ABUSE TRACKER

The proportion of Catholics in Poland attending mass has fallen from 37% to 28% in two years, according to the new figures published by the church’s statistical institute.

The church notes that the latest data – which come from 2021 – are likely to have been affected by the pandemic. But it also admits that “socio-cultural factors” have played a part in the decline.

While the vast majority of Poles are officially identified as Catholic, recent years have seen the status of the church dented by its support for an unpopular near-total ban on abortion and by revelations of child sex abuse by members of the clergy and negligence by bishops in dealing with the issue.

Since 1980, the Catholic church in Poland has conducted an annual study of how many people attend mass and take communion. On one Sunday each year, every parish in the country records figures and submits them to the…

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No complaints of sexual abuse were registered in the months the priest filled the spot

• Catholic dioceses rely on victim assistance coordinators to take complaints of sex abuse from within the church.
• When the Knoxville diocese’s coordinator died, the diocese filled the spot with a top church official.
• Church watchdogs say the arrangement is troubling.
• The diocese has hired the McNabb Center to fill the victim assistance coordinator position.

The Roman Catholic Church created review boards in the early 2000s, following revelations of widespread sexual abuse by clergy, and victim assistance coordinators have filled at important role in helping victims raise the alarm about predatory priests.

In East Tennessee, the Diocese of Knoxville turned to a licensed therapist, Marla Lenihan, to become its first victim assistance coordinator. Lenihan, who had decades of experience in private practice in Oak Ridge, died in March.

Lenihans’ replacement? Bishop Richard Stika’s right-hand man,…

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The many incidents of child sexual abuse by predator priests have shamed thousands of good bishops and benevolent clerics who have been justly angered by the rampant salacious acts of their fellow pedophile priests and in some cases by high-profile bishops and high-ranking cardinals. 

They feel helpless when their bishop protects the abuser priest and calls him “his son.” 

They long for justice for the victims and wish to exonerate their own vocation and the blemished priesthood from the tyranny of abuser priests. 

The Church has succinctly stated that every act of sexual abuse against a child is not only a heinous crime in civil law but a violation of Church law. 

Pope Francis says child abuse by a cleric is “a profound wound that cries out for healing.”

There are many occasions when bishops have been scolded by Pope Francis for covering up priest-abuse complaints instead of reaching out…

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It is the day of balancing in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising: What has happened since the sensational Munich abuse report was published a year ago? The archdiocese takes a position on this today.

Many who were abused by Catholic clergymen as children or young people find that too little has happened. One of them is Rolf Fahnenbruck, who experienced severe sexualized violence as a child in the diocese of Essen and now lives in the diocese of Passau. He is the spokesman for the local Advisory Board.

So far, he has been compensated for his suffering with 25,000 euros. But it’s not about the money, he says in an interview BR24. Because even with the performance notice, a person affected by abuse is alone again with his problem. “You can’t treat people like that,” says Fahnenbruck. “Many people are immensely disappointed in the Catholic Church.”

Affected people feel alone

All…

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A lawsuit says that the Most Rev. Richard Stika interfered in the investigation, and Knox News has independently confirmed that assertion

Two people who played key roles in a review by the Catholic Diocese of Knoxville into whether a seminarian raped a diocesan employee in 2019 told Knox News that Bishop Richard Stika interfered with the effort, independently confirming allegations that are detailed in a lawsuit by the man who says he was sexually assaulted.

Before a lawsuit was filed in February 2022 by John Doe, a placeholder name to protect the identity of the man who reported the rape, the church’s review board hired retired Tennessee Valley Authority investigator George Prosser to investigate the claims.

Prosser was a true outsider. He’s not Catholic and has no ties to the diocese, which is the spiritual home of about 70,000 Catholics in East Tennessee.

Prosser told Knox News he was hired…

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French government denied Canada’s extradition request for Johannes Rivoire last fall

A group of demonstrators gathered outside the retirement home of retired priest Johannes Rivoire in Lyon, France, on Monday, demanding the French government extradite Rivoire to face charges of sexual assault in Canada.

“For us as French citizen[s], it’s a real shame that our government refuses to make part of justice for Inuit people,” said Amandine Sanvisens, who was among the demonstrators.

“We wanted to show and to put the light on this place where he lives.”

The allegations against Rivoire stem from his time working as an Oblate priest in Nunavut in the 1960s and 1970s. He was charged last February with one count of indecent assault on a female, who was child at the time of the alleged offence. It happened between January 1974 and December 1979.

Allegations against him date much further back, though — previous charges against him had been outstanding for…

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The cardinal was smart and determined. His failure to uncover some of the worst cases of child sexual abuse by priests blights his reputation

He was a company man. He did what he did to preserve the power and the assets of the church. If that meant thrashing victims of abuse through the courts and boxing them into tiny settlements, that was fine by him. Duty done.

That’s what made him the right man to clean up the financial mess of the Vatican. High among the achievements for which he deserves praise at this time was the work he and his accountants did to begin tracking the missing billions in the Holy City. Alas, Pope Francis didn’t have the guts to back him. The courtiers brought him down.

Soon after, he was in Melbourne facing a long purgatory in the criminal courts which ended in a…

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For immediate release January 13, 2023

The surprise death of George Pell came as good news to many survivors of clerical abuse in Australia. SNAP or its network members do not celebrate the death of anyone, even of a man despised and mistrusted by thousands of survivors and supporters in Australia and beyond.

Donald McLeish of SNAP Australia, says “George Pell had become a target and focus for survivors, and seen as the embodiment of the church’s attitude to those sexually abused by clerics, religious brothers and sisters, and lay employees of the Catholic Church in Australia.” The ‘modus operandi’ used worldwide, was to immediately dispel the situation, minimise the damage, and move the perpetrator on to other places where abuse continued almost unabated until recent times.

George Pell was recognised by the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, as a witness whose testimony at the…

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Graeme Sleeman resigned in disgust after complaining about Father Peter Searson in the 1980s and suspects he was then blacklisted

Former Catholic school principal Graeme Sleeman says he still remembers the day George Pell hung up on him.

It was the 1990s and Sleeman was in Grafton, New South Wales, more than 1,500km away from the small Victorian Catholic school he had resigned from in disgust years earlier.

He had given up everything – a lauded, successful career as an educator – to blow the whistle on a notorious paedophile priest, Father Peter Searson, who was abusing children at his school, Doveton Holy Family primary school, in the mid-1980s.

The principal had fought tirelessly to protect his children from the predations of Searson, a paedophile he describes as a “serial offender”, who was known to the diocese for offending in his last parish in Sunbury.

“They knew that he sexually abused…

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It was in late spring, 1985, when I received a call from NCR’s then-editor Tom Fox. I think he said he hoped I was sitting down.

Fox and I often exchanged calls when we thought that one of our publications had something of interest for the other. At the time, I was news editor of what was then called Religious News Service, headquartered on a floor in the former Jesuit residence at 56th Street and Sixth Avenue in New York.

I was sitting at my desk when he told me that NCR’s next edition would contain an extensive and rather explosive report detailing the abuse of children by Catholic priests and the failure of hierarchy to do anything about it.

That conversation was a jarring introduction to corruption and evil that continue to reverberate to this day. That first national story to be published about the scandal was…

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[Note from BishopAccountability.org – For more on the allegations against Pell, as well as his trial, see our summary and our detailed timeline: Timeline of the Allegations and Prosecution Faced by Cardinal George Pell.]

Suppression of the truth comes from the Catholic church’s canon law. There is no exposing of hierarchy

To be a sexual assault victim of Catholic clergy is to know the truth – the truth of your own experience. That truth, long suppressed by victim, perpetrator and organisation alike is what keeps the crime of paedophilia alive. Children are easily intimidated and silenced. Paedophilic crimes thrived among Catholic clergy.

Suppression of the truth comes from the church’s canon law 489 which orders every bishop of a diocese and archbishop of an archdiocese, to maintain and keep under lock and key a secret archive. Canon law 489 acknowledges that “criminal cases in matters of morals” could be among the matters held…

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For five decades, psychologist Diane Langberg has worked with survivors of abuse and trauma. She remains amazed by their courage — and dismayed by the way church leaders have failed survivors of abuse.

Not long after Diane Langberg began working as a clinical psychologist in the 1970s, a client told her that she had been a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of her father. Not sure of what to do, Langberg went to talk to her supervisor.

The supervisor, Langberg recalled, dismissed the allegations.

“He told me that women make these things up,” Langberg said. “My job was to not be taken in by them.”

The supervisor’s response left Langberg in a dilemma. Did she believe her client? Or did she trust her supervisor’s advice?

“The choice I made is pretty obvious at this point,” the 74-year old Langberg said in a recent interview.

For the last five…

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AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

There’s a new report on abuse that took place for years in Catholic churches in Kansas. It’s just the latest revelation in a series of investigations across the nation, spurred by The Boston Globe’s reporting two decades ago that exposed widespread sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic Church there. We have Celia Llopis-Jepsen of the Kansas News Service here with us now. Thank you for being with us.

CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN, BYLINE: Glad to be here.

