ABUSE TRACKER

Due to concerns over the rapid spread of the Omicron COVID-19 variant, a much-anticipated meeting between Pope Francis and about 30 Indigenous delegates is now being postponed.

Made up of Indigenous elders, residential school survivors, and youth, the group would have been headed to the Vatican later this month in hopes of securing an apology from the Pope for the Catholic Church’s involvement with Canada’s residential schools.

“Our shared commitment to walking together towards healing and reconciliation remains strong,” read a joint statement issued by the Canadian Bishops, Assembly of First Nations, Metis National Council, and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. Organizers note that the meeting is not being cancelled but postponed to “the earliest opportunity in 2022.”

Crystal Gail Fraser, a Gwichya Gwich’in assistant professor in history and native studies at the University of Alberta, said that while the news is unfortunate, it’s not surprising considering…

View Cache

Mahoney accused of sexual assault

More than 40 years after the alleged abuse took place, a priest has been removed from public ministry after his diocese determined the allegations may be true.

The independent Diocesan Review Board found a claim of alleged sexual abuse against a minor that was lodged against 86-year-old Peter Mahoney to be credible, the diocese announced Nov. 22. The alleged crimes took place between 1975 and 1978 while he was serving in Brooklyn.

The DRB’s determination does not mean the allegations are true and that Mahoney is guilty, only that the panel believes them to be credible.

“But that determination is enough to get the priest removed from service,” a spokesperson from the diocese told the Chronicle.

At the time of the DRB’s determination, Mahoney had been ministering to the Hispanic community at Saint Anne Catholic Church in Flushing and St. Nicholas of Tolentine in Jamaica,…

View Cache

A former priest of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh was arrested this week for allegedly filming a teen in a bathroom stall.

Paul Spisak, 77, was arrested Wednesday on charges of photographic sexual acts involving a child or minor, possession of child pornography and invasion of privacy.

A 13-year-old boy saw Mr. Spisak filming him through a crack in a bathroom stall at the Target store in East Liberty, according to a criminal complaint. The boy told his father that he noticed Mr. Spisak filming him with his phone from the cracks in the adjacent stall while the teen was using the bathroom.

The boy’s father reported the incident to a Target security officer, who confronted Mr. Spisak, but the former priest denied the allegations.

The security guard called police, and an officer arrived as Mr. Spisak was attempting to flee the scene, the complaint says, with the boy’s father…

View Cache

In 1992, Anthony William Caruana faced two separate trials after students of Chevalier College in the Southern Highlands complained to police of his sexual abuse in 1989.

The Catholic priest, who was also a boarding master, rugby coach and band master at the school, had initially been charged with 11 offences against seven boys, but only two charges made it to trial.

With prosecutors at that time legally unable to link the two charges or show evidence to the juries of Caruana’s tendency to sexually abuse the boys under his care, he was acquitted.

Nearly 30 years later, his victims – now totalling 12, many of whom carry psychological scars not only from the abuse, but from being disbelieved – have finally seen justice.

Following a seven-week trial in the NSW District Court, Caruana was convicted in July of 22 counts of indecent assault and four counts of sexual intercourse with…

View Cache

Police and a former student of child abuser Anthony William Peter Caruana have described the pedophile priest’s jailing for 15 years as a good day.

The former Chevalier College teacher, now 80, attacked students in a swimming pool, a band storage room, dormitories, his office and on rugby pitches while working at the NSW Southern Highlands school from 1982 to 1989.

He was jailed on Friday for 26 offences against 12 boys.

The victims were aged 12 to 14 and often boarded at the school.

“It’s been 39 years in the coming and it’s a good day for all the victims,” Detective Senior Constable Brad Streeting told AAP.

“Justice for them has finally come and hopefully this will add to the closure for them.”

The sentiment was shared by Brendan King, who described Caruana as “an arrogant prick right to the end” who’d “lied and lied in the witness box”…

View Cache

[Via National Catholic Reporter]

Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, currently on sabbatical following criticism of his handling of clerical abuse cases in the Cologne Archdiocese, faces further pressure following the announcement that contracts he awarded to lawyers and communications consultants will be investigated under canon law.

