ABUSE TRACKER

A disturbing pattern of denial and concealment emerges across sexual abuse scandals that rock secular and religious organizations. Bringing the abuse to light is a critical first step.

Locked inside the Jehovah’s Witnesses world headquarters are secret files detailing sexual abuse by members of the religious denomination. Some of those files are slowly coming to light thanks to a grand jury investigation by state Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s office that was spurred by The Inquirer.

With Shapiro scheduled to be sworn in as Pennsylvania’s 48th governor on Jan. 17, hopefully the investigation will continue at full steam. Shapiro has been fearless in taking on influential religious institutions, starting with a 2018 grand jury report of the Roman Catholic Church that detailed decades of sexual abuse by more than 300 priests in Pennsylvania.

Catholic Church doesn’t hold a monopoly on these horrific crimes.

Similar sexual abuse scandals have recently rocked other…

View Cache

“He essentially continued the cover-up,” says victims advocate David Clohessy of SNAP.

The priest sex-abuse scandal was the albatross around the neck of Pope Emeritus Benedict’s brief eight-year reign as leader of the Roman Catholic Church, according to Vatican analysts.  

Long-suppressed allegations that priests had been preying on children — and that the bishops covered up the crimes — were already roiling the church when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope in April 2005 and took Benedict as his papal name.

Like his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, Benedict also apologized to the victims and then took some steps to punish the predators. 

“I have had great responsibilities in the Catholic Church. All the greater is my pain for the abuses and the errors that occurred in those different places during the time of my mandate,” he said in February.

But critics say that the…

View Cache

All across the world, political and religious leaders, as well as activists and former colleagues and friends, are remembering the life and legacy of the late Pope Benedict XVI, hailed as one of the greatest minds and most influential figures of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Though many continue to take issue with some of Benedict’s policies on issues of morality and doctrine, and critics still question his record on fighting clerical sexual abuse, by and large the world has remembered the late pontiff as someone deeply in love with God, whose writings will continue to be developed for years to come.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hailed the world’s first German pope as a “special church leader for many, not just this country,” saying the world “has lost a formative figure of the Catholic Church, an argumentative personality, and a clever theologian.”

Speaking to Crux, Cardinal Oswald Gracias, the Archbishop…

View Cache

The zenith of his influence was there even before he was elected pope and it lasted after his renunciation of the papacy.

For a member of the Catholic clergy, the election to the papacy represents the zenith of his influence — his pontificate, the period of most influential and consequential activity. This was not the case for Pope Benedict XVI, who died Saturday at age 95. It wasn’t because he was the first pope in modern Catholicism to renounce the papal office. It’s because the zenith of his influence was there even before he was elected pope and it lasted after his renunciation of the papacy. His pontificate was, paradoxically, not the peak but almost an interlude.

Joseph Ratzinger became a brand in the 1970s when his interpretation of Vatican II — which updated the Church’s traditions, including ending the requirement that Mass be said in Latin and opening up…

View Cache

For Immediate Release, 12/31/2022

Pope Benedict XVI will be remembered for his failure to achieve what should have been his job one: to rectify the incalculable harm done to the hundreds of thousands of children sexually abused by Catholic priests. When he resigned as Pope, he left hundreds of culpable bishops in power and a culture of secrecy intact.

The tragedy is that in refusing to enact needed reforms, he ended up hurting the faith he cherished. Had he punished cover-up and abuse as sternly as he did doctrinal violations, the Church’s abuse crisis might have ended under his watch.

Benedict’s public statements on the crisis sparked hope. When he traveled to the US in April 2008, he promised that the Church would do “whatever possible to help, to assist, to heal” victims. In February 2010, meeting with Irish bishops, he called child sexual abuse “heinous.” A month later,…

View Cache

A federal bankruptcy judge on Thursday approved a $121 million reorganization plan for one of the oldest Roman Catholic dioceses in the U.S. as it tries to stem financial losses from clergy abuse claims that date back decades.

The Archdiocese of Santa Fe in New Mexico said U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma confirmed the agreement during a hearing in which he commended the parties for working through what had been an arduous process.

In a statement, Archbishop John C. Wester thanked the panel of abuse survivors who represented fellow survivors in their claims against the archdiocese. He described it as challenging work as the group continued to deal with the aftermath of their own abuse.

“While I hope and pray that the bankruptcy outcome will bring a measure of justice and relief to the victims of clergy sexual abuse, I realize that nothing can ever compensate them for the criminal…

View Cache

His efforts to rid the church of what he called “filth” went further than those of John Paul II, but he was reluctant to hold bishops accountable.

The clerical sex abuse scandal broke under Pope John Paul II in the years that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — who would later become Pope Benedict XVI — headed the Vatican’s doctrinal office, which handled the cases of priests accused of abusing children.

Presented with case files, Cardinal Ratzinger sometimes set disciplinary measures in motion, even having accused priests defrocked. But other times, the record shows, he took the side of the accused priests and failed to listen to the victims or their warnings that an abuser could violate more young people.

When Cardinal Ratzinger became pope, the scandal exploded publicly throughout the global church. It continues to reverberate, causing some to lose faith and presenting challenges for the church’s current leadership.

During his time as…

View Cache

The Archdiocese of New York recently was ordered to turn over more than 120 pages of confidential files related to an internal investigation of sexual abuse claims against Howard J. Hubbard, who was bishop of the Albany diocese from 1977 to 2014.

The ruling by state Supreme Court Justice L. Michael Mackey capped a roughly two-year period in which the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, Hubbard and the New York archdiocese have lost a series of court decisions in which they sought to limit the materials that would be turned over to attorneys for hundreds of alleged victims of child sexual abuse. 

The records included the psychological treatment records of suspected pedophile priests, a lengthy deposition of Hubbard that took place over four days in April 2021 and, now, the archdiocese’s internal records on Hubbard’s “Vos estis lux mundi” investigation — initiated under a 2019 directive from Pope Francis that established…

View Cache

A victim of clerical sex abuse during the time the late pope Benedict was archbishop of Munich launched the lawsuit in June.

A 38-year-old German man who says he was abused by a known predatory priest has been allowed to continue his civil lawsuit against the late Pope Benedict XVI’s eventual heirs. In November, Benedict said he would defend himself in the case in front of a German court. Benedict died Dec. 31 at the age of 95 and had secured a law firm which will continue to represent his estate.

Andrea Titz, spokesperson for the Traunstein Court in Bavaria, confirmed that the suit, which accuses the former pope, of willfully ignoring complaints about Father Peter Hullermann, who allegedly abused the victim when he was just 11 years old.

The victim, who uses the pseudonym Julian Schwarz, said that the priest showed him pornography and forced him to have sexual intercourse and…

View Cache

Almost ten years after making history for resigning from the papacy, Joseph Ratzinger—Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI—has died at the age of ninety-five, in the Vatican’s Mater Ecclesiae monastery, where he had been living since May 2013.

Born in Bavaria, Germany, on April 16, 1927, Ratzinger had a remarkable impact on the life and intellectual tradition of the Catholic Church, not only as pope, but also as one of the most influential theologians at Vatican II. After publishing major works commenting positively on the documents of Vatican II during the council and in the late 1960s, his insights affected the reception of the council from the 1970s onward, as his anti-progressive views—often expressed with a contrarian spirit—became inseparable from his persona, even after his election to the papacy in 2005.

As a powerful doctrinal policy-maker in the era following Vatican II, Ratzinger was in many ways the alter-ego of Pope John…

View Cache

A quiet hush covered the vast expanse of St. Peter’s Square even though it was filled with thousands of people slowly winding their way around the colonnade into St. Peter’s Basilica to pay their last respects to the late Pope Benedict XVI.

Outdoor souvenir sellers were well-stocked with rosaries Jan. 2, but they seemed to have been caught off guard with a plethora of touristy tchotchkes and few to no images or mementos of the late pope.

A damp chill hung in the air at 9 in the morning when the doors of the basilica opened to the public on the first of three days to view the pope’s body.

Special accommodations, however, were made for officials of the Roman Curia, Vatican staff and dignitaries who were allowed access from the back of the basilica and offered a place to sit or kneel on either side of the pope’s…

View Cache

“Today a loving God called Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI home to his eternal reward for a lifetime of dedicated service to the Church. That service included 71 years as a priest, 28 years as a Cardinal, and nearly eight years leading the Catholic Church as the Bishop of Rome and Successor to St. Peter. His life and his pontificate were based in a deep and abiding faith and an extraordinary record of theological scholarship. In the years leading to the Second Vatican Council and at the Council itself, Father Joseph Ratzinger made substantial contributions to the renewal of Catholic theology, and he played a significant role in the drafting of key conciliar documents. Pope John Paul II called Cardinal Ratzinger to Rome to serve as the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In that role, he proved to be an invaluable contributor throughout the pontificate of his predecessor. Pope Benedict XVI’s…

View Cache

Lawmakers around the United States have tried to grant justice to victims of decades-old incidents of child sexual abuse by giving them extra time to file lawsuits. Now some of the defendants in these cases, including church and youth organizations, are finding a safe haven: America’s bankruptcy courts.

