ABUSE TRACKER

MICHIGAN
MLive

By Jessica Fleischman | jfleisc2@mlive.com

on August 09, 2013 at 8:08 AM, updated August 09, 2013

SEBEWAING, MI — Blue skies and sunshine welcomed 400 to 500 Catholics who rallied in rural Huron County to resist church reorganization.

Hundreds of lawn chairs lined the grass Thursday, Aug. 8, outside Sebewaing’s Holy Family Catholic Church, slated to move to “occasional use” next year as part of Catholic Diocese of Saginaw restructuring.

The “Save Our Rural Catholic Churches” rally was organized by parishioners who oppose the ongoing restructuring plan by the diocese.

“It is counterproductive to have churches merge and close,” said Mike Eisengruber, the first speaker of the night, who also acted as the emcee is one of six members of an advisory board for Save Our Rural Catholic Churches.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee Biagio Mazza | Aug. 9, 2013

ROME
If U.S. Catholic sisters want to dialogue with the Vatican over a mandate requiring them to place themselves under the authority of a U.S. archbishop, they must understand that the “central point” of dialogue is upholding church doctrine, a key Vatican cardinal said in May.

The doctrinal problems identified with the main group of U.S. sisters, known as the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), are “extremely important,” Cardinal João Braz de Aviz said.

“This is the central point of the dialogue,” Braz de Aviz said. “I have no idea how it will be resolved.”

Braz de Aviz, the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Religious, made his comments in May in Rome during a talk at the triennial meeting of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG), a membership group for approximately 2,000 leaders of Catholic sisters around the world.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Michael Sean Winters | Aug. 9, 2013 Distinctly Catholic

Father Helmut Schuller has wrapped up his speaking tour of the United States. The coverage of his talks here at NCR has been somewhat breathless and I am not sure why. Herr Schuller did not, according to the news reports, say anything that has not been said before by others.

When I was a teenager, I came under the happy influence of a priest whom I credit with keeping me in the Church. I played the organ at his church during the summertime and we would engage in conversations about our faith. He was an unreconstructed 60s liberal in both politics and theology. At one of our early conversations, he gave me a copy of Hans Kung’s “On Being a Christian” to read and I devoured it. In short, I shared many of the mundane liberal attitudes that Schuller continues to articulate.

In the intervening years, I have largely come to view the Church differently and have either severely qualified my early views or abandoned them. (Unfortunately, my priest friend was killed in a freak train accident and it is one of the great regrets of my life that he has not been able to accompany me on my subsequent intellectual journey.) I came to see that I had developed a penchant for taking ideas and intellectual constructs from the ambient, secular culture and placing them on the Church. As I came to learn more of the Church’s theology, and especially its history, I realized how often this habit of mind had, in fact, nearly wrecked the Church. Reforms that last and that help the Church to thrive can be deep, the pruning can be severe, but they are reforms that are rooted within the Church’s traditions.

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ISRAEL
Israel Hayom

Rabbi Mordechai Elon’s conviction of indecent acts rattles national-religious community • Forum Takana, which exposed him, says more serious complaints were not revealed in trial • Elon’s supporters insist: There is no one else of his caliber.

Yehuda Shlezinger

At 11 a.m. on Wednesday, merely an hour and a half after the Jerusalem Magistrates’ Court convicted him of two counts of indecent acts against a minor, Rabbi Mordechai Elon spoke by telephone with another prominent national-religious public figure, Rabbi Haim Druckman.

Druckman was taken aback by the judge’s verdict. “Dear God in heaven, that’s ridiculous. It can’t be, it simply can’t be. I’m no lawyer, but maybe you should appeal to the Supreme Court and explain it to the judges,” he told Elon.

Like other rabbis in the national-religious community, Druckman was struggling to come to terms with the new reality. Elon, who for years had been considered the star of the national-religious public, to the point where he was dubbed the “admor,” an honorific title meaning “master, teacher and rebbe,” had been deemed a sex offender. Neither Elon nor the Forum Takana, a group which seeks to fight sexual abuse by authority figures in the national-religious community and which first exposed Elon’s actions, ever envisioned that the outcome would be so conclusive.

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ISRAEL
Jerusalem Post

By DANIELLE ZIRI

08/09/2013

Crisis center head: Ruling of “immense importance in breaking silence surrounding… sexual assault in the religious community.”

The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel reported a significant increase Thursday in the number of calls to its hotlines for religious men and women, following the Wednesday conviction of Rabbi Mordechai Elon for indecent assault by force against a minor.

The association also stated this week that it wished to strengthen victims of sexual assault who chose to speak out about the events.

Orit Sulitzeanu, the association’s director-general, said in a statement that the court ruling was of “immense importance in breaking the silence surrounding the phenomenon of sexual assault in the religious community.”

“We know that the sense of guilt and shame that accompanies sexual abuse victims prevents women and men affected [from seeking] help or to complain,” she added. “We hope that all victims feel better thanks to this court decision and that people will understand that justice always ends up coming to light.”

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ISRAEL
Israel Hayom

Rabbi Mordechai Elon said to be exploring legal options after conviction • “The court’s ruling is immensely important for breaking the silence around the phenomenon of sex crimes in the religious community,” says Association of Rape Crisis Centers head.

Yehuda Shlezinger and Yael Branovsky

Friends and associates of Rabbi Mordechai Elon are still struggling to come to terms with his conviction Wednesday on two counts of indecent acts against a minor.

“Naturally, spirits are low, but the rabbi is the king of Migdal,” said one of Elon’s associates. “We are reviewing the legal options the rabbi has before him.”

After Elon’s associates and family read the court’s decision, one said that “the judge has a very clear world view, which stipulates what is legitimate and what is illegitimate. In her view, if a person behind closed doors hugs someone it is illegitimate, and you must prove that if a person comes to you for consultation and that person is in distress, that such a situation is truly called for.”

Those in Elon’s circle understand that his conviction will lead many of his critics and those skeptic of his teachings in the national-religious community to believe the rabbi is guilty.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Aug. 9, 2013

Inclusion of two Catholic sisters in a July release of clergy sex abuse documents in the Los Angeles archdiocese highlights a need for sisters’ orders to investigate abuse allegations, says a former leader of the lay group set up by the U.S. bishops to monitor the church’s sex abuse policies.

“I think what we have learned in the last 10 to 12 years is that this is not a kind of misconduct that is peculiar to Roman Catholic priests,” Judge Michael Merz told NCR Aug. 5.

“All the stones need to be turned over,” said Merz, a federal district judge in Ohio who served as the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ National Review Board from 2007 to 2009. “We need to get this stuff out in the open and deal with it.”

Merz’s comments were in regard to the July 31 release of personnel and other files of clergy and sisters accused of abuse from five religious orders that have ministered in the Los Angeles archdiocese.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Fri, Aug 9, 2013

A man who was abused as a child in Ferns diocese by the late Fr Seán Fortune has expressed his shock at discovering that the parochial house in Poulfour where children were abused by the priest is in use as a creche.

The man, who does not wish to be named, said he had visited the house on July 23rd last with photographer Kim Haughton, who is working on a project involving such places of abuse, and it was only then he discovered there was a creche on the premises.

It was, he said “a house of horrors”. At the scene that day, he “lost it. I really did. The priest who took over from Fortune in that parish refused to live there and they built a new one for him.”

He added: “Fortune is still there, if you know what I mean. He’s still hanging over the place like that house in the Psycho film, the house on the hill. You can see, you can smell him there. They should’ve knocked it. It’s so wrong. It’s not right.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Looking back, it was one incident that summed up the whole story.

In 1976, Mavis Arnold and I were interviewing a jittery Department of Education civil servant responsible for what had been industrial schools.

Our focus was on the institution run by the Sisters of the Poor Clares in Cavan.

We asked to see examples of the institution’s “dietary” plan and of a notification of punishment, both required by the 1908 Children Act.

Not available, he replied.

What about children sent out to work from the age of 10 in the early 1960s?

“You can’t see individual confidential reports.”

Could we see the accounts?

They didn’t exist.

By what process, we asked, had some Cavan girls been sent to the laundry-reformatory in Gloucester Street, Dublin?

His agitation increased: “We’d better not delve into that terrain.”

The point was that that institution, run by other nuns, was not certificated, thus the girls’ incarceration there was contrary to the rules of the Act governing the schools.

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Daily Forward

By Paul Berger
Published August 08, 2013, issue of August 16, 2013.

Twelve alumni of Yeshiva University have joined 19 other former students who are suing the Modern Orthodox flagship university for allegedly covering up decades of sexual abuse at its Manhattan high school for boys.

But the 31 students suffered a setback August 6, when United States District Judge John G. Koeltl denied their attorney’s request to gain access to more information through discovery at a court in Manhattan.

“You’re basically having plaintiffs tied one hand behind their back because much of the information is in the hands of the defendants,” Kevin Mulhearn, the students’ attorney, told the court, according to a transcript.

In New York, criminal and civil cases of child sexual abuse must be brought before a victim turns 23; the plaintiffs are older, and claim that they were abused during the 1970s and ’80s. Mulhearn, however, argues in the suit that the statute of limitations does not apply, because Y.U. fraudulently covered up the abuse.

Discovery would have given Mulhearn access to internal Y.U. documents and the ability to interview current and former Y.U. employees about the alleged cover-up. It is a legal maneuver he used in a similar abuse case against Brooklyn’s Poly Prep Country Day School, which the school settled with 12 men represented by Mulhearn.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

[Royal Commission calls for submissions on ‘Towards Healing’ – Lateline]

August 9, 2013

Benjamin Millar

The Catholic Church’s insurance company destroyed records relating to sexual abuse and drove the church’s handling of victims of abuse, according to a former adviser to the church.

Psychologist Dr Robert Grant, who advised the Catholic Church committee dealing with sexual abuse, told ABC’s Lateline on Thursday that Catholic Church Insurance dictated how victims should be treated under the Towards Healing protocol, a claim CCI denies.

US-based Dr Grant said meetings he attended in the late 1990s with the National Committee for Professional Standards, which was drafting the Towards Healing document, were attended by senior representatives of church-owned CCI or their lawyers.

Dr Grant, who has worked with the Catholic Church on sexual abuse in seven countries, said discussions devising the Towards Healing protocols centred on church liability and priests “being unjustly accused” rather than the wellbeing of victims.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Times Leader

August 08. 2013

Testimony from the trial in Pittsburgh involving alleged child abuse by a former Pittsburgh public schools police officer underscores the need for better safeguards for our children and clearer reporting procedures for school officials if they suspect child abuse.

That is the goal of my legislation that would require school district authorities to report possible child abuse to authorities within 24 hours. My bill would remove the current confusing patchwork of reporting requirements involving school officials when they believe there are instances of child abuse in school. My legislation makes all school officials mandated reporters of suspected child abuse.