RASCOE: So this is a report by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation after an investigation that took four years. How did that probe come about, and what were the findings?

LLOPIS-JEPSEN: Well, the Catholic Church in Kansas has published the names of priests before where there are substantiated cases of abuse, but the archbishop of Kansas City in Kansas, Joseph Naumann, asked for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation to help after…

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As state lawmakers decide the political costs of opening a two-year window for child sex abuse survivors to sue, much of the debate about the two-year window for those past the statute of limitations has been about the potential financial impact on the catholic church over the egregious abuse claims outlined in those grand jury reports.

But that proposal would open the door for all adult victims of child sexual abuse, and a new study shows how much that could ultimately cost taxpayers.

Last April, the Diocese of Camden in New Jersey agreed to pay $87 million to about 300 victims, an average payout of about $290,000. In November, the Diocese of Rochester in New York agreed to pay $55 million to 475 victims, about $115,000 each.

Both dioceses had declared bankruptcy before settling. How many claims could be filed in Pennsylvania against the…

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‘Today I am no longer F. I am Paméla Groleau,’ says woman participating in class action against clergy members

The woman who alleges she experienced unwanted sexual touching by Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet has revealed her identity, saying she wants more transparency from the Vatican and to encourage others to come forward with their stories of abuse.

Paméla Groleau is one of the more than 130 people taking part in a class action lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Quebec, which includes allegations of sexual misconduct against 96 members of its clergy dating back to 1940. 

“Today, I am no longer F,” Groleau said in a statement to a small group of reporters, referring to the letter used to identify her in court documents. “I am Paméla Groleau.”

Ouellet is a prominent Vatican cardinal, who has been regarded as a potential successor to the Pope. He has denied all the allegations…

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The disclosure by Michael L. Costello, the diocese’s attorney, came during a public court conference

A longtime attorney for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany inadvertently disclosed during a court conference last week that it had recently offered $20 million toward a “global settlement” involving hundreds of alleged child sexual abuse victims who have filed claims against the organization or the priests and other employees accused of sexually assaulting them.

The amount of the offer — the second by the diocese — was supposed to remain confidential under a court order.

The disclosure by Michael L. Costello, the diocese’s attorney, came during a public court conference before state Supreme Court Justice L. Michael Mackey and revealed how much money the diocese had privately offered to settle the hundreds of remaining lawsuits.

But the recent offer was not accepted because the “plaintiffs liaison committee,” a group of attorneys who were facilitating…

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[Includes 20-minute audio interview]

The death of Pope Benedict on New Year’s Eve prompted an outpouring of grief among Catholics – but his legacy is a complicated one.

A world-renowned lawyer – who’s represented countless victims of sexual abuse within the church – and was famously depicted in the 2015 film Spotlight – believes Pope Benedict XVI leaves behind a tarnished legacy.

Child abuse in the Catholic church is as bad now as ever, despite the positive impact of bringing such cases to light, Mitchell Garabedian says.

Pope Benedict’s legacy is “disappointing,” Garabedian says.

“Pope Benedict toed the company line, he practised the cover up when he was Archbishop in Munich, or he was leading the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which investigated sexual abuse claims.

“As Pope he was more interested in protecting the institution and more interested in doctrine than protecting children and trying to help victims to…

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Four survivors of childhood sexual abuse revealed details about the worst moments of their lives in a public rebuke of state law that protects pedophiles from criminal prosecution or civil lawsuits.

Backed by a bipartisan coalition of state lawmakers, the women emphasized that it can take years before a survivor accepts what happened and is willing to talk about it. Most people who are victimized as children won’t share their experiences until they are over age 50.

Kansas state law requires requires survivors to file a civil lawsuit by age 21. Proposed legislation would remove the statute of limitations for both civil and criminal cases, and open the door to retroactive litigation dating to 1984. The Legislature eliminated the statute of limitations for criminal cases in 2013, but didn’t make the law retroactive.

State law fell under renewed scrutiny last week when a Kansas Bureau of Investigation…

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In the Yellowstone prequel 1923, Sebastian Roché plays Father Renaud, a Catholic priest who runs a boarding school for Indigenous girls. The series portrays a real and dark time in American history. Native American children were forced to attend these schools and endure horrific abuse. Although 1923 has already shown graphic violence at the boarding school, Roché warns that things will get worse in upcoming episodes.

Father Renaud deals out horrific punishments in ‘1923’

For over a century, the United States funded government boarding schools designed to strip away Native American culture. Indigenous children were forced to attend these institutions, which were often run by Christian church leaders. There they endure horrific treatment and abuse.

In the 1923 premiere, a student named Teonna Rainwater fights back after Sister Mary continuously hits her with a ruler. Father Renaud then physically punishes both Teonna and Sister Mary.

“Father Renaud is one of these extreme ideologists, religious zealots who…

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James T. Beighlie of St. Louis, Missouri, curated a vile PowerPoint show over many years, but was only caught after he printed out some of his collection of photos and left them in a printer

A paedo priest who regularly updated a slideshow of sick child abuse images for over a decade has been sentenced to five years behind bars.

The US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri said on Tuesday that investigators had found over 6,000 items of child sexual abuse material on a computer belonging to Vincentian priest James T. Beighlie of St. Louis, Missouri.

The priest’s vile stash of images and videos was discovered in May 2021 after he printed out a PowerPoint presentation of some of the images, some of which showed Fr. Beighlie.

At the time, he was working as an associate pastor at St. Vincent de Paul…

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[Note from BishopAccountability.org – For more on the allegations against Pell, as well as his trial, see our summary and our detailed timeline: Timeline of the Allegations and Prosecution Faced by Cardinal George Pell.]

Former senior Vatican figure George Pell has died in Rome from complications following hip surgery. He was 81.

Pell, often described as a conservative Catholic, was jailed for 13 months for child sexual abuse in Australia in 2019 but maintained his innocence and was acquitted the following year.

Once a top official in charge of reforming the Vatican finances, and also Australia’s highest-ranked Catholic figure, Pell leaves behind a complex legacy.

His death will be sad for the Catholics who held him in high regard but less so for the many critics he attracted in Australia and elsewhere over the course of his career.

It’s hard to believe he will not be remembered most vividly for the trial in…

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The singer has always followed his instinct – becoming a priest, leaving the priesthood, speaking out about abuse, leaving the Irish Tenors… and, now, revolutionise his garden

When Finbar Wright was a little boy growing up in Kinsale, he spent long hours in his mother’s garden.

“I used to lie down among the rows of peas and pick the pods of peas. It was like eating sweets,” he says with a smile. “I grew up in the garden. It was huge.She had all sorts of flowers like dahlias in the front, and at the side she had a big kitchen garden. If you needed an onion or a carrot, you’d go out and pick it. She grew blackberries and gooseberries and made jams out of them. Our dairy farm was at the back of the house.

“We were self-sufficient – and we only went to the shops for incidentals.”

He has happy memories…

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In spite of her youth, Blanquita (Laura López) knows she doesn’t want to be a saint. She’s tried it before, she says, and it didn’t work out.

By age 18, she’s seen enough of life’s darkest side to know being good doesn’t mean she’ll be treated justly. She has spent her life living under a care system that’s failed to care for her when she needed it most, allowing men to abuse and exploit her in myriad ways. All she wants now is a place to live with her baby daughter, the identity of the father anyone’s guess considering she’s been sexually abused repeatedly and forced to engage in sex work in order to survive.

Blanquita is the unusual heroine of Fernando Guzzoni’s eponymously titled fourth film, where he was once again inspired by real-life events that transpired in his native Chile to create powerful pieces of…

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Matt Schlapp, the longtime Republican activist who co-chaired the Catholics for Trump campaign group in 2020 and then parroted the former president’s lies about a stolen election, is accused of making “sustained and unwanted and unsolicited” sexual advances against a former staffer for Herschel Walker’s failed U.S. Senate campaign.

The Daily Beast reported on Jan. 6 that it had interviewed the staffer, a man who alleges that Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union and lead organizer for the Conservative Political Action Conference, “groped” and “fondled” his crotch after buying him drinks at Atlanta bars last fall.

The staffer, who was not identified in the story, described Schlapp as behaving inappropriately, not respecting his personal space and telling the staffer that he wanted to spend the evening with him to discuss his future. The Daily Beast article indicated that the staffer presented the outlet with contemporaneous videos,…

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Frank Pavone, the national director of Priests for Life, was notified of his recent laicization, a diocesan official has told CNA, contradicting the ex-priest’s repeated claims that he has not received official notification of the Vatican’s decree dismissing him from the clerical state.

An official with the Amarillo Diocese in Texas, who asked not to be identified by name, told CNA that “the canonical process was followed, including physical and electronic notifications [of his laicization] at their proper time.” 

The official’s account is at odds with Pavone’s prior statements to CNA and other media outlets claiming that he has received no such formal notification.

Pavone, who plans to hold a livestreamed press conference Friday ahead of next week’s March for Life in Washington, D.C., provided CNA a different answer Thursday when asked about the diocesan official’s statement.

