ABUSE TRACKER

(OPINION) Though I’m no longer a believer, in the wake of yet another jaw-dropping Catholic scandal, two Biblical passages have coursed through my mind recently. 

The first verse is John 8:32: “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Illinois’ six bishops are no doubt familiar with it. Like many profound bits of wisdom, it’s short and sweet, with absolutely no qualifiers, exceptions or excuses.

Why then do these well-educated prelates apparently think the actual wording is “Some of the truth shall set you free, but you get to determine how much and when and how to reveal it?”

That’s the only rational conclusion that explains why, after decades of horrific, widespread, well-documented child sex crimes and cover-ups, these bishops still refuse to come clean about child-molesting clergy.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul impressively documented this continuing duplicitousness in his 696-page, just-released report on…

View Cache

Former Maryland state Sen. Robert “Bobby” Zirkin, a personal injury lawyer, has joined the growing and pervasive number of law firms advertising services to abuse survivors under the Child Victims Act.

Zirkin once testified in opposition to the law on behalf of the Catholic Church, but now finds himself in a position to bring in business because of it.

“The law had been determined by The Attorney General for many years to violate the Maryland Constitution and Declaration of Rights. Nevertheless, the General Assembly passed the legislation,” read an email from his law firm, Zirkin & Schmerling Law.

After four hard-fought legislative sessions, the Maryland General Assembly in 2023 passed the Child Victims Act, which eliminates the statute of limitations for survivors of childhood sexual abuse, allowing them to sue their perpetrators and the institutions that their abusers worked for.

According to CHILD USA, a national think tank…

View Cache

It is that terrible time again for devout Catholics and Christians everywhere when the evil of clerical child sex abuse is revealed once again on the international stage.

An investigative report on clerical child abuse released May 23 by the US Attorney General named six Catholic dioceses in Illinois and declared that clerical child abuse is as rife today as in the past.

The sacred trust that the people of God, followers of Jesus have in the clergy is challenged by the truth about clerical abuse of children.

If they have true faith in Jesus of Nazareth and his teaching that goodness, truth, justice, and love of neighbor and children will one day overcome and defeat evil, their faith will not be shaken. They will stand firm and welcome the truth that is cleansing the institutional Church.

In the Philippines, the cleansing has not yet happened. Child abuse cases involving…

View Cache

More than three dozen Buffalo Diocese properties could soon be appraised for current values that ultimately may factor heavily into a settlement with sexual abuse claimants in the diocese’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.

Lawyers for the diocese are asking a federal judge to approve a request to hire KLW Appraisal Group to come up with valuations for 37 properties spread across six counties.

The properties vary from 15 acres of vacant land in the Town of Hamburg near the Erie County Fairgrounds to a historically significant four-story office building in the heart of Buffalo’s medical corridor. They also include six school buildings, two retirement homes for priests, St. Joseph Cathedral, and the former Christ the King Seminary in Aurora.

They were estimated collectively to be worth $16 million in 2020 when the diocese first sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in response to more than 200 Child Victims Act lawsuits alleging…

View Cache

Carmelite nuns of the Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity in Arlington, Texas, filed new theft and defamation charges Friday against Bishop Michael Olson of Fort Worth.

The nuns’ new charges were filed in a district court for Tarrant County, Texas, the day after Olson dismissed the monastery’s prioress, Reverend Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach, from religious life on the grounds that she had a sexual affair with an unnamed priest.

In a Thursday decree, Olson announced he had found Gerlach, prioress of the Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity in Arlington, “guilty of having violated the sixth commandment of the Decalogue and her vow of chastity with a priest from outside the Diocese of Fort Worth.”

The new charges levied by the monastery are in addition to a lawsuit filed on May 3 that seeks $1 million in civil damages and asks the court to block the…

View Cache

OVERLAND PARK, Kansas — When Joe Eldred was a child, he was sexually abused by three Catholic priests while attending Nativity of Mary Catholic Church and the accompanying elementary school in Independence, Missouri.

Eldred told his story in “Procession,” a documentary directed by Robert Greene that tells the story of six men who were abused by priests in the Catholic church. The documentary starts in Kansas City, Missouri, where much of the abuse occurred, and follows the survivors as they face their trauma and work to heal together.

Most of the abuse Eldred discussed in the film occurred at Lake Viking, a private, man-made lake in northwest Missouri. There, a priest introduced him to Thomas Reardon.

“I remember Father Reardon saying, ‘Come on, let’s show them how much fun this can be.’ And that’s when he raped me,” Eldred said in the documentary.

Through the filming process, Eldred was able…

View Cache

The Vatican did not indicate whether it carried out its own investigation into the accusations against Mulakkal.

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of an Indian bishop who was cleared last year of charges of raping a religious sister in his diocese.

The resignation of the 59-year-old Bishop of Jalandhar, Franco Mulakkal, comes 16 months after his acquittal by a court in India’s Kerala state in January 2022.

The judge in the case found that “the prosecution failed to prove all the charges against the accused”.

The Vatican did not indicate whether it carried out its own investigation into the accusations against Mulakkal, who has denied the claims and contends he was falsely accused after he questioned alleged financial irregularities at his accuser’s convent.

A religious sister with the Missionaries of Jesus accused the bishop of raping her in May 2014, during a visit to her convent in Kuravilangad, Kerala….

View Cache

The sentence is one of the most severe penalties for clerical sexual abuse handed down in France.

A priest of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) has been sentenced by a French court to 20 years in prison for the rape and sexual assault of 27 minors – 16 boys and 11 girls between 12 and 15 years old at the time.

Some of Fr Pierre de Maillard’s victims were from the same family, sometimes abused in their parents’ homes, the jury trial in La Roche sur Yon, capital of the Vendée department of western France, was told.

Before the jury retired to consider its decision, the 55-year-old priest said: “Excuse me, I’m sorry, excuse me, I’m sorry.”

The sentence on 2 June was one of the most severe penalties for clerical sexual abuse handed down in France, where the Catholic Church has been haunted by the scandal for…

View Cache

Jorge Ordoñez es un padre que por tres años ha estado en busca de justicia para su hija, quien fue víctima de abuso sexual por parte de un sacerdote en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. Sin embargo, a lo largo de este tiempo, se ha encontrado con obstáculos, negación y presunto encubrimiento por parte de la Iglesia.

Ciudad de México, 31 de mayo (SinEmbargo). – Jorge Ordoñez emprende desde hace tres años una de las batallas más complicadas: buscar justicia para su hija, quien cuando tenía 10 años fue víctima de abuso sexual por parte de un sacerdote en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.

Jorge Ordoñez, el padre de la menor, denunció en entrevista con SinEmbargo, que luego de acusar formalmente a un sacerdote que abusó de la pequeña en una reunión a la que acudió con su madre en el año 2020, hasta la fecha no solo ha encontrado falta de justicia, sino obstáculos, negación por parte de…

View Cache

The Catholic Church in Spain on June 1 presented the report “To shed light,” which tallies 927 complaints of alleged sexual abuse of minors under 18 years of age or vulnerable people that occurred from 1945 to 2022.

The report does not include situations involving the abuse of conscience and power or committed against adults.

The report was “prepared from the testimonies that have been collected in the offices [of the protection of minors and abuse prevention], without assuming or proving innocence or guilt.”

The Spanish Bishops’ Conference (CEE) also acknowledged that in the account it presented “it’s possible that there are some duplications of testimonies.”

The complaints indicate 728 alleged perpetrators including 170 diocesan priests and 208 ordained religious, 234 non-ordained men and women religious, one deacon, 92 laypeople, and 23 people whose state is unknown.

Most abuse was of homosexual nature

According to the data provided by the…

View Cache

An Illinois megachurch pastor likely misused his position in 2016 to cover up credible sexual misconduct allegations concerning his son, a former pastor at the church, an independent investigation has found.

Mike Baker, former senior pastor at Eastview Christian Church (ECC), “more likely than not” withheld information from staff and church elders about sexual misconduct allegations made about his son, Caleb Baker, in 2016, the report by Wagenmaker and Oberly found. The report also found that Caleb Baker likely used his pastoral role at ECC to “persuade women to engage in sexual activity,” confirming prior reporting by The Roys Report (TRR).  

The report also determined that Mike Baker likely didn’t share the extent of the allegations against his son with the pastor who hired Caleb subsequent to his firing at ECC—Pastor Cal Jernigan of Central Christian Church in Arizona. Jernigan said last February that Mike Baker had told…

View Cache

HAMDEN, Conn. (WTNH) — A priest that served in Waterbury, Torrington and Hamden in the last five years is now the center of a sexual assault lawsuit.

“When we see a priest or anybody working for the diocese transferred quickly over a short period of time that’s concerning and that’s a red flag for us,” said Mike McDonnell with the Survivor’s Network of Those Abused by Priests. “Out of sight, out of mind. Let the dust settle.”

Reverend Mauricio Galvis joined Saint John Paul Roman Catholic Church in Torrington in 2019. A year later, the alleged victim says she developed trust, respect and reliance for the Reverend, which then led to manipulation and various sexual acts without her consent.

The alleged incident happened in Torrington in September 2020.

According to court documents the victim allegedly continues to suffer from physical injuries and emotional distress.

News 8 did reach out to…

View Cache

The parish priest of St. Jerome’s in Troy is named in the state’s recent sex abuse in the Catholic Church report, which alleges he lied to help a pedophile cohort get a teaching job years ago at a community college in Florida. 

