ABUSE TRACKER

IRELAND
BBC News

By Robert Pigott
Religious affairs correspondent, BBC News

Senior politicians have intensified pressure on the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, to resign over a paedophile priest scandal in the 1970s.

But the Vatican – where the key decisions on his future will be made – has its own reasons for wanting him to stay.

Meanwhile, the row could overshadow the Church’s International Eucharistic Congress, due to take part in Ireland next month.

Three out of the four main parties in the Republic of Ireland and the Northern Irish Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness have called on Cardinal Brady to consider his position.

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PHILADLEPHIA (PA)
CBS Philly

By Mark Abrams

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Chaput is set to appear at a news conference this afternoon to disclose the fate of some of the 27 priests suspended by his predecessor because of allegations of sexual abuse or other misconduct.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia says Archbishop Chaput is to appear for the briefing in the Archdiocese headquarters in Center City at 2 this afternoon.

KYW Newsradio has learned he will announce the disposition of some, but not all of the cases of the priests suspended by Cardinal Justin Rigali back in March 2011, following the release of a second Philadelphia grand jury report on clergy sex abuse.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Independent.ie reporters

Friday May 04 2012

CARDINAL Sean Brady has rejected a report that he offered to step down over the Brendan Smyth affair two years ago.

In a statement, the Cardinal said the report in the Irish Independent “seems to confuse” an announcement he made in May 2010 requesting episcopal support: “I have asked Pope Benedict XVI for additional support for my work, at episcopal level”.

However, he added no such offer of resignation was made.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Greg Harkin

Friday May 04 2012

ABUSE victim Brendan Boland has told how he thought the death of his teenage son in a road crash was ‘divine retribution’ for his decision to hold the Catholic Church to account for speaking out.

In an interview with the Irish Independent, Brendan (51) said the death of his 17-year-old son Stephen in 2003 left him devastated.

“I know it sounds crazy but that’s what I thought at the time. I thought that God had taken Stephen because I had spoken out against the church,” said the Dundalk man, who now lives in Harlow, Essex.

“I thought it was divine retribution and I know people think that’s a stupid thing to say but I did believe that.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Louise Hogan

Friday May 04 2012

A BISHOP has branded the inaction of Fr Brendan Smyth’s superior “inexcusable”.

Bishop Leo O’Reilly of Kilmore last night criticised the then Abbot, Fr Kevin Smith, of the Norbertine Order at Holy Trinity Abbey in Kilnacrott, Co Cavan.

“I find it incomprehensible that Abbot Smith did not take effective action to stop Brendan Smyth committing further abuse against children,” he added.

“This failure to act was inexcusable.”

The abbot, who stepped down in the wake of Smyth’s conviction in 1994, was last night uncontactable.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Fionnan Sheahan and Anne-Marie Walsh

Friday May 04 2012

GOVERNMENT ministers on both sides of the Border ratcheted up the pressure on Cardinal Sean Brady to resign in the wake of revelations of his failure to report child-rape allegations against the notorious paedophile Fr Brendan Smyth.

Education Minister Ruairi Quinn and Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness both called for him to consider his position.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny held firm on his call for the Cardinal to “reflect” on the programme on the BBC, which contained revelations on the handling of clerical abuse. But the Labour Party went further, with strong statements from Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore and Mr Quinn.

Mr Quinn called specifically on Cardinal Brady to consider his position, with coalition sources saying the minister believes he should resign.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Friday May 04 2012

ANY cardinal wishing to relinquish their role in the Catholic Church would have to proffer their resignation to the Pope.

The cleric usually travels to the Vatican for a face-to-face with the pontiff.

The resignation is then either accepted, or in some cases it is rejected by the Vatican and the cleric is encouraged to stay on in their post.

For example, a decade ago the late Pope John Paul II accepted the resignation of the embattled Boston cardinal Bernard Law in the wake of the church’s ongoing sex abuse scandal. He met for a short time face-to-face with the Pope in the Papal Library.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Greg Harkin and independent.ie reporters

Friday May 04 2012

ONE of Ireland’s most conservative and respected Catholic theologians has said that Cardinal Sean Brady has lost his moral authority and should resign.

Fr Vincent Twomey has pleaded with the church to reexamine its role and asked where is the humanity to connect with the pain of children who have been abused.

The retired Professor of Moral Theology at Maynooth, told Primetime on RTE 1, that there were issues about the failure to alert parents to other victims of paedophile priest Brendan Smyth, that the church must address.

“For the good of the church, it is really tragic, but I’m afraid I am of the opinion that he should resign,” he said.

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IRELAND/UNITED STATES
Irish Independent

By Independent.ie reporters

Friday May 04 2012

A WOMAN, who was sexually abused as a child by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth, today called for a criminal investigation into the actions of Cardinal Sean Brady.

American lawyer Helen McGonigle, (50) who now campaigns for survivors of clerical sexual abuse, said the All Ireland Primate should resign for not alerting other families to Smyth’s horrific catalogue of abuse.

She was molested by Smyth in the late 1960s in Rhode Island, New York.

Speaking to BBC Radio Ulster today, Ms McGonigle said she was “outraged” by Cardinal Brady’s response to allegations in a BBC documentary broadcast this week.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

May 3, 2012 by Susan Matthews

I’m not sure how to prepare for tomorrow. I’m trying to reconcile good memories of a priest who had a positive impact on my husband’s and my life with very unsettling facts. Both are real. Do bad acts negate the good?

Dr. Fitzgibbons, an Archdiocesan psychiatrist for whom I ghostwrote in the early 90s, had told me anger was the root of all psychological dysfunction. It made sense to me. Rape is committed out of anger rather than desire. But recently, a clergy sex abuse victim and one-time patient of this doctor, told me he disagreed. He believes extreme selfishness is the cause.

It takes just a quick review of our own motives for sinning to come to the same conclusion. Relate that idea of selfishness to the priests removed from ministry for anything from “boundary issues” to sexual abuse. A priest’s homosexuality or failing to be celibate is the least of it. It’s the harming of others emotionally, physically and spiritually out of self-interest while representing Jesus that most find egregious.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

GERRY MORIARTY

VICTIM’S REACTION: THE “PENNY dropped” for Brendan Boland when he was just shy of his 14th birthday at Christmas 1974. The paedophile priest Brendan Smyth had been sexually abusing him for two to three years at that stage.

Smyth had brought him, a Belfast boy and three girls to a Wombles concert in Dublin. Afterwards Smyth shared a room with the two boys, who also featured in this week’s BBC programme. First he abused Mr Boland, then he signalled the other boy to come to his bed.

“I was lying listening to what was going on. And I said to myself, ‘This is not going to happen again, I have got to do something. I don’t like what’s going on here’. That’s when the penny dropped for me.”

Mr Boland spoke to The Irish Times in a hotel in Belfast with his wife Martina by his side. “She’s a rock,” he said.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

BRENDAN SMYTH: NOT ALL Irish priests in the 1960s and 1970s were as enthralled by silence as Fr Seán Brady, it would appear. He had been “part of an unhelpful culture of deference and silence in society, and the Church . . . ” he said on Wednesday.

Not so Fr Bruno Mulvihill.

From the late 1960s he tried to have child abuse by Fr Brendan Smyth addressed through direct contact with two papal nuncios, one bishop, an abbot-general and two abbots. He might as well have stayed as silent as Fr Brady.

Fr Mulvihill joined the Norbertine congregation, of which Fr Brendan Smyth was a member, in 1963. From 1968 onwards he tried to have something done about his colleague. Some of this was recalled on the UTV Counterpoint programme Suffer Little Children, broadcast in October 1994.

There he produced a letter he sent to the bishop of Kilmore, Francis McKiernan, dated November 1st, 1974. In it he disclosed how “ever since 1964 I have known that a member of the community, Fr Brendan Smyth, is misbehaving: he is molesting children who attend bingo sessions. Two of them who are superficially known to me have told me about their troubles.” He “brought this matter to the attention of the abbot but to no avail”.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

CARL O’BRIEN, Chief Reporter

THE COST of the State’s redress scheme for survivors of institutional child abuse is set to rise by more than €100 million following a surge in applications for compensation last year.

Unpublished estimates compiled by senior Department of Education officials put the final bill at €1.47 billion, up from the €1.36 billion that had been quoted.

However, the State has received just €126 million to date from religious congregations despite Government attempts to split the redress costs on a 50-50 basis.

The Residential Institutions Redress Board was set up a decade ago to compensate former residents of industrial and reformatory schools, orphanages and children’s homes who suffered abuse.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

CARL O’BRIEN

CHILD PROTECTION: ONE OF Cardinal Seán Brady’s explanations for his handling of clerical sex abuse cases in the mid-1970s is that priests and society were living in a much different era.

“You see, we were without any guidance at that stage from either church or State,” he said this week. “We were without training; it was a new situation.”

But how much latitude should we give to people who failed to act decisively at time when there was much less emphasis on child sexual abuse?

For most of those who worked in either child protection or social services during the mid-1970s, there is an acknowledgment that guidelines and procedures were not in place for dealing with sexual abuse. But the notion that sexual abuse was something “new” or unprecedented is given short shrift.

