ABUSE TRACKER

MILWAUKEE (WI)
BishopAccountability.org

Includes detailed assignment record, sources, summary of assignments, documents, and notes. …

Documents

The following links offer various ways to view the documents relating to Becker’s career and the allegations against him. Some of these documents have been published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and posted by attorney Jeff Anderson on his website. BishopAccountability.org has obtained from Anderson the full Becker file as obtained in discovery.

Documents Relating to Becker’s Laicization and Archdiocesan Financial Assistance:

– Letter from Archbishop Dolan to Cardinal Ratzinger, promising assistance to Becker from a “special fund” (5/27/03)

– See also a group of letters between Dolan and the Vatican regarding Becker’s laicization.

– Status Report by Deacon Zimprich on Meeting with Becker, discussing laicization and Becker’s recent $10K “settlement” with the Milwaukee archdiocese (2/2/05)

– Status Report by Deacon Zimprich after Phone Call with Becker, discussing the $10K payment to Becker, Dolan’s refusal to pay for Becker’s health insurance from fear of liability, and Becker’s threat to tell “all he knows” (2/8/05)

Documents Detail Church Coverup: Newly Released Records from a California Lawsuit Settlement Show the Extent of the Milwaukee Catholic Archdiocese’s Efforts to Conceal Priest’s Sex Abuse, by Marie Rhode and Mary Zahn, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, January 31, 2008 [with images of documents and links to them]

– Becker Case: Franklyn Becker’s Service As a Priest, Highlighting Important Abuse and Coverup-Related Events, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 1, 2008 [with links to documents]

– Archdiocese of Milwaukee Records Regarding Father Franklyn Becker, JS Online, January 31, 2008 [with links to documents]

– Dolan-Cardinal Ratzinger Letters, posted by Jeff Anderson & Associates, March 1, 2011

– Archdiocese Vicar Log, posted by Jeff Anderson & Associates, March 1, 2011

– Background Becker Documents 1970-1997, posted by Jeff Anderson & Associates, March 1, 2011

– Background Becker Documents 2001-2005, posted by Jeff Anderson & Associates, March 1, 2011

– Complete Becker File: Part 1 of 8, posted by BishopAccountability.org, March 2, 2011

– Complete Becker File: Part 2 of 8, posted by BishopAccountability.org, March 2, 2011

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

[documents – BishopAccountability.org]

Posted by Mary Caplan on June 05, 2012

We’re outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral. in New York City today for three reasons. First, to expose – again – deceit by Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Second, to urge Dolan – again – to stop attacking and deceiving and start answering and apologizing. And third, to urge other Catholic figures to prod Dolan to be forthcoming about every single payout and “special fund” he made to or set up for child molesting clerics.

This isn’t about admitted serial predator priests getting health care from Cardinal Dolan. It’s about Catholics and citizens getting openness and honesty from Cardinal Dolan. Dolan and other church officials admit they’ve followed through on their pledges to pedophile priests. They have broken, however, their often-repeated promises of “transparency” to the rest of us.

Two newly-disclosed internal church memos show that a secret $10,000 payment in 2005 from then-Milwaukee Archbishop Dolan to a pedophile priest was not for health insurance, as Dolan claimed. And in a little-noticed 2003 letter from Dolan to then-Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, Dolan promised that he would “set up” a “special fund” for the admitted predator.

The new memos – disclosed yesterday by BishopAccountability.org – deal with Franklyn Becker, a priest who reportedly molested children in both Wisconsin and California and who admitted at least some of his crimes.

The two single-spaced typed documents show that
— a $10,000 payment to Becker was never once linked to health insurance,
— another Milwaukee church official was working to get him health insurance through Catholic Charities, and
— to avoid legal liability, the archdiocese would NOT pay for Becker’s health insurance.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CALIFORNIA
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on June 5, 2012

File this under: “What the hell are they thinking?”

Diocese of San Diego priest Fr. Jose Alexis Davila, who in April pled guilty to to battery and “engaging in an unlawful touching of an intimate part of the victim’s body,” is back at work at his old parish. You know, the one with the state-funded preschool.

If you don’t know the whole story, Davila went to a parishioner’s home on New Year’s Eve (she was a 20-year-old woman) and forced himself on her. We don’t know if more happened. But really, the guilty plea is enough, n’est-ce pas?

Yeah, say San Diego Bishop Robert Brom and his successor Cirillo Flores (who is a licensed civil lawyer), it’s enough to get you your job back! You WIN!

It gets worse: Davila has been put right smack in the same place where parishioners formed a “lynch mob” and went to the victim’s home in an attempt to get her to recant her story. They kicked her mom out of Bible study. They badgered her family.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

NEW YORK
The New York Times

By MICHAEL POWELL

Published: June 4, 2012

Charles J. Hynes, having once embraced silence on the question of his vigor in prosecuting sex abuse in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, cannot stop talking now.

In columns, in interviews, and even in an exchange with former Mayor Edward I. Koch, Mr. Hynes, the veteran district attorney in Brooklyn, has insisted that he is one tough prosecutor. He will handcuff and arrest anyone who tries to intimidate an ultra-Orthodox family into silence.

“I will not put victims at risk,” he told The Forward.

If he allows ultra-Orthodox rabbis to act as gatekeepers, determining which child was and was not molested before turning to prosecutors, and if he agrees to keep secret the names of the molesters, who could argue with the results? Since 2009, he says, his office has prosecuted 99 sex abuse cases in the ultra-Orthodox community. (When my colleagues Sharon Otterman and Ray Rivera diced Mr. Hynes’s numbers in a series of articles, they found at least one quarter of his prosecutions had little to do with child sex abuse.)

But let’s forget the numbers.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

NEW YORK
New York Magazine

By Joe Coscarelli

Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes has taken a shellacking in the press lately for his handling of sex abuse in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, with critics arguing that he’s going easy on offenders for political reasons, proliferating a culture of cover-ups, and inflating prosecution figures. Hynes has responded by announcing his support for legislation that would require rabbis to report sexual abuse allegations, but that doesn’t erase past mistakes. Today, the New York Times digs one up with a galling story about Hynes attempting to go easy on a kidnapping rabbi.

And as icing on the bad-press cake, one of Hynes’s employees allegedly punched a cop.

The Times reports that in 1994, ultra-Orthodox rabbi Shlomo Helbrans took a 13-year-old boy from his family and tried to brainwash him, only to have Hynes’s office encourage police to drop the case. Michael Powell reports that the NYPD division commander and the boy’s mother “drove down to the district attorney’s office, seeking a meeting. They sat there for hours but never got past reception.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Jun. 05, 2012
By Thomas C. Fox

COLUMN

You can bet that in the eyes of the Vatican, its Monday condemnation of the book Just Love by Mercy Sr. Margaret Farley has nothing to do with other recent and not-so-recent actions taken against U.S. Catholic sisters.

No, the move against Farley, one can hear the officials saying, stems solely from an independent investigation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith that began about three years ago.

It needs to be seen simply as that, an investigation into one wayward book.

That it comes a mere six weeks after the very same congregation issued a highly critical doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the single most prominent voice for U.S. Catholic sisters, is coincidental.

That the Vatican critique of Farley’s book, which tarnishes her as a Catholic moral teacher, comes a month after the congregation placed LCWR in receivership with the intent to diminish its independent voice is not to be viewed as related in any way.

Or at least, that’s the way I think the Vatican would have it.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Jun. 05, 2012
By Alessandro Speciale, Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY — Over the course of the last six months, Pope Benedict XVI delivered five major speeches to small groups of American bishops who were in Rome for their “ad limina” visits, which are required once every five years.

The “ad limina” visits are the way the pope and and Vatican departments keep tabs on bishops from around the world. They are also an occasion for the pope to address the major issues faced by a local church.

In his speeches, Benedict often echoed bishops’ concern about religious freedom and the challenges confronting the American church. In his last address, on May 22, he warned bishops of the “threat of a season in which our fidelity to the Gospel may cost us dearly.” …

Here’s a recap of what Benedict had to say on hot-button issues in these past months.
•Sexual abuse: “It is my hope that the church’s conscientious efforts to confront this reality will help the broader community to recognize the causes, true extent and devastating consequences of sexual abuse, and to respond effectively to this scourge which affects every level of society” (Nov. 26).

•”Dissent” within the Catholic church: “The seriousness of the challenges which the church in America … is called to confront in the near future cannot be underestimated. The obstacles to Christian faith and practice raised by a secularized culture also affect the lives of believers, leading at times to that ‘quiet attrition’ from the church which you raised with me during my pastoral visit” (Nov. 26).

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L Allen Jr on Jun. 05, 2012 NCR Today

On Monday night, the Vatican press office dispatched an e-mail alert to journalists with the text of an interview given by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, in the wake of Benedict XVI’s weekend outing to Milan for the church-sponsored World Meeting of Families. The trip was considered a major success for Benedict, culminating in an open-air Mass that drew more than one million people to Milan’s Bresso Park.

The Bertone interview is noteworthy primarily because it’s the first time the Vatican’s “prime minister” has spoken at length about the leaks scandal which has engulfed the church’s central government since January, and which exploded anew in late May with the arrest of the pope’s butler. Bertone’s comments take on special significance given that many analysts believe he is the primary target of the leaks, reflecting dissatisfaction among some Vatican insiders with his leadership.

Aside from insistence that Benedict XVI will not “allow himself to be frightened by attacks, of any sort,” perhaps the most striking element of the interview is Bertone’s comment that the leaking of confidential documents seems “carefully aimed, and sometimes also ferocious, destructive and organized.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

iITALY
adnkronos

Naples, 5 June (AKI) – Police in the southern Italian city of Naples Tuesday searched the home of former Vatican bank chief Ettore Gotti Tedeschi on the orders of prosecutors investigating alleged corruption by executives from Italian aerospace and defence giant Finmeccanica.

Gotti Tedeschi is not himself under formal investigation, according to sources close to the probe.

It was not immediately clear what his connection may be with state-controlled Finmeccanica, which denies the graft accusations being probed by Naples prosecutors.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

ITALY
San Francisco Chronicle

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

(06-05) 03:16 PDT ROME, Italy (AP) —

The home of the recently ousted president of the Vatican bank was searched Tuesday as part of a corruption investigation into Italy’s state-controlled aerospace and engineering giant Finmeccanica, prosecutors said.

Prosecutor Francesco Greco told The Associated Press that the search had nothing to do with Ettore Gotti Tedeschi’s role as head of the Vatican bank and that he is not under investigation in the Finmeccanica probe. He declined to provide details of why Gotti Tedeschi’s home was searched.

Prosecutors for months have been investigating allegations that Finmeccanica officials created a slush fund to funnel money to political parties. Finmeccanica’s ex-chairman Pier Francesco Guarguaglini is under investigation for making false invoices and tax fraud, while his wife Marina Grossi, the CEO of Finmeccanica subsidiary Selex, is under investigation for creating false invoices and corruption. Both have denied wrongdoing.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

ITALY
CNBC

NAPLES (Reuters) – Homes belonging to Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the former head of the Vatican’s bank, were searched by Italian police in connection with a corruption probe into defense technology group Finmeccanica, Naples prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Gotti Tedeschi was ousted from his position at the head of the bank last month after the board passed a motion of no-confidence, accusing him of neglecting his basic management responsibilities.

