors. But most of all, thank God for one very special class of people: the priests and church personnel who do stand up to their leaders and cry out for justice. People like Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle and former Benedictine Patrick Wall, who sacrificed promising ecclesiastical careers because they sided with the victims of abuse and not with those who would cover it up. Thank God for the recently formed Catholic Whistleblowers, a group of mainly priests and religious women, Catholic insiders dedicated to fighting the scourge of sex abuse and its cover-up.

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ARGENTINA
Infobae

La Justicia rechazó el recurso que había presentado la defensa del sacerdote. Venía gozando de una libertad vigilada luego de que la Corte confirmaran su condena de 2009 a 15 años de prisión por “abuso sexual”

Grassi había sido detenido el 7 de octubre pasado luego que la Cámara de Casación Bonaerense así como la Suprema Corte confirmaran su condena de 2009 a 15 años de prisión por “abuso sexual agravado por resultar sacerdote, encargado de la educación y de la guarda del menor víctima, reiterado, dos hechos, en concurso real entre sí, que a su vez concurren formalmente con corrupción de menores agravada”.

El sacerdote venía gozando de una libertad vigilada por decisión del Tribunal que lo condenó y no había sido detenido en virtud de que el fallo no estaba firme. Al confirmar su condena, selló su detención y ahora sólo le resta que se pronuncie la Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación sobre el caso.

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ARGENTINA
El Tribuno

La Cámara Penal de Morón confirmó la prisión preventiva para el sacerdote Julio César Grassi, condenado a 15 años de prisión por abuso sexual agravado y detenido desde octubre pasado.

El tribunal rechazó un planteo del abogado Ricardo Walter Malvicini, quien representa al cura condenado.

Los jueces Fabián Cardoso, Aldo Acosta Argañaraz y Elisabet Fernández avalaron así la decisión de detener a Grassi, adoptada después de que la Suprema Corte Bonaerense confirmara la condena dictada por un tribunal oral por abuso contra alumnos de la Fundación Felices los Niños, que dirigía.

Grassi fue detenido por decisión del Tribunal Oral Criminal 1 de Morón que lo había condenado en julio de 2009 pero el sacerdote permaneció en libertad porque el fallo no estaba firme.

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ARGENTINA
Global News (Canada)

By Staff The Associated Press

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – An Argentine priest serving 15 years in prison for sexually abusing a boy has lost another appeal.

Father Julio Cesar Grassi lived freely across the street from the orphanage where the crimes took place even as courts repeatedly found him guilty. He began serving the sentence behind bars in September after the provincial Supreme Court in Buenos Aires upheld the verdict.

The ruling published Monday on the justice system’s website said the appeals court turned down his lawyer’s request to free him pending a final appeal to the national Supreme Court, saying his arguments were unfounded.

Grassi was a celebrity priest who channeled big money donations to his Happy Children Foundation until he was accused of sex abuse in 1996. He was first convicted in 2009, and still maintains he is innocent.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, Dec. 30, 2013

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

Twice recently, St. Louis Catholic officials have violated a local judge’s order. Archbishop Robert Carlson is choosing to keep information about years of horrific clergy child sex crimes and church cover ups hidden, like he and his predecessors have done for decades.

[St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

They are refusing to obey this judge’s ruling even though he gave them more than six months to comply and even though there’s a protective order that would prevent anyone but two attorneys from seeing the information.

Today’s Post-Dispatch story is long but here’s the key phrase: “The archdiocese is fighting . . . to keep accused priests’ names secret.” That strategy – keeping accused priests’ names secret – has long been the goal of virtually every Catholic official. And despite years of promises of reform, it still is.

Earlier this month in Minnesota, a judge forced two Catholic bishops to make names of predator priests public. But here in St. Louis, a judge apparently can’t even force one Catholic bishop to turn over such names in private (with a protective order, so no one can see who they are).

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Statement by Barbara Dorris, SNAP Outreach Director, 314-862-7688 SNAPdorris@gmail.com

For immediate release: Monday December 30, 2013

We support DA Seth Williams’ effort to keep Msgr. William Lynn behind bars for now. We too worry that he might flee overseas, like hundreds of predator priests – and several corrupt church officials – already have. Why take the risk that a complicit Catholic cleric might escape justice?

Shortly after Archbishop Charles Chaput came to Philly, he was meeting with hundreds of priests and they gave Lynn a rousing round of applause, even though he’d already been charged with endangering children’s safety. And since he was convicted, virtually no Philly Catholic official has clearly denounced his wrongdoing.

So it’s clear that Lynn continues to enjoy the support of many of his Catholic supervisors and peers, any of whom could help him flee.

For decades, many in the justice system – like many in the pews – have trusted the Catholic hierarchy to act responsibly. That trust has been, and continues to be, repeatedly and egregiously violating, bringing more and more harm to still-vulnerable kids and already-wounded adults. We hope that in this case, the judge takes a more prudent course and keeps Msgr. Lynn locked up until there’s a final resolution.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Daily Times

By Phil Heron, Delaware County Daily Times
POSTED: 12/30/13

Attorneys for Monsignor William Lynn – the only high-ranking church official ever convicted in connection with the burgeoning child sex abuse scandal – will be in court today looking to have their client freed on bail.

I hope he gets it, and he goes free after 18 months behind bars.

That’s not because I condone for a second what I believe he and other archdiocesan officials did. It remains in my view no less horrendous, what amounts to a policy of putting the reputation of the church and problem priests over that of children.

I believe Monsignor Lynn was doing the bidding his job as best he could, implementing the policies put in place by Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, who was not charged in the scandal.

I think his actions – and the church’s policies – did in fact endanger the welfare of children. Lynn himself while on the stand during his trial indicated that “doing his best” to protect kids was not enough. But opinions – even moral ones – do not trump the law.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
NBC 10

[with video]

A Roman Catholic monsignor could leave prison after 18 months after a Pennsylvania appeals court reversed his unusual conviction in the clergy-abuse scandal.

Monsignor William Lynn is the first church official ever convicted over his handling of abuse claims. However, an appeals court has thrown out his case, saying he was tried under a child-endangerment law that didn’t apply to him.

His lawyers will be in court Monday to ask Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina to release the 62-year-old priest.

Lynn is the former secretary for clergy in the Philadelphia archdiocese, a post he held from 1992-2004.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

INQUIRER STAFF
LAST UPDATED: Monday, December 30, 2013

A bail hearing is set for Monday for Msgr. William J. Lynn in response to an appellate court ruling that he was wrongly convicted of endangering children.

Lynn is not expected to appear at the hearing before Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina, who sentenced the priest to three to six years in prison, saying he had “enabled monsters in clerical garb … to destroy the souls of children.”

District Attorney Seth Williams’ office said it would challenge the request by Lynn’s lawyers that he be released from prison.

Convicted after a three-month trial last year, Lynn, 62, was the first Catholic church official in the country to be tried and imprisoned for covering up child sex-abuse by priests.

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TEXAS
Los Angeles Times

After he left Los Angeles, Father John Salazar-Jimenez became a trusted figure in a small Texas parish. But no one there knew his history.

By Ashley Powers
Reporting from Tulia, Texas
December 30, 2013

He was given a second chance here, in the High Plains of Texas, where a patchwork of cotton and wheat fields unfurls beneath a giant blue sky.

He was no longer Father John Salazar, a name typed across yellowed newspapers and courthouse microfilm more than a thousand miles away in Los Angeles. He was Father John Salazar-Jimenez, the face of Catholicism in this town of emptied grain elevators and darkened shop windows.
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Yolanda Villegas adored Father John. A pillar of the Church of the Holy Spirit, she knew nothing of his past. Few parishioners did. Nearly every Sunday for a decade, she arrived for the Spanish-language Mass, knelt in the same pew and wondered how he’d inspire her that week.

“When he lifted the chalice and lifted the host, it almost felt like Jesus was doing it,” Villegas said.
They grew close as Villegas grieved for her daughter who had been killed in a car accident not long before the priest’s arrival in 1991. He later helped her teenage grandson Beau practice Spanish.
One day, in the spring of 2002, he asked Villegas to gather her family. He had something to confess.

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NEW MEXICO
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on December 29, 2013

*The article is not available online, hence the repost here.*

My opinion: What a mess. If James Wall were a CEO, he would be fired. But he’s a smart man who has a lot of bishops helping him out. I can’t help but think that Wall’s “bumbling fool” tack is simply an act.

Bishop goes before bankruptcy trustee
Testimony points to few answers, poorly kept records

First in a two-part series

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent
religion@gallupindependent.com
ALBUQUERQUE — The Diocese of Gallup’s petition for Chapter 11 reorganization continues to raise far more questions about the diocese’s finances rather than provide answers.

With the initial bankruptcy filing, Gallup Bishop James S. Wall submitted an opening declaration in U.S. Bankruptcy Court stating the Gallup Diocese “is the poorest diocese in the United States” without providing any facts or figures to substantiate that claim. On Nov. 26, Wall submitted a lengthy Statement of Financial Affairs, featuring incomplete documentation of properties in Arizona and New Mexico with reportedly “unknown” real estate value.

Wall’s sworn testimony during an Unsecured Creditors Committee meeting Dec. 19 didn’t provide much more clarification. The public meeting was supposed to produce answers about the diocese’s finances to the largest group of unsecured creditors in the bankruptcy case, survivors of clergy sex abuse.

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MEXICO
Milenio

[Summary: The Oaxaca archdiocese has apologized to families of victims of sexual abuse caused by priest Silvestre Hernandez. Gonzalo Alonso Guerror Calzada, auxiliary bishop, said the Catholic Church condemns actions of clergy subject to criminal proceedings.]

OSCAR RODRÍGUEZ
29/12/2013

Oaxaca
La arquidiócesis de Oaxaca, pidió perdón a las familias de víctimas de abuso sexual, causada por el sacerdote Silvestre Hernández, quien fue arrestado en acatamiento a una orden de aprehensión librada por un juez local señalado de cometer el delito de pederastia.

El obispo auxiliar, Gonzalo Alonso Calzada Guerrero, dijo que la iglesia católica reprueba la actuación del clérigo sujeto a proceso penal, exigiendo a las autoridades judiciales aplicar todo el peso de la ley de resultar responsables de las acusaciones que se le imputan.

Detalló que la grey católica estatal se mantendrá atenta del procedimiento judicial instaurado contra el obispo, quien fue detenido por elementos de la Agencia Estatal de Investigaciones (AEI), dependiente de la Procuraduría General de Justicia (PGJ), luego de mantenerse prófugo de la justicia por casi más de un año.

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MINNESOTA
Legal Examiner

Posted by Mike Bryant
December 29, 2013

If the Church has nothing to be ashamed of, if they have nothing to hide, then why are there still so many secrets the Catholic Dioceses are trying to keep safe? It was fortunate for everyone earlier this month when the announcement came that some Dioceses must release the names of priests who have been accused of sexual assault. But why would information like this have to be court ordered for it to be made public in the first place? And why are these priests being protected when they themselves are the predators? Lawyers and advocates have been very hard at work getting answers to these questions.

The information that has been hidden for years regarding sexual abuse within the Catholic Church is proof enough that those who should be protecting us and providing us with moral and spiritual support, instead are taking it away from us.

Jennifer Haselberger, the former canon lawyer for the archdiocese resigned from her position after her attempt to bring to light information regarding evidence of illegal activity within the diocese. Archbishop John Nienstedt, among others, had allegedly hide this evidence to protect the priests and his church. We now have a great opportunity to uncover these truths and get survivors the help they are warranted.

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NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, NM, Dec. 28, 2013

Second in a two-part series

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent
religion@gallupindependent.com

ALBUQUERQUE — Bishop James S. Wall’s recent testimony during the Diocese of Gallup’s Unsecured Creditors Committee meeting raised questions about just how well prepared diocesan officials were when they filed their Chapter 11 petition.

Wall and Christopher G. Linscott, the diocese’s recently hired financial consultant from Tucson, Ariz., offered sworn testimony about the Gallup Diocese’s finances at the public meeting, which was held in Albuquerque’s U.S. Bankruptcy Court Dec. 19. They were accompanied by Susan G. Boswell, the diocese’s lead bankruptcy attorney from Tucson, and Thomas D. Walker, its Albuquerque bankruptcy attorney.

Assistant U.S. Trustee Ronald E. Andazola, the Department of Justice official who conducted the meeting, asked the bishop what goals he had for the submission of a Chapter 11 reorganization plan.

“In terms of dates, not any hard dates,” Wall said. “As soon as possible.”

Andazola also asked Wall if the diocese was considering the liquidation of property to raise settlement money for clergy sex abuse claimants.