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VATICAN CITY
The Irish Times

PADDY AGNEW in Rome

VATICAN VIEW: THE HOLY See yesterday made no comment in response to calls for the resignation of the Archbishop of Armagh Cardinal Seán Brady.

While officially the Holy See offered no response to the call made by Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore in the Dáil yesterday, off the record senior Vatican figures repeated the view, already expressed this week, that Cardinal Brady should not resign.

One Vatican official said that for the cardinal to step down would be to admit he was in the wrong in how he handled his evidence-taking with sex abuse victim Brendan Boland in 1975, whereas the Holy See remains convinced that the then Fr Brady did nothing wrong at the time.

It is also true that the sometimes perverse logic of Vatican realpolitik is working against any possible resignation by Cardinal Brady.

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UNITED STATES
Catholics4Change

May 3, 2012 by Susan Matthews

Understanding Vatican Council II and the role of the laity is important to understanding how we can help prevent clergy sex abuse and protect children. Theologian Anthony Massimini shares his knowledge of doctrine on his new site.

www.the21stcenturyamericancatholic.blogspot.com

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NORTH CAROLINA
Huffington Post

Michelangelo Signorile

The North Carolina pastor whose violent anti-gay rant blew up across the blogosphere, said in an interview that his message to parents in a sermon — to “punch” a boy who is effeminate and “crack that wrist” if he is limp-wristed — were taken out of the “context of a ministry,” and that he meant them “figuratively,” claiming that Jesus, too, in the Bible, “conjures up violent images.”

Pastor Sean Harris of the Barean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, N.C. retracted the statements of violence but continued to defend his comments about the “importance of gender distinctions that God created,” as well his condemnation of homosexuality, citing the Bible. But he was not able to explain other passages in the Bible, such as those condoning slavery, saying he didn’t realize the interview would “slant and redirect the conversation.”

“I had no idea that the video would be chopped and posted in the blogosphere in a such a manner in which the entirety isn’t understood,” Harris said in an interview on my radio program on SiriusXM OutQ yesterday. “Those were not the best choice of words. If I had to do it over again again I would not choose those words. I was using hyperbole in an effort to communicate the importance of the gender distinctions that God created. I would offer an apology to anyone I have offended. I don’t make an apology for those gender distinctions that are the word of God.”

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NORTH CAROLINA
Huffington Post

Scott MacDougall

Sean Harris, pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, N.C., has now “apologized” for a delivering a sermon in which he told parents to “punch” their “limp-wristed” sons and force their “butch” daughters to “dress up” and “smell nice” from time to time. However, he claims that his words were meant “in jest.”

That is outrageous, as even the most open-minded and generous viewing of his sermon will quickly reveal. (Click on the link above and see for yourself.)

Having seen the remarkable documentary “Bully” just last night, I couldn’t sit back and swallow his calling this “a joke.” I sent him the following email this afternoon.

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NORTH CAROLINA
ABC News

By COLLEEN CURRY

May 3, 2012

A North Carolina pastor who told parents in a Sunday sermon that they should hit their children if they began to act gay has retracted his advice, saying he should have spoken more carefully.

Pastor Sean Harris, of the Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, N.C., apologized in a statement released this week for “any and all words that suggest that child abuse is appropriate for any and all types of behaviors, including (but not limited to) effminancy and sexual immorality of all types.”

In the sermon, given Sunday in support of a proposed North Carolina amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, Harris talked at length about homosexual behaviors. At one point, he instructed fathers who “see that son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist.”

Harris said that gay tendencies in young children should be “squashed like a cockroach” and that if parents see young boys acting like girls, fathers should “give [them] a good punch.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
San Antonio Express-News

MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press

Updated 05:23 p.m., Thursday, May 3, 2012

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput has many constituents to consider as he decides the fate of about two dozen priests suspended over child sex-abuse allegations.

The priests have been in limbo during an internal investigation that took more than a year. Their suspensions followed a second damning grand jury report on priest sexual-abuse in Philadelphia.

A person close to the process, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that Chaput plans to announce the outcome of at least some of the investigations Friday. The person is not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

Chaput first discussed the matter with hundreds of Philadelphia priests summoned to a last-minute meeting Wednesday.

“I think he’s smart, meeting with his priests, talking to them,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University who has written a book on U.S. bishops. “Priests are one of the most important constituencies that a bishop has. He needs them to do almost anything in the diocese.”

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WISCONSIN
National Catholic Reporter

by Eugene Cullen Kennedy on May. 03, 2012 Bulletins from the Human Side

Madison Wisconsin’s Bishop Robert Morlino, displays, among other items on his coat of arms, a golden turret that, according to the designers of his heraldry, symbolizes a place “in which to take refuge on the journey, to reset …”

It may be time for the good bishop, after months of contentious interactions with his people, to move, if not to a golden turret of refuge — the kind many bishops are said to prefer — then at least to a neutral corner in which to reset his relationships with his people.

The gods of irony wince at the news that in the very week of celebrating the Good Shepherd Morlino has threatened to deny communion, confession, and Christian burial to those of his flock who have objected to their treatment by the self-styled conservative priests of the Spanish Society of Jesus Christ the Priest whom he assigned to parish and other pastoral work in the diocese.

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ILLINOIS
Daily Herald

A Roselle priest convicted of gambling away about $300,000 in church funds has asked a DuPage County judge to let him return to the ministry. The Rev. John Regan, 48, was sentenced in September to probation, jail and community service, and was ordered to get a job “as menial as possible.” Since his release, he’s worked at a Joliet factory for $9 an hour.

Now Regan’s attorneys are asking Judge John Kinsella to clarify whether he can go back to work for the Diocese of Joliet — a move they say would double his income and allow him to pay restitution more quickly.

He also “wishes to return to more meaningful employment in order to be restored to his lifelong vocation,” a recent defense filing says.

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ROME
dotCommonweal

May 3, 2012

Posted by Grant Gallicho

Robert Mickens of the Tablet and Sandro Magister of Chiesa are reporting the names of the men behind the investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. You’re going to recognize a few. First, Magister:

The inspection [of LCWR] had been urged above all by some cardinals of the United States, both of the curia and residential [i.e., those who live in Rome], with direct knowledge of the “problematic” orientations of the LCWR.

Cardinal Franc Rodé, prefect of the congregation for religious until the end of 2010, had given the go-ahead to a rather hostile apostolic visitation of the LCWR. But after, on January 4, 2011, he was replaced by Brazilian cardinal João Braz de Aviz, a focolarino [member of the Focolare movement], and even before that, when the American Redemptorist Joseph W. Tobin became secretary of the same congregation, the apostolic visitation continued and concluded in a much more conciliatory manner.

This changing of the guard at the top of the congregation for religious was not at all to the liking of the cardinals from the United States residing in Rome at the time – Levada, Raymond L. Burke, James F. Stafford, Bernard F. Law, John P. Foley – so much so that none of them attended Tobin’s episcopal ordination at Saint Peter’s Basilica on October 9, 2010.

That’s extraordinary. On Magister’s telling, those American cardinals were so disappointed with the decision to appoint Tobin — an outsider who didn’t want the job and freely admits to “ranting about the curia” — that they couldn’t be bothered to attend his ordination to the episcopacy. (I wonder who attended Cardinal Law’s 2004 appointment as archpriest of St. Mary Major. His retirement ran silent.) Imagine their surprise when soon after a nun was appointed undersecretary for the congregation — and one who doesn’t usually wear a habit, just like those troublesome LCWR nuns. Those American cardinals must have seen the writing on the wall. Under new management, the apostolic visitation of the LCWR seems to have gone precisely nowhere.

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ROME
National Catholic Reporter

May. 03, 2012
By John L Allen Jr

Analysis

ROME — At first blush, one compelling frame for the crackdown on the Leadership Conference of Woman Religious would seem to be “Rome vs. America,” and in a sense, that’s perfectly correct. This is, after all, an overhaul of an American body decreed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s powerful theological watchdog agency.

Yet drilling down, the picture becomes more complicated. At least part of the original momentum for the overhaul actually came from America, not Rome, and meanwhile, not everyone in Rome is quite on the same page. …

NCR has learned that during a meeting of Vatican personnel in early 2012 to discuss the LCWR assessment, a senior Vatican diplomat warned that launching a crackdown now might be a bad idea in light of domestic American politics, especially an increasingly nasty campaign season featuring rhetoric about a “war on women.”

According to sources with knowledge of that meeting, officials of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith replied that such concerns were “exaggerated.”

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Blaine on May 03, 2012

Shame on Cardinal Brady. Catholic bishops are monarchs with tremendous power. But when child sex abuse and cover up cases come to light, they pretend to be powerless.

It’s disingenuous for Brady to claim that because he wrote one memo, he did all he could do to protect kids from Fr. Brendan Smyth. He could and should have done more and he knows it. It’s tragic that he refuses to publicly admit that, because he did the absolute bare minimum in this case, other unsuspecting parents welcomed Fr. Smyth into their homes and other innocent kids were severely hurt by him.