Witnesses at the trial testified that they were abused by the former school police officer on school premises as far back as 1998, yet no student came forward with abuse allegations at that time. That changed in 1999 when the former principal at the Arthur J. Rooney Middle School suspected that inappropriate activity occurred and reported his suspicions to the officer’s supervisors.

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CHILE
El Dinamo

Lo más interesante son las explicaciones de los obispos Tomislav Koljatic y Horacio Valenzuela quienes atribuyen las acusaciones no a los abusos sexuales de Karadima, sino a un complot de la izquierda y los masones.

Una veintena de cartas sobre la defensa que encumbrados obispos de la Iglesia Católica hicieron al ex párroco de El Bosque, Fernando Karadima, en un desesperado intento de convencer a El Vaticano y al Arzobispado sobre la inocencia del prelado, fueron dadas a conocer hoy por el portal Ciper.

Entre los escritos a los que tuvo acceso el sitio de investigación, se puede encontrar una varias enviadas por obispos y sacerdotes formados por él, donde se describe a Karadima como un hombre recto y bondadoso; “un hombre que ha centrado su vida en la Eucaristía, celebrada y adorada, con fervor”, según escribió el sacerdote Juan Ignacio Ovalle Barros. O un hombre que “atrae hacia las cosas de Dios”, según afirmó el sacerdote Francisco Javier Manterola Covarrubias.

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SCOTLAND
Scottish Catholic Observer

BISHOP Hugh Gilbert of Aberdeen has said it is ‘bitter, shaming and distressing’ that young boys were abused by monks at the Fort Augustus Abbey school in the 1950s and 1960s.

Bishop Gilbert travelled to St Peter’s and St Benedict’s parish in Fort Augustus last Sunday to celebrate Mass and express his profound sorrow after hearing news of the historic abuse cases.

A Church safeguarding advisor told the SCO this week that the Church now has the ‘robust, rigorous systems’ in place to help ensure such events are not repeated and it was vital that everyone used ‘common sense’ and embraced child protection policy.

The Scottish Church has continued to face the spectre of abuse this week following last week’s BBC Scotland investigation that uncovered a number of cases of child abuse at the Fort Augustus Abbey school, which lies within Aberdeen Diocese, and Carlekemp, its feeder school, in East Lothian. More alleged victims have since come forward.

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AUSTRALIA
Big Pond News

Friday, August 09, 2013

A man has been charged with grooming and sexually assaulting two teenage girls he met through a church in Sydney.

The 23-year-old man was arrested at his home in Westleigh, in Sydney’s northwest, on Wednesday and charged with 40 sexually-based child assault offences.

It followed investigations by the Child Abuse Squad into the alleged grooming and assault of two girls, aged 13 and 15, between March and July this year.

The girls met the man through their church, police allege.

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UNITED STATES
America

August 12-19, 2013
Bernard V. Nojadera

The reverberations can be heard nationwide. As church employees and volunteers receive notices requiring them to attend safe-environment trainings, their responses have become familiar: “Again?” “Didn’t we just do that?” “I went through this where I teach; do I need to do it in the parish too?” “I barely come in contact with kids; why do I need the program?” “I’ve been doing this work for 40 years; don’t they trust me?”

A decade into dealing with child protection efforts, I have come to expect such complaints. I see eyes roll and hear audiences sigh. On occasion, however, there is a more positive reaction: “Thank you. I was abused as a child. I’m here tonight because I have kids. You are now a part of my healing journey.”

While the safe-environment trainings may strike some volunteers as an imposition or an inconvenience, there is good reason not to take them for granted: Child protection programs work. In 2002 the U.S. bishops established stringent policies for the church in the United States that require staff and volunteers to be educated in child safety awareness and protection and to undergo background checks. The policies also demand that safe-environment instructors educate children on what is acceptable and unacceptable touch and how to report what makes them feel uncomfortable. The result? A decline in the reported number of new victims of sexual abuse and of perpetrators. In addition, with a call for men and women abused decades ago to seek help, the church is now seeing a decline in the number of old cases coming to the light.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Steve Cannane and Sashka Koloff
Updated Fri Aug 9, 2013

A psychologist who advised the Catholic Church committee that deals with sexual abuse says the church’s insurance company dictated how victims should be treated under the Towards Healing protocol.

Dr Robert Grant is a US-based psychologist who specialises in abuse and trauma, has worked with the Catholic Church on sexual abuse issues in seven countries, and has written a number of books on clerical abuse.

In the late 1990s he was living in Sydney and advising the St John of God brothers in relation to the psychiatric facilities they ran.

He was soon asked to help the National Committee for Professional Standards, which was working on the draft of Towards Healing, the church policy for dealing with clerical sexual abuse.

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INDIA
e-Pao

Source: Hueiyen News Service

Imphal, August 08, 2013: All Manipur Christian Organization (AMCO) has condemned the sexual exploitation of minor girls at Grace Home, Jaipur allegedly by its founder Pastor Jacob John.

According to a release of AMCO, the alleged child trafficking, sexual abuse and rape of children at Grace Home and the incarceration of accused Pastor John Jacob has brought shame, anger and challenge to the Christian ministers and members.

AMCO condemned the series of crime allegedly committed by John Jacob towards his maid-servants and innocent children at Grace Home, and urged the authorities for a just and speedy legal verdict against the culprit.

Further, the organization clarified that the accused Jacob John and the institution he runs (Grace Home, Jaipur) has neither link with any Christian organization nor has he taken permission from any Christian Church organization in Manipur.

All Manipur Christian Organization (AMCO) and its constituent Churches have no knowledge about the person and his institution, but only through the public and media.

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INDIA
e-Pao

Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, August 08, 2013: Stating that the alleged ‘child trafficking,’ ‘sexual abuse’ and ‘rape of children’ at Grace Home, Jaipur, and the incarceration of the principal accused, pastor John Jacob, has brought shame, anger and challenge to the Christian ministers and members, the All Manipur Christian Organisation (AMCO) urged for a just and speedy legal verdict against the accused.

Feeling the need to address the issue of the heinous act, AMCO held emergency sittings on July 22 and 23 to express, clarify and appeal to the Christians in particular and people of Manipur in general regarding child trafficking, sexual abuse and rape, especially of children.

A statement issued by AMCO said that child trafficking, sexual abuse and rape, especially of children, is a heinous crime, a grave sin to be condemned by all while condemning the series of crime, allegedly committed by Jacob John against his maid-servants and innocent children at Grace Home at Jaipur.

Sharing the trauma, shame and pain of the innocent victims of Grace Home, Jaipur, the maidservants and the innocent children, AMCO said the indescribable psychological wound and the spiritual trauma caused to children will take a long time to be healed while expressing deep sympathy and assuring them of prayerful support.

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IOWA
Des Moines Register

A restraining order has been issued against the former Des Moines youth pastor who this week was accused of sexually abusing two teenage congregation members.

Ryan Matthew McKelvey, 27, was barred from contacting all minors and was ordered to stay away from all places where minors typically can be found, according to court documents filed Wednesday.

The restraining order also said McKelvey, who has a wife and young child, was allowed to see a specific minor, who was not named, only in the presence of the child’s mother.

McKelvey, who had served as a youth pastor at Heritage Assembly of God, 5051 N.E. Fifth St., was arrested Tuesday and charged with two counts of sexual exploitation by clergy and two counts of third-degree sexual abuse. As of Thursday afternoon, he was being held in the Polk County Jail on $100,000 cash bond.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC = Lateline

[with video]

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 08/08/2013
Reporter: Steve Cannane

The Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse is taking submissions into the Catholic Church’s Towards Healing protocols which were introduced in 1996 to deal with abuse committed by clergy.

Transcript

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: The Royal Commission into child sexual abuse is taking submissions into the Catholic Church’s Towards Healing protocols, introduced in 1996 to deal with abuse committed by clergy.

The protocols are meant to be driven by pastoral concerns dealing with the pain of victims through a Christian response.

But tonight for the first time a consultant to the committee has spoken out, saying the Church’s insurance company had too much influence on the response and that a senior official from the company boasted of destroying Church personnel records.

Recently at the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child sex abuse, the CEO of Catholic Church insurance, Peter Rush, said CCI officers remained independent of the underlying process.

Steve Cannane has this exclusive report, produced by Sashka Koloff.

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CHILE
Terra

El magistrado detalló que la cita “duró cerca de media hora” donde el religioso se vio “en muy buenas condiciones de salud”.

El ministro de fuero, Juan Muñoz Pardo, aseguró esta tarde que el ex párroco de El Bosque, Fernando Karadima, “respondió todas las preguntas”, tras el interrogatorio que realizó al religioso en el marco de la demanda civil que presentaron tres de sus víctimas de abusos sexuales.

El magistrado detalló que el cuestionario “duró cerca de media hora” donde el sacerdote se vio “en muy buenas condiciones de salud”.

“Yo he cumplido con la diligencia. Ahora son las partes las que tienen que evaluar su importancia y gravitación”, afirmó el juez.

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CHILE
Ciper Chile

CIPER accedió a una veintena de cartas que usó la defensa de Karadima en su último intento por convencer al Vaticano de que el ex párroco de El Bosque era inocente. Vistas desde hoy las cartas resultan demenciales. Particularmente las de los obispos Tomislav Koljatic y Horacio Valenzuela quienes atribuyen las acusaciones no a los abusos sexuales de Karadima, sino a un complot de la izquierda y los masones. Una carta del cardenal Errázuriz a Karadima revela la delicadeza con que lo trataba mientras cerraba la puerta a sus víctimas. Los hechos muestran lo débil que fue la Iglesia ante el cura abusador, exactamente lo que hoy reclaman las victimas en los tribunales.

En estos días el cura Fernando Karadima deberá volver a enfrentar un interrogatorio judicial debido a la demanda que mantienen sus acusadores James Hamilton, José Andrés Murillo y Juan Carlos Cruz. En ella se sostiene que la Iglesia Católica chilena es responsable por no haber investigado las denuncias contra el sacerdote que oportunamente se le hicieron llegar a sus autoridades. Más aún, los denunciantes acusan que los obispos formados por Karadima (Andrés Arteaga, Tomislav Koljatic, Horacio Valenzuela y Juan Barros) supieron por años de los abusos sexuales y sicológicos que cometía su mentor y los encubrieron. Y que el entonces arzobispo de Santiago Francisco Javier Errázuriz actuó indolentemente ante las denuncias y testimonios que recibió.

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CHILE
Terra

En el reportaje, realizado por Ciper Chile, destacan las misivas de los tres -de 19- curas que no se arrepintieron de apoyar al ex párroco de El Bosque tras el fallo condenatorio del Vaticano.

El portal Ciper Chile reveló esta tarde algunas cartas que obispos y sacerdotes enviaron al Vaticano para exculpar al ex párroco de El Bosque, Fernando Karadima, de las denuncias de abusos sexuales.