Acting Naples chief prosecutor Alessandro Pennasilico said on Tuesday the police search was not related to Gotti Tedeschi’s time at the bank and he has not been placed under investigation.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

AUSTRALIA
The Age

June 6, 2012

1) Why didn’t the Melbourne archdiocese in 1994 inform parishioners at the Boronia parish that their priest Father Victor Rubeo had been accused (and not denied) of child sex abuse? Why was he still allowed to lead that parish?

A. Mr Hersbach first made a complaint to the late Monsignor Cudmore, the then Vicar General of the Melbourne Archdiocese, in 1994. At the time, Mr Hersbach was, according to Monsignor Cudmore, adamant that he did not want any steps taken in relation to Rubeo except that he receive counselling. This was arranged.

At a subsequent meeting between Monsignor Cudmore and Rubeo, Rubeo was informed of the allegation and did not deny it. The then Archbishop, Vicar General and Rubeo are now all deceased.

Viewed however by today’s standards, the response was inadequate. Since the introduction of the Melbourne Response in 1996, a priest in Rubeo’s situation would have his faculties to operate as a priest suspended pending investigation. If the allegations were substantiated, he would be permanently removed from ministry.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

AUSTRALIA
The Age

Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie
June 6, 2012

MELBOURNE’S Catholic archdiocese permitted a priest charged with child sex offences to be the ”spiritual director” to another priest accused of child molestation.

The revelation is contained in confidential Catholic Church documents obtained by The Age that provide an insight into the archdiocese’s handling of child sex abuse cases.

Click here to read a response from a spokesman for the Melbourne Archdiocese.

The documents show how senior church leaders continued to shield Father Victor Rubeo from scrutiny after child sex abuse allegations about him were first reported to the archdiocese in 1994.

Rubeo, who did not deny the allegations when questioned by a senior church official, was allowed to continue preaching in Melbourne’s Boronia parish without his parishioners or police being told of his child abuse.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CHICOPEE (MA)
The Republican

By Jeanette DeForge, The Republican

CHICOPEE – The Rev. David Darcy jokes that sometimes he feels like Moses leading his flock from place to place.

The pastor of Holy Name of Jesus Church has been facing one of the most complex church closings in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield. A combination of precedent-setting rulings from the Vatican and a deteriorated church that was declared unsafe has left the parish with four churches and the question of where it should settle permanently.

“We are struggling with how to wrap our heads around it,” Darcy said.

During the past decade the Springfield diocese has closed or merged nearly 70 churches in Western Massachusetts. The closings were followed by a few lawsuits and a flurry of appeals to the Vatican filed by parish members protesting the decision’s by the bishop, the Most Rev. Timothy A. McDonnell.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

AUSTRALIA
The Age

Richard Baker, Nick McKenzie
June 6, 2012

As a child and young man, Tony Hersbach was regularly sexually abused by a Catholic priest. He told no one for more than 20 years, and when he finally revealed all to the church hierarchy, it did nothing. By Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie.

TONY Hersbach was 42 when he told his wife that the man who married them and played grandfather to their children had regularly molested him during his youth. Lu Hersbach’s reaction to this bombshell was disbelief. The priest whom her husband had accused of despicable acts had been a dominant influence in their lives ever since he married them as 19-year-old sweethearts.

Over the next 24 years Father Victor Gabriel Rubeo would dine with them on Sunday nights, accompany them on holidays and attend their children’s birthday parties. He opened their mail and entered their bedroom unannounced.

“The man was so entrenched in our family that when I was told … [it was like] someone really close to you has died. You have this sense of disbelief and I guess I hung on to this sense of disbelief for as long as I could,” Lu Hersbach says.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

AUSTRALIA
WA Today

Tony Hersbach, abused for years by Father Victor Rubeo, tells how the Cathlic church harboured the priest for 15 years after his first conviction and provided Rubeo with a convicted paedophile as his counsellor.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CHICAGO (IL)
The Telegraph

By MANYA A. BRACHEAR — Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO — Reams of private Vatican correspondence published in a new Italian best-seller reportedly include a plea by Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George, urging the Vatican to halt an award to Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn for abolishing the death penalty.

George appears to play a minor role in the real-life Vatican whodunit that the Italian press has dubbed “Vatileaks.” Last week, the pope’s butler was arrested on suspicions that he leaked private letters, including some addressed to Pope Benedict XVI. Those letters reportedly appear in “Your Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI,” a new book in which Italian writer Gianluigi Nuzzi airs a boatload of Vatican dirty laundry and hints of a real-life conspiracy akin to a Dan Brown novel.

According to Vatican expert John Allen, the book includes what Nuzzi claims is an encrypted 2011 cable from the Apostolic Nuncio in Washington relaying a plea from George to Benedict’s Secretary of State. George asks that the Vatican official step in and block the Rome-based Community of Sant’Egidio from giving an award to Roman Catholic governor Quinn, Allen said.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

VATICAN CITY | Tue Jun 5, 2012

(Reuters) – A Vatican prosecutor on Tuesday began interrogating Paolo Gabriele, Pope Benedict’s butler who is being held on charges of stealing papal documents, the Vatican said.

Vatican officials said Gabriele was interrogated in the presence of his two lawyers and another Vatican judicial official known as the “promoter of justice”.

The prosecutor must now decide whether there is enough evidence to order Gabriele, who was arrested on May 23, to stand trial on charges of aggravated theft.

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UNITED STATES
OpEd News

By
Rev. Dan Vojir

Not to be outdone by the Vatican when it comes to financial scandals, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York continues to battle accusations of corruption when he was Archbishop of Milwaukee. Back in 2008, Dolan was accused of shifting over $55 million from the archdiocese’ cemetary assets to reduce settlements involved in clergy sex abuse cases. This transfer of funds has left the archdiocese bankrupt. Now documents from that bankruptcy and its proceedings have surfaced showing that priests accused of abuse were given money if they agreed to go quietly into that good night, leaving the priesthood voluntarily, and leaving the number of defrocked priests at a minimum. It was clearly a “pay away the lay” situation brought to light, but Dolan is calling the stipends “charity.”

A Splendid Job – Of Doing What?

Since the New York Times Article, Dolan has had to delineate what “charity” was as opposed to “payoffs” but when asked if there were similar acts of “charity” given to former priests in the 400-parish area of Manhatten, the Bronx, Staten Island and seven counties, his response was only “No, thank God. Cardinal Egan did a splendid job — that’s all taken care of.” Unfortunately there are serious gaps in this statement and they are:

1. Didn’t the former priests of New York need the same amount of “charity”?
2. What exactly was the “splendid job”?
3. Exactly what was taken care of?

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 5 June 2012 (VIS) – The Holy Father appointed Fr. Florian Worner of the clergy of Augsburg, Germany, diocesan director for the pastoral care of young people, as auxiliary of the same diocese (area 13,250, population 2,299,092, Catholics 1,360,575, priests 1020, permanent deacons 153, religious 2,125). The bishop-elect was born in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany in 1970 and ordained a priest in 1997. He has served in pastoral care in various parishes and has worked in the “Jugend 2000” youth association. Since 2009 he has also been vicar of the cathedral of Augsburg.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

DEUTSCHLAND
Frankfurter Rundschau

Im Bistum Trier stehen 16 Priester unter Missbrauchsverdacht. Kirchenrechtliche Voruntersuchungen sind teilweise abgeschlossen, Sanktionen stehen noch aus. Im schlimmsten Fall droht den Klerikern der Rauswurf.

Trier –

Wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs von Kindern und Jugendlichen sind im Bistum Trier seit Februar 2010 gegen 16 Priester kirchenrechtliche Voruntersuchungen eingeleitet worden. Dies teilte der Sprecher des Bistums Trier am Montag mit und bestätigte einen Bericht der Zeitung „Trierischer Volksfreund“. Neun dieser Vorverfahren seien vom Bistum bereits abgeschlossen, die anderen sieben liefen noch. Von den 16 Bistumspriestern seien 11 im Ruhestand.
Strafrechtlich seien die mutmaßlichen Taten aus den 1960er bis 1980er Jahren verjährt, sagte der Sprecher. Über eine mögliche kircheninterne Bestrafung sei noch nicht entschieden. „Alle Verfahren laufen noch“, sagte er.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

OSTERREICH/SPANIEN
der Standard

Angesichts der Krise in Spanien drängen die Sozialisten auf eine Aufhebung der Ausnahmen für die Kirche im Steuerrecht

Wien/Madrid – Angesichts der dramatischen Lage an den Finanzmärkten wächst in Spanien der Druck auf die katholische Kirche, einen größeren Beitrag zur Sanierung des Staatshaushaltes zu leisten. Die Tageszeitung El País veröffentlichte eine Umfrage, wonach inzwischen acht von zehn Spaniern verlangen, dass für die Kirche geltende Ausnahmen im Steuerrecht abgeschafft werden. Dieses Ergebnis ist insoweit überraschend, als der Katholizismus und die katholische Kirche in Spanien nach wie vor eine besonders wichtige Rolle spielen.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

OSTERREICH
Atheisten-Info

(Wien, 4.6.12, PUR) – Bei der Plattform Betroffener kirchlicher Gewalt sind seit März 2010 mehr als 400 Meldungen zu Gewalt gegen Kinder und Jugendliche eingegangen. In diesem Zusammenhang wurden vielfach auch die Namen der Gewaltausübenden genannt. Besonders beschämend ist es, dass sich 35 beschuldigte Priester nach wie vor im Dienst befinden. Einige von ihnen wurden zwar kurzfristig suspendiert, aber nach Abflauen des öffentlichen Interesses schon bald wieder in der Seelsorge eingesetzt. Die Hoffnung, dass seitens der römisch-katholischen Kirche nachhaltige Konsequenzen gezogen wurden, hat sich bis jetzt nicht erfüllt.

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DEUTSCHLAND
PNN

von Benjamin Lassiwe
Berlin – Die Missbrauchsfälle am katholischen Canisius-Kolleg, die Anfang 2010 bekannt wurden, lagen bereits Jahrzehnte zurück. Doch sie erhöhten auch die Aufmerksamkeit auf neuere Fälle von sexuellen Übergriffen auf Schutzbefohlene in kirchlichen und anderen Einrichtungen. Am gestrigen Montag legte das katholische Erzbistum Berlin einen Zwischenbericht in Sachen Missbrauch vor: Demnach laufen derzeit keine staatsanwaltschaftlichen Ermittlungen mehr gegen Priester, Jugendmitarbeiter oder Ordensangehörige in Diensten der Diözese.

Von den 19 Verdachtsfällen sexuellen Missbrauchs, die seit 2002 im Erzbistum Berlin auftraten, seien heute neun Fälle nicht mehr zu klären, da die Beschuldigten etwa bereits verstorben seien. Fünf Fälle seien abgeschlossen worden, in sechs Fällen liefen noch kirchenrechtliche Verfahren. Im Kirchenrecht gelten andere Verjährungsfristen als im Strafrecht, dienstrechtliche Konsequenzen wie etwa Pensionskürzungen sind daher auch Jahrzehnte nach den Taten noch möglich. Über die Konsequenzen, die es in den fünf abgeschlossenen Fällen für die Täter gegeben hat, hält sich das Erzbistum bedeckt. „Das kann ich Ihnen nicht sagen“, erklärte Bistumssprecher Stefan Förner.