We join those who are calling on Brady to resign.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on May 03, 2012

WHAT:
Holding signs and childhood photos, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will hold a small vigil outside the Philly Archdiocese headquarters. They will urge Catholic officials to:

–disclose more, not less, about predatory priests tomorrow, and
–explain why they kept kids needlessly at risk by keeping silent about every one of the 27 accused priests for more than a year.

They will also urge current and former Catholic church employees and members to step forward now and disclose any knowledge of crimes to Philadelphia law enforcement, regardless of what archdiocesan officials do or don’t do tomorrow.

WHEN:
Tonight, Thursday, May 3 at 9 p.m.

WHERE:
Outside the Philadelphia archdiocesan headquarters, 222 N 17th St. (Between Race St. and Vine St.)

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

by Tom Roberts on May. 03, 2012 NCR Today

Perhaps it should surprise no one, given the byzantine culture of Catholic hierarchy and Vatican bureaucracy, that just beneath the surface of the most recent attack on LCWR, one might find evidence of Cardinal Bernard Law, whose gross mishandling of the sex abuse crisis fairly upended the venerable church of Boston, and Archbishop William Lori, the fiery point man in the episcopacy’s religious liberty campaign and recently rewarded with the prestigious Baltimore see.

It is one of the ongoing curiosities – pointed out abundantly on this site and within the pages of NCR – that those who have caused the greatest scandal and damage to the church are those who still sit in judgment of all else in the community. And they are using their prerogatives, which they bestow upon themselves and are available only to those within the secretive, all-male, celibate world of Catholic hierarchy, to flail about, pointing up dangers and faults they are seeing all about them, in others and in endless other sectors of the Catholic community.

In the most recent instance of the women religious, The (London) Tablet’s Robert Mickens traces the timeline and personalities who have been working to bring the Leadership Conference of women Religious to heel. As his reporting shows (the link here is to America magazine and a posting by Jesuit Fr. James Martin, who also provides links to the Tablet piece) the good bishops can be persistent in their pursuit of orthodoxy and proper behavior on the part of others, especially vowed women.

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UNITED STATES
U.S. Catholic

Thursday, May 3, 2012

By Scott Alessi

For those hoping the debate about priestly celibacy would die down, think again–An Australian priest is pouring gasoline on the fire by claiming that many priests around the world have already cast off their vows to remain celibate.

Father Kevin Lee, a priest in Sydney, Australia, came forward this week to admit that he’s been secretly married for a full year, and that he hasn’t done much to hide this fact from church leaders, who turned a blind eye to his actions. That is, of course, until he publicly admitted his secret marriage, which immediately led to his removal from ministry. So why come forward?

Lee, who is now writing a tell-all book about priestly celibacy, says he wanted to call attention to just how many priests aren’t following that vow in hopes that the church will make a change to the requirement.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By Joseph A. Slobodzian
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Prosecutors today began dissecting the career of the Rev. Nicholas V. Cudemo — transferred among Archdiocesan high schools over more than two decades after being accused of molesting a series of teenage girls — as the trial continued to explore the church’s handling of allegations of sexual abuse by some priests.

“As a male celibate, he needs female companionship and friendship,” Archdiocesan officials reported Cudemo told them when confronted in October , 1991 about allegations by several cousins that the priest had fondled them during their teen and preteen years.

That statement and others were contained in church archives that were read to the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury hearing the case against Msgr. William J. Lynn, who as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004 was the designated investigator of complaints of sexual misconduct against priests.

Most of Cudemo’s predations against teenage girls occurred before Lynn’s tenure as secretary for clergy. Cudemo was ordained in 1963 and the first allegation against him — involving a junior at Lansdale Catholic High School — was in 1966 at his first post as assistant pastor at St. Stanislaus parish in the Montgomery County community. Now 75, Cudemo was defrocked in 2005.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Tyrone Times

Published on Wednesday 2 May 2012

There will be no knee-jerk decision on whether to launch a police investigation into the latest claims levelled against the Catholic Church, a senior commander in Northern Ireland has insisted.

Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Assistant Chief Constable George Hamilton said allegations made in a TV documentary on the secret internal Church inquiry in 1975 into paedophile priest Brendan Smyth would be reviewed by specialist detectives first.

Cardinal Sean Brady has faced mounting calls to resign over his role in the historic Church probe, primarily his apparent failure to alert the civil authorities about the abuse claims against Smyth.

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IRELAND
The Journal

AN OUT-OF-HOURS counselling service for victims of child abuse has said it noticed a significant increase in calls to its telephone line last night.

A spokesperson for Connect Counselling told TheJournal.ie that it expects the trend to continue over the coming days following revelations about Cardinal Seán Brady’s role in a secret 1975 inquiry into the abuse of children by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth.

“We had a noticeable spike in calls,” he said. “That is generally the pattern when the issue of clerical child abuse is raised in the media.”

Connect is a HSE-funded, out-of-hours counselling service for any adult who experienced abuse, trauma or neglect in childhood. The service is also available to partners or relatives of people with these experiences.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Thursday May 03 2012

A commander in Northern Ireland said a decision on whether to launch an investigation into the claims levelled against Cardinal Brady would not be taken until the evidence was fully assessed.

Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Assistant Chief Constable George Hamilton said a specialist team already investigating alleged institutional abuse in the region was reviewing the documentary to see if there was prima facie evidence that an offence had taken place.

He said officers would “do the right thing” based on where the evidence led them.

“For the last number of months there has been an investigation ongoing under an operation called Operation Charwell into alleged institutional abuse and this is really the context in which we will examine the material that was made available through the BBC documentary,” he said.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Independent.ie and Press Association reporters

Thursday May 03 2012

EDUCATION Minister Ruairi Quinn has become the latest politician to call on Cardinal Sean Brady to consider his position, following allegations in a BBC documentary about a church inquiry into child abuse in the 1970s.

Earlier Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore and Fr Brian D’Arcy also commented on his position.

Mr Quinn said this stance was appropriate because Cardinal Brady is the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, which is the patron of 92pc of the 3,200 primary schools.

He said that the Catholic Church also should consider the appropriateness of having at its head someone who had ”failed spectacularly to protect children.”

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IRELAND
IOL (South Africa)

May 3 2012

By Conor Humphries

DUBLIN – Ireland’s deputy prime minister said on Thursday he thought the head of the Irish Catholic Church should resign after a TV documentary reported the cleric had failed to warn parents their children were being sexually abused by a priest in 1975.

A BBC documentary broadcast on Tuesday said that Cardinal Sean Brady was given the names and addresses of children being abused by notorious paedophile Brendan Smyth during a Church investigation but had failed to act to ensure their safety.

“It is my own personal view that anybody who did not deal with the scale of the abuse that we have seen in this case should not hold a position of authority,” Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore told parliament, when asked about Brady’s response to the BBC programme.

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IRELAND
Herald

By Garry O’Sullivan

Thursday May 03 2012

TWO years ago, when calls first started for Cardinal Brady to resign, the writing seemed on the wall for him.

At that point, the calls were made over his legalistic and perfunctory performance in 1975 in a Church Tribunal of Inquiry in which, among other explicit questions, a 14-year-old boy was grilled on whether he got enjoyment out of being abused by Fr Brendan Smyth.

I remember taking a phone call from a senior church adviser in the immediate circle around the Cardinal and even this adviser believed he should step down. But the Cardinal clung on.

The Vatican doesn’t like to retire cardinals, the thinking being, if you allow senior management to be taken out, one day the mob will come for the CEO himself.

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IRELAND
Herald

By Cormac Murphy

Thursday May 03 2012

CARDINAL Sean Brady has insisted he had not been fully aware of the impact of child abuse, even though he heard harrowing victim statements.

The pressure on the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland to resign intensified today in the wake of revelations of his failure to shield children from paedophile Fr Brendan Smyth.

The priest defended not contacting gardai about the horrific details he heard from victim Brendan Boland and admitted he didn’t realise the impact abuse had on children.

He said: “I knew chapter and verse of what was going on. I didn’t have the awareness I now have of the impact that behaviour was having on those children.”

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IRELAND
Herald

By Alan O’Keeffe

Thursday May 03 2012

BARNADO’S chief executive Fergus Finlay was sexually and physically abused by two religious brothers when he was a boy. But his father took action.

Finlay (62) spoke publicly about the abuse for the first time to reject the notion that no-one understood what sex abuse was in the 1960s or 1970s or later.

“I knew what it was, I knew it was abuse. I told my father about it, he knew it was abuse, he knew exactly what action needed to be taken,” he said. “As far as I know, the action taken ensured no other child was abused by the same person.”

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OSTERREICH
betroffen

Trotz bekannter Missbrauchsfälle durfte ein Pater mehrere Jahre am Gymnasium unterrichten. Kloster und Schulbehörde zeigten nicht an

Bregenz – Eintragungen über einen Missbrauchsfall verschwinden aus dem Personalakt, ein Gerichtsakt ist zwar in aller Munde, aber keiner hat ihn gesehen. Die Schadenersatzprozesse gegen das Kloster Mehrerau werfen immer mehr Fragen auf. Etwa jene, ob die Schulbehörde informiert wurde. Schließlich sind lehrende Patres des Privatgymnasiums mit Öffentlichkeitsrecht Gehaltsempfänger des Landesschulrats.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
kath.net (Deutschland)

Die Priester wurden im Januar 2011 suspendiert, nachdem eine Große Jury in Philadelphia drei Priester und einen katholischen Lehrer wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs angeklagt hatte. Weiter 37 Priester werden „glaubwürdig“ angeschuldigt.

