ABUSE TRACKER

ROME
End the Lie

By Richard Cottrell
Contributing writer for End the Lie

There are many striking similarities between the former Soviet Kremlin and the Vatican (which has been besieged by even more scandals than usual as of late).

Consider, for example, the question of organizational bureaucracy. Commissars equal Cardinals. It is easy to swap democracy and freedom preached in the name of the people for everlasting life equally pledged to the devout and faithful by the Catholic Church.

Possession of a party card could be seen as the equivalent of obedient presence at Sunday Mass.

There are no popular elections in the Roman Church. The Pope is chosen by his own internal clique, just as Soviet leaders clambered over each other to the seat of power.

Joseph Ratzinger, alias Pope Benedict XVI, reminds me strongly of Brezhnev in his final decline. Then the corridors and chambers of the Kremlin hummed with plots, horrific acts of political treachery occurred behind closed doors as the general secretary quietly faded away, like the smile on the face of the Cheshire Cat.

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UNITED STATES
Failed Messiah

Rabbi Osher Schapiro, the Britain-based son of the Naroler Rebbe and Director of Kol Bonaich – Teens at Risk, Kids in Pain, said that activists who tell victims to go to police to report child sex abuse are “mishugoyim,” a slur that means crazy people or wild people. He repeated several times that a rabbi must be asked before reporting abuse, and said that if a rabbi says do not call police, you must listen to him. He also implied that God would deal with the pedophiles who escape because of this system, noting an increase in the number of recent prosecutions. Of course, Schapiro didn’t credit any of the “mishugoyim” with that.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Newsworks

June 3, 2012
By Marilyn S. D’Angelo

As the congregation of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church leaves today’s service around 12:45 p.m., they will be met by some of the victims of child sex abuse and their supporters.

The group will be handing out fliers to churchgoers at the Center City church located at 242 South 20th Street. The leaflets urge parishioners to help the victims and their supporters to find others who were molested by Msgr. Phillip J. Dowling, a Catholic priest who admits molesting one girl and is accused of molesting three others.

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VATICAN CITY
Sydney Morning Herald

June 3, 2012

DPA

An Italian newspaper has received confidential Vatican documents from a unknown source who in a message claimed that a papal butler arrested last week for allegedly stealing Holy See files was a “scapegoat” in a plot involving top officials.

La Repubblica said the leaking of the documents showed that Paolo Gabriele, who is currently held in the Vatican, “is not the only one” responsible for the so-called “Vatileaks” scandal which has engulfed the Vatican.

La Repubblica published on Sunday part of what it said was an anonymous, computer-typed message carrying the heading: “Chase away from the Vatican, those really responsible (for the scandal).”

The message claims that the Vatican’s second highest official, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and Pope Benedict XVI’s personal secretary Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, are the main culprits in an unspecified plot.

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CITTA DEL VATICANO
La Repubblica

Secondo la nuova indiscrezione, c’è uno scambio di documenti e un patto segreto tra il numero due della Santa Sede e il segretario particolare di Ratzinger. Repubblica è in possesso di tre documenti riservati. Sul quotidiano, il testo integrale di una lettera inviata dal cardinale Burke al segretario di Stato

di MARCO ANSALDO

MILANO – “Cacciate i veri responsabili dal Vaticano. Ancora una volta a pagare è il solito capro espiatorio. Quale migliore vittima del maggiordomo del Santo Padre. La verità va ricercata nel potere centrale”. Il corvo vola ancora in Vaticano. Volteggia, osserva e colpisce, mentre Benedetto XVI si trova in visita ufficiale per tre giorni a Milano cercando qualche momento di serenità dai veleni che lo assediano. Il corvo sforna a sorpresa nuovi documenti. Tre, per la precisione, di cui Repubblica è in possesso e che oggi presenta. Ma, avverte subito la fonte, di carte come queste ne abbiamo “centinaia”. Lo scrive in una lettera – che prelude ai tre documenti – battuta sul computer. Dimostrando, qualora ce ne fosse ancora bisogno, che il maggiordomo del Papa accusato di essere il postino delle missive fuoriuscite in passato dalla Santa Sede, “il capro espiatorio” come lo definisce la lettera, non è per niente il solo. Perché il corvo, in realtà, è ancora attivo. “La verità – denuncia – va ricercata nel potere centrale”. E spiega: “Ovverossia, nell’archivio privato di mons. Georg Gaenswein segretario particolare del Santo Padre, dal quale fuoriescono di continuo innumerevoli documenti riservati a favore del Segretario di Stato Cardinale Tarcisio Bertone”.

Un’accusa forte, che la fonte fa propria, al segretario particolare di Benedetto XVI, uomo in cui il Papa ripone invece la massima fiducia, e che da molti anni rappresenta la persona cui affidarsi

per le questioni non solo di carattere personale, ma anche spirituali e politiche. Negli ultimi anni, infatti, monsignor Gaenswein ha accresciuto notevolmente la sua influenza all’interno dell’Appartamento, maturando un ruolo di certo del tutto informale, eppure tangibile e chiaro a tutti, di consigliere di Joseph Ratzinger, del quale è anche connazionale. Aggiunge il corvo nella sua missiva preliminare alle tre carte: “Non sempre le cose vanno per il verso giusto e tra Mons. Georg ed il Cardinale ci sono passaggi incontrollati di documenti ed atti riservatissimi”. Come a dire: i documenti e gli atti interni che transitano dall’Appartamento papale all’ufficio del Segretario di Stato, e viceversa, talvolta prendono anche altre strade. E il loro controllo si perde.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

Sun Jun 3, 2012

By Philip Pullella

MILAN (Reuters) – Pope Benedict got no rest on Sunday from a leaks scandal when an Italian newspaper published documents showing that his butler was not the only person in possession of confidential correspondence indicating a Vatican in disarray.

Benedict, 85, ended a weekend trip to Italy’s industrial and financial capital Milan with a closing mass for an international gathering in which he praised traditional Catholic family values and re-stated his opposition to gay marriage.

But in its Sunday edition, the Rome newspaper La Repubblica published documents it said it had received anonymously after the arrest of the pope’s butler on May 23.

A note received by the newspaper said there were “hundreds more” documents and that the butler, Paolo Gabriele, was just a scapegoat.

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VATIKAN
Zeit

Tarcisio Bertone kommt im Vatikan gleich nach dem Papst. Sein gewaltiger Einfluss bringt die Kurie gegen ihn auf. Noch stützt der Papst den Staatssekretär.

Gestohlene Briefe, Ächtungen, Machtspiele und sogar Mordkomplotte – die Berichterstattung über die Vatikan-Krise übertrifft fast schon die Fantasien reißerischer Thriller-Autoren. Ein Name taucht in jeder neuen Geschichte auf: Tarcisio Bertone.

Auch der jüngste “Vatikanleaks”-Skandal um das Buch Sua Eminenza des Journalisten Gianluigi Nuzzi ist aus Sicht von Beobachtern nur eine Offensive im langjährigen Kampf zwischen dem vatikanischen Kardinalstaatssekretär und seinen Gegnern. Die Veröffentlichung der privaten Korrespondenz des Papstes – sagen Vatikan-Insider – soll das Ziel haben, die Machtspiele in der Kurie publik zu machen, um Bertone zum Rücktritt zu zwingen. Sicher ist, dass der 78-Jährige immer weniger Freunde in Rom hat.

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DEUTSCHLAND
kath.ch

2011 haben die deutschen Bischöfe angekündigt, dass sie sich von ihrem Medienunternehmen «Weltbild» trennen wollen. Grund: die anhaltende Empörung wegen des Vertriebs von «unmoralischer Literatur». Doch jetzt bietet sich der Kirche ein Mittelweg an. Thomas Münzel

Die katholische Kirche in Deutschland besitzt mit der Weltbild-Verlagsgruppe ein wirtschaftlich erfolgreiches Medienunternehmen. Im Geschäftsjahr 2010/2011 konnte das beste operative Ergebnis seit fünf Jahren präsentiert werden. Der Konzern wies einen Umsatz von 1,65 Milliarden Euro (rund zwei Milliarden Franken) aus. Mit einem Marktanteil von 18 Prozent ist Weltbild Marktführer im deutschen Buchmarkt. 2011 ist das Unternehmen, das zwölf katholischen Diözesen, dem Verband der Diözesen Deutschlan …

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DEUTSCHLAND
Berliner Morgenpost

Nach Aufforderung von Kardinal Rainer Maria Woelki ist ein früherer Pfarrer der Kirchengemeinde Sankt Marien in Berlin-Reinickendorf von seinem Amt zurückgetreten. Anlass ist der Vorwurf sexuellen Missbrauchs an einem damals 16-jährigen Jugendlichen in den 90er Jahren, wie der Generalvikar des Erzbistums Berlin, Tobias Przytarski, am Sonntag der Gemeinde bekannt gab. Der heutige Seelsorger der Gemeinde, Pfarrer Markus Brandenburg, verlas das Schreiben bei einem Gottesdienst. Im Erzbistum laufen nach eigenen Angaben weiterhin sechs Verfahren zu Verdachtsfällen von sexuellem Missbrauch durch Kirchenmitarbeiter.

Der Kirchengemeinde Sankt Marien war der Vorwurf seit März 2011 bekannt. Der damalige Diözesanadministrator, Weihbischof Matthias Heinrich, leitete eine Untersuchung ein. Mit Beginn des Verfahrens wurde dem beschuldigten Pfarrer die Ausübung des priesterlichen Dienstes untersagt. Nach Angaben Przytarski ergab die Untersuchung, dass weder nach weltlichem noch nach kirchlichem Recht eine Straftat vorgelegen habe, jedoch ein schwerer Verstoß gegen den priesterlichen Dienst. Deshalb habe der Erzbischof die disziplinarrechtlichen Maßnahmen angeordnet. Der Generalvikar bedauerte zugleich, dass dem Vorwurf nicht bereits zu einem früheren Zeitpunkt nachgegangen worden sei.

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OSTERREICH
SOS – Osterreich

Mai 31, 2012 von derpatriot

Über die Hintergründe von sexuellem Missbrauch gibt es viele Thesen, welche oberflächlich betrachtet schlüssig und logisch erscheinen, – verstärkt durch tendenziöse Berichterstattung mancher Medien. Wörter wie Vergewaltigung, Nötigung und Missbrauch werden nicht selten für ein und die selbe Sache „missbraucht“. Da etwa die Kirche selbst hohe moralische Ansprüche vertritt, scheint es umso genüßlicher, Verfehlungen einzelner kirchlicher Mitarbeiter als Doppelzüngigkeit anzuprangern und zu generalisieren.

Manche Vorurteile halten sich dabei besonders hartnäckig, doch es stimmt weder das Missbrauchsfälle überwiegend in kirchlichen Einrichtungen, noch die meisten Täter Priester und Ordensleute sind und auch dass die katholische Sexualmoral derartige Fälle begünstigt(e). Für interessierte Leser sei hier besonders auf wissenschaftliche Publikationen und Interviews mit dem Kriminologen Christian Pfeiffer, dem Psychiater Hans-Ludwig Kröber und dem Psychologen Gerard van den Aardweg verwiesen, welche teils auch im Internet veröffentlicht sind.

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OSTERREICH
Heute

Er soll jahrelang Zöglinge missbraucht haben, genoss absolute Macht in den Mauern des Stifts Kremsmünster. Jetzt könnte August Mandorfer, “Pumpgun Pater” Alfons, doch noch vor Gericht landen. Ein psychiatrisches Gutachten attestiert zwei seiner Opfer “Langzeitschäden” – damit wären die Fälle nicht verjährt, berichtet das Nachrichtenmagazin profil.