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IRELAND
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

Kristine Ward

It’s an amazing statement that Cardinal Timothy Dolan fired up and lobbed out to reporters after Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York on Sunday before hopping a plane to Ireland.

“SNAP,” declared the Cardinal,” has no credibility whatsoever.”

If Cardinal Dolan had considered what he was saying he’d know the next thing he should say is not another ounce of effort should be put into getting depositions from SNAP’s leaders or getting SNAP records.

No credibility, nothing worth getting. Plenty of Catholic money saved.

In the slap against SNAP, the organization that lifted the veil on Cardinal Dolan’s Milwaukee tactics, New York’s top prelate told reporters on Sunday that the reports of his Milwaukee voluntary laicization incentive payments were “groundless and scurrilous.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CANADA
The Western Star

Published on June 5, 2012

CORNER BROOK — The investigation into more allegations of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priest George Ansel Smith is still ongoing.

Smith, 74, has been charged with more than 60 sex-related offences in relation to incidents alleged to have occurred in six communities in western Newfoundland from 1969 to 1989.

The charges against him include gross indecency, indecent assault on a male, sexual assault, unlawfully committing a gross indecency and unlawfully assaulting with intent to commit an indictable offence. The charges are alleged to have happened in Port Saunders, Corner Brook, Stephenville, St. Fintan’s, Cape St. George and Deer Lake.

His past is also being investigated by authorities elsewhere in Atlantic Canada.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on June 04, 2012

Today, New York Cardinal Dolan attacked our group and again refused to address questions about the disturbing contradiction between what he said and what he did about secretly paying predator priests to quietly leave.

To reporters from WNYC, NY1 and the New York Post, Dolan reportedly said “The New York Times and SNAP have no credibility on this issue so it’s not productive to try to address groundless & scurrilous charges by them.”

It’s sad that America’s top Catholic official won’t answer a simple question: how much money did he secretly pay to how many predator priests so they would quietly go away and be around unsuspecting families and co-workers, perhaps to assault more kids.

Bishops often attack the messenger when they’re forced to defend the indefensible. It’s a despicable and desperate tactic.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED KINGDOM
Catholic Herald

The Vatican is completely correct to clarify that Sister Farley’s book stands firmly outside the tradition of the Church

By Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith on Tuesday, 5 June 2012

You may have read that the Vatican has condemned a book by Sister Margaret Farley. The Catholic Herald’s account of the matter is to be found here.

Funnily enough, I read and reviewed the book in question when it first came out, which was back in 2006, and the review was published in the Heythrop Journal of May 2008; academic reviews often come out a year or two after the original book’s publication, though a two-year gap is nothing compared to the six years that it has taken the CDF and Rome to give its verdict.

My review is not online, but I have a hard copy in front of me and am happy to share some highlights.

“In a brief section (pp. 235-236), a mere one and a half pages, she deals with ‘self-pleasuring’, a topic that, usually under a different name, has, historically, led to the spilling of rivers of ink. Farley notes that the judgment of tradition has been overwhelmingly negative; even Kant disapproved very strongly; however now ‘most’ theologians and medical practitioners view the activity as ‘morally neutral’; in other words it all depends on reasons and circumstances.

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HOLYOKE (MA)
The Republican

By Jeanette DeForge, The Republican

HOLYOKE – A preliminary ruling by the Vatican’s top court ordered protesters to leave the Mater Dolorosa Church where they have held a 24-hour vigil for nearly a year and banned the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield from demolishing or selling the church.

The Apostolic Signatura also said it will hear an appeal of the decision by the Vatican’s lower court, the Congregation for the Clergy, which upheld Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell’s decision to close the church. It rejected a request to appeal the order to merge the parish with another.

Protesters called the decision a partial victory and are meeting to decide if they should follow the order to end the vigil. The protest began June 30, the day of the last mass before the church was closed and the parish merged into the new Our Lady of the Cross.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Bilgrimage

Jerry Slevin has sent another outstanding posting commenting on the Philadelphia trial, which is in the process of wrapping up, and what that trial means at a fundamental level for the Catholic church worldwide and for its future. What follows is Jerry’s statement:

PHILLY CRIMINAL TRIAL:

For almost a decade now in Philadelphia, the birthplace of American religious and civil liberties, government prosecutors have been examining closely and carefully the Philadelphia Archdiocese’s medieval-style secret archives. The archives cover almost a half century of “problem priest” personnel, at times including files for almost a quarter of all Philly priests, who served under three Philly Princes of the Catholic Church, Cardinals Rigali, Bevilacqua, and Krol. This long prosecutorial effort has culminated in the just completed landmark multi-month criminal trial of a former top hierarchical official, with more criminal trials and likely many related civil lawsuits to follow. The trial has been well reported by Philadelphia Inquirer journalists in a brief review here and over a three month period in detail here. The pope has just tried to soften the significant adverse publicity from the trial and to preserve his Philly Catholic donor base by announcing a papal visit to Philadelphia in 2015, which already has been poorly received by many outraged Philly Catholics, as reported here.

The Philly trial court heard dozens of witnesses, including sexual abuse survivors, under oath. Prosecutors introduced as evidence hundreds of previously undisclosed documents from the Cardinals’ secret priest personnel archives. The trial revelations ranged from graphic details of nauseating and disgraceful assaults on children by priest predators, who had been previously known to the Cardinals to present serious safety risks for defenseless children, to shameless collusive document-shredding and almost limitless lying by top officials, as the dark side of the Philly clerical child sexual abuse scandal and its hierarchical cover-up was fully and relentlessly exposed.

PHILLY CARDINALS:

Each of the three Philly Cardinals had similar life experiences as they ambitiously climbed the hierarchical ladder. Each had received a prestigious Roman Gregorian University graduate education. Each in varying degrees for many years had been close to the current pope, Benedict XVI, and to his immediate predecessor, John Paul II, as well as to other major Roman curial Cardinals.

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VATICAN CITY
WGME

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI’s deputy denounced the continued leaks of Vatican documents Monday, and said the pope isn’t intimidated by the “fierce” and “organized” attacks they represent.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, made his first public comments about the scandal in an interview with state-run RAI television. Bertone’s leadership has attracted much criticism, and many commentators see the leaks of confidential Vatican documents as an attempt to discredit him and force his resignation.

The scandal represents one of the greatest security breaches at the Vatican, with dozens of letters, memos and other documents from the pope’s desk appearing in a new book “His Holiness,” by Italian investigative journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi.

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PENNSYLVANIA
EON

Ads Target Judiciary Committee Chairman Ronald Marsico, Urging Him to ‘Unfreeze’ Two Bills He Has Stalled in Committee

Current Law Prevents Sex Abuse Victims from Seeking Justice and Shields Sex Abusers Who May Continue to Harm Pa. Children, Says FACSA

June 04, 2012

PHILADELPHIA–(EON: Enhanced Online News)–On the eve of the Jerry Sandusky trial and the imminent conclusion of the clergy sex abuse trial in Philadelphia, a child advocacy group is renewing calls for a change in Pennsylvania’s statute of limitations laws. In a series of newspaper and online ads, the Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse (FACSA) is calling for State Representative Ronald S. Marsico (R-105th District), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, to act on two bills he is refusing to bring to his Committee.

“Many victims need years to come to terms with their abuse. With our current restrictive statute of limitations, victims are denied the opportunity to seek justice. The system also protects the sexual abuser, who may be abusing other children.”

Stating “Pennsylvania’s children can’t wait for task forces,” the ads implore Marsico to let the Judiciary Committee vote on two bills: one that would create a one-time window when sex abuse victims who are beyond the statute of limitations can come forward and file a suit against an abuser and another that would extend the age limit for filing civil cases against abusers to age 50.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog

Ralph Cipriano

The jury in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse case Monday began their first full day of deliberations by asking plenty of questions.

The jury asked the judge to define the elements of an attempted rape, which is the main charge against one defendant, Father James J. Brennan. Judge M. Teresa Sarmina responded that the jury must find that the priest used force, or the threat of force.

The jury wanted to know if they reached a verdict in the case of one defendant, did the judge want them to announce that verdict, or sit on it until they had reached a verdict on the second defendant in the case.

After reflecting on that question, and soliciting opinions from lawyers in the case, the judge told the jury to announce both verdicts at the same time. When they reached one verdict, the judge told the jury, “Just keep deliberating on the other and notify the court at the appropriate time.”

The jury also asked to see the prosecution’s “smoking gun,” a gray folder of handwritten and typed documents found in a locked archdiocese safe in 2006 that included a list of 35 priests accused or convicted of sex abuse.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Pocono Record

Editorial

June 05, 2012

Jurors in Philadelphia are now deliberating the fate of two Catholic priests, one of them a monsignor who’s charged with endangering children and conspiring to cover up priest abuse.

It’s hard to imagine that jurors could conclude anything other than guilty as charged.

Monsignor William Lynn served as secretary for clergy at the Philadelphia archdiocese from 1992 to 2004. Evidence and his own testimony confirm that he knew, through his position, about hundreds of allegations made against more than 60 priests.

Yet he failed to prevent it, thus enabling wayward priests to continue endangering vulnerable children.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Patricia Casey

Monday June 04 2012

When an epidemic appears during specified dates it is important to ask why did it happen at this time and not at another?

This question is relevant now in relation to The Child Safeguarding and Protection Service (CSPS) of the Archdiocese of Dublin. Its annual Child Protection Update provides statistical information on child sexual abuse by priests in the Dublin Diocese.

The figures show that since the late 1980s there has been a fall-off in abuse.

– 2pc of these priests are alleged to have abused in the 1940s

– 4pc of these priests are alleged to have abused in the 1950s

– 23pc of these priests are alleged to have abused in the 1960s

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UNITED STATES
Firedoglake

By: Scarecrow Monday June 4, 2012

A few day’s ago, the New York Times reported that documents unveiled in Milwaukee diocese bankruptcy proceedings revealed that then Timothy ArchBishop Dolan, now Cardinal in New York had, while he was the ArchBishop in Milwaukee, approved payments of $20,000 each to priests accused of molesting kids. The payments were made in conjunction with the priests’ agreements to quietly leave the priesthood.

Once this became public, the Cardinal and his protectors put out the story that these payments were simply “charity,” given that the priests were about to lose their livelihood, and the Cardinal accused the New York Times of . . . inviting people to draw inappropriate conclusions. The suggestion these payments were “payoffs,” the good Cardinal said, were “false, preposterous and unjust.”

Now the Cardinal has hit back at the New York Times via the New York Post. The Post reports (h/t Atrios) that Dolan denies first that there are currently any such payments being made to accused priests in New York, and that any payments made in Milwaukee were strictly charity.

Joseph Zwilling, Dolan’s New York Archdiocese spokesman, told The Post last week that there was no “payoff” to pedophile priests — only “charity.