“I think we’re looking at everything. … We want to come up with a good fund,” Wall said.

Timing questioned

But just how long will Wall have to submit a reorganization plan and raise settlement money? The timeline requirements of the federal bankruptcy court system and the vocal expectations of attorneys representing sex abuse claimants may force some “hard dates” on the Gallup bishop.

Two of those attorneys, John C. Manly of California and Robert E. Pastor of Arizona, co-counsels currently representing 14 sex abuse claimants, questioned why the Gallup Diocese filed its Chapter 11 petition without first taking the time to assemble complete and accurate financial data.

Manly, appearing to scoff when Linscott and Wall could not provide a figure for the diocese’s net worth, asked them if they didn’t think it would have been “a good first step” to determine the diocese’s net worth before filing for bankruptcy.

Under questioning by Pastor, Wall admitted he had been considering Chapter 11 reorganization for a long time and had begun talking with bankruptcy attorney Boswell about two years ago. Wall also agreed that Manly and Pastor had met with Boswell and Deacon James P. Hoy, the former diocesan chief financial officer, to discuss the diocese’s possible bankruptcy plans 18 months ago, in June 2012.

Confidential document

Pastor raised the ire of Boswell when he produced a 12-page confidential financial document that he said included a list of all real estate the Gallup Diocese owns in Arizona and New Mexico, along with financial values listed for each property.

Wall has submitted a Statement of Financial Affairs to the bankruptcy court, which includes a list of diocesan-owned property, but without any financial values included.

According to Pastor, attorneys for the diocese produced the confidential financial document during litigation negotiations involving the first clergy sex abuse lawsuit Pastor filed in Arizona’s Coconino County Superior Court.

Earlier in the meeting, Andazola had similarly questioned why the Gallup chancery property had been valued at more than $315,000 in a 2012 fiscal year audit report, but was listed as having an “unknown value” in the bankruptcy documents.

When Pastor attempted to give Wall a copy of the 12-page confidential document to review, Boswell jumped up from her seat, grabbed the document, and threw it back on Pastor’s table. After some bickering between the attorneys on different types of real estate valuations, Boswell agreed to accept the document for Wall and provide a copy to Andazola.

Legal argument

Much of the meeting’s testimony focused on the more than 160 pieces of “trust” and “real” property listed by Wall in his Statement of Financial Affairs and the differences between real estate replacement value and market value.

Because the diocese has not maintained a record of all its properties or copies of all its deeds, diocesan officials said they had to ask county officials in both states to search land records for diocesan property. According to Boswell, the diocese is now trying to retain brokers who can determine the market value of key properties.

“To date it has been a challenge,” Boswell admitted, explaining that the diocese owns various properties in widespread locations.

Other testimony centered on the diocese’s legal argument that Gallup priests and Gallup parishes are somehow separate from the Diocese of Gallup.

“No they’re not employees of the diocese,” Linscott said of Catholic priests working in the Diocese. Later in his testimony, Linscott admitted some parishes might need to contribute money to the diocese for settlements with sex abuse claimants.

When Manly asked Wall how much money parishes can spend without approval from the chancery or if parishes can enter into contracts without the chancery’s approval, Wall admitted he did not know the answers.

“Well, they’re on the website,” Manly said, explaining the Gallup Diocese had the information posted online under its fiscal guidelines.

“Can parishes fire their pastors?” Manly asked the bishop.

“I don’t believe so,” Wall replied.

Walker, the diocese’s Albuquerque attorney, angrily objected twice to Manly and Pastor’s line of questioning during the meeting. At one point, Walker held out his right arm in a blocking motion toward Pastor and said, “This isn’t a deposition, do you know that?”

This first Unsecured Creditors Committee meeting exceeded its scheduled time and ran nearly four hours. It will reconvene at 10 a.m., Jan. 23, in Judge David T. Thuma’s courtroom, located in Albuquerque’s U.S. Bankruptcy Court, 500 Gold Ave. S.W. The newly appointed committee, composed of seven clergy sex abuse survivors from the Gallup Diocese, should have an attorney by that date who will be able to ask further questions about diocesan finances. The meeting is open to the public.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

SULAIMAN ABDUR-RAHMAN, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
LAST UPDATED: Monday, December 30, 2013

Under a steady rain Sunday, Judy and Chuck Miller took up spots that have often been occupied by child-abuse victim advocates: the steps of the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul.

Judy Miller leads the Delaware branch of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a group that hosted regular protests after the 2011 grand jury report about clergy sex-abuse in Philadelphia.

Her return Sunday was prompted by last week’s Superior Court ruling that overturned the conviction of Msgr. William J. Lynn, the central figure in the case.

“In my humble opinion, he was certainly guilty,” Miller, 74, said as she and her husband handed leaflets to attendees at the Mass.

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

MINNESOTA
Liberty Voice

Minnesota has just added two more names to a growing list of Catholic priests who have been found as credibly accused of sexually irresponsible behavior. Early in December the list was announced to have 34 names. Today they added the Rev. Joseph Gallatin and the Rev. Mark Wehmann to the list. These priests will be taking a leave of absence, according to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis referring to the two names just added to their list.

In an attempt to be responsive and dutiful, a third-party consulting firm was hired to make evaluations. In this investigation the Minnesota firm, Kinsale Management Consulting, has sustained allegations of sexual misconduct among priests going back decades. This activity is a response to allegations that the Archdiocese has been slow to act once misconduct has been uncovered.

It is all part of a never-ending series of sexual misconduct allegations, most of which involve adolescents and young teens, that has begun to seem like the veritable unraveling of the Catholic clergy as an institution in western culture.

Moreover, it’s not as though we have had a questionable, small body of evidence surfacing after much investigation. Rather, it is as if there is no end to the rampant child sexual abuse, pedophilia, and disturbingly unethical behavior we keep hearing about on the part of priests.

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

MINNESOTA
Legal Examiner

Father Joseph Gallatin and Father Mark Wehmann Temporarily Removed by The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis

Posted by Mike Bryant
December 29, 2013

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis announced today that they were removing temporarily Father Joseph Gallatin and Father Mark Wehmann for claims of inappropriate interactions with minors. Gallatin has been serving as pastor at the Church of St. Peter in Mendota since 2008.

Wehmann has been serving as pastor at St. Boniface in Minneapolis and also at Fairview University Hospital in Minneapolis. Previously he was at Church of St. Bridget of Sweden (Lindstrom). Neither name was on the list recently released by the Archdiocese.

According to the St Paul Pioneer Press:

A consulting firm that has been reviewing diocesan files identified the incidents.

Gallatin, who has been serving as a pastor at the Church of St. Peter since July 2008, was found to have had one incident of inappropriate conduct with a minor several years ago that involved a “boundary violation.” The incident did not involve a crime, the consulting firm said.

Wehmann, who has served as a pastor at St. Boniface since July 2013, was also found to have had inappropriate conduct with minors, but in several cases. The consulting firm said law enforcement had been informed about “most of these” in the past, and no criminal charges were filed. The archdiocese recently informed law enforcement about the remaining incidents. Until recently, Wehmann was a part-time chaplain at Fairview University Hospital in Minneapolis.

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

PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Democrat

Kathy Mellott
kmellott@tribdem.com

JOHNSTOWN — The Tribune-Democrat is counting down the top stories of 2013, as determined by voting by newsroom employees. One story will appear each day in print and e-editions between now and the end of the year.

Readers can vote for their choice for the top story at www.tribdem.com/beststories.

A highly respected Roman Catholic high school, its alumni and students were rocked in January after it was learned that one of its beloved former instructors and friend to many had sexually molested what appears to have been nearly 100 people.

News hit the Johnstown area in mid-January that Franciscan friar Brother Stephen Baker had been accused of molesting male students at John F. Kennedy High School in Youngstown, Ohio, two decades ago. Church officials there reached a financial settlement with 11 of those accusers and all eyes turned toward Bishop McCort Catholic High School.

Baker came to Johnstown from Youngstown in 1992 and stayed through 2001. He was known by students as a religion teacher, but left his mark on mostly male athletes because he was a part of the athletic department.

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

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

St. Louis suit follows push toward transparency in church sexual abuse claims

By Jennifer S. Mann jmann@post-dispatch.com 314-621-58040

ST. LOUIS • The lawsuit filed by an anonymous Jane Doe against a now-defrocked St. Louis priest echoes thousands of others nationwide that have forced more than $3 billion in legal awards and settlements from the Roman Catholic Church.

But it has particular relevance here because of an added promise: unprecedented disclosure.

Experts on the Catholic Church abuse scandal say Doe’s suit fits with a trend of the last decade or so, in which victims are increasingly pushing for transparency, and not just big payouts.

Timothy Lytton, author of “Holding Bishops Accountable: How Lawsuits Helped the Catholic Church Confront Clergy Sexual Abuse,” said that when plaintiff’s attorneys began filing suits against the church in the mid-1980s, they were motivated primarily by settlements and limited by judges who were disinclined to grant large discovery requests.

But gradually, over time, he said, three things began happening: The crisis was framed in terms of institutional failure, versus a few “bad apple” priests; lawsuits forced the Catholic Church to divulge information that prosecutors had been politically afraid of demanding; and the scandal gained the focus of major institutions — the church, law enforcement, legislatures and the press.

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

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

Archdiocese fights judge’s order to release unprecedented level of abuse records

By Jennifer S. Mann jmann@post-dispatch.com > 314-621-58043

ST. LOUIS • The first priest defrocked here as the child abuse scandal erupted in the Roman Catholic Church is now at the center of a lawsuit burrowing more deeply into the issue than ever before.

A civil suit against Joseph Ross has the potential to reveal two decades of internal records on sexual abuse allegations made against St. Louis priests, if a judge’s order holds.

The suit, which also names Archbishop Robert Carlson and the Archdiocese of St. Louis, was filed in 2011 by a 19-year-old woman who says Ross began abusing her 16 years ago at St. Cronan’s Church.

Ross had been convicted of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old boy at a University City parish a decade earlier, and was sent away for treatment, then reassigned to the new parish. Years later, additional abuse allegations surfaced.

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NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, NM, Dec. 27, 2013

Testimony points to few answers, poorly kept records

First in a two-part series

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent
religion@gallupindependent.com

ALBUQUERQUE — The Diocese of Gallup’s petition for Chapter 11 reorganization continues to raise far more questions about the diocese’s finances rather than provide answers.

With the initial bankruptcy filing, Gallup Bishop James S. Wall submitted an opening declaration in U.S. Bankruptcy Court stating the Gallup Diocese “is the poorest diocese in the United States” without providing any facts or figures to substantiate that claim. On Nov. 26, Wall submitted a lengthy Statement of Financial Affairs, featuring incomplete documentation of properties in Arizona and New Mexico with reportedly “unknown” real estate value.

Wall’s sworn testimony during an Unsecured Creditors Committee meeting Dec. 19 didn’t provide much more clarification. The public meeting was supposed to produce answers about the diocese’s finances to the largest group of unsecured creditors in the bankruptcy case, survivors of clergy sex abuse.

“This is an opportunity to learn what the resources of the diocese are,” Assistant U.S. Trustee Ronald Andazola said in his opening remarks.

Andazola, employed with the Department of Justice, oversaw the meeting and led the initial questioning.

Wall, however, was frequently not able to answer many of the questions posed to him about the diocese’s finances, its financial policies or the property it owns.

The individual who might have been able to answer those questions, Deacon James P. Hoy, the former diocesan chief financial officer for 14 years, was not in attendance. Hoy resigned June 30, about two months prior to the Chapter 11 announcement. Hoy’s financial policies and his financial record keeping, however, were the subject of many questions posed to the bishop.

Poorly kept records

In addition to Andazola, private attorneys John C. Manly and James I. Stang, of California, Robert E. Pastor, of Arizona, and Richard T. Fass, of Texas, all representing sex abuse claimants, also questioned the bishop.

Wall, looking somber and speaking very softly, was assisted with the questions by Christopher G. Linscott, the Diocese of Gallup’s recently hired financial consultant from Tucson. Susan G. Boswell, the diocese’s lead bankruptcy attorney, also from Tucson, occasionally advised Wall about how to answer.

During the meeting, which ran nearly four hours, Wall and Linscott testified about a variety of subjects including audits of the diocese, loans, bank accounts, clergy abuse lawsuits, an underfunded Priests Retirement Fund, oil and gas leases, and property deeds. Many of their answers spoke to a diocesan financial office in apparent disarray, with poorly kept records.