Rev. Kevin Laughery during weekend mass acknowledged giving a job reference in the early 1990s for Walter Weerts, a known pedophile priest with 22 victims who served in several Metro East parishes, but said he “did not lie” in doing so.

The Office of the Illinois Attorney General’s “Report on Catholic Clergy Child Sex Abuse in Illinois,” issued last week lists 451 Catholic religious figures who over a span of about 70 years abused at least 1,997 children across dioceses in Illinois. 

Included in the report is Weerts, who following his ordination in 1960, served in Edwardsville, Granite City and Highland and befriended parishioners in an effort to gain access to their children. In 1986,…

View Cache

Videomessaggio di Papa Francesco

L’autore del mosaico, p. Rupnik, è stato scomunicato per gravi reati canonici. Poi lo stesso Papa cancellò questa scomunica come ha detto la Compagnia di Gesù. Intanto da mesi si discute cosa fare con oltre 200 opere del gesuita in decine di luoghi importanti in giro per il mondo.

(L. B., R. C. – a cura Redazione “Il sismografo”) In un breve 

video (al minuto 1, 20), girato con il telefonino, inviato giorni fa da Papa Francesco al santuario dell’Aparecida in Brasile, lo stesso Pontefice si avvicina ad una riproduzione di un mosaico mariano del gesuita p. M. I. Rupnik – che si trova in uno dei saloni di Santa Marta – e illustra nel dettaglio il significato dell’opera. (Vatican News) A dir poco sorprendente perché nella vicenda ripugnante del gesuita mosaicista. il Santo…

View Cache

There’s a power in the ordinary church.

The first two episodes of the recent FX documentary, “The Secrets of Hillsong,” detail the downfall of the church in New York City and around the globe. First, we watch Hillsong NYC and its pastor, Carl Lentz, rise to power and influence. Over the course of a decade, tens of thousands of people, including young people from diverse backgrounds who had abandoned or never attended church before, arrived en masse to hear Lentz preach. Justin Bieber got baptized. Selena Gomez showed up. Hillsong NYC was a cultural phenomenon. It looked like a rock concert, with a buff, tattooed and yet emotional pastor pacing the stage amidst crescendoing worship songs and powerful words of prayer. All the cool kids lined up outside in their ripped jeans and leather jackets, waiting to attend one of the seven regular weekend services.

But soon we learn what…

View Cache

New pedophile priests are exposed

All are ‘credibly accused’ elsewhere

But 5 are not on Rockford’s ‘accused’ list

One was in the diocese for nine years & was sued

Group urges whistleblowers & victims to ‘keep coming forward’

WHAT

Holding signs and childhood photos, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will

• disclose the names of five proven, admitted or credibly accused abusive clerics who were in the Rockford area but are NOT on the official Rockford diocese ‘accused’ list, and
• blast local Catholic officials for their “continued secrecy and deceit.”

They will also urge

• Rockford’s bishop to post the five names on his website as soon as possible, and
• anyone who “saw, suspected or suffered” clergy sex crimes to “keep coming forward to police and prosecutors, not to church figures.”

WHEN

Monday, May 29 at 2:30 p.m.

WHERE

On the sidewalk outside the Cathedral of St. Peter, 1243 N….

View Cache

Arcybiskup Sławoj Leszek Głódź ma przebywać w ciężkim stanie w szpitalu – podaje RadioZET.pl, powołując się na kilka źródeł.

Jak dowiedział się dziennikarz Radia ZET Radosław Gruca, arcybiskup Sławoj Leszek Głódź przebywa obecnie w szpitalu. Duchowny ma być w ciężkim stanie. Informacja ta miała zostać potwierdzona w kilku źródłach.

Abp Sławoj Leszek Głódź jest w szpitalu

Sławoj Leszek Głódź przez lata był jednym z najbardziej wpływowych biskupów w polskim Kościele, pełnił także między innymi funkcję biskupa polowego Wojska Polskiego. Później awansowano go do stopnia generała dywizji. 

W marcu 2021 roku arcybiskup Sławoj Leszek Głódź wraz z abp Edwardem Janiakiem został ukarany przez Watykan w związku z tuszowaniem przez nich nadużyć seksualnych na terenie podległych im diecezji.

Nuncjatura apostolska poinformowała wówczas, że “na podstawie przepisów Kodeksu Prawa Kanonicznego i motu proprio Papieża Franciszka Vos estis lux mundi” Watykan przeprowadził postępowanie dotyczące obu arcybiskupów “dotyczące sygnalizowanych zaniedbań (…)…

View Cache

It is well and good that op-ed writer Mike Hoffman has “received restorative justice from the Catholic Church after surviving clergy abuse” (May 30). The fact is that clergy abuse of minors has been the norm in the Catholic Church for centuries — from the Council of Trent (1545-1563) and prior to Vatican II (1962-65) and after. It has been as much a part of Catholicism as the Stations of the Cross or Ash Wednesday.

Ireland, Australia, Mexico, the United States (every country, every decade, every parish — you name it). Bishops, archbishops, cardinals and popes, when not themselves perpetrators, have aided and abetted, covering up, prevaricating, moving abusers from parish to parish and playing Russian roulette with the lives of children.

— Joe English, Oak Park

View Cache

Two weeks ago, a new, horrific chapter on sexual abuse by the Catholic religious began. By laying bare the magnitude of the tragedy, the Illinois attorney general heightened the consciousness of everyone to this issue. Once again, Catholics and others read a report wondering if they will recognize a name.

Catholics cowered at the thought of having to answer questions from friends or simply wondered what those too polite to ask were thinking. However, another set of victims gets scant press: the vast majority of priests and religious who have committed their lives to the service of others, the holy ones who have been steadfast in their faith and devoted to those they serve.

Every time one of these priests hesitates to wear his clerical collar in public, every time he approaches the altar wondering what his congregation might be thinking of him, every time he hesitates to linger after…

View Cache

The Illinois Attorney General’s Office released a sweeping report last month which detailed sexual abuse claims against 450 clerics within the state’s Catholic churches victimizing almost 2,000 children.

The Catholic Diocese of Peoria had a litany of transgressions cited by the attorney general’s office, including covering up instances of sexual abuse, mishandling cases and mistreating survivors.

Here’s what we found about the Peoria diocese’s connections to the investigation.

51 clerics cited in investigation

There were 51 former clerics who were linked to abuse of children over the past 70 years, according to the attorney general’s office. Those clerics in the Catholic Diocese of Peoria encompassed 26 counties, stretching from Rock Island in northwest Illinois to Vermillion County on the Indiana border.

Former bishop lambasted by attorney general in report

Archbishop John Myers, the former…

View Cache

Las oficinas para la protección de menores y prevención de abusos contabilizan 927 víctimas de abusos sexuales a menores desde mediados de los años cuarenta hasta 2022

EL PAÍS puso en marcha en 2018 una investigación de la pederastia en la Iglesia española y tiene una base de datos actualizada con todos los casos conocidos. Si conoce algún caso que no haya visto la luz, nos puede escribir a: abusos@elpais.es. Si es un caso en América Latina, la dirección es: abusosamerica@elpais.es.

Los obispos españoles admiten que al menos 728 miembros de la Iglesia católica están acusados de abusar de menores desde 1945 hasta finales de 2022. Este es el último avance de datos de la Conferencia Episcopal Española (CEE), aportado este jueves en Madrid en la presentación del informe Para dar luz de la CEE, el primer documento que presenta la Iglesia en España sobre la pederastia. También ha informado por primera vez…

View Cache

A Catholic priest accused in a lawsuit of sexual misconduct while serving at a Torrington church nearly three years ago has been assigned to “non-parish duties” at the Hamden parish where he now serves, officials said Saturday. 

The priest, the Rev. Mauricio Galvis, is a parochial vicar at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Hamden, according to the church’s website. The lawsuit alleges Galvis exposed himself to a woman in his office while serving at St. John Paul the Great Parish in Torrington.

“In order to allay any concerns that parishioners may have about Fr. Galvis, he is being assigned to non-parish duties while his civil case alleging sexual misconduct with an adult awaits adjudication,” according to a statement released Saturday by officials with the Archdiocese of Hartford, which oversees both churches. 

It is unclear when or why Galvis moved from the church in Torrington to the Hamden congregation. 

A lawyer representing Galvis…

View Cache

The arrest of Fr. Arul Savari, a 48-year-old priest accused of sexually assaulting an eight-year-old girl at a Roman Catholic church on the Little Grand Rapids Indian Reserve 265 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg on May 27 has provoked a local demand that the church leave the community.

The child was alone with the priest, who was charged with sexual assault, sexual interference, sexual exploitation of a young person, luring a child and forcible confinement on May 30.

“We don’t want the church here,” Oliver Owen, the reserve’s chief announced to media.

“I brought that up to the band meeting about our priest and the community right away said, ‘you know what, we don’t want that person here in the community, we don’t want him to come back and we don’t want the church here,’” Owen said in a phone interview with the CBC.

“It’s hard to imagine. I’m kind of lost…

View Cache

Survivors were outraged last fall when they learned that a retired Wyoming bishop and former Kansas City priest facing numerous sexual abuse allegations would be moving back to the Kansas City area.

And now, The Star has learned, Bishop Joseph Hart did not move back to the metro area after all — bringing more outrage to the survivors who were never informed of the change.

“I don’t even know what to say,” said Michael Sandridge, a victim of another credibly accused priest in the Kansas City area. “I feel deceived. They should have at least let people know. It’s called transparency.”