“Schwere Nötigung, Quälen oder Vernachlässigen unmündiger oder wehrloser Personen, Vergehen nach dem Waffengesetz (Mandorfer besaß illegal eine Pumpgun und soll damit Schüler bedroht haben), Körperverletzung, sexueller Missbrauch von Jugendlichen, sexueller Missbrauch von Unmündigen, schwerer sexueller Missbrauch von Jugendlichen, Vergewaltigung, Missbrauch eines Autoritätsverhältnisses, gefährliche Drohung und Nötigung” – in all diesen diesen Delikten sieht die Staatsanwaltschaft Steyr bei Mandorfer “dringenden Tatverdacht”, wie profil schreibt.

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OSTERREICH
profil

Psychiatrische Gutachten bestätigen psychische Langzeitschäden durch Gewalt und Missbrauch an ehemaligen Zöglingen des Klosters Kremsmünster. Damit sind die Taten nicht verjährt. Jetzt wird mit der Anklage des „Pumpgun-Paters“ gerechnet.

Von Emil Bobi

Die Vergangenheit hat ihn mit voller Wucht eingeholt: Innerhalb der Klostermauern des Benediktinerstifts Kremsmünster war er eine allmächtige Autorität, jetzt hat er Zuflucht in einem verschwiegenen Schwesternorden bei Wels gefunden und hebt nicht einmal mehr sein Telefon ab. August Mandorfer, 78, ehemals „Pater Alfons“, ist nicht einmal mehr Angehöriger des Klerus. Am 27. April hat ihn der Papst persönlich in den Laienstand zurückversetzt, nachdem profil den „Gerichtsakt Kremsmünster“ veröffentlicht hatte, in dem 40 der mutmaßlichen Opfer Mandorfers schockierende Zeugnisse seines „sadistischen Gewaltregimes“ ablegten. Mandorfer tauchte zunächst bei seinem Mitbruder und Freund Abt Christian Haidinger im Stift Altenburg unter, wurde aber von ehemaligen Schülern aufgestöbert und lautstark bloßgestellt. Da bat ihn das Stift, wieder weiterzuziehen.

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VATICAN CITY
Sky News (Australia)

Power-hungry cardinals, spies and a suspicious butler: ‘Vatileaks’ is just the latest scandal to grip an institution dogged down the centuries by damning tales of greed, corruption and betrayal.

From clerical sex abuse scandals to accusations of money-laundering and ties with the mafia over the years, critics do not have to indulge in Dan Brown Da Vinci Code theories to accuse the Church of slipping from its moral code.

While rumours of wild sex parties are today more easily associated with former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, the tiny Vatican state in the heart of Rome was once a hotbed of lust and depravity.

Tenth-century pope John XII, appointed aged just 18, is said to have indulged his teenage sex drive by throwing exotic orgies, sparking outraged religious observers to describe the Lateran palace, the papal home, as a whore house.

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NEW YORK
WPIX

[with video]

By MARY MURPHY
pix11.com | @murphypix

9:25 p.m. EDT, June 1, 2012
BROOKLYN, NY (PIX11)— The family of a Brooklyn man being treated for drug addiction in California traces his problems back to sexual abuse by a yeshiva teacher, when he was just 9 years old. “I do recall the rabbi being over here, trying to hush up my dad,” Yosef Werner–the abuse survivor’s brother–told PIX 11 Friday.

20 years ago, Daniel “Benji” Werner came home from the Yeshiva of Brooklyn one day and started confiding in his mother at their Midwood home. “He told me the rabbi was touching him,” Yehudis Werner told PIX. “And I said, ‘What??!!”

Benji Werner told his mother the teacher would call him up to the front of the class, take the boy behind the desk, place Benji on his lap, and then put his hands in the boy’s pants and molest him.

Mrs. Werner said she called her husband, Aaron, and he started contacting other parents from Benji’s class. She told PIX several parents had heard the same thing from their children. Soon after, she said the family received calls from religious leaders. “They called up my husband and said ‘if you continue to call parents, we’ll make your name mud.'”

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ISRAEL/NEW YORK
New York Post

By ORON DAN in Jerusalem and SUSAN EDELMAN in NY

Here is Avrohom Mondrowitz, New York’s most notorious child molester — living scot-free in Israel.

Called the “Bin Laden of pedophiles” by one victim, the bogus rabbi and self-proclaimed psychologist fled the United States in 1984 just before cops broke into his Borough Park, Brooklyn, home with a search warrant. They found a cache of kiddie porn and lists of hundreds of names of local boys, most referred to Mondrowitz by Jewish families and child-service agencies for counseling and his yeshiva-style program.

“He was known in the insular community as the go-to therapist, child mentor,” said an outspoken victim, Mark Weiss, whose parents sent him to Mondrowitz at age 13. “He had a certain knack with kids.”

Weiss says Mondrowitz treated him to restaurants and amusement parks, then took him into bed during a week’s stay in his home. When Weiss, at age 18, finally told his parents and a rabbi about the sexual abuse, “They let it die. Any such story was quashed and buried.”

But years later the NYPD finally caught up with Mondrowitz after getting anonymous complaints. He was indicted in 1985 on charges of sexual abuse and sodomy against four Italian-American boys, ages 11 to 16, who lived in the Brooklyn neighborhood.

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UNITED STATES
New York Post

Maureen Callahan

As if to further underscore their deep remove from the modern world, Vatican officials, in a clumsy attempt to stanch new and damaging leaks from within, announced that they’ve arrested the person responsible: the pope’s butler.

“It’s like a punchline,” says Matthew Bunson, editor of Catholic Answer magazine. “You wind up with the headline, ‘The Butler Did It.’ ”

Among those who pay close attention to this stuff, none believe that the butler did it.

“The evidence stacked up against him is almost too good,” says Michael James, fellow at the Roche Center for Catholic Education at Boston College. “There’s been [an internal] investigation going on for a year about missing documents. The theory is that he’s being set up.”

But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. For many Americans, the question remains: What, exactly, is the butler supposed to have done? And does it really matter?

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By John P. Martin
Inquirer Staff Writer

Barely four minutes into his closing argument Thursday, defense lawyer Thomas Bergstrom uttered two words that seemed woven into the daily script of the clergy sex-abuse trial:

“The cardinal.”

Bergstrom went on to mention the cardinal – former Philadelphia Archbishop Anthony J. Bevilacqua – at least 18 more times in an hour. Some were passing references, but all were part of a bid to convince jurors that his client, Msgr. William J. Lynn, had the will but not the power to remove abusive priests.

That power, Bergstrom said, rested solely with the cardinal.

Bevilacqua spent his final years in isolation before his death in January. Still, the landmark 11-week trial of Lynn, his former secretary for clergy, and whatever verdict the jury may render, could shape Bevilacqua’s legacy as much as any event in his career as a prelate.

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IRELAND
The Journal

JUSTICE MINISTER ALAN Shatter is to write to one of the advocacy groups for survivors of the Magdalene Laundries after the government was criticised for a lack of response to their concerns.

The Magdalene Survivors Together (MST) group said earlier this week that the Shatter and the Minister of State for Disability, Equality and Health, Kathleen Lynch, had failed to undertake a “restorative and reconciliation process” which was promised to them last September.

“It is quiet clear that Kathleen Lynch and Minister Shatter have completely failed the women on both of these counts. The Restorative and Reconciliation Process has been completely and utterly forgotten about,” the group said this week.

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UNITED STATES
New Yorker

Posted by Amy Davidson

American nuns are sending two leaders of their main organization to Rome—on a mission, not a pilgrimage. Sister Pat Farrell, the president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and Sister Janet Mock, the group’s executive director, want to meet with a cardinal and an archbishop to ask why their group is being disciplined as the result of a harsh “assessment” by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and, more extraordinarily, to object to the Vatican’s findings.

The assessment had talked darkly about “radical feminist” influences and “a distorted ecclesiological vision,” by which the Vatican seemed to mean, mostly, that the nuns were not listening enough to bishops. Strikingly, the problem wasn’t just the things that they were saying, but what they weren’t saying—that they weren’t fervent enough advocates for the bishops’ positions on issues like gay marriage and contraception. (See Margaret Talbot’s Daily Comment for an example.) It was, as I wrote when it was issued a month and a half ago, part of a broader war on nuns on the part of the Church in America, or rather on the part of the Church’s leadership; the women, it turned out, had a great deal of sympathy within local parishes, where people held prayer vigils and told the nuns that they were on their side.

But it was hard to tell what that support was worth: Where are you left when the Church to which you have given your life says that your work isn’t good—that its whole direction is wrong? Their position is a vulnerable one, to say the least. For many of the nuns, the past few weeks seem to have been a hard time, and even a lonely one. When the board of the L.C.W.R. finally met this week in Washington, Sister Pat Farrell said, in an interview today with the National Catholic Reporter, “There was an overall mood of really serious, prayerful reflection, I would say—a gamut of emotions of ups and downs. But I would say that the major thing is that it was a real consolation for all of us to finally be together in one place and to be able to process some of the feelings around this … to finally be able to talk about that face to face.”

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VATICAN CITY
Times of India

Already this year we’ve read about documents warning of a “death threat” against the Pope, widespread nepotism and corruption, exiled whistle-blowers , gay smear campaigns and embarrassing revelations about the Vatican’s tax affairs. Most of the damaging of the ” Vatileaks” were revealed by the reporter Gianluigi Nuzzi in a series of TV programmes and now his new book Sua Santita (Your Holiness).

As ever, lumbering several steps behind , the powers that be at the Holy See last month set out to catch the mole or moles behind the leaks — which they refer to as “criminal acts”. The Pope’s butler has already been nabbed in possession of some of the confidential papers. But few people think he acted alone.

This week, we learnt that an unnamed Italian cardinal is now a suspect. But even if all the leakers are caught, few observers think that there’s an end in sight for the PR disasters that have blighted the reign of 85-year-old Pope Benedict XVI.

For Valerio Gigante, a vaticanologist at the Adista religious news website, the church is suffering a moral crisis. “The contradiction at the heart of the church grows greater all the time. It exists for moral reasons but also generates huge amounts of money and is ever more occupied with political and economic power,” he said.

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VATICAN CITY
The Telegraph (United Kingdom)

The murky saga of the leaked Vatican documents has damaged the worldwide image of the Catholic Church, just as it was trying to recover from the paedophile priest scandals, writes Nick Squires.

By Nick Squires, Vatican City
7:00AM BST 03 Jun 2012

Its massive walls, topped by stone eagles and statues of saints, dwarf the crowds of tourists queuing to see the treasures inside its museums.

The Vatican may look like a medieval fortress, but the apparent impregnability of its bastions, buttresses and revetments is illusory.

Not even the Swiss Guards in their flamboyant harlequin uniforms managed to prevent the worst security breach in the Holy See’s recent history – the theft of hundreds of confidential documents, some of them stolen from the desk of Pope Benedict himself.

Smuggled out of the secretive city state, they were handed to an Italian journalist, Gianluigi Nuzzi, who dropped a metaphorical bomb on the Holy See by publishing them as a book: His Holiness – The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI.

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VATICAN CITY
Europe Online

By our dpa-correspondent and Europe Online

Vatican City (dpa) – A Vatican commission of cardinals has given final approval to last month‘s controversial decision by the board of the Vatican bank to dismiss its president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, reports said Saturday.

