ABUSE TRACKER

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Steve Tawa

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — An auctioneer has helped the Archdiocese of Philadelphia unload some properties, as the church takes more steps to reduce its financial deficit. They include a former school and two convents in Philadelphia and a parcel of land in the suburbs.

The stout former St. Michael Business School on North Second Street in Old Kensington – with a stone facade and intricate woodwork on the inside – fetched $330,000, and is likely to be converted into condo use.

Kyle Piasecki helped his mother-in-law bid $118,000 on the former Our Lady of Hope Convent on North 19th Street.

“It’s three townhomes that were connected. The goal will be to break them down into three separate homes and flip them.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
Patch

Posted by Mischa Arnosky (Editor) , July 25, 2013

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia sold four local properties at auction on Wednesday … including a plot in Abington.

According to a Phillyburbs.com story, the Archdiocese sold an unoccupied, 1-acre piece of property belonging to St. Hilary of Poitiers for $325,000 to a developer who will likely build a house there.

The money will go back into the St. Hilary parish.

Max Spann Real Estate and Auction Co. oversaw the sales, which also included a 49-acre piece of land in Plumstead (which sold for $2 million); and the former St. Bartholomew convent on Harbison Avenue in Philadelphia (which sold for $220,000). The archdiocese also agreed to sell land on Wismer Road in Plumstead for $850,000.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
ABC 27

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has auctioned off some of its properties and raised $995,000.

Wednesday’s auction was part of a strategy to stop running deficits in day-to-day operations and fill some of its financial holes. Before the auction started, officials say the archdiocese itself reached a deal on 48 acres of land in Plumstead, Bucks County, for $850,000.

At auction, the former St. Michael Business School in the city’s Old Kensington section went for $330,000 and may be turned into condos. The former Our Lady of Hope Convent sold for $118,000. The former St. Bartholomew Convent went for $220,000.

The archdiocese sold a one-acre lot in Montgomery County, but rejected a $295,000 bid on a 29-acre lot in Harleysville, because it did not approach the appraised value of $625,000.

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CHILE
Terra

La Justicia chilena anunció hoy que procesará el próximo 27 de agosto al sacerdote de los Legionarios de Cristo John O’Reilly por las presuntas denuncias de abuso sexual que pesan en su contra.

Según fuentes judiciales, O’Reilly deberá comparecer ante el Cuarto Juzgado de garantía de Santiago, por la formalización (proceso) de un caso que afectó a una menor de seis años en el colegio, mientras se evalúa una segunda denuncia.

El sacerdote, legionario de Cristo de origen irlandés, declaró en diciembre pasado en el marco de la investigación de este caso, oportunidad en que alegó completa inocencia.

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CHILE
Bio Bio

Publicado por Javier Cisterna | La Información es de María José Calderón

El Fiscal Nacional Sabas Chahuán respaldó la determinación de la Fiscalía Oriente de formalizar al sacerdote de los Legionarios de Cristo John O’Reilly por abuso sexual de dos niñas.

El Ministerio Público, además, defendió los peritajes realizados de la PDI.

Son dos hermanas, alumnas del Colegio Cumbres, quienes habrían sido abusadas sexualmente por el ex asesor espiritual del establecimiento, John O’Reilly, quien será formalizado por este delito el próximo 27 de agosto.

Esto se produce luego de más de un año de la denuncia de la menor, donde luego de diversas diligencias investigativas, la fiscalía Oriente decidió formalizar cargos en contra del ex capellán de los Legionarios de Cristo, sumando además una segunda denuncia de abuso sexual, realizada por la hermana de la primera supuesta víctima, hoy de 10 años de edad.

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CANADA
Windsor Star

Dalson Chen
Jul 25, 2013

If the Canadian government is truly sorry for the horrific Indian residential school system, it should reveal everything about that dark era, say local First Nations supporters.

On Thursday, a handful of people lit candles on Windsor’s riverfront as part of a country-wide rally to urge full disclosure of all documents concerning the schools that for decades forcibly assimilated the children of Canada’s aboriginal population.

Although Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2008 formally apologized on behalf of the nation for the Indian residential school system, critics say the government is dishonouring the apology by holding back important historical information from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

“There’s been no meaningful action behind the apology,” said Lorena Shepley, a community organizer and ally of the CanAm Indian Friendship Centre of Windsor. “It’s just not enough.”

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CANADA
Leader-Post

BY KEVIN MENZ, THE STARPHOENIX, THE CANADIAN PRESS JULY 26, 2013

Erica Lee remembers Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s 2008 apology vividly.

She sat in a packed gymnasium at Saskatoon’s White Buffalo Youth Lodge, watching the television as Harper apologized from the House of Commons for abuse aboriginal people endured under the residential school system, for the Canadian government’s role in the system, and for separating children from their families. “It felt like closure. Now it’s been how many years and nothing has changed,” Lee said Thursday.

The 23-year-old University of Saskatchewan philosophy student, who is closely involved with the grassroots Idle No More movement, organized the Saskatoon leg of several Honour the Apology rallies across Canada on Thursday.

The rallies called on the federal government to release all documents on residential schools to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission – a national commission investigating the residential schools legacy – after nutritional experiments performed on aboriginal people in the 1940s recently came to light.

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CANADA
CBC News

Dozens of people gathered in Saskatoon today to draw attention to the recent discovery that nutritional experiments were carried out on aboriginals during the 1940s and ’50s.

The rally took place at the Vimy Memorial Bandshell, where the crowd collected at noon to talk, pray and pressure the federal government to release documents that could reveal further abuses. Ottawa promised to release documents to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after its 2008 apology to residential school survivors.

Erica Lee, an organizer of the event, anticipates this is only the beginning.

“What we’re hoping is that it will kick off more pressure on the federal government to release residential school documentation that hasn’t been released and also to keep it fresh in the minds of Canadians that this is a legacy that we’ve all inherited as Canadians and we have to address it,” she said.

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UNITED STATES
Tablet Magazine

By Rachel Silberstein
July 26, 2013

In June 2011, shortly after Moshe Keller, a rabbi who ran an organization for wayward Chabad youth, was charged with molesting a local teenaged boy, an anonymous blog began to circulate in Crown Heights, the heart of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement. In the blog’s initial post, its author, who first called the site Crown Heights Watch, later changing the name to Jewish Community Watch (JCW), claimed that Keller had been “sexually abusing children since his days in Israel, two decades ago.”

“He believes he can hide behind being a rabbi, since the Rabbonim (rabbis) of the Jewish communities have a track record of hiding such matters,” the post continued.

At first, only Keller’s photo was posted, along with a testimonial from an alleged victim and a call for additional victims to report abuse to the police. A month later, two more men, Yaacov Weiss, who pleaded guilty to child-endangerment charges in 2010, and a never-charged cantor were added to the blog’s “Wall of Shame.” People began to whisper, speculating about who could be behind the blog. The blogger, fearful of retribution, remained anonymous until the summer of 2012, when he revealed himself to be 23-year-old Meyer Seewald, a long-haired local with pale blue eyes, a stubborn jaw, and a dark tan.

Now 24, Seewald claims to have a database containing over 225 suspected sex offenders and a confidential eight-member advisory “board” made up of mental-health professionals, legal experts, and rabbis who, according to Seewald, refuse to acknowledge their roles publicly for fear of backlash. JCW’s Wall of Shame features 36 accused abusers, 21 of them arrested, according to the site, each added when the “board” has determined there is sufficient evidence of wrongdoing. Like other Jewish blogs dedicated to sex-abuse awareness, such as Mark Appell’s Voice of Justice or Vicky Pollin’s The Awareness Center, JCW aggregates related news and offers referrals for legal advice or counseling services, but Seewald takes the job a step further. When a victim who confides in Seewald is unwilling—or unable due to the statute of limitations—to press charges, Seewald conducts his own investigation, selectively exposing alleged abusers on his “Wall of Shame.”

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DETROIT (MI)
Detroit Free Press

By Patricia Montemurri and Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press Staff Writers

Detroit Catholic Archbishop Allen Vigneron has banned an Austrian priest from speaking at a Westland Catholic parish today because the Rev. Helmut Schüller advocates allowing women and married men to be priests, in opposition to current church teaching.

Schüller was scheduled to speak at SS. Simon and Jude parish in Westland. But instead, his address, which is free and open to the public, will be held at Wayne Memorial High School. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. for the 7 p.m. talk.

Schüller was also banned from speaking in Catholic churches in other areas of the U.S.

Speaking to the Free Press on Thursday, Schüller criticized Catholic leaders in Detroit and other cities for banning him from church property, saying that it reflects the very problem he’s trying to highlight — a leadership out of touch with the people.

“It reflects an old-fashioned system,” Schüller said by phone from Cleveland, where he was to speak Thursday night. “It’s behavior I cannot understand.”

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ILLINOIS
Rockford Register Star

By Staff reports
RRSTAR.COM
Posted Jul 25, 2013

ROCKFORD — A Machesney Park man is still in jail this week after being charged with 17 counts of sexual assault and abuse of a child and one count of child pornography possession linked to a 13-year-old girl.

Charles M. Tucker, 45, was arrested July 15 by Winnebago County Sheriff’s Police and is at the Winnebago County Jail on $50,000 bond.

Tucker was employed by North Love Baptist Church in Rockford at the time of the arrest. He was a vehicle mechanic and not involved in church leadership.

Pastor Dan Outler said Tucker no longer works at the church.

“We are deeply grieved at the nature of the accusation and have worked closely with the Winnebago County Sheriff’s detectives and the Department of Children and Family Services to aid in their investigation,” a statement from the church reads. “This event comes as a devastating shock to all of us.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Church Times

by Madeleine Davies

Posted: 26 Jul 2013

THE independent inquiry into the Church’s handling of reports ofalleged sexual abuse by a former Dean of Manchester will be led byHer Honour Judge Sally Cahill QC, the Archbishop of York announcedon Monday, writes Madeleine Davies.

Dr Sentamu first announced the inquiry in May, after a jointinvestigation by The Times in London and TheAustralian newspaper in Sydney revealed that allegations ofabuse perpetrated by the Very Revd Robert Waddington had been madein …

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By IAN KIRKWOOD July 26, 2013

THE mother of AH – whose complaints led to the jailing of paedophile priest Jim Fletcher – has told the special commission of inquiry of being pushed into a wall in a court room toilet during the Fletcher trial.

In another incident, she said a man ‘‘rammed his supermarket trolley’’ into her legs at a supermarket checkout.

She said the man’s wife came back to them and apologised saying she had to understand because the man was ‘‘upset’’ about what had happened to ‘‘Father Jim’’.

