ABUSE TRACKER

The Diocese of Rochester took another significant step in its bankruptcy case March 24 by filing — in conjunction with the creditors’ committee representing sexual-abuse claimants — a joint plan of reorganization and disclosure statement in support of the plan.

The reorganization plan follows the framework set in the Restructuring Support Agreement jointly filed Nov. 3, 2022, by the diocese and the Committee of Unsecured Creditors.

But whereas the RSA’s 28 pages sketched the key elements of reorganization, the 193-page plan and disclosure spell out, in great detail, myriad steps and obligations involved in the process. A full 17 pages, for example, are dedicated to the definition and interpretation of terms, ranging from “abuse” to “unimpaired” claims.

Like the RSA, the plan calls for the diocese, its parishes and related Catholic entities — which the plan terms “Participating Parties” — collectively to contribute $55 million to a trust…

View Cache

Advocates and legal groups say a landmark “breakthrough” over the Catholic Church’s culpability for the crimes of paedophile priests will lead to better outcomes for victim-survivors.

Key points:

• Victoria’s highest court has upheld a ruling finding the Catholic Church liable for sexual abuse by a paedophile priest
• The ruling brings Australia in line with international law 
• A lawyer says the tide has turned for abuse survivors in Australia

Yesterday Victoria’s highest court upheld a ruling that the Catholic Church is vicariously liable for child sexual abuse by a priest, making it easier for survivors to receive compensation.

Ballarat abuse survivor Paul Auchettl knows too well that for the longest time, clergy abuse was encased in silence. 

He was abused by the notorious paedophile and Christian Brother Robert Best, who was Mr Auchettl’s Year Six teacher at St Alipius primary school. 

His younger brother Peter was also abused and died by suicide more than…

View Cache

Since January 2019, Fr. Jim Connell of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee has been urging state legislators around the country to repeal clergy-penitent privilege in mandatory reporting laws that exempt Catholic priests from notifying authorities of any sexual abuse they hear about in the confessional.

Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki has suspended Connell’s faculties to hear confessions and grant absolution, citing his advocacy “for the removal of the legal protection of the confessional seal, suggesting there are situations where it is permissible to violate it.” Listecki said in a March 22 statement that Connell’s “false assertions” that the seal of confession should not apply in some situations had caused “understandable and widespread unrest” among Catholics.

“Protecting the child is more important than worrying about whether the government is going to tell us how to practice our religion,” Connell, a retired priest and canon lawyer who served as the Milwaukee Archdiocese’s vice chancellor  View Cache

A decision by Victoria’s highest court to uphold a landmark ruling that holds the Catholic church vicariously liable for the abuse of its priests has been hailed as a win for victim-survivors. 

Key points:

• Victoria’s highest court has ruled the Catholic church is vicariously liable for sexual abuse by a priest
• An attempt by the church to appeal the ruling was quashed
• It has been hailed a significant victory for all survivors

An attempt by the church to appeal the ruling was quashed by the Victorian Court of Appeal on Monday. 

The original decision involved the case of a then-five-year-old boy, known as DP, who was abused by Catholic priest Bryan Coffey at his parents’ home in Port Fairy in 1971.

The church had argued Coffey was not a formal employee and therefore it could not be held liable. 

But DP’s lawyers convinced Victoria’s Supreme Court in 2021 that the priest was the servant of the diocese even…

View Cache

Depending on who you ask, Pope Francis’ 2019 decree “Vos Estis Lux Mundi” (“You are the Light of the World”), coupled with updates to the policy announced March 25, is either a watershed in the Church’s fight against sexual abuse or a major disappointment — or, perhaps, both at the same time.

Originally issued in the wake of a summit of the heads of bishops’ conferences from around the world to discuss the abuse scandals, “Vos Estis” was designed to promote a culture of accountability, not just for the crime of sexual abuse but also for the cover-up. For the first time, it created a mechanism for investigating and sanctioning bishops and other superiors charged with failing to respond appropriately to claims of abuse against personnel under their authority.

The recent revisions announced by the Vatican include making lay leaders of Vatican-recognized groups subject…

View Cache

A landmark study has found nearly two thirds of Australians aged over 16 have reported experiencing childhood maltreatment – abuse, neglect, or exposure to domestic violence.

The five-year study, Australia’s first national prevalence study of all forms of child abuse and neglect was conducted by a team of researchers, including key spokesperson, Professor Daryl Higgins, the director of the Australian Catholic University’s Institute of Child Protection Studies.

Of the 8503 respondents aged 16 or older, 62 per cent indicated experiences of maltreatment in childhood.

Importantly for researchers the study shows that most of those who reported experiencing maltreatment experienced multiple types, and witnessing domestic violence was the most common.

Researchers found the following prevalence rates of individual types of child maltreatment: neglect – 8.9 per cent; sexual abuse – 28.5 per cent; emotional abuse – 30.9 per cent; physical abuse – 32.0 per cent; and exposure to domestic violence – 39.6 per cent. 

“We need to focus…

View Cache

For survivors of sex abuse, the Albany Roman Catholic Diocese’s bankruptcy filing is just one more betrayal.

On March 15, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany filed for protection under Chapter 11 bankruptcy. That day I watched in despair as Bishop Edward Scharfenberger justified his decision as “the best way to protect everyone” while acknowledging “it may cause pain and suffering.”

The public has the right to know exactly what that pain and suffering looks like. Not from the loudest attorney or a diocese spokesperson, but from a victim of clergy sexual abuse.

I was one of over 400 plaintiffs under the New York Child Victims Act seeking civil relief from the Albany diocese. As imperfect as it was, the process was providing tangible justice through early releases of documents and depositions. Most notable to me, the 2021 testimony of Bishop Howard Hubbard admitting to sheltering criminal priests: moving them from parish…

View Cache

A TV documentary and book allege Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was aware of clerical sexual abuse cases before he became pope in 1978

Huge crowds waving Polish and papal flags marched through Warsaw, Kraków and other cities on Sunday to defend the memory of St John Paul II, 18 years after his death, amid reports he was aware of clerical sexual abuse cases before he became pope in 1978.

Early on Sunday morning in the central city of Lodz, a statue of the Polish pope was smeared with yellow paint on its face and red paint on its hands.

Sprayed on the plinth: “Maxima Culpa”, the title of a controversial book by journalist Ekke Overbeek.

Similar to a separate television documentary, the book argues that Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, as archbishop of Krákow until he became pope in 1978, was aware of at least four cases of abusing priests and reinstated them…

View Cache

Hans Zollner, the German Jesuit who has been a leader in the Vatican’s fight against clergy sex abuse, resigns from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors

Father Hans Zollner, one of the most respected experts and pioneers in the Vatican’s developing fight against the clergy sex-abuse crisis, has resigned from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (“Tutela Minorum”) citing disagreements over the way the body is being operated.

“I have noticed issues that need to be urgently addressed and that have made it impossible for me to continue further,” he said Wednesday in a surprisingly candid message published on social media.

The 56-year-old German Jesuit theologian and psychologist had been a member of Tutela Minorum since its establishment in 2014.

The announcement of his resignation was actually made earlier on Wednesday by the commission’s chairman, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston. But the cardinal, who is also…

View Cache

Father Conrado Mantac is accused of molesting a 17-year-old choir girl last year

Philippine police have arrested a 62-year-old Catholic priest accused of raping a 17-year-old choir girl a year ago when he was her parish priest.

Father Conrado Mantac was arrested at his residence in Negros Occidental province in the Western Visayas region on March 29, police said.

The arrest came after the girl’s parents complained to police that Mantac molested their daughter last year when he served as parish priest in Sagay City.

A police official said the charge against Mantac is a non-bailable offense, so he must remain behind bars pending trial.

“He did not resist the arrest. Perhaps, he knew it was forthcoming because he was given a chance to dispute the rape allegations at the prosecutor level,” Sergeant Paul Gaspar, a member of the police team that arrested the priest, told UCA News.

Gaspar said the…

View Cache

A Dutch journalist says he is the victim of a character assassination because of his book about the late pope

In a Warsaw elevator, Dutch journalist Ekke Overbeek and his publicist are exchanging worried words. It’s four hours until his first public event to promote his new book, Maxima Culpa: John Paul II Knew, claiming that Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, as archbishop of Kraków, protected four paedophile priests before becoming pope in 1978.

The book has rattled Poland’s Catholic church. Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the late pope’s closest aide, accused the book of “aiming to trample on the memory of all that Poland owes to the Holy Pontiff and to destroy his legacy”.

Even more vocal are Poland’s politicians, in particular the ruling national conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party. With an eye on autumn parliamentary election, and the prospect of pulpit endorsements, PiS has organised a Warsaw march on Sunday –…

View Cache

Thousands of Poles marched through Warsaw and other cities on Sunday to show their support for the late Pope John Paul II in the face of what they said were false allegations that he concealed child abuse in the Catholic Church.

The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, which faces a tough election later this year, and other religious conservatives have said any calls to re-examine his legacy amount to a plot to discredit the nation’s biggest moral authority.