Andazola said he had been given a copy of the most recent audit of the diocese, which was for fiscal year 2012. He was given an incomplete copy, he said, and he requested the audit’s missing pages. Andazola noted the audit indicated the diocese had spent $114,000 on legal fees and settlement payments to clergy abuse victims during 2012.

Andazola also requested Wall give him a copy of the report the bishop submitted to the Vatican during his “ad limina” visit which reportedly includes financial information about the diocese.

Linscott was able to provide an annual diocesan revenue figure of $2.6 to $2.7 million for fiscal year 2012, but he was not able to specify how much revenue came from restricted or unrestricted funds. Neither Linscott nor Wall could explain some “allocations” listed in the 2012 audit.

Wall admitted he hadn’t authorized an audit of the most recent fiscal year, ending June 30, 2013, which fell just two months before his Chapter 11 announcement and which coincided with Hoy’s date of resignation. “The primary reason one wasn’t done this year was because of the costs,” Wall said.
Loans and leases

Two undated loans signed with other Catholic dioceses, $29,000 from the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and $200,000 from the Diocese of Phoenix, were arranged because the Gallup Diocese needed money to file its Chapter 11 petition, Wall explained.

The diocese also signed a $200,000 promissory note with Pinnacle Bank in 2011. Wall said he thought the money had been borrowed to assist Gallup Catholic School, but he was not sure as to the loan’s specific need.

According to Wall and Linscott, the diocese recently discovered 12 Wells Fargo bank accounts that were not in the diocese’s name but were using its tax I.D. number. Two accounts had no money, one account for the local Marriage Encounter program had $5,000, and the largest account, opened in the name of a parish on the Navajo Nation, had $150,000. Diocesan officials are now trying to determine who opened the accounts.

Although 13 clergy abuse lawsuits have been filed against the Gallup Diocese in Arizona’s Coconino County Superior Court, Wall was unaware the Gallup Diocese had an Arizona attorney representing the diocese in at least one of those cases, and he was not able to answer questions about what other Catholic dioceses or religious orders were co-defendants in the cases or which ones might share legal liability for clergy abuse claims.

Linscott admitted money intended for the Priest Retirement Fund or Pension Plan used to be deposited into a general checking account, but now the money is being put into the proper custodial account. “It is an underfunded plan,” Linscott said, adding he did not know what the total “underfunded amount” was.

Although Linscott said the diocese apparently receives about $10,000 annually from oil and gas leases, its financial office doesn’t have documentation as to where those properties are located.

And finally, Wall, Linscott and Boswell admitted that diocesan officials had to seek the help of county officials in Arizona and New Mexico to search county land records to develop a list of the diocese’s own real estate holdings.

Editor’s Note: Saturday’s Part 2 looks at the Diocese of Gallup’s list of properties and other contentious issues in the Unsecured Creditors Committee meeting.

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MINNESOTA
Fox 9

by Shelby Capacio – email

MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) –
On Sunday, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis announced that two metro priests are being placed on leave pending a review of alleged inappropriate conduct involving minors.

Church officials say both Father Joseph Gallatin, pastor at the Church of St. Peter in Mendota, and Father Mark Wehmann, of St. Boniface in Minneapolis, agreed to take a leave of absence from active ministry; however, both will remain pastors until a final review is completed.

The move came as part of a review of clergy files that is still being performed by an outside professional firm, Kinsale Management Consulting, which is combing through the records of all clergy members in active ministry.

According to a pair of releases from the archdiocese, both cases involve so-called “boundary violations,” but no further information was given.

FATHER JOSEPH GALLATIN

According to a release, a single incident of inappropriate conduct with a minor dating back many years ago was uncovered by the current review.

The archdiocese said the review team did not conclude that the incident was criminal, but law enforcement has since been notified “to ensure all appropriate steps have been taken.”

Gallatin has served as a pastor in Mendota since July 2008.

FATHER MARK WEHMANN

In the case of Wehmann, the review team identified several instances of inappropriate conduct involving minors. Although law enforcement had been informed of most of the incidents in the past and decided not to press charges, the archdiocese has now informed police of the remaining incidents that were not previously disclosed.

Wehmann only recently came to be pastor at St. Boniface in Minneapolis in July 2013. Until recently, he had also served as a part-time chaplain at Fairview University Hospital in Minneapolis.

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

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Philly’s Catholic DA, Seth Williams, is asking Jesuit educated Catholic trial judge, M. Teresa Sarmina, to deny bail to Cardinal Justin Rigali’s former top aide, Monsignor William Lynn, on the basis that Lynn is a “flight risk” who may seek refuge in the Vatican. Rigali had just been spotted on worldwide TV in the prime seats at Pope Francis’ Christmas Eve Mass at the Vatican. Will Lynn soon be reuniting with his old boss?

Is there a risk of flight of a priest implicated in decisions that placed many children at risk of priest predators? Amazingly, Lynn’s lawyer suggested that Lynn be put back to Church work, which likely would give him access to children.

There is, of course, some risk Lynn would flee to the Vatican to avoid returning to prison. Recently, for example, an allegedly child abusing Archbishop fled to Rome from the Dominican Republic, as reported at:

[CNN]

And a Polish priest facing likely charges of child sexual abuse also recently fled the Dominican Republic for Poland, as reported at:

[BBC News]

And over recent decades, numerous foreign Catholic priests have fled possible US criminal proceedings, with few returning and apparently little help from the Vatican in getting them to return; see, “Fugitives from justice: Roman Catholic priests”, as reported at:

[Chicago Tribune]

For some of other important implications of the Lynn case, see, “Monsignor Lynn Proves Why President Obama Must Step Up”, at: http://wp.me/P2YEZ3-WZ

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

PENNSYLVANIA
WTRF

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) –
A legal ruling reversing the landmark conviction of a Roman Catholic priest might have implications for the criminal case against three former Penn State administrators.

Lawyers for the university officials charged in the Jerry Sandusky scandal say that child endangerment counts could be dropped because of the Superior Court’s decision.

Judges ruled Thursday that Monsignor William Lynn should not have been retroactively charged under a 2007 child endangerment law for alleged actions that occurred in 1990s. Prosecutors say he shuffled predator priests among parishes in Philadelphia.

The former university officials are charged under the same law with endangering children for allegedly not reporting a molestation claim against Sandusky in 2001.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Digital Journal

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (PRWEB) December 29, 2013

The reversal of Monsignor William Lynn’s criminal conviction for Endangering the Welfare of Children by the Pennsylvania Superior Court, docket 3201-EDA-2011, has caught the eye of law enforcement in its campaign to aggressively prosecute individuals who ignored or failed to report the conduct of child predators whom they previously controlled or supervised within their own institutions.

Monsignor Lynn, an Archdiocese of Philadelphia priest, was convicted of Endangering the Welfare of Children in Philadelphia County docket CP-51-CR-3530-2011, based on prosecution allegations that he knowingly reassigned suspected predator priests to different Catholic parishes, where further acts of child molestation were allegedly committed by the same transferred priests. The Superior Court’s ruling that Lynn should never have been prosecuted in the first place under the 2007 statute retroactively, will likely result in his release from prison shortly where he has been serving a six year sentence.

The Lynn decision could also present a significant legal hurdle in the Attorney General’s pending prosecutions in Dauphin County, docket CP-22-CR-3615-2013, against Graham Spanier, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, the three Penn State administrators charged under the same 2007 statute in connection with the Sandusky case, according to John I. McMahon, Jr., Esquire.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on December 29, 2013

The Red Herring Award of the month is a doozey:

Earlier this week, this op-ed appeared in the Port Huron MI Times Herald. The author, Mike Stechschulte, says that the media and the public need “perspective” about the clergy abuse crisis.

He cites “huge improvements in policies,” low numbers of recent clergy sex abuse cases, and a recent problematic abuse allegation made against St. Paul and Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt (currently being investigated) as proof that we need to focus our attentions elsewhere.

But a single allegation against the Archbishop is NOT why there is a scandal in St. Paul. It’s a big, fat red herring and Stechschulte hopes that low-information citizens will fall in step.

Stechschulte is wrong. There is a huge scandal in St. Paul, and the media and public must maintain razor sharp focus. It’s not about a recent allegation, it’s about the COVER-UP.

Here’s what Stechschulte “forgot” to tell the folks in Port Huron:

– The fact that just this month, the Archdiocese was forced by the courts to make public the names of accused priests. When church officials “suddenly” decided to review their own files on these men, two priests were put on leave. Why didn’t the Archbishop put them on leave when the credible accusations were made and verified? Why didn’t church leaders warn parishioners and protect kids? THAT’S a scandal.

– Stechschulte neglected to include that the former Vicar for Clergy (and brother of Obama’s chief of staff) is refusing to cooperate with police and hired a personal attorney. THAT’S a scandal.

– He “forgot” to mention the Curtis Wehmeyer case, the child porn cache in the Archdiocese basement, and the whistleblower who blew the lid off of the cover-up just this past autumn. Yeah, you got it: THAT’S a scandal.

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MINNESOTA
KAAL

By: Megan Stewart

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has placed two priests on leave following a review of clergy files conducted by an outside firm hired by the Archdiocese.

On Sunday, the Archdiocese announced in a statement that Father Mark Wehmann and Father Joseph Gallatin have agreed to take a leave of absence after their files were reviewed by a consulting firm specializing in investigative support for faith-based organizations.

Wehmann was placed on leave after the firm found several incidents of inappropriate conduct with minors. According to the statement, the Archdiocese notified law enforcement about most of the incidents in the past and determined no criminal charges were appropriate.

The Archdiocese recently informed law enforcement about the remaining issues, the statement said.
Wehmann has been serving as a pastor at St. Boniface in Minneapolis since July and, until recently, was a part-time chaplain at Fairview University Hospital.

The firm also identified an incident of inappropriate conduct involving Gallatin, who has been serving as a pastor at the Church of St. Peter in Mendota since July 2008, the Archdiocese said in a statement.

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MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press

By Raya Zimmerman
rzimmerman@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 12/29/2013

Two priests from Catholic churches in Minneapolis and Mendota are taking leaves of absence after a review of files revealed previous cases of inappropriate conduct with minors.

The priests were identified in a statement Sunday by the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis as the Rev. Joseph Gallatin from the Church of St. Peter in Mendota and the Rev. Mark Wehmann from St. Boniface Catholic Church in Minneapolis. A consulting firm that has been reviewing diocesan files identified the incidents.

Gallatin, who has been serving as a pastor at the Church of St. Peter since July 2008, was found to have had one incident of inappropriate conduct with a minor several years ago that involved a “boundary violation.” The incident did not involve a crime, the consulting firm said.

Wehmann, who has served as a pastor at St. Boniface since July 2013, was also found to have had inappropriate conduct with minors, but in several cases. The consulting firm said law enforcement had been informed about “most of these” in the past, and no criminal charges were filed. The archdiocese recently informed law enforcement about the remaining incidents. Until recently, Wehmann was a part-time chaplain at Fairview University Hospital in Minneapolis.

Since this fall, the archdiocese has faced harsh criticism for failing to expose clergy who sexually abused children and for allegedly covering up cases. Earlier this month, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis released a list of 34 priests “credibly accused” of sexually abusing children in decades prior. Los Angeles-based Kinsale Management Consulting has been conducting an ongoing review of all clergy files since mid-November.

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

MINNESOTA
KARE

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Two priests will be taking a leave of absence as a result of an ongoing review of clergy files, according to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

In a statement released Sunday, the archdiocese announced the priests have agreed to take a leave of absence from their ministries. They state that the two situations are not related, but are both a result of the review of clergy files by an outside firm that archdiocese hired.

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

MINNESOTA
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis

Date: Sunday, December 29, 2013

Source: Jim Accurso

The Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis today announced that Fr. Mark Wehmann has agreed to take a leave of absence from active ministry. Fr. Wehmann’s clergy file recently was reviewed as a part of the comprehensive file review by an outside professional firm that currently is reviewing files of all clergy in active ministry.

This review has identified several incidents of inappropriate conduct with minors involving boundary violations. Law enforcement has been informed about most of these in the past and has determined that no criminal charges were appropriate. The archdiocese recently has informed law enforcement about the remaining incidents.

Fr. Wehmann has been serving as a pastor at St. Boniface in Minneapolis since July 2013 and until recently as a part time chaplain at Fairview University Hospital in Minneapolis. While on his leave of absence, Fr. Wehmann will remain pastor but will not be performing any public ministry until a final review is complete.

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

MINNESOTA
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis

Date: Sunday, December 29, 2013

Source: Jim Accurso

The Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis today announced that Fr. Joseph Gallatin has agreed to take a leave of absence from active ministry. Fr. Gallatin’s clergy file recently was reviewed as a part of the comprehensive file review by an outside professional firm that currently is reviewing files of all clergy in active ministry.