In New York, nearly 11,000 cases flooded state courts, many seeking to hold Catholic dioceses responsible for sexual abuse by clergy, after a 2019 law suspended statutes of limitations that would have otherwise barred many of the lawsuits. In response, four New York dioceses that collectively faced more than 500 sexual-abuse claims filed for bankruptcy. That halted the cases — and blocked those from anyone who might sue later — and forced the plaintiffs to negotiate a one-time settlement for all abuse claims in bankruptcy court.Advertisement · Scroll to continue

The pattern has taken hold across the United States, a Reuters review…

View Cache

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, whose death at 95 was announced Saturday, was a powerful intellectual force who shaped the Catholic Church’s theology for more than a quarter century before shocking the world by resigning in 2013.

While not quite unprecedented, Benedict’s resignation was highly unusual. Popes typically hold office until death, and the last pope to step down was Gregory XII, who quit in 1415 to end a civil war within the church.  

Bookended by globally popular and charismatic popes – St. John Paul II and Pope Francis – Benedict cut a different figure. Friends and biographers described him as quiet and scholarly, more at home among theological tomes than adoring crowds.

In typical fashion, Benedict announced his unexpected resignation in Latin. He was 85 at the time and cited his advanced age as ill-suited for the demands…

View Cache

As the world marks the death of Pope emeritus Benedict XVI, his record on the clerical abuse scandals that have rocked Catholicism for the past three decades inevitably forms part of any evaluation of his legacy.

For many abuse survivors and their advocates, it’s axiomatic that Benedict was the public face of denial and cover-up. The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, for instance, declared in a Dec. 31 statement that “any celebration that marks the life of abuse enablers like Benedict must end.”

“Honoring Pope Benedict XVI now is not only wrong. It is shameful,” the group said. “Pope Benedict XVI is taking decades of the church’s darkest secrets to his grave with him.”

Arguably the one person on the planet best positioned to assess the late pontiff’s performance, however, has a very different take.

According to Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, it was Benedict XVI who first began to…

View Cache

Pontiff was very emotional during 2010 meeting – Lawrence Grech

A victim of clerical abuse said his surprise meeting with Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Malta in 2010 together with his apology had restored victims’ faith in the church.

“At the time, many of us had lost our faith completely but that changed during our personal meetings with Pope Benedict,” Grech told Times of Malta on Sunday.

“Those few moments that we spent with him in private restored our faith. It was a very powerful and emotional meeting.”

Pope Benedict, who spent almost eight years leading the Catholic Church before he resigned in 2013, died on Saturday at the age of 95.

As crowds visited St Peter’s Basilica to express their sorrow at the news of his death, for many Maltese the highlight of his papacy was his 27-hour visit to the island on April 17 and 18, 2010.

But, for Grech, the…

View Cache

[Via NDTV]

The German Joseph Ratzinger, who died on Saturday aged 95, was the first pope to meet with victims of abuse and defrocked almost 400 priests in the last two years of his pontificate.

Benedict XVI was the first pope to confront the scourge of clerical sex abuse in the Catholic church, but only after a career in which he himself was accused of covering it up.

The German Joseph Ratzinger, who died on Saturday aged 95, was the first pope to meet with victims of abuse and defrocked almost 400 priests in the last two years of his pontificate.

His actions were a marked change from his predecessor John Paul II, who took decades to respond to what became an avalanche of allegations about paedophile priests around the world, from Australia to Chile, France and the United States.

But his successor Pope Francis has gone much further, raising…

View Cache

[Via MSN]

Gianna Recio “came into this world fighting,” as her mother says in recounting the first moments in the life of her oldest child — born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.

Growing up on San Antonio’s South Side, Gianna wore boy’s clothes. But she always insisted she was a girl, decades before she heard the word “transgender.”

At St. Leo the Great Catholic School, she was teased for her femininity. When a priest told her she was special and loved by God, the words stuck with her. He said he wanted to counsel her to bolster her self-esteem. Their private sessions turned into sexual abuse. It lasted two years.

The priest made Gianna believe that she and her family would burn in hell if she told anyone what was happening, she said. She would hide beneath the church pews, praying that he wouldn’t find her.

For…

View Cache

Four years after an Oakland priest seemingly vanished after being accused of sexually abusing two minors, NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit has new answers on what happened to Fr. Alexander Castillo, in addition to a never-before published letter where the priest professes his innocence and blames another clergy member for his suspension

Oakland priest Father Alexander Castillo seemingly vanished in the months after he was accused of sexually abusing a minor. Yet four years later, the Diocese of Oakland still won’t answer many basic questions about the incident, details about what happened, where Castillo is today, and whether the priest might be a danger to children elsewhere.

While the Diocese remains silent, a letter written by Castillo in the wake of his suspension, and exclusively obtained by NBC Bay Area recently, sheds new light on the priest’s frame of mind just before he left the country. Castillo maintains his innocence…

View Cache

For more than a decade, Ernie Cox went online to search the faces of priests who had been accused of child sexual abuse, looking for one man.

He’d only seen the priest one day in the late 1960s when, the former altar boy alleges, the priest sexually abused him before and after mass at a Contra Costa County church. The boy was 12. The priest was visiting Immaculate Heart of Mary from another parish, and Cox, now 67, didn’t remember his name.

A few weeks ago, a friend who knew of Cox’s experience forwarded him a recent story in The Chronicle about allegations against a priest at the same parish in the small city of Brentwood. When Cox later found the late Father John G. Garcia’s face in an old black-and-white photo on the website of a local newspaper, he said, he was stricken by recognition. No other priest’s picture had…

View Cache

The first pope to resign was Celestine V, born Pietro Da Morrone, who was living the life of a pious hermit when he was elevated to the papacy in 1294, in his 80s, to break a two-year deadlock in the College of Cardinals. Feeling overmastered by the job, he soon resigned in the expectation that he could return to his monastic existence. Instead, he was imprisoned by his successor, Boniface VIII, who feared that some rival faction might make Celestine an antipope.

The former pontiff died after about a year in captivity; his successor, one of the most ambitious of medieval popes, eventually fell into a disastrous struggle with the king of France that ended with Boniface temporarily imprisoned in the weeks before his death.

The strange afterlife of Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate, which ended with his death on Saturday at 95, was not quite so wild or dramatic. But…

View Cache

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is rightly credited with having been one of the 20th century’s most prolific Catholic theologians, a teacher-pope who preached the faith via volumes of books, sermons and speeches. But he rarely got credit for another important aspect of his legacy: having done more than anyone before him to turn the Vatican around on clergy sexual abuse.

As cardinal and pope, Benedict pushed through revolutionary changes to church law to make it easier to defrock predator priests, and he sacked hundreds of them. He was the first pontiff to meet with abuse survivors. And he reversed his revered predecessor on the most egregious case of the 20th century Catholic Church, finally taking action against a serial pedophile who was adored by St. John Paul II’s inner circle.

But much more needed to be done, and following his death Saturday, abuse survivors and their advocates made clear they…

View Cache

The 265th pope of the Catholic Church was a hard-line conservative who tried to root out corruption and abuse—but retreated from the battle when it mattered most.

With 1.3 billion followers, the Roman Catholic Church is the world’s largest organization. Islam has 1.97 billion adherents but no comparable infrastructure. Google has greater reach—in cyberspace.

The Church of Rome has a vast network of parishes, schools, colleges, hospitals, and missions. The governing of this global operation in the 107-acre Vatican City has become a narrative of lengthening scandals in recent decades. Pope Benedict XVI, a pivotal figure in this story, wanted national churches in lockstep obedience to Rome on moral teaching.

In 2013, after eight years in the Apostolic Palace, the German-born Joseph Ratzinger became the first Supreme Pontiff in 600 years to retire. The most powerful and controversial theologian of his era became emeritus pope for nine years, until his death at…

View Cache

I first met Joseph Ratzinger in June 1994 when he was the cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. No, I was not being interrogated by the Grand Inquisitor. This was long before I got in trouble with the Vatican as editor-in-chief of America magazine. I was in Rome to interview him and other church officials for my book, Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church. 

I almost missed the interview. Cardinal Ratzinger was sick the day of our appointment. When I arrived, I was asked whether I wanted to meet with the congregation’s secretary. I agreed, figuring it was better than nothing. When I was ushered into his presence, I hadn’t gotten a word out before the secretary, Archbishop Alberto Bovone, assaulted me with questions: “Who are you?” “What are you doing here?” “I will…

View Cache

Speaking with the Register, the German cardinal theologian reflects on the profound legacy of the late Pope Emeritus.

Cardinal Gerhard Müller has paid tribute to the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, describing him as a “great thinker” and a “true Doctor of the Church for today.”