El medio tuvo acceso a una veintena de misivas de distintos religiosos del país, donde defienden a Karadima de las denuncias hechas por James Hamilton, José Andrés Murillo y Juan Carlos Cruz.

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CHILE
La Tercera

El ex párroco de El Bosque, Fernando Karadima, declaró hoy por cerca de media hora ante el ministro de fuero Juan Muñoz, en el marco de una demanda civil contra el Arzobispado de Santiago interpuesta por el abogado Juan Pablo Hermosilla, representante de tres demandantes del sacerdote por abusos sexuales.

Al terminar la diligencia, que se realizó en el convento de las Siervas de Jesús de la Caridad, donde se encuentra recluido el sacerdote, Muñoz señaló que Karadima se encontraba “en buen estado de salud”.

El ministro de fuero agregó que Karadima “respondió a una minuta de preguntas hechas por la parte demandante para constituir una prueba que va a servir para asegurar la pretensión que persigue que es establecer esa responsabilidad para los efectos patrimoniales”.

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CONNECTICUT
CT Post

Michael P. Mayko
Updated 5:59 pm, Thursday, August 8, 2013

HARTFORD — Just when it appeared the book had been closed on the sordid Haitian sex scandal involving Douglas Perlitz and his three-stage program to clothe, feed and educate street boys there, a new chapter is being written.

That happened Thursday when Mitchell Garabedian, a Boston lawyer, filed the first of what he anticipates will be another 32 lawsuits on behalf of boys who claim Perlitz sexually abused them while they were participants in his Project Pierre Toussaint program in Cap-Haitien, Haiti’s second largest city.

“Douglas Perlitz was a serial pedophile,” said Garabedian, who has won numerous cases on behalf of victims who claim sexual abuse by religious members. “In these types of cases it’s not unusual for victims to come forward over a period of time.”

In one case involving a Roman Catholic priest, Garabedian said 148 victims came forward.

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IOWA
Des Moines Register

Written by
Joel Aschbrenner

A restraining order has been issued against the former Des Moines youth pastor who this week was accused of sexually abusing two teenage congregation members.

Ryan Matthew McKelvey, 27, is barred from contacting all minors and is ordered to stay away form all places where minors typically can be found, according to court documents filed Wednesday.

The restraining order also said McKelvey, who has a wife and young child, is allowed to see a specific minor, who was not named, only in the presence of the child’s mother.

McKelvey, who had served as a youth pastor at Heritage Assembly Church, 5051 N.E. Fifth St., was arrested Tuesday and charged with two counts of sexual exploitation by clergy and two counts of third-degree sexual abuse. As of Thursday afternoon, he was being held in the Polk County Jail on $100,000 cash bond.

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NEW YORK
National Catholic Reporter

Ben Feuerherd | Aug. 8, 2013

NEW YORK
Fr. Helmut Schüller’s “Catholic Tipping Point” tour of the United States ended where it began: in New York. He gave an address Wednesday evening in Manhasset and on Thursday, he visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, where he delivered thousands of red ribbons and signatures he collected in 15 cities across the nation.

The original plan was to give the ribbons, which symbolize Pentecost, to New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, but no one from the archdiocese was there to accept them. Instead, it was agreed the ribbons would be delivered to the front desk of the chancery, wrote St. Joseph Sr. Chris Schenk, executive director of FutureChurch, in an email.

“I discovered many faithful Catholics working hard to change the church they love very much,” Schüller said at St. Patrick’s, according to a statement from FutureChurch, one of the tour’s organizing groups. “I also spoke with many priests who see the need for change but are afraid to raise their voices. There is no place for fear or intimidation in the Catholic church. We all must speak out for our rights as Catholics.”

In the last three weeks, Schüller traveled from the East Coast to the West, spreading a message of “disobedience” and church reform. In each city, Schüller preached the values of the “Call to Disobedience,” a 2011 document published by the Austrian Priests’ Initiative. His message includes opening the priesthood to women and married people. He also advocates for a stronger relationship between the church and Catholic gay couples.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
National Catholic Reporter

Brian Roewe Marie Rohde | Aug. 8, 2013

MILWAUKEE A federal judge’s decision that creditors cannot access funds in a separate cemetery trust as part of the Milwaukee archdiocese’s bankruptcy proceedings could have a wide range of implications should it outlast a possible appeal regarding the judge’s familial ties to the cemeteries.

On Thursday, Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley ordered archdiocesan records related to any interest U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph T. Randa or some of his family members have in cemeteries, crypts, mausoleums or the trust to be turned over to lawyers for the claimants. Archdiocesan lawyers agreed to do so.

The order came in response to an emergency motion filed Aug. 2 by the creditors’ committee following Randa’s decision that $57 million moved to a cemetery trust in 2007 could not be accessed in the bankruptcy proceedings.

Describing the situation as “unusual and unique,” Kelley cautioned that the order should not be construed as a ruling on the “appropriateness or non-appropriateness of a recusal or non-recusal or finding that [Randa] has a financial interest.”

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel Aug. 8, 2013.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee must release to its bankruptcy creditors documents that could show whether a federal judge, who sided with the church on a key issue involving its cemeteries, might have had a conflict of interest that should have been disclosed, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley ruled Thursday.

Kelley issued the ruling after a brief hearing Thursday, stressing that it was not a commentary on U.S. District Judge Rudolph T. Randa’s July 29 ruling or whether he should have recused himself from the case.

“This should not in any way, shape or form be construed as a ruling on the appropriateness of Judge Randa’s recusal or nonrecusal, or whether he has a financial interest or not” in the archdiocese’s cemetery litigation, Kelley said.

Randa ruled last week that forcing the church to use even some of the more than $50 million it set aside in a trust for the perpetual care of cemeteries to pay its bankruptcy debts — primarily sex abuse settlements — would substantially burden its free exercise of religion under the First Amendment and a 1993 law aimed at protecting religious freedom.

Randa’s ruling, which overturned an earlier decision by Kelley, was a key victory for the archdiocese in that it eliminated one of the last major assets available for a settlement with sex abuse victims who filed claims in the bankruptcy.

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CANADA
CBC News

by Jody Porter, CBC News Posted: Aug 8, 2013

A local doctor and a school nurse experimented with 14 different drugs to treat “ear troubles” in children at Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora, according to a 1954 report obtained by CBC News.

The report, from the Indian and Northern Health Services archive, said that some of the children being treated became deaf.

School nurse Kathleen Stewart wrote the report, entitled “Record of Ear Treatments and Investigation.”

“The most conspicuous evidence of ear trouble at Cecilia Jeffrey School has been the offensive odour of the children’s breath, discharging ears, lack of sustained attention, poor enunciation when speaking and loud talking,” she wrote.

Students at the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora were the subject of nutritional experiments and exposed to experimental treatments for ear infections. Some became deaf.

So Stewart said the children were taught to irrigate their own ears, or the ears of younger children, with hot water. A doctor visited the school on a weekly basis looking out for ear infections “and the recommended medicine was used when possible,” Stewart wrote.

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IOWA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: August 8, 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 Des Moines youth pastor has been charged with child sex crimes. His church supervisors and members must now seek out others who he may have hurt.

Ryan M. McKelvey Heritage Assembly Church is accused of molesting two girls. The church’s pastor claims to be “unaware” of any of McKelvey’s inappropriate behavior. We doubt that.

In almost every case, evidence surfaces showing that church officials or members saw and ignored or hid “warning signs” of abuse.

We applaud the two victims and their families for courageously coming forward and cooperating with the police despite threats of doing so by the predator. We urge current and former Heritage Assembly Church members and staff to aggressively seek out others who may have been hurt by McKelvey and prod them to call police and prosecutors so that McKelvey can be convicted and kept away from kids for a long time.

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AUSTRALIA
National Catholic Reporter

Stephen Crittenden | Aug. 8, 2013

SYDNEY After eight weeks of intense, graphic and sometimes sad testimony, public hearings have ended for the New South Wales special commission of inquiry into clerical abuse in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, north of Sydney.

Forty witnesses have given testimony in open court before Commissioner Margaret Cunneen, and many others have been heard in camera, or in closed proceedings.

New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell created the inquiry in November, days before former Prime Minister Julia Gillard called a national royal commission into child sexual abuse in Australia.

O’Farrell and Gillard were responding to allegations by a senior police whistleblower, Chief Inspector Peter Fox, who said he could “testify from my own experience that the church covers up, silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the good name of the church.”

The inquiry’s mandate was to look into whether the Catholic church covered up abuse by two late priests, Denis McAlinden and James Fletcher, and whether Fox was inappropriately removed from his investigations.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC

[with audio]

Stephen Crittenden gives a summary so far in the Newcastle Inquiry into the handling of clerical sexual abuse.

* the specific and narrow scope of the inquiry

* how the Inquiry relates to the Royal Commission into sexual abuse, and the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry

* the testimony and examination of Detective Chief Inspector Fox

* “Misprision of felony” and possible consequences for church leaders who did not report felonies historically

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UNITED KINGDOM
BBC NEWS

A disgraced former Catholic priest has been given a three-year community order after admitting sexually abusing an altar boy in the late 1980s.

Malcolm McLennan, 69, then an assistant priest in Walderslade, Kent abused the boy when he was 12 and 13.

McLennan, who has a string of previous convictions, lives in a closed church community in Quedgeley, Gloucester.

A judge at Maidstone Crown Court ordered him to attend a treatment programme.

McLennan was also put on the sex offenders’ register for five years.

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SCOTLAND
The Tablet

10 August 2013

Safeguarding in the Catholic Church in Scotland does not command public confidence, yet the attitude of some senior church leaders suggests defensiveness and even complacency. Bishop Joseph Devine, retired Bishop of Motherwell, is quoted in The Tablet this week as saying that an independent investigation into alleged abuse by priests – parallel, for instance, to the Nolan inquiry in England and Wales – was not necessary. The number of cases was “tiny” and most happened 20 or more years ago. “What about the number of people in other professions who have been involved in abuse?” He is entitled to make these points, but his tone does not reassure the public that the issue is being taken seriously. This is a Church, after all, that has seen its reputation all but destroyed by the sexual scandal involving Cardinal Keith O’Brien.

On top of that case comes the painful disclosures concerning abuse by priests at Fort Augustus School in the Scottish Highlands. It closed in 1993, and most allegations date from years before. Judging by the continuing mental distress suffered by some of the survivors, however, the abuse could have happened yesterday. The public, and that includes the Catholic public, will take some convincing that attitudes have now changed so much that further cases are impossible. Even the Catholic Church in England and Wales, streets ahead of Scotland in these respects, is still seeing a trickle of new cases reported to the authorities, as well as allegations of a more historical nature. And it has begun to flesh out its concerns to do right by those who were damaged by abuse, with an extensive programme being piloted in Hallam Diocese.