‘‘I said, ‘He’s upset?,’ ’’ the mother, known by the pseudonym BJ, told the special commission of inquiry sitting in Newcastle.

BJ took the commission through what she described as a campaign of ‘‘escalating’’ isolation and ‘‘ostracisation’’ from the Catholic establishment once news that AH had gone to the police became known.

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NEW JERSEY
Irish Central

Tom Deignan

Daniel O’Toole had enough.

O’Toole, and other parishioners at St. Joseph’s Church in Oradell, New Jersey, part of the Archdiocese of Newark, have spent the past week up in arms. They have been handing out leaflets before and after Mass.

And on Wednesday, July 31, St. Joseph’s pastor, Reverend Thomas Iwanowski, will step down, following what Iwanowski has described as a series of disagreements over his leadership style.

However, O’Toole told the Bergen Record that there is just one reason it became necessary for Iwanowski to step down.

“The reason he was removed, as best as I can understand it, was because he was harboring a priest with a known history for sexual predation,” O’Toole said.

And so it goes.

Even prior to this latest allegation, their had been calls for the resignation of Newark Archbishop John J. Myers. Earlier this month, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan also came under fire, accused of shielding church finances even as known abusers remained in the priesthood for years.

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ILLINOIS
Daily Herald

By Harry Hitzeman

A West Dundee church youth director accused of having sex with a minor made his first court appearance Thursday and was granted permission from a judge to travel to Massachusetts for a family reunion next month.

Chad A. Coe, 31, of Elgin, was arrested earlier this month on charges of aggravated criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual abuse. The most serious charge can send him to prison for up to 15 years and he would have to register as a sex offender.

Coe is accused of having sex in June with a girl between 13 and 17 years old, according to court records. He has been placed on paid administrative leave from his post as the First Congregational Church of Dundee’s Director of Youth Ministries until the case is over.

Coe was released on $10,000 bond, ordered not to have contact with his accuser, not to have contact with minors and to surrender his passport.

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OREGON
The Register-Guard

By Greg Bolt
The Register-Guard

Two Lane County women are suing a Springfield church for more than $7 million each, alleging they were abused hundreds of times by a youth pastor in the 1970s.

The suits, filed in Lane County Circuit Court, name Bethel Assembly of God of Springfield, City of Destiny Church and the national and state Assemblies of God organizations as defendants. It also names the former youth pastor, Morrice H. Corley, as a defendant.

Corley, of Springfield, declined to comment on the suit. Calls to the local church and its state council were not immediately returned.

The Bethel Assembly of God of Springfield merged with the City of Destiny Church in 2005. City of Destiny is a newer congregation formed by a Springfield couple and was not in existence at the time of the alleged abuse.

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CANADA
Oye! Times

Written by Sam Dixon

Two of the female former students of former Vancouver Olympics CEO, John Furlong, have filed a lawsuit accusing him of sexual abuse. The documents submitted in court on Wednesday, alleged that Beverly Abraham was a student at Immaculata Elementary in Burns Lake from 1969-1970, where it is mentioned that Furlong sexually harassed her more than 12 times over a seven-month period.

In the notice of civil claim, it was state that “the sexual touching consisted of grabbing her breasts and buttocks, touching her vagina and vaginal area, and attempting to put his tongue in her mouth.” It was explained in the lawsuit, that Abraham claims the touching took place in the school’s gym after Furlong’s physical education class, and sometimes in equipment room or mechanical closet. Additionally, Furlong is accused of having manipulated her “emotionally and psychologically” as he told her that it wasn’t wrong for him to touch her. The documents point out that Furlong told her that it wasn’t wrong for him to touch her, saying “You’re my beautiful Indian girl and my protégé,” and “You’re my favourite of all the girls.”

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ARIZONA
The Republic

[Marvin Knighton – Jeff Anderson & Associates]

By Michael Clancy
The Republic | azcentral.com
Thu Jul 25, 2013

A former Milwaukee priest who was thrown out of the clergy as a result of allegations that he sexually abused minors has been working as a faculty member in Mesa schools for the last six years.

Marvin Knighton, the former priest, had experience at several public schools in the Valley and good references, according to a Mesa Public Schools spokeswoman. The district is reviewing his status in light of newly available information.

Formal abuse allegations were filed against Knighton 11 years ago. He was acquitted in Milwaukee in 2003 of the abuse charges, involving a man who said he was about 15 at the time of the alleged incidents. Knighton was later convicted in a church trial and barred from the priesthood in 2011.

Details on the Knighton case were released July 1 as part of the recent bankruptcy filing by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. The documents can be read in their entirety at the archdiocese’s website, archmil.org, or at the website of Anderson & Associates, the law firm representing a number of accusers in clergy-abuse cases, andersonadvocates.com.

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NEW JERSEY
Seattle PI

PASSAIC, N.J. (AP) — A priest affiliated with two Passaic churches has been arrested on charges he had sexual contact with a minor who sought his counsel.

The Passaic County prosecutor’s office says charges against Father Jose Lopez include child luring and endangerment and criminal sexual contact.

A listing for Lopez’s attorney did not have an answering machine.

Prosecutors say Lopez lured a 14 year-old female parishioner to his private quarters at St. Mary’s Assumption church in Passaic, and allegedly engaged in sexual conduct with her.

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NEW JERSEY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, July 26

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

A Paterson diocese Catholic priest has been arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a girl.

This is a tragic reminder that every day, clergy sex crimes and cover ups in the Catholic church continue to happen, largely because the church hierarchy refuses to make real reforms. It’s also a painful reminder that – despite bishops’ claims that most victims are boys – girls are also hurt by Catholic predators.

We applaud this brave, strong girl for fighting the priest off and helping law enforcement officials pursue him. That takes real courage.

We beg Paterson’s bishop to personally visit every parish where this priest worked and strongly prod any others who may have seen, suspected or suffered Fr. Lopez’s crimes to call police immediately. The bishop should shove aside his defense lawyers and public relations professionals and act like a caring shepherd, not a cold-hearted CEO.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

Guam- The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests [SNAP] has issued a statement backing Guam Archbishop Anthony Apuron’s decision to dismiss Father Pual Gofigan as the Pastor of Dededo’s Santa Barbara Church.

David Clohessy, the St. Louis Director of SNAP, urges the Archbishop to stand by his decision to fire Father Gofigan. [see SNAP statement below]

Clohessy calls it “outrageous that any individual would rather put his career before the safety of children, let alone a man who is supposed to be considered as a community representative and leader.” And he also urges the parishioners of the Dededo Church to “speak out against Gofigan’s choice to endanger the safety of their children.”

The SNAP statement incorrectly asserts that Father Gofigan failed to fire the convicted sex offender from his maintenance position at the church. Father Gofigan says he did fire the man 3 years ago, as instructed by the Archbishop. However, the Archdiocese has charged that Father Gofigan allowed the man’s association with the Church to continue in a volunteer capacity.

In a July 16th letter to Father Gofigan, Archbishop Apuron demanded the priest’s immediate resignation accuses him of disobeying his orders to dismiss the man writing “you have in effect caused grave harm to the parish by allowing such an individual with a publicly known sex-offense record to work in the Church thus exposing him to your parishioners, especially the youth.”

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MEXICO
Independent European Daily Express

Thursday, July 25, 2013

MEXICO CITY, Jul 25 (IPS) – Human rights groups are calling for the Committee on the Rights of the Child to bring the Mexican state to account, as it has done in other countries, for failing to investigate widespread reports of sexual abuse of minors in Catholic institutions.

Experts consulted by IPS said the lack of action by the Mexican authorities and justice system violated the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was adopted by the Unite Nations General Assembly in 1989 and went into effect in 1990.

“There is a high level of impunity,” Juan Martín Pérez, the head of the Red por los Derechos de la Infancia en México (REDIM – Network for Children’s Rights in Mexico), told IPS. “There is clear evidence of collusion between the authorities and the Catholic Church, so cases seldom wind up in court.

“The high-profile cases show the power of the church. It is one of the powers-that-be that is untouchable.

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CHICAGO (IL)
National Catholic Reporter

Heidi Schlumpf | Jul. 25, 2013

CHICAGO For the crowd of more than 500 at the talk in Chicago by the founder of the Austrian Priests’ Initiative, Fr. Helmut Schüller probably didn’t say anything they hadn’t already heard. But the fact that a priest was not afraid to speak publicly and is networking with like-minded priests around the world gave many audience members hope that reform in the church is possible.

“We as priests try to do our best to support the people of the church in their desires for church reform,” Schüller said. “Let us bring hope and courage for the long march of change in our church.”

In the seventh stop on his 15-city “Catholic Tipping Point” tour, Schüller shared his experiences with the “Call to Disobedience” movement Wednesday at a charter high school in Chicago. The talk was sponsored by several reform organizations, including Call to Action, Women’s Ordination Conference, DignityUSA, FutureChurch, Voice of the Faithfu,l and Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

“After hearing Father Helmut, I’m encouraged,” said Joe Marren of Chicago, who added that he has worked for church reform for decades. “And I’m comforted that someone in the church is supporting us, the ‘lost generation.’ ”

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CONNECTICUT
NECN

July 25, 2013

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) — A Roman Catholic priest arrested on federal firearm charges last week is being released from prison.

A detention hearing was held Thursday for the Rev. Paul Gotta, who was charged with aiding and abetting the unlawful transport of a firearm and the purchase of a handgun by a juvenile. The U.S. Attorney’s office says he will be released Friday on $500,000 bond and confined to his sister’s Bridgeport home.

Documents in the case were sealed.

A telephone message was left with Gotta’s attorney.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

THURSDAY, JULY 25, 2013
BY ABBOTT KOLOFF
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

PASSAIC — A priest assigned to St. Mary’s Assumption Church has been arrested on charges related to the sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl, Passaic County Prosecutor Camelia M. Valdes said Thursday.

The Rev. Jose Lopez allegedly asked the girl to come to his private living quarters in January to talk about some problems she was having, but then put her on his lap, began kissing her, and engaged in sexual contact with her, Valdes said in a statement.

The girl was able to escape when the priest fell to the floor during a struggle, according to Valdes. The priest had pulled the girl back several times when she tried to get up before he finally fell, Valdes said.

The priest, who also is affiliated with St. Nicholas Church in the city, has been charged with second-degree luring of a child, third-degree endangering the welfare of a child, and fourth-degree criminal sexual contact. His bail was set at $50,000 in Passaic municipal court.

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NEW JERSEY
WPIX

PASSAIC, New Jersey (PIX11) – A Passaic County priest is under arrest Thursday after he allegedly molested a 14-year-old parishioner, according to officials.