Hart, whose abuse allegations were deemed credible by two U.S. bishops but dismissed by the Vatican in 2021, was to move to Kansas City in October and reside in a senior living facility. Now 91, Hart had left Kansas City more than four decades ago to become bishop of…

View Cache

Advocate for human rights led Santa Fe Archdiocese for 22 years

Michael Jarboe Sheehan, who retired in 2015 as Archbishop of Santa Fe, died Saturday at age 83, a news release from the Santa Fe Archdiocese said.

Born in Wichita Kansas, Sheehan was ordained as a priest in 1964. He served as First Bishop of Lubbock, Texas, and Apostolic Administrator of Santa Fe before being named Archbishop in 1993.

The release said that Sheehan “was deeply committed to social justice, evangelization, and worked tirelessly to abolish the death penalty in New Mexico. He championed initiatives aimed at eradicating poverty, promoting equality, and ensuring the well-being of the most vulnerable members of society.”

As reported by Reginia Ruiz for KOAT in 2014, Sheehan “inherited a diocese rocked with scandal.” In a 2015 interview with KOAT, he said Sheehan said there were many problems when he first joined the archdiocese. In a…

View Cache

A Fort Worth Bishop has dismissed the nun accused of breaking her vow of chastity with a priest.

In a statement, the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth said Reverend Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach of the Most Holy Trinity Monastery in Arlington violated the Sixth Commandment with a priest from outside the city.

Agnes’ attorney Matthew Bobo has repeatedly denied the accusations that his client admitted the allegations were true.

“I can tell you categorically that did not happen,” he said.

The Diocese said Agnes has thirty days to appeal her dismissal with the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of the Apostolic Life.

Bobo said he and his client plan on doing just that.

“Mother Superior will be appealing this immoral and unjust decision that is not subject to canonical action. In addition, the civil lawsuit will continue full speed ahead.” he said in a statement.

The lawsuit…

View Cache

Upon conclusion of an investigation initiated on April 24, 2023, the Most Reverend Michael F. Olson, Bishop of the Diocese of Fort Worth and Pontifical Commissary of the Monastery in Arlington, Texas, found the Reverend Mother Teresa Agnes (Gerlach) of Jesus Crucified, O.C.D. (née Lisa Marie Gerlach), Prioress of the Monastery, guilty of having violated the sixth commandment of the Decalogue and her vow of chastity with a priest from outside the Diocese of Fort Worth. Therefore, as Pontifical Commissary of the Monastery in Arlington, Texas, and as the Bishop of the Diocese of Fort Worth, Bishop Olson dismissed Mother Teresa Agnes from the Order of Discalced Carmelites in accord with cann. 695 §1 and 699 §2 CIC. She has thirty days to appeal this decision to the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of the Apostolic Life.

View Cache

The Jehovah’s Witness church has filed legal action to be exempted from the state-wide investigation into sexual and other abuse.

It is seeking a judicial review and High Court declaration that the church does not assume responsibility for the care of children, young people, or vulnerable people.

The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse said the church was arguing there were no instances of abuse within it that fall within the scope of the inquiry.

The commission has emailed abuse survivors from the church to say it is treating this as a priority.

It said it acknowledged the news may distress them and they had its support.

Shayne Mechen of survivor group JW for Justice said the move was immoral and would not work.

“They don’t care about the ones that have been abused, they only care about their name,” he said.

The argument was based on the JW’s lack…

View Cache

It is that terrible time again for devout Catholics and Christians everywhere when the evil of clerical child sex abuse is revealed once again on the international stage. An investigative report on clerical child abuse released on May 23, 2023 by the attorney general said six Catholic dioceses in Illinois had declared that clerical child abuse is rife today as in the past.

The sacred trust that the people of God, followers of Jesus have in the clergy, is challenged by the truth about clerical abuse of children. If they have true faith in Jesus of Nazareth and his teaching that goodness, truth, justice, and love of neighbor and children will one day overcome and defeat evil their faith will not be shaken. They will stand firm and welcome the truth that is cleansing the Institutional Church.

In the Philippines, the cleansing has not yet happened. Child abuse cases by…

View Cache

Catholic devotees in Bolivia prepared for one of the country’s biggest religious celebrations this weekend at a time when the church in this Andean country has been rocked by an increasing number of sex abuse scandals.

The faithful who were gearing up for the Jesus of the Great Power festival Saturday insisted that cases of abuse that have come to light in recent weeks would not affect the folk-religious festival in La Paz, which fuses together Catholic and local Indigenous traditions.

Tens of thousands of people will descend on the capital Saturday wearing colorful garb to dance to the beat of thousands of musicians playing traditional Indigenous music in a demonstration of their faith.

What started out as a small celebration in the Great Power neighborhood a century ago now takes over much of the capital.

Leaders of the Catholic Church acknowledged this week that the church had been “deaf”…

View Cache

An unprecedented new compendium of child abuse cases in the Brazilian Catholic Church has found that 108 members of the clergy victimized 148 children and teenagers since 2000. The authors, however, claim those totals are only the tip of the iceberg, and that many other cases are still to come to light.

Sixty of the clerics identified in the study have been convicted of sex crimes and sentenced to prison terms, while dozens are still waiting for trial.

Released in Portuguese earlier this week, the book Pedofilia na Igreja (“Pedophilia in the Church”) is based on an analysis of thousands of legal documents held in courts and police branches, international data banks on child sex abuse, news stories, and archives.

The authors, journalists Fábio Gusmão and Giampaolo Morgado Braga, also interviewed dozens of victims and their relatives, priests, prosecutors, and police agents, in an effort to describe and catalogue their stories.

“Brazil…

View Cache

It’s time for Catholic Archdiocese to provide answers

Where is my church?

For the past several weeks after release of the Maryland attorney general report on clergy abuse in the Catholic Church, we have been inundated with an average of two newspaper articles and two to three nightly news reports per week, plus numerous TV ads for lawyers soliciting abuse victims to sue the church.

My parish has said one prayer of the faithful for abuse victims. The only thing the diocese has said publicly is that the media is not covering the story fairly. So where is my church in response to the onslaught of bad press it is receiving? Does leadership they still have their heads in the sand and hope it all blows over? If so, I think they need a new public relations person.

Calls to Archbishop Lori have yielded no results in getting his audio…

View Cache

John D. Murphy, a former Augustinian priest, isn’t on any public list of abusers. The attorney general’s investigation didn’t name him. The Archdiocese of Chicago settled claims over Murphy but doesn’t include him on its list. And his Catholic religious order hasn’t named abusers — but said Saturday it hopes to “in the near future.”

John D. Murphy, a formerCatholic priest and member of the Augustinian religious order in the Chicago area, was accused in lawsuits two decades ago of sexually assaulting numerous children.

More than a dozen accusers ended up settling legal claims with the Augustinians — who oversee St. Rita High School on the Southwest Side and Providence Catholic High School in New Lenox — and the Archdiocese of Chicago over accusations against Murphy, according to interviews and records.

So why isn’t Murphy included among the 451 Catholic priests and brothers named a week and a half ago…

View Cache

A Catholic priest accused in a lawsuit of sexual misconduct while serving at a Torrington church nearly three years ago has been assigned to “non-parish duties” at the Hamden parish where he now serves, officials said Saturday. 

The priest, the Rev. Mauricio Galvis, is a parochial vicar at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Hamden, according to the church’s website. The lawsuit alleges Galvis exposed himself to a woman in his office while serving at St. John Paul the Great Parish in Torrington.

“In order to allay any concerns that parishioners may have about Fr. Galvis, he is being assigned to non-parish duties while his civil case alleging sexual misconduct with an adult awaits adjudication,” according to a statement released Saturday by officials with the Archdiocese of Hartford, which oversees both churches. 

It is unclear when or why Galvis moved from the church in Torrington to the Hamden congregation. 

A lawyer representing Galvis…

View Cache

The firestorm of accusations against priests of the sexual abuse of minors has created the suspicion, often fueled by the media, that any priest against whom allegations are made is guilty. The tremendous damage that has been perpetrated against the many victims in the sexual abuse crisis cannot be underestimated, nor can we underestimate what the church needs to do to make whole those who have been so horrendously hurt by members of the clergy. But it is important that safeguards for due process for those accused of abuse be honored, even as we work toward guaranteeing the safety of all members of the church.

A disturbing statistic from the recent National Study of Catholic Priests, undertaken by the Catholic Project of the Catholic University of America, shows the lack of trust in due process protections for priests accused of sexual abuse. In that survey, 82 percent of all priests said…

View Cache

Knoxville Catholic Bishop Richard Stika is facing increasing criticism and scrutiny over his leadership, including how he’s handled accusations that a former seminarian raped a church musician, newly gathered documents show.

The musician is suing Stika and the Catholic Diocese of Knoxville in Knox County Circuit Court. Judge Jerome Melson is expected to hold a hearing Friday for the musician’s lawyers and diocesan attorneys.

The hearing comes as local and national attention grows about the diocese, the boundaries of which stretch from Chattanooga to Knoxville and on up to the Tri Cities. An online publication called The Pillar has published numerous stories critical of Stika’s leadership since 2021.

Complaints against him gained even greater prominence May 11 when the National Catholic Reporter published a lengthy story about the bishop and his leadership.

WBIR previously has reported about the ex-organist’s February 2022 lawsuit as well as a federal complaint filed in…

View Cache

Spanish bishops release report on child sex abuse by priests and others over eight decades

An investigation by Spain’s Catholic Church found that priests and other church personnel there sexually abused almost a thousand victims over eight decades.