The German Catholic news agency KNA reported that Bishop Rolf Steinhäuser, interim head of the archdiocese, said there were indications that neither the property council nor the cathedral chapter had been involved in the awarding of contracts, as would have been required under canon law. Woelki and Msgr. Markus Hofmann, archdiocesan vicar general, awarded the contracts, KNA reported.

After a meeting with the council and chapter, Steinhäuser immediately commissioned two independent canon lawyers to examine the matter and informed the Vatican, the archdiocese said Dec. 7.

Earlier this year, after revelations about the handling of abuse reports in the archdiocese, a Vatican investigation said Woelki…

View Cache

A meeting at the Vatican between Pope Francis and Canadian Indigenous people who were abused at church-run boarding schools has been postponed because of the new coronavirus variant.

National Chief RoseAnne Archibald of the Assembly of First Nations said Tuesday that the delegation had planned to travel to Rome next week and meet with the pope on Dec. 20, but the trip is being put off because of the omicron variant. Many of the First Nation delegates are elderly.

“Particularly for many elderly delegates as well as those who live in remote communities, the risk of infection and the fluid nature of the evolving global situation presents too great a threat at this time,” the Indigenous groups and Canadian Catholic bishops said in a joint statement.

From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 Indigenous children in Canada were forced to attend state-funded Christian schools as an effort…

View Cache

The Swiss bishops’ conference and the nation’s conference of religious orders have commissioned an independent study of sexual abuse cases within the Catholic Church in the country during the second half of the 20th century.

In a statement released Dec. 6, the bishops’ conference said two history professors from the University of Zurich — Monika Dommann and Marietta Maier — will assemble and lead a team of researchers who will begin their work by March 2022.

“Many people have suffered greatly as a result of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church in Switzerland,” the statement said. Undertaking “a scientific reexamination is first and foremost a duty to the victims, especially to learn lessons for the future.”

The announcement came after the October release of a report in France by an independent commission which estimated that more than 330,000 children had been abused by church personnel there since the 1950s.

In early November, the Portuguese bishops’ conference announced…

View Cache

Two months after the publication of the CIASE report on Sexual Abuse in the Church in France, Swiss bishops announce the establishment of an independent commission to investigate into historical cases of abuse committed in the Church in Switzerland.

Following the publication of the CIASE Report in France, the Catholic Church in Switzerland has decided conduct an independent investigation into sexual abuse committed by Church members in the country.

The Conferences of Swiss Bishops (CES) and of religious orders and other communities of consecrated life in Switzerland (KOVOS) together with Central Roman Catholic Conference of Switzerland (Rkz), which brings together 24 cantonal Catholic lay organizations, have entrusted the investigation to the University of Zurich. The study will look into historical cases of “sexual exploitation within the Roman Catholic Church in Switzerland from the second half of the twentieth century”, a press release reports.   The study will focus on…

View Cache

The leaders of the Catholic Church in Switzerland have commissioned a study into the Swiss church’s history of sexual exploitation since the mid-20th century.

The Swiss Bishops’ Conference and two other organisations announced on Monday that two University of Zurich history professors, Monika Dommann and Marietta Maier, would lead the study which is due to officially launch in March 2022.

“Countless people have endured deep suffering linked to sexual abuse in the context of the Roman Catholic Church,” the organisations said. “Work of scientific memory is owed first of all to the victims, but it will also provide lessons for the future.”

The one-year pilot project will give the researchers access to files and archives “where possible and authorized under canonical and state law”. 

A scientific committee appointed by the Swiss History Society will oversee the project to guarantee its independence.

In 2010, the Swiss Catholic Church finally…

View Cache

Pope Francis has urged caution in the “interpretation” of a damning report into child sexual abuse by French Catholic clergy, saying a “historical situation” must be viewed in context.