This review has identified a single incident of inappropriate conduct with a minor many years ago involving a boundary violation. The outside professional review team has concluded that the incident did not involve a crime. However, to ensure all appropriate steps have been taken, the archdiocese also recently informed law enforcement about the incident.

Fr. Gallatin has been serving as a pastor at the Church of St. Peter in Mendota since July 2008. While on his leave of absence, Fr. Gallatin will remain pastor but will not be performing any public ministry until a final review is complete.

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MINNESOTA
CBS Minnesota

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese says two pastors are taking leaves as a result of an ongoing review of clergy files.

The Rev. Joseph Gallatin is pastor at the Church of St. Peter in Mendota. The Rev. Mark Wehmann is pastor at St. Boniface in Minneapolis. The archdiocese says they won’t be performing public ministry pending a final review.

The company reviewing the files found Gallatin was accused of one incident of inappropriate conduct with a minor involving what the church calls a “boundary violation.” The firm says the incident wasn’t criminal, but has referred it to police.

–The review of Wehmann found several incidents of boundary violations. The archdiocese says police were told about most of them previously and determined charges weren’t warranted.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Article by: JIM ADAMS , Star Tribune Updated: December 29, 2013

The priests were identified as being involved in inappropriate conduct years ago.

Two more Catholic priests have taken leaves from active ministry after an outside firm retained by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis found the priests had been involved in inappropriate conduct with minors in past years.

The Archdiocese announced Sunday that the Rev. Mark Wehmann and the Rev. Joseph Gallatin have agreed to take leaves of absence after their files were reviewed by Kinsale Management Consulting, of Los Angeles. The two will remain pastors but won’t perform public ministry until the reviews of their “boundary violation” incidents are completed.

The leaves come as Twin Cities Catholics confront a flood of allegations of priest sexual abuse and accusations that some Catholic leaders ignored warnings of sexual misconduct.

The scandal already has toppled Archbishop John Nienstedt’s vicar general, the Rev. Peter Laird, and prompted abrupt resignations from the University of St. Thomas board by former Archbishop Harry Flynn and his former top deputy, the Rev. Kevin McDonough. Both have been criticized for not responding appropriately to allegations of sexual abuse by priests.

Archbishop Nienstedt also voluntarily stopped public ministry on Dec. 17, while St. Paul Police investigate an allegation that he inappropriately touched a male minor on the buttocks in 2009 during a group photography session following a confirmation ceremony. Nienstedt called the claim “absolutely and entirely false.”

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UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Summary of Case: A Jesuit priest of the Oregon Province ordained in 1952, Fallert spent his entire career in rural Alaska. He was a school principal, parish pastor and, for five years, Alaska’s Jesuit Superior General. He died in 1990. Fallert was accused in a 2009 lawsuit of the sexual abuse of a girl in St. Michael’s, Alaska in the 1950s.

Ordained: 1952
Died: 1990

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UNITED STATES
Talking Points Memo

CAITLIN MACNEAL – DECEMBER 29, 2013

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, on Sunday praised Pope Francis for changing the way the world views the Catholic church.

“This pope has successfully, finally shattered the caricature of the church that his predecessors have tried hard to do,” Dolan said on ABC’s “This Week.” “What’s that caricature? That the church is kind of mean and dour and always saying no and always telling us what we can’t do and always telling us why we should be excluded. He’s saying, no, come on in, the church is about warmth and tenderness.”

Dolan said that Catholic leaders were surprised by how effective Pope Francis has been at improving the image of the church.

“What we were after was a good pastor with a track record of solid administration but fatherly warm, tender care for the sheep, for his people,” Dolan said. “And, boy, we got that on steroids with Pope Francis. He’s the world’s parish priest.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Road to Recovery

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

MEDIA RELEASE
DECEMBER 29, 2013

Bail hearing for Philadelphia priest, Msgr. William Lynn, who supervised sexually abusive clergy is another “punch in the gut” to clergy sexual abuse survivors

Survivors of sexual abuse will call on judge to deny bail to Philadelphia priest who enabled sexual abuse of children

Once again, highly-placed religious leaders might be “bailed out” of responsibility for enabling sexual abuse of children while many survivors will never be bailed out of their misery

What: A demonstration calling on Judge Teresa Sarmina to deny bail to Msgr. William
Lynn, former Secretary for Clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, who was convicted by a jury of his peers in a Philadelphia courtroom of enabling the sexual abuse of children by his clergy colleagues.

When: Monday, December 30, 2013 at 9:00 A.M.

Where: On the sidewalk in front of the courthouse at 1301 Filbert Street, Philadelphia, PA
19107.

Who: Members of Road to Recovery, a non-profit charity that assists victims of sexual
abuse, including a man from suburban Philadelphia who will speak about his sexual abuse by a priest in another state. Many of the other demonstrators are survivors of clergy sexual abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese and surrounding dioceses and states.

Why: Once again, the criminal justice system favors sexual abusers and enablers of
sexual abuse. Monsignor William Lynn was convicted by a jury of his peers who heard months of testimony, including poignant and credible accounts by survivors of clergy sexual abuse. He was deemed to be a criminal, and survivors of clergy sexual abuse once again call on the courts for free and equitable treatment. Up to this point, laws and religious leaders have not bailed victims out of their trauma and treated them with the respect they deserve, and Msgr. William Lynn is one such church leader who has not treated clergy abuse victims honesty, truthfully, and compassionately. He was convicted for such behavior by a jury of citizens who judged his behavior to be criminal. Lynn does not deserve to be bailed out unless and until every one of the victims to whom he denied fair hearings is “bailed out” of their pain.

Contacts: Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D. – President, Road to Recovery, Inc. – 862-368-2800

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By ROSS DOUTHAT
Published: December 28, 2013

IN ancient Sanskrit, the word “pundit” meant “wise man” or “religious sage.” In modern English, it means “often wrong, rarely accountable.” There are ways that those of us who scribble about politics can avoid living down to that reputation — by keeping our predictions vague (it worked for Nostradamus), by sticking to sure things (I told you Herman Cain wouldn’t be elected president), or by deploying weasel words like “it’s possible that …” at every opportunity. But time, chance and fallibility eventually make false prophets of us all. …

2. I underestimated Pope Francis — or misread the media. In columns pegged to Pope Benedict’s unexpected retirement and Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s elevation to the papacy, I made two claims: first, that a new “Catholic moment” in American life could “only be made by Americans themselves,” and second, that the new pope’s “evocative name” and “humble posture” wouldn’t be sufficient to repair the church’s image absent concrete steps to extend accountability for the sex-abuse scandal to the upper reaches of the hierarchy.

Given the subsequent media fascination with Francis, my attempt to minimize the papacy’s importance in American religious life may have been somewhat premature. More important, I was entirely wrong about the Vatican’s image being inextricably tied to the legacy of the sex-abuse crisis. To date, the new pope has done much less than the underappreciated Benedict on that front, but nobody in the Western press seems to care: even as American bishops continue to mishandle abuse cases, Francis’s blend of charisma, asceticism and inclusivity have been sufficient to reverse a decade of bad press for Catholicism.

In a way, I’m grateful to have been wrong, since the message and mission of the church deserve as much attention as the continuing blindness of some bishops. But that blindness still needs to be addressed, and it’s troubling, and telling, that the media would give a more liberal-seeming pope a pass on an issue they hammered his predecessor on at every opportunity. And if I’d been just a little more cynical about these things, I probably would have seen it coming.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

The Salvation Army knows how to strike a good business deal (see yesterday’s posting on Kettering Textiles). The Chairman of the trading company of the organisation in the U.K., “Lt-Col” Ivor Telfer, popped up as the Chairman of the Salvation Army’s Olympic Task Force. He got a good deal out of the London Olympics Committee.

The Salvation Army owns the 900 acre Hadleigh Farm, which is used to provide employment training and life skills for youth under various government programs. Somehow, Telfer convinced Olympics officials to make the farm the venue for the mountain bike events, over several other applicants. Normally, Olympic events sites remain in the hands of government bodies of one form or another.

In this case, the Salvation Army acquired a $1.2 million facility, at taxpayer expense, which it gets to keep, and make money from. The main income from the farm prior to the Olympics was selling the malt used to manufacture the popular confectionary, “Maltesers”.

The farm had also run a shop, café and tea-room before, relying on local tourism. As part of the deal, the government paid for highway and local road up-grades to Hadleigh Farm, enabling it, in future, to handle larger numbers of tourists.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams is asking Judge M. Teresa Sarmina to deny bail to Msgr. William J. Lynn, on the basis that Lynn is a “flight risk” who may seek refuge in the Vatican.

A panel of three Superior Court judges on Dec. 26th reversed Lynn’s “historic” 2012 conviction on one count of endangering the welfare of a child, and said that the monsignor should be “discharged forthwith.” But the D.A. isn’t going along with the higher court’s opinion at a bail hearing scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday before Judge Sarmina.

Lynn was labeled a “flight risk” in a six-page answer to a petition for a bail hearing filed by Hugh J. Burns, Jr., chief of the D.A.’s appeals unit. The monsignor is a “high ranking official [in] a worldwide organization, the Roman Catholic Church, that has both diplomatic and non-diplomatic facilities in many nations,” Burns wrote.

The evidence presented at Lynn’s trial “established that numerous individuals within that organization are closely associated with [Lynn] and may be willing to improperly assist him out of personal interest without proper sanction,” Burns wrote.

In response, Lynn’s lawyer, Thomas A. Bergstrom, said, “The whole thing is idiotic. These guys [in the district attorney’s office] are the most unprofessional lawyers I’ve ever run across in my life. They simply ignore the law and they’re gonna continue to do it. But that [Superior Court] order applies to them as well.”

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DEUTSCHLAND
Allgemeine Zeitung

[Summary: The dioceses of Mainz, Speyer and Trier have paid at least 665,000 euros to victims of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. A total of 113 applicants have been compensated so far.]

Von Birgit Reichert, dpa
Trier (dpa/lrs) – Die Bistümer Mainz, Speyer und Trier haben bislang mindestens 665 000 Euro an Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs in der katholischen Kirche gezahlt. Insgesamt 113 Antragsteller seien bis dato entschädigt worden, ergab eine Umfrage der Nachrichtenagentur dpa.

Vor knapp vier Jahren hatte ein Missbrauchsskandal die katholische Kirche in Deutschland erschüttert. Die sexuellen Übergriffe von Priestern und Geistlichen lagen Jahrzehnte zurück, wurden dann aber erst aufgedeckt. Seitdem haben sich deutschlandweit rund 1300 Opfer bei der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz (DBK) gemeldet, sie wurden mittlerweile mit mehreren Millionen Euro entschädigt.

Als die katholische Kirche im März 2011 den Startschuss für «materielle Leistungen in Anerkennung des Leids der Opfer» gab, türmten sich die Anträge bei der DBK aus allen Bistümern. Knapp drei Jahre später ist die Antragsflut vorbei. «Die Zahl der Anträge ist massiv zurückgegangen», sagte der Missbrauchsbeauftragte der Bischofskonferenz, Triers Bischof Stephan Ackermann.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Frankfurter Allgemeine

Knapp vier Jahre nach Enthüllung des Missbrauchsskandals hat die katholische Kirche schätzungsweise rund sechs Millionen Euro an die Opfer gezahlt. Rund 1300 Menschen stellten bei der Koordinierungsstelle der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz (DBK) einen Antrag auf Entschädigung. In den allermeisten Fällen habe die Expertenstelle eine Geldzahlung empfohlen, die über die jeweiligen Bistümer oder Orden erfolge, sagte ein Sprecher der DBK. Im Durchschnitt flossen pro bewilligtem Fall rund 5000 Euro, wie eine Umfrage der Nachrichtenagentur dpa ergab.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Radio Vatikan

[Summary: About 6 million euros have been paid to victims of abuse by the German Catholic Church. A total of 1,300 applications were made for compensation throught the coordination office of the German Bishops Conference. In most cases, experts have recommended payment of money.]

Etwa sechs Millionen Euro hat die katholische Kirche in Deutschland bisher an die Opfer von Missbrauchsfällen gezahlt. Das berichtet die die Nachrichtenagentur dpa. Insgesamt seien rund 1.300 Anträge auf Entschädigung bei der Koordinierungsstelle der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz (DBK) gestellt worden. In den allermeisten Fällen habe die Expertenstelle eine Geldzahlung empfohlen, die über die jeweiligen Bistümer oder Orden erfolge, sagte ein Sprecher der DBK. Im Durchschnitt flossen pro bewilligtem Fall rund 5.000 Euro, wie die Umfrage der Nachrichtenagentur ergab.