Father Jose Lopez, of St. Mary’s Assumption Church in Passaic, NJ, faces charges of luring a child, endangering the welfare of a child and criminal sexual contact after he allegedly brought a young girl to his private quarters for ‘counseling’ in January.

Lopez told the girl to sit on a couch so he could advise her on some personal problems, and while talking to her, had her sit on his lap, according to a prosecutor’s office news release.

He then allegedly began kissing her and “began to engage in sexual contact with her”, pulling her back each time she tried to get off the couch. She finally managed to escape after Father Lopez apparently fell off the couch and onto the floor.

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NEW JERSEY
The Star-Ledger

By James Queally/The Star-Ledger
on July 25, 2013

PASSAIC — An assistant pastor at two Passaic County churches was arrested today and charged with luring a 14-year-old girl to his residence and trying to kiss her, officials said.

The Rev. Jose Lopez, 34, was charged with luring a child, endangering the welfare of a child and criminal sexual contact in connection with the January incident, according to Passaic County Assistant Prosecutor Robert Holmsen.

Lopez was a parochial vicar, essentially an assistant pastor, at St. Mary’s Assumption and St. Nicholas churches in Passaic, said Richard Sokerka, a spokesman for the Diocese of Paterson. A native of Colombia, Lopez was ordained in 2011, Sokerka said.

“The diocese is deeply saddened by these charges and offers its prayers to those who have come forward in this matter,” Sokerka said in a statement.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

One of the country’s most senior Catholic Church officials admits it was Church protocol to deal with paedophile priests ‘secretly and discreetly’.

The Commission is examining claims the Church covered up abuse to protect two priests, Denis McAlinden and James Fletcher.

The inquiry’s heard father Brian Lucas’s job in the 1990s was to “encourage” paedophile priests to resign in a bid to restrict their access to children.

Maria Gerace is representing some of McAlinden’s victims at the inquiry.

Late yesterday she put to Father Lucas that Church protocol in 1993 “was a secret process that dealt with the allegations discreetly”.

She said it enabled the “scandal to be contained in the offices of the Church”.

Father Lucas replied, “To some extent, yes”

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BRAZIL
National Catholic Reporter

John L. Allen Jr. | Jul. 24, 2013 NCR Today

RIO DE JANEIRO Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York was among the 114 cardinals who elected Pope Francis in March, so he’s in a unique position to answer a fascinating question about the recent conclave and its aftermath.

The question is: Did the cardinals really know what they were getting in Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina? Or, have the first four and a half months of his papacy been as much of a revelation to them as to the rest of the world?

According to Dolan, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

The pope’s simplicity, humility and closeness to the people are no surprise, Dolan said, because the cardinals had heard all that — the only surprise is how well he seems to be pulling it off.

On the other hand, Dolan said, the cardinals also thought they were electing a dynamic manager, and so far the pace of change has been slower than some expected.

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GUAM
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: July 25, 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 )

A priest from the Santa Barbara Catholic Church in Guam was fired for failing to remove a sex offender from the parish.

Father Paul Gofigan had been instructed by Archbishop Anthony Apuron to fire a predator who worked at the church but failed to do so believing the crime was too far in the past, therefore putting children in harm’s way. Gofigan now wishes to seek a canonical hearing in order to defend his careless decision and save his career.

We urge the Archbishop to stand by his decision of firing Father Gofigan. It is outrageous that any individual would rather put his career before the safety of children, let alone a man who is supposed to be considered as a community representative and leader. We also urge the parishioners of the Santa Barbara Catholic Church to speak out against Gofigan’s choice to endanger the safety of their children.

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BRAZIL
Vatican Insider

Cardinal Madariaga revealed this to Spanish newspaper “La Razón”

ANDREA TORNIELLI
RIO DE JANEIRO

Last Tuesday, when Francis was supposed to be resting after a long cross-Atlantic trip to Brazil, he decided to work on Curia reform amongst other things, Spanish newspaper La Razón reports. The revelation comes from Honduran cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga who coordinates the commission of eight cardinals that is helping the Pope revamp the Vatican’s structures. The cardinal met Bergoglio on Tuesday afternoon at the Sumaré residence and suggested the commission prepare an instrumentum laboris on Curia reform, gathering together all proposals from the bishops of the various continents, in order to make the group’s work easier and more fruitful.

“We want the ideas to come from the bottom and bishops are enthusiastic and very eager to strengthen collegiality,” Madariaga explained. Having an isntrumentum laboris that sets out bishops’ proposals would help the Pope in his decision-making, the cardinal explained.

“The goal is to ensure the Pope is better informed so as not to repeat the Vatileaks scenario under Benedict XVI. Information needs to be given directly without any middlemen,” Madariaga said. The cardinal referred again to the envisaged restructuring of the Secretariat of State and the importance of avoiding duplication. He mentioned the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelisation and the Evangelisation of Peoples as examples.

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AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury

By ELLE WATSON July 26, 2013

One of the Australian Catholic Church’s most senior priests has spent a second day defending his decision not to report paedophile priests, including Denis McAlinden, to police on the basis it would betray victims’ trust.

Father Brian Lucas, a non-­practicing barrister and the general ­secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, said he faced a constant dilemma when victims refused to go to police.

He told the special commission of inquiry, which is investigating how the Catholic Maitland-Newcastle Diocese dealt with paedophile priests Denis McAlinden and James Fletcher, it was his role to encourage offending priests to resign from ministry.

Father Lucas, who was also part of a committee that designed a protocol for bishops in dealing with allegations of criminal behaviour in the 1980s and 1990s, said he was “mostly ­successful” at persuading ­paedophiles to resign.

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NEW JERSEY
WABC

PASSAIC, N.J. (WABC) — A New Jersey priest has been arrested on charges of having sexual contact with a 14-year old female parishioner.

Father Jose Lopez of of St. Mary’s Assumption Church in Passaic is charged with Luring a Child, Endangering the Welfare of a Child, and Criminal Sexual Contact.

Authorities say Father Lopez lured the girl to his private living quarters in the rectory at St. Mary’s Church.

The alleged victim clamed that Lopez directed her to his couch, and began to counsel her about some personal problems she was having.

She went on to say that Lopez put her on his lap, kissed her and began to engage in sexual contact with her.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

July 26, 2013

Natasha Wallace

Priests should be jailed for concealing evidence of sex abuse because they are effectively aiding and abetting a crime, a child protection campaigner has said.

The executive director of advocacy group Bravehearts, Hetty Johnston, was responding to testimony by high-ranking Catholic priest Father Brian Lucas that he did not take notes while interviewing about 35 priests from 1990-1996 who were accused of sex abuse, nor did he refer the matters to police. ”He should be jailed. That just aids and abets offenders to continue to offend and it is just as bad a crime, in my view, than committing the crimes itself,” Ms Johnston said.

”The person didn’t only not do their job but their moral obligation. It is absolutely the most appalling, atrocious response.”

Father Brian is the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, which oversees the National Committee for Professional Standards responsible for procedures in dealing with abuse complaints. Retired psychologist Stephen Paull, who has 25 years of experience in child protection in the NSW education department, said it was ”absolutely grossly negligent” both legally and morally not to take notes at such meetings.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

To people unschooled in legal and canonical niceties, mounting evidence about the Catholic Church’s approach to child abuse surely beggars belief.

Australians will soon need to decide whether they still trust the church to do what is best to protect children or whether new laws are needed to ensure police and other investigators become involved whenever there is potential risk.

By placing so much weight on protecting its own reputation and respecting the privacy of victims, the church looks increasingly out of step with community expectations.

Those concerns have been raised by evidence to commission of inquiry into Hunter region paedophile priests from Brian Lucas, general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference since 2002, qualified lawyer and ordained priest.

During six years from about 1990, Lucas’s work with the Archdiocese of Sydney included dealing with about 35 priests accused of sex crimes.

Lucas admitted he had never taken notes during the meetings, in some instances ”so that a subsequent legal process that would compel production of them cannot be successful”.

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ROME
Chicago Tribune

Massimiliano Di Giorgio
Reuters
July 25, 2013

ROME (Reuters) – A Catholic prelate at the center of a suspected money-smuggling operation denied stealing and laundering cash in a letter he sent to Pope Francis from his jail cell which his lawyers released on Thursday.

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, who is the target of two Italian criminal investigations, also said in the letter he tried to fight abusive activities by lay superiors in the Vatican’s financial administration, which Francis wants to reform.

Scarano worked for years as a senior accountant at the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, or APSA. Through APSA, he had access to the Vatican bank, where he had at least two accounts.

Though not directly implicated in the money smuggling investigation, the Vatican bank has faced growing criticism for its persistent failure to meet international transparency standards.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register

NEWS ANALYSIS: Msgr. Battista Ricca is accused of homosexual scandal, but papal spokesman Father Federico Lombardi calls the allegations ‘not credible.’

by EDWARD PENTIN 07/24/2013

VATICAN CITY — Conflicting reports surround allegations that a priest, appointed last month as an interim prelate of the institution colloquially known as the Vatican Bank, has ties with a “gay lobby” operating within the Holy See.

On July 3, respected Vatican analyst Sandro Magister alleged that Msgr. Battista Ricca had a relationship with another man — the “intimacy” of which was “so open as to scandalize numerous bishops, priests and laity” of Uruguay, where he served in the nunciature from 1999 to 2004.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi July 19 rejected the allegations as “not credible.”

Pope Francis appointed Msgr. Ricca, a 57-year-old Vatican diplomat, temporary prelate of the Vatican Bank — officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) — on June 15 in a bid to help reform the scandal-ridden institution. Until now, Msgr. Ricca had served as director of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the residence where the Pope currently lives.

Magister claims the Italian clergyman’s alleged dark past was hidden from the Holy Father in a bid to embarrass the Pope and hinder reform of the IOR, which is trying to meet international anti-fraud regulations.

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ITALY/VATICAN CITY
Reuters

Thu Jul 25, 2013

* Signing could be a matter of days -sources
* Italy wants access to more Vatican bank data
* More steps needed for normalisation of banking relations
* Italy-based banks de facto banned from dealing with IOR

By Lisa Jucca and Massimiliano Di Giorgio

ROME, July 25 (Reuters) – Italy and the Vatican are about to reach a deal allowing for the first time regular exchange of financial information between the two states to combat money laundering, several sources with direct knowledge of the situation told Reuters.

The Vatican is pushing to reform its bank, the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), whose reputation has been tarnished by three decades of scandals. Such a pact would mark a first significant step towards normalising banking relations with Italy.

The deal will take the form of a memorandum of understanding between the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority (AIF) and its Italian equivalent, the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF).

The Vatican has already signed similar pacts with other jurisdictions, notably the United States, but the deal with Italy would be significant due to the large number of Vatican transactions going through the country.