“I have no idea what they sent me. The communication broke down a…

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THE many incidents of child sexual abuse by clerics have shamed thousands of good bishops and priests who have been justly angered by the rampant and tolerated child sexual abuse of pedophile priests and some bishops. They feel helpless when their bishop protects the pedophile priest and calls him “his son.” They hunger for justice for the victims and wish to exonerate their own vocation and blemished priesthood.

Church law now says every act of sexual abuse against a child is not only a heinous crime in civil law but is a violation of church law. (www.preda.org) Bishops have been scolded by Pope Francis for covering up child abuse cases among their priests instead of reaching out to help the victims, find them therapy, healing and justice. Instead, they try to buy off the child-victim and the family with money and promises. This is what happened in a case in…

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Fr. Marko Rupnik, SJ, was appointed by the Society of Jesus to create mosaics in one of the most important historic sites of the Jesuit order, after he was found guilty of sexual and sacramental misconduct. The mosaics were then dedicated by Rupnik and Jesuit officials after the priest was accused of more canonical crimes: spiritually and sexually abusing several consecrated women.

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

But 11 months after the excommunication was declared, the Society of Jesus announced that Rupnik had been commissioned to install a set of mosaics in the Sanctuary of the Cave, a Spanish church connected to the cave where St. Ignatius of Loyola, the Jesuits’ founder, composed his famous “Spiritual Exercises.”

The church, in Manresa, Spain, is an important site for Jesuits, and a destination for pilgrims…

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You might have wondered if the recent death of George Pell, who was jailed in 2019 for child sexual abuse and then later acquitted, would bring a sense of relief or closure for victim survivors of Catholic clergy sexual abuse.

After all, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found Pell had failed to do enough during his time in senior church roles in Australia to stop priests who abused children.

In fact, news of Pell’s death may generate a roller coaster of complex and variable emotions among abuse survivors.

This mix of emotions may include sadness for the ongoing consequences of the abuse for fellow victim/survivors, and anger at the lack of justice for so many.

There’s also the potential post-traumatic stress reactions triggered by this recent round of media coverage – such as fear, dissociation, distressing memories and sleep disturbance.

Lifelong impacts

Extensive research reveals how…

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Un-redacted report released in 2020 revealed how archbishop failed to take proper steps to act on complaints about dangerous priests

• George Pell’s death could renew distress for Ballarat’s child abuse survivors
• Daniel Andrews ‘couldn’t think of anything more distressing’ for victims than a state funeral for George Pell
• Cardinal Pell dies in Rome aged 81
• Obituary: Australia’s most powerful Catholic, dogged by scandal
• Cardinal George Pell divides opinion in death as in life

The child sexual abuse royal commission in 2020 released a bombshell un-redacted report examining the failings of George Pell during his time as an assistant priest, bishop, auxiliary bishop and cardinal in Australia.

The report found he both knew about child abuse, particularly within the Victorian diocese of Ballarat, and failed to take proper steps to act on complaints about dangerous priests.

The findings – which Pell always disputed – were arrived at after an exhaustive, five-year…

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A Vincentian priest in St. Louis was sentenced Jan. 10 to prison and ordered to pay restitution for possessing 6,000 images of child pornography, an act which one victim told the presiding judge was “depressing and sickening.”

Father James T. Beighlie, a 72-year-old retired member of the Congregation of the Mission, Western Province, was ordered to serve five years in jail after pleading guilty Oct. 12, 2022, to two counts of possessing images depicting child sexual abuse. Following the prison term, Father Beighlie will be on supervised release for life.

U.S. District Judge Matthew T. Schelp also ordered Father Beighlie to pay $26,750 in restitution — $4,750 to one of the victims depicted in the child pornography images, and $22,000 toward other victims of crimes involving children.

“It’s depressing and sickening to know that people were looking at images and videos of my online sexual abuse when I was a…

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The coverage of the recent death of Pope Emeritus Benedict highlights a persistent problem regarding clergy sex crimes and cover-ups. Unlike most of the Catholic abuse crisis, this problem is one where rank-and-file Catholics can really make a difference. Without getting political, we at Horowitz Law are reminded of a memorable phrase coined by former presidential speechwriter Michael Gerson, “The soft bigotry of low expectations.” He was referring to kids’ education, not kids’ abuse. Gerson claimed that many teachers quietly assume or believe that some groups of kids (primarily minorities) really won’t succeed in the classroom as well as other kids. That assumption, Gerson suggests, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.Regardless of your views on education, his broader point is valid; “If we expect less, we often get less.”

That brings us to how Pope Benedict’s legacy is defined and what it means for Catholic parishioners. Here’s how one veteran…

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Pope Francis’ own role in the investigation into financial wrongdoing at the Holy See took center stage Friday in the Vatican tribunal, with witnesses saying he encouraged a key suspect to cooperate with prosecutors and a key defendant accusing him of interfering in the trial.

Friday’s hearing was one of the most eagerly anticipated in the Vatican’s “trial of the century,” given it featured testimony from one of the more colorful figures in recent Vatican history, Francesca Chaouqui. The public relations expert was summoned after it emerged late last year that she had played a behind-the-scenes role in persuading a key suspect-turned-star-witness to change his story and implicate his former boss, Cardinal Angelo Becciu.

But the daylong hearing ended with an unexpected bombshell, as Becciu responded to Chaouqui’s testimony by reading aloud an exchange of letters with the pope that suggested Francis himself continued to cast a shadow over the trial,…

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In dramatic testimony at the Vatican mega-trial on financial corruption Jan. 13, a former Vatican official who spent time in prison for her role in the Vatileaks scandal admitted to influencing the deposition of Msgr. Alberto Perlasca, a key prosecution witness in the current trial.

Her goal, said Francesca Chaouqui, a former Vatican diplomat, was to alert Pope Francis to the brewing financial scandal that is at the heart of the 18-month-old proceeding that has charged 10 defendants with fraud and abuse of office.

“I believed that I had to report to the Holy Father a description of what was happening behind his back,” said Chaouqui.

Chaouqui’s testimony was ordered by Vatican judges overseeing the trial after Perlasca, who once headed the administrative office of the Vatican Secretariat of State, revealed in his own testimony in early December that his deposition was made under pressure from Chaouqui. Perlasca, once a…

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According to the senator who plans to introduce the legislation, the proposal ‘tries to make clear there [will be] no confidentiality’ exception, regardless of the context in which the clergy member becomes aware of the information.

Legislation that would expand mandatory-reporting requirements for clergy and potentially pose a threat to the seal of confession could be introduced into the Vermont Senate within the next week or two. 

Current Vermont law lists members of the clergy, such as priests, as mandatory reporters, which means they are required to report suspected child abuse or neglect within 24 hours of becoming aware of the information. However, the law provides an exemption for clergy if reporting that information would violate a privilege or disclose confidential communication, such as information learned during a confession. 

Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, plans to introduce a bill that would fully eliminate that exception. The bill has not yet been…

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The parish fears the school will be targeted, in the wake of the Michigan Supreme Court’s recent reinterpretation of state antidiscrimination laws to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

Amid fears that a Catholic school could be forced to close its doors if it refuses to compromise its beliefs regarding sexuality, a Grand Rapids parish is suing the Michigan attorney general and Department of Civil Rights.

Sacred Heart of Jesus parish, which operates Sacred Heart Academy in the western Michigan city, filed its lawsuit on Dec. 12, after the Michigan Supreme Court reinterpreted the state’s antidiscrimination laws regarding sex. Under the new interpretation, the prohibition on discrimination based on sex also encompasses sexual orientation and gender-identity discrimination. 

The parish worries that this reinterpretation would prevent the school from maintaining its standard-of-conduct policies for employees and its approach to how it helps students who struggle with same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria. The…

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Robert Shiflet, a former youth pastor at Denton Bible Church in Texas who was sentenced to 33 months in federal prison in June 2021 for child sex trafficking charges, is set to be released next month but will spend the rest of his life under federal supervision.

Shiflet, 51, whose pending release was highlighted by Fox 4, was sentenced in June 2021, on charges of sexually abusing 14 young girls placed under his pastoral care 20 years earlier. The sentence was made after Shiflet made a plea deal which U.S. District Judge Lee Rudofsky lamented.

“You are a terrible person,” Rudofsky told the former youth pastor at the time, according to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. “I don’t believe that you are sorry in the slightest. I don’t believe you have rehabilitated yourself. I believe you haven’t been caught again but I don’t believe you…

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A 54-year-old Wildomar pastor accused of sexually assaulting two girls numerous times pleaded not guilty Friday to nearly two dozen felony charges.

Fredy Romeo Gonzalez Lopez was arrested in November following a Riverside County Sheriff’s Department investigation.

Lopez is charged with eight counts of aggravated rape of a child, seven counts of lewd acts on a minor, five counts of sodomy of a child and multiple sentence-enhancing allegations of targeting two or more victims in a sex crime.

The defendant was arraigned before Superior Court Judge Elaine Kiefer, who scheduled a felony settlement conference for Feb. 22 at the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta.

Lopez is being held on $1 million bail at the nearby Byrd Detention Center.