The prefect emeritus of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith also described the late Joseph Ratzinger, who died at Dec. 31 at 9:34 am in Rome, as a man of great sensitivity, humor, and humility who possessed “deep wisdom as a partaker in God’s love.”

In this interview with the Register, the German cardinal theologian — who founded the Benedict XVI Institute to make available Joseph Ratzinger’s collected works — discusses Benedict XVI’s legacy to the Church, responds to some of his critics, and reflects on how his passing might affect the highly criticized German Synodal Path.

Your Eminence, what is the greatest…

View Cache

Following the announcement of the passing of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI on Saturday at the age of 95, we look back at his long life and its main highlights with the following official biography.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, was born at Marktl am Inn, Diocese of Passau (Germany) on 16 April 1927 (Holy Saturday) and was baptised on the same day.

His father, a Police Commissioner, belonged to an old family of farmers from Lower Bavaria of modest economic resources. His mother was the daughter of artisans from Rimsting on the shore of Lake Chiem. Before marrying, she worked as a cook in a number of hotels.

Joseph spent his childhood and adolescence in Traunstein, a small village near the Austrian border, thirty kilometres from Salzburg. In this environment, which he himself has defined as “Mozartian”, he received his Christian, cultural and human formation.

His youthful years were…

View Cache

Pope Francis led tributes to his predecessor on Saturday, after Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died in a monastery in the Vatican at the age of 95.

“We are moved as we recall him as such a noble person, so kind and we feel such gratitude in our hearts, gratitude to god for giving him to the church, and to the world,” Francis said in Saint Peter’s Basilica while leading traditional vespers ceremony ahead of New Year’s Day.

“Gratitude to him for all the good he accomplished and above all for his witness of faith and prayer, especially in these last years of his life. Only God knows the value of his sacrifices for the good of the church,” Francis added.

Benedict, who was the first pontiff in almost 600 years to resign his position, rather than hold office for life, passed away on Saturday, according to…

View Cache

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the shy German theologian who tried to reawaken Christianity in a secularized Europe but will forever be remembered as the first pontiff in 600 years to resign from the job, died Saturday. He was 95.

Pope Francis will celebrate his funeral Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Thursday, an unprecedented event in which a current pope will celebrate the funeral of a former one.

Benedict stunned the world on Feb. 11, 2013, when he announced, in his typical, soft-spoken Latin, that he no longer had the strength to run the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic Church that he had steered for eight years through scandal and indifference.

His dramatic decision paved the way for the conclave that elected Francis as his successor. The two popes then lived side-by-side in the Vatican gardens, an unprecedented arrangement that set the stage for future “popes emeritus” to do the same.

A…

View Cache

‘My strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited’ to the role, German-born Benedict XVI said in 2013, when he became the first pontiff in 600 years to step down

The moment that transformed Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s legacy — and perhaps his church — passed so quietly that it was initially missed.

The pontiff was closing what one reporter described as an “extremely banal,” routine ceremony with Vatican cardinals on Feb. 11, 2013, when he uttered, in Latin, that he had made “a decision of great importance for the life of the church.”

The white-haired, German-born theologian, then 85, said he had “repeatedly examined my conscience before God” and concluded that the modern world, “subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith,” required a pope in better physical and intellectual condition. “My strengths, due to an advanced…

View Cache

Testo in lingua italiana

“Con dolore informo che il Papa Emerito, Benedetto XVI, è deceduto oggi alle ore 9:34, nel Monastero Mater Ecclesiae in Vaticano.

Non appena possibile seguiranno ulteriori informazioni.”

***

Traduzione in lingua francese

«J’ai la douleur de vous annoncer que le pape émérite, Benoît XVI, est décédé aujourd’hui à 9h34 heures, au Monastère Mater Ecclesiae, au Vatican.

D’autres informations vous seront communiquées dès que possible».

***

Traduzione in lingua inglese

“With sorrow I inform you that the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, passed away today at 9:34 in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican.

Further information will be provided as soon as possible.”

***

Traduzione in lingua tedesca

“Schmerzerfüllt muss ich mitteilen, dass Benedikt XVI., Papst Emeritus, heute um 9:34 Uhr im Kloster Mater Ecclesiae im Vatikan verstorben ist.

Weitere Informationen folgen baldmöglichst.”

***

Traduzione in lingua spagnola

„Con pesar doy a conocer que el Papa emérito…

View Cache

With Pope Emeritus’ death, the Catholic Church loses one of the greatest minds in its 2,000-year history.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has died at the age of 95.

The Vatican made the announcement of his death at 10.30 am Rome time on Dec. 31 in a short statement translated into several languages.

“With sorrow I inform you that the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, passed away today at 9:34 in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican,” Vatican press office director Matteo Bruni said. “Further information will be provided as soon as possible.” 

The Vatican added that from Jan. 2, the body of the Pope Emeritus will rest in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican “for the faithful to bid farewell.” 

Bruni later told reporters in a short press briefing that Benedict XVI’s funeral will be celebrated by Pope Francis at 9.30am on Thursday, Jan. 5, in St Peter’s Square. He also disclosed…

View Cache

He defined a conservative course for the Roman Catholic Church, but his papacy was noted for his struggle with the clergy sexual abuse scandal and for his unexpected resignation.

Benedict XVI, the pope emeritus, a quiet scholar of diamond-hard intellect who spent much of his life enforcing church doctrine and defending tradition before shocking the Roman Catholic world by becoming the first pope in six centuries to resign, died on Saturday. He was 95.

Benedict’s death was announced by the Vatican. No cause was given. This past week, the Vatican said that Benedict’s health had taken a turn for the worse “due to advancing age.”

On Wednesday, Pope Francis asked those present at his weekly audience at the Vatican to pray for Benedict, who he said was “very ill.” He later visited him at the monastery on the Vatican City grounds where Benedict had lived since announcing his resignation in February…

View Cache

The first pope to step down in six centuries dies in retirement.

Pope Benedict XVI, the eminent German theologian and conservative enforcer of Roman Catholic Church doctrine who broke with almost 600 years of tradition by resigning and then living for nearly a decade behind Vatican walls as a retired pope still clad in white robes, died on Saturday at age 95, the Vatican said.

Just as Benedict’s resignation in 2013 shook the Roman Catholic church to its core, his death again put the institution in little-charted territory.

A pope’s death customarily sets in motion a conclave to choose a new leader of the church, but Benedict’s successor, Pope Francis, was named when Benedict stepped down. It was Francis who on Wednesday announced the news of Benedict’s final decline to the world.

Now, after a life dedicated to maintaining order and tradition in the church, Benedict in death has put it…

View Cache

Residents of Walterboro, a small town west of Charleston, South Carolina, are banding together to stop a new Christian halfway house that would house up to 10 registered sex offenders.

About 970 people have joined Stop Pedofiles on Barracada Road, a new Facebook group designed to resist the facility that Shield Ministries from Charleston would operate.

“How does anyone think this even close to being okay?” asked one person in the group. There is additional worry because the director of the Shield’s program was convicted in 2003 of committing or attempting a lewd act on a child under age 16.

But there is support for Shield’s treatment approach in the South Carolina legal community. “Shield is a faith based and science-based treatment program that requires accountability and leads to real public safety,” said D. Ashley Pennington, recently retired Ninth Circuit Public Defender, in a statement that Shield released.

Recently,  View Cache

In a response to questions from journalists, the Director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni, on Friday confirmed that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s health condition remains stable at this time. He added that yesterday evening Benedict XVI was able to have a good rest, and earlier in the afternoon he participated in the celebration of Mass in his room. 

In related news, at 5:30 pm Rome time on today, Mass will be celebrated at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, remembering in prayer Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and his health. The Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, Vicar of the Diocese of Rome, will preside over the celebration. 

The Diocese of Rome has encouraged “parish communities, chaplaincies, religious men and women, all the faithful of the diocese and all the men and women of good will who live in Rome,” to gather in prayer for Benedict XVI,  “remembering with gratitude the…

View Cache

When Pope Gregory XII, the last pope to resign before Benedict, died in 1417, the world was not watching.

Gregory had stepped down two years earlier in 1415 and spent his remaining days in virtual obscurity hundreds of miles from Rome. He was quietly buried in Recanati, a town near the northern Adriatic coast.

It will be vastly different with the passing of ailing 95-year-old Benedict, who the Vatican has said is in a grave but stable condition after a sudden deterioration in his health over Christmas.

The Vatican has painstakingly elaborate rituals for what happens after a reigning pope dies but no publicly known ones for a former pope.

After Benedict dies, the Vatican will be at least partially scripting new protocols. They could be a template for other popes who choose to resign instead of ruling for life, including Pope Francis himself someday, Vatican sources say.

Those for a…

View Cache

The Catholic Church has strict protocols in place following the death of its leader, but as ex-Pope Benedict’s health wanes it is unclear whether those same protocols will apply to a retired pope, known as Emeritus.