A landmark inquiry overseen by an independent commission confirmed in October extensive sexual abuse of minors by priests in France dating from the 1950s to 2020.

“When we do this kind of study, we must be attentive to the interpretation we make of it,” the 84-year-old pontiff told reporters on board his flight back from a trip to Greece.

“Abuse 100 years ago, 70 years ago, was brutality. But the way it was experienced is not the same as today,” he said.

“For example, in the case of abuse in the church, the attitude was to cover it up — an attitude that unfortunately still exists today in a large number of families.”

He added that the “historical situation” must be…

View Cache

Aboard papal flight, Francis also mentions plans for second meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill

Less than a week after accepting the resignation of Paris Archbishop Michel Aupetit following reports of an “ambiguous” relationship with a woman, Pope Francis on Dec. 6 defended the recently ousted prelate, saying “we cannot condemn.”

Aupetit, 70, offered his resignation to Francis last month after allegations surfaced that he had a relationship with a woman in 2012, prior to being made a bishop. 

The pope said he had not accepted the archbishop’s resignation “on the altar of truth, but on the altar of hypocrisy.”

The Paris archbishop has maintained that his relationship with the woman in question was not intimate. 

“If we do not know,” Francis told journalists, “we cannot condemn. Who knows? Ugly, eh?”

Although Francis’ defended the embattled prelate in flight, the Vatican previously announced on Dec….

View Cache

Pope Francis has given formal approval to a series of updates and modifications that have been made over the years to the norms regarding clerical sexual abuse and other crimes reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The newest version of the so-called “Norms on the delicts reserved to the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith” does not introduce any new crimes, but it does seek to improve the procedural norms regarding the penal process and to update those canons connected with the recently revised “Book VI: Penal Sanctions in the Church” that was to go into effect Dec. 8.

The document, published by the Vatican Dec. 7, changes and updates modifications St. John Paul II in 2001 and Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 made to the list of canonical delicts or crimes reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the procedures for handling such cases.

Since then, many new measures have…

View Cache

Warning: This story contains graphic details of alleged sexual assault

A law firm representing men who say they were sexually assaulted by at least five priests when they were children is requesting authorization for a class action lawsuit against the entire Diocese of Amos, in Quebec’s Abitibi region.

The application, being presented in the Superior Court of the District of Abitibi on Tuesday, targets the Diocese of Amos and the Bishop of Amos for alleged crimes from 1940 to the present day.

The men say they were between the ages of seven and 14 at the time of the alleged assaults.

The plaintiff representing the class action is a 65-year-old man who cannot be identified. He alleges that he was sexually assaulted on several occasions when he was between seven and 11 years old.

The motion, led by Montreal law firm Arsenault Dufresne Wee, alleges that Father Paul-Émile Bilodeau, a…

View Cache

A legal advocacy group in Timor-Leste has called on people in the Catholic-majority country to show respect for the alleged sex abuse victims of former priest Richard Daschbach.

In a public statement on Dec. 6, Jurídico Social Consultoria (JU,S) which represents the complainants, said it is important “to recognize that the victims and their families, and the society as a whole, have endured immense pain and suffering as a consequence of the acts that led to this case.”

JU,S  has urged members of the public to use restraint while publishing statements “aimed at demeaning, intimidating and harassing our sisters for solely choosing to use the available legal procedure to demand redress for their rights.”  

JU,S said that its efforts to pursue the case posed many challenges. “These included messages of hatred and of a xenophobic nature, incitements of violence on social media and within the local community against JU,S…

View Cache

Almost 20 years ago, clergy abuse survivor Phil Saviano told the first Voice of the Faithful conference: “I am not faithful.” He said the repeated assaults he suffered from Fr. David Holley had led to losing his faith before he even went through puberty.

Yet, on Dec. 3, Saviano was buried in a rural cemetery of the Diocese of Worcester, after a funeral Mass at St. Denis Catholic Church in Douglas, Massachusetts.