Okay, how do those various statements fit together?

Yesterday, Dolan denied that similar payments were being made in the New York Archdiocese, which includes about 400 parishes in Manhattan, The Bronx, Staten Island, and seven suburban counties.

“No, thank God. Cardinal Egan did a splendid job — that’s all taken care of,” said Dolan, referring to his predecessor, Edward Cardinal Egan.

Dolan didn’t say whether similar payments to abusive Archdiocese of New York priests were made in the past.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Los Angeles Times

By David Zucchino

June 4, 2012

After hearing 10 weeks of testimony, jurors in a priest sexual-abuse trial in Philadelphia interrupted deliberations Monday to question the judge in the case about the legal definitions of conspiracy and child endangerment.

The jury of seven men and five women sent Judge M. Teresa Sarmina a note asking her to clarify charges against two Philadelphia priests in the groundbreaking case involving the first Roman Catholic Church official in the U.S. charged with mishandling complaints of child abuse by priests, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Msgr. William Lynn, 61, is charged with child endangerment and conspiracy, accused of covering up abuse complaints while serving as secretary for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The Rev. James J. Brennan is charged with child endangerment and attempted rape of a 14-year-old boy in 1996.

Jurors asked whether Lynn had to conspire with a convicted priest and other church officials, or with just one party, in order to be convicted of conspiracy. They also asked for clarification of the child-endangerment and attempted-rape charges.

Other jury questions focused on evidence related to Lynn and Edward Avery, a former priest who pleaded guilty before trial to conspiracy and sexual assault of a 10-year-old boy. Prosecutors allege that Lynn conspired with Avery to endanger children because Lynn knew that the priest had previously molested a boy but allowed Avery to remain at the church where the abuse took place.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
U.S. Catholic

[minutes of the Milwaukee archdiocesan financial council]

Monday, June 4, 2012

By Brian T. Olszewski Catholic News Service

ST. FRANCIS, Wis. (CNS) –The Archdiocese of Milwaukee claims “Christian charity” and “sound stewardship” prompted payments of at least $10,000 in 2003 to priests who had sexually abused children to seek laicization, according to Jerry Topczewski, chief of staff for the archdiocese.

Topczewski was responding to questions that arose May 30 regarding the minutes of the March 7, 2003, Archdiocesan Finance Council meeting in which council members noted that “currently unassignable priests are receiving full salaries and are budgeted under the Vicar for Clergy.”

“There is a proposal to reduce their benefit to be the same as the current pension benefit, $1,250 per month, and also offer $20,000 for laicization ($10,000 at the start and $10,000 at the completion of the process),” the minutes said. “Also, they remain on our health insurance until they find other employment.”

The minutes were one of a series of documents filed by the creditors’ committee in the archdiocese’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Washington Post

By David Gibson| Religion News Service, Monday, June 4

Nearly lost amid ongoing reports about the Vatican leaks scandal, Rome’s battle with American nuns, the American bishops’ battle for religious freedom, and the priest on trial in Philadelphia, was the news that, by the way, Pope Benedict XVI plans to visit Philadelphia.

Benedict made the announcement at the end of his visit to Milan on Sunday (June 3) for the church’s triennial World Meeting of Families. The next meeting would be in Philadelphia in 2015, he said, and he planned to be there, “God willing.”

True, the trip won’t happen until 2015, and it may well not happen at all — Benedict would be 88 by then. Even if there’s a new pope in 2015, the City of Brotherly Love is still almost assured of getting a papal visit — new popes like to underscore continuity, and respect the plans their predecessors had in place.

In a larger sense, the visit would be about more than promoting family life, and in many ways it’s related to other Catholic issues now dominating the headlines. Here’s why:

One, it’s practical

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
San Antonio Express-News

MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press
Updated 03:44 p.m., Monday, June 4, 2012

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A jury is set to continue deliberations Tuesday morning in a groundbreaking clergy-abuse case involving the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Monsignor William Lynn is charged with conspiracy and child endangerment for his handling of abuse complaints. The jury has been deliberating since Friday.

Jurors asked Monday if Lynn had to conspire with a convicted priest, Edward Avery, or if he’d be guilty if he conspired only with colleagues at the Philadelphia archdiocese to hide abuse complaints.

After hours of courtroom debate, the judge has told the jury that Avery does not have to be a co-conspirator. But she says the overt act required under the state’s conspiracy law must involve him.

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UNITED STATES
SNAP Wisconsin

After paying off pedophile priest, Dolan dispatched rep to assure worried molester his secrets were safe

Money not tied to “health insurance” as Dolan claimed in 2006, internal church document shows

Statement by Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director (Milwaukee)
CONTACT: 414.429.7259

Soon after giving a “signing bonus” of $10,000 to one of Milwaukee’s most prolific pedophile clerics to leave the priesthood, Cardinal Timothy Dolan dispatched a top official of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to assure the worried molester that he had no intention of notifying the public of the abuser’s extensive history of sexually assaulting youngsters in parishes and assignments in the Milwaukee Archdiocese and elsewhere.

The offender, Fr. Franklyn Becker, was concerned, according to an internal church memo written by Deacon David Zimprich, that his history of abusing children, if made public, would prevent him from obtaining a new job. Zimprich, acting on behalf of Dolan, assured Becker that the archdiocese “wasn’t advertising he was laicized” and unless Becker himself told someone they do not believe “it was on the internet.”

The conversation between Zimprich and Becker took place at a restaurant on February 2, 2005 and was detailed in a confidential, signed two page report submitted by Zimprich.

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NEW YORK
Gothamist

Cardinal Timothy Dolan is continuing to deny reports that he paid off pedophile priests as the archbishop of Milwaukee, preferring to refer to the payments—some as high as $20,000—as “charity.” “The New York Times does not have a reputation for fair and accurate reporting when it comes to this issue,” Dolan told the Post after Mass yesterday, sounding like another jowly old man we know. “So, to respond to charges like that—that are groundless and scurrilous—in my book it’s useless and counterproductive.” Waging war against the commerce clause and a woman’s right to choose: perfectly acceptable!

“It’s sad that America’s top Catholic official won’t answer a simple question: How many predator priests got how much money to quietly move on…perhaps to molest again?” David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “This is a predictable tactic bishops use when forced to defend the indefensible—they attack the messenger.”

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NEW YORK
The Daily Beast – The Dish

Andrew Sullivan

Here is how the Cardinal has responded to his previous archdiocese’s spokesman’s revelations that he authorized payments of $20,000 to pedophile priests to expedite their removal from the ministry:

“The New York Times does not have a reputation for fair and accurate reporting when it comes to this issue. So, to respond to charges like that — that are groundless and scurrilous — in my book it’s useless and counterproductive.”

Does he regard his former archdiocese, whence the NYT’s proof came, as equally fallacious?

And then you get the real Dolan, the man who puts ecclesiastical power before the protection of children or compassion for the abused:

The cardinal also lashed out at an advocacy group — Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests — that has called the payments ‘secret deals’ and ‘incentives.’ But Dolan fumed, “SNAP has no credibility whatsoever.”

You heard that right. A cardinal from a church revealed to have operated a global child rape cover-up for decades says the chief group for the victims “has no credibility whatsoever.” After this outburst, Dolan took a week off in Ireland.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

Jun. 04, 2012
By John L Allen Jr

In Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven,” the narrator yearns for a “surcease of sorrow” for his lost Lenore. It’s an apt allusion to open a report on the Vatican these days, gripped by scandals surrounding leaked documents, the abrupt firing of a Vatican Bank president once hailed as a great reformer, and the arrest of the pope’s butler.

In Italian, the presumed gang of insiders behind the leaks is known as corvi, which can be translated either as “crows” or “ravens.”

“The events of recent days involving the Curia and my collaborators have brought sadness to my heart,” Pope Benedict XVI said at the end of his general audience May 30 — and thus, presumably, looking for some surcease himself. It was the first time the pope spoke publicly of the events.

Depending on whom one asks, the authors of the present chaos may be:
•Courageous whistle-blowers, determined to bring secrets to light;
•Petty bureaucrats, waging tawdry turf wars;
•Admirers of Benedict who believe the current regime around the pope must go, willing to destroy the village in order to save it.

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UNITED STATES
Spiritual Politics

Mark Silk|Jun 4, 2012

Buttonholed by reporters after saying Mass at St. Patrick’s yesterday, Cardinal Timothy Dolan denounced as “groundless and scurrilous” Laurie Goodstein’s report in last week’s New York Times that he had authorized $20,000 payments to induce pedophile priests to voluntarily accept laicization when he was archbishop of Milwaukee. It’s anyone’s guess how he thinks that’s supposed to square with the Milwaukee archdiocese spokeman’s statement that such payments were indeed authorized–a statement Dolan “supports,” according to his own spokesman.

Over at dotCommonweal, a few commenters have sought to support the Dolan denial by scrutinizing accounts of the single case in point mentioned by Goodstein, that of the notorious abuser Franklyn Becker. Bear in mind that the issue at hand is the veracity of Dolan’s September 8, 2006 statement in reponse to a query from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Tom Heinen:

For anyone to assert that this money was a “payoff” or occurred in exchange for Becker agreeing to leave the priesthood is completely false, preposterous and unjust.

What this was, instead, was an act of charity, in line with Catholic social teaching, that allowed a person to obtain health insurance coverage he simply could not afford on his own. If people want to criticize me for that charity, so be it.

Based on interviews and an examination of documents in the hands of Bishop-Accountability.org, some not made public until now, I can report the following.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
KSRO

MARYCLAIRE DALE

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Jury questions in a Philadelphia clergy-abuse trial suggest confusion over charges pending against a Roman Catholic church official.

Monsignor William Lynn is charged with conspiracy and child endangerment for his handling of abuse complaints.

Jurors have asked if Lynn had to conspire with a convicted priest, Edward Avery, or if he’d be guilty if he conspired only with his colleagues at the Philadelphia archdiocese.

The question has spawned hours of courtroom debate, even after a 10-week trial.

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CALIFORNIA
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on June 4, 2012

A sex abuse and cover-up lawsuit against former priest Msgr. Michael Harris, Mater Dei High School and the Diocese of Orange is slated to go to trial in Orange County Superior Court on June 18.

Harris, the former principal of Mater Dei and Santa Margarita High Schools, has been smack in the center of the clergy sex abuse scandal in Orange County, with at least nine accusers settling with the Diocese of Orange in 2005, twelve accusers listed by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and a record $5.2 million settlement with victim Ryan DiMaria.

Frankly put: Harris is a menace. We have seen Harris’ psych reports from the most notorious church-run facility for child molesting clerics (information that Msgr John Urell kept secret), and in 2001, Bishop Tod Brown told the Los Angeles Times:

The Diocese of Orange has grave doubts about [Harris’] innocence in these matters, taking into consideration the number of complaints made against him, the similarity of those complaints and the apparent sincerity of the persons making these statements.