Child protection has to be managed independently of church administrative structures and their personnel, and has to have three guiding principles. The first is the priority of caring for survivors (the term “victim” is no longer deemed appropriate). They must say what they need – it is not for the Church to tell them – with the aid where necessary of independent professional advice. The second is to give prime responsibility to the statutory agencies, the police and local social services departments, in deciding how to respond to allegations, when to take them seriously and whether to prosecute. And the third, perhaps secondary to these but no less essential, is transparency. Subject only to the protection of survivors’ privacy and regardless of possible damage to the Church’s good name, detailed figures must be published annually by an independent authority whose work must be open to media and public scrutiny. The Catholic Church in England and Wales meets these criteria; the Scottish Church has a long way to go.

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SCOTLAND
The Tablet

8 August 2013

The Church in Scotland may call in an outside body to review its safeguarding records, a senior member of the bishops’ conference has revealed.

Fr Tom Boyle, Assistant Secretary General of the Scottish Bishops’ Conference, confirmed the Church would review historic files detailing alleged abuse kept in diocesan archives and that an independent agency may be used to carry this out.

He said the Church planned to publish the review next year, although no time span has been set for how far back the cases being examined would go.

The Scottish bishops have also revealed that they will hold an internal review of abuse cases handled by the dioceses for the period 2006 to 2012.

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KENTUCKY
The Courier-Journal

Posted on August 8, 2013 by Peter Smith

The Council of Elders of the Louisville-based Sovereign Grace Ministries is denouncing as a slanderer a former high-ranking official in the denomination who sparked upheaval in the denomination after his 2011 release of internal church documents.

Brent Detwiler of North Carolina, who has been a vocal and persistent critic of the ministry’s leadership, said he would respond on Friday to the charges.

The statement by the elders — who represent local churches in the denomination — defends the church and its former longtime president, C.J. Mahaney, pastor of Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville.

Here are excerpts:

“…we believe that Brent Detwiler has repeatedly and grievously slandered our churches and our leaders. We denounce as sinful and unbiblical his determined effort to accuse our brethren. Consequently, we urge our brothers and sisters in Christ to avoid giving audience to Brent Detwiler’s unbiblical speech until such a time that he repents of this ungodly pattern. Such harmful speech is ruinous to the church of God.

“Furthermore, in contradiction to Brent Detwiler’s ongoing statements, we vigorously reiterate our support of C.J. Mahaney as a qualified minister of the gospel….”

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UNITED STATES
TheMediaReport

[This is another entry in a continuing series of profiles about individuals whom the mainstream media often cites in its coverage of the Catholic Church abuse narrative.]

When the media needs a reliable voice to bludgeon the Catholic Church over the issue of sex abuse from decades ago, one of its favorite voices is Richard Sipe, an 80-year-old ex-priest and mental health counselor.

What the mainstream media never reports, however, is Sipe’s troubling track record of falsehoods, distortions, and nastiness. As is frequently the case with other purported experts cited by the media, Sipe uses the issue of clergy sex abuse as a means to advance his attack on the Catholic Church, especially its teachings regarding human sexuality.

Priest celibacy caused the Holocaust?!

To understand how disdainful Sipe can be of the Church and its teachings, especially those related to sexuality and priest celibacy, one can simply look to his 1995 book, Sex, Priests, And Power: Anatomy Of A Crisis.

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CONNECTICUT
Boston.com

AP / August 8, 2013

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — Fairfield University and others that supported a charity designed to help feed and educate boys in Haiti are facing another lawsuit by a man alleging he was sexually abused by a founder of the school.

The federal lawsuit, filed Thursday in Connecticut, seeks $20 million in damages. The man was about 15 at the time of the abuse, according to the suit.

The university and others reached a $12 million settlement last month with children sexually abused by Douglas Perlitz, who was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison for sexually abusing boys who attended Project Pierre Toussaint School in Cap-Haitien.

The victims’ attorney, Mitchell Garabedian, said he’s investigating another 31 claims of sexual abuse by Perlitz and may file additional lawsuits.

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VATICAN CITY
Rome Reports

[with video]

August 8, 2013. (Romereports.com) An appeal has been withdrawn by a man who claimed the Vatican was financially responsible for the sexual abuse he endured back in the 60’s, when he was abused by a parish priest in Portland, Oregon.

The case ended in the 9th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals. The plaintiff had already reached a financial settlement with the religious order the priest belonged to, but he argued the Vatican should also be held liable, claiming the priest was ultimately a Vatican employee.

The man claims he was sexually abused in 1965 and the case itself had been opened since 2002. Last year, U.S District Court Judge Michael Mosman, concluded that the Vatican did not employ the pedophile priest, nor was it involved in transferring the priest to another diocese.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Kent Online

by Rebecca Hughes
rhughes@thekmgroup.co.uk

A former Catholic priest who molested an altar boy at a Medway church more than 20 years ago has today avoided a jail sentence.

Malcolm McLennan admitted molesting the boy, who is now in his late-30s, when he appeared before Medway magistrates last month.

The 69-year-old was handed a three-year community order at Maidstone Crown Court today.

After the sentence, the victim said: “I am devastated. Justice has not been served.”

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VATICAN CITY
The Daily Star (Lebanon)

August 08, 2013
By Peter McDonough
The Daily Star

Catholicism, among the most tradition-bound religions, contains at its core a paradox that has become increasingly sharp. With Pope Francis having just finished his first overseas trip – to Brazil, the world’s most populous Catholic country – it is difficult, despite the inertia of the past, to tell where the church is headed.

The accession of Jorge Mario Bergoglio to the papacy adds to the puzzle. The chief Jesuit confessor at the papal court used to be called “the black pope,” owing to his simple black cassock (if not his sinister intent). For the first time, a Jesuit has become pope – and has compounded the novelty by assuming the very un-Jesuit name of Francis.

As curious as such gestures are in an institution that thrives on imagery, they are symbolic frills. We already have plenty of pictures of Francis kissing babies; what he faces now are strategic matters of genuine substance.

One such challenge, the Vatican Bank, is equivalent to cleaning up the Augean stables. It is enough to mention the words “Vatican” and “bank” in the same sentence to start a cascade of jokes about comic-opera ineptness and skullduggery.

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VATICAN CITY
BBC News

The Pope has stepped up the fight against corruption at the Vatican by strengthening supervision of financial transactions at its internal bank.

Pope Francis issued a decree designed to combat money-laundering and prevent any financing of terrorism.

It is the latest move to stamp out abuses at the Vatican bank, which handles funds for the Catholic Church.

The Pope recently set up a commission to investigate the bank and report back to him personally.

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VATICAN CITY
The Raw Story

By Agence France-Presse
Thursday, August 8, 2013

Pope Francis intensified the fight against corruption in the Vatican on Thursday, strengthening the law to counter “money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

The short “Motu Proprio”, a decree of Francis’s own initiative, strengthens the supervision of financial transactions “in response to a recommendation of the Moneyval Committee,” the European watchdog which carried out a review of the Vatican bank last year.

The decree is just the latest in a series of bold moves on the part of the pontiff to clean up the institution’s murky financial image.

“It is a means of ensuring the road (towards transparency) continues,” Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a press conference.

“In today’s world, it is all about resisting increasingly insidious forms of financial criminality. We have to be equal to the challenges in order to protect legality, and not be left behind,” he said.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

Thu Aug 8, 2013

* Francis issues special decree to tackle financial crime
* Watchdog given greater monitoring powers over Vatican bank
* Francis boosting bid to meet global transparency standards

By Catherine Hornby

VATICAN CITY, Aug 8 (Reuters) – Pope Francis on Thursday strengthened monitoring of the Vatican bank to prevent money laundering or the financing of terrorism as part of his campaign to clean it up after decades of scandal.

Issuing a “Motu Proprio” – a decree at his own initiative, Francis said the Vatican’s internal watchdog, the Financial Information Authority (FIA), would have increased powers of supervision over the bank and other Holy See departments involved in financial activities.

The move will lead to closer monitoring of the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) – the formal name of the Vatican bank – and responds to a recommendation from the European anti-money laundering committee Moneyval last year.

The Vatican is trying to meet international standards on fighting crimes such as money laundering, funding of terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Moneyval said in a July 2012 report that the Vatican still had some way to go.

It said FIA’s powers should include reviewing policies, procedures, accounts and records and that it should have the right to enter Vatican premises and demand access to information.

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ILLINOIS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Aug. 5, 2013

Dear Bishop Braxton:

You and your brother bishops have repeatedly pledged to be “open and transparent” about clergy sex abuse. Yet you refuse to tell your flock

–that no Belleville predator priest is being housed and monitored by the diocese,
–that other dioceses do, in fact, house and monitor predator priests,
–that only two Belleville predator priests have been defrocked,
–that six or seven of Belleville predator priests are still on the payroll, and
— how many victims have contacted you or how much you’re spending on their therapy. (The last such figures, provided by your predecessor, are almost a decade old).

At the same time, you’re quietly renovating your home again and quietly and repeatedly traveling abroad. Who’s paying for this?

We respectfully but firmly urge you to reveal who paid for your trips overseas. We urge you to halt your new kitchen renovation and be honest about who paid for it.

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UNITED STATES
Stop Baptist Predators

A reader recently sent me an article with these comments:

“My childhood church had a young man who volunteered for years with AWANA and the youth group. I had also heard from adults that he was so wonderful to be a ‘father figure’ to several boys in the church whose parents were divorced. You can guess the result – he was eventually found out to be molesting these boys, and one case went to court.

Several of the boys he was close to seemed to ‘go off the rails’ and disappear. I am pretty sure that there must have been many more victims. He was described in the paper as volunteering for ‘several years’ with youth and children, but I was in that church back in the mid-nineties and he didn’t get prosecuted till 2005, so it was at least 10 years. He was basically a volunteer youth and children minister, extremely active in the ministries. He starred in the children’s musical I was in . . . . Knowing that there must have been more victims, I think it would be helpful to post this . . . . ”

I agree. So I’m posting this excerpt from a front-page article that was in the Daily News of Northwest Florida on November 5, 2005.

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TENNESSEE
Courthouse News Service

By KEVIN KOENINGER

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (CN) – After a youth minister was charged with sex offenses, a Baptist church promised to protect its children, but all it did was offer an optional first aid course, and a second employee sexually abused another child, the family claims in court.

Parents John and Jane Doe sued Spring Creek Baptist Church on behalf of their minor daughter Janie, in Montgomery County Court. The church itself is the only defendant.

“In 2009, a youth minister at Spring Creek was criminally charged with having sexual contact with minors in Spring Creek’s youth groups. The youth minister resigned voluntarily,” the complaint states.