Situation in den einzelnen Bistümer
Die Bistümer Mainz, Speyer und Trier haben bislang mindestens 665.000 Euro an Opfer sexuellen Missbrauchs in der Kirche gezahlt. Insgesamt 113 Antragsteller seien bis dato entschädigt worden, ergab eine Umfrage der Deutschen Nachrichtenagentur. Im Erzbistum München und Freising wurden bei 36 Anträgen bislang in 26 Fällen insgesamt 134 000 Euro ausgezahlt. Daneben wurden Therapie- und Fahrtkosten übernommen in Höhe von etwas mehr als 32.000 Euro. Das Erzbistum Paderborn überwies bisher 297.500 Euro Entschädigungen. Hinzu kämen 21.500 Euro für Therapiekosten, sagte ein Bistumssprecher. Das Bistum Limburg, das sich auch über Teile von Rheinland-Pfalz erstreckt, hat nach früheren Angaben mindestens 91.000 Euro an Entschädigungen bezahlt. 28 Anträge wurden gestellt. In 24 Fällen davon seien Zahlungen geleistet worden. Das Bistum Limburg machte zur neuen Umfrage jedoch keine Angaben zur Zahl der Verdachtsfälle von sexuellem Missbrauch. Im Erzbistum Berlin bekamen bislang zwölf Opfer Geld: Insgesamt 53.000 Euro. Angaben zu den einzelnen Summen machte ein Sprecher nicht. 13 Personen hätten Anträge gestellt. Das Bistum Fulda entschädigte alle bekannten Opfer nach Angaben von Anfang Januar 2013 mit mindestens 37.500 Euro.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Delaware County Daily Times

By Christine Flowers, Delaware County Daily Times
POSTED: 12/29/13

Beware of those who want to be “on the right side of history.” Sometimes, that’s just code for “the law be damned, I’ll do whatever I, the omniscient arbiter of right and wrong, want to do.”

Kathleen Kane is one of those legal systems unto herself, looking at the Pennsylvania statutes as being optional, particularly the one that bars same-sex marriage. Bruce Haynes is another, following in the attorney general’s footsteps with his crusade to issue worthless marriage licenses to hopeful spouses. The members of Philadelphia City Council were in lockstep with them, passing gun control legislation even though they knew that the state had sole jurisdiction.

In the Haynes case, the Commonwealth Court slapped him down, telling Mr. “Right Side of History” that he better go back and take a remedial course in civics. City Council also had its comeuppance by the same appeals court. As for Queen Kathleen, the jury — or rather, the judge — is still out.

But she might take some guidance from what happened this week in the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, and realize that not every moral crusader gets away with spitting on the Constitution in the pursuit of a “noble” end.

On Thursday afternoon, the appeals court overturned the child endangerment conviction of Monsignor William Lynn, who had been convicted of the charges in what appeared to many as a fatally flawed prosecution back in 2012.

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UNITED STATES
Los Angeles Times

By Soumya Karlamangla
December 28, 2013

When the Vatican censured an organization representing thousands of American nuns, it did so in part because the group had not spoken out enough against gay marriage and abortion.

The Vatican said the Leadership Conference of Women Religious had espoused “radical feminist themes,” adding, “Issues of crucial importance to the life of Church and society, such as the Church’s Biblical view of family life and human sexuality, are not part of the LCWR agenda in a way that promotes Church teaching.”

Now, some observers of the Roman Catholic Church are wondering whether the arrival of a new pope will thaw the frosty relationship between the nuns and the Holy See.

In September, 17 months after the censure, Pope Francis said: “We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods.” Since he took office in March, the pontiff has also repeatedly spoken about the need for economic justice, which would seem to match the nuns’ emphasis on serving the poor.

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UNITED STATES
Legal Examiner

Posted by Mike Bryant
December 28, 2013

Fear, embarrassment, even guilt. These are things that most survivors of sexual abuse feel at some point. The strength it takes to move on after this abuse is tangible, and yet so many will still not fight against it. Being abused by anyone is tragic, especially when it comes from someone you are supposed to be able to trust. It changes your perspective on how you see people, even those closest to you. Over the next month as we continue to talk about sexual abuse inside the Catholic Church one thing needs to be made clear; it is okay to get help. Taking that first step and admitting you are or have been harmed is the hardest part, but you may be surprised to learn that you are not alone, and there are so many people willing to help you find the relief and justice you deserve.

We have been presented with huge opportunities to finally bring these cases out in the open and put them to rest. In May of 2013 the Child Victims Act was announced, most recently the Catholic Church has been ordered to present a list of names of those priests who have been accused of sexual abuse, more and more people are standing up to the suffering they have endured. The Catholic Church has been proven to hide incriminating evidence and move its priests to different parishes in the attempt to protect those who have been accused of abuse. Now is our chance to shine the light on what has happened and do what we can to put an end to it.

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VIRGINIA
Richmond Times-Dispatch

WHY YOU KNOW HIM: The founder and former senior pastor of the Richmond Outreach Center was arrested in May when Texas authorities charged him with sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl and her 13-year-old sister.

About a year ago, Aguilar was flying high. His congregation followed his every word, his sermons were like rock concerts and the church he founded was poised for further growth.

Now, Aguilar has lost his job at the megachurch on Midlothian Turnpike, he’s been removed from the home where he lived and he is awaiting trial. A guilty verdict could send him to prison for the rest of his life.

Aguilar’s troubles began in May when he was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting two young girls in Texas. Authorities allege that the abuse began in September 1996 in the girls’ home, where Aguilar had been invited to live, and lasted about a year.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

BEN FINLEY, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
LAST UPDATED: Sunday, December 29, 2013

PHILADELPHIA Prosecuting Msgr. William J. Lynn was never going to be an open-and-shut case.

As far back as 2005, after scores of alleged victims told a grand jury about being abused by Philadelphia-area priests, prosecutors were divided over whether criminal charges would stick against the archdiocese’s former secretary for clergy.

“Every prosecutor who looked at it could say, factually, these guys were endangering children,” said Will Spade, an assistant district attorney at the time. “But some people thought the [state’s child-endangerment] statute didn’t apply, and others thought it did.”

The debate resurfaced last week when Superior Court reversed Lynn’s 2012 conviction on endangerment charges.

In a 43-page opinion released Thursday, the panel found that the Philadelphia prosecutors who ultimately charged Lynn two years ago and the trial judge who presided over his case had misapplied the law, which did not cover supervisors like Lynn until 2007.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review

By Adam Smeltz

Published: Friday, Dec. 27, 2013

The reversed conviction of a former Roman Catholic Church official could be a big win for the defense for three former Penn State University executives accused of shielding pedophile Jerry Sandusky, several attorneys said Friday.

“Certainly, the court’s opinion puts a big hole in the commonwealth’s case” against the ex-administrators, said Donna McClelland, a Pittsburgh trial lawyer and former deputy attorney general.

She said the reversal for Monsignor William Lynn, 62, could weaken felony charges of child endangerment against Tim Curley, Gary Schultz and Graham Spanier, but not their related charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and failure to report.

Lynn was the first U.S. church official convicted for the handling of clergy abuse complaints when a Philadelphia jury found him guilty in June 2012. A Superior Court panel on Thursday unanimously rejected prosecution arguments that Lynn was legally accountable for the welfare of an abused boy in the late 1990s.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

In a surprisingly candid assessment about a much anticipated speech today by Pope Francis, a leading Vatican reporter, John Allen of CNN and the National Catholic Reporter, stated: “Given that a cleanup operation in the Roman Curia was a large part of the mandate Francis received from the cardinals who elected him, and given the fevered speculation in Rome about what further changes might be coming, many observers were anxious to see if Francis would drop some hints in his Saturday morning speech. In the end, there was nothing like that.”

So what else is new? How many cardinals really elected Francis to conduct a “clean up operation”, as opposed to a “preservation operation, to protect cardinals’ power and wealth?

This was unexpected candor, because too many Vatican reporters spend so much time promoting the distracting PR spin about Francis’ “popular nonsense”. Francis’ photo ops and sound bites are appealing, but will not ultimately satisfy. One suspects that Francis and his clique, including Cardinal Sodano, must chuckle often at how easy it has been for Francis to get Catholics to miss noticing Francis’ recurring avoidance of the real challenges the Catholic Church faces, like holding bishops accountable for enabling priest child abusers or worse or treating women equally and with respect.

These challenges may be avoided for now, but they will just get worse by Francis’ benign neglect. Changes are coming, whether the Vatican wants them or not. They will even come sooner than Francis and his clique expect. See, “A New Year’s Wish For Catholic Church Democracy”, at: http://wp.me/P2YEZ3-W7

One is reminded of Pope Pius IX, who tried to meet the pent up demands for reform by an absurd Syllabus of Errors, followed by a self serving declaration of papal infallibility in 1869. Pius IX also hyped Marian devotions, as Francis does so often. Distractions didn’t work for Pius IX and they won’t work for Francis. Most Catholics have had enough and want to return their Church to a consensual structure like the one the Apostles left behind.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

The Salvation Army is the main beneficiary of donations of disused clothing items, which are people are led to believe, normally, sold through its thrift shops. The process is meant both to provide cheap clothing, and to yield profits for the organisations other charitable activities. Recycling donated clothing is both very profitable, and very competitive – so much so that many charitable groups have brought in the professionals.

It is not known how the business operates in Australia, because the Salvation Army does not offer up the information, and has no obligation to provide it. However, due to an investigation by the Guardian newspaper, in the U.K. something of the murky world of clothing recycling has been revealed.

Most people assumed, since there was nothing to say otherwise, that all profits returned to the Salvation Army. Not so, apparently, although the Salvation Army accused the Guardian of “selective reporting”. The professionals the U.K. Salvation Army brought in were Kettering Textiles. The involvement with this company goes back over 20 years.

The Salvation Army Trading Company looks after their business interests in the U.K. While they technically have an obligation under British charity laws to get the best value possible, it is not required to put anything to tender. The clothing recycling business was not put to tender, but simply awarded to Kettering, whose 78% major shareholder, Nigel Hanger, just happened to be a member of the board of the Salvation Army Trading Company (SATCoL). Kettering has the exclusive contract to sell the donated clothing.

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ARIZONA
Courthouse News Service

By JAMIE ROSS

PHOENIX (CN) – After raping a teenager, a Catholic youth leader promised he would stop raping girls if she didn’t tell police, so she kept quiet – but he broke his promise and sexually assaulted her friend, his first alleged victim claims in court.

Maraen Foley claims in the lawsuit that Catholic youth leader Brandon Eckerson forcibly raped her two days before Christmas in 2012. She was 18.

Eckerson “convinced plaintiff not to say anything further to anyone about his sexual exploitation of her; in exchange he promised to never again sexually assault anyone. It was understood that if plaintiff discovered he violated this sworn promise she would go to the police,” Foley claims in the complaint in Maricopa County Court.

She says he broke that promise: that in June this year she learned that he had recently sexually assaulted another girl in the program, so she went to police.

She claims in the lawsuit that Eckerson’s bosses at the highest level of the Diocese knew of the rape but did not report it to law enforcement because Vatican policy threatened them with excommunication if they did.

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ARIZONA
The Raw Story

By Scott Kaufman
Friday, December 27, 2013

A Catholic youth leader who promised a teenager he had raped that he would never rape again if she didn’t report him to police was reported to police by his victim after he sexually assaulted her best friend.

In a complaint filed by Marain Foley against Brandon Eckerson, she claims that Eckerson forcibly raped her two days before Christmas in 2012. However, he convinced her “not to say anything further to anyone about his sexual exploitation of her; in exchange he promised to never again sexually assault anyone. It was understood that if plaintiff discovered he violated this sworn promise she would go to the police.”

According to complaint, the extent of Eckerson’s inappropriate behavior extended beyond sexual assault. As leader of a Catholic youth group, Foley alleges, Eckerson talked to her about “her life, seeking intimate details, including dating and sexual relationship,” and that youth group meetings were fraught with “permissive sexual dialogue, contact, spanking, slapping, gropings and ridicule.”

She also claims that Eckerson brought the group of minors to bars and restaurants in which they were illegally served alcohol, and that he frequently purchased alcohol for the group and consumed it with them during meetings.