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OSTERREICH
VOL

Die “Plattform Betroffener kirchlicher Gewalt” hat die römisch-katholische Kirche mit dem Vorwurf konfrontiert, 40 des Missbrauchs verdächtigte Priester und Mitarbeiter seien nach wie vor im Dienst. In Briefen mit den Namen der beschuldigten forderte die Organisation Konsequenzen von den zuständigen Bischöfen. Man werde die Vorwürfe “ernsthaft prüfen”, so die Bischofskonferenz via “Kathpress”.

Einige Priester seien zwar kurzfristig suspendiert, aber nach Abflauen des öffentlichen Interesses schon bald wieder in der Seelsorge eingesetzt worden, wirft die Plattform den Diözesen vor. “Die Hoffnung, dass seitens der römisch-katholischen Kirche nachhaltige Konsequenzen gezogen wurden, hat sich bis jetzt nicht erfüllt. Diese zögerliche Haltung stellt eine der Ursachen für sexuelle Gewalt in der Kirche dar.” Bis Ende Juli 2012 will die Organisation über die Ergebnisse informiert werden.

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OSTERREICH
OE1@ORF

“Wir werden die Vorwürfe ernsthaft prüfen” – so reagiert die Bischofskonferenz auf die Plattform Betroffener kirchlicher Gewalt, die der katholischen Kirche vorwirft, dass 40 Priester und Mitarbeiter nach wie vor im Dienst sind, obwohl ihnen sexuelle Gewalt vorgeworfen wird.

Massive Vorwürfe

In der katholischen Kirche werde nach wie vor vertuscht, kritisiert Sepp Rothwangl, Obmann der Plattform Betroffener kirchlicher Gewalt, viele Beschuldigte seien einfach nur versetzt worden. Die Betroffenen könnten nicht verstehen, warum die Kirche nicht reagiert und warum Kinder immer noch schutzlos ausgeliefert seien.

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VATIKAN
netzwerkB

Ein Kommentar von Doro

Endlich findet man im Vatikan einmal angemessene Worte: „Unmoralischer Akt von unerhörter Schwere“. Und zwar prompt, praktisch unmittelbar nach Aufdeckung dieser „Unmoralischen Akte unerhörter Schwere“.

Endlich werden einmal die Dinge gerade gerückt, die Verhältnisse geklärt, die Fakten klar beim Namen genannt.

Wie? Nein, es geht nicht um den zehntausendfachen weltweiten sexuellen Missbrauch an Kindern durch katholische Pfarrer.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Frankfurter Rundschau

Von Joachim Frank
Der Trierer Bischof Ackermann weist den Vorwurf gefährlicher Milde gegenüber pädophilen Priestern zurück. Diese dürften in seinem Bistum nur auf Basis eines forensisch-psychiatrischen Gutachtens und „in eingeschränkten Feldern mit Auflagen“ arbeiten.

Köln –

Das sagte Stephan Ackermann, der auch Missbrauchsbeauftragter der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz ist, im Kölner „domradio“. Diese eingeschränkte Arbeitseinstellung auf Basis eines Gutachtens entspreche den neugefassten bischöflichen Leitlinien.

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OSTERREICH
Tiroler Tageszeitung

Von Brigitte Warenski

Innsbruck, Wien – Ein Pater (Namen der Redaktion alle bekannt) soll Schüler sexuell missbraucht haben und ist nun als Pfarrer im Amt. Ein anderer Pater hat sich an Internatsschülern und Ministranten sexuell vergangen, wurde 2011 wegen Nötigung verurteilt und arbeitet weiter als Aushilfspriester. Ein weiterer Pfarrer soll sich ebenfalls des sexuellen Missbrauchs schuldig gemacht haben und wurde in eine andere Pfarre versetzt, wo er zurzeit immer noch tätig ist. Ein Laienmitarbeiter soll Kinder zum Sex gezwungen haben und arbeitet weiterhin in der Diözese Innsbruck.

Dass die katholische Kirche mutmaßliche und verurteilte Täter „nur versetzt hat, und das auch weiter tut, ist ein Skandal“, meint Philipp Schwärzler von der Plattform „Betroffener kirchlicher Gewalt“. In einem Brief, der heute an Bischof Manfred Scheuer geschickt wird, fordert die Plattform das Tiroler Kirchenoberhaupt auf, „endlich ernsthafte Konsequenzen zu ziehen“.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Zeit zu beten

4. Juni 2012

Die Kirche befindet sich wieder einmal unter Zugzwang: Laut der Plattform “Betroffener kirchlicher Gewalt” sind rund 40 beschuldigte Kirchenmitarbeiter, denen sexuelle Gewalt gegen Kinder und Jugendliche vorgeworfen wird, immer noch im Amt. Die Plattform hat außerdem eine Liste der Beschuldigten an neun Bischöfe geschickt und fordert nun Konsequenzen. (Kurier, 04.06.2012, 14:27)

Es folgt eine Pressrundschau, die den Umgang der katholischen Kirche mit des sexuellen Missbrauchs beschuldigten Priestern und Mitarbeitern wiedergeben soll. Für viele der Opfer physischer und sexueller Gewalt wurde zweifelsohne einiges unternommen; ob von den zuständigen Organen im Sinne der Aufarbeitung und Entschädigung gut gehandelt wurde, ist nach wie vor schwer zu beurteilen. Heute geht es aber um eine anderes Thema: Wie verfährt die österreichische katholische Kirche mit den betreffenden Priestern und Mitarbeitern? Angesichts der gesammelten Presseberichte zeigt sich ein trauriges Bild, kurz zusammengefasst in diesen Punkten:
•Eine deutlich zweistellige Zahl von beschuldigten Priestern und Mitarbeitern befindet sich weiterhin im Amt

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UNITED STATES
National Review

By Ann Carey

June 4, 2012

The mainstream media has had a field day with the June 1 press release of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) accusing the Vatican of causing “scandal” and “polarization” by identifying doctrinal problems within the LCWR that need to be corrected. What is really an internal Church matter about the proper role of an organization that has canonical standing in the Catholic Church has become a hot topic in a media that seems to delight in any controversy within the Church, especially one that involves challenges to its authority.

Headlines like “U.S. Nuns crack back at Vatican crackdown” (USA Today, June 1) and “American nuns come out swinging against Vatican” (CNN, June 1) might be funny if they weren’t so very ignorant. In fact, ignorance and bias have marked much of the media’s coverage of the doctrinal assessment of the LCWR by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). Or perhaps it’s laziness, for it is clear that many of the people writing about this issue know little about the Catholic Church and even less about the background for this story.

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PHILADLEPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Tony Hanson

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The jury in the Philadelphia clergy abuse case continues its work (see previous story). Today, the panel submitted another series of questions about the law as it applies to the charges against Monsignor William Lynn and Father James Brennan, who are on trial.

The jury sought clarification on the attempted rape charge against Brennan, and the jury had a number of questions related to the conspiracy and child endangerment charges against Lynn.

The issues in some respects are complicated and technical.

In response to two questions, for example, jurors sought clarification on the word “and” specific to legal issues. The attorneys for the defense and prosecution could not agree on a response.

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CANADA
Cape Breton Post

CORNER BROOK, N.L. (CP) — There has been a delay in the court case involving a 74-year-old Roman Catholic priest from western Newfoundland who faces 62-sex-related charges.

The Crown says it is waiting for the outcome of an ongoing investigation in Nova Scotia into further allegations against George Ansel Smith.

As a result, the case has been set over until Sept. 10.

The case was called in the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador in Corner Brook on Monday.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has condemned a book published by sister Farley which goes against the Catholic doctrine on divorce and same-sex unions and sexuality

Alessandro Speciale
Vatican City

New tensions between U.S. nuns and the Vatican are looming. Yesterday, the “commissioner” in charge of reforming the biggest organisation of women religious in the U.S., the Archbishop of Seattle, Mgr. Peter Sartain, tried to adopt a conciliatory tone, promising the Leadership Conference of Women Religious dialogue “in a spirit of openness, honesty, integrity and faithfulness to Church doctrine.”

But today the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith expressed new criticisms against Margaret A. Farley’s book “Just Love. A Framework for Christian Sexual Etichs”. Sister Farley is a member of the Sisters of Mercy religious order. The Congregation claimed the book “affirms positions that are in direct contradiction with Catholic teaching in the field of sexual morality “ and deals with controversial subjects such as “masturbation, homosexual acts, homosexual unions, the indissolubility of marriage and the problem of divorce and remarriage.” According to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Sister Farley “either ignores the constant teaching of the Magisterium or, where it is occasionally mentioned, treats it as one opinion among others.”

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ROME
Vatican Insider

The battle in the Holy See rages on as poison pen letter writer threatens to publish more confidential documents

Andrea Tornielli
Milan

On the very day that the Pope was welcomed with open arms by the one million people that spent the night out in the open or walked from faraway neighbourhoods all the way to Milan’s Bresso park, the poison pen letters writer struck again with another threat.

What with the final mass and the sea of people gathered for the final few hours of the Pope’s visit, Benedict XVI’s retinue did not have much time to think about the latest warning sent by the person responsible for the confidential document leak. The poison pen letter writer sent an ultimatum published in Italian newspaper La Repubblica. It was sent in the form of two letters which contained the letterhead, date and signature of the Pope’s secretary, Fr. Georg Gänswein, but no text. The mole said he/she would publish the content of the letters if Ratzinger did not get rid of his closest collaborators. But despite the evident leap in terms of the management of the Vatileaks operation, – which appears increasingly as if it is being led by experts who are aiming to strike hard at those closest to the Pope – tensions did not affect the final events of the World Meeting of Families in Milan.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By John P. Martin and Joseph A. Slobodzian
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

Hours into their first full day of deliberations, jurors in the landmark clergy sex-abuse trial of two Archdiocese of Philadelphia priests asked the judge Monday to clarify the charges and if they need to reach verdicts on both defendants before alerting the court.

Neither Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina nor the lawyers in the case speculated on the meaning of the requests. The judge and lawyers planned to reconvene early Monday afternoon to resolve how to respond to the inquiries.

But the questions suggested the jurors were still weighing the evidence against Msgr. William J. Lynn and the Rev. James J. Brennan.

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Democratic Underground

Sex Crimes and the Vatican

Created in 1962, a now infamous document was issued in secret to bishops. Called Crimen Sollicitationis, it outlined procedures to be followed by bishops when dealing with allegations of child abuse, homosexuality and bestiality by members of the clergy. It swore all parties involved to secrecy on pain of excommunication from the Catholic Church.

This document was reissued in 2001 by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and sent to all bishops. Yet rather than ordering more openness and cooperation with the authorities as demanded by both law enforcers and the victims, he reiterated its policies and ensured that the Code of Silence be applied to all cases of child abuse involving a priest. Cardinal Ratzinger also instructed that all cases should now be referred to his office directly and that he would maintain ‘exclusive competence’ over the handling of allegations. This is the Catholic Church’s policy to this day and Cardinal Ratzinger is now Pope Benedict XVI.

The policy laid out in the above document has led to systemic failure by the result that a significant number of priest have, in effect, been allowed to abuse again, and further children have been put at risk.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Washington Post

Philadelphia priest-abuse jury asks questions about conspiracy, attempted rape charges

By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, June 4, 1:12 PM

PHILADELPHIA — A Philadelphia jury weighing a groundbreaking priest-abuse case has divided lawyers with questions on a conspiracy charge.