According to sheriff’s Sgt. Joshua Parker, Gonzalez presides at a Wildomar church, but the house of worship wasn’t identified.

Parker said that detectives initiated an investigation during the first week of November,…

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

Editor’s Note: This story was updated after initial publication to include comments from Montana Southern Baptist Convention Executive Director Barrett Duke.

Dean Alan Smith, longtime pastor of Morning Star Baptist Church in Lame Deer, Mt., pled not guilty Tuesday (Jan. 3) to federal charges filed against him last month.

According to local media reports, Smith, 66, was charged with sexually abusing four girls on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation between 2017 and 2019. Morning Star Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist congregation where Smith has been pastor more than 20 years, sits adjacent to the reservation.

The Billings Gazette reported that charges against him include one count…

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The charge against the 26-year-old is used against defendants who are in a position of authority over a juvenile

Key Points

• Police arrested the former middle school teacher on Monday and took him to Blount County to face charges.
• Joseph “Kade” Abbott was on the Apostolic Christian Academy staff list as recently as August.
• Apostolic Christian Academy, based in Maryville, is the school housed in First Apostolic Church.
• Leaders of the school and church did not return requests for comment about the former middle school teacher.

A former teacher at the Apostolic Christian Academy in Maryville has been arrested on a felony charge that he sexually abused a 14-year-old girl, Knox News has learned.

Joseph “Kade” Abbott was arrested in North Carolina and taken to the Blount County jail on Monday, according to sheriff’s office spokesperson Marian O’Briant. Abbott is being held on a $200,000 bond. His preliminary hearing is Jan. 18.

…

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A former minister at a New Jersey evangelical church has pleaded guilty to multiple sex abuse crimes, admitting that he blackmailed teenage boys into performing explicit sex acts via webcam.

During a hearing last week at Burlington County Superior Court in Mount Holly, New Jersey, Sean Higgins, 32, of Palmyra, pleaded guilty to four counts of Endangering the Welfare of Children. In exchange for the plea, Higgins is expected to serve 27 years in a New Jersey state prison. Higgins’ sentencing is scheduled for March 3.

According to a grand jury indictment last August, prosecutors say Higgins victimized at least 13 boys, aged 12 to 17, who resided in Alabama, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Tennessee.

At the time of the crimes, Higgins was on staff as youth pastor and worship leader at Harbor Baptist Church in Hainesport, according to the…

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A former pastor and Illinois school district employee has been arrested and charged with two counts of sexually grooming a child, following a months-long investigation.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office posted an update to Facebook announcing the arrest of 28-year-old Garrett S. Biggerstaff of Mcleansboro. 

According to authorities, the investigation into Biggerstaff began last September when “the Benton Police Department received information from a juvenile claiming to be the target of some form of sexual exploitation.”

“Officers handling the complaint in Benton contacted Detectives from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office and a coordinated investigation [began],” stated the sheriff’s office.

“Evidence was collected and examined by the Sheriff’s Office member of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. From this work, a second juvenile victim was identified.”

After Biggerstaff was arrested Thursday, he was transported to the Jefferson County Jail and booked on felony charges. His bond was set…

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SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) in Aotearoa New Zealand Responds to Catholic Church’s Public Relations Statements

The statements by NZ Catholic Church leaders on “looking forward from the work of the Royal Commission on Abuse in Care,” and their proposed commitments to handle clergy and religious sexual abuse complaints differently, and support mandatory reporting, simply lack credibility.

For Catholic Church leaders to say they support mandatory reporting “but with exemptions” is a contradiction. Mandatory reporting means there must be no “legal, confessional, and therapeutic privilege,” – only respect for privacy at the sole request of the victim or survivor.

Further, to date survivors have not seen any substantial changes in the application and practical procedures responding to abuse complaints. We have seen nothing to bring the Church leaders’ public commitments to light.

In fact, sadly, survivor evidence demonstrates continued denial and cover up, diversion, a lack of…

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Here’s the situation all Rome is talking about:

    1) an anonymous text was circulating at the beginning of this year, signed “Demos” (the text is below) (link)

    2) the respected Vaticanist Sandro Magister revealed in a piece he wrote yesterday (link) — following Pell’s death Tuesday night in Rome at the age of 81 — that “Demos” was, in fact… Cardinal George Pell.

    So the “Demos” text suddenly took on heightened importance.

    This was an “insider” text at the highest level, for those of you interested in such things…

    What was Pell saying in his anonymous text, circulating among his fellow cardinals?

    Essentially, that the Church needed strong leadership which would teach clearly and fearlessly the Church’s doctrine.

    The document also was taken to be Pell’s way to begin to form a consensus on what “type” of man would be the man best suited to… be elected…

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Shortly before he died on Tuesday, Cardinal George Pell wrote the following article for The Spectator in which he denounced the Vatican’s plans for its forthcoming ‘Synod on Synodality’ as a ‘toxic nightmare’. The booklet produced by the Synod, to be held in two sessions this year and next year, is ‘one of the most incoherent documents ever sent out from Rome’, says Pell. Not only is it ‘couched in neo-Marxist jargon’, but it is ‘hostile to the apostolic tradition’ and ignores such fundamental Christian tenets as belief in divine judgment, heaven and hell.

The Australian-born cardinal, who endured the terrible ordeal of imprisonment in his home country on fake charges of sex abuse before being acquitted, was nothing if not courageous. He did not know that he was about to die when he wrote this piece; he was prepared to face the fury of Pope Francis and the organisers when it was published….

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Pope Francis will deliver a final send-off for Cardinal George Pell during a funeral Mass on Saturday, the Vatican said, as revelations emerge of the Australian prelate’s growing concern about what he considered the “disaster” and “catastrophe” of the papacy under Francis.

The Vatican on Thursday said the dean of the college of cardinals, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, would celebrate Pell’s funeral Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. As is custom for cardinal funerals, Francis will deliver a final commendation and salute.

Pell, who had served as Francis’ first finance minister for three years before returning to Australia to face child sex abuse charges, died on Tuesday at a Rome hospital of heart complications following hip surgery. He was 81.

He had been dividing his time between Rome and Sydney after he was exonerated in 2020 of allegations he molested two choirboys while he was archbishop of Melbourne. Australia’s High Court overturned…

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[Note from BishopAccountability.org – For more on the allegations against Pell, as well as his trial, see our summary and our detailed timeline: Timeline of the Allegations and Prosecution Faced by Cardinal George Pell.]

Instead of flights of angels, the death of Cardinal George Pell provoked another roiling culture war to sing the Cardinal to his rest. It’s what Australia’s most prominent church figure would have wanted. The only certainty, other than death, is that arguments about Pell’s ecclesiastic and cultural legacy will rage for years after his remains are interred in the crypt beneath Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral.

The battleground preferred by Pell’s supporters, most prominently former prime minister Tony Abbott and Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton, is the ill-fated criminal prosecution of Pell for historical child sex offences which saw him jailed for 14 months before the High Court unanimously set aside his conviction and acquitted him of all charges.

…

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Survivors question why Oblates of Mary Immaculate isn’t identifying the overseer

The Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a Catholic order that operated 48 of Canada’s residential schools, has hired an independent third party to oversee efforts to ensure members who have committed sex crimes do not reoffend.

Some sexual assault survivors have praised the hiring as a positive development — but have also criticized the Oblate’s decision to withhold the monitor’s name.

Tony Charlie, who was sexually assaulted by an Oblate brother during his time at Kuper Island Residential School starting in the mid-1960s, said the hiring of an independent monitor is “a good step.” 

He also said it’s impossible to confirm that the monitor is truly independent if the Oblates are unwilling to release the hire’s name.

“We have no clue who this person is,” he said. “It’s very important that these abusers be accountable and visible and probably monitored closely.”

The Oblates hired the monitor in December 2022 and expect he will begin monthly…

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Two years ago, ProPublica showcased the remarkable tale of a doctor who saved physical evidence from more than 2,000 rape exams starting in the 1970s, years before police began to preserve forensic DNA. Baltimore County police tested just a tiny portion of the samples decades later and solved more than 80 cold cases; they made dozens of arrests and exposed serial rapists, including a man who assaulted at least 25 women and murdered one. The evidence also exonerated an innocent man and gave survivors life-changing closure.

Baltimore County law enforcement could have prioritized testing such a fruitful trove. Instead, it falls through loopholes in laws meant to preserve rape kit evidence and expedite testing.

Each year, the evidence saved by the doctor in the form of glass slides has been excluded from a state-mandated inventory of untested rape kits. A police spokesperson said they did not list the evidence because they…

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When accused Bishop Howard Hubbard requested the Vatican remove his status as a priest, among those caught by surprise were his alleged abuse victims and their civil attorneys, along with canon lawyers. Read letters to the editor from NCR readers responding to our reporting below. The letters have been edited for length and clarity.

The title of this article is false. This article isn’t about “victim’s lawyers” but about the lawyers of alleged victims. Both the repeated use of “alleged” and references to “allegations” in the body of the article are implicitly, and I’d imagine purposely, undermined by the inaccurate title. 

Ultimately, the blurring of the distinction between alleged and proven victims is a reminder that irrationalism is not only rising on the right, but is sharply increasing in the Anglosphere more generally.