When Benedict XVI resigned in 2013 citing old age, he became the first pope in 600 years to step down from the role. Born Joseph Ratzinger, the German cardinal was elected in April 2005 and chose to go by the name of Benedict.

For almost a decade there have in effect been two popes living at close quarters in the Vatican, because Benedict has stayed in the Vatican Gardens at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery and appeared occasionally alongside his successor.

“We’ve never had this before where a living pope will help bury a dead pope,” Catholic historian John McGreevy said.

Even the Middle Ages do not provide a template, because when Gregory XII resigned…

View Cache

Outgoing Attorney General Hector Balderas said Thursday his office is in the final stages of completing a sweeping risk report on clergy sex abuse in New Mexico and evaluating possible prosecution of a priest accused of wrongdoing.

“We are advancing a criminal investigation of a [Catholic priest], and we’re finalizing that risk report, and I’ve made that part of my transition briefing to the next attorney general,” he said in an interview with The New Mexican.

Balderas, barred from seeking reelection due to term limits, said he decided to allow the administration of successor Raúl Torrez, who will take office Jan. 1, to finalize the report because of the active criminal investigation.

Balderas declined to identify the priest or the allegations against him, saying it would be unethical and prejudice the investigation.

The update on Balderas’ inquiry into a sex abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church in New…

View Cache

Years of negotiations between survivors of clergy sex abuse and the Archdiocese of Santa Fe moved toward conclusion this week when claimants and a federal bankruptcy judge approved a proposed $121.5 million agreement that would settle nearly 400 claims made by people who say they were abused by Roman Catholic clergy.

“While I hope and pray that the bankruptcy outcome will bring a measure of justice and relief to the victims … I realize that nothing can ever compensate them for the criminal and horrendous abuse they endured,” Archbishop John C. Wester said in a written statement issued Thursday.

“I pledge that the Archdiocese of Santa Fe will remain vigilant in protecting children and young people from clergy sexual abuse, doing all we can to assure them of a safe and protective environment in the Catholic Church,” Wester wrote.

Attorney Brad Hall, who represents about 140 of the claimants —…

View Cache

The Catholic Jesuit order, of which Pope Francis is a member, has been rocked by claims a prominent priest abused several women, a case raising questions about how the Church sanctions offenders.

Father Marko Rupnik, a 68-year-old Slovenian priest and world-renowned artist, is accused of abusing a number of women at a religious community in Ljubljana in the early 1990s, in what press reports said involved sexual and psychological violence.

The case first emerged in the Italian media, before the Jesuits — one of the main Roman Catholic orders, founded in 1540 — revealed it had sanctioned Rupnik, denying him the right to hear confession.

The Vatican’s dicastery (ministry) for the doctrine of the faith was involved in the case but said it could not put Rupnik on trial because the statute of limitations had expired.

The Jesuits later revealed that, in a separate case, Rupnik had also been convicted…

View Cache

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is “lucid and vigilant” but his condition remains serious, the Vatican said Thursday in an update on the former pontiff’s health.

“He is absolutely lucid and vigilant and today while his condition remains serious, the situation at the moment is stable,” Vatican press office director Matteo Bruni said in a statement.

“Pope Francis renews his invitation to pray for him and accompany him in these difficult hours.”

Pope Francis announced Wednesday that his 95-year-old predecessor was “very sick” after a deterioration in his health.

“I want to ask you all for a special prayer for Pope Emeritus Benedict who sustains the Church in his silence. He is very sick,” Francis said during his general audience at the Vatican on Wednesday. “We ask the Lord to console and sustain him in this witness of love for the Church to the…

View Cache

All the laws in all the world, all the paper reforms and speeches and exhortations and pleas and promises are worth exactly as much as those in charge are willing to put behind them in dollars and cents, to show their earnest and make them stick.

This Rupnik business is very bad. There’s no telling how bad it will be for Pope Francis, the Vatican, the Jesuits, or the Slovenian bishops. There’s plenty of bad to go around.

Rupnik’s art is to be found in shrines and chapels all over the world. That’s what makes this Rupnik business appear to be a world-in-a-nutshell instance of the Church’s leadership crisis and the effect of it on the institution and the faithful worldwide.

The Inescapable Rupnik

There is no escaping it. Lourdes. Fatima. Padre Pio’s crypt in San Giovanni Rotondo. Pope St. John Paul II’s shrines in Krakow and Washington, DC. Madrid’s…

View Cache

Through the years, I have worked a lot on how media portrayals reflect changing attitudes towards religion, and in turn do a great deal to shape those attitudes. In fact, I have a piece in the current Christian Century on “Priests on Screen,” looking at some recent European representations of clergy. Given that background, I was very struck by one American production this past year, from a surprising source.

The TV series in question was Mo, starring comedian Mohammed Amer, who also created and produced the show, drawing heavily on his own experiences. Mo (available on Netflix) has been widely praised for its portrayal of immigrant life in Alief, a very multi-cultural working class suburb of Houston. Texas references and in-jokes abound. The show is very good on issues like the use of language, such as the blend of…

View Cache

Re: Catholic church settles lawsuit around historical sex abuse of 10-year-old B.C. girl (Online, Dec 15)

1. The confessional at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Nanaimo is now, and in 1976, divided by a wall so that the pastor and penitent are in separate rooms.

2. Father Hartmann wrote three books about his life. There were no letters of criticism or claims of abuse, only affection and respect for his career as a priest.

3. Father Hartmann spoke of his experiences fleeing the Nazis and the Russians. He tried to escape several times and finally succeeded.

4. The article said a complaint was dismissed in 2000. The Dec. 15 news article states that the allegations were not proven in court. When a man is dead and can no longer defend himself, why has the Victoria diocese decided to condemn him?

5. In the absence of evidence to support…

View Cache

Given their abrupt suspension of accused priests, the bishops have eroded the theological density of the sacrament of Holy Orders. By so doing, they have undermined the very deposit of faith they seek to protect and transmit.

A few weeks ago, the Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America released the results of a massive survey of Catholic priests in the United States. Priests interviewed numbered 3,500 from 191 American dioceses.

Predictably—at least for those who have been paying attention—the results constitute a biting indictment of the American episcopacy. The most prominent finding of the survey is that a majority of priests do not trust their own bishops—and, shockingly, only 24% of priests trust the US episcopacy in general. In other words, the bond between priests and their putative “fathers” and “brothers” is badly corroded. Even worse, bishops are largely unaware of the decay, with over 90% claiming they are…

View Cache

A paedophile priest who abused young vulnerable boys for almost 20 years was handed a suspended sentence on Thursday after he breached a court order.

Imposing a three month jail sentence on disgraced priest Daniel Gerard Curran but suspending it for three years, District Judge Steven Keown said the pre-sentence probation report illustrated a “depressing lack of insight and minimisation of his behaviour.”

He warned the 72-year-old if he breached his Sexual Offences Prevention Order again in that time “you will be facing custody.”

Curran, from Bryansford Avenue in Newcastle, had earlier entered a guilty plea to breaching his lifelong SOPO on 12 August this year in that without reasonable excuse or permission from his designated risk manager, he “remained or loitered at Tullymore National Activity Centre which by its nature is likely to attract or be frequented by children.”

A prosecuting lawyer told Downpatrick Magistrates Court how Curran had…

View Cache

When a Dutch journalist claimed to have found documents indicating that Pope John Paul II covered up clergy sexual abuse while serving as the archbishop of Krakow, Poland, in the 1960s and ’70s, it sparked a predictable media frenzy in Europe’s most Catholic country.

With some urging a consideration of the evidence, and others dismissing the claims out of hand, the incident appears to highlight a continuing gulf between the Polish church and its Western neighbors.

“We face serious problems here whenever issues like this arise, since it’s impossible to have any serious debate about the pope,” Malgorzata Glabisz-Pniewska, a senior Catholic presenter with Polish Radio, told NCR.

“Some people, partly for political reasons, attack him, hoping to discredit his claims to sanctity, while others insist any criticism is inherently satanic,” she said. “It’s a situation St. John Paul himself would not have appreciated.”

Claims about diabolical motives were made…

View Cache

Child sex abuse survivors have overwhelmingly approved a $121.5 million plan in a crucial step toward resolving the long-running Archdiocese of Santa Fe bankruptcy reorganization, which was aimed at stemming the church’s financial losses while atoning for wrongs of the past.

Aside from providing monetary payments to nearly 400 abuse claimants, the terms of the settlement require the establishment of an “unprecedented” public archive of documents showing how “decades of widespread abuse occurred” in New Mexico and to prevent such abuse by clergy in the future.

A formal confirmation order is expected to be signed by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma of Albuquerque on Thursday. Payouts in the case could begin in the coming months.