Monsignor William Lynn is a former official at the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Philadelphia. He is the first U.S. church official charged with conspiracy and child endangerment for allegedly mishandling abuse complaints.

Jurors have asked if Lynn had to conspire with both a convicted priest and other church officials, or just one party, to be convicted of conspiracy.

Defense lawyers say the answer is both. Prosecutors say one finding is enough to convict. The judge is weighing the arguments.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

On Saturday, I said that in the near future I’d write more about the lie that the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops His Eminence Timothy Cardinal Dolan has told re: his knowledge of payoffs made to priests abusing minors in the Milwaukee archdiocese to encourage those priests to disappear quietly. When I planned to take up that topic this morning, I had thought that my comments would be Johnny-come-lately remarks, since Laurie Goodstein reported on this story in the New York Times on 30 May, and it has been in the news for almost a full week now.

But now, after having refused for five days to address the claims that he knew about payoffs to priests abusing minors in Milwaukee and has lied to the public about his knowledge of these payoffs, His Eminence finally broke silence just yesterday. Speaking to reporters after Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s cathedral (on the eve of a trip to Ireland to attend the International Eucharistic Conference next weekend), His Eminence chose to mount an attack instead of directly addressing the allegation that he has lied to the public.

As Brigid Bergen reports for the WNYC news blog, in his remarks yesterday, His Eminence attacked two bearers of the news that he has long had knowledge of payoffs to pedophile priests in the Milwaukee archdiocese and has lied about that knowledge. His Eminence attacked media reports–specifically, it would appear, Goodstein’s in the Times–as inaccurate and unfair. And he attacked the group Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests, SNAP, as lacking all credibility and peddling “groundless and scurrilous” charges against him to which he refuses to respond.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Jamie L Manson on Jun. 04, 2012

Only weeks after taking a broad swipe at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has returned to its more typical routine of taking aim at individual theologians.

The latest target is Mercy Sr. Margaret Farley, professor emeritus of Christian ethics at Yale Divinity School, and her 2006 book Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics.

On Monday morning, the CDF published a notification that states Just Love does not reflect the official teaching of the Magisterium and, therefore, “cannot be used as a valid expression of Catholic teaching, either in counseling or formation, or in ecumenical or interreligious dialogue.”

As Farley herself said in her response to the notification, Just Love “was not intended to be an expression of current official Catholic teaching, nor was it aimed specifically against this teaching.” The goal of this book was to engage discussion about issues in sexual ethics, knowing that fruitful discussion becomes possible only if critical questions are pressed.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By Joseph A. Slobodzian and John P. Martin
Inquirer Staff Writers

Update 10:15 a.m. Tuesday: The jury has resumed deliberations.

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CANADA
The Western Star

With the investigation into further sex offences ongoing, the matter of George Ansel Smith has been set over in the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador until September.

The Crown is still waiting the outcome of the ongoing investigation in Nova Scotia into further allegations against Roman Catholic priest George Ansel Smith, who has 62 sex-related charges against him in Newfoundland and Labrador.

It’s much the same position the provincial Crown has been in for the last two months.

The case was called in the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador in Corner Brook Monday morning. Crown prosecutor Trina Simms informed Justice Alan Seaborn that she believes the out-of-province investigation should be concluded before the court’s next scheduled arraignment date, which is not until September.

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NEW YORK
NY1

[with video]

[minutes of the Milwaukee archdiocesan financial council]

Cardinal Timothy Dolan is slamming a report suggesting he authorized payments to priests accused of sexual abuse in exchange for them leaving the church.

The New York Times last week cited documents showing that when Dolan was Archbishop of Milwaukee in 2003 he agreed to pay several alleged pedophile priests $20,000 if they left the church.

The Milwaukee Archdiocese also admitted to the payouts after the plan was revealed by the advocacy group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.

While speaking to reporters Sunday, Dolan claimed the payments were “charity.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

BY DELLARAM VREELAND

04 Jun, 2012

CATHOLIC clergy in Australia should be held accountable for any abuse they may have perpetrated towards young people, according to outspoken priest Father Bob Maguire.

Speaking in support of a parliamentary inquiry into clergy and other sexual abuse during a visit to Ballarat yesterday, Fr Bob said the Catholic Church should be ashamed of the scandal which has rocked the organisation.

He said it was imperative that every institution should “be open, transparent and questioned” for acts they may or may not have committed.

“It’s the kind of thing that should be expected by any institution, civil or religious … especially when you can see so much turmoil in a natural resource, and that is the hearts and minds of our children which surely was a reaction of their abuse as children whether sexual or emotional,” Fr Bob said.

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ROME
Spiegel

By Fiona Ehlers in Rome

Though Pope Benedict XVI’s personal butler has been arrested in connection with the “Vatileaks” scandal, new documents released over the weekend indicate he had powerful backers that remain unidentified. The secret documents expose the pontiff’s awkward and helpless leadership in the Church.

Do the two know each other? Is one the other’s source? Could it be that they teamed up to harm the German-born head of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI?

Few others in Rome have been the object of such intense speculation recently as these two men. But, as chance would have it, despite their physical proximity, they probably won’t be running into each other any time soon.

One of them is looking out of a 4 meter (13 foot) by 4 meter detention cell in a Vatican police station on the wall surrounding the papal state. He has been sitting there for almost two weeks now, and almost everyone knows his name: Paolo Gabriele, the pope’s 46-year-old personal butler.

Shortly before Pentecost, Benedict’s private secretary, Monsignor Georg Gänswein, reportedly uncovered Gabriele as a spy. Investigators found four boxes with copies of strictly confidential letters to and from Pope Benedict in Gabriele’s apartment.

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CANADA
CBC News

The Archdiocese of Moncton is asking people from Cap-Pelé who were victims of sexual abuse by former priest Camille Léger to contact Michel Bastarache, the retired Supreme Court of Canada justice.

Archbishop André Richard said in a letter the church will continue to offer counselling to Léger’s victims who come forward.

But now the church has obtained the services of Bastarache, who will set up and manage a conciliation process for people with complaints about Léger.

Richard said Bastarache’s sense of justice and understanding of people in the community and the province will allow him to help those who have been wronged.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

June 4, 2012 by Susan Matthews

Pope Benedict announced Sunday that Philadelphia will host the World Family Meeting in 2015. This could be viewed as a positive sign of support to Philadelphia during troubled times. Despite often being characterized as relentlessly optimistic, I’m not ready to call this a positive.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning group Amnesty International cited the Vatican in its 2011 annual report for human rights violations because of the clergy sex abuse crisis in Ireland. Since then, the Vatican has done little to address this incredible failure in any part of the world. Instead, the news from Rome is “the butler did it” and that nuns are spending too much time on the poor.

While the papal visit in 1979 was an incredible spiritual event, this one will ring hollow if the recommendations of the 2011 Grand Jury report are still not met years later in 2015. If our children are still under-protected, there is nothing to celebrate.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Philly Post

Kevin Cirilli

Not even the chosen 12 can question a dead man. For the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, judgment day is under way. A 12-person jury is deciding the fate of Monsignor William Lynn, charged with covering up alleged pedophile priests. But no matter what the jury decides, Philly Catholics won’t ever get the answers from the man who perhaps knew the most: the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua.

The question for the jury isn’t could Lynn have done more, but rather, does law require him to do so?

For any defendant to testify in a case is risky. And Lynn is the highest-ranking church official to have been charged in the scandal. So when Lynn, 61, took the stand in late May, those who have been following the case couldn’t help but wonder if he could handle it.

But this is a man who has, since 1992 when he first learned of a child molestation case, according to court documents, spent more than a decade covering it up. He is a priest, trained at giving vague answers to some of life’s biggest questions. Could he handle court? He was trained for it. Lynn took the stand sporting his black priest gear to cover up his humanness, as Rolling Stone reported.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By Joseph A. Slobodzian and John P. Martin
Inquirer Staff Writers

The 11 weeks of speeches, emotional and shocking testimony, and legal fireworks are now memories.

When the landmark conspiracy and sex-abuse trial involving Archdiocese of Philadelphia priests resumes Monday, the action will be behind closed doors: a jury room off the large third-floor courtroom at the city’s Criminal Justice Center.

There, seven women and five men will begin their first full day of trying to decide whether Msgr. William J. Lynn is criminally culpable for how the Philadelphia church handled the crimes of some of its priests.

The Common Pleas Court jurors worked just three hours Friday, but they already appear deep into dissecting the evidence.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
MyFoxPhilly

[with video]

PHILADELPHIA –
Today could be the day we learn if Monsignor William Lynn will be convicted or found not guilty of shuffling pedophile priests around the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Jury deliberations continue Monday in the Philadelphia priest sex abuse trial.

Lynn is the first U.S. church official charged for his handling of the abuse complaints.

His co-defendant, Rev. James Brennan, is accused of molesting a teen in 1996.

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UNITED STATES
SNAP Wisconsin

Statement by Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director (Milwaukee)
CONTACT: 414.429.7259

After five days of silence, in remarks to the media this afternoon Cardinal Dolan, instead of explaining his actions of paying off pedophile priests to leave the priesthood while he was Archbishop of Milwaukee and then misleading the public about it in 2006, blasted the New York Times and the victim advocacy group SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

It is not victim/survivors of predator priests in Milwaukee or the New York Times who publically confirmed, based on the official minutes of a meeting Dolan attended while the Archbishop of Milwaukee, that Dolan had authorized payments to child sex offender priests in order to be officially “laicized” and leave the priesthood. It was the Archdiocese of Milwaukee itself, including Dolan’s long time Milwaukee Chief of Staff, Jerry Topczewski. And it was confirmed several times, over several days. Presumably, Dolan does not consider that his former Archdiocese is making “groundless and scurrilous” charges about him? In fact, Dolan’s spokesperson said last week that Dolan “agreed” with the statements being issued by the Milwaukee Archdiocese.

But secretly paying off sex offenders to quietly leave the priesthood is not, as indefensible as that is, what is most damning about Dolan’s conduct. It is, rather, that he appears to have deliberately lied about it: to the public, to Catholics, and most egregiously of all, to victim/survivors of the very same predator priests he was paying off.

In 2006, when Dolan was confronted with evidence that he had implemented such a payout to notorious Milwaukee pedophile priest, Franklyn Becker, he loudly, unambiguously, and self-righteously denied that he had done so. “For anyone to assert” Dolan wrote in a statement at the time “that this money was a ‘payoff’ or occurred in exchange for Becker agreeing to leave the priesthood is completely false, preposterous and unjust.”

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NEW YORK
New York Post

[minutes of the Milwaukee archdiocesan financial council]

By ANTONIO ANTENUCCI and JOSH SAUL

Last Updated: 5:48 AM, June 4, 2012

Timothy Cardinal Dolan yesterday blasted a report that he authorized payments to pedophile priests — and said no such payments are being made to New York clerics.

Dolan, while serving as Milwaukee archbishop in 2003, agreed to pay multiple accused pedophile priests $20,000 in exchange for their agreeing to leave the priesthood, according to documents cited by The New York Times.