The functions of president of the bank – known as the Institute for Religious Works (IOR) – would be assumed on an iterim basis by deputy-president, Ronaldo Hermann Schmitz, papal spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, was quoted as saying by the ANSA newsagency.

Lombardi also denied Italian newspaper reports of a split between the five cardinals making up the commission over Gotti Tedeschi‘s ousting by the board on May 24.

The reports, some of which claimed that cardinals Attilio Nicora and Jean-Louis Tauran had sided with Gotti Tedeschi, were “absolutely baseless,” Lombardi said.

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MAINE
Kennebec Journal

By Bill Nemitz bnemitz@mainetoday.com
Columnist

The year was 1853. Anti-Catholic violence ran so rampant throughout Maine that the Rev. Henry B. Coskery, vicar general of Baltimore, said thanks but no thanks to his appointment as the first Roman Catholic bishop of Portland.

Two years later, the job finally went to Bishop David Bacon, brave man. But even Bacon made sure to arrive here from Brooklyn, N.Y., in the dead of night to lessen the chance of riots.

Which brings us to last week’s announcement that Bishop Richard Malone soon will leave Maine for Buffalo — only the 11th time in more than 150 years that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland has changed leaders.

And this time — thank God for small blessings — it’s not the flaming torches that Malone’s successor will have to worry about as he moves into the new, 2,918-square-foot bishop’s residence in Falmouth.

It’s the yawns.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

Editorial

Published: June 1, 2012

The nation’s Roman Catholic nuns are pushing back against the Vatican’s unjustified attack on their fidelity. The president and the executive director of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents about 80 percent of the nation’s 57,000 nuns, intend to go to Rome and fully rebut the accusations that the group has “serious doctrinal problems” and a tendency toward “radical feminist themes.”

Catholic laity immediately and rightly decried the attack as an insult to the high professionalism of the sisters and the vital importance of their good works. To many, the Vatican’s decision to appoint three American bishops to oversee and remake the conference seemed to be retaliation for the group’s endorsement of President Obama’s health care reform. The nation’s bishops were opposed.

It’s heartening that after six weeks of official silence and spirited discussion in the ranks of the sisterhood, the leadership conference is finally speaking out in its own defense. On Friday, the national board said the Vatican’s assessment of its works was based on “unsubstantiated accusations” and a “flawed” review process.

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UNITED STATES
Minnesota SNAP

By Vinnie Nauheimer

There once was a bishop named Dolan,
Whose gift of gab kept his train rollin.
Then one day he fell down flat
When we discovered a rat.
Justice for victims, he had stolen.

So let’s sing another verse worse than the other verse
And dazzle me with your collar.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Times Online

As Sandusky sex-abuse trial approaches, a look at a Pittsburgh case shows importance of reporting

By Bill Heltzel and Halle Stockton PublicSource

A ninth-grade boy at Pittsburgh’s Vincentian High School had a secret. He’d changed a grade on his report card, but soon his basketball coach discovered the deceit. For weeks, the coach summoned him from gym class and the cafeteria to his office, where he prodded: What would the boy do for the coach to keep the secret?

Finally, the coach, according to court documents, gave the boy three choices: Masturbate in front of the coach, stand on his head and pee or get paddled with a plank. He chose the beating. The coach stood the boy against a chalkboard, splayed his legs, and hit him with a 2-by-4. The coach then pulled down the boy’s pants to see the welts.

When the boy and his parents told school officials what happened, the principal doubted the story, but offered to change the boy’s schedule to avoid the coach’s English class.

“That’s what her offer was, and I’m like, ‘No, I’m not going to do that,’” the boy later told police about the 1995 incident with coach David Scott Zimmerman, then 28. “I’m leaving school. I can’t take this anymore.”

The Vincentian principal dropped her inquiry and Zimmerman continued to coach and teach.

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UNITED STATES
AlterNet

It’s tempting to simply view the church hierarchy as a cult of misogyny. But at its heart, it’s a cult of power; misogyny is but one tool for securing that power.

June 1, 2012

In 1979, Sister Theresa Kane was given a very special task. As president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group for most orders of U.S. Catholic nuns, Kane was asked to deliver four minutes of welcoming remarks, on behalf of American sisters, to the newly elected Pope John Paul II during his first papal visit to the United States. At a gathering inside the grand church in Washington, D.C., known as the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Kane offered the pope a warm greeting, and then launched into this:

As I share this privileged moment with you, Your Holiness, I urge you to be mindful of the intense suffering and pain which is part of the life of many women in these United States. I call upon you to listen with compassion and to hear the call of women…As women, we have heard the powerful messages of our church addressing the dignity [of] and reverence for all persons. As women, we have pondered these words. Our contemplation leads us to state that the church, in its struggle to be true to its call to reverence and dignity for all persons, must respond by providing the possibility of women as persons being included in all ministries of the church.”

All ministries — including, of course, the priesthood. Her meaning was not lost on the pope or, it seems, his henchmen in cassocks.

Chief among the new pope’s enforcers was Joseph Ratzinger, the bishop from Bavaria, whom, three years later, JPII would appoint to the position of prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine the Faith, an entity once known as the Roman Inquisition. As prefect, Ratzinger soon had his Congregation all but living up to its historical inquisitive reputation as he conducted a jihad against liberal bishops, clerics and nuns in the U.S., and around the world. Today, the former prefect is known as Pope Benedict the XVI, still an enforcer, and one with a long memory.

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ITALY
Vatican Insider

The Holy See’s official position given by the spokesman of the Vatican Press Office in Milan during a press conference

Vatican Insider Staff
MIlan

“The statements published by some newspapers about a division among the cardinals of the Supervisory Commission on the IOR are absolutely unfounded,” said Press Office Director Fr Federico Lombardi at a press briefing in Milan.

“There is no division within the Commission of Cardinals,” said Father Lombardi.

The Commission, headed by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, “noted the decision of the board and communicated in writing to Mr Gotti Tedeschi that the functions of the president had been assigned ad interim, per statute, to vice president Ronaldo Hermann Schmitz.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
MyNews3

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Philadelphia jury is homing in on the alleged “smoking gun” in a groundbreaking clergy-abuse case.

Jurors have left for the weekend after starting deliberations in the 10-week trial of a former Roman Catholic church official. They’re restart deliberations Monday.

They’ve already asked for a gray folder found in a locked safe at the Philadelphia archdiocese. The folder contains a 1994 list of 35 suspected predator-priests.

Monsignor William Lynn is charged with endangering children by keeping accused priests in ministry. He says he created the list for Cardinal Bevilacqua. Another secret memo shows Bevilacqua had the list shredded.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
dotCommonweal

June 2, 2012, 1:44 pm

Posted by Paul Moses

In his trial on charges of criminally endangering children, Monsignor William Lynn portrayed himself as a man of conscience who quietly tried to help victims despite the indifference of his superiors.

Maryclaire Dale of The Associated Press summarized his defense this way:

A Roman Catholic church official is being unfairly prosecuted for the sins of the church and the rogue conduct of predator-priests, a defense lawyer said Thursday as he asked jurors in a groundbreaking trial to acquit his client.

“You have witnessed evil in this courtroom. You have seen the dark side of the church. You’ve seen grown men come into this courtroom and weep because they were abused,” said lawyer Thomas Bergstrom. “And now, the sins of all these fathers that he laid bare – that he laid bare – are now laid at his feet.”

Lynn maintained that the prosecutors’ prized exhibit – a secret list of 35 suspected pedophile priests – was actually evidence of his innocence. He said he drew the list up to call attention to the problem; Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua ordered it destroyed. (A copy survived.) No wonder the jurors, who resume deliberation in Philadelphia on Monday, asked for it right away.

Many scoff at this defense. But my experience in covering scores of trials is that, regardless of the verdict, the truth of what happened usually falls someplace between the prosecution and defense versions. And so, what if Monsignor Lynn is right?

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

As I just noted at the end of my posting a moment ago, a reader I value has sent the following announcement about counter rallies that are being organized to occur simultaneously with the nationwide USCCB- sponsored “religious freedom” rallies this coming Friday. In contrast to the USCCB-sponsored rallies, these counter rallies don’t seem to be centrally organized with a website to which I can point readers for more information. But the announcement is informative and clear, and should answer any questions interested readers may have about attending, wearing white, bringing signs to indicate your concerns, and doing local organizing to gather other like-minded Catholics in your area. The proposal to encourage Catholics who want to give a counter-witness to the narrow, politically partisan and lopsided USCCB definition of religious freedom strikes me as very good:

WHAT: Catholic “counter” rallies to show solidarity (A) with women, including American Sisters, disrespected by the hierarchy, (B) with children abused by priests protected by the hierarchy, and (C) with gay Catholics insensitively treated by the hierarchy. The bishops will also be holding at the same time and place a rally to object to the new proposed HHS regulations on health insurance for contraception. The venue will give all Catholics a chance to voice their concerns on other hierarchical concerns the bishops appear uninterested in addressing with Catholics generally.

WHEN: Noon, next Friday, June 8.

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IRELAND
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

Every layer they strip
Seems camped on before.
The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is bottomless.
Seamus Heaney, the “Bogland”

Kristine Ward, Chair, National Survivor Advocates Coalition

The National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC) stands on the sod of Ireland to bear witness to the incredible courage of the children raped, sodomized, and demeaned from whom childhood was cruelly and crudely ripped asunder by molesting priests and nuns in Irish parishes, schools and orphanages.

When we lived in the void of unknowing before the survivors’ truth penetrated our consciousness, Seamus Heaney’s portrait of Ireland’s bogs might have simply been stunning poetry.

Not today.

Today they are heavy with Irish melancholy that moans without ceasing for deliverance from the fraud of self-preservation over genuine leadership for justice and the protection of children.

We speak of two prelates – one on each side of the Atlantic, — two Irishmen — the Cardinal Primate of All Ireland, Sean Brady and the Cardinal Archbishop of New York, former Archbishop of Milwaukee, and current president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Timothy Dolan.

Atlantic seepage indeed.

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COLORADO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on June 01, 2012

First, we don’t know Lisa Poulos but we applaud her for her courage and wisdom. According to a newly-released arrest affidavit, she told police her suspicions about Fr. Charles Robert Manning, who faces criminal charges for alleged child sex abuse.

If more adults who saw or suspected child sex crimes were brave and compassionate enough to call law enforcement, far more children would be spared devastating harm. We applaud Ms. Poulos and hope she receives nothing but praise for her responsible, caring action.

Second, if Manning gave the boy “classes” in his church office, gave him marijuana and liquor several times, took partially-clad photos of him, posted those photos on Facebook, and was so aggressive and brazen , over three months, that the boy felt compelled to move out of state to avoid Manning, it’s hard to believe that every single Catholic church employee and member near Manning didn’t see some serious warning signs.

Third, why aren’t Colorado Springs Catholic officials – from lower levels to the very top – doing everything possible to help law enforcement with this case?

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VATICAN CITY
Sunday Times (Sri Lanka)

ROME, June 2, 2012 (AFP) – Cardinals tasked with deciding the fate of the Vatican bank president amid financial scandals and a struggle for power in the Holy See are struggling to come to an agreement, media reports said Saturday.

The commission of cardinals must decide whether or not to uphold the board’s decision to oust Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who was fired for failing to clean up the institution’s image amid accusations of corruption and money-laundering.