New York (kath.net/KNA) Im US-Erzbistum Philadelphia steht offenbar eine Entscheidung über 27 des Missbrauchs beschuldigte katholische Priester bevor. Erzbischof Charles Chaput rief mehrere hundert Geistliche am Mittwoch (Ortszeit) zu einer Beratung hinter verschlossenen Türen zusammen, wie die Tageszeitung «New York Times» meldet. Anlass und Inhalt des Treffens seien nicht mitgeteilt worden. Für Freitagnachmittag (Ortszeit) habe Chaput eine Erklärung angekündigt. Am 8. März schrieb der Erzbischof auf einer kirchlichen Website, einige der 27 Fälle stünden «sehr kurz vor einem Abschluss».

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ITALIA
la Repubblica

L’ex parroco della chiesa dello Spirito Santo di Sestri Ponente processato per violenza sessuale su minore. L’unico reato per cui è stato assolto è la detenzione di materiale pedopornografico. Prima della camera di consiglio, il sacerdote ha consegnato al giudice una lettera-confessione

E’ stato condannato a 9 anni, 6 mesi, don Riccardo Seppia, l’ex parroco di Sestri Ponente in carcere da un anno per pedofilia. Il giudice lo ha condannato per violenza sessuale su minore e tentata induzione alla prostituzione minorile.

Cardinale Bagnasco: “Io tradito dalla sua doppia personalità”

Prima che il magistrato si ritirasse in camera di consiglio, il sacerdote ha consegnato una lettera alla corte: “Chiedo scusa per i miei comportamenti moralmente disdicevoli”, così scrive l’ex parroco. E l’avvocato corre a spiegare: “Non è un’ammissione di colpa. Il mio cliente ammette che i suoi comportamenti sono stati forse amorali, ma non hanno rilevanza penale”. Secondo Paolo Bonanni, legale di fiducia, l’imputato avrebbe dovuto essere assolto da tutti i capi di imputazione tranne una cessione semplice di droga.

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ITALIA
Corriere della Sera

MILANO – È stato condannato a 9 anni, 6 mesi e 20 giorni, e al pagamento di 28 mila euro don Riccardo Seppia, l’ex parroco di Sestri Ponente in carcere da un anno per pedofilia. Il giudice dell’udienza preliminare Roberta Bossi lo ha condannato per violenza sessuale su minore e per tentata induzione alla prostituzione minorile. Il pubblico ministero Stefano Puppo, che riteneva di poter far equiparare la tentata violenza su minore a una violenza effettiva, aveva chiesto 11 anni e 8 mesi, mentre il legale del sacerdote aveva chiesto l’assoluzione per tutti i capi d’accusa, tranne la cessione semplice di droga.

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ITALY
adnkronos

Genoa, 3 May (AKI) – A Catholic priest in northern Italy was sentenced to almost a decade in prison for crimes that include attempted sexual violence against minors.

The court in the northwest city of Genoa sentenced Riccardo Seppia to nine years, six months and 20 days in prison and fined him 28 thousand euros. Prosecutors has sought 11 years and eight months behind bars.

“I ask for forgiveness for my moral behaviour,” Seppia said before the sentencing.

The Genoa court found Seppia guilty of attempted sexual violence and attempted prostitution of a minor. He was also found guilty of attempting to furnish cocaine to minors. His lawyer Paolo Bonanni said he would appeal in an effort to get a lighter sentence.

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MIAMI (FL)
NBC Miami

By Karen Yi

Thursday, May 3, 2012

A lawsuit filed Wednesday against the Archdiocese of Miami claims a well-known priest sexually abused a boy at least 150 times at a Pompano Beach church.

The lawsuit, filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, seeks more than $5 million in compensation fees for John Dorman, the alleged victim. Jeff Herman, the attorney in the case, said the alleged victim wanted to be identified to the public.

The lawsuit names Father Ricardo Castellanos, a retired priest, and claims he abused Dorman when he was a 10-year-old boy working at San Isidro Church.

“For the majority of my life I’ve dealt with it in secret and I’ve had that burden on me. Today is the day I’m taking that burden off of me and I’m putting it back on Ricardo Castellanos and the Archdiocese and the people that are responsible for it,” Dorman, 27, said by phone during a news conference Wednesday.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Bilgrimage

Jerry Slevin continues to follow the trial of Philadelphia archdiocesan officials carefully, and has provided another statement responding to news that Archbishop Chaput convened archdiocesan priests yesterday and will hold a press conference tomorrow. What follows is Jerry’s posting:

ONGOING TRIAL: The Philly criminal trial of alleged predator priests, including Fr. Brennan, and their protector, Monsignor Lynn, former top aide to the Philadelphia Archdiocese’s Cardinal Rigali, has continued for its sixth week with no end in sight. The Philadelphia Inquirer has continued its play-by-play reporting of more obscene and bizarre episodes of priestly perversions and clerical cover-ups revealed at the trial and Inquirer news coverage of the trial is online here.

The Philadelphia Archdiocese has been the subject of almost a decade of periodic criminal grand jury investigations culminating in a 2005 grand jury report and a second 2011 grand jury report as discussed by me previously here.

NEW DEVELOPMENT: A new related development occurred yesterday afternoon in a suddenly scheduled, closed-door meeting of Archbishop Chaput with many of his Philadelphia Archdiocese (Philly AD) priests in attendance. Apparently, Chaput also has a press conference planned for tomorrow presumably to report on the matters discussed with his priests.

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IRELAND
Vatican Insider

Revelations by a BBC program that a boy abused by a priest gave a 1975 Irish Church Inquiry the names of several boys and girls being abused by the same priest have led to new calls for the resignation of Cardinal Brady, a notary at that inquiry. Many think he had an obligation then to inform the children’s parents, and blame him for not doing so

Gerard O’Connell
Rome

Ireland’s Cardinal Sean Brady has rejected new calls for his resignation following a BBC TV program which he accuses of “seriously misrepresenting” his role in a 1975 Church inquiry into the abuse of children by the late Father Brendan Smyth, a member of the Norbertine religious order, who abused very many children over forty years.

The BBC broadcast the program, “The shame of the Catholic Church” on May 1 in Northern Ireland and on May 2 in the UK.

It recalled how in 1975, the future cardinal, then a young priest, participated in a Church Inquiry that interviewed a 14 year-old boy, Brendan Boland, under oath of secrecy, without his parents being present. Based notes made by Brady then, the BBC revealed that the boy had not only described his own abuse by Smyth, but also gave the names and addresses of two other boys and two girls who suffered a similar fate.

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IRELAND
The Association of Catholic Priests

Blessed John Henry Newman, and Monday May 7th, 2012: -‘Towards an Assembly of the Irish Catholic Church’.

John Henry Newman, probably the greatest writer/theologian of the 1800’s, was made Cardinal, but only at the age of 78, and by the newly elected Pope Leo X111. His predecessor, Pius IX , and a lot of bishops in England, had regarded Newman with suspicion. Much of this suspicion related to his views on the role of the Catholic Faithful.

‘On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine’ , a famous article, was first published in July, 1859 in the Rambler. It was the immediate cause of great controversy both in Rome and in England. Newman did not withdraw his views, though he did not reprint the article. It can now be found, with notes, in www.fordham.edu/…/newman-faithful.htm.

In this long article, Newman shows how, in the course of the history of the Church, the laity protected and saved the Church, even from its bishops, in times of great peril. As a young Anglican Minister, Newman had done a long study of Arianism (-Arius and his many followers denied the Divinity of Christ-) in the 4th Century, and wrote how this was eventually defeated by the preaching and writings of St. Athanasius together with the fidelity of the faithful, when great numbers of the hierarchy had fallen into error.

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ITALY
AGI

13:35 03 MAG 2012

(AGI) Genoa – The preliminary hearings magistrate Roberta Bossi of the Court of Genoa has sentenced this morning Father Riccardo Seppia, former parish priest of the Spirito Santo parish of Sestri Ponente to 9 years and 6 mths in prison.

Father Riccardo Seppia will be prosecuted. He is sentenced for attempted sexual violence on minor, attempted prostitution of minors, attempted cession of drugs to minors and the detention of pedophile pornographic material. The preliminary hearings magistrate has almost entirely met the demand of public prosecutor Stefano Puppo for 11 years and 8 months in prison.

Father Riccardo Seppia has been acquitted for only one offence, the detention of pedophile pornographic material. The preliminary hearings magistrate has considered the attempted sexual violence as an offence that has been committed. Father Riccardo Seppia’s lawyer, Paolo Bonanni had asked for the acquittal of all charges except for the cession of drugs.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

Patrick Roberts

Why do Irish media lynch mob want Cardinal Sean Brady to resign?– Brady acted in good faith at the time investigating a notorious pedophile priest

The harsh clamor for the resignation of Cardinal Sean Brady because of his alleged involvement in pedophile cover-up is a mistaken call.