The issue here is epistemology. How do we evaluate truth claims? One side suggests that we…

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Key Points

• The Diocese of Knoxville changed last year the rules for how its sex abuse review board operates.
• The change was initiated three months after the diocese and Bishop Richard Stika were named in a sexual abuse lawsuit.
• The diocese says the new rules better protect victims.
• Sex abuse victim advocates say the new rules protect abusers.

Three months after the Catholic Diocese of Knoxville and Bishop Richard Stika were named in an explosive sexual abuse lawsuit last year, leaders made the church’s sexual abuse review board meetings much more secretive, including requiring members to sign nondisclosure agreements, Knox News has learned.

The lawsuit asserted the church did not properly investigate sexual abuse allegations made by a former church employee and instead worked to discredit him. There has since been a separate lawsuit with similar allegations filed by a Sevier County woman.

The diocese maintains a more…

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A year and a half since the initiative was launched, more than 200 survivors have reported their abuse and two prosecutions have been made. That’s less than one percent.

Ineffective and harmful, that’s how some described a statewide investigation by Wisconsin’s Department of Justice. More than a year and a half after its creation, Attorney General Josh Kaul defends his plan to look into clergy abuse. He says progress is being made to hold religious leaders accountable.

Kaul originally pleaded with survivors, asking them to report their stories of abuse to his office to look into. Some of those survivors say after reporting, they have no idea what, if anything, is actually being looked into.

In April of 2021, standing on the Capitol steps, survivors of abuse put their faith in AG Kaul, faith his initiative would hold clergy and religious leaders accountable by law for past…

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James T. Beighlie, 72, sparked suspicion after colleagues found “compromising images” of the priest on a church printer, prosecutors said.

A retired priest in St. Louis, Missouri, was sentenced to five years in prison after police discovered he had created a PowerPoint presentation containing thousands of images of child sexual abuse material.

The US Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Missouri announced on Tuesday that James T. Beighlie, 72, had amassed 6,000 pictures containing child sexual abuse on one computer, as well as 236 images and 40 videos of similar content on another.

Officials said that the priest had created two PowerPoint presentations with graphic titles that linked to the material and had revised and edited the presentations more than 200 times since 2008.

“This criminal conduct was part of his daily life,” Assistant US Attorney Colleen Lang said in a statement.

Beighlie’s criminal activity was…

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[Note from BishopAccountability.org – For more on the allegations against Pell, as well as his trial, see our summary and our detailed timeline: Timeline of the Allegations and Prosecution Faced by Cardinal George Pell.]

[Via Chicago Catholic]

Pope Francis praised the late Australian Cardinal George Pell as a faithful servant of God and of the Catholic Church, who steadfastly followed the Lord even “in the hour of trial” when he was jailed for sexual abuse before his conviction was overturned by Australia’s highest court.

Cardinal Pell died in Rome Jan. 10 at the age of 81 after suffering a heart attack following hip replacement surgery.

The cardinal’s funeral was expected to be celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican with burial to take place in St. Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney, but the Vatican did not offer details immediately.

In an interview with Italy’s Mediaset broadcast Dec. 18, Pope Francis…

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Pope Francis will preside over the final portion of the funeral of the late Australian Cardinal George Pell on Saturday in St. Peter’s Basilica.

The Holy See Press Office announced on Thursday that Pope Francis will preside over the rites of Ultima Commendatio and Valedictio at the funeral of Cardinal George Pell.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Dean of the College of Cardinals, will celebrate the Requiem Mass at 11:30 AM on Saturday, 14 January.

The Mass will take place at the Altar of the Chair of St. Peter in the Vatican Basilica.

A host of other Cardinals and bishops are expected to concelebrate the Mass.

‘Dedicated to the Gospel’

The late Australian Cardinal died on Tuesday in Rome at the age of 81 due to heart complications following a hip operation.

Cardinal Pell had served as the Prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy from April 2014 until February 2019.

Pope Francis expressed…

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About twenty years ago, in a series of email messages, the late Father Paul Mankowski and I exchanged arguments against the legal recognition of same-sex marriage. This was a private conversation, at first, and since we were old friends, accustomed to speaking freely, the language of the exchange was fairly colorful. Eventually, convinced that our ideas were worthy of a wider audience, we cleaned up that language, removing some of the saltier expressions, and published the result in Catholic World Report.

Before it was published, however, Father Mankowski told me that he had shared the exchange with then-Archbishop George Pell. I was taken aback. Had he sent him the original, uncensored version? Yes, said Father Mankowski, unperturbed. He knew the Australian prelate well, and knew that he would not be flustered by strong language.

In fact, Archbishop Pell shared that exchange with priests in his Sydney archdiocese. I…

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COMMENTARY: In his last years of life, the Australian prelate became one of the universal Church’s most prominent champions for doctrinal orthodoxy, a mantle others will need to carry forward following his departure.

Immediate reflections following the shocking death of Cardinal George Pell have focused on the Australian prelate’s heroic endurance of false accusations of sexual abuse. And rightfully so. 

Cardinal Pell’s fortitude in the face of such ideologically motivated injustices, which included 404 days of solitary confinement in a Melbourne prison cell before the charges were quashed by the Australian High Court in April 2020, were an inspiration to Catholics across the world, a compelling example of faithfully enduring the kind of persecution that Christ foretold those who follow him would face.

But far less attention has been given to the significant role Cardinal Pell took up after his post-exoneration return to Rome in 2020 — a role that makes his passing…

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Australian Cardinal George Pell – who was convicted then acquitted of child sex abuse – will not be offered a state funeral in his home state to avoid distress for victims of abuse, Victoria’s premier says.

The former Vatican treasurer died on Tuesday aged 81.

He is Australia’s highest ranking Catholic, and the most senior clergyman ever jailed for child sex offences.

State funerals are frequently offered to notable public figures in Australia.

But the premier of Victoria – where Cardinal Pell was born and spent about half his career – said no such funeral would take place there.

“I couldn’t think of anything more distressing for victim survivors,” Daniel Andrews told reporters on Thursday.

Mr Andrews also said he was unlikely to attend the cleric’s funeral.

Officials in the state of New South Wales, where the Cardinal served as Archbishop of Sydney, have also said they will not offer…

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Cardinal George Pell, who died this week as a result of complications related to hip surgery, was the poster boy for Pope John Paul II’s “heroic priesthood,” a discernible type of prelate that was common throughout the 20th century. Conspicuous, forceful, determined, dismissive toward contrary opinions, he was a polarizing figure convinced of the need to risk polarization in order to defend the church’s teachings.

“There was nothing bland or half-hearted about George Pell: he was strong, even vehement in his faith, his convictions, his likes and dislikes,” wrote Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, Australia, in The Catholic Leader. “He could be a fierce opponent, unafraid to enter the battle. At times this could make him seem an ideological warrior, which did not serve him well. It certainly wasn’t George Pell at his best.”

Coleridge’s heartfelt remembrance of the late cardinal is the best I have…

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Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, who has been a key figure in the Church’s fight against abuse, defends Benedict XVI’s efforts.

Benedict XVI’s passing has reignited talk about how adequately he addressed sexual abuse in the Church. From being the first Pontiff to meet with abuse victims, to taking action against powerful and guilty priests, to being accused of mismanaging cases in his diocese when he was a bishop in Germany, the Pope Emeritus left a mixed record, according to many observers. 

However, the Archbishop of Malta, Charles Scicluna, has instead strongly defended the Pope Emeritus’ efforts in various statements published by multiple media outlets. The Maltese prelate worked alongside Benedict XVI from 2002 to 2012 as the promoter of justice, like a prosecutor in charge of dealing with serious abuse crimes, for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). 

Cardinal Ratzinger was “instrumental in the lengthy process that updated…

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[Via Catholic World Report]

Jesuits in Slovenia have asked for forgiveness from the women who have have accused Father Marko Rupnik, S..J, of spiritual and sexual abuse, saying they believe the claims.

Rupnik, a Jesuit priest and artist originally from Slovenia, has been accused of the sexual, spiritual, and psychological abuse of at least nine women from a religious community with which he was formerly connected.

The alleged abuse took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s. An investigation into the claims was dropped by the Vatican in October 2022 due to the statute of limitations.

“It is obvious that, as a province, in the past we did not know how to listen to the victims and take appropriate action to clear up the issues and put an end to the suffering. We fully accept and understand the indignation, anger, and disappointment of the victims and their loved ones,”…

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More than 50 years ago, Susan Leighnor says she was raped in the 4th grade by priests at Holy Cross Catholic School in Hutchinson, Kansas.

All told, Leighnor says four priests in her childhood either sexually abused her or helped facilitate abuse against her, including the late William Wheeler, who appears on the Wichita diocese’s list of clergy with substantiated sexual abuse allegations against them. One of them told her she would go to hell if she spoke out, she said.

After repressing what happened for decades, Leighnor, now 67, says she has been recovering memories in recent years that paint a portrait of terrible trauma.

“I was furious that the Catholic Church could get away with this,” Leighnor, who lives in Colorado, said in an interview this week.

