ABUSE TRACKER

The Catholic religious order that runs Marmion Academy in Aurora is acknowledging for the first time that one of its members had “established allegations” of child sex abuse in the 1970s and remained at the school for years.

During that time, Brother Jerome Skaja was accused of more sexual misconduct involving minors.

The Benedictines long hid the fact that Skaja, who died in 2016, had been accused of repeatedly sexually abusing a Marmion student in the 1980s, as the Chicago Sun-Times reported in October — and also that they reached a secret financial settlement with the accuser when he threatened to sue when he turned 18.

In December, the Rev. John Brahill, a Marmion leader, said the order planned to post its first public list of “established offenders,” as the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago has done and as many other Catholic religious orders have. Now,…

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[Via Los Angeles Times; see also a video of the news conference.]

A sweeping lawsuit filed in San Diego Superior Court accuses the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego of a scheme to fraudulently transfer hundreds of properties to avoid potentially large payouts stemming from a new wave of lawsuits alleging abuse by clergy members.

The suit was filed on Tuesday, less than two weeks after the diocese held a news conference warning it might have to file bankruptcy for the second time since 2007, because of the threat from potentially large payouts to approximately 400 people who have sued alleging they were abused years ago.

The latest lawsuit said that the diocese transferred 291 properties into real estate holding companies in late 2019, just after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that opened a three-year window for people who claimed they were victims of past sexual abuse to file…

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The Diocese of Buffalo has received a child sexual abuse complaint regarding a retired priest in the diocese. As a result, Bishop Michael W. Fisher has placed Father Joseph Vatter on administrative leave as an investigation continues. Prior to being placed on leave, Father Vatter was occasionally celebrating Masses at various diocesan churches.

Please note that this administrative leave is for the purpose of investigation and does not imply any determination as to the truth or falsity of the complaint. 

If you have any information specific to clerical sexual abuse you would like to share, please contact Jackie Joy, victim assistance coordinator for the diocese, who may be reached at 716-895-3010.

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A Buffalo Diocese priest has been put on leave over an allegation that he sexually abused a child, the diocese announced Thursday.  

The Rev. Joseph E. Vatter, 71, who retired in 2022 as pastor of St. Paul Parish in Kenmore but continued to occasionally celebrate Mass at various churches, will be on leave while the diocese investigates the allegation.

Diocese officials declined Thursday to disclose when the alleged incident occurred, but said they had notified the Erie County District Attorney’s Office about the allegation.

In September, a Rochester area man, Robert Kapal, told The Buffalo News that Vatter had abused him when he was a 9-year-old altar boy at St. Christopher Church in the Town of Tonawanda in 1980. 

Diocesan records obtained by The News show the church in 2004 received an abuse complaint about Vatter, but the diocese determined in 2005 that there was “no basis” to the…

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The Vatican has been dismissed from a sexual abuse lawsuit filed by an alleged victim of disgraced former archbishop Anthony Apuron.

The Guam District Court found that the Holy See is absolved of certain responsibilities by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

But the 35-page decision and order does provide explicit details of the allegations against the now-defrocked Apuron.

The Holy See, also commonly referred to as the Vatican, was one of several Catholic Church defendants in the lawsuit, which alleged that it was aware of numerous similar sexual abuse acts by then-Archbishop Apuron, and should share in the responsibility.

But Chief Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood granted the Holy See’s motion to dismiss citing among other things, lack of subject matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction under the foreign sovereign immunities act.

The order with prejudice means the Vatican can’t be sued again for damages by the plaintiff. But contained in the court…

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A proposal to do away with clergy exemptions for reporting child abuse and neglect got a first look Wednesday from a Vermont Senate committee. 

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee took no action on the bill, S.16, after listening to several witnesses speak about it. The senators said they wanted to hear from more witnesses, including constitutional scholars.

Vermont law says members of the clergy are obligated to report abuse and neglect, but the law adds exemptions for what they learn while hearing a confession or acting as a spiritual adviser.

According to current law, the exemptions include information received in a communication that is:

• Made to a member of the clergy acting in the capacity of a spiritual adviser.
• Intended by the parties to be confidential at the time of the communication.
• Intended to be an act of contrition or matter of conscience.
• Required to be confidential by religious law, doctrine…

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A lawsuit was announced Wednesday alleging the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego fraudulently transferred real estate to dummy corporations in order to avoid paying out pending legal settlements to hundreds of victims of childhood sexual abuse.

The suit alleges that due to the impending passage of a bill that extended the statute of limitations for alleged sex abuse victims to file lawsuits, the diocese transferred at least 291 real estate parcels to its parishes in a bid to conceal assets. The suit, which seeks to undo those transfers, states the total assessed value of the transferred property exceeds $450 million.

The lawsuit follows an announcement from the diocese that “the staggering legal costs” of hundreds of sex abuse lawsuits it faces could force it to file for bankruptcy.

Earlier this month, Cardinal Robert McElroy wrote in a letter to parishioners that most of the diocese’s assets were “depleted” due…

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The suit, which seeks to undo those transfers, states the total assessed value of the transferred property exceeds $450 million.

A lawsuit was announced Wednesday alleging the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego fraudulently transferred real estate to dummy corporations in order to avoid paying out legal settlements to hundreds of victims of childhood sexual abuse.

The suit alleges that due to the impending passage of a bill that extended the statute of limitations for alleged sex abuse victims to file lawsuits, the diocese transferred at least 291 real estate parcels to its parishes in a bid to conceal assets. The suit, which seeks to undo those transfers, states the total assessed value of the transferred property exceeds $450 million.

The lawsuit follows an announcement from the diocese earlier in February that “the staggering legal costs” of hundreds of sex abuse lawsuits it faces could…

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Plaintiffs’ attorneys say 1500 new lawsuits have been filed against the Roman Catholic Church in Northern CA alone. The Investigative Unit has independently reviewed nearly 700 of them.

An NBC Bay Area analysis of nearly 700 lawsuits filed against Catholic institutions across Northern California over the past three years suggests the church’s child sexual abuse scandal in the region is significantly worse than the public previously knew.

More than 200 of the clergy and lay employees of the Catholic Church named in the wave of lawsuits have never been publicly accused of being sexually abusive towards children and teenagers until now, NBC Bay Area’s investigation found. Some of the newly accused continue to work as priests.

Other alleged perpetrators named in the civil filings have faced previous accusations but now face new claims, some of them dozens.

NBC Bay Area is in the process of reaching out to those accused…

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The lawsuit claims the Diocese transferred its properties so that those assets weren’t reachable by its creditors, namely survivors of sexual abuse.

A new lawsuit claims that the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego transferred ownership of 291 real estate holdings and parcels across San Diego and Imperial counties to parish corporations in order to conceal the Diocese’s true assets to avoid paying settlements of suits brought by survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

The lawsuit, filed in San Diego County Superior Court by The Zalkin Law Firm on behalf of more than 100 plaintiffs who say they were sexually abused by Catholic priests or employees of the Diocese in either San Diego or Imperial county, claims the Diocese began to transfer its property after the passage of Assembly Bill 218. That California law, passed in 2019, significantly extended the statute of limitations for survivors of childhood sexual assault to file…

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A convicted killer and rapist revered by millions as a religious guru has temporarily walked free from jail in India for the fourth time in 12 months, angering activists who say it sets a dangerous precedent in a country grappling with violence against women.

Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, head of the spiritual organization Dera Sacha Sauda, was released for 40 days on January 21 and is expected to remain free until early March, Sanjeev Verma, a senior official from the city of Rohtak, in the northern state of Haryana, confirmed to CNN on Wednesday.

In 2017, Singh was sentenced to 20 years in prison for raping two of his followers. Two years later, he received a life term for the murder of a journalist who exposed the sexual abuse of women within his group.

Singh was previously granted temporary leave from prison in February, June and October last…

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A former youth minister from Anna has been locked up for the rest of his life after being convicted for producing child pornography at multiple locations, including at a church.

Federal investigators got onto the trail of 49-year old Chad Michael Rider of Anna while they were investigating a Denison man for child pornography offenses.

The Homeland Security agents were able to trace illicit videos back to the Denison Church of the Nazarene, where Rider was a youth minister.

There on a hard drive in the church, they found videos of Rider and the other man, identified as David Pettigrew, setting up cameras to film children who were bathing at the church. More videos were found of Rider recording children at two other residences.

“One of the sacred safe havens for children is the church and all it stands for.  Yet Rider and his conspirators purposefully used it as a lure…

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Christian-majority East Nusa Tenggara province is the largest hub of human trafficking, campaigners says

Indonesian Cardinal Ignatius Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo has called on Catholics to fight the scourge of human trafficking during the upcoming Season of Lent.

Hardjoatmodjo termed human trafficking as “one of the greatest crimes against humanity, which directly contradicts the ideals of the common good” in a pastoral letter issued ahead of Lent that begins on Feb. 22.