The reorganization plan is the product of years of legal wrangling that involved three mediators and effectively halted more than three dozens civil lawsuits in state court that alleged abuse of children by clergy…

View Cache

Benedict XVI has lived longer than anybody else who’s ever been pope.

Most Catholics can’t remember a world without him. Even his final chapter — as a retiree — has extended so long that many in Rome have grown accustomed to having a Catholic Church with two men in white, Benedict, 95, living quietly in a Vatican convent.

“We’ve had him like a grandfather living behind the church,” said Mountain Butorac, an American who lives in Rome and guides Catholic pilgrimages. “And now we’re about to lose him.”

The Vatican’s announcement Wednesday that Benedict’s health had worsened put the church on alert, and Catholics are bracing for the first papal death since 2005. Because Benedict is not a sitting pope, his death won’t lead to a conclave and won’t cause the same immediate upheavals. But it has become a moment for Catholics to reflect on a figure who has had…

View Cache

• A former nurse at St. Mary’s Medical Center was accused by coworkers of abusing unconscious patients.
• Christopher Lambros was arrested on charges of sexual assault.
• In a class action suit, lawyers allege the hospital allowed Lambros access to patients for 10 years.

A Colorado hospital is facing a class-action lawsuit after police alleged a former nurse recorded himself sexually abusing unconscious patients. 

The Grand Junction Police Department confirmed in a statement emailed to Insider that Christopher Lambros, a 61-year-old former nurse, was arrested on October 25 on three felony counts of sexual assault and was remanded to the Mesa County Detention Facility. 

According to the arrest warrant, his bail was set at $250,000. The police department confirmed Tuesday he remains in custody.

Lambros was caught by another hospital staff member in July in a patient’s room at St. Mary’s Medical Center, according to the arrest warrant, having apparently exposed…

View Cache

Two women who say a nurse sexually assaulted them while they were unconscious in intensive care filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Colorado hospital where they were being treated, alleging the hospital’s management didn’t do enough to prevent the abuse.

The lawsuit — which is proposed as a class action suit — alleges St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction and SCL Health and Intermountain Healthcare, the companies that ran the hospital, knew or should have known about the actions of the nurse, Christopher Lambros, who has been arrested and charged with sexual assault. Police say Lambros would record himself sexually abusing female patients while they were unconscious or incapacitated.

According to his arrest affidavit, on a day in June when Lambros made five videos of himself abusing a patient, he whispered to the camera saying “don’t ever get rid of these videos” and “you need to keep them forever ……

View Cache

A few observations regarding Archbishop William Lori’s recent commentary (”Baltimore archbishop: ‘The Church of today is not the Church described by the attorney general.’ Here’s what’s changed.” Dec. 20). First, providing thousands of pages of documents to the Maryland attorney general because of a subpoena does not make you transparent; it makes you not wanting to go to jail. Providing those documents to the public years ago when you first took office would have made you transparent.

Second, he makes show of the fact that he will not oppose the statute of limitations reform bill currently before the Maryland General Assembly, after having opposed it for years using high-priced lobbyists. Yet he neglects to mention the fourth paragraph of his own news release where he indicates that a huge part of the bill is believed to be unconstitutional. He is clearly laying the groundwork for how the…

View Cache

The lawsuits are stacking up in courthouses across the state, sometimes dozens per day, identifiable by their unusual names: Jane Doe vs. Doe Archdiocese. M.L., an individual, vs. Doe 1, a California organization. John Doe #1 vs. Roe 2, a California entity.

In the waning days of a three-year window that gave adults more time to file lawsuits over childhood sexual abuse, California is seeing a flood of new litigation.

Spurred by a 2020 change in state law, thousands of lawsuits alleging abuse as far back as the 1940s have been filed against dozens of organizations, including religious groups, private and public schools, sports groups and nonprofit organizations. In some cases, the alleged perpetrators have been dead for decades.

The number of lawsuits is expected to rise sharply before the Dec. 31 filing deadline. After that, people older than 40 will once again be barred from suing over abuse suffered in…

View Cache

Pope Francis has said that his predecessor Pope Benedict, the 95-year-old former pontiff who resigned from the post nine years ago, is “very sick” after a deterioration in his health on Wednesday.

“I want to ask you all for a special prayer for Pope Emeritus Benedict who sustains the Church in his silence. He is very sick,” Francis said during his general audience at the Vatican on Wednesday.

“We ask the Lord to console and sustain him in this witness of love for the Church to the very end.”

A Vatican spokesman later confirmed that “in the last few hours there has been a deterioration due to the advancement of (Benedict’s) age.”

“The situation at the moment remains under control and continually monitored by his doctors,” the spokesman, Matteo Bruni, said, adding that Francis visited his predecessor at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery in Vatican City after his general audience.

In…

View Cache

Is the Catholic Church about to face a new paedophilia scandal linked to Africa? From Makoua to Namur, we investigated the charges of the alleged rape of a teenager in Congo-Brazzaville by a Belgian priest. 

• We have investigated the rape of a Congolese teenager in the late 1990s in Makoua, Congo-Brazzaville. 
• This sexual abuse – similar to the cases we denounced in Gabon – were allegedly committed by a Belgian priest, now working in the diocese of Namur, Belgium, and whose canonical trial could begin soon.  
• The facts also bring to light the practices of the Belgian Church, which has a very official price list – ranging from €2,500 to €25,000 – for making financial agreements with victims.  

Joseph has trembling hands and tears in his eyes. Two decades after the events, he has not told his story to anyone close to him. His family knows nothing. Nor do his neighbours….

View Cache

[Translated from L’Essenziale]

Two decades after the U.S. Catholic Church finally began to confront priest abuse of minors, and many other countries followed suit, Italian bishops who live with the Vatican in their midst are reluctant to break the church’s vow of silence and answer to victims.

It was in 2002 that the scandal of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests erupted in the United States, prompting the country’s conference of bishops to draft the first Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in the Church.

The charter allowed guilty clergy members to be removed, and dioceses — the group of churches that a bishop supervises — were asked to cooperate with civil authorities in cases of violence against minors in the name of transparency.

But 20 years later, the scandal, which has since spread to many other countries, is far from over.

In the meantime, things…

View Cache

[From Domani (Rome, Italy); translated by The Pillar]

“The first time he kissed me on the mouth telling me that this was how he kissed the altar where he celebrated the Eucharist, because with me he could experience sex as an expression of God’s love.” This is the beginning of the detailed account of the sexual, psychological, and spiritual abuse that Anna (not her real name), 58, a former Italian religious sister of the Loyola Community, suffered for nine years at the hands of Jesuit Father Marko Ivan Rupnik.
As Domani has reported in recent days, Rupnik, a world-renowned theologian and artist, is now at the center of a scandal based on accusations that he abused several religious sisters. Anna, who came close to suicide because of the suffering caused by the Jesuit’s delusion of omnipotence and sexual obsession, denounced her abuser several times over the years but the Church has…

View Cache

Pell’s Prison Journal provides an inspiring example of how to endure attacks while loving our persecutors. Perhaps his serene approach can show our post-Christian civilization the beauty of Christian love and forgiveness.

rom 2019 to 2020, Cardinal George Pell, the retired Catholic archbishop of Melbourne (1996-2001) and Sydney (2001-2014), spent almost 14 months in solitary confinement after being falsely accused for sexual assault. He was finally released after his unanimous acquittal by Australia’s High Court. The journal Pell kept in prison has now been published in three volumes under the title Prison Journal. They reveal an inspiring lack of rancor and give us insight into an astute, conservative social observer. Considering both the viciousness of the campaign against him and a conviction based on flimsy and contradictory evidence alongside his decidedly politically incorrect views on political issues such as Brexit and global warming, on full display in the three-volume journal, raises the question of…

View Cache

[Via Catholic Spirit, Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis]

Twenty years ago, in 2002, the revelations of clergy sexual abuse and its cover-up in the Archdiocese of Boston were the metaphorical bombshell that fell on the Catholic Church in the United States.

The U.S. bishops, when they met that June in Dallas, approved the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” a comprehensive set of procedures for addressing allegations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy.

Its one-strike-and-you’re-out policy did just that — permanently removing from public ministry those priests against whom abuse allegations were substantiated.

Twenty years later, at their assembly in Baltimore Nov. 14-17, the bishops acknowledged the charter’s anniversary and said that they have made steps in addressing clergy sexual abuse and would continue to listen, care for and walk with survivors.

Over the past 20 years, the fallout from the Boston revelations has…

View Cache

A Catholic High School teacher in Trinidad is facing harassment and child abuse charges after students told police she would strike them with various objects. 

Andrea Jimenez, a 63-year-old teacher at Holy Trinity Academy in Trinidad, is due in court for her first appearance on Jan. 5th after she was issued a summons last month.  

On Oct. 31, Trinidad Police began their investigation into possible harassment involving a teacher at Holy Trinity Academy School, a Catholic private school that teaches students from Kindergarten through the 12th grade. Multiple students and parents pointed to Jimenez as the primary concern. 