It was the very church where Saviano had been sexually assaulted repeatedly as a boy by Holley. A familiar photo shows Phil in front of St. Denis – the church and the statue – in the late 1990s, wearing a Recovering Catholic T-shirt. What are we to make of Phil Saviano’s provocative final gesture?

Phil’s funeral Mass (the video is available here) was nothing like the healing Masses and ceremonies of…

View Cache

Billionaire businessman Andrew Forrest is poised to snap up prime farmland surrounding Australia’s only monastic town of New Norcia, 130 kilometres north of Perth in WA.

Key points:

• The historic townsite north of Perth is not part of the sale
• It’s the first time the land is being sold in 175 years
• The property is touted as some of the best farming land in the state

In a deal subject to approval by the Catholic Church, Mr Forrest’s Tattarang company is set to buy the 7,975 hectares of farmland surrounding the historic townsite that was established by Benedictine monks as part of an Aboriginal mission in 1847.

It will be the first time the land, near the banks of the Moore River, has changed hands since then.

The remaining small community of monks at New Norcia made the “difficult decision” earlier this year to sell the land to pay for historical sexual…

View Cache

The new Netflix documentary “Procession” follows six men who were sexually abused by Catholic priests from the Kansas City area. The film, made by University of Missouri Associate Professor Robert Greene, shows the survivors reclaiming power through drama therapy techniques.

The men attempt to heal from decades of pain by creating short films, some set at the very location the abuse happened. The scenes aren’t graphic, but symbolic of the power priests have.

All of the men agreed that child actor Terrick Trobough would play their younger selves. And the men themselves acted in the scenes as well.

“Just having actors come off the streets with no skin in the game wouldn’t help us raise this up to the level we’re trying to get [to],” one survivor Dan Laurine said.

The film takes viewers through the three-year process the men took to create the scenes, offering an intimate look at…

View Cache

On October 5, 2021, the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE), chaired by Jean-Marc Sauvé, published the report that the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF) and by the Conference of Men and Women Religious of France (COREFF) had commissioned it to produce.

The following is an analysis by Fr. Arnaud Sélégny (SSPX).

The sentence fell like a cleaver: the president announced that 216,000 minors had been victims of assault by ecclesiastical staff or consecrated persons – priests, deacons, men or women religious – a figure which would rise to 330,000 if the lay staff attached to the Church were taken into consideration. These numbers obviously went off like a bomb. They were relayed and taken as final and firmly established.

The report also presents a series of explanatory causes, from which it draws a list of 45 recommendations to implement the suggestions, and the reforms it advocates.

…

View Cache

Everybody likes Pope Francis. Except, it seems, U.S. Catholic bishops. 

On the other hand, no one seems to like the bishops — they damaged their own credibility with their 2002 “Dallas Charter” on clerical sex abuse, which sanctioned only priests and deacons but left bishops alone. 

It was former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, known then, as now, for his own predatory acts, who suggested eliminating bishops from the document. 

Once again, today, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops seems bereft of common sense. 

Forget the worldwide Synod on Synodality, a listening exercise ordered by Francis, who wants to hear from Catholics and non-Catholics alike about how the church can move forward in the current century. Many American bishops are content to ignore it: Only half of the U.S. bishops have even named someone to run the synod project in their dioceses.

That is, half of the U.S. bishops are…

View Cache

Newly named Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller says he wants to get to the bottom of why Ottawa abandoned its appeal of a ruling releasing the Catholic Church from its settlement obligations to residential school survivors.

“I am as puzzled as everyone,” he told The Canadian Press in a recent, wide-ranging interview.“

“I don’t know what there is to do yet.”

The ruling, handed down by a Saskatchewan judge in July 2015, found a deal had been struck between the federal government and a corporation of Catholic entities. That deal released the church groups from their remaining obligations within the $79-million worth of payments and in-kind services owed to survivors under the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, approved in 2006.