She is also suing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix; its Bishop, Thomas Olmsted; and the Reverend Patrick Robertson, who was the nominal supervisor of the youth group Eckerson ran, because she claims that after she told her doctor about the rape, “in compliance with state law [he] sent notice to Blessed Sacrament Parish, which circulated an email on the subject.” The complaint alleges that the church “knew that Brandon Eckerson was a danger,” “shared that concern with other members of Blessed Sacrament Parish and the Phoenix Diocese,” but never went to the police.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

POSTED BY BARBARA DORRIS ON DECEMBER 28, 2013

Victims to hand fliers out to church-goers
It urges those who “saw, suspected or suffered” crimes to speak up
They beg prosecutor to appeal
To Archbishop Chaput “stop stonewalling prosecutors”

WHAT
As parishioners leave mass, clergy sex abuse victims and supporters will hand out fliers urging them to

–ask their loved ones if they were hurt by Philadelphia Catholic clerics, and
–contact prosecutors urging them to appeal Lynn’s conviction being overturned.

They will also

–urge Philly Catholic officials to keep Msgr. Lynn from public ministry and any position of power
–beg every person who saw, suspected and suffered clergy sex crimes and cover ups in the Philadelphia Archdiocese (especially current and ex-Catholic employees) to come forward, call police, protect others and start healing

WHEN
Sunday, December 29 at 11:45 a.m.

WHERE
Outside the Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul, 18th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, in Philly

WHO
Three –four members of a support group for victims of clergy abuse called SNAP (the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests)

WHY

On Thursday the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned Monsignor William Lynn’s conviction for child endangerment. This ruling gives corrupt Catholic officials encouragement to continue deceiving police, stonewalling prosecutors, ignoring victims, destroying evidence, fabricating alibis, hiding crimes, and protecting pedophiles.

[Associated Press]

The group believes that literally thousands of U.S. Catholic officials have done precisely what Msgr. Lynn did and were never even charged or exposed, much less convicted. They believe that hundreds or thousands of chancery officials across the globe are doing – right now – exactly what Msgr. Lynn did for years.

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SWEDEN
The Local

A priest in southern Sweden has been prosecuted on a charge of sexual molestation after sending a text to a teenage boy saying that he wanted to have sex with him.

The priest, who was based in Kalmar county, has admitted that he sent the sex text and that it was wrong but has denied the charge of sexual molestation.

“I hope that we end up in bed and have sex. As I am gay and you are young and good looking,” the priest wrote in the text which was sent in September.

Following the incident the priest has since been relieved of his duties entirely within the priesthood by the church.

The priest and the boy had got to know each other at a confirmation camp and remained in contact afterwards. At first the contact was friendly but relations came to an abrupt end when the boy received a text from the priest saying he wanted to have sex.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By Francis X. Rocca
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — After a year that included the historic resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and a series of celebrated innovations by Pope Francis, it is hard to imagine 2014 at the Vatican could be nearly as eventful. Of course, the biggest stories are likely to be those that come by surprise, but in the meantime, here are developments bound to loom large in Vatican news over the coming year:

— New Cardinals: Pope Francis is scheduled to create new cardinals Feb. 22. By that time, no more than 106 members of the College of Cardinals will be under the age of 80 and thus eligible to vote in a conclave to elect a new pope. Under rules established by Pope Paul VI, the college should not have more than 120 such members, though subsequent popes have occasionally exceeded that number. So Pope Francis can be expected to name at least 14 new cardinal electors.

The election of the first Latin American pope has raised expectations of greater geographical diversity among cardinal electors, so the new slate might prove relatively heavy on names from statistically underrepresented regions, especially Latin America and Africa.

— Vatican reform: The eight-member Council of Cardinals that Pope Francis formed to advise him on governance of the universal church and reform of the Vatican bureaucracy has already joined him for two rounds of meetings at the Vatican and will do so again in February. The body is working on the first major overhaul of the Roman Curia, the church’s central administration at the Vatican, since 1988.

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TENNESSEE
WMC-TV

[with video[

MEMPHIS, TN –
(WMC-TV) – A Memphis COGIC pastor will plead guilty to a sexual battery charge and his church will shut down, according to his attorney.

Michael Bryant, pastor at Hour of Restoration COGIC in Memphis, was in general sessions court Thursday for what was supposed to be a bond reduction hearing.

Instead, defense attorney Art Horne says he and the prosecution worked out a plea agreement in a “criminal information” that will be brought before a judge in criminal court.

“The case is settled,” said Bryant’s defense attorney, Art Horne. “He’s pleading guilty to sexual battery by an authority figure and the sentence will be six years at 30 percent. And we’ll ask for probation.”

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TENNESSEE
Houston Chronicle

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A defense lawyer says a Memphis pastor is pleading guilty to sexual battery of a teenage girl and his church will shut down.

Attorney Art Horne tells WMC-TV (http://bit.ly/1edRliS ) that he and prosecutors have worked out a plea agreement for Michael Bryant, pastor at Hour of Restoration Church of God in Christ in Memphis.

Horne says Bryant is pleading guilty to sexual battery by an authority figure and the sentence will be six years.

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MEXICO
NSS Oaxaca

Gerardo Silvestre Hernández está acusado de abusar de al menos 45 niños indígenas de Oaxaca.

México.- El sacerdote, Gerardo Silvestre Hernández, fue encarcelado luego de ser hallado culpable de abusar de al menos 45 niños indígenas de Oaxaca.

El encarcelamiento se dio tras casi ocho años después de que las primeras denuncias se hicieran públicas y más de tres años de la presentación de pruebas y testimonios comprobables.

Según testimonios, el arzobispo José Luis Chávez Botello minimizó los hechos y permitió que el cura continuara ejerciendo durante los últimos tres años hasta que el pasado 27 de noviembre tuvo que suspenderlo de su ministerio al hacerse pública una denuncia que hizo un padre de familia, cuyo hijo de 9 años había sido acólito de la parroquia donde oficiaba Silvestre Hernández.

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MEXICO
Vanguardia

Ciudad de México. En su columna “Astillero” de este viernes, publicada en el diario La Jornada, el periodista Julio Hernández López denuncia que el Arzobispo de la diócesis de Antequera, José Luis Chávez Botello, protegió al sacerdote señalado e incluso hostigó y amenazó a los religiosos que se atrevieron a denunciarlo, y permitió que Silvestre Hernández ejerciera por más de tres años.

El 22 de diciembre de este mes, medios locales publicaron la reacción del Arzobispo ante la orden de aprehensión girada por el Juez Séptimo de lo Penal, acusado de corrupción de menores de edad y abuso sexual en agravio de sus acólitos en la parroquia de Villa Alta, región de la Sierra Norte de Oaxaca.

Chávez Botello atinó a decir: “La Iglesia católica nunca ha entorpecido, al contrario siempre facilitará que se cumpla con la ley; nosotros no estamos interviniendo ni hemos intervenido”, publicó el periódico local E-Oaxaca.

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MEXICO
La Jornada

Julio Hernández López

Ha sido encarcelado el sacerdote Gerardo Silvestre Hernández, casi ocho años después de que comenzó a abusar de niños indígenas en Oaxaca (cuando menos 45 casos conocidos), y a cuatro años y medio de que el tema fuera expuesto y abundantemente demostrado ante el arzobispo José Luis Chávez Botello (quien redobló la protección a ese depredador sexual e intensificó el hostigamiento y castigo contra los religiosos denunciantes, nueve párrocos y un diácono).

El pasado 22, en reunión de temporada con periodistas oaxaqueños, el arzobispo Chávez Botello hubo de responder a preguntas sobre la orden de aprehensión girada por el juzgado séptimo de lo penal en la entidad y cumplida por la policía del gobierno de Gabino Cué, según notas publicadas en algunos diarios locales. Durante años, el jefe religioso regional había defendido con enjundia al sacerdote acusado de abusar de niños y jóvenes de zonas indígenas de Oaxaca. Chávez Botello no aceptaba ningún cargo contra el cura Silvestre Hernández, quien más de una vez había asegurado que tenía una gran cercanía personal con el arzobispo. Ahora, frente a acciones de la justicia civil que encontró indicios de lo que él nunca logró ver, a pesar de que se le hicieron llegar detallados testimonios y pruebas, el mismo Chávez Botello aseguró que la Iglesia católica no ha entorpecido la aplicación de la ley en cuanto a Silvestre Hernández y que, en todo caso, facilitaría que hubiera sanciones justicieras contra quien las mereciera (http://bit.ly/1ijFrtc).

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MEXICO
Diario del Morelos

[Summary: Oaxaca -. Priest Gerardo Silvestre Hernández was accused of sexual abuse of at least 45 indigenous children eight years ago but was finally imprisoned on Dec. 22. According to journalist Julio Hernandez Lopez, writing in his Friday column in La Jornada, said the archbishop of the Antequera diocese, Jose Luis Chavez Botello, protected the pederast priest and harassed and threatened those who dared to denounce. The actions by the archbishop, according to Lopez, allowed the priest to abuse minors for more than three years.]

Oaxaca.- Gerardo Silvestre Hernández fue acusado del abuso sexual de por los menos 45 niños indígenas hace ocho años, sin embargo hasta el 22 de diciembre de este año, el sacerdote de Oaxaca fue encarcelado.

El periodista Julio Hernández López publicó este viernes en su columna “Astillero” del diario La Jornada, que el Arzobispo de la diócesis de Antequera, José Luis Chávez Botello, protegió al sacerdote pederasta, mientras hostigaba y amenazaba a los religiosos que se atrevieron a denunciarlo, lo que permitió a Silvestre Hernández ejercer su abuso por más de tres años.

El 22 de diciembre, medios locales publicaron la reacción del Arzobispo frente a la orden de aprehensión girada por el Juez Séptimo de lo Penal, en contra del sacerdote por los cargos de corrupción de menores y abuso sexual que padecieron los acólitos de la parroquia de Villa Alta en la región de la Sierra Norte de Oaxaca.

El Arzobispo aseguró que la Iglesia católica “nunca ha entorpecido, al contrario siempre facilitará que se cumpla con la ley”, resaltando categóricamente que ellos no habían intervenido.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News

DAVID GAMBACORTA, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER GAMBACD@PHILLYNEWS.COM, 215-854-5994
POSTED: Sunday, December 29, 2013

A COMMON PLEAS judge who once excoriated Monsignor William Lynn for shielding “monsters in clerical garb” will now decide if he’ll be able to get out of prison.

Judge M. Teresa Sarmina will preside Monday over a bail hearing for Lynn, who on Thursday learned that the Superior Court of Pennsylvania had overturned his 2012 conviction on a felony child-endangerment charge.

The three-judge appeals panel sided with Lynn’s lawyers, who argued that the state child-endangerment law that was in effect while Lynn served as the secretary for clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia applied only to parents and guardians of children.

Thomas Bergstrom, one of Lynn’s attorneys, had hoped that Lynn, 62, would be released from a state prison in Wayne County within a day or two.

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UNITED STATES
Times-Herald

According to one study, approximately 546,000 children in the United States were sexually abused last year. According to another, 16 percent of youths 14-17 years old are sexually abused in any given year in the United States.

A third study says that over the course of their school careers, nearly 10 percent of K-12 students will be the victim of some form of sexual abuse at school, with one in 10 of those involving a teacher or school employee. If you draw the numbers out, that means roughly 4.5 million students currently in grade or high school have been abused by an educator, or 375,000 annually.

Unfortunately, there has never been a widespread, authoritative analysis of the issue of child sexual abuse in the United States to help shine light on the instances of exactly where, when, how often and by whom this scourge on civilized society continues to take place.

But if the scores of smaller studies indicate one thing clearly, it’s that it does continue to take place — in schools, homes, churches, day cares, and anywhere else adults have easy access to children — at an alarming rate.

The Catholic Church was rightly called on the issue of child sexual abuse when the Boston Globe first revealed the scope of the problem in 2002: A frightening 4,400 priests — 4 percent — had been accused of abusing a minor in a 52-year span between 1950 and 2002, with the vast majority of those cases between 1960-80. While the Catholic Church should be held to a higher standard in society, given the trust it once possessed and especially when dioceses were accused of hiding or ignoring abuse, 4 percent is still less than half the rate at which teachers — even today — are accused of abusing their students.

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TENNESSEE
MemphisRap

Memphis COGIC Pastor Arrested on Sexual Abuse of 16-Yr-Old Family Member, Church Members Knew About It and Prayed For Him!

A Memphis COGIC pastor has been arrested and charged with sexual battery for molesting a 16 year-old family member for years and the secret was even kept by fellow church members.

Michael Bryant, 48, was accused of sneaking in the bedroom of the teen-girl while her mother was asleep or was at work.

Bryant would expose himself and fondle the victim and he did it for the last two years while being the pastor of Hour of Restoration COGIC in Hickory Hill.

Michael Bryant was formerly an elder at Greater Community Temple COGIC.