But the cardinals are reportedly split, with two of the four siding with Gotti Tedeschi, widening the bitter rift between the financial ethics expert and Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican number two.

It was Bertone who reportedly pushed the bank’s board to fire their president as internal divisions over financial transparency came to a head.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail (United Kingdom)

Inside the mind of a monster: child sex abuse of Franciscan priest revealed in his own sick words

By Daily Mail Reporter

A 27-page ‘sexual history’ written by a defrocked Franciscan cleric provides a shockingly candid and detailed window into the troubled mind of a notorious pedophile priest.

Robert Van Handel is accused of molesting at least 17 boys, including his own 5-year-old nephew, local children in his boys’ choir and students at St. Anthony’s, a prestigious Franciscan boarding school in California where he taught.

The essay, penned for a therapy assignment and kept secret for years, is believed to be the first of its kind to be publicly revealed through civil litigation despite years of lawsuits targeting sexually abusive priests.

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UNITED STATES
Death and Taxes

By Dave Holmes

Yesterday, Laurie Goodstein reported in the New York Times that Cardinal Timothy Dolan authorized payoffs to accused pedophile priests in hopes that they would leave the priesthood more quickly and quietly. (It’s the old Reverse Monopoly: go directly to $20,000, do not collect jail.) We were hoping for a quick, sassy response from the Catholic League, but so far the only rebuttal has come from Jimmy Akin of the National Catholic Register. Why did it take so long? Because contortin’ ain’t easy.

Consider this: Suppose you are walking down the street and a homeless person approaches you and asks you for some money. You give him the money. Would that justify a headline saying that you have been paying the homeless?

Or suppose you were with your teenage son or daughter and they asked if they could give some money to the homeless person as an act of kindness and you said Yes. Would that justify a headling saying that you authorized paying the homeless?

But what if the homeless person is not a stranger but an employee of yours, and his job involved outreach with children, and some of those children accused him of raping them, and you gave him money to shut up and skip town? I will admit that this is an outrageous hypothetical, but I’ve read this article a few times now, and it is not explored. Nor is the real problem (besides the raping and the lying and the abuse of the trust of children and the faithful): why didn’t someone —anyone — call the fucking police? Akin provides no insight there, but does posit a motive for what he calls Goodstein’s hit piece — the Catholic Church’s position on contraception.

It’s breathtaking: Cardinal Dolan didn’t pay off these priests, he just made a lot of money be in their bank accounts all of a sudden. And if you don’t see the difference, then you’re just thinking with your selfish, hungry vagina. Jesus, if you’re reading, hurry back.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Greg Harkin

Saturday June 02 2012

CARDINAL Sean Brady should be arrested and questioned about withholding information, a victim of paedophile priest Brendan Smyth demanded last night.

Brendan Boland told the Irish Independent that a decision by the PSNI not to investigate the contents of a BBC programme in which he appeared last month showed that gardai should hold an inquiry.

Gardai refused to comment on whether or not they would interview Cardinal Brady.

But a statement from the PSNI piled pressure on gardai to hold an investigation after concluding that any “offences” happened south of the Border.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By Michelle Boorstein, Published: June 1

Leaders representing most American nuns on Friday issued a surprisingly forceful response to a Vatican report calling for their reform, saying the report had caused “scandal and pain” among Catholics.

Reactions among Catholics to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious’s statement were strong and polarized, typical of a faith community divided between those anxious to see Catholic theology more explicitly outlined — and enforced — and those who want more openness on everything from ideas on human sexuality to how decisions are made at the top of the church. …

Kathleen Sprows Cummings, associate director of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of American Catholicism, said the statement showed that the women were “unintimidated, committed to dialogue, and above all focused on working toward a more just society.”

But others said it foreshadows continued division in the church.

“What worries me here is the emergence of an adversarial view of membership in the church,” said Michael Sean Winters, a left-leaning Catholic writer.

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PHILIPPINES
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Editorial

It’s been called “a strategy of tension, an orgy of vendettas and preemptive vendettas that has now spun out of the control of those who thought they could orchestrate it.” The tale so far has touched on treachery, betrayal, greed, corruption, ambition, not to mention secret passageways, disappearing papers and tight-lipped suspects.

A government scandal? The latest Dan Brown potboiler? Skullduggery on Wall Street? A daytime soap?

Well, no. It concerns the Vatican—the Holy See, the epicenter of the 1.3-billion-strong Catholic faith and seat of power of its Supreme Pontiff and “Vicar of Christ on earth,” Pope Benedict XVI. In the year of our Lord 2012, the world’s tiniest state is in the throes of a scandal that has the world’s press buzzing.

Reports say that last May 23, one of the Pope’s closest aides, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested after Vatican investigators discovered confidential papal documents in his apartment. Described as a shy, taciturn man unfailingly loyal to the Pope, Gabriele—whose duties included helping dress Benedict in his vestments, serving him his meals and riding with him as a bodyguard in the Popemobile—is perhaps the last person to be suspected of betraying his master. He is said to be one of fewer than 10 people who held the key to secret entrances leading to the Pope’s private apartments. Now an Italian cardinal has called him the most damning name in the Catholic book—Judas, the betrayer of Jesus.

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ROME
BBC News

By David Willey
BBC News, Rome

A book reproducing the private correspondence of Pope Benedict XVI has angered the Vatican and forms part of a series of leaks revealing allegations of corruption and internal conflicts.

Pope Benedict complained bitterly at his latest general audience about the international media. He said they had unfairly latched on to the admittedly very unusual story of the arrest of his butler, to distort the truth about recent goings-on at the Catholic Church’s power centre here in Rome.

Yet he looked saddened and understandably angry about this invasion of his privacy in his own home on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace.

Every day, the Italian media give their latest versions about what they call the “Vatileaks” crisis which has been headline news.

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VATICAN CITY
Chicago Tribune

Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor
Reuters

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict is fighting the worst crisis of his papacy, but his problems are only the latest in a long history of controversies and intrigue in the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church.

The “Vatileaks” scandal, in which the pope’s private papers are alleged to have been pilfered by his own butler, pales in comparison to the scandals of centuries past when popes were accused of violence, nepotism and sexual excesses.

Pope Benedict has angrily charged that “totally gratuitous” accounts in the media “offer an image of the Holy See which does not correspond to reality.”

Archbishop Angelo Becciu, the third-ranking official in the world’s smallest state, bemoaned the “distorted image” presented of the Vatican and said the internal debates revealed by the documents were perfectly normal in any organization.

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ROME
NPR

[with audio]

by Sylvia Poggioli

June 2, 2012

The scandal over leaked documents that has been engulfing the Vatican is the biggest breach of confidence and security at the Holy See in recent memory.

Known as Vatileaks, the crisis has shed light on a Vatican gripped by intrigue and power struggles like a Renaissance court.

Vatileaks erupted into a full-blown scandal with the publication two weeks ago of a book of Vatican documents alleging corruption and conspiracies among cardinals.

Within days, the Vatican bank president was abruptly dismissed and the pope’s own butler was arrested on charges of stealing the pope’s correspondence.

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ITALY
The Daily Star (Lebanon)

MILAN: The pope insisted Saturday that celibacy is central to the priesthood, amid increasing calls for clergy to be allowed to marry and claims that abstention may have contributed to sex abuse scandals.

“The shining light of pastoral charity and a unified heart is sacerdotal celibacy and enshrined virginity,” Pope Benedict XVI told hundreds of clergy members in Milan Cathedral during the 7th World Meeting of Families.

“Without a doubt, Jesus’ love is for all Christians but takes on particular significance for the celibate priest and for those who take up the vocation of a life of devotion,” he said on the second day of his visit to Milan.

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UNITED STATES
Daily Times

Published: Saturday, June 02, 2012

By JAMES F. DRANE
Times Guest Columnist

For Catholics who remained faithful throughout the pedophile priest scandal, this has been a dark and painful period. Every new revelation of abuse, every testimony by victims of a life ruined, is like another punch in the jaw or kick in the gut. The pain continues and we can expect an added shock. This time it will be a bishop scandal.

The awful things done by emotionally compromised pedophile priests raised all kinds of questions. Pedophilia however is a pathology not even well-understood in psychiatry. The word pedophile did not even appear in much of early 20th century psychiatric literature. When it finally made it into the textbooks and dictionaries, it was called a paraphilia and listed with disorders like exhibitionism and voyeurism.

Freud recognized pedophilia as a sexual deviation. He thought that most male pedophiles were weak and impotent. He also emphasized what he thought was the seductive roll of children. Little to no attention however was paid to the damage done to the children involved in this secretive and repetitive pathological behavior.

If understanding of pedophilic behavior was weak in psychiatry, imagine the level of understanding that existed in the church hierarchy. For bishops, the concept of sin alone was used to understand the acts of pedophile priests. For this reason, many bishops thought that confessing the sin, followed by a serious penance like a retreat, would solve the problem. After confession and penance, a pedophile priest would be considered forgiven and could then be returned to parish work. Like every sin which was confessed, a priest’s pedophile behavior had to be kept secret.

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UNITED STATES
KVOR

[Robert Van Handel’s Sexual History]

(NEW YORK) — The lurid confessions of a priest who sexually abused young boys in his parish choir and the seminary offer a glimpse into one of the minds behind the massive sex abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church.

Former priest Robert Van Handel’s 27-page sexual history, which he wrote for a psychologist between 1993 and 1994, details his history of abuse and fantasies of abusing boys age 8 to 11. The document was released as part of a settlement between the Franciscan order of priests and 25 abuse victims.

In the essay, Van Handel, now 65 and a registered sex offender in Santa Cruz County, describes wrestling, tickling and fondling young boys whom he invited to attend one-on-one choir practices, admits to molesting high school boys at a seminary where he taught, and says he took pictures of young boys wearing few clothes or showering.

“It was clearly my choir and the fulfillment of my fondest dreams,” he wrote. “Now I understand that it was also a constant supply of attractive little boys.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
PBS Newshour

[with video]

Transcript

MARGARET WARNER: A Philadelphia jury began deliberating today in a landmark criminal case against a Catholic Church official. Monsignor William Lynn is the first church figure to be targeted not for molesting children, but for concealing the abuse.

Lynn, secretary of the clergy for the Philadelphia Archdiocese for 12 years, is charged with conspiracy and endangering children. Prosecutors say he protected suspect priests, and reassigned them to jobs where they could abuse children. Closing arguments concluded yesterday after months of emotional testimony from victims of abuse, and Lynn himself taking the stand.

John Martin has been in court throughout the 11-week trial, covering the story for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and he joins me now.

Thank you for joining us.

Let’s start with, tell us a little bit more about Monsignor Lynn. What exactly did it mean to be clergy of the secretary — I mean, clergy of the — yes, secretary of the clergy.

JOHN MARTIN, The Philadelphia Inquirer: Secretary of the clergy, right.

MARGARET WARNER: And then what is he accused of actually doing in that job?

JOHN MARTIN: OK.

As secretary for clergy, he was the — more or less the human resources manager for all of the priests in the archdiocese in Philadelphia. He was the official who responded directly to Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua. And he helped deal with their assignments, any time the priests had problems, transfers and such.

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COLORADO
Colorado Connection

[with video]

by Abbie Burke

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. — Court documents were released Friday detailing the sexual encounter between a Colorado Springs priest and a teenage boy.

WARNING: Some of the details are graphic.

Charles Manning, 77, turned himself into police May 22 after they issued a warrant for his arrest.

Manning was charged with sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust, a class 4 felony, and two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, also a class 4 felony.