Kansas prevents nearly all survivors of childhood sexual abuse from filing lawsuits against their abusers or the institutions that enabled them….

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[Note from BishopAccountability.org – For more on the allegations against Pell, as well as his trial, see our summary and our detailed timeline: Timeline of the Allegations and Prosecution Faced by Cardinal George Pell.]

Pope Francis on Wednesday paid tribute to Cardinal George Pell, who spent 404 days in solitary confinement in his native Australia before his child sex convictions were overturned, praising his diligence in reforming the Vatican’s finances and his faith “even in the hour of trial.”

Francis sent a telegram of condolences to the head of the College of Cardinals, expressing his “sadness” over Pell’s death and relaying his prayers and sympathy to the Australian prelate’s family.

Pell died Tuesday in Rome, where he had attended the funeral last week of Pope Benedict XVI. Pell suffered fatal heart complications following hip surgery, said Archbishop Peter Comensoli, Pell’s successor as archbishop of Melbourne. He was 81.

He was a…

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Cardinal George Pell, a conservative theologian who served as the Vatican finance chief for Pope Francis and who was acquitted after becoming the most senior Catholic cleric to be convicted of sexually assaulting children, died Tuesday in Rome. He was 81.

His death was confirmed by Peter Comensoli, one of his successors as the archbishop of Melbourne, who said the cardinal died of heart complications after undergoing hip surgery. Cardinal Pell had been in Rome to attend Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s funeral last week.

Cardinal Pell spent more than a year in solitary confinement in his native Australia after a jury found him guilty in 2018 of assaulting two teenage choirboys in a Melbourne cathedral while he was the city’s archbishop in the 1990s. His conviction was overturned by a top Australian court in 2020.

The cardinal remained a polarizing figure in Australia and the church even after…

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[Note from BishopAccountability.org – For more on the allegations against Pell, as well as his trial, see our summary and our detailed timeline: Timeline of the Allegations and Prosecution Faced by Cardinal George Pell.]

An adviser to Pope Francis and a prominent figure in Australia, Cardinal Pell went to prison on charges of abusing two boys in the 1990s, but a higher court later acquitted him.

Cardinal George Pell, an Australian cleric and adviser to Pope Francis who became the most senior Roman Catholic prelate to be sent to prison for child sexual abuse and was later acquitted of all charges, died on Tuesday in Rome. He was 81.

The cause was complications of hip replacement surgery, according to Peter Comensoli, the archbishop of Melbourne, Australia, who confirmed the death in a post on Twitter. Cardinal Pell had gone to Rome to attend the funeral last week…

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Pope Francis’ lead clergy abuse investigator has acknowledged survivors’ frustrations with the Vatican’s strict culture of secrecy about Catholic bishops accused of misconduct or cover-up. Victims who bring a claim forward have a right to know how it is handled, said Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna.

In a National Catholic Reporter interview, Scicluna admitted the Vatican is not at what he termed “an optimal point” with regard to how it follows up with abuse victims, calling the matter “something that needs to be developed.”

Scicluna, who serves as an adjunct secretary for the Vatican’s powerful Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and has investigated abuse claims across the world, said, “Most of the suffering I have seen is when victims are left in the dark without any follow-up of the disclosure they have given.”

“We have a law and we have a system which empowers people to disclose abuse or…

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An Indian Catholic bishop probed by a Vatican-appointed team of bishops for alleged involvement in serious crimes like murder, rape and misappropriation of church funds, has been ordered to “take a period of absence from the ministry.”

Bishop Kannikadass A William of Mysore (now Mysuru) has been replaced by retired Archbishop Bernard Moras of Bangalore as apostolic administrator of southern India’s Karnataka state.

“I wish to inform that The Dicastery of Evangelization has appointed His Grace Most Rev Bernard Moras, Apostolic Administrator sede plena et ad nutum Sanctae Sedis of the Diocese of Mysore for the ordinary administration and pastoral care of that local Church,” Archbishop Felix Machado, secretary-general at the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, said in a Jan.7 communication to cardinals, archbishops and bishops in India.

The appointment became effective from Jan. 7, he added.

Significantly, the Vatican…

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A retired Catholic priest in Missouri who used thousands of images of child pornography to make PowerPoint presentations for several years was sentenced Tuesday to five years in prison.

James T. Beighlie, 72, pleaded guilty in October to two counts of possession of child pornography. He was also ordered to pay $4,750 to one of this victims, and another $22,000 for a fund that will go toward other child victims of crimes.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Colleen Lang said Beighlie had thousands of images and videos that he used for the PowerPoint presentations, which he revised several times. He had been using child pornography since at least 2008, she said. The prosecutor’s office has not indicated that Beighlie showed the presentations to anyone.

“All I can say is that I am ashamed and deeply remorseful,” Beighlie told the judge.

A church investigation began in May 2021, after co-workers at the Congregation of…

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A PREDATORY priest who was exposed for having an ‘inappropriate’ relationship with a ‘vulnerable’ churchgoer has been struck off for five years.

The victim of Gosport clergyman The Rev Peter Lambert said today that she had felt ‘massively used’ and exploited into having the relationship with the man of the cloth. After he was disciplined following an investigation the woman received a written apology from the Bishop of Portsmouth.

Married Mr Lambert was a self-supporting minister and a volunteer who led services across the town in churches including Christ Church, Holy Trinity Church and St John’s Church.

He was ordained as a priest but was not employed by or paid by the Church of England and had no specific church he was vicar of.

Mr Lambert, a chartered surveyor who has worked at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, struck up a friendship with the woman, who The News is not naming. The mum said it…

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Press Release

A federal grand jury in Columbia returned a 3-count indictment against Jamie Adolfo Gonzalez-Farias, a/k/a “Father Gonzalez,” a/k/a “E,” 67, a former South Carolina priest, for the alleged sexual abuse of an 11-year-old minor.

The indictment charges three counts: Coercion and Enticement of a Minor, Transportation of a Minor with Intent to Engage in Criminal Sexual Activity, and Aggravated Sexual Abuse with a Child.  The Grand Jury also identified Florida state statutes of Lewd or Lascivious Molestation and Lewd or Lascivious Exhibition as implicated by Gonzalez-Farias’s conduct.

The indictment alleges that Gonzalez-Farias has been ordained as a Priest since at least 1990, and that he has held various positions in the churches in which he served, including Pastor, Parochial Vicar, Administrator, Chaplain, and Priest.  The indictment further alleges that Gonzalez-Farias began serving in South Carolina in 2015, and that he sexually abused a minor to whom he had…

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The Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old child pleaded not guilty to the federal charges on Monday.

Jaime Adolfo Gonzalez-Farias, 68, appeared in shackles, his silver hair neatly combed, in a federal courtroom in Columbia, South Carolina, after being extradited from Florida. He has been charged with aggravated sexual abuse of a child, coercion of a minor and transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity.

Wearing a dark green jumpsuit and bright orange plastic sandals, the Roman Catholic priest peered over his glasses as he waived reading of the indictment.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Elliott Daniels, who is prosecuting the case, requested that Gonzalez-Farias be detained. Through his attorney, federal public defender Allen Burnside, Gonzalez-Farias stated that he was not contesting the detention at this time.

The court advised him that he had a right to file a motion at any time to…

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In death as in life, Cardinal George Pell split opinion in Australia: while believers on Wednesday mourned the passing of a “great churchman”, sexual abuse survivors said they would shed no tears.

One of the most powerful figures in the Roman Catholic Church, Pell died at the age of 81 on Tuesday in Rome due to heart complications following a hip operation.

The man who was convicted, jailed and then cleared of molesting two 13-year-old choirboys in the 1990s remains deeply polarising.

“It was very sad personal news to hear and quite a shock,” said Archbishop of Melbourne Peter Comensoli.

But Phillip Nagle, an abuse survivor in Victoria, said he believed Pell knew more about sexual abuse than he let on.

“None of us will be shedding any tears,” he was quoted as saying in Melbourne’s The Age newspaper.

‘All of us are sinners’

A mass was held for Pell…

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Lawyers say they would continue to pursue the claim against any estate left by the cardinal, who died Tuesday in Rome

The father of a former altar boy will press ahead with legal action against Cardinal George Pell’s estate over the alleged sexual abuse of his son, his lawyers said Wednesday.

Shine Lawyers said they would continue to pursue the claim against any estate left by the cardinal, who died Tuesday in Rome.

The former altar boy died in 2014, and his father — who has not been identified — filed the claim against Pell and the Archdiocese of Melbourne in 2021.

“A civil trial would have provided the opportunity to cross-examine Pell and truly test his defense against these allegations,” Shine Lawyers, representing the father, said hours after the powerful Church figure’s death.

“There is a great deal of evidence for this claim to rely on, and the court…

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A week after he was a surprise choice to become speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Democratic state Rep. Mark Rozzi on Monday canceled sessions for the rest of the week after failing to reach a deal on his primary legislative priority.

Lawmakers were brought to the Capitol for a hastily called special session designed to speed passage of a two-year window for letting some victims of child sexual abuse file otherwise outdated lawsuits.