“Afterwards, at least one member of Spring Creek communicated to Senior Pastor Paul Bunger that Spring Creek should adopt policies for protecting children in its care.

“Spring Creek adopted no policies for protecting children other than offering a first aid course for Sunday School teachers on a voluntary basis.”

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

David Gibson Religion News Service | Aug. 8, 2013

For more than three decades, the Vatican of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI operated on a version of the conservative maxim, “No enemies to the right.”

While left-wing theologians were silenced and liberal-to-moderate bishops were shunted aside in favor of hard-liners, and liturgical traditionalists and cultural conservatives were diligently courted and given direct access to the apostolic palace.

But in a few short months, Pope Francis has upended that dynamic, alienating many on the Catholic right by refusing to play favorites and ignoring their preferred agenda items even as he stressed the kind of social justice issues that are near and dear to progressives.

“I’ve personally found many aspects of this papacy to be annoying, and struggled against that feeling from the beginning. I’m hardly alone in this,” Jeffrey Tucker, editor of the New Liturgical Movement blog, wrote as Francis basked in the glow of media coverage of his recent trip to Brazil.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee Biagio Mazza | Aug. 8, 2013

ROME A “new attitude” of cooperation and equality must govern relations between the Vatican and Catholic sisters around the world, a key Vatican cardinal said in May.

That attitude, Cardinal João Braz de Aviz said, must be grounded in the understanding that both the church hierarchy and the sisters “are two dimensions essential in the church.”

“Neither is greater than the other,” Braz de Aviz said. “Both the prophetic and the governing dimensions form the church.”

Braz de Aviz, the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Religious, made his comments in May in Rome during a talk at the triennial meeting of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG), a membership group for approximately 2,000 leaders of Catholic sisters around the world.

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UNITED STATES
AlterNet

AlterNet / By Amanda Marcotte

August 7, 2013

Right-wing Christians have a lot of ridiculous sexual rules to control and direct sexual behavior: Everything from frowning on all nomarital sex to denouncing homosexuality to objecting to divorce. Of course, the problem they run up against is that consenting adults have lives that are complex, emotional and messy, and they’re going to make decisions based on their own circumstances and not the rules. This is so true that the very people espousing these strict rules about sex and marriage can’t even be bothered to follow them. Here’s some examples.

1) Catholic vicar Arthur M. Coyle caught with a prostitute.The Catholic Church has a long, long list of “nos” when it comes to sex, so long that it’s easier to list what you can do than what you can’t under their rules: Have contraception-free sex within marriage. That’s it, and if you’re a priest, even that is off the table for you. Which is why it’s newsworthy that Monsignor Arthur Coyle, who has been holding the high office of episcopal vicar for the Archdiocese of Boston was recently arrested for soliciting sex from a prostitute. The cops noted that Coyle was routinely spotted in the area where the prostitutes hung out, and so really, it was just a matter of time before he got caught. As usual, any lessons about what kind of behavior people will get up to if they’re denied healthy outlets for their sexuality will be ignored by the Catholic hierarchy.

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NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, August 8, 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 )

Shame on the Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn and the board and staff of St. Francis Prep for trying to intimidate victims of sexual abuse and harassment.

For decades, judges, courts, prosecutors and lawmakers across the US have let victims of sex crimes and sexual harassment seek justice while protecting their privacy. A small number of ruthless defendants, however, insist on trying to force victims to disclose their identities. This mean-spirited and desperate maneuver is designed to scare other victims, witnesses, and whistleblowers into keeping quiet.

We believe and hope it will backfire. We hope every single person who saw, suspected or suffered crimes, misdeeds or cover ups by Franciscan Brothers – at St. Francis Prep or elsewhere – will find the courage to speak up, get help, expose wrongdoers, warn parents, protect the vulnerable and deter future misconduct.

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AUSTRALIA
lewisblayse.net

The case of Fr. Richard John James Robinson, although occurring in the U.K., gives a clear indication of just how the Catholic Church has adopted the same strategy for its paedophile priests world-wide.

Robinson was shifted from parish to parish over a period of 25 years where he abused many boys, despite clear evidence that church officials knew of his offending. When, eventually, charges were mooted, the church sent him out of the country, to the U.S., in 1985.

About twenty years later, a victim tracked him down to California, but it was not possible to extradite him to the U.K. because of an American law placing a 10 year limit on extraditable offences. It was only when this law was changed, and a victim alerted U.K. authorities to that change, that Robinson was taken back to the U.K. He received a 21 year sentence for his offences, some dating back to 1959.

According to Anna Wheeler, a senior prosecutor with West Midlands Crown Prosecution Service’s Complex Casework Unit, who finally extradited Robinson back to Britain to face justice, it is likely that Robinson had offended in the 20 years he was in the U.S. She thinks more victims will eventually come forward.

In a curious fact of the U.K. justice system, two victims who came forward after Robinson’s extradition were unable to have their case prosecuted in the courts. However, they were permitted to give evidence in the case against Robinson by other victims.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

Pope Francis has issued a new Motu Proprio which states that Vatican money-laundering laws now also apply to dicasteries of the Roman Curia. The document also gives greater supervisory powers to the Vatican Financial Information Authority

ANDREA TORNIELLI
VATICAN CITY

The Pope has taken yet another step to bring the Holy See’s structures in line with international money-laundering standards. Today he issued a Motu Proprio for “the prevention and countering of money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” a Holy See Press Office statement said. It follows on from the action taken by Benedict XVI in this field “reaffirm[ing] the Holy See’s commitment to the goal of preventing and countering money laundering.”

The new law “broadens the application of the relevant Vatican laws to the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia and to other institutes and entities dependent on the Holy See, as well as to non-profit organizations enjoying juridical personality in canon law and based in the Vatican City State”; it “strengthens the supervisory and regulatory function of the Financial Information Authority” headed by Cardinal Attilio Nicora; it “establishes the function of prudential supervision over entities habitually engaged in financial activities, in response to a recommendation of the MONEYVAL Committee of the Council of Europe, and assigns that function to the Financial Information Authority”; finally, it “establishes the Financial Security Committee, whose Statutes are appended to the Motu Proprio, for the purpose of coordinating the competent authorities of the Holy See and the Vatican City State in the area of prevention and countering of money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

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VATICAN CITY
Chiesa

Name by name, Bergoglio’s personal team. A miniscule but highly active parallel curia in which he makes all the decisions. Including the mishaps of the appointments of Monsignor Ricca and Francesca Chaouqui

by Sandro Magister

ROME, August 8, 2013 – Francis is in no hurry to reform the curia, and some of his big electors are starting to get impatient. “We wanted someone with good managerial skills and leadership skills, and so far that hasn’t been as obvious,” the cardinal of New York, Timothy Dolan, complained in an interview a few days ago.

But pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio certainly does not like the curia the way it is. And in fact he often and intentionally does without it. The latest chirograph signed “Francis,” that of July 18 which instituted a commission of eight experts to rethink the organization of the economic-administrative structure of the Holy See, was made known to the Vatican secretariat of state only as a done deal.

This means that in the little office of pope Bergoglio on the second floor of the Casa di Santa Marta, where he has chosen to reside, many things are decided and done that never even pass through the majestic curial offices of the first and third loggia of the Apostolic Palace, a few steps away from the now-deserted pontifical apartment.

The secretariat of state continues its routine work, but much more at work is another secretariat, miniscule but highly active, which in direct service to the pope attends to the matters that he wants to resolve himself, without any interference whatsoever.

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CHILE
Diario U Chile

Para este jueves está contemplado que el ex párroco de El Bosque, Fernando Karadima, declare ante el ministro Juan Manuel Muñoz.

El ministro concurriría a las 16:00 hrs. hasta el convento de las Siervas de Jesús de la Caridad ubicado en Avenida Bustamante, en el marco de la acción civil presentada en contra del arzobispado por los denunciantes de Karadima, que lo acusan de abusos sexuales y abuso de poder.

Se trata del médico James Hamilton, el periodista Juan Carlos Cruz y el presidente de la Fundación para la Confianza, José Andrés Murillo, quienes, representados por el abogado Juan Pablo Hermosilla, preparan una demanda civil contra la Iglesia de Santiago.

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NEW YORK
Time

The 2012 trial of Nechemya Weberman captivated New Yorkers: the prominent and respected counselor of the Satmar Hasidim sect stood accused of sexually abusing a young girl entrusted in his care. Incredibly, the youthful victim—who was 12 at the start of her four-year ordeal—and her family were ridiculed and defamed by many in this intensely insular ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, nestled in a Brooklyn neighborhood famous for its hipster clubs and cafes.

In her new Kindle ebook The Devil of Williamsburg, which goes on sale today, writer-editor Allison Yarrow offers a compelling account of a crime that horrified a city and forced a devout group of believers to confront some unpleasant truths. It is a piece of long-form investigative journalism—based on reporting, interviews, and courtroom testimony—that has as its narrative spine the story of two women: the young (and now married) victim and Weberman’s wife, who even now professes her husband’s innocence.

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VENEZUELA
La Opinion

SAN CRISTOBAL | 06 DE AGOSTO DE 2013

La comunidad de San Cristóbal continúa esperando los resultados de la investigación que adelanta la Fiscalía, respecto a la responsabilidad del sacerdote Isaías Albarrán Villasmil, de 35 años, en cinco casos de abuso sexual registrados en la capital del estado Táchira.

El jefe del Cicpc, Luis Monroy, aseguró que aun no se pueden dar detalles de la investigación, en la que se conoció ya ha declarado un importante número de personas. Además, extraoficialmente se ha comentado que las mujeres violadas por el sacerdote podrían incluso llegar a ser diez, y no cinco como se viene informando.

Asimismo, dentro de las evidencias encontradas en el automóvil Spark, vehículo propiedad de Albarrán Villasmil y donde supuestamente cometía las violaciones, fueron hallados cabellos femenínos, un lapiz labial, papel higiénico y sangre, además de tres teléfonos celulares donde estarían los videos de las atrocidades que cometía el sacerdote.

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ILLINOIS
Univision

CHICAGO (AP) — Un ex sacerdote católico del área de Chicago que fue sentenciado a prisión por abuso sexual de un niño fue deportado a Bolivia, se conoció el miércoles.

Funcionarios de la Oficina de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE) dijeron que Alejandro Flores, de 40 años, fue deportado el martes a La Paz. Fue enviado en un vuelo comercial y acompañado por dos agentes federales. Las autoridades dijeron que Flores tiene prohibido de por vida regresar a Estados Unidos.

Flores se declaró culpable en 2010 de abuso sexual criminal y fue condenado a cuatro años en prisión. Abusó de niño cuando trabajaba en la iglesia de St. Mary en West Chicago.