“Our poorest, most vulnerable and disabled sisters, as well as women of all ages and children, migrants, refugees and our sisters who come from disharmonious families, are very vulnerable to being exploited by human trafficking practices,” the prelate stated in the letter read throughout the archdiocese Sunday Mass on Feb. 19.

He wanted Catholics to fight the crime and said poverty causes many to become victims of human trafficking.

“Help our less fortunate brothers and sisters,” the cardinal said.

…

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Jean-Baptiste De Franssu told the Vatican court last week that he had “no other choice” but to refer the London deal for investigation.

The president of a major Vatican Bank told a courtroom Thursday that he reported a suspicious Vatican property deal to investigators, even while senior Vatican officials offered him “protection” to help the deal go through.

Jean-Baptiste De Franssu is president of the Institute for Works of Religion, a Vatican City bank. Amid a sprawling Vatican City criminal trial, De Franssu answered questions Feb. 16 about the Secretariat of State’s 2018 acquisition of a London building at 60 Sloane Ave.

The banker told judges that in 2019, the Vatican Secretariat of State submitted a loan application to his bank – commonly called the IOR – in order to refinance a mortgage it had taken from a Swiss bank when it bought the London building.

De Franssu told judges…

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A former Methodist pastor, scheduled to stand trial next week on charges that he sexually abused three boys, is considering a judge’s offer of three to four years in state prison if he pleads guilty by Thursday.

Russell W. Davis, 70, of Seabrook, New Hampshire, who until 2015 was a church-licensed but not ordained pastor for the United Methodist Church, was first charged in 2018 after one of the boys went to Newbury police with an account of years of sexual abuse.

But eight years earlier, in 2010, another boy had also reported that Davis had been abusing him since he was 11. Due to the boy’s emotional state, police did not pursue that case at the time, prosecutor Kate MacDougall said in court Tuesday.

Both boys came from what a prosecutor said on Tuesday were unstable and difficult living situations that “made them vulnerable.” Both were brought to the…

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A former St. Olaf Church staff member accused of sexual misconduct with a young parishioner pleaded guilty to a single count of child enticement in a Feb. 20 hearing, with sentencing to be decided in April.

Rajnal Rehmat, 31, entered the plea in a hearing in Dane County Circuit Court on Monday. As part of a plea agreement, a separate charge of sexual assault was dismissed, but read into the record. Prosecutors agreed not to seek additional charges, while seeing a sentence of two years in prison and three years of extended supervision. Sentencing will be decided in an April 5 hearing.

Rehmat, who is originally from Pakistan, was in the country as a part of the Catholic organization Canons Regular of Jesus the Lord (CJD), according to a statement released by the Diocese of Madison. Rehmat had been working in parishes in DeForest and East Bristol.

The DeForest Police…

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Fr. Marko Rupnik will face an internal Jesuit process addressing allegations of spiritual and sexual abuse.

The Society of Jesus has announced a new canonical process against Fr. Marko Rupnik, SJ, the priest and well known religious artist accused of sexually abusing dozens of women religious over decades.

The canonical process is internal to the Jesuits, and could result in the priest’s expulsion from the order, the Jesuits have explained.

The new legal process, announced Feb. 21 in a statement from the society’s interprovincial house in Rome, follows new allegations against the priest.

Those accusations were made after the Jesuit order asked for any additional victims of Rupnik to come forward in December last year, after news broke that the priest had been found guilty of a crime against the sacrament of penance and briefly excommunicated in 2020.

Since then, the society said Tuesday, the internal team responsible for handling…

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The future Pope John Paul II allowed a priest to return to priestly duties after he had served a prison sentence for self-confessed multiple cases of sexually abusing 10- and 11-year-old girls, according to archival documents and interviews published in a new book.

The revelations come amid debate in Poland over the legacy of John Paul II – a national hero not only for his spiritual leadership but also for the role he played in inspiring opposition to the communist regime – with regard to historical abuse cases in the Catholic church.

The claims emerged from a book, Maxima Culpa, by Ekke Overbeek, a Dutch journalist who is the Warsaw correspondent for the Trouw daily. It will be released next month, but an extract has been published by news magazine Duży Format.

The article focuses on the case of Józef Loranc, a priest who abused a number of girls in the village of Mutne in 1969…

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An NBC Bay Area analysis of nearly 700 lawsuits filed against Catholic institutions across Northern California over the past three years suggests the church’s child sexual abuse scandal in the region is significantly worse than the public previously knew.

More than 200 of the clergy and lay employees of the Catholic Church named in the wave of lawsuits have never been publicly accused of being sexually abusive towards children and teenagers until now, NBC Bay Area’s investigation found. Some of the newly accused continue to work as priests.

Other alleged perpetrators named in the civil filings have faced previous accusations but now face new claims, some of them dozens.

NBC Bay Area is in the process of reaching out to those accused in the lawsuits and anticipates publishing a complete list of names at the conclusion of that process.

While most local dioceses have released internal lists of suspected child…

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As the shockwaves of last week’s revelations about child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church in Portugal subside somewhat, it is worth remembering that Catholicism has been at the forefront of atrocious behavior towards children for centuries.

The Catholic Church has certainly not been the only religious or political entity involved in inhumane activity, and historical records are just a backdrop to the moral misconduct in recent decades that has at last been highlighted by those Catholics who have courageously lifted the veil of silence on abuse.

Catholic Crusaders slaughtered hundreds of Muslim and Jewish men, women and children on entering Jerusalem in 1099. The so-called ‘Children’s Crusade,’ initiated supposedly by a divine instruction, sent children to march along with women and elderly people from Europe towards the Holy Land in 1212.

This was during the Crusader wars (1095 to 1291) in which European Catholics made a series of violent…

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The story of an unusual apostasy.

For the fourth week in a row, a white ex-Catholic Buddhist sits down to teach us about humility. We, a group of six or seven teenagers, roll our eyes at each other. It’s 2013, and we’ve just left the gompa—the shrine room—of a Buddhist center in Raleigh, North Carolina, to attend youth group. The mostly white adult members will stay in the gompa to listen to the teachings of the Nepalese geshe (an advanced title earned by high-level Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns). A different parent teaches youth group every week, but a surprising percentage of them grew up Catholic and converted to Buddhism in young adulthood.

Being raised Buddhist from birth put me in a unique position among white Americans. I’ve heard white peers, professors, and Uber drivers praise Buddhism for being the only “unproblematic” religion—Buddhists typically don’t proselytize, the religion tends to accept and incorporate scientific discoveries,…

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As the shockwaves of last week’s revelations about child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church in Portugal subside somewhat, it is worth remembering that Catholicism has been at the forefront of atrocious behaviour towards children for centuries.

The Catholic Church has certainly not been the only religious or political entity involved in inhumane activity, and historical records are just a backdrop to the moral misconduct in recent decades that has at last been highlighted by those Catholics who have courageously lifted the veil of silence on abuse.

Catholic Crusaders slaughtered hundreds of Muslim and Jewish men, women and children on entering Jerusalem in 1099. The so-called ‘Children’s Crusade’, initiated supposedly by a divine instruction, sent children to march along with women and elderly people from Europe towards the Holy Land in 1212.

This was during the Crusader wars (1095 to 1291) in which European Catholics made a series of violent…

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State Senate GOP leaders say they already passed childhood sexual abuse measures as part of a package of amendments. Speaker Mark Rozzi told The Inquirer the Senate should “Stop bulls—ing people.”

The Pennsylvania House will return Tuesday for the first time in more than a month to vote on two measures to help childhood sexual abuse survivors seek justice from their abusers and the institutions that protected them.

In what House Speaker Mark Rozzi (D., Berks) called “a week for the victims,” he called the House back into a special session where they’ll be tasked with voting on only two bills: one that would propose an amendment to the state constitution and another that would change state law; both would create a two-year window for adult victims of childhood sexual assault to file civil lawsuits against their abusers or the institutions that protected them.

Childhood sexual abuse survivors have View Cache

Diogenes Unveiled: A Paul Mankowski Collection
Edited by Philip F. Lawler
Ignatius Press
294 Pages, $19.95

Paul Mankowski, S.J., who died unexpectedly in 2021, was a rare ecclesiastical commodity. He pursued expertise in philology because, as he put it, the meanings of words form the battle lines in the Church. He was an old-fashioned Jesuit with an extraordinary gift for raucously intelligent satire. His literary talents ranked alongside those of his exemplar, Evelyn Waugh. Diogenes Unveiled is a compilation of Mankowski’s internet posts, gathered by Philip Lawler. This book should be required reading in seminaries everywhere.

Although Mankowski was always upright and obedient, his superiors considered him a problem child. Today’s Jesuits—with some notable exceptions—rarely make a compelling defense of Catholic orthodoxy. Mankowski’s “transgressions” included his stands on such hot-button issues as abortion, homosexuality, women’s ordination, and celibacy—all covered in this book. His Jesuit authorities found his dissent…

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Thousands of children have been sexually abused by priests and others within the Catholic Church in Portugal since the 1950s, an independent commission announced Monday.

The commission’s final report, authorized by Portugal’s bishops’ conference, marks the first study of its kind in the overwhelmingly Catholic country and paints a grim picture of clerical abuse dating back decades.