A report by the Spanish Catholic bishops conference, released Thursday, said that at least 927 victims reported abuse by church personnel since the 1940s. The count will be updated as new data is collected, the conference said.

More than 99% of the abusers were male as were 83% of their victims. About half of the abusers were clergy. The largest numbers of cases occurred between 1960 and 1990.

The report was released at the same time as a compendium of the bishops’ child-protection policies, which mandate cooperation with police and prosecutors, including the obligation to report criminal abuse.

The Spanish bishops’ report is the latest of a series of local and national investigations…

View Cache

Franco Mulakkal has resigned as Bishop of Jalandhar at the behest of the Vatican. His arrest in 2018 on the complaint of a nun and acquittal last year by a trial court triggered debate and discussions.

Franco Mulakkal, the Catholic priest who was acquitted last year of charges of raping a nun, has resigned as Bishop of Jalandhar on Thursday (June 1).

Communication from the Apostolic Nunciature to India, which is the Vatican mission in the country, said the Holy See requested the resignation from Mulakkal not as a disciplinary measure imposed upon him, but as pro bono Ecclesiae, especially for the good of the diocese which needs a new bishop. There would not be any canonical restrictions on his ministry, said the release.

After the announcement from the Vatican, Mulakkal in a video thanked all those who stood with him during his troubled days. “The Pope on Thursday accepted my…

View Cache

The case is related to the rape of a nun belonging to the Missionaries of Jesus – a Catholic congregation for women under the Jalandhar diocese.

Franco Mulakkal, who was acquitted by a court in Kerala last year in connection with the rape of a nun, has resigned as bishop of the Jalandhar diocese, the Vatican’s mission in India said on Thursday.

The Apostolic Nunciature to India — the Vatican’s mission in the country — said in a release that Pope Francis accepted the resignation.

The communication from the Nunciature in Delhi said the Holy See respected the verdict of the Additional Sessions Court in Kottayam that acquitted the bishop, as well as the appeal against the acquittal that has been admitted by the Kerala High Court.

According to the Vatican’s representative, the resignation was requested of Mulakkal for the good of the diocese, which needs a new bishop, and not…

View Cache

Pope Francis requested the resignation of an Indian bishop acquitted of raping a nun because his case has divided the diocese, the apostolic nunciature in India said Thursday.

The Vatican announced June 1 that Pope Francis had accepted Bishop Franco Mulakkal’s resignation as bishop of Jullundur (Jalandhar) in the Indian state of Punjab, but gave no reason for the 59-year-old’s resignation well before the typical retirement age of 75. 

But a June 1 statement from the apostolic nunciature in New Delhi explained that Mulakkal was asked to step down for the good of the Church.

The nunciature said that it respected a civil court’s decision to acquit Mulakkal of all charges on Jan. 14, 2022, as well as an appeal against the acquittal admitted by the high court in Kerala State.

“Given the still divisive situation about the aforesaid matter in the Diocese of Jullundur, the resignation has been requested from the…

View Cache

Spain’s Catholic bishops’ conference says it has found evidence of 728 sexual abusers within the church since 1945, through the testimony of 927 victims, in its first public report on the issue.

The church said 83% of the victims and 99% of the abusers were male and that more than 60% of the offenders were dead.

In a report presented Thursday, more than 50% of offenders were said to be priests. The rest were other church officials.

The church said that most cases occurred in the last century, 75% of them before 1990.

The conference said the collection of testimonies was continuing and the figure would be updated periodically. The data was collected in some 200 offices for the protection of minors, set up by the church around Spain in 2019.

Leading daily El País, which has been reporting constantly on cases in Spain and abroad, said Friday the real…

View Cache

An investigation by the Spanish Catholic Church into child sexual abuse by members of the clergy and non-clerical staff has so far identified 728 alleged abusers and 927 victims since the 1940s, according to its first report.

“We acknowledge the harm caused,” said Jose Gabriel Vera, the spokesman for the Spanish Bishops’ Conference. “We want to help all victims…to accompany them in their healing.”

The issue came under a spotlight in Spain in 2021 after El Pais newspaper reported more than 1,200 alleged cases, years after sexual abuse scandals had rocked the Church in countries such as the U.S., Ireland and France.

Several inquiries have been launched, including one led by the country’s ombudsman, and the Church’s own internal investigation.

“We want to know what went wrong in the selection of candidates for the priesthood, what went wrong during their training…what has led a person who decided to give himself…

View Cache

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST: Multiple U.S. states are rethinking how long victims should have to seek damages from sex abusers in civil court. Maryland is the latest state to abolish its civil statute of limitations, as hundreds of people are preparing to sue the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore for damages. WYPR’s Scott Maucione has more.

SCOTT MAUCIONE, BYLINE: All over Maryland, billboards, TV commercials and social media ads are popping up, informing people they have the right to sue the Catholic Church. The Maryland General Assembly passed a law this year abolishing the statute of limitations on civil suits for sex crimes. It coincided with the report that more than 600 children were abused by members of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Sixty-four-year-old Kit Bateman was one of those victims. He says he was abused at a Catholic high school in Baltimore when he was a teenager. Going to church was his…

View Cache

Father John C. Anderson, a priest at Saint Edward Catholic Church in Chillicothe, abused at least seven children starting in the late 1970s. Two of his victims participated in the Illinois Attorney General’s investigation of abusive priests, and were given the pseudonyms, “Adam” and “Paul.” 

Adam was just 8 years old when his family moved to Chillicothe and enrolled him in the third grade at St. Edward school. Adam was one of a number of children Anderson asked to mow the church lawn and do yard work for his mother. For at least two of those children, lawn work turned into sleepovers and repeated sexual abuse, according to the Attorney General’s report.  

Adam said Anderson fondled him and masturbated while lying naked in the bed beside him. The abuse happened 30 to 45 times over the course of three or four years, and left lingering effects on Adam. 

“He…

View Cache

Documents in a searing lawsuit against the Catholic Diocese of Knoxville cannot be kept secret, a Knox County judge has ruled.

The Catholic Diocese of Knoxville asked a judge to hide court documents from the public as it defends itself against a man who says he was raped by a seminarian and who is calling into question the leadership of Bishop Richard Stika.

The diocese cited Knox News’ ongoing investigative reports when it asked the judge to protect documents related to the church’s sexual abuse review board and from “private meetings of priests of the diocese.”

A spokesperson previously said the diocese was only seeking to protect a small percentage of documents.

“This motion is not well-taken,” Circuit Court Judge E. Jerome Melson said before ruling to keep the documents open.

In particular, Melson found the diocese’s attorney had not presented enough evidence to put in place a protective order, but noted…

View Cache

About 20 state attorneys general have mounted investigations that have cataloged decades of abuse but yielded few criminal prosecutions.

The nearly 900-page report landed like a grenade when Josh Shapiro, then the attorney general of Pennsylvania, delivered it on a stage in Harrisburg, Pa., five years ago. It detailed widespread sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church throughout Pennsylvania, and a “sophisticated” cover-up by senior church officials. Victims of abuse and their families, sometimes visibly weeping, joined Mr. Shapiro on the stage.

More than 300 priests were found to have abused children, at least 1,000 of them, over the course of seven decades. The report reverberated at the highest levels of the church, with the Vatican expressing “shame and sorrow” over the findings. And it reached the pews, too: A Gallup poll the next year found that more than one-third of Catholics in the United States…

View Cache

A priest with the Diocese of Dallas, Texas, Kenneth J. Roberts came in contact with children from Illinois through his role as a retreat leader for the Diocese of Peoria.

Three people from Illinois have come forward to allege abuse at the hands of Roberts in the 1980s, according to a report on abusive priests compiled by the office of the Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.

Roberts was a minor celebrity for penning a biography, “Playboy to Priest,” in 1975. He claimed to have left behind a life as a jet-setting playboy when he was ordained in 1966. 

A victim given the pseudonym “William” related a tale of abuse not only at the hands of Roberts, but also by the Diocese of Peoria after it was made aware of the abuse. 

William was in fifth or sixth grade in the 1980s when he attended a retreat called Emmaus Days…

View Cache

Even after Samuel D. Pusateri pleaded guilty to criminal sexual assault of a 17-year-old student at Saint Bede Academy in Peru, the Catholic church did not publicly name him as a child sex abuser.

A month after Pusateri was sentenced in 1991, Diocese of Peoria Bishop John Myers wrote to the prison chaplain asking for special favors for Pusateri, according to a report on abusive priests compiled by the Illinois Attorney General. Even when Myers finally revoked Pusateri’s permission to minister in the Diocese of Peoria in 1993, he didn’t rule out the possibility that Pusateri might be allowed to return to his duties in the future.  

Pusateri did not return to the Diocese of Peoria, but instead served as a chaplain to the Franciscan Sisters in Wheaton until 2004, when he departed for Rome where he was in active ministry until about 2018, when the Attorney General of Illinois…

View Cache

George Hiland was a priest at Saint Stephens Church in Streator in the mid 1960s when he started showing special attention to a seventh grader. Because the boy’s father died when the boy was 10 years old, the boy’s mother and grandmother were delighted when Father Hiland started spending time with the child.  

Hiland took him to a bonfire, then for a drive where the boy got to steer while sitting in the priest’s lap. Then Hiland began fondling the boy. Later he performed oral sex on him and asked him to reciprocate, according to a report by the Illinois Attorney General. 

“I hated it, but I didn’t know who to talk to,” said the boy, who was given the pseudonym “Peter” in the attorney general’s report. 