According to one of the student’s statements to investigators, Jimenez got extremely close to her face and body after getting upset over finding laptop charging cables on the ground.

Jimenez began smacking them in the face and on her body with the charging chord according to the student’s statements to investigators. 

…

View Cache

The year 2022 in the Catholic world was dominated by significant shifts in the intellectual and ecclesial landscape, accompanied by shockingly few shifts among key personnel in the Vatican Curia and at the headquarters of the U.S. bishops’ conference. Pope Francis continues to invite the church to try new approaches with the goal of retrieving our tradition more fruitfully, even while here in the United States he encounters a great deal of opposition.

Synodality was the biggest story of 2022 — or it might be. The process has begun and no one is sure how it will end, but already we are seeing signs of its effect.

As NCR board member Jim Purcell, who was heavily involved in the synodal process in his parish and diocese, noted, “I have witnessed again and again the animating power of the Holy Spirit that is at the…

View Cache

The son of Coventry factory workers, he overcame a traumatic childhood to find fame in the Thatcher years as the frontman of the Specials.

Terry Hall, the frontman of the Specials, the British ska band that blended pub-fight energy with socially conscious lyrics that explored the political and racial tensions of Britain in the late 1970s and early ’80s, died on Dec. 18. He was 63.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, his former bandmate Horace Panter announced on Facebook. The announcement did not say where he died.

After enduring a traumatic childhood, Mr. Hall went on to enjoy a chart-topping music career.

He forged his most lasting legacy as a face of the revival of ska — the pop genre that emerged in Jamaica in the 1960s, blending Caribbean styles like calypso with rhythm and blues — that shook the British music scene during the early, convulsive Margaret…

View Cache

One might assume that, at first blush, spending $2.4 million (plus remodeling costs) is not a huge outlay for a luxury view home in Seattle — at least for the privileged few who can afford it. Yet, the recent purchase of such a home by the Seattle Archdiocese for Archbishop Paul Etienne has caused serious concern among many clergy and lay Catholics.

When he first arrived in Seattle in 2019, the archbishop declared, “I am a Pastor, not a Prince’’ in renouncing residence at a mansion on First Hill in Seattle that had been purchased by contributions from the laity more than a century earlier.  He further claimed that the proceeds from the sale of the mansion would be used by the church for its social services. In recognition of that apparent austerity, the archdiocese renovated for $160,000 the rectory at St. Peter’s Church in the working class neighborhood of Beacon Hill.

…

View Cache

A former Grimsby priest has been jailed for the “systematic abuse” of six boys over a 21-year period.

Terence Atkinson, 70, was convicted of nine counts of indecent assault after a trial at Lincoln Crown Court.

During his trial jurors heard Atkinson volunteered at youth and church groups, including the Shalom Youth Centre, and was later ordained as a minister.

Passing a sentence of 10 years, Judge Simon Hirst told Atkinson he had abused his position of trust.

Prosecutor David Webster told the court Atkinson sexually assaulted his victims between 1978 and 1999.

The court heard he would invite boys back to his home and use strategies such as lifting them up to read his electric meter and measuring them for football kits to touch them inappropriately.

“He betrayed the trust of these young boys and abused them,” the barrister said.

‘Lasting damage’

The court also heard statements from…

View Cache

Father Gigante, a towering figure in the Bronx, left a $7 million fortune entirely to the son he had while he was a priest.

The Rev. Louis R. Gigante was always larger-than-life. A Roman Catholic priest, the son of Italian immigrants and brother of New York mobsters, Father Gigante swaggered through the crime-ridden and crumbling South Bronx with a baseball bat and a development company that built thousands of apartments for the poor.

But it turns out even the legend could not live up to the true scope of Father Gigante’s full life. After he died in October, his will revealed two more startling facts: He was a multimillionaire. And he left nearly all his fortune to a single beneficiary — his 32-year-old son.

The revelation discloses publicly a brash defiance of one of the tenets of the Catholic Church, that priests must remain celibate. The discovery was made in…

View Cache

The Remnant has obtained a copy of a letter sent six months ago by an alleged victim of Jesuit artist Father Marko Ivan Rupnik to top Church leaders, asking why no action had been taken as the Slovenian priest continued to be held up as a reliable teacher in the Church.

The letter dated June 5, 2022 and sent by a former religious sister pseudonymously called Anna — who earlier this week gave an explosive interview to Italian media detailing the extent of the depravity she allegedly suffered — was addressed to the Jesuit’s superior general, Father Arturo Sosa, and copied to 17 Church leaders and Vatican officials.

They included Jesuit Cardinal Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith; Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, the Vicar of Rome; and Jesuit Bishop Daniele Libanori, an auxiliary bishop of Rome whom the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) assigned…

View Cache

The act would require the FBI to use “multidisciplinary teams” in the investigation of child sexual abuse.

Congressmen Mo Brooks and Barry Moore were among the 28 Republican lawmakers on Thursday to vote against a measure seeking to amend how the Federal Bureau of Investigations handles sex abuse cases involving children.

Both Brook’s and Moore’s offices did not respond to requests for comment on their decision to vote against the measure.

The largely bipartisan effort passed the U.S. House of Representatives 385-28 after approval in the U.S. Senate last Tuesday. The legislation, titled the Respect for Child Survivors Act, was crafted largely as a response to the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal involving former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry and the ensuing investigation by the FBI.

In September 2021, four American gymnasts, including seven-time Olympic medalist Simone Biles and silver medalist McKayla Maroney, shared harrowing details of how the FBI mismanaged the…

View Cache

The Vatican has found French Guiana’s retired Bishop Emmanuel Lafont guilty of sexual abuse and ordered him to observe a life of prayer and penance at a French monastery. The bishop has been accused of sexual misconduct with immigrants whom he had housed in his episcopal residence.

The retired bishop is also facing a civil investigation by the Cayenne public prosecutor’s office, for human trafficking, breach of trust, and aiding illegal residents.

La Croix reported the Vatican verdict Dec. 19, saying it was actually handed down in October.

The Dicastery of Bishops’ decision means that Lafont “is forbidden to carry out any pastoral activity, to wear the insignia of a bishop, to come into contact with his acquaintances in Guiana as well as with young migrants,” the French bishops’ conference (CEF) confirmed to AFP.

“He is under house arrest, in a monastery on mainland France,” the CEF told French journalists.

…

View Cache

The bipartisan Respect for Child Survivors Act, a law that would aid victims of child sex abuse and their families, just passed the House in a 385-28 vote.

All 28 votes against the bill came from Republicans.

The bill would require the FBI to form multi-disciplinary teams to aid sex abuse victims and their families in order to prevent re-traumatization from investigation and any cases from being dropped. These teams would include “investigative personnel, mental health professionals, medical personnel, family advocacy workers, child advocacy workers, and prosecutors,” Newsweek reported.

U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX), Chris Coons (D-DE), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced the legislation.

“I applaud Senator Cornyn’s leadership on this issue to correct an egregious wrong committed by certain FBI agents regarding their treatment of victims of sexual abuse,” said Sen. Graham. “Requiring the FBI to use appropriate, tried and true methods to interview child victims will help ensure…

View Cache

Fr. Rupnik remains an official advisor to several Vatican departments, even after he was excommunicated and accused of sexually abusing consecrated women.

Fr. Marko Rupnik, SJ, remains an official advisor to several Vatican departments, even after he was excommunicated for a major canonical crime, and is accused of spiritually and sexually abusing consecrated women.

Rupnik was declared in 2020 excommunicated, for the canonical crime of abusing the sacrament of penance to abet his sexual misconduct.

He was in 2021 formally accused at the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith of serially abusing Slovenian religious women in the 1980s and 1990s. Rupnik is nevertheless still listed as a consultor – an officially appointed expert advisor – for several Vatican dicasteries, including those with oversight of clergy and liturgy.

The priest’s roles on those departments amplifies questions about whether he was actually placed under ministerial restrictions by his religious order as…

View Cache

Cardinal Angelo De Donatis said Friday that the Diocese of Rome learned only recently about the accusations of abuse against Father Marko Rupnik, a Jesuit priest and artist who has served in the diocese for decades.

In a statement released late on Dec. 23, De Donatis said “the Diocese of Rome, which was unaware until recently of the issues raised, cannot enter into the merits of the determinations made by others, but assures, also in the name of its Bishop, every support necessary for the desirable positive solution of the case…”

De Donatis is vicar of the Diocese of Rome, of which Pope Francis is bishop.

The 68-year-old Rupnik, originally from Slovenia, is a renowned sacred artist whose works decorate Catholic churches, chapels, and shrines around the world, including the Redemptoris Mater Chapel in the Vatican and the major seminary of Rome.

Reports were published earlier this month containing allegations…

View Cache

Pope Francis on Dec. 22 warned top Vatican officials against the temptation of believing the Catholic Church is no longer in need of conversion and said that creating a pure church only for the pure would be a return to heresy.  