That included, for example, a “best efforts” fundraising campaign to generate $25 million, for which court only heard the groups raised around $3 million since the agreement took effect in 2007.

Today, the…

View Cache

Canada’s Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister says the federal government will soon release some of the residential school records it’s been criticized for withholding to a national archives centre.

Marc Miller also says there’s no evidence the Liberal cabinet, including former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, was told of a 2015 decision to drop a court case that freed the Catholic Church from compensating survivors.

“Knowing what we know today — it doesn’t seem right,” he told The Canadian Press in a recent interview.

In October, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation said Ottawa had yet to provide key documents detailing the specific histories of each government-funded, church-run institution that made up the residential school system.

The statement came in response to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau telling Indigenous leaders in Kamloops, B.C., that the federal government had turned over all of the records in its possession, a claim the Winnipeg-based centre said wasn’t…

View Cache

When Robert Bender arrived at Brewster Hall in 1980, Conrad Mainwaring was the first person he met.

“He was the face of Syracuse University,” Bender said.

Mainwaring, who worked in a residence hall at the time, introduced himself while leading Bender and his mother up the stairs. When he learned that Bender was a gymnast, Mainwaring, a former Olympian who was studying and coaching at SU, became excited, Bender said.

In the following weeks, Mainwaring watched Bender practice at Archbold Gymnasium. He told stories about the Olympics. Eventually, Mainwaring sexually assaulted Bender.

But unlike the survivors who have sued SU for employing the man who abused them as children, Bender has no legal recourse. He is just six months older than some of the plaintiffs currently battling the university in court, but because Bender was 18 when Mainwaring began abusing him, he cannot sue.

Survivors, legislators and advocacy groups hope…

View Cache

It was one of the craziest stories of 2019, and now it’s one of the most infuriating stories of 2021.

I’m referring to the case of Angel Garcia, the former Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany deacon who last week was indicted on two felony counts related to the sexual abuse of children — acts that he allegedly committed when he should have been in state prison for sexually abusing his 6-year-old goddaughter years ago. 

It’s quite possible that the only reason Garcia was finally consigned to prison two years ago was because Cayla Harris, at the time a newly arrived Hearst Fellow at the Times Union, uncovered a monumental judicial-bureaucratic oversight while she was building a database of regional sexual offenders and their status. The project was part of her coverage of abuse cases launched under the state’s Child Victims Act law, which in August 2019 opened a one-year “lookback window”…

View Cache

The activist has died at age 69.

Phil Saviano never let go. From the time in the basement of St. Denis Church, when he was molested by a priest named David Holley, through the years of cover-ups and denials, through the belated—and ongoing—vindication of himself and thousands of other victims in the early 1990s, through a lifetime of deadly medical problems that began with an AIDS diagnosis in 1992 to the cancer that finally killed him over the weekend, Phil Saviano just would…not…let…go. He would not let go of the crimes coated with candle wax, their stench camouflaged by incense. He sunk his teeth into an institutional Roman Catholic Church that had turned into an international conspiracy to obstruct justice, and he hung on with the kind of strength of character that we little Catholic schoolchildren had been taught was the martyr’s true glory. The truth set him free, but…

View Cache

Since Gov. Murphy signed a 2019 law that suspended the statute of limitations for civil sex abuse lawsuits for two years, more than 1,200 cases were filed — two-thirds of them against clergy or a religious institution.

A window to justice opened, and the people who had spent years or decades harboring an unfathomable pain stepped through it.

But the deadline for those victims to file suit ended Tuesday, and examination of the available data makes this much clear: The suspension of the statute needs to be extended, and our lawmakers should consider waiving it entirely.

Victims of abuse need time to decide whether they can share their experience. That’s why the bill championed by Senator Joe Vitale was crucial, because the previous window for civil action in our state was preposterous: Victims had to bring civil suits before they turned 20 or within two years from the…

View Cache

A Cincinnati priest pleaded guilty Thursday to raping an altar boy in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a day before jury selection was set to begin in his trial.