Pope Francis has made cleaning up the Holy See a goal of his papacy. However, two of the sources, who declined to be named, said the Vatican must prove its willingness to cooperate with Italian authorities before the Bank of Italy can lift a de facto ban on transactions between the IOR and Italian-based banks.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX From: The Australian July 26, 2013

A SENIOR Catholic cleric was aware of evidence suggesting two priests acquitted of child abuse offences in court were in fact guilty of such crimes.

The men were among dozens of alleged pedophile priests interviewed by Brian Lucas, the general-secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, who did not report them to police.

Instead, Father Lucas told the NSW special commission of inquiry into church child abuse that he followed a “secret and discreet” policy of dealing with the men and would “take my chances” with the law as a result.

“I can think of one particular priest I interviewed who absolutely denied anything. He subsequently was charged, he was convicted by the jury, his conviction was overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeal and no retrial,” Father Lucas said.

“I did understand that there had been other families who had made representations to the bishop, with which I was not involved at all, suggesting he would have been guilty.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

July 26, 2013

Barney Zwartz
Religion editor, The Age.

Of more than 2000 complaints by clergy child-sex abuse victims in Victoria, only one has ever made it through the civil court process to a verdict, a researcher will tell a human rights conference on Friday. And that case failed.

The researcher and victims advocate, Judy Courtin, also says that more than half the victims associated with the secondary victims she interviewed are now prematurely dead, either through suicide or substance abuse.

She says the civil law’s statute of limitations and especially the Ellis defence – by which the Catholic Church successfully argued it was not an entity that could be sued – has deterred lawyers so that ”victims are stymied … a clear breach of a fundamental human right”.

Criminal proceedings are not much more successful, with about four victims in every 1000 finding their abuser convicted, she says.

Ms Courtin is addressing a high-profile human rights conference held by Monash University’s Castan Centre. Other speakers include Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, feminist Eva Cox, Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar, and Refugee Immigration Legal Centre director David Manne.

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SCOTLAND
Herald Scotland

Thursday 25 July 2013
The announcement of Monsignor Leo Cushley as Archbishop-elect of St Andrews and Edinburgh is good news, both for the Archdiocese and for the Scottish Catholic Church.

The relative speed with which the matter of an appointment has been resolved is an indication of the seriousness with which Rome views the situation in Scotland.

Four of the eight dioceses have been vacant, and the fall of Cardinal O’Brien left bishops, clergy and laity shocked and shamed at the disgrace brought upon the Church. This was all the greater for the prominence that Archbishop O’Brien had enjoyed, following in a course previously laid out by Cardinal Winning.

Each in turn was described as leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, but there is no such position and neither Archbishop Tartaglia nor Archbishop-to-be Cushley will agree to be described as such. Rome has forgone the services of one of its few native English-speaking clergy, no less than the head of the English section of the Secretariat of State.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By IAN KIRKWOOD July 25, 2013

COUNSEL for a victim of paedophile priest Denis McAlinden has asked why the only thing a senior Catholic cleric says he can remember about the matter is the one thing that would mean he did not have to go to police at the time.

Maria Gerace, counsel for various church victims including one known as ‘‘AJ’’, was cross-examining Father Brian Lucas, the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and a major figure in forming the church’s response to priestly child sexual abuse from the late 1980s.

After almost two days of giving his evidence in chief before senior counsel assisting, Julia Lonergan, Father Lucas was asked by Ms Gerace about a number of matters from those days, including a media release issued by the Catholic welfare agency, Centacare, in March 1992.

Allowed to continue despite objections from Father Lucas’s counsel, Peter Skinner, Ms Gerace said the media release stated that priests accused of child sexual abuse would be stood down automatically from their duties and the allegations taken to civil authorities.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By IAN KIRKWOOD July 25, 2013

FATHER Brian Lucas began his second day in the witness box in Newcastle confirming he’d had to supply more documents about his involvement in dealing with paedophile priests to the Special Commission of Inquiry.

He finished the day by rejecting a suggestion from victims’ counsel Maria Gerace that his evidence was ‘‘not true’’.

Ms Gerace said the only thing Father Lucas could recall for the commission about serial paedophile the late Denis McAlinden – that his victims did not want to go to the police – was the one thing that would stop Father Lucas being charged with concealing a crime.

In between, the evidence traversed such diverse areas as the Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete – a New Mexico-based ministry that specialises in ministering to troubled priests, including paedophiles – and the failure of a Catholic ethicist, Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini, to convince the Church to have paedophile allegations against priests automatically reported to police from as early as 1990.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

July 26, 2013

Catherine Armitage
Senior Writer

One of the leaders of the Catholic Church has admitted his way of dealing with claims of child sexual abuse against clergy was outside the church’s protocols of the time, that it gave priests an inducement to avoid police action and it helped the church contain any scandal.

In hindsight, it may have been better not to have done it his way, Father Brian Lucas said at the state government inquiry into alleged church and police cover-ups of paedophile priest activity in the Hunter Valley.

On his second day in the witness stand, the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishop’s conference, a barrister with particular legal expertise in issues of child protection and church confidentiality, came in for a grilling over the way he handled complaints against priests in the first half of the 1990s.

The credibility of his complete lack of recall of a crucial meeting with the disgraced serial child abuser Denis McAlinden in 1993 was repeatedly called into question.

From 1990 it was Father Brian’s role to interview NSW priests accused of child sexual abuse. He has asserted the most effective way of protecting children’s safety was to persuade offending priests to leave the ministry so they would not have intimate access to families.

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VATICAN CITY
Chiesa

Statement of the nuncio in Montevideo. Confirmations and new background on the case of the prelate of the IOR. But another storm is already approaching. On a strange appointment (photo) at the newly created commission for the reorganization of the Vatican administrations

by Sandro Magister

ROME, July 25, 2013 – It is enough these days to enter the offices of the Institute for Works of Religion to understand how flimsy the argument is that has been advanced in defense of Monsignor Battista Ricca, the prelate of the IOR whose scandalous past has been revealed by L’Espresso:

> The Prelate of the Gay Lobby

Three floors below the window of the pope’s Angelus, in two rooms facing the colonnade of Saint Peter’s Square, across large monitors scroll movements of money, past and present, of the clients of the IOR, before the eyes of auditors hunting for suspicious operations. The team is led by Antonio Montaresi, with solid experience in the United States, the new Chief Risk Officer of the controversial Vatican “bank.”

Every operation of dubious regularity is brought to the attention of the Financial Information Authority directed by René Brülhart, vice-president of the international network of the Financial Intelligence Unit, which in turn informs its sister authorities in the countries involved and if necessary the Vatican magistracy.

“Bad management”: this is how the president of the IOR, Ernst von Freyberg, dismisses the conduct of the previous director, Paolo Cipriani, who was forced to resign together with his deputy last July 1.

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CANADA
Sudbury Star

Rallies are planned in seven Canadian cities Thursday — including Sudbury — in light of revelations the federal govern-ment starved and experimented on malnourished aboriginal children in residential schools in the 1940s.

“Canadians from many backgrounds have been shocked and hurt by these recent revelations and this is an opportunity to talk, reflect and do something about it,” co-organizer Wab Kinew said in a press release.

A University of Guelph report found 1,300 native children and adults were test subjects in nutritional experiments conducted by the government. Meal plans were altered to provide insufficient vitamins and minerals, and subjects were sometimes denied dental care to test the efficacy of supplements.

These revelations have sparked worry Canada may be covering up other past abuses.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC Gippsland

By Celine Foenander

How hard will it be for people who grew up in orphanages and homes to make a submission to the Royal Commission?

Longford resident Ray Shingles says it will be tough but he plans on sharing his story.

“This is a big thing with the Royal Commission, this is our last gasp for them to get it right and I think they will get it right,” he says.

“I have a voice and in my community of Forgotten Australians, I will always have a voice and I will always barrack for the underprivileged in the Forgotten Australians.”

The Forgotten Australians, people who spent time in homes, orphanages and out of home care will be among those preparing submissions to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

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SCOTLAND
Herald Scotland

Thursday 25 July 2013

Gerry Braiden
Senior reporter

THE new Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh has pledged that all complaints from clergy and parishioners over the fallout of the Cardinal Keith O’Brien scandal will be fully investigated.

Monsignor Leo Cushley, who was yesterday unveiled as Cardinal O’Brien’s successor following the enforced resignation, said he would “work hard to get this business sorted out”, adding it was crucial any investigation had to be open and transparent.

Mgr Cushley, 52, is currently head of the English-language section of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and has been a close collaborator of both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

Cardinal O’Brien resigned as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh five months ago after admitting decades of sexual behaviour with other clerics and was exiled by the Vatican from Scotland in May. He remains a cardinal.

Asked of his intentions to ­investigate the scandal, Mgr Cushley said: “If there is an investigation it won’t be up to me. It will depend on the Holy See.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By IAN KIRKWOOD July 25, 2013

FATHER Brian Lucas has finished giving his evidence in chief to the special commission of inquiry with a determined defence of the practices he used to deal with Denis McAlinden and other paedophile priests.

Father Lucas, the Canberra-based general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference since 2002, was previously with the Catholic Church’s Archdiocese of Sydney and a key player in the Australian church’s formulation of early policies dealing with child sexual abuse by clergy.

As he did on Wednesday, Father Lucas defended his decision not to tell the police about McAlinden on the grounds that the victims who had come to him for help were adamant that they did not want the police involved.

In the commission’s pre-lunch session on Thursday, Father Lucas said this created a significant dilemma that was only solved in 1996 when the church began working more closely with police and developed a protocol to tell the civil authorities about allegations made against clergy without necessarily naming the victims.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX From: The Australian July 25, 2013

A SENIOR Catholic cleric may have been aware of evidence suggesting two priests acquitted of child abuse offences in court were in fact guilty of such crimes, an inquiry has heard.

Giving evidence to the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry into church child abuse, Brian Lucas also said he had not reported the men to police as many of their alleged victims did not want authorities involved.

Reverend Lucas said the men were among dozens of pedophile priests he personally interviewed during the early 1990s.

“I can think of one particular priest I interviewed who absolutely denied anything. He subsequently was charged, he was convicted by the jury, his conviction was overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeal and no retrial.

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SCOTLAND
Evening Times

Stef Lach
Senior Reporter

SCOTLAND’S 
newest archbishop has the personal skills that will help him fill a difficult role, according to people who worked with him when he was a young priest.

Airdrie man Monsignor Leo Cushley was 
appointed Archbishop of St Andrews & Edinburgh by the Roman Catholic Church, 
replacing Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who left the post this year after admitting inappropriate sexual conduct.