Police began the investigation last year after the victim’s sister called them because she thought it wasn’t “natural” for a 76-year-old and a 15-year-old to be spending so much time together, especially alone.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog

Ralph Cipriano

A defense lawyer quoted Shakespeare and Twelve Angry Men as he talked to the jury about reasonable doubt. A prosecutor read a pornographic love note that a priest had written to a seventh-grader, and then he showed jurors a smiling, baby-faced photo of a 10-year-old altar boy before he was raped.

It was time for closing arguments Thursday in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse case, with lawyers from both sides looking to score last-minute points as they closed out 10 weeks of testimony. Judge M. Teresa Sarmina is expected to charge the jury Friday morning, and then it will be time for deliberations.

Thomas Bergstrom, a defense lawyer for Msgr. William J. Lynn, was the leadoff speaker. He’s a former judge advocate officer for the U.S. Marines who looks like a graying version of Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird, as played by Gregory Peck.

The concept of reasonable doubt “is an enormous safeguard in our system of justice,” Bergstrom told the jury. He defined reasonable doubt as “that kind of doubt that causes you to hesitate. If you hesitate, then you have a reasonable doubt.” Bergstrom was hoping for lots of hesitation from the non-Catholic, largely minority jury of seven men and five women who will decide the fate of Msgr. Lynn, and his co-defendant, Father James J. Brennan.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

Fr Michael Maher

43 YEARS A MARIST PRIEST

It was after the death of my grandfather Thomas Ashe, when I was 19 years of age, that I first remember thinking, Yes, this present life will come to an end. This, I presume, led me to ask the ultimate question: What is it all about?

I always had a great love for and devotion to the mother of God, and this brought me to suss out and see if there was such a religious order called Marist, when I felt I might have a call to the priesthood. Community life is important to me. That mysterious inner voice seemed to enlighten me to be a Marist priest.

Later on, I discovered their charism is to live in the spirit of Mary. Marists bear the name of Mary; they desire to be like her and follow Jesus as she did. They see Mary as the founder and perpetual superior of the Marist Society. They try constantly to imitate her delicate responsiveness to the promptings of the holy spirit and to the needs of God’s people.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

BY ALISON HEALY

How many Catholics?

2011 84.2% Proportion of the population – or 3,861,300 people – who said they were Catholic in the 2011 census

1930s 93.5% Proportion of the population – or 2,773,920 people – who said they were Catholic in the 1936 census

1920s 92.6% Proportion of the population – or 2,751,269 people – who said they were Catholic in the 1926 census

LOUGH DERG: 1952 was the most successful year, with 34,645 pilgrims. A one-day retreat that Lough Derg introduced in 1992 may account for some of the reduction in numbers. About 4,000 people went that year. After reaching 12,645 in 2000, numbers have dropped; last year 8,321 people went on the one-day retreat

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

KATHY SHERIDAN

When did Irish Catholics finally stop fearing the belt of the crozier? Was it in 1992, when they were forced to confront the tragedy of the raped and pregnant 14-year-old girl in the X case? Or after the 2009 Murphy report, when Mary O’Rourke spoke scathingly of the nuncio “parading around Ireland in his wonderful glitzy clothes but not replying to letters”? Or was it the spectacle of a fearful, perspiring Cardinal Seán Brady being torn apart in interviews after revelations about his role in the interrogation of a boy who had been abused by a priest?

The whiplash speed of bishops’ fall is awesome. Now the Catholic Church no longer acts as a “sacred canopy” for social, political and economic life, says Prof Tom Inglis of the school of social science at University College Dublin.

“The main change now is in fear,” says Inglis. “There was a sense in which the church was an authority to be obeyed, and there was a fear of not being obedient. Then you moved into a phase where it wasn’t obeyed and it was respected. And now it has moved into a phase where the institutional church is not respected.”

In an academic paper in 2007, Inglis asked: “Are Irish Catholics becoming more like their fellow European Catholics and Protestants . . . ‘believing without belonging’?”

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

The 1932 Eucharistic Congress – an organisational triumph that saw an estimated million people assemble for Mass – was a demonstration that the Free State had become a Catholic state for a Catholic people, writes DIARMAID FERRITER .

LESS THAN 10 YEARS after the end of the Civil War, the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin in June 1932 provided an opportunity for both church and State to emphasise what united the citizens of the Free State rather than their deep political divisions.

Seán Clancy, a Free State Army captain, was a member of the officer guard of honour for the open-air pontifical High Mass in the Phoenix Park during the congress. He recalled that after the ceremonies, the guard of honour attended a dinner with the new Fianna Fáil government, which had defeated Cumann na nGaedheal in the general election in February. The two groups, who had fought on opposite sides during the Civil War a decade earlier, felt uneasy in each other’s company until Éamon de Valera broke the tension by inviting the officer in charge to sit at his side during the meal.

One of the reasons the leader of the previous government, William T Cosgrave, had dissolved the Dáil at the end of January was to ensure there would be stability rather than uncertainty during the congress. For the new government, it provided an opportunity to emphasise its impeccable Catholic credentials and win over its critics in that regard. The strategy worked.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

A new ‘Irish Times’ series begins today. Next week, Ireland hosts the 50th Eucharistic Congress of the Catholic Church. More than 80 per cent of Irish people still call themselves Catholic, but the church is out of touch and divided. Can it be repaired?

THE IRISH CATHOLIC Church is a house divided, and the events of just the past few months have demonstrated the depth of those divisions. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin has acknowledged it, speaking of “unhealthy divisions within the church”. On May 6th at St Francis Xavier Church on Gardiner Street in Dublin, the archbishop said he was “saddened by some of the polemics taking place in the church today”.

He was saddened too “by some comments made in the public arena about Pope Benedict, as if all he did as pope was somehow suppressing the truth”. What was needed in the church was “not discontent but hope”, he said.

He was at the Mass to launch “a simple prayer book to help prepare for the forthcoming 50th International Eucharistic Congress”, which begins in Dublin next weekend.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
KDKA

Reporting Andy Sheehan

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Sources close to the investigation tell the KD Investigators that Father Daniel Valentine’s Facebook posts involved an invitation to a minor to drink alcohol and that they have found pornography on his computer.

Bishop David Zubik says while he is not aware of these specific allegations, the prospect of another priest under suspicion is more than disheartening.

“Obviously, all of us are saddened by it,” he said. “I would be less than honest with you to tell you I lose a lot of sleep over this stuff.”

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CALIFORNIA
Patch

By Shannon Burkey

A shocking 27-page narrative written by a Boulder Creek resident who is a defrocked Franciscan priest and a convicted child molester detailing his abuse was released last week.

Robert Van Handel, 65, is accused of molesting at least 17 boys, including his 5-year-old nephew, according to the Associated Press, who obtained more than 4,000 pages, including Van Handel’s 27-page narrative, from a plaintiff’s attorney last week.

The documents are the first of their kind to be released to the public and graphically detail Van Handel’s history of abuse with young boys during his time teaching at a seminary high school in Santa Barbara and running a boy’s choir in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s.

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ARGENTINA
Buenos Aires Herald

A court ruled that priest Julio César Grassi should not remain under house arrest and ordered his release, thus annulling a previous ruling by another court.

Grassi was sentenced in 2010 to 15 years in prison after a court found him guilty of charges including aggravated sexual abuse.

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CALIFORNIA
ABC News

[Read Robert Van Handel’s Sexual History]

By COLLEEN CURRY

In the essay, Van Handel, now 65 and a registered sex offender in Santa Cruz County, describes wrestling, tickling, and fondling young boys whom he invited to attend one-on-one choir practices, admits to molesting high school boys at a seminary where he taught, and says he took pictures of young boys wearing few clothes or showering.

“It was clearly my choir and the fulfillment of my fondest dreams,” he wrote. “Now I understand that it was also a constant supply of attractive little boys.”

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UNITED STATES
IrishCentral

Cardinal Dolan really has some nerve lecturing Obama on morals — His actions in Milwaukee, paying off pedophile priests, were dreadful

Patrick Roberts

Cardinal Timothy Dolan has spent the last few months lecturing President Obama on morals and the need for Catholic organizations to have freedom of choice over birth control provisions in their health insurance.

Ignore for a moment the fact that 95 per cent of Catholic women use birth control anyway and consider instead the story yesterday from Milwaukee.

There, a long-lost diocesan document has turned up making it clear that then Bishop Dolan paid $20,000 on at least two occasions to pedophile priests in order to spur their departure from the priesthood.

These two pedos were not handed over to the police. They received a $20,000 reward and walked away Scot-free as far as Bishop Dolan was concerned.

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VATICAN CITY
CBC News

By Mark Quinlan, CBC News

Posted: Jun 1, 2012

The Vatican has been under intense scrutiny for almost six months now, the result of leaked correspondence — the so-called Vatileaks — that alleges financial corruption and intrigue within the internal government of the Holy See.

The subject of the leaks has sparked a media frenzy in Rome and even among some of the world’s financial press, but it is no surprise to church historians who have seen all this before.

“The Vatican is in a sense almost perpetually enmeshed in scandals, because it continues to act like a kingdom,” says John Stackhouse, professor of theology and culture at the University of British Columbia’s Regent College.

“It might have made sense at one point in history for the pope to also be a prince, but whenever you’re involved in politics or business, things get messy.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Washington Examiner

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Philadelphia jury wasted no time Friday in homing in on the alleged “smoking gun” as it started deliberations in a groundbreaking clergy-abuse case.

Jurors broke for the weekend after deliberating in the afternoon in the trial of a former Roman Catholic church official. Monsignor William Lynn is charged with conspiracy and child endangerment for allegedly keeping predator-priests in ministry.

Jurors quickly asked for a half-dozen exhibits, including a gray folder found in a locked safe at the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The folder contains a list of 35 suspected predator-priests — and was compiled by Lynn in 1994. At least one priest on the list was a parish pastor until this year.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Jun. 01, 2012
By Joshua J. McElwee

Franciscan Sr. Pat Farrell, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, told NCR Friday the group is still discerning whether it can abide “with integrity” a Vatican-ordered revision of the organization’s charter, and plans to raise serious questions with church officials during planned meetings later this month in Rome.

In an exclusive interview, Farrell said a special meeting of the group’s national board of directors this week found it facing “a gamut of emotions of ups and downs” as it attempted prayerfully to decide the future course for the organization.

Farrell’s comments come just hours after LCWR, which represents some 80 percent of U.S. women religious, issued its first official statement in reply to a highly critical doctrinal assessment of the group issued April 18 by the Vatican’s Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

The LCWR reply said the Vatican assessment followed a flawed process and charged that it has caused “scandal and pain throughout the church.”

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DEUTSCHLAND
Zeit

Für Abweichler war das Leben in der Katholischen Kirche nie ein Zuckerschlecken. Früher, als die Zeiten noch rauer und die Strafen drakonischer waren, wurden sie mit Schimpf und Schande verbannt oder gar verbrannt. Heute, da die Kirche milder geworden ist, tut’s die Exkommunikation. Allerdings wurde die Spezies der Abweichler immer eindeutig und von höchster Stelle definiert: Wer nicht mitzog, der war draußen; wer die Lehrmeinung nicht vertrat, der gehörte nicht dazu. Soweit so klar. Dachte man.