That argument resonates strongly with many older Poles who were inspired by John Paul to stand up to Communism in the 1970s and ’80s, although church attendance has been falling in the decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

“I felt the need to show my connection with (the pope’s) teaching,” said Donata Pronczuk, a retired teacher, who came to Warsaw from the northern city of Koszalin for the march,…

View Cache

The Catholic Church in Bangladesh is forming a team to combat the growing number of assaults and other forms of violence against women in their homes, workplaces, and other locations. 

Discussing Abuse Against Women 

According to the UCA News, the convenor of the Women Desk of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Bangladesh and a social activist, Rita Roselin Costa, stated that the Catholic bishops of Bangladesh have verbally agreed to form the team that will be led by the Women Desk of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Bangladesh to tackle abuses against women.

Costa said on Wednesday, Mar. 29, that plans are being discussed to establish a team that will take measures as soon as possible, including legal action if any women are subjected to abuse. Their team is anticipated to begin this year but did not provide a specific launch date. She added that the church staff would take immediate…

View Cache

Officials at the Catholic shrine in Lourdes have formed a study group to determine the future of a controversial attraction at the sanctuary.

The mosaics on the facade of one of the three basilicas were designed by Jesuit artist Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik in 2008 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Marian apparitions that turned Lourdes into a primary pilgrimage site, visited by approximately 3 million people annually.

Mosaics Made By Jesuit Indicted with Abuse to Be Reviewed

In December last year, it was revealed by the Jesuits that Rupnik had been excommunicated by the Vatican in 2020 for committing a severe crime in church law. According to Associated Press News, he had used the confessional to acquit a woman with whom he had engaged in sexual activity. He had also been accused by nine women of sexual, spiritual, and psychological misconduct in the 1980s. As…

View Cache

A 60-year-old pastor from Ouddorp suspected of abusing his children has been temporarily suspended by the Restored Reformed Church. According to the national church board, he has been temporarily barred from all activities related to his ministry, De Stentor reported.

The pastor and his 58-year-old wife are suspected of abusing their children regularly over the past 29 years, according to prosecutors. The couple has eight children, with whom they lived in Arnemuiden, Elspeet, and Nieuwe-Tonge in the meantime. During that time, the children were allegedly exposed to violence in various ways. Among other things, they are said to have been beaten with a vacuum cleaner stick and a frying pan. Furthermore, one of the sons reported that his head was held underwater for long periods of time.

In 2021, six of the eight children, who are now between 20 and 34 years old, decided to report their parents after finding…

View Cache

As Del. C.T. Wilson (D-Charles) has done for several years, he stood on the House of Delegates floor Friday morning to implore his colleagues to support legislation on behalf of child sexual abuse survivors.

In past years, efforts to pass similar bills have found success in the House, but stalled in the Senate.

But this year, Sen. William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery), chair of the Judicial Proceedings Committee, ushered legislation through his chamber that passed March 16.

This year’s House vote on House Bill 1 brought an intense feeling of relief for survivors such as Wilson, who hugged House Judiciary Chair Luke Clippinger (D-Baltimore City), after a resounding 132-2 vote. The chamber erupted in a standing ovation.

Before Wilson cast his vote in support of the bill labeled The Child Victims Act of 2023, he had a message for survivors.

“I just want these people to understand that…

View Cache

Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley of Boston, president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, expressed his surprise, disappointment and disagreement with statements challenging the commission’s effectiveness made by a prominent safeguarding expert who resigned from the advisory body.

However, “the commission has a plenary meeting scheduled in the next few weeks during which we can address these and other matters more fully as a group,” the cardinal said in an updated statement March 30.

Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, a leading expert in the field and member of the commission since it was founded in 2014, stepped down in mid-March but gave the reasons for his departure in a public statement March 29, saying it was due to urgent “structural and practical issues that led me to disassociate myself” from the papal commission.

Father Zollner’s criticisms came just a few hours after his resignation was made public in a…

View Cache

When Sen. Cindy Holscher was 5 years old, she did what most young children would do on their family farm: play with animals, spend time with family and enjoy a few blissful months off from school.

But one day, things turned much darker.

A farmhand entered a barn while Holscher was playing with kittens and their conversation began innocently. Quickly, however, the man suggested playing a game “like Simon says” that involved showing private parts.

“Of course, my parents had warned me of stranger danger,” Holscher said. “This wasn’t a stranger. This was someone I knew.”

The man lured her in, Holscher said, saying he played the game with one of her friends. At the decisive moment, however, a screen door slammed, causing the man to flee and saving Holscher from joining the estimated 1 in 10 children who are sexually abused before their 18th birthday.

“If it has taken…

View Cache

Statement of Cardinal Sean O’Malley, OFM. Cap., President of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors on the publication of the updated motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi.

The Church’s ongoing work of preventing sexual abuse by ministers of the Church received a further boost today with the publication of the definitive version of Pope Francis’s motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi (You are the light of the world).

In May 2019, Pope Francis established new norms regarding the requirement to ensure adequate processing of reports of sexual abuse by priests or members of religious life. Today’s document makes permanent these important protections for those reporting abuse and holds Church leaders accountable for any failures to carry out their responsibilities in this regard.

For many people, the reality of child sexual abuse in the Church was further compounded by the cover up or negligence by bishops and religious superiors in properly…

View Cache

Officials at the Catholic shrine in Lourdes announced the creation of a study group Friday to decide what to do with one of the French sanctuary’s most famous but now controversial attractions: mosaics by a Jesuit artist who has been sanctioned by the Vatican and his religious order for sexually, spiritually and psychologically abusing women.

The Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik designed the facade of one of the three basilicas at Lourdes with a series of mosaics in 2008 to mark the 150th anniversary of the Marian apparitions that turned the shrine in southwest France into one of the world’s biggest pilgrimage sites, attracting around 3 million visitors a year.

In December, the Jesuits revealed that Rupnik had been declared excommunicated by the Vatican in 2020 for committing one of the worst crimes in church law — using the confessional to absolve a woman with whom he had engaged in sexual…

View Cache

Legal experts like Mitchell Garabedian, a Boston-based attorney who represents victims of clergy sexual abuse, say nondisclosure agreements, like the one at the center of the case against Donald Trump, are often used to silence victims of workplace misconduct on the taxpayer’s dime

The same type of hush money payments Donald Trump is accused of using to silence adult film star Stormy Daniels are currently being investigated in Massachusetts by State Auditor Dianna DiZoglio.

Daniels signed a nondisclosure agreement with Trump’s attorney in October 2016, agreeing to keep their alleged affair quiet in exchange for $130,000. She later broke that agreement by speaking publicly and alleged that Trump’s lawyer used “intimidation and coercive tactics” to get her to sign it.

Legal experts like Mitchell Garabedian, a Boston-based attorney who represents victims of clergy sexual abuse, say nondisclosure agreements are often used to silence victims of workplace misconduct on the taxpayer’s dime.

…

View Cache

I want the Maryland Attorney General’s report on clergy sexual abuse within the Archdiocese of Baltimore released to the public as was promised (”‘A public reckoning’: Baltimore judge orders release of redacted Catholic church abuse report,” Feb. 24). Rich Wolf, an investigator within the Maryland Attorney General’s Office who was involved in the four-year effort once told me last year that the report was being wrapped up and would be out by Thanksgiving, early December at the latest.

Here we are 4 and a half months later with no sign of when this report will be given over to the public and in what condition.

The institutions holding this release up are not deciding what is best for the survivors. They’re figuring out who’s named in the report that they need to protect from getting their feelings hurt, their names brought into this horrible mess, sued…

View Cache

Credible claims of child sexual abuse have been filed against 28 Catholic priests who have served in Georgia since the 1940s. However, no current or ongoing allegations can be pursued criminally because either the accused perpetrator has passed away or the applicable statute of limitations has been reached.

Child Sex Abuse Allegations in Georgia

There were 13 credible allegations inside the Archdiocese of Atlanta, seven of which involved archdiocesan priests and six concerning priests in religious orders or linked with other dioceses. The investigation cited 15 additional credible complaints in the Diocese of Savannah, of which seven involved diocesan priests, and eight included members of religious orders.

According to the Catholic News Agency, the Prosecution Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, which issued the study on Mar. 20, noted in a news release that the report contains thorough details of charges of sexual abuse and other sexual misbehavior, including grooming and misuse of…

View Cache

We salute the Maryland legislators who approved the passage of the Child Victims Act (CVA) into the Senate. The outdated legislation will undergo much-needed reform as a result of the CVA’s approval. We are very appreciative of Delegate C.T. Wilson for standing up for this truth and prioritizing the needs of the victims. Without the committed survivors and advocates who have worked so hard to create this opportunity for reform, none of this would be possible. We are hoping for a speedy Senate agreement to make this legislation a reality for the victims who have long carried the burden. A Senate companion bill has also been introduced by Sen. William C. Smith Jr.

We know that window legislation is an important step in recognizing the realities of childhood sexual abuse and that delayed disclosure is the norm, not the exception. Amending laws to be more in line with reporting trends…

View Cache

Cardinal Sean O’Malley said Thursday he strongly disagrees with a critique of the Vatican’s safeguarding commission by abuse expert and recently resigned member Father Hans Zollner.