Hiland instigated sex “everywhere,” said Peter – the church choir, the school cafeteria, an underground tunnel between the school…

View Cache

Norman D. Goodman had risen in the ranks of the Catholic Church to the status of monsignor, a title bestowed by the pope. As such, he was protected by his employer when allegations of abuse arose – there were a total of 19 confirmed cases, according to the Illinois Attorney General’s report on abusive priests.

“Jacob,” a pseudonym given to one of the victims in the report, was in 6th grade and an altar boy at Holy Family Church in Lincoln when Goodman began fondling him. The priest approached the boy from behind, pressing him against a counter or sink. Sometimes Goodman put money down Jacob’s pants pocket as an excuse to touch his genitals. The abuse continued for three years, ending around 1983. 

Jacob told his family of the abuse in the late 1990s. Initially he wanted to keep the news quiet, but changed his mind after speaking to diocesan…

View Cache

A yearslong investigation into child sex abuse by members of the Catholic clergy in Illinois has found at least 1,997 children in the state’s six dioceses were sexually abused between 1950 and 2019.

The Peoria Catholic Diocese, which covers 26 counties spanning from Rock Island in northwest Illinois to Vermillion County on the Indiana border, was part of that investigation.

Attorney General Kwame Raoul on May 23, 2023, released a comprehensive report, which included 51 clergy members in the Catholic Diocese of Peoria. Here is a list of their names, their Illinois parish assignments and the diocese’s claim of first report.

• John Anderson: Saint Mary, Aledo; Saint Mary, Canton; Saint Rose, Rushville; Saint Edward, Chillicothe; Saint Philomena, Peoria; Saint Joseph Home, Peoria; King’s House Retreat Center, Henry; 1993.

• Michael “Miguel” Baca: Assignments not reported by archdiocese/diocese/religious order; diocese…

View Cache

A boy was abused by two priests when he was a freshman at Trinity High School in Bloomington in 1964. He chose to share his experiences with Illinois Attorney General’s Office investigators even though talking about it prompts him to have nightmares. 

“Every time I have to tell my story, I don’t sleep well for several nights,” said “Nathan,” a pseudonym given to him for the report. “I just feel so much shame and guilt.” 

William Harbert, who taught sex education to the freshman boys, was known for grabbing children by the groin as they walked through the halls of the school. 

“We thought it was grab-assing, but he would do it often. I remember times walking down the hallway, going to the bathroom, and he would grab you by the groin and say, ‘Gotcha!’ said Nathan. Harbert once accompanied Nathan and a few other boys to a dentist’s appointment after…

View Cache

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Bishop Franco Mulakkal of India’s Jalandhar diocese more than a year after a lower court acquitted him of all charges of raping a nun.

“The letter of resignation I have written after prayerful reflection and consultation with my superiors was accepted by our dear Pope Francis today,” Mulakkal announced in a social media message on June 1.

The Vatican removed Mulakkal from the administrative responsibilities of the diocese based in northern Punjab state just before police arrested him in 2018 on charges of raping a nun.

The nun, a member of the Missionaries of Jesus congregation,  under the patronage of the bishop, accused him of raping her more than 13 times between 2014 and 2016 inside her convent in Kerala’s Kottayam district.

A district court in southern Kerala state, where the complainant nun lived, acquitted Mulakkal. The court on Jan. 14,…

View Cache

Critics say the seeking of permanent stays in cases where perpetrators have died amount to ‘another layer of abuse’ for survivors and a failure of moral leadership

The Australian Lawyers Alliance is preparing to meet with the New South Wales attorney general to lobby for reform against the “disgraceful” tactics employed by churches and other institutions to prevent abuse survivors from pursuing justice.

A Guardian investigation – based on interviews with 13 lawyers, analysis of court records, and discussions with survivors and their advocates – found earlier this year that churches and other institutions are now routinely seeking permanent stays in cases where perpetrators have died, arguing they cannot possibly receive a fair trial.

Where successful, the tactic permanently halts a survivor’s claim without any compensation. The mere threat of a stay is also being used to lowball survivors during settlement negotiations.

The tactic effectively relies on the passing of time to…

View Cache

[Via Daily Mail]

• Archbishop loses bid to reduce payout to altar boy
• Victoria man to receive almost $2 million in damages
• He was abused by former priest Desmond Gannon

A Catholic archbishop has lost a bid to reduce an almost $2million court-ordered payout to an altar boy subjected to horrific sexual abuse by a pedophile priest.

Archbishop of Melbourne Peter Comensoli launched an appeal of a Supreme Court decision to award $1.9million in damages to one of former priest Desmond Gannon’s victims, after being found vicariously liable for the abuse.

Gannon sexually assaulted the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, three times between 1968 and 1970 while he was an altar boy and pupil at a Catholic primary school in regional Victoria.

The priest drove the 11-year-old boy out to a remote bush area where he molested and raped him. He was terrified Gannon would get a shovel, kill…

View Cache

At the Joliet Diocese Wednesday, fallout from the release of last week’s damning 700-page report on the Catholic Church continued as members of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, spoke out against what they believe is a continued lack of transparency.

“The Joliet bishop continues to protect predators for the same reason that most of his brother bishops continue to protect predators and that is because he can get by with it,” said David Clohessy of SNAP.

The report, issued by Attorney General Kwame Raoul, identified 69 “credibly accused” Joliet area priests or brothers, eight more than what the diocese lists on its website. But could there be even more?

“We in SNAP have found several men who we believe should be on the Bishop’s list and are not on his list,” Clohessy said.

Speaking from his home in Florida, Mark Wethersbee described the abuse he suffered…

View Cache

The former monastery on a quiet residential street in Rome once sheltered Jews fearing deportation during World War II. Purchased by the Vatican in 2021 as a dormitory for foreign nuns studying at Rome’s pontifical universities, the building now stands empty, a collateral victim of the latest financial scandal to hit the Holy See.

Pope Francis has asked aides to get to the bottom of how at least $17 million, including money to refurbish the dorm, was transferred from the Vatican’s U.S.-based missionary fundraising coffers into an impact investing vehicle run by a priest, The Associated Press has learned. Two years later, the U.S. fundraiser says the money is gone, and the monastery is shuttered. Its renovation is tied up in bureaucratic red tape, while the nuns studying in Rome are still housed at a convent a 90-minute commute away.

The story of what happened to the money is one that…

View Cache

After Pennsylvania authorities issued a bombshell report in 2018 detailing widespread sexual abuse of children and coverup in the Roman Catholic church, California’s attorney general invited victims here to share their stories. The next year, the state subpoenaed half of California’s Roman Catholic dioceses.

What California authorities have learned since remains a mystery.

And for victims of long-ago abuse seeking justice in the courts while the state’s dioceses increasingly seek bankruptcy protection, the silence is a growing aggravation — especially as other states, notably Illinois and Maryland, recently issued their own reports, revealing a devastating past of abuse by hundreds of clergy of thousands of children.

“The public deserves to know what you have already uncovered,” SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in a letter Wednesday to California Attorney General Rob Bonta. “We urge you to release a report, or at least a preliminary report, about…

View Cache

This commentary is by Maura Labelle of Colchester, who lived at St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Burlington in the 1960s.

n January 2015, Bishop Christopher Coyne was installed with much fanfare as 10th Bishop of the Diocese of Burlington. He was new. He was modern and open. Coyne was heralded for his work as a blogging priest who would become the first “blogging bishop.” 

Victims of clergy abuse hoped he could be their champion.

Let’s fast forward to 2023. Coyne no longer has a blog. He rarely posts messages on Twitter. His Facebook page says that he can’t respond to Facebook messages due to “time constraints.” 

Most disappointing was that clergy abuse victims had not found their champion. Rather, they found a company man of the Catholic church who goes along to get along.

Clearly, something has changed. My guess is that Coyne is feeling the heat from multiple clergy sex abuse…

View Cache

The story of six nuns and former nuns paints a heartbreaking picture of a repressive and damaging regime which emphasised self-sacrifice and unquestioning obedience, writes Karen Hanrahan

“Any thoughts of escaping to a more natural life was regarded as being sinful. The idea of being unfaithful to your vocation was a step on the way to hell. It would be a mortal sin.”

These are the words of Mary, my mother. She was just 15 when she entered a convent in Ireland in 1950 and 34 by the time she finally managed to leave. She had been expressing doubts to her superiors since her early 20s but years of “brainwashing” and the very real fear of her and her family facing eternal damnation made breaking her vows seem impossible.

Speaking to my mother, as well as to five other nuns and former nuns for my PhD research, gave me a…

View Cache

A lawsuit brought by a former altar boy who said he was raped as a child in the 1960s by a now-deceased Roman Catholic bishop in Massachusetts has been settled, the sides announced Friday.

The plaintiff identified in court papers as John Doe alleged in the suit filed in February 2021 that not only was he abused by former Diocese of Springfield Bishop Christopher Weldon as well as two other clergy, but also that the church engaged in a yearslong coverup to protect the bishop’s reputation and legacy.

The suit also said that even after abuse allegations against Weldon were found to be credible, diocesan officials as late as 2019 denied them.

The diocese’s current bishop in a statement announcing the settlement apologized.

“Mr. Doe’s allegations were determined to be credible, therefore, any public statement made on behalf of the Diocese in May or June of 2019 that is…

View Cache

[Transcript of an interview with Robert Herguth of the Chicago Sun-Times; also available as a podcast.]