The commission, which began its work in January last year, received a total of 564 testimonies, of which it validated 512. Many of the victims who testified said they knew of other children who also had been abused.

Taking these references into account, the commission arrived at “a more extensive network of victims, estimated at a minimum number of 4,815 children,” the group’s coordinator, psychologist Pedro Strecht, explained to journalists during a news conference Monday.

As for the total number of crimes, “it is not possible to quantify, because most of the children…

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When I learned that Auxiliary Bishop David G. O’Connell had been shot to death in his home, I felt as if I had been turned to stone. I was standing in the house he had blessed, about to head out on a long-planned trip with my youngest daughter.

Years ago, when I told him I was pregnant with her, he had laughed. “A third, at your age? Sure, you’re still a Catholic at heart.”

Over the years, O’Connell had done his best to coax me back to the church. Though it never quite worked, he achieved something more miraculous: He restored my faith in faith.

I don’t know many people who have lived a life of loving service without that love at some point becoming bitter. Or without turning away from service and toward power. But I did know David O’Connell. Not well enough to begin to understand why someone would…

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Prosecutors describe ‘lavish lifestyle’; amorous relationship and purchase of a Porsche

Following on from the ignominy of last week’s dossier into child sex abuse within the Portuguese Catholic Church, the institution has been visited by new ‘scandal’ – again, very close to home.

This time it centres on a priest in charge of two Greater Lisbon parishes (Greater Lisbon being one of the mainland areas worst affected by the endemic sexual deviances of priests). 

But Father Arsénio Isidoro is not accused of molesting children: his alleged crime is diverting funds destined for children (in need/ at risk) and the elderly, for his own personal delectation. 

Say reports, public prosecutors have accused him of plundering €800,000, with a ‘female accomplice’ with whom he was having an amorous relationship.

The money is understood to have been lavished on various luxuries, including a Porsche motorcar costing €167,000.

To be fair, the popular press is often peppered with alleged misdemeanors of the…

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[Google translation followed by original Italian text]

In recent months the Referent Team for cases of complaints against Jesuits of the Delegation for Roman Interprovincial Houses and Works of the Society of Jesus ( DIR ) has received several new testimonies and complaints regarding Fr. Marko Rupnik. All the people involved who expressed a desire to be met by the Referent Team were listened to. The Father Delegate, Johan Verschueren, S.J. he is extremely grateful to all the people who have had the strength to tell their experiences, sometimes with the inner suffering of having to bring out many painful episodes again. People are really gods and “ survivors (and ” given the harm they told they had suffered.

Many of these people have no knowledge of each other and the facts narrated concern different periods ( Loyola Community, single people who declare themselves spiritually abused in conscience, psychologically or sexually harassed…

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The Society of Jesus said Tuesday it will open a new internal procedure on Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik after receiving abuse accusations with a “very high” degree of credibility against the artist.

According to a Feb. 21 statement on the Jesuit website, the accusations the religious order received span from 1985 to 2018, and include claims of spiritual, psychological, and sexual abuse, and abuse of conscience.

Rupnik, 68, has been informed of the accusations, but has refused to meet to discuss them with the order, the statement said.

The order said the internal procedure is in the beginning stages, but possible results could include further restrictions on Rupnik’s ministry up to and including his dismissal from religious life.

During the internal procedure, the Slovenian priest’s ministry will remain under restrictions, the Society of Jesus said. Going forward, Rupnik also is barred from performing any public artistic activity, especially…

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Pope Francis’ Jesuit religious order has decided to prohibit a prominent Jesuit artist whose mosaics decorate churches around the globe from pursuing his artistic activity after 15 more people came forward with fresh accusations against him of spiritual, sexual and psychological abuse.

The Jesuits told The Associated Press that they are weighing further disciplinary measures against the Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik following a third church investigation into allegations he used his exalted status as one of the Catholic Church’s preeminent religious artists to manipulate adult women into sexual activity.

While defrocking technically remains an option, alternative measures could include removing him from the art community he founded in Rome and isolating him in a monk-like life of penance and prayer so he is no longer a threat to women, said Rupnik’s superior, the Rev. Johan Verschueren.

“Naturally the first thing for me to be vigilant about is to do everything…

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The Roman Catholic religious order of Jesuits said on Tuesday that accusations of sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse against a prominent member of the order were highly credible and that restrictions on him had been tightened.

The order said on its website that it would start an “internal procedure” against the priest, Father Marko Ivan Rupnik, 69, a well-known religious artist.

About 25 people, mostly former nuns, have accused Rupnik of various forms of abuse, either when he was a spiritual director of a community of nuns in his native Slovenia about 30 years ago, or after he moved to Rome to pursue his career as an artist.

Rupnik has not spoken publicly of the accusations, which have rattled the worldwide order, of which the pope is a member, and the Vatican since breaking into the open in November.

His superior in the order, Father Johan Verschueren, said Rupnik had…

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Pope Francis revealed a slightly wary take on papal resignations in a candid conversation with his fellow Jesuits during a recent trip to Africa, saying he believes the papacy is for life and that stepping down should not become a habit in Catholicism.

The pope was in Africa Jan. 31-Feb. 5, visiting both the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan. He was originally supposed to make the trip last summer but was unable to do so due to his ongoing knee troubles.

During the trip, he met privately with Jesuits serving in both the DRC and South Sudan. In each meeting, he was asked about his thoughts on papal resignation and whether he was considering it himself, and in each meeting, he said no.

Speaking to 82 Jesuits gathered for his Feb. 2 meeting in Kinshasa, Francis said, as he has in past interviews, that he wrote a letter…

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Paedophile priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale has been charged with indecently assaulting a boy during the late 1980s.

Ridsdale, who has sexually assaulted dozens of child victims, was excused from appearing in Horsham Magistrates Court on Monday.

The 89-year-old is facing one charge over an allegation he indecently touched the child at St Brigid’s College in Horsham between July 1987 and May 1988.

Ridsdale, who is behind bars, is due to face Ballarat Magistrates Court on March 2.

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A priest who kept a stack of child porn in the vicarage and was about to adopt a set of twins has been banned from the Church of England for life. 

Tom Donaghey was banned from the church for life after police found thousands of indecent images during a raid at his former marital home in Baxenden in Blackburn Diocese, Lancashire. 

The 56-year-old, who was about to adopt young twins with his wife, was suspended from his duties at Baxenden St John Church after the raid and subsequent arrest in November 2020. 

In 2021, he was spared a prison sentence and handed down a community order after admitting three counts of making indecent images of children and one of possessing extreme pornographic images. 

Donaghey, who was also chaplain at St Christopher’s High School in Accrington, admitted his guilt to officers before any of his devices were examined. 

Police found…

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Inside real-life ‘religious’ boarding schools where Native Americans were ‘conditioned’ to be white – and where Hundreds died amid rampant abuse – as Yellowstone prequel brings horrors to life

• The drama 1923 details the abuse that went on within church and government-run boarding schools
• In 2012, the U.S. Interior Department launched an investigation to look at what happened decades ago
• It uncovered that between 1819 and 1969 more than 500 students died at US operated Indian schools

The Yellowstone prequel spinoff 1923 offers insight into one of the darkest periods of Indigenous American history, during a time when horrific government-sanctioned abuse took place under the guise of education and religion.

While the plotline of the Montana-set drama might be fictional, the physical and emotional abuse that is witnessed at a Catholic boarding school for Indigenous American youth and attended by Teonna Rainwater – played by Aminah Nieves – is based on real-life…

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Both priests are retired

Allegations of sexual abuse of a minor were substantiated against two Catholic priests in the Diocese of Buffalo Friday.

Rev. Daniel Palys and Rev. Msgr. Ronald Sciera were previously removed from ministry following allegations of abuse, according to the diocese. Both priests are now retired.

Rev. Palys was removed from ministry in 2018 as result of an allegation of abuse that had been substantiated. Msgr. Sciera was placed on administrative leave in September 2021.

The decision comes following an investigation and report by the Diocesan Review Board, a group of clergy and lay Catholics appointed by the bishop to review sexual abuse cases for the diocese.

Both men were named in Child Victims Act lawsuits. Palys faces three suits while Sciera faces one.

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Priests and others within the Portuguese Catholic Church sexually abused more than 4,000 children over the past 70 years, and more than 100 priests suspected of child sexual abuse are still active in church roles, investigators estimate.

An investigation report published this month by the Independent Commission for the Study of Child Sexual Abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church found that priests and others have likely sexually abused 4,812 children within the church since 1950.

Through an online survey, investigators validated 512 victim witness statements and “estimate that the 512 victims knew of or were in contact with close to 4,300 other victims.”

“[T]he vast majority of cases took place on more than one occasion against the same child, to many thousands of instances of abuse,” the report states.

In a statement, Bishop Josè Ornelas apologized for the church’s failure to grasp the extent of the problem, promising…

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Why I’m not engaging with the SBC’s Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force (whew, that’s a mouthful) has asked for my “input.” Here’s why, at least for now, I’m choosing NOT to engage with them in any direct or formal way.