In taking over from Cardinal O’Brien, Mgr Cushley, 52, is stepping into the role at a difficult time for the Catholic Church in Scotland.

People who knew him as a chaplain at three Lanarkshire schools in the 1980s and 1990s – St Aidan’s High in Wishaw, Our Lady’s High in Motherwell and St Margaret’s High in Airdrie – describe him as, “highly intelligent, kind and thoughtful, just decent” and add that “he can be very witty.”

Liz Leydon, editor of the Scottish Catholic Observer, said: “That personal touch bodes well for what lies 
ahead for the archbishop-elect.

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NEW YORK
Jersey Journal

By Rev. Alexander Santora/For the Jersey Journal
on July 25, 2013

Walking through Manhattan’s Washington Square Park on a hot July evening has the feel of an urban circus. Adults and children cool off in the fountain’s sprays, musicians entertain, and food vendors do a brisk business.

As I am about to exit, I notice the New York University Catholic Center’s modern looking building on the left but I’m headed to the historic Judson Memorial Church to hear an Austrian Catholic priest, Rev. Helmut Schuller, kick off a 15-city U.S. tour. I am not sure why the sponsors selected Judson instead of any Catholic setting; the Archbishops of Boston and Philadephia did ban Schuller from any Catholic property. That only boosted attendance on July 16 and required additional chairs to seat the 400 plus audience.

Schuller is a mild-mannered 60-year-old, who is every bit involved in the life of the Vienna, Austria Archdiocese. He was their Vicar General, the second highest position in the chancery, and still pastors the same parish he did when he had that job. He serves on their priests’ council and writes a weekly column for their archdiocesan newspaper.

So why all the hubbub?

Schuller organized 400 priests out of some 2,500 in the entire country to issue calls for reform back in 2006. The Austrian Priests’ Initiative addressed the “increasing shortage of priests forcing many Austrian parishes to close.”

But it also advocated for reform in the celebration of the sacraments, welcoming remarried Catholics to communion, ordination of women and married men and homosexual unions – none of which is approved by the universal church.

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INDIA
Hindustan Times

Two persons, including a priest and a pastor, were arrested on Tuesday night for allegedly sexually abusing a minor girl, an inmate of an orphanage, for the last three years.

Subsequently, their bail pleas were rejected and they were remanded in jail custody for 14 days.

Police said that the girl was rescued on Tuesday night with the help of an NGO.

The accused, identified as Father George Samuel (52) and Pastor Johnson ED (39), who have two children each, also used to take regular Bible classes at the orphanage.

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CHILE
Terra

La fiscalía de la zona oriente pidió formalizar por el presunto delito de abuso sexual al al sacerdote de los Legionarios de Cristo John O’Reilly.

La solicitud la realizó al Cuarto Juzgado de Garantía la fiscal de la zona oriente Lorena Parra, de acuerdo a lo señalado a Terra desde el Ministerio Público.

La petición fue presentada ayer y la audiencia se realizará el 27 de agosto próximo.

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CHILE
El Dinamo

24 de julio de 2013

El sacerdote fue suspendido el 25 de julio del año pasado de sus labores tras las denuncias, aunque el religioso se declaró inocente y aseguró que las afirmaciones en su contra constituyen “un lamentable error”.

La Justicia anunció hoy que procesará el próximo 27 de agosto al sacerdote de los Legionarios de Cristo John O’Reilly por denuncias de abuso sexual que pesan en su contra.

Según fuentes judiciales, O’Reilly deberá comparecer ante el Cuarto Juzgado de garantía de Santiago, por la formalización en un caso que afectó a una menor de seis años en el Colegio Cumbres de la capital, mientras se evalúa una segunda denuncia.

El sacerdote, legionario de Cristo de origen irlandés, declaró en diciembre pasado en el marco de la investigación de este caso, oportunidad en que alegó completa inocencia.

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AUSTRALIA
My Daily News

BANORA Point whistleblower Fiona Barnett will be Bravehearts’ local representative at the organisation’s annual White Balloon Day activities on September 6.

Ms Barnett last month appeared before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to testify about the activities of a teacher she says was responsible for the abuse of at least 20 local children in the 1980s and 1990s.

She said she was then approached by Bravehearts to represent the group locally at its fundraising event that will involve hundreds of schools, day care centres, businesses, councils, sporting clubs, community groups and organisations around Australia.

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CANADA
APTN

By Jorge Barrera
APTN National News
The nutritional experiments conducted in First Nation communities and in Indian residential schools were not the only example where Canada’s Indigenous population faced treatment as “guinea pigs,” academic research shows.

First Nation infants were used for Saskatchewan trials of a tuberculosis vaccine that was mired in controversy at the time of the experiment in the 1930s.

The subject of nutritional experiments exploded last week after reports surfaced on a study by University of Guelph food historian Ian Mosby. The study found that experiments were conducted in six residential schools and communities in northern Ontario, northern Manitoba, British Columbia, Alberta and Nova Scotia between 1942 and 1952.

Previous and ongoing academic research shows, however, that the nutritional experiments were part of a wider pattern in the medical and scientific community’s approach to Indigenous people at the time which included experimentation and the persistence of certain types of surgeries that were no longer conducted on non-Indigenous people.

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CANADA
rabble.ca

BY KRYSTALLINE KRAUS | JULY 24, 2013

On Thursday July 25, 2013, First Nations activists across Canada are calling for the Federal government to release all documents pertaining to our history of residential schools immediately.
Nation-wide prayers are encouraged across Canada from 12:00 pm noon to 1:00 pm.

“If Canada made the apology, they need to honour it,” the call out explains.

In 2008, the Federal government under Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, made a rare public apology to First Nations, Metis and Inuit for their treatment under the residential school system.

Residential schools – funded by the Canadian government and administered by Christian churches — operated here quite soon after settlers began migrating to Turtle Island.

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ILLINOIS
WIFR

[with video]

ROCKFORD (WIFR) — A former church employee is now in jail, accused of taking advantage of a young girl.

That girl is just 13 years old. The Winnebago County Sheriff’s Department says the man who molested her, Charles Tucker, is now behind bars. He’s charged with child molestation and child pornography. Tucker worked at North Love Baptist Church when the alleged abuse happened and when he was arrested, but the pastor says Tucker no longer works for the church. Investigators won’t say whether the girl was taken advantage of at the church or somewhere else.

Tucker’s neighbors say they were shocked to learn an accused sexual predator lived right down the street.

“I feel surprised and I feel concerned having small children living in this neighborhood. I would like to be aware of this information and I would like to see our neighborhood notified in some way shape or form so that we can just be a little more cautious,” Wendy Seerup, said.

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SCOTLAND
Scotsman

by VICTORIA RAIMES
Published on the 23 June 2013

THE VATICAN has finally agreed to demands to launch a formal inquiry into Cardinal Keith O’Brien following allegations of sexual misconduct, it has been reported.

The church is set to undergo a high level inspection – known as an apostolic visitation – in response to the claims made against Britain’s most senior Catholic cleric, who resigned from the diocese of Edinburgh and St Andrews in February.

Archbishop Antonio Mennini is understood to have revealed the inspection when he met with a former priest, known only as Lenny, who accused the cardinal of making sexual advances towards him when he was a seminarian.

The alleged victim said: “The archbishop told me the holy see had decided there would be an investigation into all the allegations. Anyone affected would be able to give evidence. If it is judged that there is sufficient evidence, then it would go to another, deeper process in Rome.

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MEXICO
e-Consulta

La canonización del fallecido Papa Juan Pablo II debe detenerse, pues es un personaje vinculado a la red mundial de pederastia, y se encuentra en investigación, afirmó el ex sacerdote Alberto Athie.

“Pedimos que la santificación de Juan Pablo II se detenga, que se esperen a los veredictos y a las recomendaciones que se lleven a cabo, y veamos que hay quienes fueron responsables de qué y ya sobre eso veamos una valoración si su vida fue una virtuosa y valiosa al extremo”, dijo Athie en entrevista en Noticias MVS Primera Emisión.

Esto, como respuesta a que el Comité de Naciones Unidas para los Derechos de los Niños solicitó esta semana al Vaticano revelar la información sobre casos de pedofilia que involucran al clero católico.

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MEXICO
El Pais (Espana)

Organizaciones de víctimas de abusos sexuales de México han elevado la voz para exigir a Francisco que paralice el proceso de canonización de Juan Pablo II mientras se investigan los casos de abusos sexuales de la Iglesia. Tras la petición está la solicitud del Comité sobre los Derechos del Niño de la ONU, que este mes de julio ha requerido al Vaticano “información detallada” sobre todos los casos de abusos a menores.

Es la primera vez en la historia que un organismo internacional cuestiona a la Santa Sede. El Papa, de visita estos días en Brasil, tendrá que enfrentar un caso que mermó la credibilidad de su antecesor antes del 1 de noviembre, fecha impuesta por la ONU para presentar una respuesta a sus duras preguntas. “El Papa tiene una oportunidad histórica y única de entregar toda la documentación y de demostrar que no está dispuesto a que esto siga sucediendo”, dice al teléfono el exsacerdote mexicano Alberto Athié.

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MEXICO
Latin Times

By Megan Taros, Jul 24, 2013

The UN Convention On The Rights Of The Child have backed a Mexican sexual abuse victims group that formed in response to the impending canonization of late Pope John Paul II. This is the first time a group has formed to challenge the Vatican when it comes to a person’s sainthood. The current Pope Francis will now see a case that gives him a chance to reveal pressing questions about the Catholic Church’s history with child sexual abuse. He has until Nov. 1 to come forward with any and all evidence pertinent to the case.

“The Pope has a unique and historic opportunity to deliver all the documentation and demonstrate that it is willing to move forward,” Alberto Athié, a former Mexican priest, said.

Athié, like many others, left the priesthood after the molestation allegations began surfacing. The Vatican refused to hear the cases in both Mexico and Rome. Another who is opposed to the canonization of John Paul, Joaquín Aguilar of the Clergy Abuse Survivors Network, believes Pope Francis must make an effort to investigate the cases so all involved can be properly punished. He criticized late John Paul’s failure in doing so.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

July 25, 2013

Catherine Armitage
Senior Writer

There is “not much more you can do” to prevent children being abused by paedophile priests once you’ve removed the ministers from office, a Catholic Church priest has told a NSW government inquiry.

But Father Brian Lucas agreed his system of managing accused priests was a failure of risk management and did not comply with the church’s protocols at the time.

In the five or six years from 1990 when his role was to deal with sexual abuse allegations against the church in NSW, some of those accused did admit their guilt to him, he said. But he did not pass the admissions on to police because he “never felt able to do that”.