Joseph Zwilling, Dolan’s New York Archdiocese spokesman, told The Post last week that there was no “payoff” to pedophile priests — only “charity.”

“The New York Times does not have a reputation for fair and accurate reporting when it comes to this issue,” Dolan said yesterday after Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Midtown. “So, to respond to charges like that — that are groundless and scurrilous — in my book it’s useless and counterproductive.”

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UNITED STATES
Irish Central

[minutes of the Milwaukee archdiocesan finance council]

By
JAMES O’SHEA,
IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Monday, June 4, 2012

Timothy Cardinal Dolan has blasted The New York Times for claiming that he gave payments to pedophile priests when he was Bishop of Milwaukee.

The Times revealed that documents recently released showed that the diocese agreed to pay accused priests $20,000 each to facilitate them leaving the priesthood.

“The New York Times does not have a reputation for fair and accurate reporting when it comes to this issue,” Dolan said yesterday after Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. “So, to respond to charges like that — that are groundless and scurrilous — in my book it’s useless and counterproductive.”

Joseph Zwilling, New York Archdiocese spokesman,had told The New York Post last week that there was no “payoff” to pedophile priests — only “charity.”

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NEW YORK
WNYC

Sunday, June 03, 2012

By Brigid Bergin : WNYC Producer

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of the Catholic Diocese of New York, said on Sunday that reports he approved payments to priests facing sex abuse charges while he was archbishop of Milwaukee were “groundless and scurrilous.”

Speaking to reporters after mass at St. Patrick’s on Sunday, Dolan blasted the New York Times’ coverage of “this issue” saying it was not fair or accurate. He also took aim at the organization behind the charges – specifically the abuse victims’ advocate group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, which recently made public a document from the archdiocese’s bankruptcy proceedings that references a proposal to pay up to $20,000 to priests accused of abuse who return to the laity.

“SNAP has no credibility whatsoever,” Dolan said. “To respond to charges like that that are groundless and scurrilous in my book is useless and counterproductive.”

The Times was among numerous media organizations that reported about the document made public by SNAP.

Dolan’s comments Sunday seemed to contradict a statement made to WNYC by a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York last week, which said that the cardinal “has read and supports the statement from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.”

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UNITED STATES
Patrick J. Wall

Has anything in Roman Catholic Church changed when it comes to child protection?

At first blush I deeply want to be believe: yes. The faithful have endured 28 years of civil litigation, several grand jury reports, billions of dollars in settlements, and several high profile criminal trials. However, when I reviewed the most recent proceedings of the Canon Law Society at their 2011 convention in Jacksonville, Florida, my heart dropped.

Diane L. Barr JD, JCD (who is also the chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore) presented a seminar, “Obligation of the Tribunal to Report Child Abuse“. Barr reviewed mandatory criminal child abuse reporting laws versus canonical responsibilities—that it, what “church law” says she should do. She also discussed obligations to privacy, confidentiality and protecting the Diocese. No mention of victims or child protection.

Let’s get something straight: nowhere in the United States does Canon law trump federal, state, or local criminal or civil law. But apparently, Barr does not know that.

Lessons Learned? Eh … not really.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 4 June 2012 (VIS) – The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith today published a “Notification Regarding the Book ‘Just Love. A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics’ by Sister Margaret A. Farley R.S.M”. The document warns the faithful that the work in question “is not in conformity with the teaching of the Church. Consequently it cannot be used as a valid expression of Catholic teaching, either in counselling and formation, or in ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue”. The English-language Notification is signed by Cardinal William Joseph Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and has been approved by the Holy Father.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wrote to Sr. Farley in 2010 enclosing a preliminary evaluation of her book and indicating the doctrinal problems it contained, however her answer failed to clarify those issues in a satisfactory manner. The Congregation therefore proceeded to examine the volume following the procedure for “examination in cases of urgency”. In June 2011 a commission of experts confirmed that the “book contained erroneous propositions, the dissemination of which risks grave harm to the faithful”. Sr. Farley was sent a list of the erroneous propositions and invited to correct them, but her response “did not adequately clarify the grave problems contained in her book” and the Congregation decided to proceed with the publication of this Notification, extracts of which are given below.

“The author does not present a correct understanding of the role of the Church’s Magisterium as the teaching authority of the bishops united with the Successor of Peter, which guides the Church’s ever deeper understanding of the Word of God as found in Holy Scripture. … In addressing various moral issues, Sr. Farley either ignores the constant teaching of the Magisterium or, where it is occasionally mentioned, treats it as one opinion among others. … Sr. Farley also manifests a defective understanding of the objective nature of the natural moral law”.

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VATIKAN
Welt

Die Enthüllungsaffäre um gestohlene Vatikan-Dokumente schwelt weiter: Einer italienischen Zeitung sind wieder Schreiben aus dem Vatikan zugespielt worden. Der Papst macht derweil weiter wie zuvor.

Der Enthüllungsskandal im Vatikan findet für Papst Benedikt XVI. kein Ende: Anderthalb Wochen nach der Festnahme des päpstlichen Kammerdieners wurden nach einem Zeitungsbericht neue vertrauliche Dokumente aus dem Vatikan publik.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Berliner Zeitung

Berlin –

Mitte der Neunziger wurde ein 16-Jähriger von einem Berliner Kaplan missbraucht. An diesem Wochenende wollte die katholische Kirche den Fall nun mit einer dürren Erklärung vor der St.-Marien-Gemeinde in Reinickendorf abschließen. Doch niemand hatte damit gerechnet, dass das Opfer den Gottesdienst besuchen würde.

Es ist zehn Uhr am Morgen, als Peter Beyer* vor der Kirche in seinen roten Schuhen von einem Bein aufs andere tritt.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Volksfreund

Missbrauch: Kirchenjustiz ermittelt gegen 16 Trierer Bistumspriester

Wegen möglichen Missbrauchs Minderjähriger ist in den vergangenen zwei Jahren gegen 16 Trierer Bistumspriester eine kirchenrechtliche Untersuchung eingeleitet worden. Im schlimmsten Fall droht den Klerikern der Rauswurf.

Liegt es an der harten Hand des katholischen Missbrauchsbeauftragten Stephan Ackermann? Oder ist die Zahl der Missbrauchspriester in seinem Heimatbistum höher als in anderen Diözesen? Seit Februar 2010 wurden im Bistum Trier gegen 16 der insgesamt 700 Priester sogenannte kirchenrechtliche Voruntersuchungen eingeleitet. Dabei geht es um eine mögliche Bestrafung der Geistlichen durch die katholische Kirche. Nach Angaben von Bischofssprecher Stephan Kronenburg sind neun Verfahren “seitens des Bistums abgeschlossen”; die Abschlussberichte gingen nun an die Glaubenskongregation in Rom. Dort werde über das weitere Vorgehen entschieden, sagte Kronenburg unserer Zeitung.

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VATICAN CITY
CathNews

BY MICHAEL MULLINS

Sandro Magister writes on the Vatican leaks, bickering among Cardinals Bertone and Nicora on the Vatican Bank, and a bungled attempt by the some cardinals to take over a major hospital in Milan. His conclusion:

“The boundary between illicit acts and those of simple mismanagement has become very slender, almost nonexistent”.

The Tablet’s Robert Mickens blames the troubles on a “lack of transparency in most of the Roman Curia’s operating structures” that is a consequence of “the clericalist ethos that permeates the curia”.

[Clericalism] serves only to shield members of the hierarchy from being judged by (or held accountable to) anyone of lower rank or by the lay faithful – and certainly from anyone outside the Vatican… In the end, the continued confusion and negative press that all of this has generated have cast this pontificate in an extremely negative light.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

Monday, June 4, 2012

To hear District Attorney Charles Hynes now tell it, members of Brooklyn’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community have criminally protected child sex abusers by bullying victims and their families into silence.

“I haven’t seen this kind of intimidation in organized-crime cases or police corruption,” Hynes declared in an interview with the Daily News.

So whom among these obstructors of justice did Hynes prosecute? Virtually no one. And who
m among the predators did he send to prison? Far, far fewer than he should have across the first 19 of his more than 22 years in office.

As Hynes stunningly admitted to the Jewish Daily Forward, for almost two decades he was “completely unsuccessful” in prosecuting sex abuse by ultra-Orthodox Brooklynites, a group that was politically important to him and whose leaders discourage, as a matter of religion, involvement with civil authorities.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
NBC 10

Local officials and parishioners hailed the announcement by Pope Benedict XVI that he plans to visit Philadelphia in 2015 when it is the site of the next World Meeting of Families, some adding that it might heal divisions caused by the clergy abuse scandals of recent years.

Benedict announced the venue during a Sunday Mass in Milan celebrating the seventh such gathering of families from around the world. The pope sent his greetings to Archbishop Charles Chaput and the Catholics “of that great city” and said he was looking forward to meeting them in 2015.

Officials said it was too early to confirm the papal calendar. Traditionally papal trips abroad are usually confirmed first by the local diocese hosting the trip once the dates are set, a few months before the journey. And the Vatican releases details of such a pilgrimage only a few weeks before departure. Since becoming pope, Benedict attended a world families meeting in Valencia, Spain, but skipped one in Mexico.

The announcement of the papal visit comes as jurors in Philadelphia are deliberating in the landmark trial of a former Roman Catholic church official charged with conspiring to hide priest-abuse complaints and endangering children by keeping predators in ministry.

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ROME
The Daily Beast

Jun 4, 2012

Barbie Latza Nadeau

Fresh leaks from inside the Vatican suggest that the pope’s attendant was merely the ‘scapegoat’ of a much more powerful culprit. Barbie Latza Nadeau on what the latest twist has exposed.

The VatiLeaks source has struck again! But this time, the butler didn’t do it.

On Sunday, editors at the Italian newspaper La Repubblica published several documents they say were mailed to them after the arrest of Pope Benedict XVI’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, on May 24.

Gabriele is being held in a “secure room” somewhere within the tiny walled borders of Vatican City. He faces 30 years in prison for aggravated theft for allegedly leaking documents to Gianluigi Nuzzi, an Italian journalist who printed many of the confidential papers in the bestselling book His Holiness. Nuzzi will not reveal his sources’ names, ages, or gender, but he told The Daily Beast that they were Vatican employees trying to expose “the truth behind the Vatican’s lies.”

Among the fresh leaks obtained by La Repubblica are supposedly letters from the desk of the pope’s private secretary, featuring the Holy See’s crested letterhead and the signature “don Georg Gaenswein.” The contents are blanked out; the secret sender told the paper that the bodies of the letters were hidden so as not to “offend the Holy Father,” but that he or she was prepared to share them if the Vatican didn’t come clean about the real source of the leaks.

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VATICAN CITY
The New York Times

By RACHEL DONADIO

Published: June 3, 2012

VATICAN CITY — In an undisclosed location here, the Vatican authorities are busy questioning Paolo Gabriele, the pope’s butler, and others in a widening leaks scandal that has made the seat of the Roman Catholic Church appear to be a hornet’s nest of back-stabbing and gossip.