In a new statement March 30, O’Malley, who heads the commission, said: “I am surprised, disappointed, and strongly disagree with [Zollner’s] publicly-issued assertions challenging the commission’s effectiveness.”

The 56-year-old Zollner, a founding member of the Vatican’s Commission for the Protection of Minors, said in a statement March 29 that “structural and practical issues” within the commission had led him “to disassociate” from it.

A statement from commission president O’Malley issued a few hours earlier had characterized the Jesuit priest’s departure as an effort to reduce his already significant administrative responsibilities, including “his recent appointment as consultant for safeguarding to the Diocese of Rome.”

The commission issued an updated statement on March 30 in which O’Malley said he was “supplementing” his earlier sentiments regarding Zollner’s…

View Cache

COMMENTARY: His public clash with Cardinal Seán O’Malley is an indication of how much the Holy Father’s reform agenda has faltered.

That the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, established in 2014 and one of the flagship reform efforts of Pope Francis, is in deep crisis was manifest this week in how its two most prominent figures clashed.

German Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, an original member of the commission and its most prominent one, resigned on Wednesday. Initially, Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston, president of the commission, released a statement saying that Father Zollner had new duties, and thus was resigning, and thanking him for superlative service.

Father Zollner had a different view. He put out his own statement, a blistering denunciation of the commission’s failures in “responsibility, compliance, accountability and transparency,” all of which “have made it impossible for me to continue further.”

Cardinal O’Malley “updated” his statement…

View Cache

The president of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference (CEE), Cardinal Juan José Omella, has handed over to the people’s ombudsman, Ángel Gabilondo, a total of six volumes of data on cases of sexual abuse of minors.

In Spain, the role of the ombudsman is to defend the fundamental rights and public liberties of citizens by watching over the activities of local and national governments as well as the administration of justice.

Speaking to Radio Nacional de España, Omella explained that all the data on cases collected by the Spanish dioceses has been turned in.

In total, the ombudsman has received “six volumes of reflection with all the data that we have up to now.” He stressed the Spanish prelates commitment to “put in place all means to eradicate” the abuse of minors.

The cardinal also said that these situations cause “great harm, not only to the Church but [also] to society.”

…

View Cache

On Friday the bishop who oversees a famed Marian shrine in Lourdes said he is considering removing mosaics installed by a prominent Jesuit artist accused of sexual misconduct due to the potential harm their presence could inflict on victims.

In a March 31 statement, Bishop Jean-Marc Micas of Tarbes and Lourdes said the mosaics were commissioned in 2008, for the 150th anniversary of the Marian apparitions in Lourdes, when the Virgin Mary is believed to have appeared to a young woman named Bernadette Soubirous in 1858.

According to tradition, the Virgin Mary offered a message of penance and asked Bernadette to dig a hole in the ground, forming a spring with waters said to have healing properties. The location of the apparitions is now home to a large shrine, drawing pilgrims and visitors from all over the world, specifically those with disabilities, who are often immersed in large baths whose…

View Cache

Mosaic art created by Father Marko Rupnik could be removed from the Basilica of the Sanctuary of Lourdes, France, out of consideration for victims of abuse who come to the sanctuary in search of consolation, the bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes said.

“Lourdes is a place where many victims turn to the Immaculate Conception for comfort and healing. Their anguish is great before the mosaics of Father Rupnik in this very place: We cannot ignore it,” Bishop Jean-Marc Micas said in a statement released Friday.

Rupnik, a Jesuit priest and artist, founded the Aletti Center, an art school in Rome dedicated to religious art. He has been accused of sexually and psychologically abusing consecrated women from the Loyola Community in Slovenia who were associated with the Aletti Center.

As the National Catholic Register reported earlier this year, Rupnik’s art decorates more than 200 churches and…

View Cache

The number of child sexual abuse cases filed in Turkey has increased by 33 percent in 2022 compared to 2021, according to official data.

Turkey has experienced a spike in cases of child sexual abuse in 2022, the Justice Ministry’s statistics revealed.

According to the 2022 Justice Statistics, the number of child sexual abuse cases filed in Turkey has increased by 33 percent in 2022 compared to 2021.

Children’s rights advocates have been calling for better sex abuse prevention for years. 

Experts say prevention involves increasing gender equality, educating children on their bodies and sexuality in age-appropriate ways, teaching about sexual abuse through awareness campaigns and training public officials. But under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), talking about sexual issues is still considered taboo.

The annual increase was 41 percent for the fraud cases and 30 percent for the theft cases, the daily Birgün reported on…

View Cache

A ministry for homebound victim-survivors of clergy abuse to receive the Eucharist in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is an example of the creativity needed to help abuse survivors find healing, said the executive director of the Secretariat for Child and Youth Protection for the U.S. bishops. 

“It’s the Holy Spirit at work,” said Deacon Bernie Nojadera, who has led the post at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for the past 12 years. He said this new program is “leading the way with its ministry,” noting that it has brought “blessing and grace” to the person receiving the Eucharist and the person bringing it. 

Deacon Nojadera also told The Tablet that this ministry, which he described as bringing “the church to survivor victims,” is the only one of its kind that he is aware of. 

He also described it as planting a seed, adding: “Who knows what…

View Cache

A former Tacoma Catholic nun and a priest were added to an official list of clergy and others accused of abuse, the Archdiocese of Seattle announced Friday.

Sister Jerry Lyness and Father Thomas Phelan were added to the official list of “Clergy and Religious Brothers and Sisters for Whom Allegations of Sexual Abuse of a Minor Have Been Admitted, Established or Determined to be Credible.”

Lyness was a teacher at St. Patrick Catholic School from 1976 to 1994 and she served as co-principal there from 1991 to 1994. Phelan served as pastor at St. Ann Parish from 1973 to 1983. Both are dead. St. Ann Parish was recently merged into the new Pope Saint John XXIII Parish.

In December 2022, the Archdiocese settled a case involving allegations of childhood sexual abuse by Phelan which occurred in approximately 1978 at St. Ann.

Also in December 2022, the Archdiocese…

View Cache

The Vatican’s prosecuting attorney has leveled additional charges against four of the defendants who have been on trial since July 2021 for their alleged roles in the Vatican’s failed investment in a property in London.

Alessandro Diddi, the prosecutor, announced the new charges March 30 at the end of the trial’s 54th session.

Raffaele Mincione, Gianluigi Torzi and Enrico Crasso were charged with bribery in addition to the original charges that included embezzlement, fraud and money laundering.

A money-laundering charge also was made against Fabrizio Tirabassi, a former official in the Vatican Secretariat of State, who had been accused of corruption, extortion, embezzlement, fraud and abuse of office.

Diddi said the new charges resulted from testimony given at the trial and from new information that arose as the investigations into the 10 defendants continued.

A key issue in the trial is the role the defendants played in convincing the Vatican…

View Cache

A popular historian of church architecture and promoter of liturgical aesthetics faces allegations of sexual misconduct against adult seminarians from his time on faculty at Mundelein Seminary in Illinois.

In a March 28 article, The Pillar, an online news outlet that covers the Catholic Church, disclosed that Mundelein’s rector, Father John Kartje, had issued a March 27 letter — a copy of which was obtained by The Pillar — advising the Mundelein community that “we have received reports alleging Dr. Denis McNamara, a former (seminary) faculty member, engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior toward adult seminarians during and after the time he was employed here.”

McNamara most recently had been director of Benedictine College’s Center for Beauty and Culture, which opened in 2019, as well as an instructor in the school’s architecture department, where he taught courses on the intersection of theology, art and architecture in Catholicism. However,…

View Cache

Editor’s Note: In support of the sixth strategic action of Vision 2025 adopted by messengers to the 2021 SBC Annual Meeting, Baptist Press will continue to report every instance of sexual abuse related to Southern Baptist churches or leaders of which we are made aware. The original story included a trial date but Baptist Press has learned a trial has not been set.

A Georgia Baptist pastor is awaiting a trial date in a North Carolina Superior Court over abuse charges filed in 2020 that prompted an investigation and his eventual arrest.

According to the SBC Workspace, Jeff McCammon has served as pastor of Mountain View Baptist Church in Stone Mountain, Ga., since May 2019. In December 2020, he was arrested after an investigation by local authorities in Cherokee County, North Carolina.

A grand jury subsequently indicted McCammon with a felony count of indecent liberties with a child. The Cherokee Superior…

View Cache

Editor’s Note: In support of the sixth strategic action of Vision 2025 adopted by messengers to the 2021 SBC Annual Meeting, Baptist Press will continue to report every instance of sexual abuse related to Southern Baptist churches, entities, institutions or leaders of which we are made aware.

Former Chalkville pastor Kenneth Daniel was released from one jail and taken to another Feb. 27, where he was charged with four counts of sexual abuse of a child less than 12 years old.

Daniel was the pastor of First Baptist Church of Chalkville in Jefferson County.

He was arrested in October in Blount County on charges of facilitating solicitation of unlawful sexual conduct with a child.