But the House did virtually no business, and after hours of delay Rozzi issued a statement saying the two caucuses were too far apart. He announced he would create a “working group” of three Republicans and three Democrats “of varied interests from across the commonwealth to sit down and find a way forward.”

He said “statute of limitations reform” was his objective, “but we also must fix the workings of our government and find a…

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On Friday, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation released a report which identified dozens of Catholic clergy who may have committed sex crimes against children.

KSHB 41 News spoke with an attorney who tried and won many cases in Kansas and Missouri on behalf of sexual assault survivors of the Catholic church.

Attorney Rebecca Randles believes the KBI report highlighted fraudulent concealment of sexual abuse well.

In the report, the KBI said it found 188 suspected sexual predators in the clergy, but didn’t release their names.

“If anyone is looking to protect their children from a given predator, there’s no way this report would allow that,” Randles said.

According to Randles, she tried her first case in 1998. Since then, she’s had more than 400 cases.

Randles says in this report, it’s the “what’s missing” that stands out to her.

“It was released on a Friday evening just before…

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The Archdiocese of Milwaukee honored Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI during a memorial Mass at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist on Tuesday, Jan. 10.

Benedict died on Dec. 31, 2022. 

Archbishop Jerome Listecki led the Mass.

“I’ll always remember Pope Benedict because I wouldn’t be standing here before you if it wasn’t for Pope Benedict,” Listecki said.

During the memorial Mass and again when talking to CBS 58, Listecki said Benedict will be remembered as a great theological intellect, a proponent of objective truth, and one who was truly committed to Christ.

“You felt a personal dignity that was bestowed upon you when you were with him. He really cared about you. He was interested in who you were,” Listecki said.

Meanwhile, Nate’s Mission, a statewide anti-clergy abuse organization, protested honoring Benedict, who they said played a role in covering up the admitted actions of Fr. Lawrence Murphy. 

Murphy…

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In light of the emerging scandal surrounding Jesuit artist Father Marko Rupnik, Catholics are asking what should be done with his sacred art. 

Some are calling for it to be removed — even destroyed — out of respect for his alleged victims or as a way to censure Father Rupnik himself. Others object that such an approach seems to align with the contemporary “cancel culture” and would logically extend to stripping churches of all art, since after all every artist is also a sinner. Others again claim that art must be judged on its own standards: If Father Rupnik’s art is of value, it should remain, regardless of his personal sins. Still others point to the economic and social costs of removing the artworks: Father Rupnik’s workshop has accounted for projects for more than 200 liturgical spaces around the world, including Lourdes, Fatima and the Vatican. Indeed, it would be…

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A Vatican court has scheduled a preliminary hearing for the wrongful termination lawsuit filed by Libero Milone, despite a criminal investigation.

A Vatican City court has scheduled a preliminary hearing for the wrongful termination lawsuit filed by Libero Milone, the former Vatican auditor who was accused by Cardinal Angelo Becciu of spying on the private lives of Vatican officials.

The hearing is scheduled for Jan. 25, despite an ongoing criminal investigation into the plaintiff. Under Vatican law, a criminal investigation into the same events should suspend the lawsuit, raising questions about both the legal tactics of Vatican prosecutors, and about how the lawsuit might overlap with the ongoing Vatican financial corruption trial.

Milone was named the Vatican’s first auditor general in 2015. After two years in that job, Milone was forced to resign under threat of legal prosecution after he was accused by the then sostituto at the Secretary of…

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The former assistant pastor of a rural Minnesota church will spend about a month in jail after pleading guilty to molesting a girl in his youth group.

Sean Patrick Masopust, 33, was sentenced Thursday to 30 days’ confinement and 10 years of probation after pleading guilty to criminal sexual conduct, a fourth-degree felony, according to Minnesota court records.

Masopust will be allowed to attend sex offender programming and is eligible for work release, his court record shows. If he does not successfully complete probation, he could go back to jail for 18 months.

Meanwhile, the survivor of Masopust’s crime is confronting leaders of the Assemblies of God (AOG) for allegedly supporting Masopust and “coddling” those who covered up his crime.

In a victim impact statement read during the sentencing last week, Masopust’s victim Katie Morgan wrote, “(AOG leaders) decided to give Sean a severance pay,…

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Pell was acquitted on appeal of child sexual abuse charges, but remained tarnished by his response to paedophile priests over decades

The Australian cardinal George Pell rose from modest beginnings to become one of the world’s most powerful Catholics but his reputation was fatally damaged by association with the church’s child sexual abuse scandals in his home country. Pell himself became the highest-ranking Catholic to be convicted of such offences, and he spent more than a year in jail before his conviction was overturned by Australia’s high court in 2020.

In his role as cardinal and inaugural treasurer of the Vatican’s Secretariat of the Economy, Pell had the ear of Pope Francis, but his influence had already begun to wane by the time he was charged with child sexual abuse offences in Australia in 2017. Pell was acquitted on appeal after his conviction in 2018, having…

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The priest who sexually abused David Rigby in 1976 said he was giving the young student a medical exam.

“As a naive, 14-year-old boy I didn’t realize that priests with no medical qualifications don’t have the right to give a medical exam to anybody,” Rigby said Monday.

He was speaking on a corner in Andover across from St. Augustine Parish, where he was accompanied by Robert Hoatson of Road to Recovery, a charity that assists victims of sexual abuse.

Mitchell Garabedian, the Boston attorney who represents clergy sex abuse victims, was present on Zoom. He said he earned a low, six-figure settlement a month ago for Rigby’s abuse and that of one other boy at the hands of the priest, Robert Turnbull.

“I have settled more than 15 cases involving Father Turnbull, who was a serial pedophile,” Garabedian said.

Turnbull, who died in 2000, taught math and physics and served…

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The Bay State has fallen behind neighboring states, which have opened up new legal avenues for victims to sue the institutions that harbored their abusers decades ago.

A recent change in Maine law has given people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s a chance to seek justice, at long last, for the sex abuse they endured as children.

The measure retroactively eliminated the statute of limitations for civil lawsuits in these cases, allowing victims to seek restitution from the churches and summer camps and Boy Scout troops that had failed them so grievously decades ago.

Robert Dupuis, 73, is among those who have filed suit since the law changed.

In the early 1960s, he says, a priest at St. Joseph Church in the central Maine community of Old Town periodically summoned him to a closet he called his “office” and pulled Dupuis’s buttocks into his crotch and fondled his genitals…

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The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests also wants Kansas to change its laws on old cases so that more abusers could potentially face justice.

Janet Patterson remembers attending a Catholic Mass at her parish near Wichita and hearing the congregation’s newly assigned priest lecture the parishioners.

“I remember him saying, ‘You must never criticize the priest,’” she said. “I was sitting there in the church with my son, Eric, and my other kids and my husband. And I remember thinking, ‘Who’s criticizing the priest?’”

Only later did Patterson learn about the long list of accusations of sexual abuse levied against the previous priest, Father Robert Larson, who had just been reassigned from this church in Conway Springs to another congregation in Newton, Kansas.

Ultimately convicted of molesting four boys, Larson allegedly molested many more. Five of them died by suicide as young men, including Patterson’s son,…

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Survivors of sexual assault by priests ask for legislation to be passed

Churches across the country, including Corpus Christi, have survivors of sexual abuse by priests asking for information about their alleged assailant.

Patrick Wilkes has requested secret files on his father, James Wilkes, who was a priest in Corpus Christi but he said they have not been provided.

He also said his father sexually abused him, his siblings and others.

“He was a priest of the Diocese of Corpus Christi, ordained in 1950,” Wilkes said. “During that time, he became a part of a group of priests that went across the river into Mexico and had their way with prostitutes and children, because they could.”

Wilkes said he has received little to no response from the diocese, and that Father Wilkes’ name was not on the Diocese 2019 list of credible sexual abuse offenders.

Robert Pastor is an attorney…

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Documents reveal inaction in cases involving accusations of sexual assault against local priests

The history of sexual abuse by clergy in the Catholic Church is widely documented. Locally, there are at least 12 pending civil cases against the Diocese of Corpus Christi.

6 Investigates obtained secret documents from the Diocese of Corpus Christi, which showed the steps they took, or didn’t take, when dealing with accusations against a local priest.

“The Diocese of Corpus Christi and other dioceses like it are trying to protect. They do not want people to realize that we knew about this information, and instead of protecting the child, we protected the brother priest,” attorney Robert Pastor said.

Pastor, an attorney in Arizona who represents survivors of sexual abuse by priests, is involved in eight ongoing suits against the Diocese of Corpus Christi involving its priest, Father Clement Hageman.

The suits allege that the…

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Father Jaime Adolfo Gonzalez-Farias, a visiting priest from Chile who served in the Diocese of Charleston, South Carolina, has been arrested in Florida and charged with sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl in 2020.

Gonzalez-Farias, from the Diocese of San Bernardo, Chile, was arraigned this afternoon in federal court for the district of South Carolina. 