Speaker B: Hey, everyone, quick heads up for me that we are talking about sex abuse in the Catholic Church in this episode.

Speaker B: Take care of yourself while you listen.

Speaker B: Last week, the Attorney General of Illinois released a 696 page report, and then he stepped in front of reporters to talk about it.

Speaker C: Good morning.

Speaker B: Were you watching that press conference?

Speaker A: Yeah, I was there.

Speaker B: Robert Herguth is a reporter at the Sun Times, and he was at this presser because he had questions for the AG.

Speaker B: This report dealt with a subject robert’s become an expert in the Catholic Church.

Speaker B: The Attorney General found evidence that nearly 2000 people were abused by clergy over the last…

View Cache

[Via Washington Post]

Advocates have been stunned by the number of cases that surfaced during this revival window

At least a third of the 12 Roman Catholic dioceses in California have either filed for bankruptcy or are contemplating doing so to deal with an influx of lawsuits filed by survivors of childhood sexual abuse after a state law opened a three-year window in which cases were exempted from age limits.

More than 3,000 lawsuits have been filed against the Catholic Church in California under a 2019 state law that also extended the statute of limitations to allow all alleged victims of sexual abuseto sue up to the age of 40.

Advocates have been stunned by the number of cases that surfaced during the window, which closed at the end of December.

So far, two dioceses have declared bankruptcy.

The Diocese of Santa Rosa, which is facing more than 200 lawsuits,…

View Cache

Two women who say they were sexually abused as girls told Knox News they told the senior pastor of First Apostolic Church in Maryville and his wife about the assaults, and neither of the church leaders contacted police about the allegations as required by Tennessee’s mandatory reporting laws.

The women also say the alleged perpetrators, both whom were active in the church, were not publicly disciplined.

The survivors, now adults, said in each of their assaults – which happened years apart – they met in the Rev. Kenneth Carpenter’s office to discuss what happened. After they described the abuse, Carpenter offered to pray for them. Nothing else was done, to the survivors’ knowledge.

At the time of the abuse one of the girls was 11. The other was 12.

The church is under scrutiny after a man who is a former worship leader and middle school teacher at the church’s…

View Cache

[Includes video]

Survivors of alleged abuse by priests have accused local Catholic officials of withholding names.

Survivors Network of those Abused of Priests (SNAP) gathered outside of Rockford’s Cathedral of St. Peter on Monday. They said that they have discovered five clerics who are, or were, in the Rockford Diocese.

SNAP said that the five have been deemed “credibly accused” child molesters by Catholic officials elsewhere, but said that they are not on Rockford’s “credibly accused list.”

“If someone is on one list, why wouldn’t it be on every list, not just here but every list all across the country,” said Larry Antonsen, leader of Chicago SNAP. “They should all be on that list, every one of them, even the deceased ones. It’s good to have their names out there, and someone might see that name and something might click.”

The group urged Bishop David Malloy to post the names…

View Cache

Their names are missing from the Rockford diocesan ‘credibly accused’ list, even though they are or were in the Rockford area and are on one or more church ‘credibly accused’ lists elsewhere.

• Fr. Philip DeRea, was in the Rockford diocese two or three times for a total of at least nine years (from 1970-1976 at Sacred Heart Monastery and from 2008-2011 at the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart Community, both in Aurora). In 20—, US Catholic magazine reported on an abuse and cover up lawsuit against DeRea and his church supervisors which said that he “currently lives in Aurora and has most recently served as development director” for a church entity.

According to a Pennsylvania newspaper obituary, after ordination “DeRea was first assigned to the Public Relations Department of the headquarters of the USA Province of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in Aurora.”

For roughly…

View Cache

Clergy sex abuse findings called more detailed and transparent than Maryland’s

A new report by the Illinois Attorney General’s Office on sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in that state is too long for most readers to absorb in a day or two, but that didn’t stop Liz Murphy from zeroing in on what she most wanted to find out.

Murphy, an abuse survivor who lives in Baltimore, flipped through the report’s 696 pages one afternoon last week and checked whether it contained any black marks. When she saw that it didn’t, she said that alone told her it had more healing power than the one published by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office last month after a review by a Baltimore judge.

“This one has no redactions,” said Murphy, a survivor of sexual assault at the hands of the late John Merzbacher, a notorious former Catholic middle school teacher, in the…

View Cache

The ethereal sounds of the Maryland State Boychoir have soared through spaces sacred and secular the world over, from the Vatican to the White House.

The late Gov. William Donald Schaefer once designated the organization as “Maryland’s Official Goodwill Ambassadors,” and more than 1,000 boys have passed through its ranks.

But for all the accolades it has gathered over the past several decades, the 130-member group began humbly, when Frank T. Cimino Jr. brought together 14 boys in his mother’s basement in 1987 to hone what he later called the “miracle” of their young voices.

But there was something left out of its origin story: That same year, Cimino, a Baltimore native and Peabody Conservatory graduate, had been fired from his job as minister of music at St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Church in Northeast Baltimore.

The reason: A man reported Cimino had sexually abused him when he was a…

View Cache

[Includes a video]

A group of survivors and supporters speak out about sexual abuse within the Catholic Church outside a local place of worship Monday.

Several church abuse victims were among those who stood in front of Cathedral of St. Peter in Rockford Monday holding a poster with names of five priests who have spent time in Rockford accused of sexual abuse. Some priests on the list are dead, others still living.

“We want the bishop to post these five names on his website along the sides of the proven, admitted, critically accused molesters that are there now,” said Missouri’s Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) volunteer director David Clohessy.

The names of the priests are Father Philip Derea, Father John Powell, Father Norman Maday, Father Charles Becker and Father Robert Erpenbeck.

SNAP leaders say those names are listed under other church’s ‘credibly accused’ lists but claim they…

View Cache

In the small workshop behind his home in the Victorian country town of Broadford, Craig Waters was huddled on the floor, rocking back and forth. He’d been back there for hours, crying and alone, trapped anew in childhood nightmares.

Waters was trying to process what the Catholic church had just told him: it was threatening to thwart his attempt to receive justice for the horrors he says he experienced as an eight-year-old boy at St Brendan’s Catholic primary school in western Sydney.

There, a Catholic nun he dubs “the witch” would take him away from his friends at lunchtime, lead him to a small dark room off the main assembly hall and shut the door.

“I remember always dreading the moment that she turned around and looked at me, as that was when she seemed to be at least 10 foot tall, her eyes looked like they were black holes…

View Cache

Catholic church’s claim he could not have been an altar boy because he was baptised Anglican proved to be incorrect but delayed case for a year, in a legal move being heavily criticised

The Catholic church has been accused of causing added trauma to a survivor after it tried to thwart his case involving a notorious jailed paedophile priest by claiming he could not have been an altar boy because he was baptised in the Anglican church, a move that delayed the case for a year.

The accusation adds to a litany of complaints about the legal tactics being employed by the church in abuse cases, including its repeated attempts to permanently halt cases where paedophile clergy have died, a practice first revealed in an investigation by Guardian Australia.

In late 2020, a survivor who wishes to remain anonymous, sued the Maitland-Newcastle diocese for alleged abuse at the hands of…

View Cache

As a child Megan was full of promise. She did well at high school. She was liked and people used to tell her she should be a comedian.

She was vivacious, quick-witted and was a devoted teen athlete.

This story contains content that readers may find distressing.

But when the 59-year-old was five, a predator entered her life and his actions would eventually stamp out all that made her who she was — her sense of humour, her confidence and her pride.

Former Catholic priest Neville Creen was jailed in the early 2000s for abusing 22 other children.

On Friday he was sentenced to 12 months’ prison, to be suspended after serving three months, for his abuse of Megan.

He pleaded guilty to four charges, including indecent assault and treatment, and maintaining an unlawful relationship with a child.

Megan says when she was growing up Creen ingratiated himself into her family and didn’t leave her life for more than…

View Cache

The Diocese of Davenport has received a report of inappropriate sexual behavior in regard to a minor by Fr. John Stack dating from the 1990s. In compliance with the Diocese’s Memorandum of Understanding with local law enforcement, both Scott County and Clinton County (where the alleged behavior took place) were notified. The case was referred back to the Diocese for further investigation and possible canonical process.

In compliance with the Diocese’s Policies Relating to Sexual and Personal Behavior, Fr. Stack has been removed from ministry while the Diocese investigates this allegation further.

Fr. Stack was accused of abuse in the 1980s in 2013 and was removed from ministry, but a church trial reinstated him in 2016.

Fr. Stack has served in various parishes and institutions throughout his career, including Holy Family in Davenport, All Saints in Keokuk, St. Joseph in East Pleasant Plain, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini in Richland, Samaritan…

View Cache

Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Bolivia acknowledged Wednesday that the church had been deaf to the suffering of victims of sexual abuse, commenting as a pedophilia scandal involving priests is rocking the country.

In a statement, the Andean nation’s Catholic bishops said that “as a church, we are facing a painful moment … because we are certain that we have been directly or indirectly involved in the deep pain caused to innocent victims.”

The statement comes amid the fallout from the case involving a late Spanish Jesuit priest, Alfonso Pedrajas. According to a private diary accessed by the Spanish newspaper El País, Pedrajas allegedly abused dozens of minors in Catholic boarding schools in Bolivia in the 1970s and 1980s. He died of cancer in 2009.

Earlier this week, Jordi Bertemeu, one of the Vatican’s top sex crimes investigators, arrived in Bolivia.

The bishops said that while “we know…

View Cache

More than 20 abusive clerics who once served at area Catholic churches and schools were named in a state report released Tuesday.