Back in 1987 Brady was given a job to report to the-then Bishop of Cavan, Francis McKiernan on the findings of an ecclesiastical commission on the matter of Father Brendan Smyth, a known and notorious pedophile.

The BBC is now reporting that Brady was more than just a note taker as he claimed, but they do not dispute that he gave a full and complete account of the activities of Smyth to his superiors,

In other words all sides agree that Brady collected the information then passed it on to his superiors.

He acted correctly in that respect. Those higher up who ignored his report and allowed Smyth to keep on abusing did not obviously.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Thursday, May 03, 2012

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said today that Cardinal Seán Brady should consider his position as head of the Catholic church in Ireland.

A BBC TV documentary recently revealed that information on victims of paedophile Fr Brendan Smyth was given to a Church investigation, but then-priest Brady did not pass the information on to parents or civil authorities.

Cardinal Brady claims that he was just a notetaker in that inquiry.

“I think Cardinal Brady should reflect on his position and consider his position, but that’s a matter obviously for the church,” said Mr Martin.

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IRELAND
Longford Leader

Published on Thursday 3 May 2012

The Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnois has leapt to the defence of under fire Cardinal Sean Brady, saying he would be “very saddened” if the Primate is forced to resign.

Bishop Colm O’Reilly said the County Cavan native had given outstanding service to the church since his appointment as Ireland’s chief cleric almost 15 years ago.

In an interview with longfordleader.ie this morning (Thursday), Bishop O’Reilly also hinted that the Vatican, and not Cardinal Brady may ultimately decide his fate.

“At the present time, I would be full of regret if he (Cardinal Brady) weren’t to lead the Bishops’ Conference in June as he has given such high quality leadership to the Church,” said Bishop O’Reilly.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Edel O’Connell

Thursday May 03 2012

BARNARDOS chief Fergus Finlay has broken his silence about sexual abuse he experienced as a child in a bid to call for greater accountability from the Catholic Church.

The chief executive of the children’s charity said the excuse that sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests was not dealt with properly in the past because it was “the culture of the time” is a “complete myth”.

Mr Finlay (62) broke his silence about his own sexual abuse, which he said happened in 1961 when he was 11 years old and involved an “elderly man” whom he describes as “very religious”.

He explained how he told his father about the abuse and his father “dealt with the issue” and ensured the man did not go on to abuse again.

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

BY JENNIFER MANN • jmann@post-dispatch.com > 314-621-5804

ST. LOUIS COUNTY • A lawsuit against a dissolved North County church and its former pastor will proceed toward trial, but only on the claims of a husband who says his marriage counseling sessions were corrupted when the pastor started angling for an affair with his wife.

The pastor, Bill Little, has filed his own claims, of defamation and libel, and through his lawyer denied wrongdoing.

Cumulatively, filings in St. Louis County Circuit Court shed light on a fiery conflict that in 2010 did what prior allegations of misconduct against Little had not: forced him to retire after more than 50 years as pastor of the Christ Memorial Baptist Church of Cool Valley. The church then closed.

Darrell and Rhonda Pitt, of the St. Louis area, claim that in the 1980s Little used his position as a pastor and licensed psychologist to exploit their marriage and that church leaders allowed it to happen.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Amnesty International

Amnesty International has called on the Police Service of Northern Ireland to launch an investigation into the potential cover-up of criminal acts of child abuse detailed in the BBC programme This Week, broadcast in Northern Ireland on May 1 2012.

The programme uncovered fresh information about serious acts of sexual abuse of children, living in Northern Ireland and the republic of Ireland, by Fr Brendan Smyth, and suggested that a number of people within the Church hierarchy in Ireland may have failed to report those crimes to the State authorities in either jurisdiction. It is alleged that, as a result, the abuse of these and other children continued for a further period of years.

Amnesty International has called for the PSNI to investigate whether Church officials and others failed to report the alleged criminal offences against children in Northern Ireland to the relevant authorities in Northern Ireland.

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IRELAND/UNITED STATES
Irish Central

By
MOLLY MULDOON,
Irish Voice Reporter

Published Thursday, May 3, 2012

Catholic priests in Ireland face a huge task in re-establishing Irish society’s trust as a result of the child abuse scandal and will require strong leadership, according to an Irish American deacon currently studying in Ireland.

The son of an Irish emigrant, Shane Sullivan, 26, was ordained a deacon on Sunday, January 29 in Maynooth, Co. Kildare. A Minnesota native, he is to be ordained into the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Tuam on Sunday, June 3, in Tuam Cathedral, Co. Galway.

The January ceremony marked the last phase in the formation of Sullivan as a seminarian before his ordination into the priesthood in June.

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MONTANA
Great Falls Tribune

Eighteen new victims added their names to litigation against the Helena Diocese and Ursuline nuns for abuse they allege took place when they were children at Catholic parishes and boarding schools in Montana, according to a Tuesday news release from their Montana attorney, Vito de la Cruz.

The amended complaint adding the new victims was filed in Montana’s First Judicial District Court in Lewis and Clark County.

“Some of the students were day students and some boarded,” de la Cruz stated. “And some were abused not by priests, but by nuns who acted alone or in despicable cahoots with clergy.”

The amended complaint contends the priests and nuns used their positions as authority figures at schools and parishes to “molest, exploit and abuse children.”

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NORTHERN IRELAND
News Letter

Published on Thursday 3 May 2012

THE BBC report this week into the role of Cardinal Sean Brady, head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, in the 1975 investigation into paedophile priest Brendan Smith was profoundly disturbing, but should not come as a surprise.

In 2009 an independent report into child abuse by priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin concluded: “The Dublin Archdiocese’s preoccupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The Archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the state”.

This, indeed, has been the pattern right across the world: in the USA, in Germany, in France, in Austria: wherever allegations of abuse have surfaced against priests the first instinct was to protect the church from scandal, and not young children from harm.

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STOCKTON (CA)
Lodi News-Sentinel

By Ross Farrow and Maggie Creamer/News-Sentinel Staff Writers

A 25-year-old man who says that convicted pedophile Oliver O’Grady sexually molested him in 1992 has sued O’Grady and the Stockton Diocese.

O’Grady, who is in an Irish jail after pleading guilty to possessing child pornography, was assigned to parishes in San Andreas and Hughson when the plaintiff was allegedly molested. He was a priest at Lodi’s St. Anne’s Catholic Church from 1971 to 1978.

In an unrelated case, O’Grady was convicted in 1993 of four counts of lewd and lascivious acts against two boys in San Andreas. He spent seven years at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione before being paroled in 2000. He was then deported to his native Ireland and has been defrocked as a priest.

The lawsuit alleges that O’Grady molested the plaintiff when he was 5 years old. The plaintiff said he was molested in the priest’s bedroom in the rectory while O’Grady was babysitting.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Thursday May 03 2012

NOTORIOUS paedophile priest Brendan Smyth abused 30 or more children in the years after Cardinal Sean Brady failed to report his crimes, a former RUC officer has revealed.

Pressure was growing on Dr Brady to resign today as Barnardo’s chief Fergus Finlay joined the calls for him to step down.

Dr Brady’s position is becoming increasingly untenable after new revelations about his failure to report child rape allegations or inform the parents of some of Smyth’s victims.

The cardinal admitted that there had been nothing to stop him going to civil authorities about accusations against the serial paedophile.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Independent.ie reporters

Thursday May 03 2012

A VICTIM of paedophile priest Brendan Smyth, who was abused after he was reported to Cardinal Sean Brady, today called for the All Ireland Primate to resign.

Sam Adair was abused after the then Fr Brady investigated Smyth, and fellow-victim Brendan Boland had given fives names and addresses of other abused children to the investigation.

He said that at the time of the inquiry Cardinal Brady was not just a note taker, but a skilled canon lawyer.

Speaking on RTE Radio’s Morning Ireland show, he called on the church to compensate Smyth’s victims.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Independent.ie reporters

Thursday May 03 2012

CARDINAL Sean Brady is under increasing pressure today as Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore and Fr Brian D’Arcy have commented on his position.

Anyone who did not properly deal with allegations of child abuse against one of Ireland’s most dangerous paedophiles should not hold a position of authority, Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore has said.

As Cardinal Sean Brady faced down calls to resign over his role in a secret inquiry into Brendan Smyth, Mr Gilmore said it was his opinion that senior clerics who did not act at the time should resign.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Thursday May 03 2012

Almost two decades after playing a major role in the collapse of the 1993-4 Fianna Fail/Labour coalition, the crimes of paedophile priest Brendan Smyth continue to cast a long shadow over Irish life.

Now, not for the first time, Cardinal Sean Brady, the leader of Ireland’s Catholics, finds himself forced to explain his role in the Church’s investigation into Fr Smyth’s crimes.

In 1975, the then Fr Sean Brady was called upon to assist in the investigation of allegations of sexual abuse made by several children against Fr Smyth. His role in the investigation was a relatively junior one. He first acted as a notetaker in the interview of one of Fr Smyth’s victims and subsequently interviewed a second child who had been identified as a victim of Fr Smyth in the first interview.