They’re asking for survivor “input” on how to plug the holes in a system that is designed to have holes. At best, that’s an exercise in frustration. The holes aren’t a bug; they’re a feature.

Although I believe some individuals are well-intentioned, I see little reason to believe the institution is truly committed to doing what’s right and what’s needed. For starters, if it were truly committed to accountability for abusers and care for survivors, it would be spending a lot more money and acting much faster. But they’re trying to address this on the cheap.

“Without transformation, there’s no repentance. There’s only the same…

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KEY POINTS

1. The priest, Ilya Spirov, was given only 120 hours of correctional labor
2. The pedophile admitted guilty to his relationship with the child
3. He had sex with the child at least six times between 2021 and 2022

A Russian Orthodox priest has been sentenced to only 120 hours of correctional labor after having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl.

The priest, however, continues to pursue the girl and seeks to deprive the victim’s mother of parental rights, according to a report by Insider Russia.

Ilya Spirov, an active priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, fully admitted his guilt and reportedly repented, resulting in a lighter sentence under Article 134.1 of the Criminal Code.

“Considering the nature and degree of social significance of the crime committed, […] to impose on him a penalty of 120 hours of correctional labor,” the Aug. 23 verdict said, as quoted by…

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A Florida church being targeted by the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) Credentials Committee for platforming disgraced pastor Johnny Hunt is now threatening legal action against the SBC.

The church—Hiland Park Baptist Church in Panama City, Florida—was recently placed under inquiry by the Credentials Committee for actions allegedly out of step with the SBC’s stance on sexual abuse. Hunt, a former SBC president who’s accused of sexual assault, joined Hiland Park Baptist last summer, after leaving his longtime church in the Atlanta area, First Baptist Woodstock.

In a letter dated Wednesday, Hiland Park leadership stated it is discussing the inquiry with legal counsel “in pursuance of all our legal recourses.” The church added that there is “no proof whatsoever” that Hunt has “committed sexual abuse.” And it claimed the inquiry “violates every historic norm” about Southern Baptist church autonomy.

Hiland Park’s leadership argued that the Credentials…

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Was I guilty of ­negligence in the conspiracy of silence that allowed the abuse to ­continue?

The presence of the monks, once considered Ampleforth’s greatest asset, has become its greatest handicap, says a former head boy. The irony is that the college’s disastrous response to its abuse crisis was rooted in a distortion of the merits that in other ways made the place so special.

 When the first stories about abuse at Ampleforth began to surface in the press – in the early 2000s – I had a call from Dom Dominic Milroy, who had taught me French (inspiringly) during my schooldays, and later became headmaster. I had always got on well with him, and he said he wanted some advice, suggesting we meet in a discreet restaurant near King’s Cross before he hopped on his train back north. Over lunch he asked whether I had any ideas about how…

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Alleged victims claim they were assaulted in the dark basement of an orphanage in the 1960s

Two men have sued the Catholic Diocese of Dallas and a charity in Texas over the alleged cover-up of their sexual assault.

The victims, who have not been named in the lawsuit filed last week, say they were sexually assaulted by Reverend Henry McGill at the Dunne Memorial Home for Boys orphanage between 1962 and 1971, the Dallas Morning News reported.

They claimed a nun by the name of Sister Mary Bridgette would give them alcohol before leaving them in a dark basement, where they were then assaulted.

McGill died at the age of 84 in 1996. His name was included in a list of priests credibly accused of sexual assault released by the diocese in 2019.

The men are now seeking more than $1m in damages. They argue in the lawsuit…

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The Diocese of Knoxville says that documents emerging during a cover-up lawsuit could prejudice a jury against Bishop Rick Stika.

The Diocese of Knoxville asked a judge last week to shield documents from the public record, as the diocese fights back against a lawsuit which claims that Bishop Rick Stika covered up an allegation of sexual assault against a seminarian, while defaming the seminarian’s alleged victim.

In a motion filed Jan. 31, the diocese asked the court to seal from public access any subpoenaed documents that pertain to the diocesan review board, to priest meetings of the diocese, and to a Vatican-ordered Vos estis lux mundi investigation in the Tennessee diocese.

Those documents would include diocesan documents, and those which might be subpoenaed from other sources, including the Knoxville clerics who made the Vos estis complaints

The diocese argued that a protective order is needed for a fair outcome to the lawsuit, because of…

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CIUDAD DEL VATICANO (AP) — The Associated Press tuvo una larga entrevista con el papa Francisco el martes 24 de enero. A continuación la transcripción:

Francisco: Disponga usted, disponga usted. Usted es la que sabe el tiempo del programa, ¿no?

AP: Santo Padre, le entregamos más tarde unos regalos. Pero antes de comenzar, quería entregarle esta imagen de uno de nuestros fotógrafos en Ucrania, puesto que resume muy bien lo que hacemos nosotros, Associated Press. Esa foto que le entrega la colega fue tomada en la ciudad de Mariúpol en las primeras semanas de la guerra. Nuestros compañeros permanecieron allí cuando el resto de la prensa se marchó. Y las imágenes del bombardeo de ese hospital de maternidad que dieron la vuelta al mundo mostraban la brutalidad de lo que ocurrió. Y cómo muchos civiles inocentes estaban siendo asesinados.

Tras el ataque, nuestro equipo tomó muchos riesgos para localizar a…

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A Jonesville man who fled to the Philippines to avoid prosecution on dozens of child sex abuse charges last summer is back in custody in Michigan after being extradited back to the United States. 

Tye Braxton Stiger, 36, made his initial appearance in the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan in Grand Rapids on Tuesday, Feb. 14, after a federal grand jury indicted him on charges of two counts of sexual exploitation of a child, two counts of attempted sexual exploitation of a minor and one count of possession of child pornography. 

“These sexual exploitation and child pornography allegations are extremely disturbing and serious,” said U.S. Attorney Mark Totten. “My office is committed to protecting our youngest and most vulnerable citizens – our children.”

The Hillsdale County Prosecutor’s Office referred the matters to the U.S. Attorney’s Office last summer after issuing a 34-count warrant for his…

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An Indiana Baptist pastor, Benkert played a key role in setting up an investigation into how SBC leaders have responded to the issue of abuse. He also reported a church that had platformed former SBC President Johnny Hunt, who has been credibly accused of sexual assault.

Todd Benkert, a Southern Baptist pastor who helped force reforms in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination’s sexual abuse policies, has stepped down from a task force he was appointed to last year to implement those reforms.

Benkert’s role on the committee became controversial this week due to a public dispute involving a Florida megachurch that restored SBC President Johnny Hunt to active ministry after he had been credibly accused of sexual assault.

Hunt was one of a number of SBC leaders named in a 2022 report from the investigative firm Guidepost Solutions hired by the denomination in 2021 to resolve long-running conflicts over sexual abuse. The report…

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When popes talk about sex, it tends to make headlines.

This was certainly true when Pope Francis told the Associated Press last month, “Being homosexual isn’t a crime.” He said the Catholic Church opposes criminalizing homosexuality and that, “We are all children of God, and God loves us as we are.” The pope then noted that homosexual activity is “not a crime. Yes, but it’s a sin.”

The pope immediately responded to questions from Outreach.faith, a website serving LGBTQ Catholics. Francis explained: “I was simply referring to Catholic moral teaching, which says that every sexual act outside of marriage is a sin. … This is to speak of ‘the matter’ of sin, but we know well that Catholic morality not only takes into consideration the matter, but also evaluates freedom and intention; and this, for every kind of sin.”

The timing was striking since the AP interview ran on Jan….

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Pennsylvania’s top House Republican on Wednesday warned of chaos when legislators reconvene next week, six weeks after representatives elected a Democrat as House speaker and left Harrisburg without conducting any other business.

Republican Minority Leader Bryan Cutler of Lancaster County said the chamber’s 102-101 Democratic majority may not be able to solve the gridlock that has so far prevented lawmakers from so much as adopting operating rules for the 2023-24 session. Cutler himself served as House speaker before deciding in November not to seek the leadership post again.

Cutler spoke to reporters in the Rotunda Wednesday, down the corridor from a lengthy, closed-door meeting about the rules being held among Democratic House members. By sweeping three special elections last week, Democrats cemented a tiny majority, their first in 12 years. Republicans had kept a tight grip on the chamber for more than a decade, with rules that largely prevented Democrats from…

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House Minority Leader Angela Romero confirmed to FOX 13 News on Friday she’s been told her bill and others mandating clergy report abuse disclosures to law enforcement will not be advancing in the legislature. There were four bills introduced in the legislature on the topic following reports of sexual abuse within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints not being handed to law enforcement.

The Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City has been vigorously opposed to it, arguing it breaks the seal of confession. Rep. Romero, D-Salt Lake City, said she had been told the LDS Church was neutral on her bill. But she planned to bring the bill back again and again.