Daniel remains in the Shelby County jail on $240,000 bond as of March 2. A hearing is set in Shelby County on March 22.

This article originally appeared in The Alabama Baptist. If you are/have been a…

View Cache

Philippine police have arrested a 62-year-old Catholic priest accused of raping a 17-year-old choir girl a year ago when he was her parish priest.

Father Conrado Mantac was arrested at his residence in Negros Occidental province in the Western Visayas region on March 29, police said.

The arrest came after the girl’s parents complained to police that Mantac molested their daughter last year when he served as parish priest in Sagay City.

A police official said the charge against Mantac is a non-bailable offense, so he must remain behind bars pending trial.

“He did not resist the arrest. Perhaps, he knew it was forthcoming because he was given a chance to dispute the rape allegations at the prosecutor level,” Sergeant Paul Gaspar, a member of the police team that arrested the priest, told UCA News.

Gaspar said the prosecutor found “probable cause” that Mantac committed rape against the minor in 2022…

View Cache

A former student union president at a prominent Christian Bible school in Alberta, Canada, has been arrested and charged with sexual assault of multiple minors, after a two-year investigation. 

Derek Taplin, 43, allegedly abused four underage victims while he was student union president at Prairie Bible Institute, now Prairie College, in Three Hills, Alberta, from 2002 to 2004. Some of the alleged assaults reportedly occurred on campus.

On Wednesday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arrested Taplin in Winnipeg, Manitoba, after a Canada-wide warrant was issued. They escorted him to Alberta to face charges. He is charged with four counts each of four separate crimes: sexual exploitation of a young person, sexual Interference, sexual assault, and invitation to sexual touching.

The RCMP began an investigation of Taplin in June 2021 following an initial report of sexual assault, according to a release from the Canadian police service. The…

View Cache

Pedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale is set to plead guilty to more horrific sex crimes.

The latest charge involves a young boy at Horsham in the late 1980s.

The 89-year-old faced the Ballarat magistrates court via videolink yesterday.

He’s currently imprisoned in Ararat, serving a 36-year jail sentence for abusing close to 70 victims.

Ridsdale has been serving concurrent sentences since first being charged in 1993. On 15 August 2017, Ridsdale pleaded guilty to 23 charges, including two counts of rape and one of buggery, for abusing 12 children, 11 boys and 1 girl aged 6 to 13, between 1962 and 1988 in Ballarat and the surrounding area.

He’ll return to court in June.

View Cache

There should be zero tolerance when it comes to clergy abuse of congregants. However, we learned years ago of how child sexual abuse by priests has been tolerated within the Roman Catholic Church. Since then, it has become unequivocally clear that clergy sexual abuse is not merely a “Catholic problem,” but one that impacts Christians across the ecclesiastical spectrum. 

As is the case with Catholic leaders, some evangelical and fundamentalist leaders have enabled and covered up clergy sexual abuse. The same could be said of leaders within mainline Protestant denominations. Church leaders often discredit and dismiss survivors. Therefore, they are complicit in their suffering. 

In recent years, details of a scandal involving the Southern Baptist Convention have come to light, largely due to the work of Guidepost Solutions.

Despite last summer’s damning report by Guidepost, some prominent leaders within the SBC would rather focus on excommunicating churches that have women pastors than…

View Cache

Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, an internationally renowned expert in protecting children and vulnerable adults from clerical sex abuse, has resigned from his position on the Vatican’s safeguarding commission.

The move was announced by the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors on Wednesday.

The 56-year-old Father Zollner, a founding member of the commission, said in a statement March 29 that “structural and practical issues” within the commission had led him “to disassociate” from it.

“The protection of children and vulnerable persons must be at the heart of the Catholic Church’s mission,” he said. “That was the hope I and many others have shared since the commission was first established in 2014. However, in my work with the commission, I have noticed issues that need to be urgently addressed and which have made it impossible for me to continue further.”

In early March, Father Zollner was appointed  View Cache

COMMENTARY: His public clash with Cardinal Seán O’Malley is an indication of how much the Holy Father’s reform agenda has faltered.

That the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, established in 2014 and one of the flagship reform efforts of Pope Francis, is in deep crisis was manifest this week in how its two most prominent figures clashed.

German Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, an original member of the commission and its most prominent one, resigned on Wednesday. Initially, Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston, president of the commission, released a statement saying that Father Zollner had new duties, and thus was resigning, and thanking him for superlative service.

Father Zollner had a different view. He put out his own statement, a blistering denunciation of the commission’s failures in “responsibility, compliance, accountability and transparency,” all of which “have made it impossible for me to continue further.”

Cardinal O’Malley “updated” his statement…

View Cache

On any other day, the dominant Vatican headline yesterday would have belonged to German Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, whose unexpected resignation from the pope’s chief advisory body on combating sexual abuse left the broader state of Francis’s reform campaign an open question.

It wasn’t just the fact that Zollner resigned which raised eyebrows, but how.

Just moments after Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, had released a statement thanking Zollner for his service and benignly attributing his departure to a new assignment with the Diocese of Rome, Zollner put out his own communique blasting the group for alleged shortcomings in “responsibility, compliance, accountability and transparency.”

Those failures, the 56-year-old Zollner said, “have made it impossible for me to continue further” – indirectly creating the impression that O’Malley and his team were trying to sweep the reality of the situation under the rug.

…

View Cache

For 150 years, the United States government financed more than 400 boarding schools across the United States, educating tens of thousands of Native American children but subjecting them to abuse, neglect, cultural oppression, and sometimes even death.

But while the government has a list of every Navy ship the nation has floated, it has never compiled a list of the boarding schools it ran.

“There was no central place where all this information was held,” said Brenna Cussen, who for the last two years has been part of a committee of the Catholic Native Boarding School Accountability and Healing Project, known as the AHP, which is compiling such a list. Cussen is also the religious communities liaison for the Nuns and Nones Land Justice Project.

Almost two dozen people sit on the AHP’s archives committee, most of whom are archivists for religious congregations or…

View Cache

The Maryland House of Delegate seemed to collectively hold its breath on Friday, as a years-long, painful journey to help survivors of child sexual abuse culminated in a vote.

Green bulbs lit up on the vote board, row after row, showing delegates in support of the Child Victims Act, which is designed to enable more survivors of child sexual abuse to be able sue institutions that enabled their abusers.

“Has everyone recorded their vote?” House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones asked, and not a soul in the chamber stirred.

With 132 votes in favor and just two opposed, the bill passed and applause rang out in the marble chamber. Delegates rose and, in a show of respect, turned to Del. C.T. Wilson, a survivor of child abuse who has been on a painful and frustrating mission to help fellow survivors.

With that vote, Maryland state lawmakers ensured that they will eliminate…

View Cache

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley of Boston, president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, expressed his surprise, disappointment and disagreement with statements challenging the commission’s effectiveness made by a prominent safeguarding expert who resigned from the advisory body.

However, “the commission has a plenary meeting scheduled in the next few weeks during which we can address these and other matters more fully as a group,” the cardinal said in an updated statement March 30.

Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, a leading expert in the field and member of the commission since it was founded in 2014, stepped down in mid-March but gave the reasons for his departure in a public statement March 29, saying it was due to urgent “structural and practical issues that led me to disassociate myself” from the papal commission.

Father Zollner’s criticisms came just a few hours after his resignation was…

View Cache

The upcoming plenary meeting of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors will address matters that include the entity’s effectiveness. A statement issued by the President of the Commission notes that “the protection of children and vulnerable persons remains at the heart of the Church’s mission.”

After an initial statement issued by Cardinal Sean O’ Malley, President of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, announcing the resignation of Father Hans Zollner, he has released another in which he notes the Commission will soon be meeting for its plenary assembly and will discuss issues raised by Fr Zollner’s resignation.

Fr. Hans Zollner, SJ is a renowned child protection expert, and a founding member of the Commission. On Wednesday, 29 March, he asked to be relieved of his duties as a member of the Commission. In a personal statement, he cited “structural and practical issues” within the Commission, which…

View Cache

This month, the dioceses of Albany and Oakland publicly acknowledged that they may soon file for bankruptcy protection. Last month, the diocese of Santa Rosa, California, actually took that step. A total of 31 Catholic entities are in or have sought Chapter 11 proceedings. Other large, popular, and powerful groups have done likewise, notably the Boys Scouts of America and USA Gymnastics.

It is a truism to say that the powerful and wealthy are able to carve out legal strategies to benefit themselves. It is a cruel irony, though, that Chapter 11 in the Bankruptcy Code perversely caters to the institutions that created the conditions for child sex abuse while it sidelines the victims.

Chapter 11 was designed for “honest debtors” to reorganize their businesses so they could leave their debts behind and successfully carry on. It is triage for the poor debtor, who is the “victim” in the bankruptcy…

View Cache

Watch the preview here.

The guests on the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Sunday “Freethought Matters” TV show have dedicated their lives to helping survivors of clergy child abuse obtain justice.