According to the federal indictment from the U.S. district court for the district of South Carolina, Gonzalez-Farias — who went by “Father Gonzalez” — “used a facility and means of interstate and foreign commerce to knowingly attempt to and did persuade, induce, entice, and coerce” an 11-year-old girl “to engage in sexual activity.” 

The indictment further charged that Gonzalez-Farias “did knowingly transport” the 11-year-old girl “in interstate commerce, with intent that the individual engage in sexual activity.”

A third charge in the indictment says that Gonzalez-Farias “crossed a state line with intent to engage in a…

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[Audio presentation, 27 minutes, including interviews with Doris Reisinger, Anne Barrett Doyle, John L. Allen Jr., Bishop Robert Barron, et al.]

In this special programme to mark the death of Pope Benedict XVI, Colm Flynn explores the life story of the gentle German academic who became the spiritual leader of 1.3 billion Catholics all over the world.

The 95-year old Pope Emeritus died at the Vatican on New Year’s Eve 2022. He will perhaps be best remembered as the first Pope to retire in 600 years. But his life and legacy is much more complicated and varied, with a papacy filled with both majestic spiritual moments and embarrassing and hurtful blunders.

Benedict led the Catholic Church for fewer than eight years but is considered by many to be one of the most influential religious leaders of modern times. Born Joseph Ratzinger in rural Bavaria, he has a deeply religious upbringing…

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The Shetland actor caused in online stir when he criticised the late Pope’s ‘nice send-off’

Scottish actor Douglas Henshall has launched a savage attack on the late Pope Benedict, criticising his nice “send-off”, despite “protecting paedophiles”.

The actor known for his role in Shetland tweeted his salvo on the former Pope after his funeral on Sunday as 50,000 paid their respects to the late leader of the Catholic church.

Mr Henshall tweeted: “Why did the paedophile protecting pope get a nice send off. I really don’t get it.”

The comment caused on online storm. Heather Macphail wrote: “Not true. He was defrocking priests. Of course he didn’t want publicity. But he took action.”

Another wrote: “Terrible, unsubstantiated accusation that demeans you.”

Pope Benedict XVI resigned in 2013 around the same time as the UK’s most senior cardinal, Keith O’Brien. Cardinal O’Brien was forced to resign as the archbishop of…

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French police have opened a preliminary investigation into Archbishop Michel Aupetit following a report that was filed by the Archdiocese of Paris

The Archdiocese of Paris has filed a report concerning its former archbishop, Michel Aupetit, with the French capital’s Public Prosecutor’s Office. An email correspondence that was discovered between the archbishop and an unidentified woman – the circumstances of which have not been specified – led to the belief that there may have been a relationship of a sexual nature between the two.

A preliminary investigation for sexual assault was then opened because the woman was under guardianship as a vulnerable adult at the time. The investigation will have to determine whether she possessed the capacity to freely consent to a possible sexual relationship.

In a press release published Tuesday evening, the archdiocese confirmed that it had made the report at the end of November. But it also…

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BFMTV a indiqué ce mardi 3 janvier 2023 que l’archevêque émérite de Paris, Mgr Michel Aupetit, faisait l’objet d’une enquête préliminaire pour des faits d’agressions sexuelles sur personne vulnérable, et que le parquet de Paris a ouvert une enquête après avoir reçu, à la fin du mois de novembre 2022, un signalement du diocèse de Paris.

Le diocèse de Paris confirme avoir adressé un signalement et précise – ainsi qu’il l’a indiqué au parquet de Paris – qu’il n’est pas en mesure de vérifier si les faits en cause sont avérés, ni s’ils constituent une infraction. C’est pour que toutes les vérifications nécessaires puissent être effectuées par la justice, en cohérence avec le protocole signé en 2019 entre le diocèse et le parquet de Paris, que le signalement – qui ne comportait pas la qualification d’agression sexuelle – a été réalisé.

Il est demandé à chacun de respecter l’enquête en…

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The former archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, is reportedly under preliminary investigation for sexual assault on a vulnerable person, according to a report from the Archdiocese of Paris in late November 2022, French news channel BFMTV reported. 

According to the TV channel’s report, the allegations date back to 2011 and concern a vulnerable former parishioner, subject to a judicial protection measure. Aupetit is suspected of having exchanged sexual emails with this parishioner, who suffers from a “slight mental deficiency.”

The investigations opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office have been entrusted to the French Brigade of Repression of Delinquency People. For the moment, neither the former archbishop nor the alleged victim — who has not filed any complaint — have been heard from by the police.

In a statement issued on the evening of Jan. 3, the Archdiocese of Paris said it was not “able to…

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Criticisms of the handling of the January 5th funeral at the Vatican are missing the real question about the current pontificate.

Pope Francis and the Vatican were going to be under a microscope during the days between Benedict XVI’s passing and his interment.  There was never any question of avoiding it. The period, however, turned pretty quickly into a sort of Rorschach test for Catholics all around the world.

The test was not so much apt to determine where on the spectrum of political, social, and liturgical opinion people sit, as it was apt to reveal how they view the papacy – the office – and the Church generally.

People were always going to complain. The folks in the Vatican knew it, especially Pope Francis, the first person to succeed a living former pope in more than six centuries. Popes die in office. At least, they are supposed to die…

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Pope Francis on Monday privately met Archbishop Georg Ganswein, former Pope Benedict’s closest aide, who has rattled the Vatican with a book describing what he says were the strains while two men wearing white lived within its ancient walls.

The Vatican’s daily bulletin listed Ganswein in the pope’s schedule of audiences but as is customary gave no details.

Hours after Benedict was buried on Thursday, an Italian publishing house sent some news outlets including Reuters advance copies of Ganswein’s 330-page “Nothing But The Truth – My Life Beside Benedict XVI”.

Ganswein, 66, was Benedict’s personal secretary from 2003, when Benedict was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and remained as his side for nearly 20 years until his death on Dec. 31. He was also Francis’ gatekeeper until the two had a falling out.

The main question now facing Francis is what position to give Ganswein. Many are waiting to see if…

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Since the first day of his papacy nearly a decade ago, Pope Francis has had to navigate an unprecedented complication in the Roman Catholic Church: coexisting with his retired predecessor in the same Vatican gardens. Supporters of Francis studiously played down the two-pontiff anomaly, but it generated confusion, especially when conservative acolytes of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI sought to wrap their fervent opposition in their leader’s white robes.

Now, with the burial of Benedict on Thursday, Francis, never bashful about exercising his power, is for the first time unbound.

“Now, I’m sure he’ll take it over,” said Oswald Gracias, the archbishop of Mumbai, as he walked around St. Peter’s Square before Benedict’s funeral Mass.

Some liberal supporters of Francis, who has often balked in the face of advancing major overhauls, are raising expectations for a late-breaking season of change.

Many bishops and cardinals in the Vatican are convinced “he’s thinking ahead,”…

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Sometimes ministers and church volunteers make mistakes. Usually, these can be corrected, and the adults who made them can learn how to be better and continue their ministry. As many evangelicals proudly assert, forgiveness and reconciliation are important in the walk with Christ.

But when children are in danger, where do we draw the line with mistakes?

At Kanakuk Kamps, a popular evangelical Christian summer camp outside Branson, Mo., the line has been blurry for decades. For years, Kanakuk leadership allegedly has been aware of abuse at the hands of camp counselors and staff. Reports from victims and their parents appear to have been ignored, and many allegedly were silenced by Non-Disclosure Agreements. Pedophiles have been protected for a “lifetime of ministry” among innocent children who became subject to repeated and preventable abuse.

Part of a long list of survivors, Logan Yandell recently rejoined the fight against sexual abuse at Kanakuk Kamps…

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The Spiritans transferred the abusing priest abroad, after complaints were made about him in Dublin school

Pete Fischer was standing in a queue at the supermarket when the call came that turned everything he knew, or thought he knew, about his older brother Jeff on its head.

It was August 2018. The Pope’s visit to Ireland was making international headlines. An Irish man was interviewed on Canadian television about the sexual abuse he’d suffered as a child in Dublin at the hands of a priest called Fr Arthur Carragher, who was later shunted off to Canada.

Jeff Fischer was watching at home in London, Ontario, when a photograph of Carragher flashed on screen and brought suppressed memories flooding back. The first person he told was his brother.

“Jeff always called me, just ‘hey what’s going on?’ We were very close,” remembers Pete. “I said: ‘Hey, what’s going on.’ He said: ‘Do you…

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The 21-page report details what KBI calls an immense investigation. It has a scope of more than 50 years, looking into all four archdioceses of Kansas

A new report from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation shows the extent of child abuse by clergy in the Catholic Church in Kansas.

The 21-page report details what KBI calls an immense investigation. It has a scope of more than 50 years, looking into all four archdioceses of Kansas.

During the four-year investigation, KBI’s Catholic Clergy Sexual Abuse Task Force identified more than 400 victims, opened 125 criminal cases and investigated nearly 200 clergy members.

The Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas, recommended this investigation to the Attorney General’s Office in November 2018. On Saturday, they released a statement in response to the report — saying you cannot read it without your heart breaking.

It says in part, “[Archbishop Joseph Naumann] joins bishops across the state of…

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