The six dioceses in Illinois failed to disclose hundreds of abusive clerics before the state opened what would become a yearslong investigation into sex abuse within the church, Attorney General Kwame Raoul said Tuesday.

A 2017 law eliminated Illinois’ prior statute of limitations for child sex abuse, under which a 20-year clock began ticking on a victim’s 18th birthday. But that law was only prospective; a 2009 Illinois Supreme Court decision affirmed that attempts to alter the statute of limitations retroactively violated the due process rights of the accused.

Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Springfield Diocese said he supports the investigation and feels it is time to bring all the crimes out into the public. 

“The attorney general’s inquiry into the history of clergy sexual abuse of minors in…

View Cache

Much of Sean Faloon’s story is too harrowing to print

Victims of a notorious paedophile priest who may have abused 400 children over four decades have come forward to tell their story of suffering, and allegations of cover-up by the Catholic Church and collusion with police. Writer at Large Neil Mackay investigates

THE sexual abuse began when Sean Faloon was just 10 years old. It continued every week for seven unrelenting years.

Sean was raped by Father Malachy Finnegan. The priest may have abused up to 400 children over four decades. How did he get away with his crimes for so long? Sean, his lawyer and other victims believe Finnegan may have been a police informer.

The crimes took place in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. Victims claim Finnegan was passing intelligence on IRA suspects to the RUC. Police knew about Finnegan’s offending as early as 1996,…

View Cache

Letter to St. Alexander Parish, Villa Park

Letter to St. Boniface Parish, Monee

Letter to St. Dominic Parish, Bolingbrook

Letter to St. Joseph Parish, Downers Grove

Letter to St. Lawrence Parish, South Wilmington

**

Note from BishopAccountability.org: See our cached versions of the letters below.

Letter to St. Alexander Parish, Villa Park

Letter to St. Boniface Parish, Monee

Letter to St. Dominic Parish, Bolingbrook

Letter to St. Joseph Parish, Downers Grove

Letter to St. Lawrence Parish, South Wilmington

View Cache

Około 300 przestępców seksualnych związanych z Kościołem, co najmniej 1100 ofiar – taką skalę pedofilii w środowisku kościelnym w okresie PRL ujawnili dziennikarze “Rzeczpospolitej”. Autorzy dziennikarskiego śledztwa przekonują, że to dopiero wierzchołek góry lodowej

“LEKTURA tych ustaleń już teraz rodzi pytanie, czy nie będzie konieczna poważna korekta obrazu Kościoła w czasach komunistycznych” – mówi w rozmowie z “Rzeczpospolitą” o. Adam Żak, koordynator Konferencji Episkopatu Polski ds. ochrony dzieci i młodzieży. Dziennikarze Tomasz Krzyżak i Piotr Litka przeprowadzili kwerendę archiwalnych dokumentów m.in. w Instytucie Pamięci Narodowej (IPN) i Archiwum Akt Nowych (AAN), na podstawie których oszacowali liczbę ofiar i sprawców przestępstw seksualnych w Kościele w czasach PRL.

Wśród przestępców są nie tylko księża, rekolekcjoniści, badacze Pisma Świętego, budowniczowie sanktuariów, autorzy kościelnych śpiewników, bracia zakonni, klerycy, a także kościelny i organista. W sumie około 300 osób.

121 przypadków badanych przez władze PRL

W czasach PRL władze zajmowały się co najmniej 121…

View Cache

Sanctuary of Sin, Part 2 [See video]

[See also: Sanctuary of Sin Part 1: ‘The damage this does is chronic:’ Clergy sex abuse survivor shares story]

WGN Films presents “Sanctuary of Sin,” a series looking at a little-known religious order and the role it played in the Catholic church sex abuse crisis. This is Part 2 of 3.

Father Gerald Fitzgerald started a Catholic religious order after a chance encounter with a beggar. It turned out the beggar was a priest in need of help and had nowhere to turn.

So, Father Fitzgerald founded the Servants of the Paraclete in the late 1940s to help fill that void. He established in a compound in the New Mexico desert where priests struggling with alcohol abuse or a crisis of faith could be treated.

But he soon encountered clergy with more serious issues.

…

View Cache

Stika against sending ex-seminarian home

Knoxville Bishop Richard Stika told a priest in the spring of 2021 he would resign before he’d allow a former seminarian accused of raping a church employee to be sent back to Poland, according to a written account by the priest.

The priest reported the bishop’s comments in a May 2021 email to a Louisville priest who was investigating the diocese on behalf of the archbishop in Louisville, who oversees the Knoxville diocese.

The email was included in a batch of documents obtained by Knox News. We are not identifying the priest to protect him from retaliation, or the former seminarian because he has not been charged with a crime.

The email went to the personal inbox of Louisville priest Paul Beach who visited the diocese – along with then-Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, the former bishop of Knoxville – to assist “with our difficult situation,” according…

View Cache

Diocese denies Stika on sex abuse panel

Around lunchtime on a Friday in March 2021, the chair of the Knoxville diocese’s sexual abuse review board shared a complaint alleging that a seminarian had sexually assaulted a church employee.

The email from Carleton “Butch” Bryant, then serving as head of the board, was addressed to “fellow board members” and requested an urgent meeting to discuss the complaint. Many responded right away to say when they could meet, according to a copy of the emails obtained by Knox News.

Thirty minutes after Bryant sent his note, another recipient responded: Bishop Richard Stika.

Stika’s involvement goes against what the diocese has maintained since last fall. Spokesperson Jim Wogan said Stika was not a member of the review board and that his name had been mistakenly included on a list of members posted on the diocese’s website.

Including the diocese’s top leader on an…

View Cache

Patrick Wattigny, a former school chaplain outside New Orleans, is considering a guilty plea but could be out of prison in three years

A Louisiana man accusing a Roman Catholic priest of molesting him as a child has spoken out against what he says is an overly lenient sentence being offered to the defendant in exchange for a guilty plea.

The accuser, 24, is pressing a criminal case against Patrick Wattigny, who worked as a chaplain at the alleged victim’s high school and was charged with abuse against him in 2013.

Wattigny, 56, is considering pleading guilty to a single count of molestation of a juvenile in exchange for three years in prison, according to what the accuser says has been communicated to him by the suburban New Orleans-area district attorney’s office handling the case.

But the accuser says any prison sentence of less than 10 years…

View Cache

Several Catholic dioceses and American newspapers have revealed cases that, until recently, were unknown to the public. EL PAÍS has discovered that, after committing their crimes in the U.S., the accused clergymen headed for Spain… and managed to disappear

In 2018, EL PAÍS launched an investigation into pedophilia in the Spanish Church. We maintain an updated database with all known cases. If you know of a case that has not been reported, you can write to us at: abusos@elpais.es. If your information is regarding a case in Latin America, the address is: abusosamerica@elpais.es.

─────────

Manuel Fernández is a Spanish priest who was ordained in 1959, ending up in New Jersey by 1979. But in 2002, he was accused of child abuse — which occurred in the 1980s — and was removed from his post.

However, Fernández then returned to his diocese in the city of Ourense, in…

View Cache

Em duas décadas, mostra livro com levantamento inédito, Justiça condenou 60 sacerdotes por molestarem crianças e adolescentes

Nos últimos 20 anos, a Igreja Católica tem passado por seguidos escândalos de abusos sexuais de crianças e adolescentes cometidos por integrantes do clero. Desde o terremoto causado na Arquidiocese de Boston, nos Estados Unidos, pela série de reportagens do time Spotlight do jornal “The Boston Globe”, denunciando não só abusos de religiosos mas o acobertamento dos crimes pela Igreja, décadas de pedofilia envolvendo padres vieram à tona, um país após o outro. Um lugar, porém, vinha escapando ileso: maior país católico do mundo, o Brasil viveu sob um silêncio que encobriu boa parte das histórias de abusos da fé.

Ao contrário do resto do mundo, as notícias sobre vítimas brasileiras surgiram de forma esparsa. Em contraposição, nos últimos anos, países como Alemanha, Argentina, Austrália, Chile, México, Espanha, Irlanda, Portugal, Itália, França e…

View Cache

The director of the Maryland State Boychoir has resigned after he was identified as one of the 156 Catholic Church staff named in a Maryland Attorney General’s Office report on child sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

The Baltimore Sun on Friday named Frank T. Cimino Jr. as one of 10 alleged abusers whose names were redacted in a public version of the report issued April 5.

Cimino, 75, founded the boychoir 36 years ago and served as its president and director emeritus. Now numbering about 130 members, it performs widely in the state, nationally and abroad.

“This painful set of circumstances was completely unexpected, and to our knowledge, there have never been any previous complaints about Mr. Cimino’s conduct,” the choir’s board of directors wrote in an email Saturday to its community. “The entire Board understands how surprising and concerning this must be as the allegations…

View Cache

Joseph O’Brien told a reporter at The Baltimore Sun that he is listed as “redacted defendant number 154” in the case.

A Newport News man has reportedly admitted to being named in the Maryland Attorney General’s report of sexual assault in the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore. 

The AG released the redacted report back in April but in a story published by The Baltimore Sun on Friday, a man named Joseph O’Brien revealed that he’s named in the report. 

O’Brien told a reporter at the Sun that he is listed as “redacted defendant number 154” in the case.

The report details the accusations against each clergy member. 

According to the report, O’Brien’s sexual assault allegations stem from an incident in the 1970s. 