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CIUDAD DEL VATICANO
La Opinion

Ciudad del Vaticano – Una sentencia dictada en Estados Unidos considera que la Santa Sede no puede ser acusada de responsabilidad directa en los casos de abusos sexuales cometidos por algún miembro del clero en el mundo, informó este miércoles Radio Vaticano en su edición digital en inglés.

El Tribunal de Apelación de Oregón rechazó el pasado lunes una causa puesta en marcha en 2002 sobre la supuesta responsabilidad de la Santa Sede en un caso de abuso sexual.

Los hechos se refieren a un sacerdote irlandés demandado por abuso sexual por un menor de edad en 1965 y que la Santa Sede pasó al estado laico pocas semanas después de que su orden religiosa le informara de lo sucedido.

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AUSTRALIA
Victoria Police

The SANO Task Force was established to investigate historic and new allegations that have emanated from the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into child sex abuse involving Religious and Non-Government organisations. The task force will also coordinate investigations emerging from the Australian Government Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

SANO Task Force is based within Victoria Police’s Crime Command and comprises specialist sexual assault detectives. SANO investigators will identify links between offenders and offences through the use of modern, specialist investigation methods.

SANO investigators are trained experts in sexual assault matters who will maintain the confidentiality of anyone who makes a complaint or wishes to provide information regarding child sexual abuse. Victoria Police are dedicated to accessing justice for victims, whether that is though a full judicial process by going to court or by simply telling their story.

How to contact the SANO Task Force

If you or someone you know has experienced child sexual abuse in an institutional context, we encourage you contact SANO Task Force via email sanotaskforce@police.vic.gov.au

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TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
Guardian

Published:
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Geisha Kowlessar

Minister of Gender, Youth and Child Development, Marlene Coudray, yesterday warned managers and caregivers of children’s homes they would feel the full brunt of the law if it was found children have been abused in any form. She made the comment at the formal opening of four newly-constructed residential units at the St Mary’s Children’s Home, Tacarigua, saying Government may soon take the action of placing cameras within homes to monitor activity.

“The abuse of children would be met with aggressive action from this ministry and we are now setting up mechanisms by which we can monitor,” she said, when asked about how the ministry could put mechanisms in place to ensure children were properly taken care of. “One of the options we have is to install cameras that can be monitored remotely. We know there is privacy and other issues involved but I want to assure the ministry is actively working on reports of abuse,” she added.

Saying she was not singling out the St Mary’s Home, Coudray said she made the remark after several complaints of abuse at children’s homes had reached the ministry. Urging that at all times children need love, care and guidance, Coudray said a child was most confident when he or she was exposed to such qualities. The St Mary’s Home, Coudray said, would serve as a model on which other children’s homes would be fashioned.

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TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
Newsday

By RACHAEL ESPINET Thursday, August 8 2013

GENDER, Youth and Child Development Minister Marlene Coudray yesterday warned anyone caught abusing children, be it physical, sexual or mental abuse, will feel the full brunt of the law.

Addressing the opening of the residential units at the St Mary’s Children’s Home in Tacarigua, Coudray said, “The Ministry is taking very seriously all reports of abuse. Anyone who takes charge of the care of children and abuses them, will feel the full weight of the justice system.”

Coudray said she has received many reports about child abuse and her Ministry is working assiduously to protect children. An initiative the Ministry is contemplating is installing cameras at public Children’s Homes, but she said that due to privacy and legal issues, feasibility studies must first be done. She encouraged the children to speak out against abuse.

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TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
Trinidad Express

By Verdel Bishop
Story Created: Aug 7, 2013

Gender, Youth and Child Development Minister Marlene Coudray has signalled a warning to perpetrators of abuse of children in various homes and institutions.

Coudray, who was speaking yesterday at the official opening of four new buildings at the St Mary’s Children’s’ Home (SMCH) in Tacarigua, said there are numerous reports to her Ministry about abuse in children’s homes across the country.

“We are getting reports very regularly on abuse to children. I want to assure you that the Ministry is taking very seriously all these reports of abuse to children at homes and institutions. I want to make it quite clear that anyone who takes charge of the care of children and abuses their rights will feel the full weight of the justice system,” said Coudray.

“The abuse of children of any form will be met with aggressive action from this Ministry. Abuse of children must stop.”

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Daily Forward

By Seth Berkman
Published August 07, 2013.

Twelve more former students of Yeshiva University High School for Boys who claimed that they were molested by staff members have joined a $380 million lawsuit against the school.

The additioan cases were revealed in court papers revealed in a hearing on Tuesday, according to the New York Daily News.

The plaintiffs’ attorney Kevin Mulhearn said the number of alleged victims in the suit now stands at 31. Last month, the initial claim, filed in U.S. District Court in White Plains, N.Y., alleged a, “massive cover-up of the sexual abuse of [high school] students…facilitated, for several decades, by various prominent Y.U. and [high school] administrators, trustees, directors, and other faculty members.”
Click to see the rest of the section, Click for more stories about abuse at Y.U.

Some of the alleged assaults allegedly took place as far back as the 1970s. Even though sexual abuse cases in New York must be brought forward before a victim’s 23rd birthday, Mulhearn is arguing that the alleged cover up negates the statute of limitations.

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OAKLAND (CA)
Univision 14

Sacerdote que admitió abuso de 100 niños vivía en vecindario de Oakland

El Padre Rubén Martínez estuvo en una residencia de su orden por varios años, al parecer sin supervisión, y los vecinos no sabían nada

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CALIFORNIA
KGO

(KGO) — A new tactic is being used in hopes of locating a Catholic priest who admitted in 2005 to abusing at least 100 children.

KGO’s Lisa Campbell reports that The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) spent Tuesday protesting outside the priest’s last known home. The group hopes its effort will bring information or at least attention to the issue, again.

Group member Melanie Sakoda says over 100 children — most under 12 — were abused by Father Rubin Martinez. And his last known address is this house they’ve just found here in Oakland.

KGO has reached out to the Catholic Church for comment and so far received no response.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY MICHAEL O’KEEFFE / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2013

An attorney for St. Francis Prep says it is inappropriate for a former student who claims she was sexually harassed by a Spanish teacher to sue the school under a fictitious name, according to papers filed in Brooklyn federal court this week.

But “Jane Doe” says she has to pursue the civil suit she filed in June anonymously because the harassment and bullying from Brother Ben O’Reilly contributed to the mental illness that caused her to abuse alcohol and attempt suicide.

If U.S. District Judge Sterling Johnson rules she can’t remain anonymous, Doe said, future employers and school admissions officers would learn the most intimate details of her life simply by searching Google for her name.

“It is extremely important for me to remain anonymous because the case contains a lot of details about my medical history,” Doe said. “I was sexually abused as a child, I’ve battled with substance abuse, I’ve had suicide attempts. I’m in my early 20s. If I were to go public, this would follow me for the rest of my life.”

The suit filed in June on behalf of Doe and another former student, as well as an ex-St. Francis Prep teacher, claims the Queens school ignored sexual and physical abuse by longtime assistant football coach Robert Stenger. St. Francis Prep, the Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn — the order that operates the school — and longtime principal Brother Leonard Conway are listed as defendants in the suit.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A man has been charged with sexually assaulting two girls he met through their church in Sydney’s north.

Detectives from the Child Abuse Squad at Chatswood arrested the 23-year-old man at his Westleigh home yesterday morning.

Police say the man met his victims, aged 13 and 15, through their church and several of the offences took place between March and July this year.

The man has been charged with 40 offences, including 24 counts of committing an act of indecency against a person under the age of 16 and 12 charges related to sexual acts.

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CALIFORNIA
Justia Verdict

Marci A. Hamilton

At the end of July, Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archbishop Jose Gomez sent the following letter to the editor of California Catholic, Bob McPhail, asking him to publish Gomez’s letter encouraging parishioners to contact their state elected representatives urging them to vote against statute-of-limitations (SOL) reform for child-sex- abuse victims, by voting against Bill SB131. The primary target of the Catholic bishops, and bishops nationwide, is this statute-of-limitations window which would open a one-year period during which those victims of clergy child sex abuse whose statutes of limitations had expired (which is the vast majority) could still file lawsuits against their abusers and those who covered up the abuse.

Here is an excerpt of what Gomez said:

Friends, my brother bishops and I in the California Catholic Conference are asking all Catholics to contact their Assembly members and Senators and urge them to vote “No” on Senate Bill 131.

SB-131 fails to protect all victims of childhood sexual abuse, discriminates against Catholic schools and other private employers, and puts the Church’s social services and educational mission at risk.

This is the same playbook that was first conjured up by now-Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput when he was the Archbishop of Denver, Colorado. The main idea is that, once SOL reform is proposed in the legislature, the bishops then mobilize their parishioners against it, with messages that misrepresent the actual impact of such legislation, and then play a false anti-Catholic card to really get their parishioners out of the pews and onto their computers and phones. The trouble is that neither claim is true, nor is either truly in the spirit of Catholic teachings.

Who Is Listening to Catholic Bishops on the Issue of Child Sex Abuse, and What Religious Values Fuel Their Opposition to Victims’ Access to Justice?

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ILLINOIS
Bolivia.com

El exsacerdote católico bolivano Alejandro Flores fue deportado a Bolivia, después de cumplir una condena de prisión por pedofilia, informó la Oficina de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE) de Chicago.

Según lo informado, el 8 de septiembre de 2010 el entonces sacerdote de la diócesis de Joliet (Illinois) se declaró culpable de haber abusado de un menor durante cinco años, cuando era seminarista asignado a la parroquia Santa María de la ciudad de West Chicago.

Flores, que fue criado en un orfanato en Bolivia, alegó en su defensa que había sido abusado sexualmente durante años cuando era niño.

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ILLINOIS
Vive Lo Hoy

Por Leticia Espinosa, 8/7/2013

Alejandro Flores, un ex sacerdote católico de la Diócesis de Joliet, quien fuera condenado por abusar sexualmente de un niño durante cinco años, fue deportado a Bolivia el martes por el Buró de Inmigración y Aduanas de Estados Unidos (USICE).

Flores, de 40 años, fue repatriado a La Paz, Bolivia, el 6 de agosto por una línea aérea comercial, escoltado por agentes, informaron las autoridades de inmigración en un comunicado.

El 8 de septiembre de 2010, Flores se declaró culpable de asalto sexual criminal de un menor, en una corte del Condado de Kane, y fue condenado a cuatro años de prisión.

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ILLINOIS
Northwest Herald

By The ASSOCIATED PRESS
Created: Thursday, August 8, 2013

CHICAGO – A former Chicago-area Roman Catholic priest who was sentenced to prison for abusing a boy has been deported to Bolivia.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say 40-year-old Alejandro Flores was deported to La Paz, Bolivia, on Tuesday. He was sent on a commercial aircraft and accompanied by two federal officers. Federal officials say Flores is barred for life from entering the U.S.

Flores pleaded guilty in 2010 to felony criminal sexual abuse and sentenced to four years in prison. He abused the boy while working at St. Mary’s Church in West Chicago.