Across town, in the lobby of a fancy hotel on the Via Veneto, Gianluigi Nuzzi, the investigative reporter whose new book based on some of the leaks has sent the Vatican into a tailspin, was holding court and looking rather pleased.

“I’m serene, I’m tranquil, convinced that I did my work in a correct way, without raising questions about the Holy Father,” Mr. Nuzzi said in an interview last week, during which he was twice interrupted by fans asking him to sign copies of his book, “Your Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI.”

With its glimpses of behind-the-scenes spats in the Apostolic Palace, where the pope lives, and high-stakes power struggles over the secretive — and lucrative — Vatican bank, the book has set Italy abuzz even during a week dominated by a deadly earthquake, dismal economic forecasts and a soccer match-fixing investigation that has shaken Italians’ faith in an institution almost as beloved as the papacy.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Patriot-News

Catholic officials in Harrisburg say pope’s 2015 visit to Philladelphia might heal divisions caused by clergy abuse scandal

By MARY KLAUS, The Patriot-News

PHILADELPHIA — An announcement Sunday by Pope Benedict XVI that he plans to visit Philadelphia in 2015 when it hosts the World Meeting of Families caused some local officials to say the visit might heal divisions caused by the clergy abuse scandals.

Benedict announced the visit during a Sunday Mass in Milan celebrating the seventh such gathering of families from around the world. The pope sent his greetings to Archbishop Charles Chaput and the Catholics “of that great city.”

The pope’s announcement comes as jurors in Philadelphia deliberate in the landmark trial of a former Roman Catholic church official charged with conspiring to hide priest-abuse complaints and endangering children by keeping predators in ministry.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
Seamus Heaney,”The Cure at Troy”

Kristine Ward

Life is hard here. Here in Northern Ireland. This is the land of Derry and Belfast. These are the cities of the datelines of the decades of the most recent “troubles.”

The peace is still nascent here.

As the Olympic Torch moves through a five (5) day relay across this part of the United Kingdom there is determination that the days will not be marred by violence or incident.

This is country that still lives intimately with heaviness and hardship. It cannot be hidden. It embosses the faces of the local residents even as they play hide and seek with it in the lifting of a Saturday night pint of Guinness to the rhythms of the fiddle.

We take pause in asking more of these people.

But ask we must for the government of Northern Ireland is on the verge of announcing an inquiry into sexual abuse in Northern Ireland.

Inquiry yes.

But not a vapid whitewash.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Whispers in the Loggia

Fresh off the wire from Milan (via 222), Archbishop Charles Chaput OFM Cap. released the following statement on Pope Benedict’s selection of Philadelphia this morning to host the Eighth World Meeting of Families in 2015:

“I am so grateful to the Holy Father that he has chosen Philadelphia and excited that we will host the 2015 World Meeting of Families. It’s fitting that this gathering, which celebrates the cornerstone of society, will take place in America’s cradle of freedom. The Holy Father’s choice is a gift to the local Church in Philadelphia and to the whole nation.

“The family is founded on a deep and loving union between one man and one woman for mutual support and the nurturing of children. This meeting in Philadelphia will be a wonderful opportunity to highlight the family as the basic evangelizing unit of the Church. Every effort to promote marriage and the family serves not only the Church, but also the common good.”

In comments to Catholic News Service, Chaput said that, given the difficult financial situation of the Philadelphia church, he made clear to Vatican officials that the city could only host the event if it were considerably smaller — “60,000 to 80,000” people — than earlier editions of the WMF. (The crowd at today’s closing Mass in Milan, for example, reportedly topped out at a million.)

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News

Jason Nark, Regina Medina and John F. Morrison
Philadelphia Daily News

AN ELDERLY woman knelt in the last pew of St. Monica’s Church in South Philly on Sunday, a rosary intertwined in her fingers, while a shaggy-haired teenager in basketball shorts played with his cellphone one pew up —both beneath a pastel-painted ceiling of the afterlife.

Catholics in Philly still struggle with the universal mysteries while grappling with the still-simmering sex-abuse scandal that rocked both the diocese here and the faith around the globe. Adherents expect guidance from Rome in the toughest times — and, so, it’s always a monumental moment when Rome comes to you.

It was announced Sunday that Philadelphia will host Pope Benedict XVI for the 2015 World Meeting of Families, the city’s first papal visit since 1979 when a million people crammed the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to see Pope John Paul II. …

The Pope passed over Philadelphia back in 2008 when he visited Washington D.C., then New York.

“What changed? Two things. The grand-jury report, and the eruption that emerged from it, changed everything,” said Vatican expert Rocco Palmo, who writes the Catholic-themed blog Whispers in the Loggia.

“We’ve been through the toughest period that any American diocese has been through in the last 50 years. It’s the darkest hour the Philadelphia Archdiocese has gone through in 200 years.”

Chaput was handpicked by Pope Benedict XVI to lead Philadelphia through traumatic times, and Palmo said that the papal visit is a “vote of confidence” in the Archbishop’s leadership.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Sunday Leader

By Uvindu Kurukulasuriya – reporting from London

Chief Sanghanayaka Thera of Great Britain and Chief Incumbent of the Thames Buddhist Vihara and Parivenadhipathi of the Vidyaravinda Pirivena, Pahalagama, Gampaha and Chief Lekhadhikari of the Sri Kalyani Samagi Dharma Maha Sangha Sabha has been convicted of four counts of indecent assault on an underage person and sentenced to seven years in prison, a judge ruled Friday June 1, 2012. He has also been banned from working with children for life and his name is added to the sex offenders register.

Monk Pahalagama Somaratana, 65, of Dulverton Road, Croydon was initially convicted at Isleworth Crown Court on May 1, 2012 of four counts of indecent assault on a female under 16 years between January 1, 1977 and December 31,1978 at an address in Chiswick.

He was found not guilty of the rape of a female under 16 years between January 1,1977 and December 31,1978 at an address in Chiswick and not guilty of indecent assault on a female under 14 years between January 1,1985 and December 31, 1986 at an address in Croydon.

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UNITED STATES
Pope Crimes & Vatican Evils…

Updated June 3, 2012

Paris Arrow

The Vatican is now attacking American nuns, the members of the LCWR Leadership Conference of Women Religious, whose median age is 74 – and if the Vatican would declare any group of sisters to be “outside the Catholic Church”, then those sisters might risk losing anything their communities had accrued over the years — housing, savings, medical care.1 The pitiless and heartless Pope Benedict XVI does not care about “housing, savings and medical bills” because he has billions of dollars at his disposal for his own old age as he resides in the lap-of-luxury in the largest church and wealthiest medieval palace on the planet, read about the Vatican billions here http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2011_03_01_archive.html

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Jun. 04, 2012
By Jerry Filteau

The Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has sharply criticized Just Love, an award-winning book on sexual ethics by Mercy Sr. Margaret Farley, a prominent Catholic theologian at Yale University.

“Among the many errors and ambiguities in this book are its positions on masturbation, homosexual acts, homosexual unions, the indissolubility of marriage and the problem of divorce and remarriage,” the congregation’s five-page “Notification” said.

In those areas, it said, the author’s position “contradicts” or “is opposed to” or “does not conform to” church teaching.

Made public June 4 but dated March 30, the Notification was approved by Pope Benedict XVI and signed by U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada, prefect of the congregation, and Archbishop Luis F. Ladaria, its secretary.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CNN

By Sarah Hoye, CNN

updated 4:26 AM EDT, Mon June 4, 2012

Philadelphia (CNN) — Deliberations resume Monday in Philadelphia in the landmark trial of Monsignor William Lynn, the highest-ranking cleric charged with endangering children by allegedly helping cover up sexual abuse.

Lynn, a defendant with another Philadelphia priest, is accused of knowingly allowing dangerous priests to continue in the ministry in roles in which they had access to children.

Also on trial is the Rev. James Brennan, who is accused of the attempted rape of a 14-year-old. Both Brennan and Lynn have pleaded not guilty.

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ROME
7 News (Australia)

ROME (AFP) – Just 10 days after the pope’s butler was arrested in an investigation into Holy See leaks, an Italian daily Sunday published fresh whistleblower letters, suggesting the scandal is far from over.

Three new documents filched from the Vatican were sent to La Repubblica by an anonymous source in another blow for the Holy See, which has played down rumours that top clerics may be orchestrating a number of informers.

“The truth can be found at the top of the hierarchy,” the source said in a letter accompanying the documents, apparently accusing one of Pope Benedict XVI’s personal secretaries, Georg Gaenswein, of allowing secrets to slip out.

Gaenswein, who has access to the pope’s personal study, has been passing highly secret documents to the Holy See’s number two, Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone — some of which then ended up splashed in the media — the whistleblower said.

“Kick out of the Vatican those who are really responsible for the scandal: Mr. Gaenswein and Cardinal Bertone,” the source said, adding that the new documents it had revealed referred to “shameful events inside the Vatican.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced today that Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. has approved the recommendations of the Archdiocesan Strategic Planning Committee to merge parishes in Phoenixville. These mergers are the result of ongoing restructuring that will ultimately strengthen parish communities throughout the Archdiocese positioning them for future growth and sustainability. It is hoped that the result will be revitalized parishes throughout the Archdiocese that are better equipped to meet the spiritual and pastoral needs of future generations.

The recommendations and resulting mergers are an outcome of the Archdiocesan-wide Parish Pastoral Planning Area initiative, which began in 2011. Parishioners at all affected parishes learned of the final decisions through letters mailed to all registered parishioners as well as announcements made at all Masses this weekend.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. is in Milan today where Pope Benedict XVI announced during the World Meeting of Families that Philadelphia has been chosen as the site for the 2015 meeting. As part of the Milan event, Archbishop Chaput received the icon of the Holy Family, which is the symbol of The World Meeting of Families.

Archbishop Chaput said, “I am so grateful to the Holy Father that he has chosen Philadelphia and excited that we will host the 2015 World Meeting of Families. It’s fitting that this gathering, which celebrates the cornerstone of society, will take place in America’s cradle of freedom. The Holy Father’s choice is a gift to the local Church in Philadelphia and to the whole nation.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholic News Service

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

MILAN (CNS) — When the Archdiocese of Philadelphia hosts the United States’ first World Meeting of Families in 2015, it will need to be a significantly smaller affair than the enormous gatherings seen since its inception in 1994, said the city’s archbishop.

It is only with a reduced number of participants that “we could manage through special gifts and the like that people would be willing to give to support such a gathering,” Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia told Catholic News Service shortly after Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement.

The pope announced the host city of the next world meeting at the Seventh World Meeting of Families’ closing Mass to an estimated 1 million people gathered at Milan’s outdoor Bresso Park June 3.

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ROME
Rome Reports

[with video]

June 3, 2012. (Romereports.com) Before concluding the World Meeting of Families, Benedict XVI recited the Angelus. Instead of his usual spot from the window of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, the pope spoke in Milan’s Bresso Park to around one million people.

The Pope thanked the families for attending, saying that their homes were “temples of God”.

He also announced that the next World Meeting of Families will be in the United States in 2015.

BENEDICT XVI
“With joy I announce that the next World Meeting of Families in 2015 will take place in the city of Philadelphia in the United States of America.”

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