“The worst thing that could happen to us is to think that we are no longer in need of conversion, either as individuals or as a community,” said Francis. “Where the Gospel is concerned, we are always like children needing to learn. The illusion that we have learned everything makes us fall into spiritual pride.”

In his annual pre-Christmas address to the Roman Curia — the Vatican’s central bureaucracy — the pope recalled the Second Vatican Council, saying that the conversion of the church sparked by the council 60 years ago must continue in order to preach the “Gospel more fully and to make it relevant, living…

View Cache

Editor’s note: This story involves the issue of child sexual abuse and could be triggering. This is the first in a two-part series. Read the second part here.

The glow of the campfire lit the priest’s face as he turned to a 12-year-old boy named Michael and smiled, opening his hand to offer candy as a prize for the trivia contest the young camper had just won.

But a greater reward lay ahead, or so the boy initially thought — so awed was he by the fact that the priest was showing interest in him.

Father Gary Timmons was a parish priest and founder of the Catholic children’s camp in Mendocino County — a man “regarded as next to God,” the boy, now a man, said last week.

So when he invited the Sonoma boy to his tent for a massage as part of his winnings, the adolescent thought it…

View Cache

Australian televangelist John McMartin, a former megachurch pastor and denominational leader, has been found guilty of indecent assault, a letter from his former church states.

McMartin had been the New South Wales state president of Australian Christian Churches (ACC), formerly called the Assemblies of God in Australia. In that role, he testified to a government commission investigating institutional responses to child sexual abuse in 2014. He also testified during Hillsong founder Brian Houston’s trial this month.

Authorities charged McMartin in November 2020 over a “sexual incident” in 2013 with a 19-year-old member of his church, a letter from the leadership at Inspire Church stated.

The woman reportedly told police McMartin groped her at his home while his wife was out of the country. McMartin testified in his own defense, saying he gave the teen a massage, but denied touching her sexually. The trial judge found…

View Cache

This year, at least 10 Texas pastors, former pastors and youth ministers were arrested, charged or convicted for various allegations of sexual abuse of children.

In November, 56-year-old David Lloyd Walther, a pastor for the Faith Baptist Church in Round Rock, was arrested for the distribution, receipt, transportation and possession of child pornography, as reported by the Austin American-Statesman. Walther, who told the FBI that he had a pornography addiction, faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.

In the same month, a 31-year-old former student minister at the Champion Forest Baptist Church in Harris County was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to online sexual abuse of a child. Timothy Jason Jeltema pleaded guilty on November 17 to four charges of online sexual abuse of a minor—including one charge of indecency with a child—one charge of sexual performance by a child and two counts of online…

View Cache

A former Wausau Roman Catholic priest convicted of molesting and exposing himself to teenage boys under his care is facing new charges after police allegedly discovered graphic images of children on his computer.

The Rev. Timothy E. Svea was 39 when he was convicted of second-degree sexual assault of a child younger than 16 and several counts of exposing himself to a child. He also pleaded guilty to false imprisonment. Svea, who was suspended of his duties in 2001 by the Institute of Christ the King after allegations surfaced, is now 59 and living in Mosinee.

According to an Associated Press report from 2002, the abuse began in 1998 while Svea headed a mission group in Monroe County and continued when the group moved in 1999 to St. Mary ‘s in Wausau. One of the boys told investigators that Svea invited him to his office and showed him photos of…

View Cache

A former youth minister who is facing more charges related to a series of child sexual assaults threatened to kill the latest victim if he reported the incidents, according to his arrest warrant.

Jean Bernard, 44, of Shelton, is facing numerous charges related to sexually abusing multiple victims while working as a youth minister at Mont Des Oliviers Seventh-day Adventist Church in Norwalk, according to court documents. Court records indicate the incidents occurred as recently as November 2021 and date back to January 2010. 

On Dec. 14, Norwalk police filed new charges of third-degree sexual assault and risk of injury to a child against Bernard. His bond was set at $250,000 and he is scheduled to appear in state Superior Court in Stamford for the case on Feb. 21, according to judicial records.

The most recent charges stem from incidents involving an 11-year-old boy identified in Bernard’s arrest warrant application as…

View Cache

*Warning: This story contains distressing details.

International Justice Mission is helping rescue kids in what the FBI calls an epidemic in the Philippines. 

Marie Gravoso is a lawyer in Winnipeg, originally from the Philippines. She interned during her time as a law student with International Justice Mission (IJM). 

“I was a legal intern for the Cebu legal team,” says Gravoso in an interview. “It was done virtually because it was in the middle of the pandemic and it was for about a majority of my third year in law school. I was in my third year studying for the last term and also doing a legal internship. It was a very unique experience.”

IJM is an organization trying to end human trafficking and the unique way they do that is through the justice system.  

“We try to partner with different organizations who would be able to assist with Online Sexual…

View Cache

On Nov. 9, Cardinal Lazzaro You Heung Sik, prefect for the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Clergy, laicized Father Frank Pavone from the priesthood for “blasphemous communications on social media” and “persistent disobedience of lawful instructions of his diocesan bishop.” But what does it mean to be “laicized,” “defrocked,” or “dismissed from the clerical state”?

Ordination, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “confers a gift of the Holy Spirit that permits the exercise of a ‘sacred power’ which can come only from Christ himself through his Church.”

The Church says ordination marks a person with an irremovable imprint, a character, which “configures them to Christ.” Ordination, in Catholic theology, makes a permanent change that the Church has no power to reverse.

“You are a priest forever,” the Letter to the Hebrews says.

This change is referred to as an ontological change, or a change in being itself.

In…

View Cache

A woman has been given £75,000 by the Sisters of Nazareth, a Catholic Order responsible for running Nazareth House Children’s Home, Lenton, Nottingham, in a settlement for a legal claim for alleged abuse she suffered as a child at the Home in the 1970s and 1980s.

The woman, whose identity the court anonymised as HXH, complained of serious sexual and physical abuse at Nazareth House, including repeated sexual assault by a member of care staff.

As a child, she told another carer about the sexual abuse, which stopped soon after. HXH left Nazareth House when she was a teenager and spent much of her adulthood trying to bury her memories of the abuse.

In 2006, HXH reported the abuse to Nottingham Police and the alleged perpetrator was charged with multiple sexual offences against her. Unfortunately, HXH’s health declined, and she withdrew from the prosecution before trial in 2007. HXH had understood…

View Cache

The bipartisan Respect for Child Survivors Act, a law that would aid victims of child sex abuse and their families, just passed the House in a 385-28 vote.

All 28 votes against the bill came from Republicans.

The bill would require the FBI to form multi-disciplinary teams to aid sex abuse victims and their families in order to prevent re-traumatization from investigation and any cases from being dropped. These teams would include “investigative personnel, mental health professionals, medical personnel, family advocacy workers, child advocacy workers, and prosecutors,” Newsweek reported.

U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX), Chris Coons (D-DE), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced the legislation.

“I applaud Senator Cornyn’s leadership on this issue to correct an egregious wrong committed by certain FBI agents regarding their treatment of victims of sexual abuse,”said Sen. Graham.“Requiring the FBI to use appropriate, tried and true methods to interview child victims will help ensure…

View Cache

The video of a man raping his 9-year-old daughter was discovered in New Zealand in 2016 and triggered a global search for the little girl.

Investigators contacted Interpol and the pursuit eventually included the FBI, the U.S. State Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Months later, investigators raided the Bisbee, Arizona, home of Paul Adams, arrested him and rescued the girl in the video along with her five siblings.

While Adams can no longer physically hurt his daughter — he died by suicide in custody — the videos live on, downloaded and uploaded by child pornographers across the U.S. and around the globe, growing ever more popular even as as police, prosecutors and internet companies chase behind in a futile effort to remove the images.

The number of times the Adams video has been seen soared from fewer than 100 in 2017 to 4,500 in 2021, according…

View Cache

Fr. Rupnik remains an official advisor to several Vatican departments, even after he was excommunicated and accused of sexually abusing consecrated women.

Fr. Marko Rupnik, SJ, remains an official advisor to several Vatican departments, even after he was excommunicated for a major canonical crime, and is accused of spiritually and sexually abusing consecrated women.

Rupnik was declared in 2020 excommunicated, for the canonical crime of abusing the sacrament of penance to abet his sexual misconduct.

He was in 2021 formally accused at the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith of serially abusing Slovenian religious women in the 1980s and 1990s. Rupnik is nevertheless still listed as a consultor – an officially appointed expert advisor – for several Vatican dicasteries, including those with oversight of clergy and liturgy.

The priest’s roles on those departments amplifies questions about whether he was actually placed under ministerial restrictions by his religious order as…

View Cache

ROME (AP) — The pope’s vicar for Rome called Friday for the full truth to come out about a famous Jesuit priest accused of sexual and spiritual abuses against adult women, and said he was evaluating what to do with the priest’s Rome-based community and diocesan positions.