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IOWA
WHO

[with video]

August 7, 2013, by Kelly Maricle and Jannay Towne

Des Moines police arrested a former youth pastor and charged him with sexual abuse.

“This has been going on for a brief period of time, but I can’t go into details as exactly how long,” says Des Moines Police Sgt. Daniel Blom.

Police were contacted Monday by a teenage girl and her parents. The girl reported an alleged sexual assault perpetrated by 27-year-old Ryan McKelvey.

“Looking into it, doing their investigation, they discovered there might be a second victim. They made contact with the second victim and confirmed that there was an inappropriate sexual contact,” says Blom.

McKelvey is a former youth pastor at Heritage Assembly Church. The church issued a statement saying it is working with police. It goes on to say, “Our prayers and concern go out to the families involved.”

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IOWA
Radio Iowa

August 7, 2013 By Dar Danielson

A former youth pastor at a Des Moines church is facing sexual abuse charges.

Des Moines police say they were contacted by a female juvenile and her parents who said she had been sexually assaulted by Ryan McKelvey, the former youth pastor at Heritage Assembly Church.

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IOWA
Des Moines Register

Aug 7, 2013 | by Regina Zilbermints

A former Des Moines youth pastor is charged with sexually abusing two teenage members of the congregation, police said today.

Ryan McKelvey, 27, a former youth pastor at Heritage Assembly Church, 5051 NE Fifth St., was charged with two counts of sexual exploitation by clergy and two counts of third-degree sexual abuse.

A female victim and her parents reported the abuse to Des Moines police Monday, officials said. While investigating, detectives discovered a second victim, who also confirmed inappropriate sexual incidents had occurred.

Authorities declined to say where the incidents occurred but said none occurred at the church.

McKelvey was arrested at his home on Tuesday. He remains in the Polk County Jail on a $100,000 cash-only bond.

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IOWA
KCCI

[with video]

DES MOINES, Iowa —A youth pastor was charged with sexual abuse Tuesday.

Ryan McKelvey, 27, of Des Moines, is charged with two counts of third-degree sexual abuse and two counts of sexual exploitation by a counselor or therapist. McKelvey was booked into the Polk County Jail on Tuesday night.

Des Moines police said they were contacted on Monday by a girl and her parents regarding a sexual assault. The girl reported the suspect in the incident was McKelvey.

Police said that during the investigation it was discovered there could be a second victim. Investigators made contact with the second female, also a juvenile, and confirmed inappropriate sexual incidents had occurred with her as well.

McKelvey was a youth pastor at Heritage Assembly of God church at 5051 Northeast 5th St. in Des Moines.

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NEW YORK
WHAM

[with video]

Rochester, N.Y.– A teenager who was sexually abused by a priest will now spend ten years in federal prison for sexually exploiting other children. Paul Hearty is now 37-years-old. He pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography and will get an enhanced sentence in spite of letters written on his behalf from members of the Catholic Church.

“It’s really a tragic day that we’ve come to this point,” said Federal Judge Frank Geraci. He acknowledged the letters written by a Syracuse bishop and a Catholic priest from Rochester expressing the partial responsibility of the church for what happened but said the sentence is mandatory because it is Hearty’s second offence.

Federal prosecutor Tina Lee said because Hearty himself was a child victim “he of all people would understand the pain sexually abused minors experience.” Hearty agreed. He told the court, “I am struggling against a wall of past trauma and fear.” He said he accepts full responsibility and apologized.

“I ask forgiveness from those exploited by these events,” he said. More than a decade ago, Paul Hearty came forward to say he was sexually abused as a teenager by a Rochester priest. Father William Lum later pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct and Hearty received a settlement from the Catholic church.

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ROME
DFW Catholic

Rome, Italy, Aug 7, 2013 / 09:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican’s judicial authorities have requested that their Italian counterparts interrogate Monsignor Nunzio Scarano about withdraws he made from his Vatican bank account, putting a brand new agreement between the two countries to its first test.

The request to have the Italian authorities question the monsignor was made last week by Giampiero Milano, the Promoter of Justice for the Vatican Court, just days after the two countries signed an pact to exchange information related to the prevention of money laundering.

Msgr. Scarano is currently being held in an Italian jail for allegedly planning to smuggle 20 million euros ($26 million) from Switzerland to Italy aboard an Italian government airplane.

He is also being investigated by the public prosecutor in his home town of Salerno, Italy for supposedly laundering 560,000 euros ($744,000) that he took from his account at the Institute for Religious Works – the so-called Vatican bank – to pay off the mortgage of a house in Salerno.

This second case led the Vatican authorities to freeze Msgr. Scarano’s funds on July 9 and suspend him from his job in early June. The case against Msgr. Scarano, a suspended accountant for the Administration for the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, first became public June 28 when he was arrested by the Italian authorities for the smuggling attempt.

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ILLINOIS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, Aug. 7

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 )

Fr. Alejandro Flores, a convicted Joliet predator priest, has been deported to Bolivia. Those who enabled him to hurt kids, however, are escaping scot-free.

(We believe he has not been defrocked. So he should be referred to as “Fr. Flores.” He is NOT, we believe, “a former Catholic priest.” We believe he’s still being paid.)

Top Catholic officials in Joliet, we are convinced, ignored warning signs about Fr. Flores. In fact, prosecutors disclosed that, according to one newspaper, “Catholic officials had some warning signs about Flores.” The Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office said that “Flores was caught with gay porn on his computer by Catholic officials in the spring of 2009. Though the website posted a disclaimer saying the people involved in the sex acts were not minors, [prosecutors] said some of the images appeared to be those of young boys.”

Yet these church officials let Fr. Flores be around kids, and even now they are cleverly managing to avoid being exposed as corrupt and complicit.

We worry about the safety of Bolivian kids. We urge Bolivia’s bishops to warn their flock about Fr. Flores. And we urge Joliet’s Bishop Daniel Conlon to write to his Bolivian colleagues urging them to take this simple public safety step.

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ISRAEL
Artuz Sheva

By Maayana Miskin
First Publish: 8/7/2013

MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud Beytenu) related Wednesday to the verdict finding Rabbi Mordechai (Moti) Elon guilty of performing an indecent act with a minor and of exploiting his position of authority.

Feiglin began by noting that he does not automatically support whatever a court says. In the case of former President Moshe Katzav, he said, while he supported the decision to send Katzav to jail, “the description of his actions as ‘rape’ seemed to me more like giving in to a feminist media attack than a serious verdict.”

However, he said, in Rabbi Elon’s case, “It seems like this is a serious verdict, free of outside considerations. It would be right to give him a very harsh punishment.”

Rabbi Tzfania Drori, the rabbi of the city of Kiryat Shemona and the local Hesder yeshiva, spoke to Arutz Sheva about the verdict in Rabbi Elon’s case.

The ultimate lesson, he said, is “to understand that there are problems here, and to be careful.”

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ISRAEL
YNet News

[with video]

Sex offender Rabbi Elon holds first Torah lesson since conviction, but confronted by man who claims was sexually assaulted in past by another esteemed rabbi, beseeches Elon to ‘admit he sinned,’ says If he wasn’t such a great man I wouldn’t have bothered’

Maor Buchnik
Published: 08.07.13

Rabbi Moti Elon conducted his weekly Torah lesson in the Midgal Yeshiva Wednesday evening, just hours after being convicted for performing indecent sexual acts on a minor.

During the lesson, Rabbi Elon was confronted by Nahum Pechnik, a man attending the lesson, who stood up and yelled: “I want to tell you that you are a great man, but you need to find the courage to say ‘I have sinned’. You are a great man, admit that you’ve sinned.”

Pechnik, 40, a resident of Jerusalem, is a married father of four. According to him, in 1993 he himself was a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of another famous rabbi which he refused to name.

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ISRAEL
Jerusalem Post

By GIL HOFFMAN0
8/07/2013

Analysis: Motti Elon incident, others possibly resulted in the religious Zionist community becoming so skeptical of its rabbis that it cannot crown a leader out of fear of disappointment.

There are rabbis who are respected in their own sector but not in others. There are some who can cross sectors but not appeal to the masses.

And then there was Rabbi Motti Elon.

The charismatic rabbi had shows on TV and radio. His classes in Jerusalem and at Bar-Ilan University attracted huge and impressively diverse crowds. A son of a Supreme Court justice, he appealed to the secular, was respected by haredim, and was adored by religious Zionists of all ages.

That all changed seven years ago when Elon mysteriously gave up his public posts and moved to Migdal, a small northern community, and then three years later when the rabbinical star’s image came crashing down amid the charges against him that were the reason for his exile.

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ILLINOIS
Chicago Tribune

By Clifford Ward
Special to the Tribune
2:22 p.m. CDT, August 7, 2013

A Roman Catholic priest who was convicted of sexually assaulting an 8-year-old west suburban boy has been deported to his native Bolivia, federal immigration authorities said Wednesday.

Alejandro Flores, accompanied by two immigration agents, was repatriated Tuesday via a commercial flight to La Paz, according to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

“Flores held a position of trust in the Catholic Church and has proven to be an extreme danger to our children,” said Ricardo Wong, field office director for ICE’s Chicago Enforcement and Removal Operations.

Flores, 40, had been detained by federal officials following his release in June from prison in Illinois, where he had been sentenced to a 4-year term for sexually assaulting the boy in St. Charles.

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UNITED STATES
Vatican Insider

According to the court’s verdict the Vatican cannot be accused for sexual abuse acts committed by priests

VATICAN INSIDER STAFF
ROME

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that the Holy See cannot be accused of being directly responsible for acts of sexual abuse committed by any member of the clergy in the world, Vatican Radio reports.

The lawsuit against the Holy See for alleged involvement in a sex abuse case was filed in 2002 and was dismissed by the appeals court today. The case involved an Irish priest who was sued for child abuse in 1965, was reported to the Holy See by his religious order and was consequently reduced to the lay state within the space of a few weeks.

The court ruled that the lawsuit “never should have been filed in the first place” and dismissed the premise that the Holy See is directly informed about the activities of all Catholic priests and that it has control over all priests across the world and should therefore be held directly responsible for sexual crimes committed by any member of the clergy. The case was dismissed precisely because the court recognised that this was a false premise.

As the Holy See’s lawyer Jeffrey S. Lena explained in a statement, priests are under the control of their local superiors and that the Vatican was not the priests’ “employer” as would be the case in a company context. He also said the Holy See did not receive or hold information on all priests across the world.

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ILLINOIS
Patch

By Ron Kremer

A 40-year-old priest who served briefly at Holy Family Church in Shorewood and later attempted to commit suicide after being charged with sexually molesting a 7-year-old boy was deported to Boliva on Tuesday, according to a Sun-Times News Group report.