Father Lucas, who is also a lawyer with expertise in child protection, was being grilled at the inquiry into the alleged church cover-up of paedophile priest activity in the Hunter Valley.

His insistence that defrocking paedophile priests was the best approach in the early 1990s is under challenge from counsel assisting the inquiry Julia Lonergan, SC. Also under challenge is the credibility of his assertion of a total absence of memory about his dealings with paedophile priest Father McAlinden.

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CANADA
CBC News

Two former students of a Catholic school in Burns Lake, B.C., have filed notices of civil claims in B.C. Supreme Court, alleging sexual abuse at the hands of former VANOC CEO John Furlong, who taught at the school in the 1960s.

The lawsuits filed by Grace Jessie West, 53, and Beverly Mary Abraham, 55, name Furlong, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver, the Roman Catholic Prince George Diocese and the Catholic Independent Schools Diocese of Prince George.

The story first broke last fall when journalist Laura Robinson wrote a story for the Georgia Straight newspaper alleging Furlong had mistreated native students while he was a teacher at a Catholic school in Burns Lake in the late 1960s.

Furlong has vehemently denied the accusations made in the newspaper story and launched a lawsuit against Robinson and the Georgia Straight newspaper.

Allegations of sexual touching

In the lawsuits filed on Wednesday in Vancouver, the two women allege Furlong abused them sexually, physically and verbally during and after gym classes at the Catholic school while he was a teacher there in 1969 and 1970.

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CANADA
The Globe and Mail

SUNNY DHILLON
VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Jul. 24 2013

Two women who allege they were physically and sexually abused by former Vancouver Olympics CEO John Furlong when he was a physical education teacher decades ago have filed lawsuits against him.

Beverly Mary Abraham and Grace Jessie West filed their notices of civil claim Wednesday in B.C. Supreme Court.

Mr. Furlong has not filed a response and the allegations have not been proven. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Mr. Furlong’s lawyer did not return phone and e-mail messages Wednesday seeking comment.

Communications firm TwentyTen Group issued a statement saying Mr. Furlong and his counsel would not comment because the matter is before the courts.

Allegations that Mr. Furlong abused several aboriginal students when he was a physical education teacher in Burns Lake, B.C., more than 40 years ago first surfaced in September in the alternative weekly newspaper the Georgia Straight. Mr. Furlong filed a lawsuit against the newspaper, as well as the article’s author, in November.

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CANADA
The Province

BY KIM NURSALL, THE CANADIAN PRESS JULY 24, 2013

VANCOUVER – Two women who allege the former head of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics sexually molested them at least a dozen times when he was a teacher decades ago in Burns Lake, B.C., launched separate lawsuits Wednesday in B.C. Supreme Court, documents show.

In one statement of claim, Beverly Abraham, now 55, alleges Furlong would ask her to stay late after class before molesting her in the gym, the equipment room and a mechanical closet.

Abraham, who was 11 at the time, said in the statement that Furlong also emotionally and psychologically manipulated her, calling her his “beautiful Indian girl” and saying it was not wrong for him to touch her.

Grace West, 53, filed a separate statement of claim, alleging that almost every week Furlong would touch her breasts and vagina while stroking himself. West’s claim also states Furlong would kick her almost every day, calling her “dirty Indian” and “squaw.”

Abraham does not state that Furlong physically abused her. Rather she claims he would request that the school’s nuns force her to kneel and the nuns would strike her open palms repeatedly.

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CANADA
Global News

[with video]

Two Burns Lake women are suing former VANOC CEO John Furlong for physical abuse, sexual touching and defamation.

Beverly Mary Abraham is alleging she was 11-years old when Furlong sexually molested her 12 times from November of 1969 to May of 1970.

The court documents state Abraham attended Immaculata Roman Catholic Elementary school in Burns Lake in 1969 and 1971.

Furlong was a teacher at the school in 1969 and 1970.

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CANADA
Vancouver Sun

BY KELLY SINOSKI, VANCOUVER SUN JULY 25, 2013

Two former students of a Burns Lake Catholic elementary school have filed notices of civil claim in B.C. Supreme Court, alleging they were physically and sexually abused by former Vanoc CEO John Furlong when he taught at the school in 1969-70.

Beverly Mary Abraham and Grace Jessie West claim the abuse occurred after gym class at Immaculata elementary school where Furlong was a physical education teacher.

The women also allege the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver, Roman Catholic Prince George Diocese and Catholic School Diocese of Prince George are “vicariously liable” for the abuse because they did nothing to stop it.

In their claims, which have yet to be proven in court, both women allege they were sexually abused by Furlong in the school gym, the equipment room and a mechanical closet, usually after the physical education class had ended. Furlong could not be reached for comment through his lawyer or the public relations firm that represents him, TwentyTen Group.

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SCOTLAND
Scotsman

TO STEP into the shoes of disgraced Cardinal Keith O’Brien, after a difficult year for the Catholic Church in Scotland, must be a daunting task.

So this newspaper wishes Monsignor Leo Cushley, the new Catholic Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, good fortune in taking up his new post at a difficult time.

Little is known of Mgr Cushley, but initial reports suggest he holds orthodox views on the key doctrinal issues facing the Catholic church. This is perhaps unsurprising. The new archbishop may, however, be wise to take a somewhat more nuanced view of his role in the life of the nation than has been evidenced in recent years from senior Catholic clergy in Scotland.

The 52-year-old from Lanarkshire is reputed to be one of the Vatican’s most gifted diplomats. That may be useful, because what the Church in Scotland needs now is a tone that is, in the broadest sense of the word, diplomatic.

The need for a new approach rests not on the saga of O’Brien’s fall from grace – although senior Church figures have acknowledged that having a cardinal condemn homosexuality while being guilty himself of homosexual indiscretions leaves the Church open to the charge of hypocrisy.

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SCOTLAND
The Guardian

Press Association
The Guardian, Wednesday 24 July 2013

The Catholic church can recover from “the battering” it has taken in recent months, according to Monsignor Leo Cushley, who is to succeed disgraced Cardinal Keith O’Brien as the archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh.

The priests and people are “anxious to move on” from the scandal involving Cardinal O’Brien, who left the post earlier this year after admitting inappropriate sexual conduct, Mgr Cushley said.

He said he would take stock of what happened within the governance of the archdiocese when he is ordained on 21 September.

The 52-year-old also expressed surprise at being appointed archbishop, given his background as part of the Vatican’s diplomatic team, although he described the challenges of his new role as “comparatively easy” compared with previous situations he has faced.

“I am humbled that our Holy Father, Pope Francis, has nominated me for such an important task here in our ancient capital. I know it’s a delicate moment and that there is a lot to be done but, with God’s grace and the kind support of the clergy and people of Edinburgh, I will work cheerfully and willingly with all the energy I can muster,” he said.

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SCOTLAND
The Times

Mike Wade
Published at 12:02AM, July 25 2013

The Archbishop-elect of St Andrews and Edinburgh has said he will back a Vatican inquiry into the sex scandal surrounding Cardinal Keith O’Brien, emphasising his determination “to sort this business out”.

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SCOTLAND
The Sun

By ANNABELLE LOVE

THE Pope’s aide chosen to replace shamed Cardinal Keith O’Brien as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh said yesterday the Catholic Church can recover from its recent “battering”.

Airdrie-born Monsignor Leo Cushley, 52, said he was “humbled” that Pope Francis had chosen him.
The hillwalking U2 fan said: “I know it’s a delicate moment and that there is a lot to be done.
“I will work cheerfully and willingly with all the energy I can muster.”

He added: “I think the Church has taken a bit of battering. I think that is fair.

“But also I think the fundamentals are good and they are right.

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MICHIGAN
Advisor & Source Newspapers

By DAVE PHILLIPS

A 62-year-old former priest from Novi has pleaded guilty to distributing child pornography and possession of child pornography, federal officials announced Wednesday.

Timothy Murray “used peer-to-peer software to trade child pornography with others,” including an undercover Department of Homeland Security agent, according to a press release from the office of U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade.

Agents recovered at least seven devices from Murray’s home. Those devices contained more than 650 movies and 450 images of child pornography, the release states.

“Murray had previously served as a Catholic priest within the Archdiocese of Detroit before being removed from public ministry when substantiated allegations of Murray’s prior sexual abuse of a young boy came to light,” the release states.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

One of the country’s most senior Catholic Church officials says the bishop of a diocese does not need to know about a paedophile priest’s admissions of guilt.

In the 1990s father Brian Lucas had a special role, to “seduce paedophile priests” to resign.

Father Lucas is a qualified lawyer and general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and is giving evidence at the inquiry into claims the church covered up abuse by two priests, including Denis McAlinden.

The commission’s heard McAlinden confessed in 1993 to the abuse of children but father Lucas said he did not need to tell the Maitland-Newcastle bishop.

He said the bishop “didn’t need to know the names of the victims to fulfil his child protections obligations”; he “only needed to know the outcome of the meeting” that the paedophile priest had resigned and should never work for the Church again.

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SCOTLAND
Scotsman

by CHRIS MARSHALL AND STEPHEN MCGINTY
Published on the 24 July 2013

A VATICAN career diplomat ­appointed to be the new archbishop of St Andrews and ­Edinburgh has promised a ­period of “reconciliation and healing” following the scandal surrounding his disgraced predecessor.

Monsignor Leo Cushley said the standing of the Catholic Church in Scotland had taken a “battering” when Cardinal Keith O’Brien resigned after admitting inappropriate behaviour with a number of priests.

Mgr Cushley, a Scot who has worked all over the world in the Vatican’s diplomatic corps, said Catholics in Scotland had been left “upset and dismayed” at what had happened. But he said the task facing him was “comparatively easy” when compared to missions he had carried out for the Church in Africa.

The 52-year-old, who was born in ­Airdrie, has been a priest of Motherwell diocese for 28 years, but has not worked in Scotland since 1993.

He will be ordained at St Mary’s ­Cathedral in Edinburgh on 21 September. His appointment comes after revelations emerged earlier this year about inappropriate relationships Cardinal O’Brien had with priests and seminarians.

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AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald

By IAN KIRKWOOD July 24, 2013

Inquiry archive

Transcripts of inquiry

A SENIOR priest at the heart of the Catholic Church’s efforts to deal with paedophile priests has admitted to not taking notes of his investigations so as not to leave a paper trail.

Father Brian Lucas, general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, yesterday gave evidence to the Special Commission of Inquiry in Newcastle.

Father Lucas has been identified in earlier evidence as being involved in attempts to discipline paedophile priest Denis McAlinden, who died in a church-run facility in Western Australia in 2005.

Although he acknowledged evidence at the inquiry that McAlinden had confessed to him personally during an interview in the 1990s, Father Lucas said he had no recollection of that meeting.