Peter Isley, an advocate against priest abuse and a survivor of childhood sexual assault by a Wisconsin priest, is a founding member of SNAP: Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School and a psychotherapist in private practice, Isley has established and directed the nation’s only in-patient program for victims of clergy sexual trauma. Sarah Pearson, the deputy director of Nate’s Mission, is likewise a survivor of abuse and a recent grad of Harvard Divinity School. She is the director of a film previewed on the show titled “Manufacturing the Clerical Predator.”

Isley relates how his abuse started at a Catholic boarding school when he was 13, how he confronted the church about…

View Cache

Abuse survivors and advocates who’ve pushed for legislation making it easier in Kansas to prosecute abusers and file lawsuits decades later have achieved a breakthrough in the Legislature, where the proposal is advancing quickly.

The bill would remove limits on how long prosecutors have to file charges against suspects for any of a dozen violent sexual offenses against children, including indecent liberties, aggravated human trafficking and internet trading in child pornography. It also would give abuse survivors more time to file lawsuits seeking monetary damages.

Reports across the U.S. of abuse by Roman Catholic clergy have spurred interest in making it easier to pursue criminal prosecutions or lawsuits over cases of abuse dating back decades. In January, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation reported that it had identified 188 Catholic clergy suspected of crimes stretching back to the 1950s and submitted 30 affidavits to prosecutors. No criminal charges resulted, largely because of…

View Cache

Bacolod City, Philippines — A Catholic priest in Looc, Romblon, who was charged with rape, has been suspended from pastoral duties, Bishop Gerardo Alminaza said.

Conrado Mantac, 62, is under police custody following his arrest in Barangay Estefania in this city on Monday based on a warrant issued by Sagay Regional Trial Court Judge Reginald Fuentebella.

No bail was recommended.

Mantac, who was assigned at the Most Holy Rosary parish in Barangay Paraiso in Sagay City, was accused of molesting a 17-year-old choir member last year.

Alminaza said the alleged rape and arrest of Mantac “pains me and the whole diocese of San Carlos.”

“We have been consistent in our teachings and advocacy against any form of sexual abuse of children, women and vulnerable persons, and such crimes committed by any person and especially priests or religious cannot be tolerated,” Alminaza said.

Alminaza assured authorities of his cooperation in the…

View Cache

There were no pending criminal cases resulting from the report.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr on Wednesday called past coverups of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta and the Diocese of Savannah “horrific and indefensible.”

Carr, who is Roman Catholic, addressed the findings of a 267-page report released last week by the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia that investigated decades of suspected abuse in the Roman Catholic church in the state.

In a tweet, Carr wrote that the report “confirmed what many have feared and suspected” about such allegations. While the report, he tweeted, “did not uncover any current, ongoing or unreported sexual abuse by priests, it did reveal historical criminal allegations in Georgia against priests.”

In all the situations contained in the third-party report either the criminal statute of limitations had expired, the accused was deceased, the allegations had been reported to the proper authorities or…

View Cache

Arthur Masse was charged last year in alleged incident at Fort Alexander dating back more than 50 years

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

A retired priest accused of assaulting a First Nations girl at a Manitoba residential school more than 50 years ago has been acquitted.

Victoria McIntosh, 63, alleged she was assaulted by Arthur Masse, now 93, in a bathroom of the Fort Alexander Residential School in eastern Manitoba’s Sagkeeng First Nation sometime between 1968 and 1970.

Loved ones, some wearing orange Every Child Matters shirts, hugged McIntosh in court in Winnipeg as Manitoba Court of King’s Bench Justice Candace Grammond read her decision on Thursday acquitting Masse.

Grammond said she believes McIntosh was assaulted, but she wasn’t persuaded that Masse in particular was necessarily the one who did it.

“I have concluded when taken as a whole her identification of the accused was not sufficiently reliable to convince me beyond a…

View Cache

Pope Francis recently changed the 2019 church law governing clerical sexual abuse. Lay leaders will now be accountable for cover-up abuses of the church members.

Changes in 2019 Church Law For Clerical Sexual Abuse

CNN reported that for decades, the Catholic Church had been rocked by several sexual abuse scandals in countries worldwide. In 2019, Pope Francis wrote an Apostolic letter entitled Vos estis lux mundi in which he outlined the rules governing clerical sexual abuse for the first time. At the time, the norms were commanded to be followed for four years.

On Saturday, Mar.25, the Vatican released a document saying that Pope Francis has made some minor revisions to that document and made it permanent, effective on Sunday, Apr. 30.

As mentioned, provisions have been added as part of the amendments to ensure that lay leaders of Vatican-approved groups are held accountable for covering up instances of sexual abuse….

View Cache

It is said that no good deed goes unpunished. We see two clear examples of this in the cases of Father Ryszard Biernat and Siobhan O’Connor, two persons who had the courage to do what was necessary to expose former Buffalo Bishop Malone’s continued shielding of abusive priests. As a consequence of their necessary actions, they were branded as pariahs by leaders of the church they love.

Father Ryszard realized the risk he took in secretly recording Bishop Malone, and it’s no surprise that he was suspended by Malone as a result. I have at times wondered whatever became of Father Ryszard, and learned the answer in the Feb. 27th Buffalo News article, that he remains suspended from active ministry more than three years after Malone first sanctioned him.

I was very perturbed to discover that Father Ryszard is still being treated as an outcast by the Diocese…

View Cache

The Vatican on Thursday responded to Indigenous demands and formally repudiated the “Doctrine of Discovery,” the theories backed by 15th-century “papal bulls” that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands and form the basis of some property laws today.

A Vatican statement said the papal bulls, or decrees, “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples” and have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith.

The statement, from the Vatican’s development and education offices, marked a historic recognition of the Vatican’s own complicity in colonial-era abuses committed by European powers. It was issued under history’s first Latin American pontiff, who was hospitalized Thursday with a respiratory infection, exactly one year after Francis met at the Vatican with Indigenous leaders from Canada who raised the issue.

On Thursday, these Indigenous leaders welcomed the statement as a first good step, even though it didn’t address the rescinding of…

View Cache

ZOLLNER: FRANCIS’S KEY OVERSIGHT AND COMPLIANCE COMMISSION HAS FAILED.

MARCH 29, 2023. This morning, Fr. Hans Zollner, the chief architect of Pope Francis’s clergy sex abuse policy, announced his resignation from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. The Commission, established in 2014, is the centerpiece of Pope Francis’s response to the global clergy sexual abuse catastrophe.

The Commission’s mandate, according to Zollner, was to ensure “responsibility, compliance, accountability, and transparency.” After nine years in the Commission, Zollner has confirmed through his resignation statement that the Commission has failed on all four counts. Zollner’s resignation clearly signifies that the Commission, and therefore Pope Francis’s entire abuse management strategy, is unsalvageable.

Yesterday, Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA) along with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) sent an open letter to Zollner sharing some of his concerns and calling on him to urge Pope Francis to implement a true…

View Cache

Some 20 years ago, Ross Wiest’s job took him a couple of times to Stella Maris in Timonium, where he noticed a man who lived there looking at him and smiling.

“I know you,” said the nursing home resident.

Wiest recognized him, as well, but walked away without responding.

What could he say at that point to A. Joseph Maskell, the Baltimore priest accused of sexually abusing multiple Catholic school students and suspected, if not proven, of involvement in the unsolved murder of a nun?

What could Wiest say, when for so long he had kept secret his own childhood abuse and torture by Maskell and other priests?

Wiest is 68 now. Over time and in a more deliberative way than possible in the unexpected encounter shortly before Maskell’s death, he has found his voice.

About a month ago, his lawyer said, he settled an abuse claim against the Baltimore…

View Cache

The Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Wednesday on bills that would allow for constitutional amendments opening a statute of limitations window for child sex abuse claims – one step in what is likely to result in a partisan impasse between the House and state Senate.

“There’s no more single effective measure to protect today’s society than to allow window legislation,” Mike McDonnell, an abuse survivor who is now the communications director for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, told the committee Wednesday.

The possibility of justice will embolden more survivors to come forward, advocates told the committee, and “they need a good law in place to be able to hold their abusers accountable and name them publicly,” McDonnell said.

Wednesday’s hearing was advertised as addressing both House Bill 1 and Senate Bill 1, both of which would, if passed, place a constitutional…

View Cache

Father Hans Zollner, one of the leading members of the Vatican committee against child sexual abuse, said on Wednesday he had resigned from the group, citing concerns over the way it was operating.

Zollner was one of the founding members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which Pope Francis established in 2014 as part of efforts against the decades-old scandal of paedophilia within the Roman Catholic Church.

His abrupt departure represents a sharp blow to its image and comes after several members resigned early on, complaining the commission had no real power and met with internal resistance.

“Over the last years, I have grown increasingly concerned with how the commission, in my perception, has gone about achieving [the goal of protecting children and vulnerable persons]”, the Jesuit priest said in a statement.

Zollner said his resignation was effective on 14th March. He added that he could not…

View Cache

Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, a leading safeguarding expert, resigned from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors because of his concerns over how the advisory body had been working over the past years.

There are urgent “structural and practical issues,” he said, “that led me to disassociate myself” from the papal commission.