Alejandro Flores, 40, was repatriated to La Paz, Bolivia—his homeland—via commercial aircraft, according to the report. Flores pleaded guilty in September 2010 to one count of criminal sexual assault in a case involving a then-7-year-old boy that occurred while he was a seminarian at St. Mary’s Church in West Chicago, according to the report.

Flores had repeated sexual contact with the boy over a five-year period, according to the report. He attempted to commit suicide after being confronted by investigators. After Flores eventually entered a guilty plea, he was sent to jail, released on June 7 and turned over to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit, according to the Sun-Times News Group report.

Flores was deported as a criminal alien convicted of an aggravated felony and is barred from entering the United States for life, according to the report.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service | Aug. 7, 2013

VATICAN CITY At the request of a man allegedly abused by a priest in 1965, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed his case claiming the Vatican was the priest’s employer and could be liable for damages.

Jeffrey Lena, the counsel for the Holy See, said in a statement that the lawsuit “never should have been filed in the first place.”

He told Vatican Radio in an email interview, “This case was based on a couple of simple and erroneous ideas about the Catholic Church. First, that all priests are controlled by the Holy See and second that the Holy See receives information about the activities of all priests and makes specific decisions, either directly or ‘by and through’ dioceses and religious orders.”

The plaintiff, a former Oregon resident known as John V. Doe, and his attorneys were trying to prove that the Vatican exercised direct control over priests, Lena said, but “this is not how the Catholic Church works.”

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ILLINOIS
WBEZ

August 7, 2013
The Associated Press

A former Chicago-area Roman Catholic priest who was sentenced to prison for abusing a boy has been deported to Bolivia.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say 40-year-old Alejandro Flores was deported to La Paz, Bolivia, on Tuesday. He was sent on a commercial aircraft and accompanied by two federal officers. Federal officials say Flores is barred for life from entering the U.S.

Flores pleaded guilty in 2010 to felony criminal sexual abuse and sentenced to four years in prison. He abused the boy while working at St. Mary’s Church in West Chicago.

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ILLINOIS
CBS Chicago

(STMW) – A former west suburban Catholic priest who attempted to commit suicide after being charged with sexually molesting a young boy for five years was deported to Bolivia on Tuesday.

Alejandro Flores, 40, a Bolivian native, was repatriated to La Paz, Bolivia, on Tuesday via commercial aircraft, according to a statement by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In 2004, Flores, a priest in the Diocese of Joliet, befriended a then-7-year-old boy while a seminarian at St. Mary’s Church in West Chicago, and had repeated sexual contact with him over a five-year period. In June 2009, Flores was ordained and sent to Holy Family Church in Shorewood to serve as parochial vicar.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Tony’s Kansas City

Critics of Bishop Finn’s tactics when dealing with patterns of abuse are connecting the dots regarding a recent case in St. Louis case that’s reminiscent of so much Kansas City sex abuse drama.

To wit . . .

CHECK THIS EXCLUSIVE MESSAGE REGARDING A KANSAS CITY CONNECTION TO CURRENT STL CATHOLIC DRAMA!!!

Check it:

ROUND-UP OF MORE RECENT MISSOURI CATHOLIC SCANDAL CONNECTED BACK TO BISHOP FINN!!!

St. Louis’s top Catholic official is accused of “almost exactly what Kansas City Bishop Finn did, when he saw to it that evidence was destroyed in a similar case a while back,” says Catholic blogger Kevin O’Brien.

And the St. Louis Post Dispatch apparently agrees, in this unusual editorial questioning Archbishop Robert Carlson:

The case involves a recently ordained priest who reportedly abused a girl and gave her parents a check for $20,000 after they confronted him and he admitted his guilt. Carlson, a civil suit alleges, tried to get the check, but the parents had already given it to police as evidence.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: August 7, 2013

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

Religious figures attack a man who reported “serial physical and sexual abuse of children covered up” by church officials” claiming that his account is slander and “unbiblical”.

Brent Detwiler filed a lawsuit in January against the Sovereign Grace Ministries, a national network of churches, saying that the defendants, despite knowing the facts on multiple child abuse cases, “cared more about protecting its financial and institutional standing than about protecting children, its most vulnerable members” and therefore “failed to stop repeated and ongoing sexual predation occurring at SGM churches and organization”.

We applaud Detwiler for doing the right thing and not backing down. These serious accusations should be met with genuine concern, not adamant denial. Church officials should be welcoming those who report suspected abuse, not intimidating them.

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NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: August 7, 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 )

More victims have signed up in a civil child sex abuse and cover up lawsuit against a prestigious Manhattan high school.

The suit charges that crimes by principal Rabbi George Finkelstein and teacher Rabbi Macy Gordon have been concealed by Yeshiva University High School for decades.

We applaud the courage of all those who have come forward against the school. We hope that their testimony will help with both the healing of the victims and the preventing of future child sex crimes.

A lawyer for Yeshiva University High School stresses how long ago the alleged crimes happened. So what? Wrongdoers deserve to be exposed and punished, no matter how old their wrongdoing may have been. Otherwise, wrongdoing is rewarded.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on a ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that dismissed a federal lawsuit against the Holy See:

On April 3, 2002, Jeffrey Anderson filed suit against the Holy See claiming that it was responsible for the conduct of a priest who had allegedly molested a young man in Oregon in 1965. Anderson contended that the priest worked for the Vatican and that officials there knew about his sexual exploits. On April 4, 2002, I issued a news release stating the following: “Anderson’s crusade is malicious. He knows he will lose in court.”

I was right. On Monday, Anderson told the Ninth Circuit that he was withdrawing his appeal of a federal district court ruling that said the Holy See did not employ the priest and was not liable for damages.

Anderson knew from day one that he would lose. While his knowledge of the way the Catholic Church works is deficient, he had to know—unless he is truly a conspiratorial maniac—that his stunt would go nowhere. Moreover, his actions were exploitative: 2002 was the year the sex scandal hit the newspapers, so he thought he could cash in on it.

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CHILE
Cooperativa

Sumergido en la depresión el sacerdote Fernando Karadima, quien ayer cumplió 83 años, “reafirma su inocencia”.

Así contó el médico Santiago Soto, quien ayer por la mañana visitó al cura en el convento de las Siervas de Jesús de la Caridad, en Providencia, donde permanece recluido desde enero de 2011, cuando fue notificado de la condena del Vaticano por abusos sexuales.

“Lo vengo a ver cada dos semanas, a veces una vez al mes (…). Está con una gran depresión, tristeza, angustia. Mal”, contó al diario La Tercera Soto, quien conoce a Karadima hace tres décadas.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Bristol Post

By Tom Morris

A 76-YEAR-OLD Bristol bishop faces being sent to jail after admitting stealing £180,000 from his church.

Former magistrate Gerald Edmund, right, of Lansdown Road, Kingswood, pleaded guilty to swindling the huge sum from Bethel United Church of Jesus Christ Apostolic.

Edmund, who was bishop at Bethel Apostolic Church in St George between 1962 and 2002, pleaded guilty to two counts of theft and one of fraud by false representation between July 2010 and February 2011.

The married father made the pleas when he appeared before magistrates in Birmingham last month.

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UNITED KINGDOM
This is Cornwall

A RETIRED priest found dead in the sea off Padstow was anxious and depressed in the months leading up to his death, and was concerned that the Jimmy Savile police inquiry was spreading to Cornwall.

The Reverend Barry Kinsmen left a suicide note at his home in the town. Two friends found it after becoming concerned when he failed to turn up for a lunch together. …

Giving evidence to the Cornwall Coroner, Dr Emma Carlyon, the Reverend Canon Christopher Malkinson, one of the two friends who found the suicide note, said Mr Kinsmen had been depressed and anxious in the months leading up to his death, and no longer wanted to preach or deliver eulogies in church.

“Barry was very concerned about the amount of coverage the Jimmy Savile enquiry was getting, especially the fact the enquiry was spreading to Cornwall,” Mr Malkinson said in a statement.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Jason Berry | Jul. 31, 2013

The Benedictine priest who long headed one of the organizations that brought the ire of the Vatican down on U.S. women religious last year is stepping down at the end of this year.

Benedictine Fr. Dan Ward will leave as executive director of the Resource Center for Religious Institutes effective Dec. 31, according to a notice on the center’s website dated May 28 and signed by St. Agnes Sr. Hertha Longo, chair of the center’s board of directors.

“Fr. Dan believes that now is the time to pass on the leadership … to slow down and take a sabbatical,” the announcement says.

For 14 years, Ward has quietly dispensed advice to religious orders on their canonical and financial rights through the resource center and its precursor organizations. Armed with civil and canon law degrees, he earned a reputation as a complex character and a behind-the-scenes player.

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UNITED STATES
Plant & Build

August 5, 2013

The Sovereign Grace Council of Elders held their inaugural meeting May 23-25, 2013, in Orlando, Florida. In addition to approving a motion to form a Strategy Committee for International Missions and confirming Mark Prater as the first Executive Director, the Council of Elders also approved, by a supermajority, the following statement to be sent to every Sovereign Grace church and posted on the Sovereign Grace Ministries website.

As the Sovereign Grace Council of Elders, representing the elderships that govern local churches, we believe that Brent Detwiler has repeatedly and grievously slandered our churches and our leaders.[1] We denounce as sinful and unbiblical his determined effort to accuse our brethren.[2] Consequently, we urge our brothers and sisters in Christ to avoid giving audience to Brent Detwiler’s unbiblical speech until such a time that he repents of this ungodly pattern. Such harmful speech is ruinous to the church of God.

Furthermore, in contradiction to Brent Detwiler’s ongoing statements, we vigorously reiterate our support of C.J. Mahaney as a qualified minister of the gospel.[3] While we wholeheartedly support our reformation in polity, we also publicly declare our gratefulness for C.J.’s many years of service and commend his ongoing ministry of the gospel.[4]

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UNTIED STATES
Associated Baptist Press

By Bob Allen

Sovereign Grace Ministries in Louisville, Ky., has released a statement adopted in May by the organization’s leaders commending founder C.J. Mahaney and denouncing a former associate turned vocal critic of the well-known evangelical leader.

A website posting dated Aug. 5 carries a statement by the Sovereign Grace Council of Elders, the highest governing body within the 80 church union, which met for the first time May 23-25 in Orlando, Fla.

The statement alleges that whistleblower Brent Detwiler, a former Sovereign Grace pastor, “has repeatedly and grievously slandered our churches and our leaders.”

“We denounce as sinful and unbiblical his determined effort to accuse our brethren,” the council says of Detwiler, who blogs at BrentDetwiler.com. “Consequently, we urge our brothers and sisters in Christ to avoid giving audience to Brent Detwiler’s unbiblical speech until such a time that he repents of this ungodly pattern. Such harmful speech is ruinous to the church of God.”

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