“There’s strong concerns from the Catholic church in particular, and I’ll still continue to move forward with these bills because I really fell like it’s important we hold people accountable if they’re harming children,” she told…

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Across Australia child sexual abuse survivors have to contend with church memorials to their abusers and those who protected them

For the past 10 years, on the grounds of one of Canberra’s most prominent Catholic schools, a small plaque has paid tribute to the service of a man named Brother Jerome Hickman. Under the school sigil of Marist College Canberra, the plaque commemorates the work of the late Hickman, honouring him along what is known as “the Brothers Way”, a walk of appreciation for past clergy and staff.

The plaque, quietly removed in recent weeks, gave no hint of his darker past.

Hickman was the subject of multiple complaints of child sexual abuse and violence spanning his career in the Marist order.

The church has long held knowledge of complaints about him and has offered payouts and apologies to survivors in out-of-court settlements, according to Kelso Lawyers, a firm specialising…

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Father Joseph ‘Jack’ Baker was church pastor in Wayne and Oakland counties

Sentencing has again been delayed for a Catholic priest convicted last October of raping a child in 2004.

The sentencing hearing for Joseph “Father Jack” Baker, 61, has been moved from Feb. 17 to March 1 in Wayne County’s 3rd Circuit Court in Detroit. Sentencing will be handed down by Judge Bridget Hathaway.

Baker is held in the Wayne County Jail, denied bond. His sentencing hearing has been rescheduled multiple times since his trial concluded Oct. 13, 2022 with a guilty verdict for first-degree criminal conduct – sexual penetration with a person less than 13 years old.

The assault happened while Baker was pastor of St. Mary Catholic School in Wayne. His victim was a second-grade student there who came forward a few years ago, saying Baker raped him in the church sacristy.

Baker was pastor of St….

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A CATHOLIC Church Commission has concluded after only six months of investigating child sexual abuse by priests in Portugal that only 4,815 victims were identified, but said it was the tip of a great iceberg of abuse that is yet to be revealed. The report of the commission was published on Feb. 13, 2023. Critics and supporters of clerical child abuse victims said there were many thousands more victims, not given the opportunity to come forward. The victims were mostly boys 10 to 14 years old.

Several bishops and priests in Portugal who have been accused of child abuse are still in their church duties and positions, and allegedly flout the Vatican law supported by Pope Francis, whereby the civil authorities should investigate and prosecute such allegations. A shocking report in France in January 2022 found approximately 3,000 Catholic priests and religious authorities had sexually abused over 200,000 children since…

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Insisting the case against Rock Church International Pastor John Blanchard remains strong enough to convict him of prostitution charges, Chesterfield County Police Chief, Col. Jeffrey S. Katz of Virginia, publicly disagreed with the decision of Commonwealth Attorney Stacey Davenport to drop the charges against the pastor, arguing that the case should have gone to trial.

Blanchard was among 17 men accused of solicitation of prostitution after an online sting operation by police on Oct. 29, 2021. The married father of two was charged with solicitation of prostitution of a minor and use of a vehicle to promote prostitution which are both felonies. He was arrested at a hotel where he was supposed to meet a detective posing as a 17-year-old girl.

After almost a year of legal maneuvering, the charges against Blanchard were withdrawn or nolle prossed ahead of a criminal trial in…

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A special prosecutor has been appointed in the case against John Blanchard, pastor of Rock Church International in Virginia Beach, who previously saw charges against him dismissed by prosecutors a year after his 2021 arrest during an undercover child sex crimes sting.

This move comes after the Chesterfield County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office in Virginia decided to unseal documents in the case after emails emerged shedding new light on the reason for dropping the charges in 2022 and revealed previously unknown evidence, according to media reports.

William Blaine Jr. is the special prosecutor to review the case, NBC’s Richmond affiliate WWBT reported. 

Republican state Delegate Tim Anderson, who represents the Virginia Beach area where Rock Church Internation is located, obtained emails through a Freedom of Information Act request with Chesterfield Police that revealed why Blanchard’s case was treated differently from others arrested for soliciting prostitution from a minor, according…

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An Indiana pastor who reported two congregations to the Southern Baptist Convention’s Credentials Committee for platforming accused sexual abuser Johnny Hunt has resigned from the SBC’s Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force.

Todd Benkert’s sudden resignation from the task force came just two days after one of the reported congregations, Hiland Park Baptist Church in Panama City Beach, Fla., declared it would not be accountable to the Credentials Committee and cast doubt on the report of an independent investigation that found credible evidence Hunt abused a pastor’s wife shortly after ending his term as SBC president.

Despite Hunt’s fall from grace in the SBC and his resignation as executive vice president of the SBC’s North American Mission Board, there remains a group of Hunt allies and friends in the SBC who have denied the documented allegations against him or downplayed their significance.

Benkert is not among those. Instead, he has been a fierce…

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In August 2022, AP News released a story detailing how a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints knew about child sexual abuse and didn’t report it to authorities. The child abuse continued for seven years. That story spawned reactions of “dismay, disgust and anger.” It also prompted discussion of the role of clergy and if they should be mandatory reporters of child abuse.

This legislative session, three bills have been introduced on the topic of clergy mandatory reporting. While all these bills have good intentions, only one — H.B. 115 — does enough to combat child abuse.

Child Sex Abuse and the LDS Church

In Utah, mandatory reporting laws make everyone responsible for reporting child abuse, with just a few exceptions. Those exceptions exists for clergy who learn about child abuse or neglect from a perpetrator while acting in a ministerial role. The goal of this exception in Utah, and…

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J.J. Wright, director of the University of Notre Dame Folk Choir, has already undertaken several ambitious large-scale music projects.

Most of them, such as 2019’s “Vespers for the Immaculate Conception,” recorded with the Fifth House Ensemble and St. Patrick’s Cathedral Choir, combined sacred choral music and improvised jazz. His new work for the Notre Dame Folk Choir is “The Passion,” a 90-minute description of the events leading to the death of Jesus Christ.

There is no jazz this time around, but the spirit of improvisation permeates the work. For some passages, the musicians play a loose set of chord changes, deciding on the details themselves. The singers get to do the same.

“Even some of the choir parts have aleatoric sections,” Wright says, referring to what’s also known as “chance music,” where the composer gives the performer the freedom to…

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For decades, leaders of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination mistreated survivors of sexual abuse, labeling them as troublemakers and enemies of their church while claiming there was little the leaders could do to address abuse in local congregations, often in the name of protecting their vast missionary operations.

Then, in the summer of 2021, Southern Baptists had had enough.

Angered over a groundbreaking newspaper investigation of abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention and over concerns that SBC leaders continued to mistreat survivors despite promising to do better, Southern Baptists overruled their leaders, called for an in-depth investigation into their actions and, after receiving the report of that investigation in 2022, passed a series of reforms aimed to help prevent abuse and to care for survivors.

Among those reforms: building a “Ministry Check” database to track abusive pastors, providing…

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Survivors and family members of victims of sexual abuse at Kanakuk camps testified at a hearing before the Missouri House Judiciary Committee regarding a bill proposed by local state Rep. Brian Seitz to change laws to help survivors of childhood sexual assault.

The bill, H.B. 367, creates a cause of action for vulnerable victims to allow filing civil actions at any time before the victim is 55-years-old, and for situations which had been dismissed because of statute of limitation issues before the passage of the bill to be revived.

“This legislation is most serious,” Rep. Seitz said in his testimony. “Through no fault of their own, children and/or the medically disabled who have been abused in the past are being abused again by not being able to hold their perpetrators to account in civil actions.”

Seitz referred to the victims of Kanakuk who would be testifying.

“I bring this bill…

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An independent commission’s report on the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church in Portugal “points to the urgent need to combat whatever fosters silence from those who have been impacted by abuse,” said Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley of Boston.

Silence “impedes effective prevention and the administration of justice,” said the cardinal, who is president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

In a statement released at the Vatican Feb. 17, Cardinal O’Malley thanked the commission members and the Portuguese bishops who launched the study, but mostly the victims and survivors who came forward, many telling their stories for the first time.

“Our concern should first and foremost be with the victims, whose right to justice and to adequate care needs to be a common priority,” the cardinal said.

The commission’s report, released Feb. 13, examined the period of 1950 to 2022; all dioceses and religious orders…

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The Buffalo Diocese has added a retired priest to its list of clergy with “substantiated claims” of sexual abuse of a minor.

Monsignor Ronald Sciera was put on administrative leave following a 2021 Child Victims Act lawsuit claiming he molested a 13-year-old boy nearly 50 years ago. Sciera in a 2021 interview with The News denied sexually abusing anyone and said the claim was false.

In a statement Friday, the diocese said Bishop Michael W. Fisher determined that accusations against Sciera, 88, had been substantiated.

The bishop made his decision after an investigation and recommendations by a review board that consists mostly of lay Catholic professionals, including a retired judge, a licensed clinical social worker and a retired banking executive. 

Fisher previously suspended Sciera, who lives in Florida, from performing any public ministry as a priest, a restriction that the monsignor’s lawyer tried to have reversed with an…

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Religion and government must coexist within a society of laws and norms. And when they intersect, society should determine which entity is serving the greater good.