A member of the papal commission since its establishment in 2014, Father Zollner had submitted his resignation to Pope Francis, who accepted it March 14, the priest said in a written statement released March 29, the date his resignation became public.

Thanking the commission’s president, members, and staff, “both past and present, who share in the hope of building a safer church,” Father Zollner wrote, “The protection of children and vulnerable persons must be at the heart of the Catholic Church’s mission. That was the hope I and many others have shared since the commission was first…

View Cache

The most influential member of a Vatican commission on tackling clerical sex abuse said Wednesday he has quit over “structural and practical issues” which made it “impossible” for him to continue.

Hans Zollner, the public face of Pope Francis’s efforts to tackle the global paedophilia scandal, said he had “grown increasingly concerned” over how the papal advisory body works, “particularly in the areas of responsibility, compliance, accountability and transparency”.

His resignation from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors is the latest blow to a working group dogged by controversy.

US Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the body’s head, said early Wednesday that Zollner had resigned due to a heavy workload.

But German Jesuit priest and renowned academic Zollner, one of the leading experts in the fight against child abuse in the Catholic Church, said he had “noticed issues…

View Cache

One of Pope Francis’ key advisers on clergy sexual abuse has resigned from the pontiff’s child protection commission and has launched searing criticisms against the organization’s leadership and its alleged lack of transparency.

The president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, announced on March 29 that one of the commission’s founding members, German Jesuit Fr. Hans Zollner, had asked the pope “to be relieved of his duties as a member.” 

O’Malley’s statement, which praised Zollner as a global “ambassador” for combating clergy sexual abuse, said that Zollner had resigned due to his new appointment earlier this month as a consultant to the Diocese of Rome’s safeguarding office. 

Yet in an unusually blunt 400-word statement issued several hours later, Zollner said that after nine years of service on the commission, it was “impossible” to continue given his mounting concerns “in the areas…

View Cache

A proposed bill, now pending in the Texas Legislature, could bring a measure of justice to many survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

As introduced by state Rep. Ann Johnson, a Democrat from Harris County, House Bill 206 would allow a person who was sexually abused as a child to bring a civil lawsuit “at any time” to recover for injuries arising out of the abuse.

If the bill is passed, the law would apply retroactively, effectively reforming archaic statutes of limitation to give child sex-abuse survivors access to the civil justice system, even if their cases would have been time-barred under prior law.

This would bring Texas law in line with current knowledge about the effects of childhood sexual abuse. Inherent to the trauma is a silencing effect that causes many victims to delay disclosure. Often, victims are well into adulthood before they begin talking about what was done to them. The  View Cache

Morganton native Jeffrey Kendall no longer works as an active Catholic priest, but that doesn’t mean he has given up looking for God.

“I’m always going to be Catholic – I can never change that,” Kendall said. “I’m not anti-church. I’m anti-abuse.”

Kendall left his post as in the Diocese of Charleston due to what he calls “a culture of cruelty.” He said the abuses of power and mistreatment he experienced left him broken and distant from God.

“I went back, and I tried to heal in the Catholic Church,” he said. “But healing was impossible in the Diocese of Charleston. That’s a damning statement.”

In his new memoir, A Walk to the End of the Earth, Kendall, a Freedom High School graduate and the first Catholic priest to hail from Morganton, recalls the abuse he endured and his journey away from the priesthood. The book recounts his anger at God,…

View Cache

Bishop Richard J. Malone testified about being shocked and “very concerned” to discover that the Buffalo Diocese hadn’t forwarded credible allegations of clergy sex abuse of minors to the Vatican, per the terms of a 2001 church law.

But when pressed by a state prosecutor in 2019 about when exactly he learned the cases hadn’t been forward and who told him or how he learned about it, Malone struggled to remember.

Newly released transcripts of sworn testimony to the state Attorney General’s Office by Malone and Auxiliary Bishop Edward M. Grosz reveal the bishops’ most extensive comments to date about their roles in addressing child sex abuse allegations and handing abusive priests. They also provide a glimpse into the inner workings of the highest levels of the Buffalo Diocese as a scandal over the cover-up reached fever pitch.

Malone, in the testimony, acknowledged that he never discussed with his predecessor…

View Cache

A widely known and well-respected world figure is once again taking on the Catholic Church over its abuse crisis, speaking more forcefully than ever before.

Asking for forgiveness “is not enough,” he says.

Victims, he says, have to be “at the center” of everything.

He insists there must be “concrete actions to repair the horrors they have suffered and to prevent them from happening again.”

The Catholic Church must set an example in helping to solve the problem and “bring it to light,” he says.

Strong words, no?

Here’s the problem, though: the man saying these things is the man who can do these things.

Pope Francis himself, in a carefully choreographed new video released earlier this month (March 2), talks tough about abuse, as though he is someone outside the church looking in.

But he is, of course, the ultimate church “insider,” the man at the…

View Cache

Legislation that would lift deadlines for survivors of child sexual abuse to sue their abusers is closer to receiving approval by both chambers in the Maryland legislature.

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, Sen. William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery) took questions on part of the bill, which would repeal the statute of limitations and cap liability for governments and school boards at $890,000.

Smith sponsored the legislation which the Senate approved March 16.

The measure increases the liability limit to $1.5 million for claims against private institutions for non-economic damages such as pain and suffering. An amendment approved last week removes the cap for economic damages for costs of services such as therapy or medical treatment.

Del. Nicole Williams (D-Prince George’s) asked what settlement amounts have been agreed upon in cases where an organization is charged with abuse and later files for bankruptcy.

Kathryn Robb, executive director of Child USAdvocacy,…

View Cache

The Sexual Offences Against Children (Amendment) Bill 2023, aimed at providing a clearer and comprehensive protection to children, was passed in the Dewan Rakyat today.

It was passed with more votes in favour after it was tabled for the second reading by the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform), Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said, and debated by 10 Members of Parliament.

According to Azalina, the bill, among other things, is to replace the terminology ‘child pornography’ with ‘child sexual abuse material’ in the Sexual Offences Against Children Act 2017 (Act 792).

“Although it looks like a replacement of terms only, this replacement has a great impact on the perspective and depiction of the level of seriousness, and the true nature of the crime of exploitation and sexual abuse of children,” she said when winding up the debate on the bill.

In addition, Azalina said that the…

View Cache

Independent Review Group finds ‘repeated and regular’ sexual attacks on members

Senior officers in the Defence Forces groomed more junior members for sexual purposes and the spiking of drinks for the purposes of carrying out sexual attacks was “repeated and regular”, an independent review into allegations of abuse in the organisation has concluded.

There was a “discernible pattern of rape and sexual assault” in barracks, swimming areas, naval boats, showers and abroad on foreign deployments, the Independent Review Group (IRG) said.

Some members were “targeted with sadistic violence for officers’ perceived pleasure”. Others “alleged that violence was gratuitously perpetrated without any trigger beforehand”.

[ Women of Honour report: Defence Forces ‘barely tolerates women’ at best and ‘abuses women in ranks’ at worst ]

The IRG’s examination of sexual misconduct, bullying, harassment and discrimination in the Defence Forces, established by Government in 2021 to investigate matters first raised by a group of…

View Cache

Several athletes have testified about sexual, mental, physical abuse in Canadian sport

The Canadian government committed $13.8 million in Tuesday’s budget to addressing safe sport issues that have dominated headlines over the last year.

Federal sport minister Pascale St-Onge has said the sport system is in crisis.Tearful athletes have testified at parliamentary committee meetings in recent months about the sexual, mental and physical abuse they’ve experienced, and how the sport system has failed to address it.

• ‘Broken by the system’: Athlete details Gymnastics Canada’s mishandling of abuse claims
• Sport Minister St-Onge says there’s ‘no coherence’ in Canada’s safe sport system

The budget committed $13.8 million over three years starting in 2022-23 to the Heritage department that oversees the sport portfolio to “enhance accountability and support efforts to build a safe and accountable sport system.”

“From beginners to Olympians, every athlete in Canada should be safe from abuse, harassment,…

View Cache

The claims come after a court certified a class-action lawsuit by students alleging abuse by members of the Christian Brothers at St. Thomas More Collegiate and Vancouver College.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver and a private Catholic school have denied wrongdoing after claims of sexual abuse from former students and have filed their own lawsuits against the alleged abusers.

The archdiocese and St. Thomas More Collegiate in Burnaby filed separate lawsuits last week against the men who belonged to a Catholic order and were transferred to B.C. from Mount Cashel, the Newfoundland orphanage notorious for the sexual abuse that took place there.

The claims come soon after a court certified a class-action lawsuit by students, naming the archdiocese, St. Thomas More Collegiate and others as defendants, alleging abuse by members of the Christian Brothers at the school and Vancouver College, another Catholic private institution.

The statement of claim filed by…

View Cache

A U.S. judge on Tuesday affirmed the Boy Scouts of America’s $2.46 billion settlement of decades of sex abuse claims, rejecting appeals by some of the group’s insurers and abuse claimants.