Aber nachdem jetzt das Unerhörte geschehen ist und ein päpstlicher Kammerherr vatikanische Geheimnisse ausplauderte, verschieben sich die Fronten. Es scheint kein römisches, sondern ein europäisches Phänomen zu sein. Neulich auf dem Katholikentag in Mannheim gab es eine ganz andere, geradezu inverse Spezies von Abweichlern zu entdecken: Nämlich die, die die Lehrmeinung der Katholischen Kirche voll vertrat – und gerade deswegen ausgebootet wurde. Eine Spezies, die nicht gegen die Amtskirche ankämpfte, sondern gegen die Hardcore-Toleranten. Denn diese hielten das Mantra der Toleranz derart hoch, dass sie abweichende Meinungen nicht tolerieren konnten.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Sexueller Missbrauch – Forschungsergebnisse

5. Forschungsergebnisse und Psychogramm der beteiligten Personen

31. Mai 2012

5.1 Ausmaß und Dunkelziffer

Das wahre Ausmaß von sexuellem Missbrauch lässt sich aufgrund der sehr hohen Dunkelziffer schlecht erkennen. Die Dunkelziffer liegt bei den an Kindern begangenen Missbrauchshandlungen besonders hoch. Man schätzt, dass noch etwa acht ­ zehnmal mehr Kinder betroffen sind, als bekannt wird. Die Gründe dafür sind vielseitig: Häufig ist ein Kleinkind, zu Aussagen noch nicht fähig, Opfer der Tat. Das größere Kind scheut sich, Angaben zu machen, vor allem dann, wenn der Vater als Täter in Frage kommt. Das Kind läuft sogar Gefahr, für den Zerfall der Familie und für die nach der Verurteilung des Vaters aufkommende Not verantwortlich gemacht zu werden. Das Kind wird als der schuldige Teil angesehen und manchmal sogar als kleine Hure oder phantasievolle Lügnerin bezeichnet.

Die Opfer werden selten oder überhaupt nicht dem Arzt in seiner Praxis vorgestellt, schon aus der Sorge heraus, es könnten Anzeigen erfolgen. Nachfolgende Untersuchungen, Begutachtungen und Vernehmungen im Ermittlungsverfahren gegen den Täter werden für die ganze Familie als peinlich und unangenehm angesehen und sollen deshalb vermieden werden. Diese Tatsachen sprechen deutlich dafür, dass die tatsächliche Zahl von sexuellem Kindesmissbrauch weit über der Zahl der bekannt gewordenen Fälle liegt. Aus diesem Grund wird allgemein davon ausgegangen, dass in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland jährlich ca. 300.000 Kinder sexuell missbraucht werden.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Diesseits

Der Giordano Bruno Stiftung (gbs) liegt einer Mitteilung zufolge ein Brief der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz (DBK) vor, dem zu entnehmen ist, dass die Kirche künftig nicht darauf verzichten will, sich bei sexuellen Gewalttaten an Kindern und Jugendlichen durch Kirchenbedienstete auf die Verjährung zu berufen. Der Opferanwalt Christian Sailer hatte dies zuvor in einem offenen Brief gefordert, um die von kirchlicher Seite immer wieder versprochene „restlose Aufklärung und Entschädigung aller Missbrauchsfälle” zu ermöglichen. Das Schreiben des „Büros für Fragen des sexuellen Missbrauchs im kirchlichen Bereich” vom 15. März ist mit der Bemerkung „persönlich/vertraulich” versehen. Rechtsanwalt Sailer veröffentlichte es dennoch.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Die Zeit

In den USA werden straffällig gewordene Priester entlassen. Nun gibt es erste Stimmen, die diesen harten Kurs auch in Deutschland einschlagen wollen. Doch damit würde sich die katholische Kirche der Verantwortung für die Täter entledigen

Wollen die katholischen Bischöfe ihren Kurs im Missbrauchsskandal ändern? Der neue Kölner Generalvikar Stefan Heße verriet dem „Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger“, dass es darüber Diskussionen gibt. Manche Oberhirten liebäugeln damit, die zehn Jahre alte strikte Politik ihrer amerikanischen Kollegen zu übernehmen: Ist Missbrauch erwiesen, wird der Täter für immer von pastoraler Arbeit ausgeschlossen. Ihm droht Entlassung. Offenbar suchen die Bischöfe die Vorwärtsverteidigung. Ihr Chefaufklärer Stephan Ackermann geriet im März ins Zwielicht. Opfer warfen ihm, dem Trierer Bischof, vor, dass er überführte Täter weiterbeschäftige. Einer von ihnen berichtete sogar, er sei in eine Auslandsgemeinde in der Ukraine versetzt worden und habe auch dort Kinder missbraucht.

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The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) has defined the Vatican’s accusations of their doctrinal infidelity as “unsubstantiated”. On 12 June the congregation is to meet Cardinal Levada in Rome

Fabrizio Mastrofini
Rome

It took them more than a month but in the end, U.S. nuns have rejected the Vatican’s accusations. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) finally reached a decision at a meeting which took place on 30 and 31 May. The accusations made against them by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith were defined as “unsubstantiated” “and the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency.”

The sanctions imposed – they added – are “disproportionate” and could compromise their board members’ ability to fulfil their mission. It was over a month ago that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had asked for a deep reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the organisation which represents the majority of orders of women religious in the United States. The investigation concluded that the “the current doctrinal and pastoral situation of the LCWR is grave and a matter of serious concern.” The Archbishop of Seattle, Peter Sartain, was nominated as Vatican delegate for the supervision of the reform work, the revision of the organisation’s statutes, programme planning and the revision of liturgical texts.

Over the past month and a half, the number of demonstrations in favour of the nuns has risen in the U.S., with marches, debates and telegrams expressing solidarity. Three days ago, a group of nuns, and lay people marched before the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington. To everyone’s surprise, the city’s Nuncio, Mgr. Carlo Maria Viganò, went out to speak to the demonstrators, asking two of them to enter his office for a more in depth face to face dialogue. This gesture received a great deal of attention in the progressivist Catholic press and was seen as a sign of sensitivity at the very least.

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ITALY/UNITED STATES
Vatican Insider

Alessandro Speciale
Rome

The issue of the unreported sex abuse cases in still alive in the Church’s internal debate and “paedophilia has contributed to the Church’s loss of credibility.” Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley stated this, in a speech this morning at the VII World Family Meeting in Milan.

The Cardinal said we must express our pain to the people who were hurt and assure them that in the future acts of abuse of this kind are not repeated. We must preach what we practice, he said, proclaiming the Gospel and acting as true disciples of Christ.

The Archbishop of Boston went on to remind his audience that in the countries where this problem was identified standards have been adopted.

Just as he is he is engaged in a fight to the last breath with President Barack Obama – which coincides with the campaign for next November’s presidential elections – the Archbishop of New York, and President of U.S. Bishops Cardinal Dolan, finds himself caught up in a scandal that could tarnish his image.

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COLORADO
The Gazette

June 01, 2012 12:38 PM

MATT STEINER
THE GAZETTE

A Colorado Springs Catholic priest allegedly had sexual contact with a 16-year-old, provided the teenage boy with alcohol and marijuana and posted shirtless photos of the boy on Facebook, according to an arrest affidavit released Thursday.

Colorado Springs police officer Terry Thrumston described in the affidavit instances where Manning allegedly kissed the boy on the lips and performed other sexual acts before apologizing, saying “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want to do that.”

Thrumston had been contacted Oct. 21, 2011 by Lisa Poulos, who had received information about Manning, who recently retired from St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church in Colorado Springs, from the 16-year-old’s sister, the court document said.

According to the affidavit, the boy told a detective that all sexual contact between him and Manning happened “within in the last three months he lived in Colorado, starting in June or July 2011.”

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Steve Tawa and Tony Hanson

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — After all-day closing arguments on Thursday, the judge in the landmark clergy child sex abuse case charged the jury this morning, and deliberations followed.

The lead defendant, Monsignor William Lynn, is the first US Roman Catholic church official to be charged criminally with child endangerment.

This morning, the jury was instructed on familiar and not-so-familiar legal concepts of law, including the presumption of innocence, reasonable doubt, consciousness of guilt, and accomplice liability.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Riverfront Times

By Jessica Lussenhop
Fri., Jun. 1 2012

A priest who served in four different Missouri parishes has just been formally charged with sexual abuse of a minor in a Colorado courtroom.

The details of Charles Robert Manning’s alleged crimes are under seal, but an investigation began after one 15-year-old boy complained that Manning was behaving like a “jealous lover” toward him.

While Manning awaits his next court date, new details of his alleged crimes are beginning to trickle out, and victims’ advocates want to know why Manning has been allowed to come back to St. Louis.

According to Bishop Accountability, Manning served in Glencoe, Bridgeton, St. Louis, and Imperial, starting in the late ’90s. For reasons that remain unclear, he was reassigned to St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church in Colorado Springs in 2007.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Jun. 01, 2012
By Dan Morris-Young

To varying degrees, U.S. priests continue to harbor discontent with church leaders and at times feel like they are walking on “eggshells” as a result of the clergy sex abuse crisis, reports a recently released study.

Carried out by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, “Same Call, Different Men: The Evolution of the Priesthood since Vatican II” also says the scandal:

•Caught many priests off guard, that they had been “unaware of the full scope of the problem”;
•Was “almost never” linked by study participants to homosexuality or clerical celibacy as underlying causes;
•Should include the question: “Is there a dark side to priestly fraternity?”

Based at Georgetown University, the CARA researchers used a sample of 2,400 diocesan and 800 religious priests. It employed surveys, focus groups and individual interviews.

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UNITED STATES
Irish Independent

By Daniel Trotta in New York

Friday June 01 2012

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan authorised $20,000 (€16,000) payments to a handful of sexually abusive priests so they would immediately leave the Milwaukee archdiocese when Cardinal Dolan was archbishop there nearly a decade ago, the church has confirmed

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) first announced the payments on Wednesday upon discovering minutes of a March 2003 meeting of the Milwaukee archdiocese finance council meeting. SNAP is demanding full disclosure of all such payments.

Offenders

Church officials confirmed the payments as approved in the minutes but archdiocese spokeswoman Julie Wolf said she had yet to determine how many priests received them, estimating the number at “a handful, a couple”.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Democrat Herald

Jury deliberations have begun in the Philadelphia trial of a Roman Catholic church official charged with endangering children by keeping predator-priests in ministry.

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

Jurors have heard from more than dozen alleged victims. They include a nun, a former priest and young adults with drug and alcohol problems.

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UNITED STATES
National Review

By Kathryn Jean Lopez

June 1, 2012 .

Timothy Cardinal Dolan, who of course is both the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and cardinal archbishop of New York, was the subject of a New York Times piece Thursday, and of much hysterical commentary in its wake. The short version of the story is that, as archbishop of Milwaukee, he approved the quickest and most effective way to get priests accused of misconduct to leave the priesthood.

Support was offered to priests who voluntarily relinquished their priestly ministry — laicized — as an incentive for them to do so. This was the most efficient way to get them out of ministry. The alternative would have been lengthly canonical trials — which would have taken more of a toll on the victims, as they would have been examined by canon lawyers over the course of the proceedings, the costs much higher than the price tag of expeditious removal.

There is no news here. In fact, the Laurie Goodstein piece even betrays that early on: Then-bishop Dolan commented on this in 2006, reacting to the insinuation that he was rewarding priests who had been accused of misconduct. Critics are now calling him a “liar” for saying that the charge that he had given “payoffs” to accused priests was false. Most reasonable readers understand that he was reacting to a pejorative characterization of what he deemed to be a responsible stewardship decision.