The state Legislature is in the midst of a debate over House Bill 1098, which would make clergy members mandatory reporters of child abuse and sexual assault. The bill places the humanity of children over any religious practice that would allow a clergy member to withhold knowledge of child abuse — current or in the past. 

Lobbyists for the Catholic Church support the Senate version of the bill that would exempt clergy from reporting any knowledge of abuse gained during the sacrament of confession. That loophole would prevent the enforcement of the bill and place innocent lives in peril. Sponsored by Rep. Amy Walen, the House version would not include the loophole and would require reporting of alleged abuse, including of that learned through…

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The lawsuit alleges the men were sexually assaulted by a priest while under the care of the diocese and the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word at the Dunne Memorial Home for Boys in the 1960s.

Two Tarrant County men are suing the Catholic Diocese of Dallas and the Houston-based Sisters of Charity of theIncarnate Word over sexual abuse they say they suffered as children in the 1960s at an Oak Cliff orphanage.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in Dallas County, alleges the institutions failed to protect children in their care and covered up the abuse. It seeks more than $1 million in damages.

The Dallas diocese recently learned of the lawsuit and is reviewing it, spokeswoman Katy Kiser said.

“The Diocese takes all claims of abuse very seriously, and we continue to offer our prayers to all victims of abuse,” she said in a written statement.

The Sisters of…

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Several bishops and priests accused of child abuse are still doing duties in Church positions

A Catholic Church Commission has concluded after only six months of investigating child sexual abuse by priests in Portugal that only 4,815 victims were identified but said that it was the tip of a great iceberg of abuse that has yet to be revealed.

The commission report was published on Feb. 13. Critics and supporters of clerical child abuse victims said that there were many thousands more victims not given the opportunity to come forward. The victims were mostly boys 10 to 14 years old.

Several bishops and priests accused of child abuse are still doing duties in Church positions and allegedly flout the Vatican law supported by Pope Francis whereby civil authorities should investigate and prosecute such allegations.

A shocking report in France in January 2022 found approximately 3,000 Catholic priests and religious authorities…

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A catholic school teacher in Escanaba has been fired after an investigation into boundary violations with a student.

The Diocese of Marquette said Wednesday that the person whose employment was terminated is not a priest. He was an employee of the school. The school has not identified the teacher.

The Diocese says no criminal charges have been filed by authorities, however, the teacher’s employment at Holy Name Catholic School in Escanaba was terminated after violations of diocesan safe environment policies were discovered. He was originally suspended due to allegations of boundary violations.

Michigan Child Protective Services and Escanaba Public Safety were notified and are investigating. The school is fully cooperating with the investigation.

Along with background checks and ongoing monthly training, employees and volunteers are required to follow safe environment policies and procedures designed to make schools and church properties safe for children and young people.

On Sunday night, Jan….

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The 19 elderly women allege as troubled teens they were subjected to compulsory labor by Sisters of the Good Shepherd

Nineteen elderly women in the Netherlands on Friday accused an order of Catholic nuns of years of forced labour while locked up in convents, saying they were “abused on industrial scale”.

The case before the Haarlem District Court relates to some 15,000 teenage Dutch girls who were the wards of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd at convents across the country from 1951 to 1979.

The women, now aged between 62 and 91, said as troubled teens they were taken in by the order and put to work, often hours on end, six days a week sewing material sold for profit, grafting in laundries or ironing.

“The Good Shepherd is responsible for the violation of one of the most fundamental human rights known to us: the prohibition of forced labour or…

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The call came into Cambridge Police headquarters on Independence Day weekend in 2019. A three-time Olympian, the caller said, had filed a complaint with the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, alleging sexual abuse by her coach, including assaults in Cambridge, when she was a girl.

The officer on duty, Sergeant Darlene Beckford Pearson, took the call from a committee official and asked for the Olympian’s name.

Lynn Jennings, she was told.

Pearson trembled. She and Jennings, one of the greatest middle-distance runners in American history, had been fast friends in the 1970s as teen stars of Greater Boston’s renowned Liberty Athletic Club. In all the years since, Pearson had guarded her own haunting secret: She too had been sexually molested as a youth by her coach.

Her hand quivering, Pearson then logged the name of Jennings’s alleged abuser: John M. Babington. A former US Olympic and  View Cache

The thorny question of what to do with the works of celebrated Church artists, writers and founders who have since been found guilty of sexually abusing vulnerable people

A book came out in 2020 (Prêtres et artistes du diocèse de Lyon: XXe-XXIe siècles) painted a a glowing portrait of the French Catholic priest and artist Louis Ribes (1920-1994), who was nicknamed “the Picasso of churches”. But less than two years later three dioceses – Lyon, Saint-Étienne and Grenoble – Lyon issued a joint press release denouncing the late priest for his sexual assault of some fifty children in the 1970s and 80s after two the victims went public.

Ribes’ trademark signature, “RIB”, now taints all his works – stained glass windows, paintings, stations of the cross… The priest from Lyon had worked in dozens of churches.

And now, at the request of a group of victims, the archdiocese of Lyon…

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The handling of the Marko Rupnik case shows the difficulty Rome has in analyzing the phenomenon of having a “hold” over someone when it concerns an adult

Numerous messages were posted on Facebook at the end of December 2022, a few days after several Italian websites and newspapers revealed what quickly became the Rupnik affair, named after the Slovenian Jesuit mosaicist accused by several nuns of touching and rape, against a background of a psycho-spiritual hold.

After having sexually assaulted them, the priest then heard their confessions. These are the events for which the Jesuits must close an internal investigation this Friday, February 17.

On social medias, the debate surrounding these accusations rages among Italian journalists.

One explains: “In fact, if there had been no consent, there would have been no confession and absolution of the access consenting, since they were adults. The person speaking is not just anyone:…

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Content warning: sexual abuse 

The Justice for Survivors Act, or AB 452, seeks to permanently abolish the statute of limitations in California to open the doors to justice for childhood survivors of sexual abuse.

AB 452 was introduced by state Senator Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, and state Assemblymember Dawn Addis, D-Morro Bay. The bill is a byproduct of AB 218, which suspended the statute of limitations on childhood sexual abuse cases for three years while it was in effect, according to Founding President of Dordulian Law Group Samuel Dordulian. When AB 218 expired Dec. 31, the statute of limitations reverted to the age of 40.

Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, support coordinator Melanie Sakoda said the issue with the temporary opportunity presented by AB 218 is that people are not always ready to come forward or they simply miss the deadline.

“It takes an extremely long time…

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St. Louis University chess coach and grandmaster Alejandro Ramirez is under investigation by U.S. Chess officials for sexual assault and harassment of at least one person: a U.S. women’s chess champion who went public with the allegations on Wednesday.

Jennifer Shahade, a two-time women’s champion and a program director for U.S. Chess, said in a Twitter post she was sexually assaulted by Ramirez on two occasions a decade ago, and in recent years has heard from multiple women with similar accusations.

“When it was just me I didn’t feel like I had an obligation to report it,” Shahade said in an interview Thursday night. “When it turned out that it affects younger people … I felt ethically compelled to bring my experiences to light to help bring credibility to their stories.”

The allegations threaten to be the second national chess scandal centered in St. Louis in less than six months,…

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An Aroostook County man has filed the latest civil complaint against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland. The lawsuit comes on the heels of a judge’s order this week upholding a law that allows Mainers to sue for past childhood sexual abuse, regardless of when it occurred.

The man, who is now in his 40s and filed the lawsuit under the name “John SB Doe,” says he was sexually abused by the Rev. Angelo LeVasseur on a summer trip with the priest to Quebec in the early 1990s.

His attorneys, Jessica Arbour and Michael Bigos, believe this is the first time LeVasseur has been publicly accused of sexually abusing a child.

LeVasseur died in 2009 at the age of 56.

More than a dozen other people in Maine have filed complaints against the diocese, thanks to a 2021 law that made it…

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If you or someone you know needs resources or support related to sexual violence, contact the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault’s 24/7 hotline at 800-871-7741.

A 45-year-old Aroostook County man is the latest Mainer to sue the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland and its bishop for alleged sexual abuse by a priest decades ago.

The plaintiff, identified in the complaint as John SB Doe, claims that the Rev. Angelo LeVasseur, who died of cancer in 2009 at age 56, sexually abused him once in July 1991 or 1992 on a trip to Quebec City, where the priest had been invited to celebrate the Feast Day of Saint Anne at the Basilica of Sainte Anne de Beaupre. Doe was 14 or 15 at the time the abuse allegedly occurred.

At the time, LeVasseur was assigned to St. Luce Catholic Church in Frenchville and ran the diocese’s Christian Life Center there.

This is believed to be the…

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There’s another lawsuit against Maine’s Catholic Diocese accusing a priest of sexual abuse decades ago.

The complaint says Rev. Angelo Levasseur, who was a priest in Frenchville, took a boy in his early teens to a religious event in Quebec in the early 1990s.