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IRELAND
Sunday World

Fr. Brian D’Arcy

FIFTY years ago when I first entered The Graan as a 17-year old novice, I tried to be the best I could be. I accepted that the ‘old’ Brian D’Arcy had to die and that I had to take a new name, Desmond Mary. I accepted that I had to leave my clothes to be locked up by the Novice Master and to put on instead borrowed clothes, habit and walk in sandalled feet as well.

I willingly got up in the middle of the night to pray and then went back to bed before getting up at 6am again. I took all those penances for granted. Silence was an essential part of life and I had to leave my family behind. I could not write to them; I could not speak to them if they came to church. I should not try to understand what was happening in the world. All of which was tough but I bought into it anyway. I knew it was what I had to do to be a priest.

Now I realise it was seriously damaging to me as a person. On one of those bleak days the Rector called me to his cell (room). The Rector had been in Africa and was very close to being made a bishop.

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BELGIE
Knack

(Belga) Het Centrum voor Arbitrage inzake seksueel misbruik heeft al 190 aanvragen voor herstelmaatregelen binnengekregen. Dat heeft Karine Lalieux (PS), voorzitster van de opvolgingscommissie rond seksueel misbruik van de Kamer woensdag gezegd.

Het Centrum werd in de nasleep van de bijzondere Kamercommissie Seksueel Misbruik opgericht, nadat de kerkelijke overheden in 2011 akkoord gingen om deel te nemen aan een pluridisciplinaire arbitrage om de verjaarde gevallen van seksueel misbruik en feiten van pedofilie binnen de Kerk te behandelen.

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SPAIN
The Olive Press

SPANISH bishops have expressed their ‘support’ for Sister Maria Gomez Valbuena, the nun at the centre of the stolen babies’ scandal.

Juan Antonio Martinez Camino claimed her convent was the victim of a ‘smear campaign.’ However he insisted the Church would ‘collaborate with the courts.’

Sister Maria – the first nun to be questioned as part of the investigation – refused to testify in court. The 87-year-old later issued a statement denying the accusations.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Cardinal Sean Brady vows to remain as former RUC officer says failures let abuse go on

A former RUC officer who was close to the Brendan Smyth investigation has said that the paedophile priest would have been stopped from ruining countless other lives had he been reported to the authorities in 1975.

Cardinal Sean Brady yesterday vowed he would not resign as the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland despite new claims that he failed to act on evidence he obtained about clerical child abuse.

The beleaguered Primate — Ireland’s most senior cleric— remained defiant that he would not step down as church leader after mounting pressure grew following further alleged ‘cover up’ revelations rocked the church.

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IRELAND
BBC News

Irish priest Father Brian D’Arcy has said he believes Cardinal Sean Brady was willing to offer his resignation two years ago but the Vatican refused.

Fr D’Arcy was responding to a BBC This World programme which found that the cardinal failed to pass details of sex abuse to police or parents.

It said that in 1975, Cardinal Brady had the names and address of children being abused by Fr Brendan Smyth.

Smyth, a paedophile, continued to attack children for a further 13 years.

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IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Cardinal Brady’s resignation would signal an acceptance that priests answer to society and not just to the Church, says Malachi O’Doherty

Most of us, if we had been priests of Fr Sean Brady’s age in the 1970s, would have done as he did. The priest takes an oath of obedience to his bishop. Brady was assigned by his bishop to investigate a fellow cleric who was allegedly raping children and to report back.

He did everything that was expected of him by the only authority to which he had pledged himself answerable. He ascertained that the odious Brendan Smyth was, indeed, a paedophile priest making use of children for his sexual gratification. And he also spoke to two boys who had been abused in that way and he believed them. Then he swore them to secrecy.

All of this – in the practical, secular view of a later age – was what we would now call collusion in the cover-up of a vile crime. The manipulation of victims for the protection of an offender and of the institution to which that offender belonged.

But what was it in the mind of Sean Brady? It was the exercise of unquestioning obedience and loyalty. It was an outward expression of his faith in the power of the church to do the right thing.

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IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

By Lindy McDowell
Wednesday, 2 May 2012

I wouldn’t presume to tell the Pope how he should go about his business or to advise the Vatican on matters theological.

But I do know that the censuring of Fr Brian D’Arcy the latest Irish priest to be disciplined by Rome (there are now six in total) is not the Church’s savviest move.

And that’s because I know Brian D’Arcy to be one of the finest, most honourable men to walk the planet.

He is a priest who totally, utterly connects with the people he serves. He understands life as it really is — not how church leaders might like it to be.

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IRELAND
RTE News

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore has described the revelations about further cases of child abuse at the hands of Brendan Smyth as “another horrific episode of failure by senior members of the Catholic Church to protect children”.

Mr Gilmore also told the Dáil that anyone who did not deal with the scale of the abuse revealed in this case should not hold a position of authority. However, he stressed that this was his own personal view.

Fianna Fáil’s Willie O’Dea asked Mr Gimore about the Government’s position on the future of Cardinal Séan Brady, who participated in investigation.

“As far as your question about the Government’s position in relation to Cardinal Brady is concerned, let me say this, I have always believed in the separation of church and state,” Mr Gilmore said.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

A prominent canon lawyer has said that he believes Cardinal Sean Brady’s position as Primate of all Ireland is untenable.

It follows allegations in a BBC documentary that information on victims of Fr Brendan Smyth was given to a Church investigation in 1975 but was not passed on to victims’ families or law enforcement authorities.

Cardinal Brady insists he was just a notetaker in the inquiry, and had no authority over Fr Smyth.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has urged him to “reflect” on the documentary.

Fr Tom Doyle, a renowned canon lawyer, also featured in the programme.

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IRELAND
BBC News

The head of Barnardo’s in Ireland has spoken publicly for the first time about being abused as a child.

Fergus Finlay says he felt he had to speak out while taking part in a debate about the BBC’s This World programme which found Cardinal Sean Brady failed to pass details of sex abuse by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth to police or parents in 1975.

Cardinal Brady said he accepted he was “part of an unhelpful culture of deference and silence in society, and the Church, which thankfully is now a thing of the past”.

Mr Finlay said a changed culture was not a proper explanation.

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IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Thursday, 3 May 2012

While the BBC has produced fresh evidence against Cardinal Sean Brady, head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, in relation to the sex abuse carried out by notorious priest, Fr Brendan Smyth, the fundamental problem for the Primate is unchanged.

He may argue that he did nothing wrong and that his involvement in the interviewing of two victims of the priest were minimal and that he now regrets the culture of silence within the Church at that time. Yet many will feel that is a weak defence.

The Cardinal – who was then simply a priest – was given the names of children at risk from Fr Smyth and while he passed those on to superiors in the Church, neither the police nor the parents were informed.

Cardinal Brady may feel that it was not his role at that time to alert either, yet most right-minded people will regard it as shameful that a Christian organisation should continue to leave some of its most vulnerable flock – children – at risk from a paedophile.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Thursday, May 03, 2012

A prominent priest said today that he believes Cardinal Sean Brady was willing to offer his resignation two years ago, but the Vatican refused.

Father Brian D’Arcy said that if he was in Cardinal Sean Brady’s position now, he would find it difficult to continue – and has called on him to reflect.

It follows allegations in a BBC documentary that information on victims of Fr Brendan Smyth was given to a Church investigation, but was not passed on to parents or civil authorities by Cardinal Brady, who was then a priest.

Cardinal Brady says he was a notetaker in that inquiry and had no authority over Fr Smyth.

Fr D’Arcy said that the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland can’t simply step down and he believes Cardinal Brady may have tried in the past.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

CHARLIE TAYLOR

A man abused by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth in the years after he had been investigated by an inquiry team that include Cardinal Séan Brady has called on the Catholic primate to resign.

Sam Adair, a former resident of the Nazareth Lodge children’s home in Belfast, also called on the current primate to offer compensation to Smyth’s victims.

Pressure is growing on Cardinal Brady to step down following renewed allegations about his role in a church inquiry team investigating the Norbertine priest in 1975.

A BBC documentary broadcast on Tuesday evening revealed how, in 1975, when he was a priest in the diocese of Kilmore, Dr Brady was given the names and addresses of children who were abused by the serial child sex abuser Smyth.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Thursday, May 03, 2012

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore said that it is his personal view that the Catholic Primate of all Ireland, Cardinal Seán Brady, should resign in the wake of the latest abuse scandal.

It follows claims in a BBC TV programme that information on victims of paedophile Fr Brendan Smyth was given to a Church investigation, which Seán Brady was a member of, but was not passed on to parents or law enforcement authorities.

Cardinal Brady said he was just a notetaker in that inquiry.

In the Dáil today, the Tánaiste said that whether it was the 1970s or today, anybody with information about the rape of a child had and has a duty to pass it on.

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IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

Thursday, 3 May 2012

Anyone who did not properly deal with allegations of child abuse against one of Ireland’s most dangerous paedophiles should not hold a position of authority, the deputy prime minister has said.

As Cardinal Sean Brady faced down calls to resign over his role in a secret inquiry into Brendan Smyth, Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore said it was his opinion that senior clerics who did not act at the time should resign.

“It is my personal view that anybody who did not deal with the scale of the abuse that we have seen in this case should not hold a position of authority,” Mr Gilmore said.