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ITALY
Reuters

By Silvia Aloisi

MILAN | Fri Jun 1, 2012

(Reuters) – Some 15,000 policemen deployed in Milan on Friday to keep protesters at bay during a visit by Pope Benedict which is unlikely to provide much respite from the worst crisis of his papacy.

The pope, who has expressed sadness and pain over a scandal which exploded last week when his butler was arrested for stealing his private documents, will begin a three-day visit to Italy’s financial capital on Friday evening.

Before his arrival, heavy security was in place with snipers on rooftops along his route from Linate airport to Milan’s majestic central square in front of its huge gothic cathedral, where the pontiff will greet pilgrims.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

For Immediate Release – June 1, 2012

Nothing less than a full, independent investigation should be demanded by the Catholics of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee into golden parachute payments for perpetrator priests to voluntarily seek laicization.

For this outrageous raid on their given in good faith money, NSAC calls upon the Catholics of Milwaukee to take a stand, speak up and do what’s right. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be.

Priest perpetrators in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee during Archbishop Dolan’s tenure were staked with a golden carrot of at least $10,000 and a possible $20,000 to get out and get lost.

All they had to do was start the paperwork to pick up $10,000, wait for the papers to come through and their bank balances climbed by another $10,000. All this for abusing children.

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UNITED STATES
Medicine Hat News

Friday, 01 June 2012 07:48 Rachel Zoll, The Associated Press

NEW YORK, N.Y. – The largest umbrella group for U.S. nuns said Friday that the Vatican-ordered overhaul of their organization is based on unsubstantiated claims from a flawed investigation that has caused “scandal and pain” for Roman Catholics.

A Vatican agency in April said the group has “serious doctrinal problems,” including taking positions that undermined Catholic teaching on the all-male priesthood, marriage and homosexuality. The Vatican reprimand prompted an outpouring of support for nuns by Catholics and non-Catholics.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents about 57,000 nuns, said they will bring their concerns to the Vatican orthodoxy watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in a meeting scheduled for June 12 in Rome.

The national board of the nuns’ group issued the statement, its first since the Holy See ordered the overhaul, after a three-day private meeting.

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UNITED STATES
CNN

By Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor

(CNN) – The leadership representing most of America’s nuns came out swinging Friday against the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, in the face of charges from the Vatican that the nuns are espousing “radical feminism” and straying from church teaching.

The Vatican’s criticism of the American nuns has “caused scandal and pain throughout the church community, and created greater polarization,” the Leadership Conference of Women Religious – which represents about 80% of American nuns – said in a statement Friday.

The board of the group had convened in Washington this week for three days of special meetings, provoked by an April assessment from the Vatican that said America’s nuns had largely gone rogue and warned that they could be a negative global influence on the church.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L Allen Jr on Jun. 01, 2012 All Things Catholic

While the arrest of the pope’s butler has triggered feverish speculation about the “who” of the Vatican leaks scandal, there’s been less attention so far to the “what” of the revelations contained in the sensational new book His Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI, published by journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi.

In part, that’s because the scores of documents in the 326-page book are complex and highly diverse, often composed in dense ecclesiastical Italian; in part, that’s because a Vatican whodunit is tough to resist.

Yet the substance of the leaks obviously merits consideration, so below, I present a sampling of the highlights, including material likely to interest English-speaking readers. Later, I’ll roll out more. …

2. The Legionaries of Christ

Critics have long asserted that the Vatican had all the information it needed to act against Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, well before it sentenced him to a life of “prayer and penance” in 2006. Charges of sexual and financial misconduct by Maciel became public in the 1990s, though Vatican officials have insisted those reports were not confirmed until later.

Nuzzi’s book adds another detail, producing the brief notes taken by a papal secretary on Oct. 19, 2011, after a half-hour meeting with Fr. Rafael Moreno, a Mexican priest who served as Maciel’s private assistant for 18 years.

The full text of the unsigned note reproduced by Nuzzi, written on letterhead of the “Particular Secretary of His Holiness,” is as follows:
19 October 2011
Meeting 9:00-9:30 am
By me
Meeting with Fr. Rafael Moreno, priv.sec. of M.M. •Was for 18 years private secretary of M.M.; from this was … [word is illegible]
•Destroyed proof against him (incriminating material)
•Wanted to inform P.P. II in 2003, but he didn’t want to hear them, didn’t believe
•Wanted to inform Card. Sodano, but he didn’t concede an audience to them
•Card. De Paolis had too little time

Nuzzi writes that in all probability, “P.P. II” refers to John Paul II. Cardinal Velasio De Paolis, meanwhile, is the Vatican official Benedict XVI has tapped to oversee a reform of the Legionaries. …

Perhaps most explosively, Calcagno’s report advises against giving in to demands for large-scale financial compensation for Maciel’s victims.

Calcagno says reconciliation with some victims “has not been difficult,” but it’s more complicated with regard to “those who demand, in the name of justice, enormous sums that the Legion absolutely cannot afford, and which in fact cannot be based on claims of justice.”

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
KMOX

Fred Bodimer

June 1, 2012

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) – A local clergy abuse survivor is sounding off on published reports that St. Louis native — Cardinal Timothy Dolan — paid suspected pedophile priests $20,000 to leave the ministry while serving as Archbishop of Milwaukee.

“In what other line of work does a man molest children, then get paid a bonus to leave?” says David Clohessy.

He’s the head of the St. Louis based Survivors Network of Those Abused By Priests or SNAP.

“If Dolan wants to protect kids, he knows that the way to do that is to help police and prosecutors lock-up child molesting clerics, not simply strip them of their collars and send them on their way,” says Clohessy.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

ST. LOUIS • A former Roman Catholic seminarian at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary pleaded guilty Thursday to attempting to receive child pornography through the mail in a deal that will net him five years in federal prison.

Nickolas Eugene Pinkston, 41, of Warrensburg, was dismissed from seminary Jan. 10, 2010, when church officials learned he was involved in a relationship with an adult woman. He had been sponsored by the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.

In March, he caught the attention of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service because of a mailing he’d received from an Ohio-based website that had both adult and child pornography, prosecutors said.

In a sting, postal inspectors then sent Pinkston an ad for a catalog that billed itself as the “”underground leader in TABOO and FORBIDDEN XXX videos!!” Pinkston ordered a catalog featuring young teen girls and pre-teen girls, prosecutors said, then ordered a DVD entitled “Children’s sex orgy.”

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UNITED STATES
RH Reality Check

by Lon Newman, Family Planning Health Services

June 1, 2012

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who has problems of his own in Milwaukee, is leading a procession of lawsuits opposing a national requirement of health insurance companies to cover contraceptives. The cardinal called it a “totalitarian incursion against religious liberty.” His principle argument, is that religious institutions should not “… be forced by the government to provide coverage for contraception or sterilization,” because it “… violates their religious beliefs.”

On that principle, legislators across the country are working to deny state and federal funding to organizations that provide contraceptive services. These lawmakers and their political allies echo the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) reasoning that it is unjust to force taxpayers, employers, or members of the Church to support institutions or their affiliates which are committing acts they decry as “intrinsically evil.”

The morality of contraception has been debated for generations, but what if we apply Cardinal Dolan’s reasoning where the question of morality and legality is indisputable?

Recent polling shows that 80 percent of American Catholics find contraception morally acceptable and almost all Catholic women who have had sex have used a method forbidden by the Church.

On the other hand, protecting sexual predators is neither moral nor legal. At the same time the anti-contraception lawsuits were filed, a Wisconsin court ruled that the Green Bay Archdiocese illegally concealed sexual assaults of children and put other children at risk. If it is the bishops’ principle to stop federal and state funding for institutions and affiliates that have acted immorally, we can begin where there is no question of legality or morality. Let us deny funding to institutions, like the Green Bay Archdiocese, that have been convicted of conspiring to protect child sexual predators.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
The Journal

THE PSNI HAS concluded its investigation into allegations made in a BBC programme broadcast last month, and said that the abuse alleged in the programme did not take place in Northern Ireland.

The BBC This World programme alleged that the primate of All-Ireland failed to protect children from the abuse of paedophile priest Fr Brendan Smyth.

It said that Brady had been given the names and addresses of boys being abused, but that he did not ensure their safety after acting as a notary during a 1975 inquiry carried out by the Catholic Church. Brady has since made a public apology to the victims.

The BBC reports today that the PSNI’s investigation has found that the sex abuse referred to in the programme did not take place in Northern Ireland. The PSNI has said that it continues to investigate 251 separate complaints which have been made to police, ranging from 40 years ago to five years ago.

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UNITED STATES
Predator-Proof Your Family

I’m sitting here reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about the controversy surrounding the decision of a church in Milwaukee to pay suspected pedophiles priests to leave the ministry. It turns out that any priest suspected of pedophilia was given $20,000 to get out of the ministry and return to civilian life.

All the predictable points are raised about the pros and cons of the payments.

Naturally, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) protested the payments as payoffs and bonuses to priests for molesting children, saying “You don’t give a bonus to a man who rapes children,” and, “If they paid them anything, it should have been for therapy and counseling.”

Of course the archdiocese defended the payments, saying they’re just an incentive to get rid of the priests without getting into a lengthy, bureaucratic process of removal and the payments were to help the men transition to lay life without completely losing access to needs such as health care.

Whoooooah just a minute. Hang on a minute. I feel like somebody has a great big whitewash brush they’re trying to slap over my sensibilities. I have two problems.

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UNITED STATES
America Magazine

The Vatican’s assessment of the L.C.W.R. offers an opportunity for discernment and collaboration.

Peter Sartain | JUNE 18, 2012

The city of Memphis was ravaged by a series of yellow fever epidemics in 1873, 1878 and 1879, the aftermath of which touches the city even today. Growing up there, I often rode the public bus, and I became aware at an early age that sisters, brothers and priests were allowed to ride at no cost. During those dreadful epidemics, as thousands of citizens died or fled to healthier climes, Catholic religious stayed put. More than 50 sisters and 25 priests died of yellow fever while caring for victims of the disease, and in gratitude the city offered free bus rides to religious for many years thereafter. Such heroism inspired me as a boy growing up in a city whose population was less than 3 percent Catholic.

The history of the Catholic Church in Washington State, my new home, is likewise filled with similarly inspiring chapters, chief among them the pioneer courage and faith of consecrated women. Their story was repeated again and again across the United States, and perhaps nowhere else in the world have women religious had the impact they have had in this country.

Catholic explorers, immigrants, settlers, Native Americans, converts, sisters, brothers and priests faced daunting challenges in the early days: few resources, primitive transportation, disease, extreme weather, racism and language barriers. I am moved every time I read about the establishment of hospitals, schools, orphanages and monasteries in the Pacific Northwest. For the most part, these institutions were the inspiration and work of religious women, who responded to God’s call to serve his beloved people, no matter their religion, culture, language or way of life.

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UNITED STATES
America Magazine

Posted at: Thursday, May 31, 2012
Author: Tim Reidy

Today we posted two Web-only articles commenting on the “doctrinal assessment” of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The first article is from Most Rev. Peter Sartain, the archbishop of Seattle and the CDF-appointed delegate charged with overseeing the evaluation of the LCWR. Archbishop Sartain begins with praise for the legacy of women religious in the United States:

Catholic explorers, immigrants, settlers, Native Americans, converts, sisters, brothers and priests faced daunting challenges in the early days: few resources, primitive transportation, disease, extreme weather, racism and language barriers. I am moved every time I read about the establishment of hospitals, schools, orphanages and monasteries in the Pacific Northwest. For the most part, these institutions were the inspiration and work of religious women, who responded to God’s call to serve his beloved people, no matter their religion, culture, language or way of life.