A woman reported that O’Brien was an associate pastor at her high school prayer group. He offered to take her home after the meetings, where…

View Cache

The parents never saw the Catholic brother as a threat to their son.

They encouraged his relationship with their boy, allowing him to take the child to baseball games and on overnight trips. They hoped he would inspire the boy to pledge his life to the church, as the man had done.

One night, while the two were sleeping in the same bed, the family friend fondled the boy’s genitals, his sister later reported to authorities. The allegation appears on Page 443 of the Maryland attorney general’s report on child sexual abuse and cover-ups within the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The survivor himself described the abuse when contacted by the archdiocese in 2003, according to the report.

He felt responsible for what had happened, the report states, and for 10 years “guilt ate him alive.”

The report refers to the accused man only as “No. 153”; his name…

View Cache

An Episcopal minister is on leave from his Western Maryland church after being listed as one of 10 people accused of abuse whose names are redacted in a Maryland attorney general’s report on child sexual abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore.

The Rev. Thomas Hudson of St. George in Allegany County acknowledged to The Baltimore Sun that he is listed in the report, but declined to comment on the specific allegation against him.

Hudson is one of 15 living individuals whose names are blacked out in the public version of the report, either because they are accused of abuse and previously hadn’t been publicly identified, or because they are accused of helping to cover up abuse. The attorney general’s office learned about their alleged crimes as part of a four-year investigation of the Baltimore Catholic archdiocese. Much of the report relies on the Catholic Church’s records, obtained from a…

View Cache

A member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) urged Springfield Catholic Bishop Thomas John Paprocki to provide full assignment records for credibly accused priests living in or who previously served in the diocese that covers central Illinois.

David Clohessy, the former national director of SNAP from St. Louis and a clerical abuse survivor, also urged Paprocki to post the names of at least nine alleged child-molesting clerics who are missing from the Springfield diocese’s predator list.

The nine were mentioned by name in an exhaustive report released by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul Tuesday.

Between them, they are on at least 25 church-sponsored credibly accused lists all over the country and some are on multiple lists, Clohessy claimed.

Members and supporters of SNAP gathered outside of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception Wednesday afternoon.

Clohessy, who now directs SNAP volunteers in Missouri, also made his case in a letter…

View Cache

[Note from BA: Click here to read Bishop David Malloy’s full statement.]

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul held a press conference in downtown Chicago May 23 to release the final report on his investigation into clergy sexual abuse conducted over the past four and one half years.

The 696-page “Report on Catholic Clergy Child Sex Abuse in Illinois,” focuses on decades of old and new abuse cases in the state’s six dioceses: Belleville, Joliet, Peoria, Rockford, and Springfield and the Archdiocese of Chicago.

In response to the report the Diocese of Rockford has issued a statement about the report and recognizes the impact of abuse on survivors. “First and foremost, the Diocese of Rockford apologizes for the pain endured by victim survivors of childhood sexual abuse. No child should ever be harmed, and no adult should have to endure the memories of that harm. Our priority today remains the…

View Cache

Sex abuse survivor: Diocese, Paprocki ‘prioritized their own interests’

A multi-year investigation into child sex abuse by members of the Catholic clergy in Illinois found almost 2,000 children across the state were sexually abused.

Attorney General Kwame Raoul Tuesday released a comprehensive report detailing decades of child sex abuse by members of the Illinois Catholic dioceses Belleville, Chicago, Joliet, Peoria, Rockford, and Springfield.

The exhaustive 700-page report features detailed narrative accounts of child sex abuse committed by Catholic clerics.

Many of the narratives were written in consultation with survivors, are based upon their experiences, and told from the survivor’s point of view.

“I was raised and confirmed in the Catholic church and sent my children to Catholic schools. I believe the church does important work to support vulnerable populations; however, as with any presumably reputable institution, the Catholic church must be held accountable when it betrays the public’s…

View Cache

Seventeen years ago, the two of us wrote to Southern Baptist Convention officials, urging creation of a denominational database of pastors criminally convicted or credibly accused of sexual abuse.

“Moral obligation demands it,” we said.

That moral obligation still stands unmet.

For decades, SBC officials “lied” about their reason for refusing to meet that obligation. While publicly proclaiming they couldn’t keep a database because of “local church autonomy,” privately, they could, and they did.

The Guidepost report exposed that deceit, along with numerous other cruelties and ethical abdications. Yet although the report was released a year ago, the reckoning has been puny and pusillanimous: a proposal for “the bare minimum” and then the doing of not even that.

Despite much talk and multiple committees, the SBC has not yet, on its own, outed and held accountable a single credibly accused clergy sex abuser. It has further alienated many survivors because, absent…

View Cache

NPR’s Scott Simon speaks to journalist Dan Ronan, who was sexually abused as a child by a Catholic priest in Chicago. A recently released report details widespread misconduct by Illinois clergy.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

A report from the Illinois attorney general’s office released this week says 451 Catholic priests abused at least 1,997 children across the state between 1950 and 2019. Previously, just two Roman Catholic dioceses in Illinois had released lists of substantiated allegations of abuse, saying just 103 priests or religious brothers had abused children during those seven decades.

We want to talk about one case for the next few minutes with a person who lived through that abuse. St. Jerome’s Parish, West Lunt Avenue in Chicago, just after mass one day in 1971, officiated by Father Thomas Gannon – one of the altar boys was an 11-year-old named Dan Ronan. Dan, today, is a journalist in Washington,…

View Cache

A monastery of Carmelite nuns says a Texas bishop has threatened them all with dismissal from their order, as he conducts an investigation into an alleged offense by the convent’s superior. 

While the diocese says the nun admitted to sexual misconduct, the Carmelites have filed for a restraining order against the bishop, and claim their superior was interrogated while in a state of opioid-induced delirium after surgery. 

Meanwhile, the nuns’ lawyer says that money, not sex, is at the root of the conflict between Olson and the nuns. 

—
The conflict between Bishop Michael Olson of Fort Worth and the Carmelite Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity began last month, when Olson told a community of cloistered nuns that he was investigating allegations of sexual misconduct against their superior, and that she could be dismissed from the Carmelite order. 

The bishop has since prohibited daily Mass at the monastery, confiscated computers…

View Cache

On Tuesday, the Illinois attorney general released a long-awaited report into clerical sexual abuse of minors in the state’s dioceses. 

Like similar reports released by attorneys general in other states in recent years, it details an appalling history of clerical abuse in the state over decades. It also outlines institutional efforts to cover up instances of abuse, minimize the experiences of victim-survivors, and shield dioceses from potential liability. 

The report made headlines for its dismal statistics: 451 “credibly accused” clerics and nearly 2,000 victims across the state’s six dioceses — prompting comparisons with the landmark 2018 report from a Pennsylvania grand jury which helped ignite a still-ongoing era of renewed scandal in the U.S. Church.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Illinois AG Kwame Raoul deflected questions inviting him to compare his findings with those of similar reports issued in other states, noting repeatedly that it would be a disservice…

View Cache

The cardinal’s questions on how the Illinois attorney general’s abuse claims were substantiated “are particularly perplexing because many of those 125 names” came from the Archdiocese of Chicago, Raoul said.

Attorney General Kwame Raoul on Friday slammed Cardinal Blase Cupich for the top Catholic cleric in the Chicago region’s response to a blockbuster report this week by Raoul’s office showing the church had hidden the names of hundreds of child-molesting priests and others throughout Illinois.

Cupich released a written statement and posted a video on YouTube in which he called the findings “misleading” and portrayed himself as having been blindsided by them.

In response Friday, Raoul said, “At best, the cardinal’s claims of being blindsided are misleading.

“At worst, they are more of the same, a continuation of the church’s decades-long pattern of turning a blind eye and covering up allegations of child sex abuse to the detriment…

View Cache

The Illinois attorney general’s “Report on Catholic Clergy Child Sex Abuse in Illinois,” released Tuesday, found nearly 2,000 substantiated claims of child sex abuse from 541 Catholic clerics over 70 years and alleged numerous examples of intentional cover-ups and inadequate responses from bishops. 

“Decades of Catholic leadership decisions and policies have allowed known child sex abusers to hide, often in plain sight,” Attorney General Kwame Raoul said in a statement. 

The report showed examples of bishops and archbishops transferring accused child abusers to other parishes or other dioceses while failing to make the public aware of allegations against them. 

It also shows examples of accused priests being disciplined and put back into ministry only to be accused of repeating their actions elsewhere. 

What follows are just a few examples of the many such cases revealed in the report.

A bishop who transferred abusers

Bishop Joseph Imesch of the…

View Cache

Four priests with substantiated child sexual abuse allegations against them served in Catholic churches in Edwardsville between 1954 and 1980, according to a report issued Tuesday by the Illinois attorney general.

One priest listed among clergy who abused children served in Maryville from 1982-84.

Of those five, sexual abuse of children is reported to have occurred in Edwardsville and Maryville parishes by at least three of them.

State Attorney General Kwame Raoul announced Tuesday that a four-and-a-half-year investigation found 1,997 children were abused by 451 Catholic clergy in Illinois between 1950 and 2019.

In the Diocese of Springfield Illinois, which includes Madison County, 32 clergy members were identified as having sexually abused children, according to the attorney general’s 700-page report.

In Edwardsville and Maryville, revelations in the investigation include the following priests named in the report.

• George Faller, Saint Boniface Catholic Church, 1954-61
• Robert Dodd, SIUE Newman Catholic Community, 1968
• Garrett Neal Dee, Saint Boniface,…

View Cache