The beleaguered Cardinal Sean Brady vowed to remain as Primate of All-Ireland on Wednesday after being forced for a second time in three years to account for his role in a 1975 Church inquiry into Smyth’s attacks on children.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

IRISH TIMES REPORTERS

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore has today called on Cardinal Seán Brady to resign following renewed allegations concerning his role in an inquiry into allegations of clerical abuse by the paedophile priest Fr Brendan Smyth.

Speaking in the Dáil this morning, Mr Gilmore said he had always believed in the separation of Church and State.

“But is my own personal view that anybody who did not deal with the scale of the abuse we have seen in this case should not hold a position of authority,’’ he added.

The Tánaiste was replying to Fianna Fail TD Willie O’Dea, who said that every citizen had always had at least a moral obligation to report any abuse to the civil authorities.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Thursday, May 03, 2012

It seemed incredible in 1994 that the cover-up involving the paedophile activities of Fr Brendan Smyth had been going on for 19 years by the time it brought down the government of Albert Reynolds.

More than 17 years have passed and the public is presented with another facet of the cover-up, in which the safety of children was recklessly endangered by Church leaders who were more concerned about protecting their own institution from scandal than protecting vulnerable members of its flock.

For more than 37 years, Church figures have been passing the buck, and now it has come the full circle and has landed back on the desk of Cardinal Seán Brady. The latest controversy has been sparked by Tuesday night’s BBC documentary, This World: The Shame of the Catholic Church.

The programme provided details of the testimony of Brendan Boland, who was abused as an 11-year-old altar boy by Fr Brendan Smyth. The abuse went on for a couple of years before he reported it to a priest, who informed his parents and the Church authorities.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Priest Abuse Trial Blog

Ralph Cipriano

Monsignor William J. Lynn doesn’t get excited when he’s told that archdiocese priests are sexually abusing altar boys.

He doesn’t loose his cool when he discovers that one priest has young boys living with him in the rectory, or that another priest has a farm where he keeps three young boys rotating through his bedroom.

That same monsignor doesn’t hit the panic button when he learns that one of his predator priests just busted out of the sex clinic, and is AWOL from the archdiocese, or that another predator priest who just molested a 13-year-old girl has fled the Commonwealth.

Nope, after six weeks of testimony, the monsignor comes across as a guy who doesn’t rattle easily, even when he’s getting grilled by a grand jury prosecutor who’s obviously gunning for him. But Wednesday at the archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse trial, we finally learned what gets a rise out of the monsignor, and by extension, his late boss, Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

May 02, 2012|By Joseph A. Slobodzian, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

In 1996, the Rev. Michael C. Picard was accused of disobedience, and brought up on the ecclesiastical equivalent of a court-martial for besmirching the name of a fellow priest to prevent him from becoming an associate pastor at Picard’s growing Bucks County parish.

On Wednesday, the tables turned.

Picard sat in the witness box of a Philadelphia courtroom 15 feet from Msgr. William J. Lynn, whom he accused of falsifying the disobedience charge because Picard had tried to stop the reassignment of a problematic priest..

Through Picard’s words, and reams of internal correspondence from the secret archives of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington portrayed now-Msgr. Picard as a whistleblower. Lynn and church superiors, including the late Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua, had retaliated against Picard in an effort to tamp down the threat of public scandal over the 1996 assignment of the Rev. Donald J. Mills to Picard’s St. Andrew parish in Newtown, the prosecutor said.

As secretary of clery from 1992 to 2004, Lynn was Bevilacqua’s designated investigator of allegations of sexual abuse against priests. Now 61, he is charged with conspiracy and endangering the welfare of children for enabling some priests to be transferred to other parishes despite accusations of improprieties.

Lynn, the highest-ranking church official criminally charged in the church sex-abuse scandal, has denied the charges. His attorneys have argued that he was thrust into the job without legal training and was often the first to stop what has been described as a revolving-door policy of reassigning

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MISSISSIPPI
WTVA

TUPELO, Miss. (WTVA) — The director of the Family Resource Center in Tupelo supports a bill sent to the governor that requires health professionals, clergy and others to report suspected sexual abuse of children.

“Over 17,000 children were allegedly sexually abused last year,” said Christi Webb, who leads an agency that conducted more than 400 forensic interviews last year to determine if a child had been sexually abused.

But many more incidents go unreported, she said, because sometimes people who are in position to know what’s going on don’t come forward.

“I think when it comes to children, when it comes to sexual abuse, child abuse, I think confidentiality needs to be thrown completely out the window,” Webb continued.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

May 3, 2012 by Susan Matthews

Today, Archbishop Chaput held a meeting of Archdiocesan priests at Cardinal O’Hara High School. Many presume he shared the outcome of at least some of the investigations regarding the priest removals that occurred in the wake of the 2011 Grand Jury Report. I don’t think we’ll hear much more than speculation until Friday’s public announcement (0n an also undisclosed topic).

According to sources, he asked the priests to keep silent on today’s information. Because of their vow of obedience, they will most likely comply. If only Archbishop Chaput would direct them to police each other more thoroughly, to offer ministry and compassion to victims and to support the removal of the statute of limitations on child sex abuse in PA. Then, we might get somewhere. But priests are well-practiced at silence and the faithful are quite used to it.

Here are the possible outcomes for those who will not be returned to ministry.

– (not-so supervised) lives of prayer and penance

– laicization

With the latter, the District Attorney might have the opportunity to step in – if the statute of limitations has not run out on newly acquired evidence. That is a big “if.” Otherwise, those laicized priests are free to move right next door to you or me. That’s why this is a public safety issue and not just a Catholic issue.

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CHARLOTTE (NC)
WCNC

[with video]

by DAVE WAGNER / NewsChannel 36

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — He is a pastor who calls himself an “apostle,” but former members at Charlotte’s Church of Philadelphia call Clavon Leonard something much more sinister.

“I would describe him as barbaric,” said former church employee Talitha Williams.

For 18 months, the I-Team has investigated claims of abuse against Pastor Leonard. Three of Leonard’s former personal assistants said their service involved mind control, beatings and sexual abuse.

One former assistant said, “It would rip your flesh… blood would splat everywhere.”

Another assistant told the I-Team his punishment included, “smacking the face, punching in the chest, whipping with a belt, whipping with an extension cord.” He and other assistants said Pastor Leonard sadistically grabbed their private parts.

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IRELAND
Catholic News Service

By Sarah MacDonald
Catholic News Service

DUBLIN (CNS) — The primate of All Ireland has said he will not resign despite criticism of his role in a 1975 canonical inquiry into a pedophile priest, Norbertine Father Brendan Smyth.

In a statement issued in Armagh, Northern Ireland, May 2, Cardinal Sean Brady defended his involvement in the inquiry and accused the BBC documentary “The World: The Shame of the Catholic Church” of making a number of claims that overstated and misrepresented his role.

He also highlighted that no state or church guidelines existed in the 1970s in the Irish Republic to assist those responding to an allegation of abuse against a minor.

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STOCKTON (CA)
Fox 40

Sam Cohen
FOX40 News

STOCKTON—
A convicted pedophile, and former Catholic priest in the Stockton Diocese, is facing more allegations of sexual abuse.

Bishop Stephen Blaire released a statement Wednesday, stating the Diocese just learned of a civil complaint filed against Oliver O’Grady.

O’Grady was a priest at St. Andrew’s Parish in San Andreas in 1992, when the suit alleges the abuse happened.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

ANALYSIS: It is not the case that a canon lawyer and church notary in such an inquiry played only a minor or purely administrative role, writes PATSY McGARRY

IT JUST gets curiouser and curiouser. Just what was Cardinal (then Fr) Seán Brady’s role when he attended that inquiry with two other priests and 14-year-old Brendan Boland at the Dominican friary in Dundalk on March 29th, 1975?

According to a statement from the Catholic Communications Office, issued on March 16th, 2010, he was there “to conduct a canonical inquiry into an allegation of child sexual abuse which was made by a boy in Dundalk, concerning a Norbertine priest, Fr Brendan Smyth.”

In case there might be doubt, this was repeated in the very next sentences of that statement. It said that “because he held a doctorate in canon law, Fr Brady was asked to conduct this canonical inquiry”. So we were told twice by the communications office on March 16th, 2010, that Fr Brady’s role was “to conduct” this canonical inquiry.

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UNITED STATES
NECN

(NECN) – New developments have occurred in the on-going story of fallout from sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church.

In Philadelphia, the focus is on a trial of an accused priest and his supervisor, a monsignor. If the verdict comes back as guilty, it will mark the first time that the priest abuse convictions have reached the Catholic Church hierarchy.

In Boston, the top Jesuit official in the U.S. is under a shadow after resigning from the board of Boston College and several other schools because of his failure to supervise a priest who was abusing children.

Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org joins Broadside to weigh in on these latest developments.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Wall Street Journal

By JOHN W. MILLER

The Archbishop of Philadelphia met with hundreds of priests in a closed-door session Wednesday to discuss 27 suspended clerics under investigation for alleged sexual abuse or other misconduct, but didn’t disclose whether some or all of the suspended priests would return to active ministry.