Father Lucas said repeatedly that he did not report McAlinden to the police because the victims who had come forward did not want this to happen.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Jamie Manson | Jul. 24, 2013 Grace on the Margins

Much has been written about Austrian priest and reformer Helmut Schüller since he opened his 15-city U.S. tour, called “The Catholic Tipping Point,” in New York last week.

Schüller has been making news in the Roman Catholic church reform movement since 2006, when he and a group of fellow priests organized the Austrian Priests’ Initiative. In 2011, they made global headlines when they launched the “Call for Disobedience,” an appeal to the Vatican to address the shortage of priests and other predicaments facing the institutional church.

The Austrian Priests’ Initiative is concerned that the dwindling number of clergy is impacting the quality of pastoral care offered to baptized Catholics. Their “Call for Disobedience” suggests reforms such as the ordination of women and married men to address this unfolding crisis.

What makes Schüller an intriguing figure among reformers is that he is not simply an upstart parish priest. He spent years as a hierarchical insider, filling the very public roles of president of Caritas Austria and vicar general under Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. He has the rare insight of one who has served both in the hierarchy and in the parish. Rarer still, he has risked his position and privilege to be in full, outspoken solidarity with lay Catholic reformers.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE
A Ram in the Thicket

By Ryan A. MacDonald

I grew up in the sprawling metropolis of New York City. My parents, being somewhat refined folks, took me to all of the city’s great cultural institutions, all within walking distance or a subway ride of home. During summer trips to a friend’s Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire home, however, all that hard won culture was cast off at a Weir’s Beach arcade where I excelled at a game called “Whack-a-Mole.” Armed with a heavy padded mallet, there was something cathartic about clobbering those moles popping up in rapid succession. In the summer of 1994, I was hands down the “Whack-a-Mole”champ of Weir’s Beach.

I was completely insulated back then, of course, from something happening in another corner of New Hampshire that year. As I played “Whack-a-Mole,” Catholic priest Gordon MacRae, today winding up nineteen years in prison, was fighting for his life and freedom in Cheshire County Superior Court sixty miles away in Keene, NH. Having studied in depth that debacle of a trial and all that preceded it, I know I’ve lost my “Whack-a-Mole” title to some folks in the “Live Free or Die” state.

As I prepare to publish this article, I have just learned that a pending habeas corpus appeal in the Father MacRae case was denied by Superior Court Judge Larry Smukler without a hearing on its new evidence or merits. This will bring about further appeals and additional media scrutiny of this case. The latest in a series of articles on the MacRae case by Wall Street Journal investigative writer, Dorothy Rabinowitz, drew international attention to this injustice. At WSJ.com, “The Trials of FatherMacRae” (May 11, 2013) was the most viewed and most emailed article of that week. At last count, it generated over 32,000 links and was cited in whole or in part in hundreds of other venues.

Among the more than 150 comments posted at the article’s on-line version, a few were from New Hampshire resident, Ms. Carolyn Disco, an outspoken critic of the Diocese of Manchester and of Father MacRae (who, by the way she has never met, seen, or spoken with). In posted comments at WSJ and other sites over recent years, Ms. Disco has played a skillful game of “Whack-a-Mole,” knocking down any and every exculpatory fact to vie for points in the one-sided propaganda game that fueled MacRae’s trial, sent him to prison, and keeps him there today. A few years ago, Carolyn Disco was honored by SNAP, the Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests, for her outspoken pursuit of New Hampshire’s accused priests.

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MICHIGAN
My Fox Detroit

DETROIT, Mich. (AP) –
A Detroit-area man removed from the priesthood nine years ago has pleaded guilty to two federal child pornography charges.

The U.S. attorney’s office announced Wednesday that Timothy Murray made the pleas to one count of distributing child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography.

Prosecutors say the 62-year-old Novi resident used peer-to-peer software to trade child pornography with others, including an undercover Department of Homeland Security investigator.

A search warrant executed at Murray’s home recovered at least seven different computer devices containing child porn. Murray’s collection included more than 650 movies and 450 images.

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AUSTRALIA
Maitland Mercury

By ELLE WATSON July 25, 2013

The priest who extracted a confession from paedophile Denis McAlinden has admitted he advised other clergy not to take notes of criminal admissions because it could be used as evidence in legal proceedings.

Father Brian Lucas, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference general secretary, yesterday gave a number of reasons it would be counter productive to create a permanent record of conversations with accused priests.

He told the special commission of inquiry into alleged Hunter clergy sexual abuse cover-up: “If you’re sitting in front of him taking notes he isn’t going to say anything, that’s my experience.”

Senior counsel assisting the commission Julia Lonergan SC put it to Father Lucas the real reason he was adverse to taking notes was because he knew it could be used in legal proceedings against the offending priests.

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MICHIGAN
Detroit Free Press

Emma Ockerman
Free Press Special Writer

Timothy Murray, a non-practicing Catholic priest with the Archdiocese of Detroit, pleaded guilty today in federal court in Detroit to one count of distributing child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography.

Murray, 62, of Novi, was removed from public ministry in 2004 after he was accused of touching a 13-year-old boy’s genitalia. Then, he was not charged due to the length of time passed since the alleged abuse and the report of the allegation.

After a federal investigation conducted on Murray last year on suspicion of possession of child pornography, he was found to be trading child pornography with others, including an undercover Homeland Security special agent. That prompted a search warrant to be executed in Murray’s home.

The warrant uncovered at least seven different computer devices containing child pornography, with a collection that included 650 movies and over 450 images, U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade’s office said in a press release. According to court documents, Murray told investigators that he viewed pornography weekly, and preferred 13-year-old males.

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

For immediate release: Wednesday, July 24

Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 862 7688 home, 314 503 0003 cell, SNAPdorris@gmail.com)

A Jewish teacher who worked and abused in St. Louis and Australia has been sentenced to three years in jail but could be freed in about three months.

David Kramer, 52, is a former Yeshivah College teacher. He pleaded guilty to two counts of child molestation in St. Louis in 2008 and was sentenced to a seven-year prison term.

This week in Australia, Kramer pled guilty to charges of molesting four boys there.

We urge Jewish officials – in Missouri and Australia – to do more. Kramer very likely hurt other kids. He could face other charges. And if he doesn’t, he could walk free soon and assault more children.

It’s not enough for religious figures to sit back and do little or nothing while victims, police and prosecutors work overtime to try to keep kids safe from criminals like Kramer. Every single person who saw, suspected or suffered Kramer’s crimes must find the courage to speak up now. And every single Jewish employee or synagogue member who has knowledge or suspicions of wrongdoing here must do likewise.

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VIRGINIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: July 24, 2013

Statement by Becky Ianni Washington, DC/Virginia SNAP Director, SNAPVirginia@cox.net, 703-801-6044

A former pastor from Virginia has been charged with 12 counts of aggravated sexual battery on children less than 13 years of age taking place between January 2011 to September 2012.

Amongst the charges is the accusation that James Richard Daley, currently the pastor of the Beth Eden Lutheran Church in Luray, had inappropriately touched a female child. The wife of the predator, Margaret Daley—who also ran a day care out of their home—is being charged with failure to report child abuse and keeping a child in a dangerous environment.

We urge the leaders of Beth Eden Lutheran Church to inform their flock and community of this man’s crimes and ask that anyone with more information about Daley to come forward in order to insure he is kept in jail, safely away from children.

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CALIFORNIA
TheMediaReport

Making the news recently is California Senate Bill 131, which seeks to open up a one year “window” in 2014 allowing anyone over the age of 26 to sue the Catholic Church for damages stemming from clergy sex abuse. Suits would be allowed even if the alleged activity took place many decades ago and even if the accused abuser is long ago deceased, thus making it nearly impossible for the Church to effectively defend itself in court.

Sound familiar? It should. California enacted the exact same measure a decade ago, which led to the Catholic Church in California paying out $1.2 billion in settlements because of the “window” year of 2003 determined by the state legislature.

Indeed, it was implicit a decade ago that California’s temporary lifting of the statute of limitations was a one-time event that would give people who were abused decades ago a unique opportunity to come forward and collect damages. Yet cash-hungry contingency lawyers are at it again for a second round.

Yet a recent article about SB 131 in the Los Angeles Times by Ashley Powers, like other media coverage about the unfair bill, makes no mention at all of the Church-suing contingency lawyers who stand to score humongous settlements yet again if SB 131 passes.

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NEW JERSEY
Spiritual Politics

Mark Silk | Jul 24, 2013

Imagine two teachers at a private school who are good friends, and one is fired by the headmaster as the result of credible accusations that he molested a teenage boy 25 years ago. The dismissed teacher relocates to his beach house where his friend also goes to live when he is not in residence on campus.

A decade after the dismissal, the house is damaged in a storm and the headmaster gives permission for the man to come live on campus with his friend. The rest of the school is not told anything about the man’s past. When the story comes out, the friend is forced to resign.

This is a secularized version of the story reported in the Newark Star Ledger by Mark Mueller on Sunday, about two priests of the Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, Robert Chabak and Thomas Iwanowski. The headmaster? Archbishop John J. Myers, of course.

Myers’ spokesman, Jim Goodness, explained to Mueller that the decision to let Chabak stay at Iwanowski’s rectory was made “out of a sense of compassion.” As for Iwanowski, his comment to Mueller was, “He lived in the rectory and went to Mass every day. He didn’t do anything else. I don’t see the problem with that.”

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MICHIGAN
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: July 24, 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 )

A Detroit priest is expected to plead guilty to child porn charges today. For the safety of kids, we hope he’s jailed for a long time.

We also hope that Detroit Catholic officials will use their vast resources to reach out to anyone else who may have been hurt by Fr. Timothy Murray. It’s not enough for the archbishop to passively sit back doing nothing while the burden of keeping this criminal away from kids falls on victims, police and prosecutors. Archbishop Vigneron has tremendous power. He should use it to seek out and help every single person who was assaulted or exploited by Fr. Murray. He should use it to gather every bit of evidence law enforcement officials need to keep Fr. Murray behind bars for years. And he should use it to lobby Michigan lawmakers to reform the state’s archaic, predator-friendly statute of limitations that prevents most child molesters from ever being prosecuted.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, July 24

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

A page one New York Times story today documents troubling mistreatment of children at private institutions in Utah, California, Florida, South Carolina, Montana, Louisiana, Mexico, Jamaica, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere.

It’s immoral to outsource the safety of kids to private companies and institutions without any real oversight.

The Times reports that “there are no federal laws governing (these) schools” and “private boarding schools are not regularly inspected and are not required to be licensed or accredited” and there’s “little governmental control because the schools are regulated as religious institutions.”