Cardinal Angelo De Donatis became the latest church official to weigh in about the scandal involving the Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik, a sought-after artist, preacher and retreat leader whose mosaics grace churches and basilicas around the world. In Rome, where the Slovene priest has lived since the mid-1990s, Rupnik decorated the diocesan seminary chapel as well as the Redemptoris Mater chapel inside the Vatican.

Technically speaking De Donatis, who is Pope Francis’ day-to-day manager for the Rome diocese, has little direct oversight over Rupnik because he is a Jesuit and reports to his immediate Jesuit superior. But in an indication of his influence…

View Cache

The legal fight over whether to make public a comprehensive report on sexual abuse committed by Catholic priests in Maryland will continue to play out behind closed doors, a Baltimore judge ruled.

Presented with two motions from abuse victims challenging his preliminary decision to keep the proceedings secret, Circuit Judge Anthony F. Vittoria doubled down in a ruling Thursday, finding that the continued court battle was likely to reveal privileged grand jury materials.

Vittoria cited opinions from the U.S. Supreme Court and Maryland’s highest court calling grand jury confidentiality as an “integral part of our criminal justice system.” He described the legal principle as “well-settled law.”

The legal fight over the report’s release is “related to a grand jury proceeding and that pleadings about or a hearing on this initial issue, at a minimum, would reveal confidential grand jury material,” Vittoria wrote. “Accordingly, this matter must remain sealed at this…

View Cache

This week The Catholic Register publishes a rare guest editorial written by Lea Karen Kivi, author of Abuse in the Church: Healing the Body of Christ, who articulates concerns that we agree must be engaged regarding the effect of the adversarial legal system on clerical abuse cases. 

Are lawyers and insurance companies an impediment to the healing of the Church when it comes to clergy sexual abuse cases? 

This week, we learned that Cardinal Marc Ouellet has brought a civil lawsuit alleging defamation on the part of a woman, a party to a class-action lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Quebec, who alleges that he sexually assaulted her. 

Both parties certainly have the legal right to proceed in this manner, but is an adversarial courtroom setting, in which lawyers on both sides seek to discredit the opposing party, the best place for such matters to be dealt with? 

As survivors of clergy sexual abuse have said, some (arch)bishops…

View Cache

Pope Francis warned Vatican bureaucrats on Thursday to beware the devil that lurks among them, saying it is an “elegant demon” that works in people who have a rigid, holier-than-thou way of living the Catholic faith.

Francis used his annual Christmas greeting to the Roman Curia to again put the cardinals, bishops and priests who work in the Holy See on notice that they are by no means beyond reproach and are, in fact, particularly vulnerable to evil.

Francis told them that by living in the heart of the Catholic Church, “we could easily fall into the temptation of thinking we are safe, better than others, no longer in need of conversion.”

“Yet we are in greater danger than all others, because we are beset by the ‘elegant demon,’ who does not make a loud entrance, but comes with flowers in his hand,” Francis told the churchmen in the Hall…

View Cache

ROME — Over the past few days, three perceived “problem priests” have dominated Catholic headlines in Rome and around the world. To recap, here are the offenses that have been at issue.

• Prolonged sexual coercion and spiritual abuse with a community of nuns, as well as using the confessional to absolve a woman with whom the priest had engaged in sexual activity.
• Partisan political activity on behalf of pro-life causes and “blasphemous” use of social media.
• Owning and operating a series of for-profit businesses, including a restaurant and a bar, in violation of a provision of Church law that bars clergy from “conducting business or trade.”

Now, here are the punishments that have been doled out in the three cases.

• A brief excommunication that was quickly lifted, a Vatican investigation that was shelved due to a statute of limitations, and restrictions on hearing confessions and giving spiritual direction.
• Suspension a divinis, meaning…

View Cache

A Baltimore Judge ordered proceedings sealed concerning the release of a report about Catholic clergy sexual abuse report within the archdiocese.

Circuit Judge Anthony Vittoria has now denied two appeals from sexual abuse survivors who fought to have the proceedings open to the public, said document.

This denial of the appeals comes after many abuse victims and critics of the church fought for weeks in Baltimore for the investigation into the history of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church of Baltimore’s information to be made public.

“It is time for Catholics everywhere to stand up and demand accountability from their leaders,” said Jean Hardagon Wehner at a November news conference.

The investigation found more than 600 victims and also states over 150 priests were credibly accused of abuse, including 43 that have not been identified by the archdiocese.

In November, the Archdiocese of Baltimore said that it would not oppose…

View Cache

Citing state and federal rules that protect grand jury materials, a Baltimore judge ordered proceedings to remain secret in the legal effort to release an investigation into the history of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church of Baltimore.

Circuit Judge Anthony Vittoria on Thursday denied two appeals from survivors of priest sexual abuse who sought to have the proceedings opened up.

At issue wasn’t the 456-page investigation itself; a decision is still pending on whether the report will be disclosed. Rather, the judge ruled the litigation around the release of the report will remain confidential. Those proceedings have played out behind closed doors so far.

“Pursuant to the well-settled law set forth above, the Court finds that the State’s Motion to Disclose is related to a grand jury proceeding and that pleadings about or a hearing on this initial issue, at a minimum, would reveal confidential grand jury material. Accordingly,…

View Cache

A member of the Loyola Community, a women’s religious institute formerly connected to Father Marko Rupnik, has said, in her experience, the Jesuit priest and artist “is an egocentric and violent person.”

The sister, who wished to remain anonymous, told CNA she did not know anything about sexual abuse or allegations of abuse, but that her experience of Rupnik was “of spiritual manipulation and humiliation.”

Referring to an interview given by a former member of the Loyola Community describing in detail sexual, psychological, and spiritual abuse allegedly at the hands of Rupnik, the sister said she “honestly could not imagine that he went that far.”

“I can only say that Father Rupnik, this is my experience, is an egocentric and violent person,” she said via email. “Rupnik is a person who always wanted to be in the center of attention, to subjugate everyone to his own agenda, to receive honors…

View Cache

The indictment of Bishop Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrück is the first ever filed by a victims’ board against a bishop in Germany.

The German Victims’ Advisory Board has filed a canonical complaint against Bishop Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrück for hushing up clerical sexual abuse.

Bode is the vice president of the bishops’ conference and of the synodal way. 

The Victims’ Advisory Board for the north German dioceses of Osnabrück, Hildesheim and Hamburg announced its decision on Monday 12 December.

It is the first time that a victims’ board has ever filed an indictment against a bishop in Germany.

Bode was quick to reply: “I fully respect the step the board has taken and support the thus-initiated investigation by the Vatican authorities”, he said.

He would send the entire interim abuse report by the University of Osnabrück which his diocese had commissioned and excerpts from which had been quoted by…

View Cache

BANGOR, Maine (AP) — Two more people have filed lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by a Roman Catholic clergy member and a nun — both deceased — raising the number to over a dozen since Maine loosened the statute of limitations last year.

One of the plaintiffs contended he was sexually abused by a priest and was spanked by a nun who interrupted one of the encounters in Bangor, while another said that a nun regularly spanked boys’ bare bottoms in class, and that she sexually abused him in private, according to the lawsuits.

The minister died in 1997 at age 96, while the nun died in 1973 at age 86.

The lawsuits, announced Wednesday, bring to about 14 the number of lawsuits alleging the Diocese of Portland knew about abuse and failed to stop it or warn parishioners. A spokesperson said the diocese doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

Maine removed…

View Cache

Slovenia’s Catholic bishops on Thursday condemned as “despicable” the emotional, sexual, and spiritual violence committed against women by a famous Slovenian priest at the heart of an abuse and cover-up scandal roiling the Vatican and the Jesuit order of Pope Francis.

The Slovene bishops’ conference broke three weeks of silence with a statement in which the churchmen also voiced solidarity with the victims of the Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik and urged anyone harmed by him or any other priest who abused his authority to come forward.

“It is never the victims’ fault! We are on their side,” the bishops said. “Any misuse of spiritual power and authority to carry out violence against subordinates is an unacceptable and despicable act.”

The scandal involving Rupnik, a Jesuit from Slovenia whose mosaics decorate churches and chapels around the globe, erupted earlier this month when Italian blogs and websites reported claims by several women that…

View Cache

Every time we learn something new about the case, the mishandling of it at every level appears more appalling.

What if I told you that a man with power of his own and access to more of it serially abused unsuspecting women who had turned to him for various reasons, both professional and personal, for help and guidance?

What if I told you that he followed a playbook to warp their minds, exploit their vulnerabilities – including their desires to be loved and appreciated – in order to get them to do the sorts of things for which Lulu White would charge her clients extra and women like Cora Pearl would not countenance for all the petites Tuileries in the world?

What if I told you that lots of people knew what he got up to, most of them very powerful…

View Cache