A spokesman for Archbishop Charles J. Chaput said a final determination about the priests in question is still expected “in the first months of 2012.”

The turmoil surrounding the nation’s sixth largest archdiocese, with 500 priests and 1.5 million members, has become a symbol of the church’s struggles with child sex-abuse because it has dragged on for almost a decade and because it is the first case in which a church official faces criminal charges for covering up alleged abuse.

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IRELAND
Scotsman

Published on Thursday 3 May 2012

The leader of Ireland’s four million Catholics has said he will not resign after a documentary accused him of helping to cover up 1970s child abuse by a priest who went on to assault scores of other children.

Cardinal Sean Brady said the BBC documentary, broadcast in Northern Ireland on Tuesday, exaggerated his role in his 1975 interviews of two teenage boys abused by priest Brendan Smyth.

The clergyman yesterday said he gave his report as instructed to his bishop, who should have told Smyth’s religious order leaders. They, not he, had the power to act and failed to do so, he said.

“I feel betrayed that those who had the authority in the church to stop Brendan Smyth failed to act on the evidence I gave them. However, I also accept that I was part of an unhelpful culture of deference and silence in society, and the church, which thankfully is now a thing of the past,” Cardinal Brady said.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette

By Gary V. Murray TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
gmurray@telegram.com

WORCESTER — A prosecution witness testified today about a conversation she had in late 2010 with the woman who has accused the Rev. Charles Michael Abdelahad of physically abusing and sexually assaulting her during counseling sessions.

Mary Ann Kourey, a member of St. George Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral on Anna Street and the church’s former school director, said the woman approached her on a Sunday morning at the church in the fall of 2010 and asked to speak with her privately.

During the discussion that followed in Rev. Abdelahad’s office, the crying woman related to her that she had been beaten by Rev. Abdelahad during counseling sessions aimed at treating the woman’s eating disorder, according to Ms. Kourey.

Ms. Kourey testified that the woman also told her the priest, now on a leave of absence from his role as pastor, had bitten her, pulled her hair, struck her head against a wall and forced her to sit naked on his office floor “for obedience reasons.”

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STOCKTON (CA)
News 10

[with video]

Written by
Jonathan Mumm

STOCKTON, CA – His case was notorious, not just because of the sexual abuse he was convicted of, but because of his willingness to talk about his actions, both in a legal deposition and in a documentary film called Deliver Us From Evil.

Oliver O’Grady was convicted in 1993 of molesting two young brothers in Calaveras County and spent six years in prison. Upon his release, he was deported to Ireland, where he is once again behind bars, this time for possessing child pornography.

Now, a 25-year-old man is filing a lawsuit, claiming at the age of five he suffered sexual abuse from the defrocked priest.

Representatives of the group SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, gathered in front of the Diocese of Stockton building on San Joaquin Street in Stockton Wednesday to announce the filing of the lawsuit.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Main Line

UPDATE: Archbishop Charles Chaput will address the status of 23 suspended priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia during a Friday press conference, according to one Delaware County priest who attended this afternoon’s meeting at Cardinal O’Hara High School.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Hundreds of Roman Catholic priests have been called to a sudden meeting in Delaware County with their archbishop, as 23 priests suspended over sex-abuse allegations await their fate.

At the conclusion of the meet at Cardinal O’Hara High School, the priests filed out without commenting on what took place. It’s still not clear if they learned the fate of 23 suspended colleagues.

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CALIFORNIA
The Oakland Tribune

By Tracey Kaplan tkaplan@mercurynews.comcontracostatimes.com
Posted: 05/02/2012

The San Francisco man accused of beating up an elderly Los Gatos priest he says molested him when he was a child was not a berserk vigilante hellbent on revenge.

Instead, his lawyer asserts, Will Lynch suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and acted out of self-defense during a confrontation with the priest he contends physically tortured him and forced him to have sex with his brother more than three decades ago.

In a closely watched assault case, that ambitious defense will be used by Lynch’s attorneys to defend him against charges involving the Rev. Jerold Lindner, whom the Jesuits have acknowledged is on a list of molesters living at the Sacred Heart retirement and medical center in Los Gatos.

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IRELAND
BBC News

A victim of Ireland’s most notorious paedophile priest has said the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, should resign.

Brendan Boland was responding to a BBC This World programme which found Cardinal Brady failed to pass details of sex abuse to police or parents.

It found that in 1975, Cardinal Brady had the names and address of children being abused by Fr Brendan Smyth.

Smyth, a paedophile, continued to attack children for a further 13 years.

Cardinal Brady claimed the BBC exaggerated his authority at that time. He said he had “absolutely no authority over Smyth” and had felt betrayed that those in the Church who had the power to stop Smyth did not do so.

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STOCKTON (CA)
The Modesto Bee

Bee Staff Reports
local@modbee.com

Another civil lawsuit has been filed against the Stockton Diocese alleging sexual abuse by a Catholic priest, this time on behalf of a 25-year-old man who says he was molested by Oliver O’Grady in the early 1980s.

According to the complaint, filed Monday in San Joaquin Superior Court, the abuse happened in 1992 when the plaintiff was 5 to 6 years old and O’Grady was a priest at St. Andrew’s Parish in San Andreas. O’Grady was arrested there a year later and convicted of molesting two boys. He was deported to Ireland after his release in 2000, and has since been named in many lawsuits, including one pending in Stanislaus County.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By John P. Martin
and David O’Reilly

Signaling an end to an investigation that stretched past a year, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput on Friday will announce the fates of parish priests suspended over allegations that they sexually abused or acted inappropriately around minors.

At least a dozen of the 27 affected priests are scheduled to learn the outcome of their cases in private meetings with Chaput on Thursday and Friday, according to a source familiar with the process but not authorized to publicly discuss it.

Insiders predict that only a few of those priests will be cleared of wrongdoing and restored to ministry, the source said. The ones who are not reinstated could be defrocked or choose to remain priests under a supervised life of prayer and penance.

The archbishop will disclose his decisions at a 2 p.m. news conference Friday at the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s Center City headquarters, church officials confirmed.

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STOCKTON (CA)
The Record

By Jennie Rodriguez-Moore
Record Staff Writer

May 03, 2012

STOCKTON – A new child sex-abuse lawsuit has been filed against the Catholic Diocese of Stockton and its highest-ranking official, Bishop Stephen Blaire, alleging abuse in 1992 by defrocked priest Oliver O’Grady.

Blaire became Stockton bishop in 1999.

An unidentified 25-year-old plaintiff was molested by the notorious O’Grady when he was 5 years old, according to the complaint. In 1992, O’Grady was assigned to St. Andrew’s Parish in San Andreas.

Blaire said he shared the complaint with Calaveras County law enforcement after obtaining a copy of court documents Wednesday.

Consultant Patrick Wall, a member of the Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, announced the civil action in front of the diocese’s pastoral center at San Joaquin and Channel streets.

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IRELAND
TV3

Cardinal Sean Brady is coming under increasing pressure to stand down following allegations that he failed to report clerical child sexual abuse in the 1970’s.

Several groups who work with victims – including the Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, have called for his resignation.

A BBC documentary claimed that Cardinal Brady knew of children who were at risk of abuse by paedophile priest Fr Brendan Smyth, but failed to pass on the information.

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SPRINGFIELD (PA)
The New York Times

By JON HURDLE

Published: May 2, 2012

SPRINGFIELD, Pa. — Several hundred Roman Catholic priests from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia gathered Wednesday for a closed-door meeting with Archbishop Charles J. Chaput days before he has said he hopes to announce the results of an investigation into claims of sexual abuse against 27 priests.

Church officials declined to disclose the topic of Wednesday’s meeting at a Catholic high school in suburban Philadelphia, and priests said beforehand that they had not been told what would be discussed. But the archbishop scheduled an announcement for Friday afternoon.

Priests made no comment to reporters after the 90-minute meeting.

The meeting prompted speculation that the archbishop would announce whether the priests would be allowed to remain in ministry after being placed on administrative leave early last year.

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IERLAND
Nieuws (Nederland)

(Novum/AP) – DUBLIN – Het hoofd van de katholieke kerk in Ierland, kardinaal Sean Brady, treedt niet af. Dat heeft hij woensdag gezegd. Brady wordt er in een BBC-documentaire van beticht kindermisbruik dat in de jaren zeventig werd begaan door een pedofiele priester te hebben verdoezeld. Brady zei dat zijn rol bij het schandaal in de documentaire wordt overdreven.

Brady interviewde in 1975 twee jongens die waren misbruikt door een katholieke priester, Brendan Smyth. Volgens Brady heeft hij zijn rapport dat hij opstelde naar aanleiding van de interviews doorgespeeld aan zijn bisschop, die op zijn beurt de leidinggevenden van Smyth had moeten inlichten. “Ik voel me verraden dat diegenen die de leiding hadden binnen de kerk Brendan Smyth niet hebben gestopt met behulp van het bewijs dat ik ze gaf”, aldus Brady. “Ik zie echter in dat ik deel uitmaakte van een cultuur van eerbied en zwijgzaamheid in de samenleving en de kerk. Die cultuur behoort nu gelukkig tot het verleden.”

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