Hasn’t the horrific, decades-long abuse and cover up in the Catholic church taught our society anything about the dangers of letting religious institutions deal with predators and children without regulation?

The Times also reports that

–“a 2011 Congressional bill that would have banned physical abuse and the withholding of food at such schools died in committee after it was opposed by lawmakers reluctant to impose new federal standards on a matter often regulated by states.

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AUSTRALIA
Canberra Times

July 25, 2013

Catherine Armitage
Senior Writer

Father Brian Lucas agreed that studying law taught the discipline of good note-taking.

But despite being a non-practising barrister with a fistful of law qualifications, the senior figure within the Catholic Church on Wednesday told an inquiry into sexual abuse he never made notes when dealing with about 35 priests accused of sex crimes.

The inquiry also heard that Father Brian wrote advice for clergy that it was a good idea not to take notes during interviews with accused priests to avoid the material being exposed during any ”subsequent legal process”.

Asked repeatedly about his own practice of not taking notes, Father Brian insisted it could be ”unproductive” because the priest would stop speaking with him.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DAN BOX From: The Australian July 25, 2013

ONE of the country’s most powerful Catholics, Brian Lucas, does not remember his private meeting with pedophile priest Denis McAlinden.

But then, Father Lucas met dozens of pedophile priests during the early 1990s, convincing them to resign their positions, but taking no notes of the conversations and not reporting their crimes to the police.

“One had to, in some sense, seduce them to resign,” the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference yesterday told the NSW special commission of inquiry into church child abuse.

Working closely with the current chancellor of the Archdiocese of Sydney, John Usher, Father Lucas said he met about 35 alleged pedophiles from across NSW over about six years.

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SCOTLAND
Daily Record

MONSIGNOR Cushley was appointed by the Catholic Church this morning and replaces Cardinal Keith O’Brien who left the post earlier this year after admitting inappropriate sexual conduct.

THE Catholic Church can recover from “the battering” it has taken in recent months, according to Monsignor Leo Cushley, who is to succeed disgraced Cardinal Keith O’Brien as the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh.

The priests and people are “anxious to move on” from the scandal involving Cardinal O’Brien, who left the post earlier this year after admitting inappropriate sexual conduct, Mgr Cushley said.

He said he would take stock of what happened within the governance of the archdiocese when he is ordained on September 21.

The 52-year-old also expressed surprise at being appointed Archbishop, given his background as part of the Vatican’s diplomatic team, although he described the challenges of his new role as “comparatively easy” compared with previous situations he has faced.

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HAWAII
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

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

For immediate release: July 24, 2013

A predator priest has just been released on parole.

Fr. Mark Matson, a Catholic priest of the Colorado-based Theatine Fathers order, was tried and convicted in 2000 in Hawaii for sexual assaulting a 13-year-old boy. Matson was sentenced to 20 years.

[Star-Bulletin]

This week, he was freed. (See official notice below.)

We believe Catholic officials, in Hawaii, California, Texas and Colorado, should use their vast resources – parish bulletins, church websites, diocesan newspapers and pulpit announcements – to warn families about him.

In addition to his Hawaii conviction, Matson has been accused of abusing boys in Colorado and California. Furthermore, a Colorado man filed a civil suit against Matson for sexual molesting and assaulting him at 13 years old at St. Andrew’s Seminary in the 1970s. (Miami attorney Adam Horowitz represented the victim.)

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UNITED STATES
Berlin Daily Sun

By FRANK BRUNI

The men were spiritual leaders, held up before the children around them as wise and righteous and right. So they had special access to those kids. Special sway.

And when they exploited it by sexually abusing the children, according to civil and criminal cases from different places and periods, they were protected by their lofty stations and by the caretakers of their faith. The children’s accusations were met with skepticism. The community of the faithful either couldn’t believe what had happened or didn’t want it exposed to public view: why give outsiders a fresh cause to be critical? So the unpleasantness was hushed.

This is not a column about the Catholic Church.

This is a column about Orthodox Jews, who have recently had similar misdeeds exposed, similar cover-ups revealed.

And I’m writing it, yes, because the Catholic Church over the last two decades has absorbed the bulk of journalistic attention, my own included, in terms of child sexual abuse. There are compelling reasons that’s been so: Catholicism has more than one billion nominal adherents worldwide; endows its clerics with a degree of mysticism that many other denominations don’t; and is just centralized enough for scattered cover-ups to coalesce into something more like a conspiracy. The pattern of criminality and evasion has been staggering.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

When the NSW government enquiry into child sexual abuse and its cover-up in the Newcastle-Maitland Catholic church diocese heard evidence from Fr. Fletcher victim, “AH”, a strange thing happened. The assembled public, media representatives, lawyers and enquiry officials flooded the court with their tears. When he had finished his statement (see full transcript below), all media reported that the hearing chamber “erupted in spontaneous applause”.

Indeed, as he was about to leave the witness box, Commissioner Cunneen told him that “You must always remember, no shame attaches to you. Your courage has placed the shame squarely where it belongs.”

AH did not go into details of the abuse he had suffered, as it was detailed in his mother’s book. What he did go into was the effects the abuse had on him and his family. It was these effects, from an obviously impressive young man, that triggered the tears from those present.

The effects were what are becoming recognized as the standard for the victims of these pathetic priests and include alcohol use, relationship breakdowns, depression, business-failure and suicide attempts. As “AH” put it so well, “I actually thought I was just stuffing up my life until I realized I was a typical victim.”

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

Fr. Brian Lucas has admitted to the NSW inquiry into Catholic Church cover-ups of child sexual abuse within the Newcastle-Maitland diocese that he did not take notes during meetings to ensure they could not be used later in court.

The meetings were of a committee established by the Bishop to review allegations against local priests. Lucas is a frequent media spokesman for the Sydney Archdiocese, headed by Cardinal George Pell. The name of the third member of the committee is the subject of a suppression order.

Lucas, who is also a lawyer, said it was a “serious and well understood dilemma” within church legal circles that clergy risked being charged with the crime of misprision of a felony (covering up a crime) if they did not go to police with victims’ complaints. He said he was prepared to take this risk when priests admitted their crimes to him.

One of the Australian Catholic Church’s most prominent and senior figures, Lucas admitted he also advised other clergy it was a good idea not to take notes of interviews with priests accused of sexual abuse so they “couldn’t be successfully used in legal action.”

Clearly, Lucas is defying the law. His close association with Cardinal Pell demands a reply from Pell, who remains on holiday in his palatial, $30 million apartments in Rome. Pell should be called before the enquiry to clarify this matter, but of course that is unlikely since the enquiry officials would probably think he was far too important to be called before them to answer the obvious questions.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with video]

One of Australia’s most senior Catholics, Father Brian Lucas, has told the Cunneen Inquiry into the sexual abuse cover up, that he convinced 35 paedophile priests to resign from the church rather than reporting them to the police.

Transcript

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: A senior Catholic Church official has admitted he was willing to risk breaking the law by failing to report cases of clergy sex abuse to police.

Father Brian Lucas told the Special Commission of Inquiry into church sex abuse in Maitland-Newcastle that he’d never betray the trust of a victim if they didn’t want to go to police about abuse allegations.

Father Lucas said he’d been tasked with seducing alleged paedophile priests to resign, but took no notes of their confessions.

Emma Renwick reports.

EMMA RENWICK, REPORTER: As a lawyer, a priest and former media advisor, Father Brian Lucas is careful with his words.

Father Lucas was at the forefront of the Catholic Church’s process of dealing with paedophile priests in the 1980s and ’90s. His special role was convincing them to leave the ministry.

Today Father Lucas told the special inquiry into the cover up of child sexual abuse, “… one had to seduce them into agreeing to resign …”.

EMMA RENWICK: Later, Counsel Assisting asked, “How many of these matters have you dealt with?”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 24 July 2013 (VIS) – Today, the Holy Father:

– appointed Msgr. Leo Cushley as metropolitan archbishop of Saint. Andrews and Edinburgh (area 5,504, population 1,533,000, Catholics 115,900, priests 120, permanent deacons 4, religious 145), Scotland. The bishop-elect was born in Wester Moffat, Scotland in 1961 and was ordained a priest in 1985. He holds a licentiate in liturgy from the Pontifical Atheneum of St. Anselm and a doctorate in canon law from the Gregorian Pontifical University. He has served in a number of pastoral roles, including parish vicar of the cathedral “Our Lady of Good Aid” in Motherwell, chaplain of Our Lady’s High School, parish vicar of St. Serf’s, Airdrie, and chaplain of St. Margaret’s High School in Airdrie, Glasgow, and parish vicar at St. Aidan’s in Wishaw. He collaborated in the English section at the Secretariat of State before admission to the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in Rome. He entered the diplomatic service of the Holy See in 1997, serving in the Apostolic Nunciatures in Egypt, Burundi, Portugal, New York (United Nations) and South Africa. He is currently nunciature counsellor in the Section for General Affairs of the Secretariat of State.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

[with video]

Evidence to a NSW inquiry has reveled senior clergy failed to act against a paedophile priest despite evidence they knew he’d been abusing girls for decades, and a warning this story contains graphic language.

Transcript

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: More damning evidence of the Catholic Church’s failure to report serial child sex abusers has emerged at an inquiry in New South Wales.

The focus of today’s hearing was Father Denis McAlinden, a veteran paedophile who abused dozens of children.

In the witness box was one of the Church’s most senior office holders, Father Brian Lucas, currently the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference. He’s played an integral role in the Church’s handling of paedophile priests and survivors have slammed him for failing to report offenders like McAlinden to the police.

Adam Harvey reports, and a warning: this story contains explicit language and sexual references.

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SCOTLAND
Scotsman

by STEPHEN McGINTY
Published on the
24 July

MONSIGNOR Leo Cushley has been named new Archbishop of St Andrews & Edinburgh, replacing Cardinal Keith O’Brien who resigned in disgrace after admitting inappropriate behaviour with a number of priests.

• Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s successor named
• New Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh comes to role from Vatica’s foreign office

Monsignor Cushley, a priest from the Motherwell diocese, is currently working in the Vatican with its secretariat of state, the Vatican’s foreign office.

Cushley has been involved in the visits by heads of state to the Holy See, and was also present on the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the UK in 2010.

Cushley is believed to have been chosen on account of his “outsider” status and skills in diplomacy and conflict resolution, following service in troublespots during the civil wars in Burundi and Rwanda. He is also known to be a trusted aide and confidante of Pope Francis.

The new Archbishop will today deliver his first message to the Archdiocese which has been shocked by the scandal surrounding Cardinal O’Brien who was revealed to have had a number of inappropriate relationships with priests and seminarians.

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