U.S. District Judge Richard Andrews in Wilmington, Delaware, ruled that the Boy Scouts agreement, which would create the largest sexual abuse settlement fund in U.S. history, was a good faith effort to resolve claims by more than 80,000 men who say they were abused as children by troop leaders.

The Boy Scouts settlement, approved in bankruptcy court in September, was supported by 86% of abuse claimants and the Boy Scouts’ two largest insurers.

The Boy Scouts organization said it was “enormously grateful” to abuse survivors who spoke out about their experiences and who voted to support the settlement.

“We look forward to the organization’s exit from bankruptcy in the near future and firmly believe that the mission of Scouting…

View Cache

Just six days before a long-awaited trial was to begin on allegations from a former student that Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and former President Paige Patterson failed to protect her from sexual assault, a federal judge dismissed most of the case for lack of sufficient legal evidence.

Left pending is a motion for summary judgment on a defamation claim the judge has not yet acted upon. The parts of the case dismissed by U.S. District Judge Sean Jordan March 25 relate to allegations of negligence and gross negligence.

The assertion by the anonymous Jane Roe that “women who tried to report sexual harassment and sexual abuse were ignored, dismissed or disciplined themselves” is “a gross distortion of the evidence before the court,” Jordan wrote March 25. “The proposition that SWBTS has a history of condoning sexual assault or sexual harassment of female students has not been proven by Roe and is not…

View Cache

Leaders of First Baptist Church of Houston knew about Paul Pressler’s alleged inappropriate sexual activity with young men in 2004, according to correspondence from the church to Pressler obtained by the Texas Tribune.

Journalist Robert Downen, writing for the Tribune, also reports Pressler’s law partner — a prominent conservative Republican known for his anti-LGBTQ stances — knew about the serious allegations yet continued to work with Pressler for another decade and provide him young male “personal assistants, most of them young men who typically worked out of his River Oaks mansion. Two have accused Pressler of sexual assault or misconduct.”

Downen and the Tribune have sifted through thousands of pages of new court records recently released in the six-year-old lawsuit brought against Pressler, his law partner Jared Woodfill, First Baptist Church and other leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention by a former member of Pressler’s church youth group.

Plaintiff Duane Rollins claims after he enrolled in Pressler’s…

View Cache

A prominent Catholic architectural historian, author, and professor has been accused of sexual misconduct involving adult seminarians, Chicago’s Mundelein Seminary notified seminarians Monday.

“I write to inform you that we received reports alleging Dr. Denis McNamara, a former [seminary] faculty member, engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior toward adult seminarians during and after the time he was employed here,” wrote Fr. John Kartje, Mundelein’s rector, in a March 27 letter obtained by The Pillar.

“We deeply appreciate the courage of the men who came forward to report these matters,” Kartje added, while encouraging “anyone who believes he or she has been subjected to inappropriate behavior” at the seminary to make a report to seminary officials.

McNamara was from 2000 until 2019 a faculty member at the Liturgical Institute at Mundelein Seminary — which is called formally the University of St. Mary of the Lake, and includes Chicago’s seminary formation programs, and theology…

View Cache

There are complexities because the Catholic Church operates under both canon and civil law

Recent and potential bankruptcy filings by California and New York dioceses, made in response to clerical sexual abuse claims, highlight the complex tensions between civil and canon law regarding church assets — including those at parishes — and their availability for settling lawsuits.

With several states, including California and New York, having temporarily lifted statutes of limitation on child sex abuse claims, a number of Catholic dioceses have declared or are poised to declare bankruptcy.

The Diocese of Santa Rosa, California, officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy March 13. Bishop Robert F. Vasa explained the move was necessary due to more than 160 sexual abuse claims filed against the diocese after California opened a three-year window in its statute of limitations.

The Diocese of Albany, New York, announced March 15 it would file for bankruptcy, having…

View Cache

On a recent Sunday, Brother Joseph Holthaus posted a photo of a child on a trash heap. He captioned it with a prayer for “those who dig through garbage dumps in search of recyclables and food.” The prayer intention was that caring adults might help them to find a healthy and wholesome life.

Other weekly postings on the Facebook and website pages of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart offer prayers for children who are snatched from their families and forced to join an army, children who have no spiritual center, those in institutions or with serious illnesses. There are prayers, too, for children who are unloved and unwanted, and those who have been bullied, exploited and sexually assaulted.

They are the at-risk children that the province holds up in prayer in their Youth on the Margins series of postings.

“We were founded to work with…

View Cache

The Vatican has for the first time handed over to a Polish court the case file of a former priest on trial for child sex abuse. The move came after the local Polish archbishop informed the judge that he was unable to make the documents available himself.

The transfer of the material took place in autumn last year, when the Vatican handed the 200 pages of documents over to the Polish embassy. But it was only reported yesterday for the first time by the Gazeta Wyborcza daily because the trial of the former priest is being conducted behind closed doors.

The files pertain to ecclesiastical proceedings against the accused, who can be named only as Krzysztof G. under Polish privacy law. They reportedly include his written confession of guilt and a subsequent decree removing him from the clergy.

Krzysztof G. is currently on trial in a state court for the same accusations…

View Cache

Under oath, outspoken anti-gay activist Jared Woodfill said he was told in 2004 that Paul Pressler had sexually abused a minor. But Woodfill did not cut ties with the Southern Baptist leader — and said he had no knowledge of Pressler’s alleged behavior when another young man came forward about alleged sexual misconduct in 2016.

In 2016, former Harris County GOP chair Jared Woodfill received an urgent warning about Paul Pressler, his longtime law partner and a Southern Baptist leader. In an email, a 25-year-old attorney from Woodfill’s Houston firm said he’d recently gone to lunch with Pressler, who told him “lewd stories about being naked on beaches with young men” and then invited him to skinny-dip at his ranch.

Woodfill — an outspoken anti-gay politician and prominent conservative activist who’d just played a key role defeating an equal rights ordinance for LGBTQ Houstonians — responded to the young man’s request…

View Cache

A support group for survivors of abuse within the Catholic Church has sent an open letter to the pope claiming a coverup, secrecy and denial of abuse by the church in this country.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, SNAP, said the church’s redress process was secretive and denied a survivor’s right to natural justice.

SNAP said it wrote to Pope Francis in September last year, but never got a reply.

”We informed you of ongoing coverup and denial of credible complaints of clerical abuse and child sexual assault through a secretive A Path to Healing – Te Houhanga Rongo redress process.’

”We are disappointed to not have had the courtesy of a reply or acknowledgement of our letter.”

SNAP is calling on the pope to instruct church leaders in New Zealand to initiate an urgent, independent and transparent external audit of its redress and safeguarding system.

”While…

View Cache

FLINT, MI – A former Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting underage boys may stand trial just shy of four years after being charged with several counts of criminal sexual conduct.

Vincent DeLorenzo, 84, is scheduled to face a jury at a trial before Genesee County Circuit Judge Brian S. Pickell on April 26, online court records show.

DeLorenzo, a former Flint-area priest accused of sexually assaulting two boys in the mid-1990s, when the alleged victims were under 13 years old, appeared before Pickell on Monday, March 27, for a final pretrial hearing.

It was at that hearing that Sara Coaster, a defense attorney representing DeLorenzo, and the prosecutor on the case, assistant attorney general Danielle Hagaman-Clark, told the judge they were prepared to head to trial.

“Father DeLorenzo has denied these specific allegations,” Michael Manley, an attorney handling the former priests case told MLive-The…

View Cache

Both organizations say the teachers themselves would be to blame for any alleged abuse

The Archdiocese of Vancouver and one of two local high schools facing allegations of systemic sexual abuse have now filed their own lawsuits denying any wrongdoing, saying any mistreatment of students was through no fault of their own.

The archdiocese and St. Thomas More Collegiate (STMC) high school filed their claims last week in response to an ongoing class action lawsuit that has claimed abusive teachers targeted students in Vancouver for decades after they were transferred from the notorious Mount Cashel orphanage in Newfoundland.

The organizations say the teachers themselves would be among the ones to blame for any alleged abuse.

“If … any members of the class have suffered any damage … such damage was caused or contributed to by the fault of [the teachers],” read the archdiocese’s claim.

The lawsuits come weeks after the original lawsuit was certified as a class-action, which…

View Cache

ROCCA DI PAPA, Italy — The findings of an initial expert report were astonishing: One of the 20th century’s revered Catholic leaders, who built an international movement of community care for people with intellectual disabilities, perverted Catholic doctrine about Jesus and Mary to justify his own sexual compulsions and abuse women.

The findings of a second report were even worse: The movement he created had at its core a secret, mystical-sexual “sect,” and was founded for the precise purpose of hiding the sect’s deviant activities from church authorities.

The two rounds of revelations about Jean Vanier and the L’Arche federation he founded have rocked the group to its core, all the more because L’Arche itself commissioned independent scholars to investigate after receiving a first complaint from a victim a few years before Vanier died in 2019. It’s the latest case of a Catholic giant, considered a living saint by his admirers…

View Cache

EAST FLATBUSH — The Diocese of Brooklyn has removed from priestly ministry Father Bony Monastere, the parochial vicar for St. Therese of Lisieux Church in East Flatbush, after a sexual abuse allegation involving an adult was substantiated, according to the diocese.