Apparently, the victim revealed Bryant’s sexual abuse to other church and family members, who then kept the abuse a secret while choosing to pray for their pastor instead of turning him in to the police.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Hamilton Spectator (Canada)

By Maryclaire Dale
PHILADELPHIA Lawyers for a Roman Catholic church official will demand his immediate release from prison Monday after an appeals court overturned his conviction in a novel priest-abuse case aimed squarely at the church hierarchy in Philadelphia.

Monsignor William Lynn, 62, is the first Catholic official ever prosecuted over his handling of priest sex-abuse complaints. He has served 18 months of the three- to six-year sentence handed down by a judge who said he helped predators remain in ministry, endangering new victims.

But the Superior Court threw out the conviction Thursday, ruling that the state’s child-endangerment law did not apply in the late 1990s to church supervisors like Lynn. The Superior Court said the case never should have been filed.

“The laws at that time were inadequate to deal with this kind of problem. And I think that the judge and the prosecutor stretched the law, trying to find some way to punish somebody,” Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit theologian and senior analyst with the National Catholic Reporter, said Friday. “They stretched the law too far, in the opinion of the appeals court.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Big Trial

By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net

The state Superior Court has reversed the conviction of Msgr. William J. Lynn, saying he never should have been charged in the first place with the crime of endangering the welfare of a child.

But whether Lynn gets out of jail now is up to Judge M. Teresa Sarmina, the trial court judge who put Lynn away, and whose prior rulings in the case have been described by a panel of three Superior Court judges as “fundamentally flawed.”

At 10 a.m. Monday, Judge Sarmina will convene a bail hearing to determine whether Msgr. Lynn gets out of jail. The hearing will be held in Courtroom 507 of the Criminal Justice Center. Several members of District Attorney Seth Williams’ office are expected to attend, and argue that the monsignor deserves to stay in jail while the D.A. appeals the Superior Court opinion.

For Msgr. Lynn’s lawyer, Thomas A. Bergstrom, this doesn’t make much sense.

“The Superior Court has said he [Lynn] should be discharged forthwith, so I don’t think that requires any interpretation,” Bergstrom said. “Seems to me she [Judge Sarmina] has to do exactly what they’ve ordered,” Bergstrom said, referring to the panel of three Superior Court judges who reversed Lynn’s conviction.

In the past, however, Judge Sarmina, has not exactly been partial, or merciful, when it comes to Msgr. Lynn.

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MINNESOTA
Legal Examiner

Posted by Mike Bryant
December 26, 2013

Last week was a step in the right direction with the release of the Minneapolis/St Paul Archdiocese List , however there is a lot more information needed. The Archdiocese needs to come clean with the truth and give Zero Tolerance, meaning:

– They need to be open and disclose information voluntarily. The press release suggested that they were releasing the list on their own. Actually, it was the order of Judge John B. Van de North Jr.. The Church fought the release each time a request has been made.

– The real concern needs to be about the survivors. The day before the list disclosure emails and letters were sent out to 92 parishes warning them that they were churches where these pedophiles had been placed. It is an example of how backwards the information has come out. These churches in many cases should have never had these placements to begin with.

– The lists need to be updated. It is clear that there are names that are missing or potentially intentionally not being included. If there is a bankruptcy, you can be assured that they will have all of the names so that they are protecting their financing. It is another place where they are backwards in who should be protected.

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MINNESOTA
Monticello Times

By Tim Hennagir
December 26, 2013

Harry Walsh, former pastor and music director of St. Henry Catholic Church in Monticello, has denied a list of claims made against him in a recent news report.

Walsh provided an emailed statement to the Monticello Times last Friday (Dec. 20) that stated the following: “I am saddened by the Dec.19, 2013, Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) report. I am sad that facts are brushed aside and skewed to advance a narrative unrelated to me, and sad that sensationalism trivializes the real and important work that I do. Any allegations of abuse by me are unfounded.”

Walsh added: “I am not going to address every misstatement from the MPR report and [a] subsequent Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis press release, but I do want to address the two allegations and my decision to seek laicization [removal of rights to exercise the functions of an ordained ministry.]”

While Walsh’s name wasn’t on a recently released list of priests credibly accused of sexually abusing minors, MPR presented church documents that contained information he had been accused in the 1990s of molesting a 15-year-old girl in Detroit in the mid-1960s and a 12-year-old altar boy in in South St. Paul the early 1980s. The archdiocese contributed to a financial settlement for the girl in 1996, MPR reported in its investigative story, adding two archbishops allowed him to continue working in parishes until the fall of 2011.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Monsignor Lynn’s trial court reversal, likely to be appealed further, turned on a narrow technical interpretation of a new statute. Importantly, the appellate court did not dispute the lower court’s substantial evidence about Lynn’s shameful role in shuffling several dozen predatory priests from parish to parish. Indeed, as reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer recently, the three appellate judge court indicated: “… We cannot dispute that the Commonwealth [ Philly prosecutors] presented more than adequate evidence to sufficiently demonstrate that [Lynn] prioritized the Archdiocese’s reputation over the safety of potential victims of sexually abusive priests and, by inference, that the same prioritization dominated [Lynn’s] handling of [an abusive priest], … “, the ruling said.

Paradoxically, Lynn’s trial reversal, and the current publicity it is generating, are helping the cause of curtailing priest abuse. They also keep the pressure on Pope Francis to address the issue of bishop accountability directly and transparently, after nine months mainly of avoiding it.

Once again, the inadequate US state law criminal process for prosecuting the US Catholic hierarchy has failed children. Pennsylvania state officials are too often restricted by narrow laws pushed often by the Pennsylvania Catholic bishops’ very influential and well funded lobbyists. President Obama needs to follow Australia’s effective lead now, and set up a US national commission to investigate institututional child sexual abuse and to propose new national legislation. For more, see, “A New Year’s Wish For a Catholic Church Democracy”, at: http://wp.me/P2YEZ3-W7 .

Incidentally, Fr. Kevin McDonough, the priest brother of President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough, reportedly appears now potentially to be facing similar cover-up allegations in Minneapolis (USA). Significantly, the reported Minneapolis allegations in a couple of the reported cases involve the Vatican and relate also to Federal crimes, which may soon require Federal prosecutors, if they are not involved already. This may get sticky for the Obama Administration. Will Obama’s conservative opposition risk jeopardizing their current “political alliance” with US bishops and press Obama on any of the Minneapolis cases? Time should soon tell.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Religion News Service

David Gibson | Dec 27, 2013

(RNS) This week’s court decision that freed a senior cleric in Philadelphia who had been jailed for shielding an abusive priest was a symbolic setback for victims’ advocates but one with a substantial, and discouraging, message for their cause: None of the churchmen implicated in cover-ups during the worst decades of abuse will likely ever face charges.

The June 2012 conviction of Monsignor William Lynn was seen as a landmark verdict because until then no one in the upper levels of the Catholic Church had ever faced a trial or been found guilty for shielding molesters.

Lynn, who oversaw clergy and fielded abuse complaints for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia from 1992 to 2004, was sentenced to three to six years on one count of child endangerment. After serving 18 months in prison, Lynn was expected to be released from prison soon.

During the past few decades, a number of abusers have been convicted, and many defrocked. But public outrage was largely directed against the bishops and senior church officials like Lynn who, as the appeals court noted in its ruling on Thursday (Dec. 26), “prioritized the archdiocese’s reputation over the safety of potential victims of sexually abusive priests.”

But the appeals ruling also said that Lynn’s behavior, while outrageous to much of the Catholic faithful and the wider public, did not violate the child welfare law in place at the time of the abuse. …

Nicholas Cafardi, a canon and civil lawyer at the Duquesne Law School in Pittsburgh and former head of the Catholic bishops’ national review board on clergy abuse, said Francis must broaden the mandate of the commission to include his brother bishops.

“We have to insist that there be repercussions for any bishop who would re-assign or cover-up for a sexually abusive priest,” Cafardi wrote in an email. “The church will never have closure on this issue unless the larger problem of hierarchical complicity is dealt with.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Gloucester Citizen

THOUSANDS of church volunteers could be pushed into leaving their roles because of “overzealous” criminal record checks.

Figures show the Church of England carried out 58,000 such checks in the last 12 months alone before allowing people to work in parishes or take office roles.

In 2010, Annabel Hayter quit her role as chairman of the Gloucester Cathedral Flower Guild after being told she and her team would have to undergo the vetting process.

She had minimal contact with children, but church authorities were concerned that she and her fellow flower arrangers shared a lavatory with choirboys.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

The Church of England has carried out tens of thousands of criminal record checks on volunteers in a move that critics claim risks driving away bell ringers and florists

By Graeme Paton 26 Dec 2013

Volunteer bell ringers, florists and organists risk being pushed out the Church of England because of a regime of “overzealous” criminal record checks, the Archbishop of Canterbury has been warned.

Figures obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that at least 58,000 people have been vetted by the Church in the last 12 months alone before being allowed to work in parishes or take back office roles.

More than 80 per cent of the checks carried out by individual dioceses were on volunteers, it emerged.
In many cases, vetting procedures are used in relation to adults working with children in Sunday schools and church crèches – a target of the government’s Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

EDITORIAL

The Pennsylvania Superior Court has dismissed the child endangerment conviction of Philadelphia’s Monsignor William Lynn.

The Court’s position is that Monsignor Lynn didn’t supervise the child or children who were sexually abused by a priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and it doesn’t think that supervising the welfare of children is a standard that should hold in this case. The Court said it did not believe sufficient evidence was presented to convict Monsignor Lynn for child endangerment.

We hope the Church doesn’t take comfort in this ruling – particularly when it celebrates the Feast of the Innocents on December 28.

It was a dangerous time to be a child 2000 years ago in Herod’s reign if you were two years old or younger. Didn’t matter if the solider who drew his sword to kill you knew you or not. You were just as dead.

Time doesn’t correct everything.

It’s still a dangerous time to be a child.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CatholicPhilly

BY MATTHEW GAMBINO

The highest ranking official of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia convicted of a crime in connection with the sexual abuse scandal of recent years may soon walk free from prison.

A three-judge panel of the Pennsylvania Superior Court reversed the conviction of Msgr. William Lynn Dec. 26. The former secretary for clergy of the archdiocese was convicted on one count of endangering the welfare of a child in June 2012.

The priest has spent the past 18 months, almost to the day, in Waymart state prison in Northeastern Pennsylvania, where he was serving a three-to-six year term.

“The decision by the Superior Court to overturn this conviction,” read a statement by the Philadelphia Archdiocese, “does not and will not alter the Church’s commitment to assist and support the survivors of sexual abuse on their journey toward healing or our dedicated efforts to ensure that all young people in our care are safe.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The American Conservative

By ROD DREHER • December 27, 2013

Last year, when a Pennsylvania jury convicted Msgr William Lynn of the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia to prison for his role in a child sex abuse cover-up, reader Mike Ehling wrote to me:

I’m an ex-Catholic, and I have no desire to defend a paternalistic hierarchy, and Lynn is no one I would ever want to hire as a personnel director, but I have a very real concern that….

(1) Judge Sarmina was just wa-a-ay too pro-prosecution.

(2) Lynn was being held to the standards of 2012 for his actions from 1992 to 2004, at a time when “one-strike” policies were simply not that prevalent and rehabilitation was seen as more of an option.

(3) Lynn was not a “mandatory reporter” under Pennsylvania law (blame the Pennsylvania legislature for this if you like), so he had no legal obligation (whatever moral obligation you might assert) to report suspected instances of child abuse to the police.

(4) Lynn had (in my view) the right to give a suspected priest the benefit of the doubt and aim for treatment rather than prosecution. Note that I’m not saying Lynn should have done this, only that I don’t think that his having done so is so outrageous as to justify criminal (as opposed to civil monetary) liability.

The real problem, I think, is that clergy in general make lousy personnel directors. Clergy are trained in a “helping” profession, while personnel directors often find themselves in the “enforcement” role. My reading of this case is that Lynn was a well-meaning priest who was trying to do right but who was in wa-a-ay over his head. Moreover, note that Cardinal Bevilacqua was not just Lynn’s boss and an important member of the hierarchy but that he was also a civil lawyer, with a degree from St. John’s University Law School in Queens, New York, which gives added emphasis to directions he gave to Lynn.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
City of Angels

Kay Ebeling

The Philadelphia appeals court ruling yesterday did NOT say Monsignor William Lynn was innocent, it ruled only that the law did not cover him.

Lynn’s attorneys won this appeal saying Pennsylvania’s child-endangerment law at the time of the crimes applied only to parents and caregivers, not to “supervisors” such as the Monsignor. The reversal “turned on disputed interpretations of Pennsylvania’s former child welfare law,” as described in the New York Times.