Attorneys say Levasseur and the boy shared a hotel room, where he gave the teen alcohol and encouraged him to take off his clothes.

The alleged victim says Levasseur forced him into sexual contact, which left the boy shocked and confused.

CBS13 reached out to the diocese for comment, but we have not heard back.

Attorneys say Levasseur was assigned all over Maine during his time with the diocese, from southern, central and northern parts of the state.

He died in 2009.

This is the 14th lawsuit filed against the diocese recently after Maine overturned the statute of limitations on claims of sexual abuse, a law…

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The reorganization plan for the Harrisburg Catholic Diocese has been approved following a settlement hearing on Wednesday in federal bankruptcy court.

The settlement is the culmination of years of litigation, following the 2018 Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report into child sex abuse in the Catholic Church across Pennsylvania. That report found hundreds of children had been abused at the hands of priests for decades, while being covered up by the church.

The plan set aside $18.25 million for 59 survivors who filed lawsuits against the diocese.

An attorney for the claimants tells CBS 21 that money will be placed into a trust, and a third party attorney will figure out how that money is allocated to the survivors. The attorney said it would be based on the survivors’ stories.

The Harrisburg Diocese filed for bankruptcy in February of 2020. In the original filing, church leaders only claimed between $1 and $10…

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(For Immediate Release February 15, 2023) 

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg received court approval of a bankruptcy plan that establishes an $18.25 million trust to pay clergy abuse victims and puts in place stipulated child protection protocols. Nearly three years after they first filed for bankruptcy, church officials from the Diocese of Harrisburg, PA have released details on their plan to compensate survivors. Unsurprisingly, this plan is clearly more about protecting assets and secrets than it is providing restorative justice to adults who were traumatized as children by church employees.

The simple fact is that monetary reparations for a lifetime of bearing the pain of abuse is pittance in the grand scheme of things, especially given the vast wealth of the church. There is no way to make up for the lifelong suffering brought on by sexual assault, and the sham that is Harrisburg church…

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NEW YORK – With 26 commitments across three separate pastoral letters, the Canadian bishops have, albeit only in broad strokes, outlined how they plan to honor a pledge to embark “into a new era of reconciliation” with the nation’s indigenous peoples.

The pastoral letters, released by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops on Feb. 8, were sent to the First Nations, the Inuit of Canada, and Métis Indigenous Peoples. The commitments made vary slightly from letter to letter, but largely focus on deepening dialogue, working with community leaders to address social challenges, education, engaging indigenous youth and supporting advocacy efforts.

Also expressed in the letters was a pledge to fulfill a 2021 financial commitment to donate $30 million over a five year period to “support healing and reconciliation initiatives for residential school survivors, their families, and their communities.”

To date, about $9.35 million has been raised through the Indigenous Reconciliation…

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We devote considerable time and energy to exposing child-molesting clerics in this space. However, there’s a kind of criminal who arguably does even more harm than a sexual predator. A murderer. This week, a Buffalo newspaper reported that Fr. John D. Lewandowski was sent to a church mansion (where several abusive priests lived), where homicide detectives questioned and fingerprinted him as a suspect in the murder of a fellow priest. Fr. Lewandowski now faces at least four civil child sex abuse lawsuits. That got us thinking about other murders that are associated with predator priests. There are a surprising number of such cases.

1. In 2022, Fr. Ryan Erickson was listed on a Michigan Diocese’s ‘credibly accused’ list. A special hearing in 2005 found there was ‘probable cause’ to rule he likely murdered Dan O’Connell and James Ellison. (Fr. Erickson admitted the killings to…

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70 bishops were asked to collaborate, but only 29 have responded

OVIEDO, Spain – Spain’s attorney general said on Thursday that the country’s bishops are withholding information related to an ongoing investigation into sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

Alvaro Garcia Ortiz said that “in light of the very little information received,” the Spanish justice system will send letters to the Catholic dioceses “in the coming days, ”imploring them to send data on abuses that the prosecutors are still missing.

In November, 70 dioceses, or religious districts under the control of a bishop, were asked to inform state prosecutors about any sexual abuses that they were aware of.

Garcaa Ortiz said only 29 have replied and that most of the replies contained minimal information.

Spain’s requests in November came after the Spanish Episcopal Conference refused to send the relevant information on sexual abuse cases, arguing…

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Jean Vanier, the renowned and beloved author, speaker and founder of L’Arche, an international network of residential communities supporting adults with intellectual disabilities, also was a sexual predator of women, according to a report released Jan. 30.

The report was commissioned by L’Arche International in 2020 after several women came forward with accusations of abuse by Vanier and Thomas Philippe, a Catholic priest who was Vanier’s spiritual mentor and the source of the twisted “mystico-sexual” beliefs and practices both men purveyed. His influence on Vanier and his disciples was, in fact, the impetus for the entire L’Arche project.

Titled “Control and Abuse Investigation on Thomas Philippe, Jean Vanier and L’Arche (1950-2019),” the report makes clear that the significant work of L’Arche was not impacted by the abuse that is detailed. The abuse was contained among a small group of people at L’Arche’s founding community in Trosly-Breuil, France, and did not involve…

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A federal bankruptcy court approved a reorganization plan for the Diocese of Harrisburg, Pa., Feb. 15. The settlement follows litigation from abuse survivors in the wake of the 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report into child sex abuse in the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania.

Bishop Ronald W. Gainer of Harrisburg said in a Feb. 15 statement that he made “the difficult decision” to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections three years ago “as a means of stabilizing the diocese’s financial situation, while at the same time allowing us to make restitution to survivors of clergy sexual abuse and continue our ministries.”

The bishop’s statement noted the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania confirmed Feb. 15 the “Joint Plan of Reorganization for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg,” concluding the three-year process begun Feb. 19, 2020.

Bishop Gainer said the journey was “a difficult, emotional process for many, most…

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Child sexual abuse at the hands of the Catholic clergy is plaguing several countries for decades now. The tragic tales sometimes take an entire lifetime to come to the surface. The ugly face of it, the laws behind and the system loopholes, which reek itself in injustice. Know everything about the paedophilia scandal. 

An investigation by an independent commission recently has unearthed the dirty face of child abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy in Portugal. The horrifying testimonies of the survivors become the ground of the commission’s inquiry. The commission with the help of a large network of victims was able to make a deeper cut into finding out the ongoing paedophilia in the staunchly Catholic country. 

The Portuguese inquiry which was commissioned by the church revealed that there are about 5,000 children who have become victims of child abuse since 1950. The report comes after the testimony…

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Commission’s report points to more than 100 abusers still working as priests

As the nation digests the full horror paraded yesterday of 72 years of sexual deviance within the Portuguese Catholic Church, the one positive emerging has been the belief that the institution now will be ‘better’.

The Church has not only apologised profusely to all victims, it has pledged to taking concrete and concerted steps to ensure abuse on the scale laid out by the independent commission of inquiry cannot be able to happen again.

As one leader writer put it, the Church has to be praised for supporting this ‘moral apocalypse’. In spite of the shame and disgust that revelations have heaped on the institution, it was the Church that requested this independent inquiry, and it was the Church that throughout supported its various requests.

But there are still huge questions: not least how to deal with the 100-plus priests in communities whose names appear…

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A CO ARMAGH priest accused of voyeurism by spying on a woman in a changing room was found not guilty of the charge on Wednesday.

Having heard evidence from the complainant, District Judge Bernie Kelly said she had “not been satisfied to the criminal standard” so she was dismissing the single count against Fr Aidan McCann, who was ordained as a priest in 2015.

Fr McCann, (35) with an address at the parochial house on Maddens Row in Keady, had always denied the single charge of voyeurism, alleging that on 28 March last year “for the purpose of sexual gratification, he observed a female doing a private act knowing that the other person did not consent to being observed for your sexual gratification.”

She gave evidence that she had been in a changing cubicle in Rushmere Shopping Centre when she saw her curtain twitch a number of times, leading her…

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A Church of England priest, Vicar David Renshaw, has been found guilty of eight counts of extreme pornography at Lewes Crown Court.

The 63-year-old priest who had more than 22,000 files of indecent images and videos on his hard drive, including animal pornography, has told how he wanted to “sacrifice babies to Satan” and fantasised about drugging boys with crystal meth.

His activities were traced by police, who found rotten dead animals, used needles, and drug pipes when they raided his parish home.

A spokesman for the Diocese of Chichester said Renshaw was suspended immediately after police searched his address and he has not been in active ministry since.

The Bishop of Chichester, Dr. Martin Warner, said the diocese cooperated closely with Sussex Police throughout this investigation.

Investigating officer, Detective Sergeant David Rose, said, “Throughout this investigation, Renshaw has sought to blame anyone but himself.

“He has failed to accept…

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The Catholic Church in Portugal is the latest in Europe to investigate historic cases of sex abuse. Here’s what others on the Old Continent have done.

After more than a year of interviews and investigations, Portugal’s independent commission on Church-related sexual violence against minors this week published the conclusions of its investigations. The report, which was released on Monday, looks at cases of abuse dating back to 1950.