Quite simply, these religious women evangelized. They lived the life of Jesus Christ; they introduced others to him; they taught the truth; they loved; they healed; they cared for the outcast; and most importantly, they prayed. The histories of our early years chronicle the sacrifice offered by religious women to build the foundation of the church in this part of the world, and embedded in each story is a life of prayer. Prayer makes witness to Christ possible and credible.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

Nuns push back on Vatican report, calling it unsubstantiated and scandal-causing

By Michelle Boorstein

Leaders representing most American nuns pushed back on Friday against a stinging Vatican report that was issued in April and called for their “reform.”

After a special meeting this week in Washington, the 21-member board of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious issued a statement calling the Vatican report “unsubstantiated “ and saying it has “caused scandal and pain” and exacerbated polarization throughout the Catholic church community.

The board of the conference, whose members represent the vast majority of the 57,000 nuns in the United States, met for three days to consider how to respond to the Vatican report accusing the group of “radical feminism” and of publicly undermining the leadership of the bishops.

The full 1,500-member conference will meet in August to determine more specifically how to react, but Friday’s statement was an unusually bold reaction to the Vatican’s doctrine-enforcing arm and seemed to imply the women may choose to rebel.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic News Service

By Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) — The national board of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious said June 1 the assessment that led to a Vatican order to reform the organization “was based on unsubstantiated accusations and the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency.”

“Moreover, the sanctions imposed were disproportionate to the concerns raised and could compromise their (board members’) ability to fulfill their mission,” the board said in a statement. “The report has furthermore caused scandal and pain throughout the church community and created greater polarization.”

The board released the statement the morning after it concluded a special meeting in Washington May 29-31 held to review and plan a response to the report issued to LCWR by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

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UNITED STATES
Worcester Telegram & Gazette

The Associated Press

NEW YORK — The umbrella group for U.S. Roman Catholic nuns says the Vatican crackdown on their organization is based on unfounded claims and has hurt the church.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious says they are sending their top administrators to Rome in two weeks to meet with the Vatican officials in charge of their case.

The sisters made the statement Friday after a three-day board meeting.

The Vatican’s orthodoxy watchdog in April accused the group of serious doctrinal problems. The Vatican said the organization took positions that undermined Catholic teaching on the priesthood, marriage and homosexuality. The Holy See ordered a complete overhaul of the group.

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UNITED STATES
Reuters

Fri Jun 1, 2012

By Stephanie Simon

(Reuters) – The largest organization of U.S. Catholic nuns on Friday rejected a Vatican assessment that they had fallen under the sway of radical feminism and needed to hand control of their group over to a trio of bishops.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, whose members represent about 80 percent of nuns in the United States, issued a sharp statement calling the Vatican’s rebuke “unsubstantiated” and “the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency.”

The nuns said the Vatican’s report has “caused scandal and pain throughout the church community and created greater polarization.”

Tensions between U.S. nuns and church authorities, both in Rome and in the United States, have been simmering for decades as nuns have taken an increasingly independent and outspoken role in politics and social outreach.

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UNITED STATES
New Jersey Jewish Standard

Dr. Yoel Finkelman • World
Published: 01 June 2012

First, the bad news: Sexual, physical, and emotional abuse occurs in Orthodox Jewish communities.

Next, the worse news: Although there is no evidence that such abuse occurs more frequently among the various Orthodox segments of society than in other populations, two recent front-page New York Times stories are just the latest piece of evidence that Orthodox communities are often in denial and worse.

Rabbis and communal leaders often seek to save the community from embarrassment and, in so doing, protect the perpetrators. If children complain of being abused, their parents may silence them, or, if their parents complain too, their neighbors harass them to prevent their going to the police, claiming a religious prohibition on giving Jews up to secular authorities. Indeed, the official policy of the charedi organization Agudath Israel of America is that school teachers or administrators who suspect abuse must ask a rabbi before going to secular authorities, New York State laws notwithstanding.

There is also good news: Even as denial and stonewalling continue, the Orthodox conversation about abuse is gradually changing; and so is people’s behavior. Mental health professionals say that Orthodox parents, who in the past would have tried to deny abuse or keep it hush-hush, are now defending victimized children more actively. True, some school principals and community leaders continue to put pressure on parents to keep silent; but many Orthodox communities have sprouted activists who serve as “go-to” people in cases of abuse, while such organizations as JSafe provide additional resources for concerned communities and individuals concerned. The Bais Yaakov girls’ high school in Baltimore has even published a child safety protocol for both school staff and parents.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Fingal Independent

Friday June 01 2012

Police in Northern Ireland are investigating more than 250 complaints of clerical and institutional abuse.

Some of the allegations go back 40 years, according to the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

With retired High Court judge Mr Justice Anthony Hart set to head up an official inquiry into the abuse of children living in residential care, police said the vast majority of the 251 complaints under their investigation – Operation Charwell – relate to incidents at least 20 years ago. But the overall time range was five years to 40 years.

Assistant Chief Constable George Hamilton, the officer in charge, has deployed special resources from public protection units and the rape crime unit, according to the police.

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UNITED STATES
Leadership Conference of Women Religious

[Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious – Congregation for the Doctine of the Faith]

June 1, 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

[Washington, DC] The national board of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) held a special meeting in Washington, DC from May 29-31 to review, and plan a response to, the report issued to LCWR by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The board members raised concerns about both the content of the doctrinal assessment and the process by which it was prepared. Board members concluded that the assessment was based on unsubstantiated accusations and the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency. Moreover, the sanctions imposed were disproportionate to the concerns raised and could compromise their ability to fulfill their mission. The report has furthermore caused scandal and pain throughout the church community, and created greater polarization.

The board determined that the conference will take the following steps:

•On June 12 the LCWR president and executive director will return to Rome to meet with CDF prefect Cardinal William Levada and the apostolic delegate Archbishop Peter Sartain to raise and discuss the board’s concerns.
•Following the discussions in Rome, the conference will gather its members both in regional meetings and in its August assembly to determine its response to the CDF report.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

By Joshua J. McElwee

A harsh Vatican critique of the organization representing most U.S. women religious was based on unsubstantiated accusations, comes from a flawed process and has caused “scandal and pain throughout the church,” the sisters’ group said in a statement this morning.

The statement, issued Friday by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), came after three days of meetings among the group’s national board and is the first official public response to the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith’s April 18 assessment of the organization, which represents some 80 percent of U.S. Catholic sisters.

That stinging Vatican assessment ordered LCWR to revise its statutes, programs and affiliations and place itself under the authority of Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain.

Friday’s statement said that during their meetings this week LCWR national board members raised concerns about “both the content of the doctrinal assessment and the process by which it was prepared” and that the group’s president and executive director will soon travel to Rome to “raise and discuss” their concerns with Vatican officials.

“Board members concluded that the assessment was based on unsubstantiated accusations and the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency,” the statement continues.

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UNITED KINGDOM
National Secular Society

Posted: Fri, 01 Jun 2012

By Terry Sanderson

It’s always a pleasure to read that the Pope is upset. Nobody deserves to be upset more than His Holiness.

This time Mr Ratzinger is wailing about the publication of a book, His Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI, by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi. It is based on documents leaked from the Vatican by un-named sources. The documents reveal a web of corruption and cronyism within the walls of Vatican City that would put a Dan Brown novel to shame.

You can read some of the details in this article.

The Vatican launched an investigation into who could have passed the documents on to the journalist and eventually pinpointed the Pope’s valet, Paolo Gabriele. Yes, the butler did it!

Or that’s according to the Vatican who are now suspected of making this poor man — presently under arrest by the Vatican police — a fall guy.

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COLORADO
The Gazette

LANCE BENZEL
THE GAZETTE

A retired Catholic priest who was suspended from a Colorado Springs church in January amid a police investigation was charged in court Thursday with several counts alleging he sexually assaulted a child.

Charles Robert Manning, 77, attended a hearing in Colorado Springs with a walker and an oxygen tank – his first public appearance here since Colorado Springs police announced his May 22 arrest.

Details of his alleged crimes weren’t released, however, and an arrest affidavit describing the case has been sealed by court order.

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COLORADO
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Associated Press | Posted: Thursday, May 31, 2012

A retired Roman Catholic priest has been formally charged with sexually assaulting a child.

The Gazette reports ( http://bit.ly/L1cPPn) Charles Robert Manning appeared in court in Colorado Springs on Thursday. He is charged with three counts of sex assault on a child by one in a position of trust, two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and two counts of sexual exploitation of children.

Details of the allegations haven’t been disclosed. Lawyers for both sides declined to comment outside the courtroom.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By GRETCHEN EHLKE • Associated Press | Posted: Friday, June 1, 2012

MILWAUKEE • The Archdiocese of Milwaukee and a former priest who received money to leave the ministry after allegations of sexual abuse say that payment and others were a form of charity meant to help men transition to a new life.

The archdiocese acknowledged paying suspected pedophile clergy after an abuse victims’ group produced a court document on Wednesday that mentioned a 2003 proposal to pay $20,000 to “unassignable priests” who agree to leave the ministry. The document from the archdiocese’s bankruptcy proceedings includes minutes from a 2003 meeting of its Finance Council, which included then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan, a St. Louis native who is now a cardinal and head of the New York archdiocese.

Council members discussed how the church should handle sexual abuse complaints, a potential budget deficit and how to cut costs. The $20,000 payments were among the options mentioned.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests characterizes the payments as a payoff to priests who molested children.

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UNITED STATES
The Windsor Star

Postmedia News Services
June 1, 2012

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan authorized $20,000 payments to a handful of sexually abusive priests so they would immediately leave the Milwaukee archdiocese when Dolan was archbishop there nearly a decade ago, a church spokeswoman said on Thursday.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests first announced the payments on Wednesday upon discovering minutes of a March 2003 meeting of the Milwaukee archdiocese finance council meeting. SNAP is demanding full disclosure of all such payments.

Church officials confirmed the payments as approved in the minutes, but archdiocese spokeswoman Julie Wolf said she had yet to determine how many priests got them, estimating the number at “a handful.”

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UNITED STATES
New York Post

[Minutes of the Archdiocesan Finance Council]

By DAN MANGAN

Last Updated: 5:36 AM, June 1, 2012

An advocacy group for clerical-sex-abuse victims yesterday charged that New York Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan, while heading the Milwaukee archdiocese six years ago, “lied” when he denied any “payoff” to encourage a pedophile priest to leave the priesthood.

“The disturbing new revelations about Cardinal Dolan raise a troubling question: What other secret deals and ‘incentives’ did and does he offer to pedophile priests?” asked David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Dolan’s New York Archdiocese spokesman, Joseph Zwilling, yesterday refused to directly respond to Clohessy’s claims. Zwilling instead said only that the cardinal supported the Milwaukee Archdiocese’s claim that there was no “payoff” to pedophile priests, only “charity.”

Clohessy’s allegation came after disclosures this week that while serving as Milwaukee archbishop in 2003, Dolan agreed to pay accused pedophile priests $20,000 in exchange for their agreeing to leave the priesthood.

In 2006, Dolan had strongly denied a victims-advocate’s claim that pedophile priest Franklyn Becker was paid $10,000 in exchange for his voluntary laicization, telling the Milwaukee Sentinel:

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