Bishop Robert Brennan announced the decision via a letter that was read aloud to parishioners by Auxiliary Bishop Neil Tiedemann on Sunday, March 19. 

Bishop Brennan wrote that the diocese was made aware of the allegation in September 2022 and that Father Monastere had denied it. The matter was then referred to the Diocesan Review Board — an independent panel tasked with investigating abuse allegations.

Following an investigation, the review board determined the allegation was substantiated and recommended that Father Monastere be removed. 

Bishop Brennan wrote in the letter, “I have accepted the recommendation of the Diocesan Review Board, and Father Monastere has been removed from priestly ministry.” 

Father Monastere…

View Cache

Last week, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò — the former apostolic nuncio to the United States — published a new open letter, wherein the fugitive churchman welcomes the founding of the “International Movement of Russophiles.” I do not exaggerate when I describe it as the most astounding and bizarre public document created by this deeply troubled man to date. His letter — posted on the website of Italian traditionalist Marco Tosatti and delivered by email to subscribers of Robert Moynihan’s “Inside the Vatican” newsletter on March 16 — is a full-throated endorsement of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, laden with new world order conspiracy theories and religious paranoia.

In it, Viganò, a man once lauded as “the best nuncio we’ve had thus far” by John Paul II biographer George Weigel — a man whose grasp on reality has also faded, albeit to a lesser…

View Cache

To the Editor:

Re “Sex Abuse Accusation Names a Rowing Legend” (front page, March 20):

In this article about childhood sexual abuse, The Times correctly noted that “victims may not report their abuse because of denial, shame or fear that they won’t be believed.”

There’s another, often overlooked factor that helps explain delayed abuse reports. Many survivors don’t deny their victimization — they simply don’t understand, until years later, that what happened to them was abuse.

Often, a child gets inadequate attention at home and believes that abuse is abrupt and brutal. Along comes a shrewd predator who convinces her that gentle touches are genuine affection. Her ignorance and innocence cause her to confuse being abused with being loved.

So it’s not only true that most victims don’t come forward promptly, but also the case that they may not recognize what occurred as abuse.

David G. Clohessy
St. Louis
The writer is the former…

View Cache

ROME – It’s entirely possible that by the time this article appears, Father James Connell of Milwaukee, already barred from hearing confessions unless the penitent is in immediate danger of death, may be facing other suspensions – possibly from preaching, possibly from public ministry altogether.

A March 24 email to Connell relaying instructions from Archbishop Jerome Listecki of Milwaukee made the threat crystal clear.

“The Archbishop wants you to understand that if it is too difficult for you to appropriately understand the limits of your ministerial permissions in the light of his decree, that he is willing to remove your faculties to preach publicly as well, and to also restrict your permission to publicly exercise ministry period,” it read.

“He will take those further steps if his ongoing assessment of your behavior and situation warrants it,” wrote Father Nathan Reesman, the Vicar for Clergy in Milwaukee.

The warning came two…

View Cache

What reason did the Vatican give when it made the surprise announcement Saturday that Pope Francis had accepted the resignation of one of Germany’s most prominent bishops?

The answer: none whatsoever. 

That’s not unusual. When the pope accepts a diocesan bishop’s resignation before the customary age of 75, the Holy See press office rarely gives a reason. 

In the absence of an official explanation, speculation is rife. Was the 72-year-old Bishop Franz-Josef Bode’s resignation accepted because he was one of the chief organizers of Germany’s controversial “synodal way”?

Or was it because he was one of the first German bishops to invite same-sex couples to receive blessings after the synodal way endorsed the practice earlier this month — despite an emphatic Vatican prohibition on doing so?

Or could it have been on account of his errors in handling abuse cases, which prompted a canonical complaint to Rome?

Let’s consider each of three principal theories.

…

View Cache

ANALYSIS: Pope Francis’ acceptance of the resignation of Bishop Franz-Josef Bode, a major proponent of the Synodal Way in Germany, is widely seen as a blow to the controversial process. But was this a ‘strategic element’ of the Vatican’s decision?

Pope Francis’ acceptance of Bishop Franz-Josef Bode’s surprise resignation is a clear blow to the German Synodal Way — at least according to the reactions of others championing the controversial process, which is pushing for blessings of same-sex unions, women’s ordination and other changes at odds with Church teaching.

Johannes Norpoth, the spokesman for the German Bishops’ Conference’s (DBK) advisory board of abuse victims, described the erstwhile bishop of Osnabrück as “an episcopal engine of the Synodal Way,” noting that his resignation “will clearly and permanently weaken the wing in the German Bishops’ Conference that is willing to reform and change.”

Irme Stetter-Karp, the president of the powerful Central Committee for…

View Cache

The Bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts, issued on Friday a ban on the use of so-called hookup apps for all diocesan clergy.

Bishop Robert McManus promulgated the new diocesan penal law March 24, warning that use of hookup app technology will lead to sanctions for priests and deacons in the Massachusetts diocese.

“The new law reminds the clerics to cultivate and preserve the virtue of chastity as well as the promise of celibacy for priests and single or widowed deacons,” the diocese announced in a statement Friday. 

“This particular law specifically references digital solicitation, grooming, pornography and/or sharing of such material on social media as ways of violating their lifelong commitment to the observance of chaste celibacy.”

The diocese said the new law, which invoked the existing universal law of the Church related to the clerical obligation to “behave with due prudence towards persons whose company can endanger their obligation to…

View Cache

A former Wausau priest convicted of child molestation two decades ago was sentenced to three years in prison on child porn charges Monday after graphic images of children were found on his computer in December. 

Svea, now 60, faced new possession of child porn charges after pictures were discovered by a computer repairman who notified police in December 2022.

In 2002, Svea served 18-months in jail after being convicted of molesting an underage boy. He’d pled guilty to sexual assault of a minor, false imprisonment and several counts of exposing himself to a child.

Svea was living in Mosinee when a new investigation started. Svea had served in various Catholic groups in Wausau and Cashton.

View Cache

Pope Francis on Friday accepted the resignation of an influential German bishop who has been a key player in the German synodal process and come under pressure over his handling of clerical sex abuse cases in his diocese. 

Bishop Franz-Josef Bode, 72, who has been vice-president of the German Bishops’ Conference (DBK) since 2017 and a keen advocate for reform in the Church, allegedly offered his resignation due to mishandling of sex abuse cases.

As recently as September last year, Bishop Bode of Osnabrück publicly refused to resign amid calls to do so following the release of a 600-page report entitled “Sexual violence against minors and vulnerable by clergy in the Diocese of Osnabrück since 1945”. 

The report incriminated Bode for “repeatedly” retaining in their posts or promoting clergy accused of abuse. 

Particular concern surrounded the fact that the bishop refused to take precautionary measures pertaining to clergy who were…

View Cache

The sanctuary at St. Mark Catholic Church was nearly full for 11 a.m. Mass.

A white-robed priest gave a sermon on the recent Sunday morning about a Samaritan woman who met Jesus at a well. Parishioners lined up to receive Communion. And as congregants flooded to their cars afterward, a few paused to share thoughts on an issue that could soon engulf the historic parish in Catonsville.

Sometime in the next week or so, the Maryland Attorney General’s Office is expected to release its report on the sexual abuse of children and young adults by priests and brothers in the Archdiocese of Baltimore dating back 80 years. Its authors identify 158 men who abused and tortured more than 600 people between the mid-1940s and 2002, and describe the archdiocese’s efforts to protect abusers and silence victims.

A summary that appeared in a court filing in November said some…

View Cache

Archbishop Charles Scicluna, Adjunct Secretary of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and an expert in the fight against abuse, shares his thoughts on Pope Francis’ updates to “Vos estis lux mundi,” and says one important change is a “detailed procedure for reporting and investigating allegations against lay people at the head of international associations.”

Archbishop Charles Scicluna, the Archbishop of Valletta, Malta, since 2018, serving as Adjunct Secretary of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, has always been involved in combating the scourge of abuse by clergy.

In the following interview with Vatican News, he illustrates the importance of the changes introduced on Saturday by Pope Francis in his update of ‘Vos estis lux mundi,‘ the motu proprio promulgated in 2019 with which the Pope introduced procedural rules to combat sexual abuse and ensure that bishops and religious superiors are held accountable for their actions. 

…

View Cache

Cardinal Blase Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, welcomes Pope Francis’ promulgation of an updated version of ‘Vos estis lux mundi’, and says it confirms the Church’s desire to root out sexual abuse and give justice to abuse victims.

Pope Francis has released an updated version of his 2019 motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi, which offers specific procedures to regulate the Church’s actions to counter sexual abuse.

The Holy See Press Office published the new text on Saturday, which enters into force on 30 April and replaces the version released in May 2019.

In the following interview with Vatican News, American-born Cardinal Blase Cupich describes a few of the important changes made to the original text of Vos Estis.

The Archbishop of Chicago, who also serves as a member of the Vatican’s task force for the protection of minors, says the updated document shows the Pope’s desire to protect victims…

View Cache