Several other countries in Europe have already conducted similar investigations. But there are some who are still reluctant to do so. Here’s a quick look at the situation.

Portugal

In Portugal, the independent commission for the prevention of sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults was set up by the Catholic bishops’ conference in November 2021.

Composed of qualified lay people and “some non-Catholics”, the commission collected more than 500 validated testimonies, although the revelations involve a total number of victims estimated…

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Today, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg (RCDH) announced that its Chapter 11 Plan of Reorganization has been approved by the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. With this approval, the RCDH has emerged from bankruptcy, nearly three years from when this process started. The Most Reverend Ronald W. Gainer, Bishop of Harrisburg, offered the following statement on the completion of this process:

“Three years ago, I announced that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections. That difficult decision was made as a means of stabilizing the Diocese’s financial situation, while at the same time allowing us to make restitution to survivors of clergy sexual abuse and continue our ministries.

“This morning, myself and our legal counsel attended a hearing at the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, presided over by the Honorable Henry W. Van…

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Two former Saint Louis University faculty members—one who taught at the university as recently as July 2021—were added to the list of Jesuits and former Jesuits who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors or vulnerable adults. The Jesuits of the U.S. Central and Southern Province added the late Daniel Campbell and David Meconi to the list on Wednesday, Feb. 8.

Campbell was a faculty member at SLU in the 1950s, during the time of the alleged abuse. David Meconi, whose estimated time of abuse was between 2015-2016, was a former Jesuit priest, theology professor and founding director of the Catholic Studies Center. He worked at SLU up until July 2021 when the university said he was placed on leave for matters unrelated to the allegation. According to the province list, there are a total of six Jesuit priests with assignments at SLU who have credible allegations of…

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The independent commission said that over 100 priests suspected of abuse are still active in the Church.

An independent commission has published a report on child sexual abuse in the Portuguese Church, detailing cases from the 1950s up to last year.

Speaking as the report was issued on Monday, the president of the commission, Pedro Stecht, said that it had validated 512 of 564 accounts of abuse presented to it between January and October last year, which indicated a “much more extensive” number of victims.

From this data, the commission had calculated a figure of 4,815 victims at the “very minimum”, he said.

“It is not possible to quantify the total number of victims.”

The president of the Portuguese bishops’ conference, Bishop Josè Ornelas of Leira-Fátima, promised that the Church would act on the findings.

“We have heard things we cannot ignore. It is a dramatic situation we are living,” he…

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A federal bankruptcy court on Wednesday approved a plan calling for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg to establish an $18 million trust to pay settlements with victims of clergy sex abuse.

The so-called reorganization plan approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania also establishes stipulated child protection protocols.

The court decision comes nearly three years after the diocese filed for bankruptcy amid mounting claims from victims of clergy sex abuse.

Officials from SNAP – which stands for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests – decried the plans to compensate survivors focused more on protecting the church’s assets and information than providing restorative justice to adults who were traumatized as children by clergy or church employees.

“The simple fact is that monetary reparations for a lifetime of bearing the pain of abuse is pittance in the grand…

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A federal judge gave final approval Wednesday to a bankruptcy settlement that will require the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg and its insurers to provide $18.25 million in restitution to survivors of child sexual abuse in the church. 

Negotiations over the settlement spanned almost three years, with the diocese and a committee representing sexual abuse survivors reaching an agreement in November. 

Patrick Duggan, an abuse survivor who served on this committee, called Wednesday’s legal resolution “bittersweet” — noting that it secured money for damages and numerous commitments from the diocese but also leaves some survivors without the chance to confront church representatives in court.

“You don’t get the opportunity to ask two questions: Why did they pick me?” Duggan said. “And why did you cover it up?”

‘Addressing the horrors of clergy abuse’

Bishop Ronald Gainer, head of the Harrisburg diocese, said the church “recognizes and is fully committed to…

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Denver, Colo., — A Maine judge has upheld a state law that retroactively eliminates the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse lawsuits, though he acknowledged that attorneys for the Catholic Diocese of Portland raised “serious” constitutional concerns in their legal challenge.

Justice Thomas McKeon of Cumberland County Superior Court upheld a 2021 law that allowed retroactive legal claims regarding sexual abuse allegations. He rejected the argument that the new law was unconstitutional because its retroactive changes violated both due process rights and vested rights, though he said it was a “close” case, the Associated Press reported.

Attorneys for the Diocese of Portland had filed a motion to challenge the law. The motion came in the first of the civil lawsuits now allowed under the 2021 law.

McKeon has halted lawsuit proceedings so that attorneys for the diocese may appeal to Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court. They have 21 days to…

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The final report of the Independent Commission for the Study of Sexual Abuse of Children in the Catholic Church in Portugal, releases validated testimonies relating to abuse cases that occurred between 1950 and 2022 and points to over 4,800 victims.

Reacting to the final report of the Independent Commission charged with investigating sexual abuse cases of minors in the Catholic Church in Portugal, the President of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference (CEP) said his first thought is for the victims, and the second for the commission towards whom the Church is grateful for its competent, passionate and humane work.

The Commission’s 8-point report points to a minimum number of 4815 victims in 70 years. The body was set up by the Portuguese Conference to examine abuse in recent decades.

Apology

Bishop Josè Ornelas said the results will not be ignored and launched a message of reassurance to the victims pledging to…

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At least 4,815 children were sexually abused by members of the Portuguese Catholic Church – mostly priests – over the past 70 years, the commission investigating the issue said in a report on Monday, adding the findings are the “tip of the iceberg”.

“(We want) to pay a sincere tribute to those who were abuse victims during their childhood and dared to give a voice to silence,” said child psychiatrist Pedro Strecht, who headed the commission. “They are much more than a statistic.”

Most perpetrators (77%) were priests and 57% of the victims were men, Strecht said, adding that they were abused in Catholic schools, churches, priests’ homes, confessionals, among other locations.

The majority of the sexual abuses took place when the children were aged 10-14, with the youngest victim being just two-years-old.

Jose Ornelas, head of the Bishops’ Conference, attended the final report’s presentation and told a news conference…

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A Portuguese report published Monday estimated there have been close to 5,000 victims of clerical abuse of minors since 1950.

A report published Monday by the Independent Commission for the Study of Sexual Abuse of Children in the Catholic Church in Portugal estimated there have been close to 5,000 victims of nearly 500 abusers in the local Church since 1950.

The commission began it’s work in January 2022, and surveyed the whole of the country’s Catholic institutions, dioceses and religious orders, producing a nearly 500-page report, the first of its kind in the majority Catholic country.

In response, Bishop José Ornelas of Leiria-Fátima, the president of the Portuguese bishops’ conference, said that the commission’s report had detailed an “open wound which hurts and shames us” and promised measures by the bishops to enforce zero-tolerance on abuse in the local Church.

The report concluded with several recommendations, including extending the civil…

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A final report of the Independent Commission for the Study of Sexual Abuse of Children in the Catholic Church in Portugal revealed more than 4,800 children had been victims of clergy sexual abuse in the country from 1950 to 2022.

Responding to the report, the president of the Portuguese bishops’ conference, Bishop José Ornelas Carvalho of Leiria-Fatima, apologized to the victims and thanked the Church-sponsored commission for highlighting the abuse by Catholic clergy. He also pledged that surviving perpetrators would be removed from office.

“Zero tolerance toward abuse has to be a reality throughout the Church — we will not tolerate abuses or abusers,” Bishop Ornelas said. “This is an open wound that hurts and shames us, and we ask forgiveness from all the victims — those who courageously gave testimony, silent for so many years, and those still living with pain in the depths of their hearts.”

The report was…

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Cardinal Robert McElroy announced last week that the San Diego Diocese may have to resort to a declaration of bankruptcy in 2023 to manage the cost of hundreds of new abuse claims. The Santa Rosa Diocese in California might also declare bankruptcy, according to local media reports.

At issue, McElroy said, is a mounting number of abuse claims filed under a three-year window opened by California’s governor, which began in 2020 and expired on Dec. 31, 2022. Some of the new abuse claims brought to the diocese date back 75 years, the cardinal wrote.

More than two dozen U.S. dioceses, including two in U.S. overseas territories, have entered into bankruptcy proceedings, the vast majority in the past decade. Of those dioceses, 11 are in the midst of the proceedings as of February 2023, while 15 have completed the process.

Many dioceses have  View Cache

Yet another report has been released that shows yet another country saw thousands of their children harmed and abused by priests, nuns, and other Roman Catholic staffers. Our hearts break for the families and survivors devastated by this abuse and hope that this report leads to secular reform that will better protect children.

According to a report published by a Portuguese panel funded by the country’s Catholic bishops, approximately 5000 children were abused by Catholic clergy. According to the report, many of the molestation cases involved boys, and some of the victims were as young as two years old. One victim claimed he had been living in a “black hole” throughout his testimony. Our hearts break for him and for all the children who have endured years of abuse at the hands of adults who are supposed to be God’s trusted representatives. We commend this survivor…

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