There is no denial of Monsignor Lynn’s guilt here, only attorneys finding a way once again to twist the Law to their client’s interest, with enough cash to pursue it until they win.

So as Donoho’ of the Catholic League and others jump in and call this a victory for a wrongfully accused priest, let’s take a minute to look at the whole truth.

Since his attorneys say he was not a caregiver, are they then arguing that he did not care? Because we all know that is the truth here.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive

By Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com

A Roman Catholic priest lodged in a northeastern Pennsylvania prison cell may just have hit the legal equivalent of a home run for former Penn State President Graham Spanier and two of his former top aides at the university.

That’s because, some legal experts say, Pennsylvania Superior Court’s reversal Thursday of Monsignor William Lynn’s 2012 child endangerment conviction may well knock out similar charges lodged against Spanier, his athletic director, Tim Curley, and his vice president for business and finance Gary Schultz.

“There are huge implications for the Penn State prosecution from this case,” said Wes Oliver, a professor at the Duquesne University School of Law who has closely watched the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.

“This could mean that some of the most serious charges (against Spanier, Curley and Schultz) are gone,” Oliver said.

The three former Penn State administrators face trial in Harrisburg next year on charges that they lied to state investigators about what they knew of child sex abuse allegations against Sandusky, then a beloved Penn State football hero, and what they did in response.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Vatican Insider

The Roman Catholic Church official had been accused of covering up child abuse committed by priests. The judge who sentenced Lynn in 2012, said he had “enabled monsters in clerical garb … to destroy the souls of children”

VATICAN INSIDER STAFF
ROME

Mgr. William Lynn, the Roman Catholic Church official who was accused of covering up priest-abuse cases has had his conviction overturned by Philadelphia’s court of appeal. He is being released from prison after being sentenced to 3 to 6 years in prison back in July 2012.

Mgr. Lynn had been secretary for clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia from 1992 to 2004, was in charge of assigning priests to the various parishes and investigating sex abuse claims. The US press said he had been accused of allowing a priest suspected of abusing minors to continue working with children.

According to the judge who sentenced Mgr. Lynn in 2012, the Church official had “enabled monsters in clerical garb … to destroy the souls of children.” But the appeal court ruled that “the evidence was insufficient to demonstrate that [Lynn] acted with the ‘intent of promoting or facilitating'” the offence.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

ALLISON STEELE, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
POSTED: Friday, December 27, 2013

The Philadelphia judge who sentenced Msgr. William J. Lynn to three to six years in prison for his handling of priest sex-abuse complaints is now being asked to free him.

Lawyers for Lynn, whose 2012 conviction was overturned this week by a Superior Court panel, have filed a motion to Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina to have Lynn immediately released on bail, lead lawyer Thomas A. Bergstrom said Friday.

Sarmina is expected to review Lynn’s bail conditions and determine if she wants a hearing on the matter, Bergstrom said.

The judge will likely decide next week.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
ABC News

By MARYCLAIRE DALE Associated Press

A bail hearing has been set Monday for a Roman Catholic church official after his child-endangerment conviction was overturned.

Monsignor William Lynn won’t be at the hearing in Philadelphia. He remains in custody at a state prison in northeast Pennsylvania.

The 62-year-old Lynn is the first church official ever prosecuted over his handling of priest sex-abuse complaints. Lynn has served 18 months of the 3- to 6-year sentence.

But the Superior Court threw out his conviction Thursday, saying the law did not apply in the late 1990s to church supervisors like Lynn.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WNPV

A Superior Court Panel’s ruling that reverses the conviction of Monsignor William Lynn on charges that he sent predator priests to parishes in the Diocese of Philadelphia, where they were again in contact with children, is met with outrage. Karen Polesir is the Spokesperson for the Philadelphia region of The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests or Snap.

“He knew what he was doing. He claimed he was doing it because he was told to do it. He’s a grownup and he’s supposed to be an ethical man, so when you are told to put children in harms way, you can say no.”

Polesir is asking people to protest the decision and urges Philadelphia D.A. Seth Williams to appeal the decision. Lynn’s attorney, Thomas Bergstrom, maintains that an injustice occurred when Lynn was convicted. Bergstrom says, Lynn is an innocent man. Lynn served 18 months of a 3 to 6 year prison term.

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PHILADLEPHIA (PA)
Catholic Online

PHILADELPHIA, PA (Catholic Online) – Last year, Monsignor William Lynn went to prison for covering up cases of priests in his charge who molested children. Instead of reporting those priests to authorities, he simply transferred them to other parishes where they went on to abuse other children.

Lynn, 62, was sentenced to three to six years in prison for the conviction.

However, a three-judge Superior Court panel has overturned his conviction saying that under the law, he could not be held responsible for what happened to the abused children.

The judges are right, therefore Monsignor Lynn will be released, possibly as early as today.

Thomas Bergstrom, Lynn’s attorney, told the media following the ruling, “He’s been in prison 18 months for a crime he didn’t commit and couldn’t commit under the law. It’s incredible what happened to this man.”

But is it really?

When Monsignor Lynn served as Secretary of the Clergy from 1992 to 2004, he knowingly reassigned pedophile priests to several different parishes in Philadelphia. He did the wrong thing and children paid the price. Although Lynn may not be legally culpable for what happened, he is certainly morally responsible. As faithful Catholics, we must hold our Church fathers to a higher standard of morality because the trust we have in them is virtually absolute and they are responsible for the most important aspect of our lives, which is our spiritual well-being. We trust these men with our children and our souls.

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AUSTRALIA
The Dallas Morning News

By Reese Dunklin
rdunklin@dallasnews.com
9:45 am on December 27, 2013

A notorious figure from our 2004-2005 series about the Catholic Church’s global transfer of sexually abusive priests has admitted to molesting even more children.

Australian prosecutors had filed 34 criminal charges against Frank Klep. That number was cut to 12 in a guilty plea this month, according to news reports. The 70-year-old now awaits an April pre-sentencing hearing in Melbourne.

During the recent court hearing, Klep said only one word.

“Guilty.”

This is Klep’s third time through Australia’s justice system. The latest charges arose from a parliamentary inquiry last year and involve 14 now-grown boys.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Pilot

PHILADELPHIA (CNS) — A panel of judges for a Pennsylvania Superior Court reversed the decision on a priest’s conviction in handling a clerical abuse case and ordered his release from prison.

The decision, announced Dec. 26, involves Msgr. William Lynn, former secretary for clergy in the Philadelphia Archdiocese. Msgr. Lynn has served 18 months of a 2012 prison sentence of three to six years after being found guilty of endangering the welfare of a child, a felony.

Prosecutors had argued that the priest had reassigned abusive priests to new parishes in the Philadelphia Archdiocese in his diocesan role as clergy secretary. However, Msgr. Lynn’s attorneys argued that Pennsylvania’s child-endangerment law at the time applied only to parents and caregivers, not to supervisors, which was Msgr. Lynn’s role.

Prosecutors could appeal the Superior Court panel’s decision or ask the full Superior Court to rehear the case.

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MALTA
Times of Malta

Eleven men subjected to years of child abuse by two priests claim they have never received the therapy promised by the Church.

Lawrence Grech, speaking on behalf of the victims, told Times of Malta he had never been approached by the Church.

When contacted, a Curia spokesman denied Mr Grech’s claims. He insisted the men had all been contacted by the Missionary Society of St Paul in writing back in 2011. Since then, he added, some had even received counselling services.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on the decision by a Pennsylvania appeals court to overturn the conviction of Msgr. William Lynn:

The guilty parties that worked overtime to convict an innocent man—they include attorneys, judges, newspapers, professional “victims’ groups,” activists, TV talking heads—have been disgraced. This is a monumental win for justice, and a tremendous setback for anti-Catholic bigots. Their goal is to “get a bishop,” and if that doesn’t work, then they settle for the next in line. They are fundamentally dishonest, and now they have been disabled.

Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham began this witch-hunt—she was authorized to pursue sexual misconduct in all religious communities, but instead she selectively chose to focus exclusively on Catholics—and then she passed the baton to her successor, Seth Williams. All of them knew that Msgr. Lynn did not know, or know of, the drug-addicted, lying, scheming, accuser, Billy Doe. They also knew that laws applied ex post facto (e.g., the 2007 amendment of the 1972 child endangerment statute) would not stand scrutiny on appeal. But none of this mattered.

So how does the Philadelphia Inquirer feel today? It refused $58,000 from the Catholic League for an ad earlier in the year that told the truth about this subject. How does David Clohessy, the vindictive, weeping, professional “victims’ group” head feel? How do rapacious lawyers like Jeffrey Anderson, Rebecca Randles, and Marci Hamilton feel?

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Jason Berry | Dec. 27, 2013

Top leaders of Regnum Christi, the lay wing of the Legion of Christ, knew as early as 2006 that Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the scandal-tarnished founder of the order, had a grown daughter, but concealed the information from the members at least three years, NCR has learned.

In exclusive NCR interviews, Elizabeth Kunze, who spent 16 years as a consecrated celibate in Regnum Christi, and Legionary Fr. Peter Byrne, who is leaving the order, denounced rooted secrecy and betrayal in the order and a bungled Vatican reform effort.

Kunze, of Milwaukee, called Regnum Christi a “cult” and said the Vatican 2010 visitation, or investigation of the Legion, “was rigged.”

“I’ve winced for years every time someone challenged [Regnum Christi], saying it was a cult or cult-like,” said Kunze, 47, who works as a bilingual counselor for a Milwaukee Catholic school in a Latino community.

“Even now it is painful for me to consider that description, but a year ago I told someone about the movement” — as Legionaries and Regnum Christi members call the joint effort — “and I said quite plainly it was a cult. I feel ashamed for having been caught up in a cult for so many years. It is not easy to admit, but I finally feel free enough to say what I believe.”

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UNITED STATES
City of Angels

Kay Ebeling

It woke me up, this idea, probably many others have had it already but isn’t it suspicious that our new left wing pope is being guided through the media by a Fox News trollop? This pic from NCR Online of Greg Burke, papal flack, praying for the camera, gives an idea of what more is in store as Fox News extends its fingers into Rome. Below pic is a stream of news stories about it, more to come from me in January.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
OPB

After spending a year and a half in jail, a Philadelphia Roman Catholic priest convicted of child endangerment will go free after a court overturned the 2012 verdict.

NPR’s Jeff Brady says although Monsignor William Lynn, 62, was never accused of abuse himself, he was convicted in 2012 of putting children in danger by moving abusing priests to unwitting parishes. Lynn was an official of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia at the time.

On Thursday, however, a three-judge panel unanimously rejected prosecutors’ arguments that Lynn was legally responsible for the welfare the children allegedly abused by priests under his supervision.

“He’s been in prison 18 months for a crime he didn’t commit and couldn’t commit under the law,” Lynn’s attorney, Thomas Bergstrom, said. “It’s incredible what happened to this man.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Upper Michigans Source

PHILADELPHIA, PA (AP) — Lawyers for a Roman Catholic church official are going to try to get him released as early as this week from a state prison in Pennsylvania — now that an appeals court has reversed his conviction for child endangerment.

The appeals panel is ordering the release of Monsignor William Lynn. But prosecutors are planning to fight the ruling, and resist any move to release him.

Lynn is serving a three-to-six-year prison sentence. He was charged over his handling of priest sex-abuse complaints. He was the first U.S. church official ever charged or convicted for the handling of those complaints. …

Tonight in the Daily Pulse we’re wondering: Do you think Monsignor William Lynn should be released from prison? Yes or no? Why or why not?

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholic Culture

In a unanimous ruling, a Pennsylvania appellate court has overturned the 2012 conviction of Msgr. William Lynn, who served as the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s vicar of clergy from 1992 to 2004.

The court found that “the state’s child-endangerment law at the time of Lynn’s conviction applied to parents and caregivers but did not extend to institutional supervisors,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

“When Monsignor Lynn’s sentence was announced last summer, the Archdiocese reemphasized that it has changed dramatically since the events over ten years ago that were at the center of the trial and reaffirmed that dramatic steps have been taken to ensure that all young people in our care find a safe and nurturing environment,” the archdiocese said in a statement. “It also expressed a hope that the nature of the sentence imposed on Monsignor Lynn would be objectively reviewed. That has happened.”

“The decision by the Superior Court to overturn this conviction does not and will not alter the Church’s commitment to assist and support the survivors of sexual abuse on their journey toward healing or our dedicated efforts to ensure that all young people in our care are safe,” the statement continued.

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