The Rev. Geoff Drew showed no emotion in court as the victim, now a man in his 40s, as well as the man’s wife described the impact of Drew’s crimes.

“You killed me,” the man told Drew. “I’ve been through hell.”

The man’s wife said that for many years her husband believed he was to blame for what happened.

“That he had been too weak … or too kind or too trusting,” she said. “That he was unloved, and worst of all, that he was alone.”

As part of the plea agreement, Drew received a seven-year prison sentence, a sentence the victim had been consulted about, according to prosecutors.

Drew pleaded guilty to nine counts of rape for incidents that happened between 1988…

View Cache

Father Geoff Drew of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati was placed on administrative leave on July 23, 2019 as a result of a pattern of behaviors – such as boundary violations and texting a minor – in contradiction to the Decree on Child Protection. Subsequent to being placed on administrative leave, Father Drew was arrested and charged with nine counts of rape. These were new, previously unreported allegations dating back to the late 1980s, a decade before he entered the seminary to begin formation for the priesthood.

Information previously released about this matter can be found on the website of the archdiocese:

Fr. Geoff Drew Information

Given the guilty plea accepted today in court, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati will now seek the laicization of Father Geoff Drew with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Holy See.

“Father Geoff Drew will never again have a priestly assignment in…

View Cache

[See original article for links to videos]

A Cincinnati priest pleaded guilty Thursday to nine counts of raping a 10-year-old altar boy multiple times between 1988 and 1991 and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

That sentence, worked out in a plea deal with Hamilton County prosecutors on the eve of the start of his trial, is far less than he would have faced had he been convicted of all charges, up to 99 years.

Now, Father Geoff Drew, 59, will be released from prison in 2026. He received credit for time served at the county jail while awaiting trial, 27 months.

Drew is required to register as a Tier III sex offender for the rest of his life.

The priest wore a face covering in court, appeared to show no emotion and did not speak.

His attorney said on his behalf: “The defense expresses remorse over what happened.”

…

View Cache

A Catholic priest from Cincinnati pleaded guilty on Thursday to raping a 10-year-old altar decades ago, one day before the jury was to be selected for his trial.

The Rev. Geoff Drew, 59, was reportedly emotionless at his court appearance when he was directly addressed by his victim, now in his 40s.

“The truth is no amount of time will make up for the child that you murdered,” the victim told his abuser, according to Fox 19.

“Any chance of having intimacy, any chance to actually live, love, find joy, was stolen,” the victim said. “You made me unusable, undesirable, dirty and broken, but I trust in God that this is bigger than you. This is bigger than me. And this is in his authority to have vengeance. And one day you will have to stand in front of him.”

Drew was sentenced to seven years in…

View Cache

He played a pivotal role in helping The Boston Globe uncover the widespread scandal in the Catholic Church and was portrayed in the movie “Spotlight.”

Phil Saviano carried a terrible secret for much of his life — that in the early 1960s, when he was 11, he was sexually molested by his parish priest in Massachusetts.

Nearly 30 years later, suffering from AIDS and believing he would soon die, he decided to go public about the abuse and disclosed his experience to The Boston Globe. As it happened, Mr. Saviano lived, and he went on to play a pivotal role in bringing to light the widespread pedophile priest scandal coursing through the Roman Catholic Church.

He provided key information and guidance for a series of articles by The Globe’s Spotlight team, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003. And his role…

View Cache

Just two years after his ordination in 2017, the Rev. Robert McWilliams was charged with a cascade of sexual assault and child pornography charges. He was sentenced to life imprisonment a few weeks ago, on Nov. 9, in a federal criminal court in Cleveland.

The McWilliams case came as an unhappy shock to Catholics in the Diocese of Cleveland and all over the United States who might have hoped that years of procedural changes and an enhanced screening process for seminarians would have put an end to the ordination of priests like Father McWilliams. The most recent report card from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection, released the same day as Father McWilliams’s sentencing, offered some reason for optimism. Although 4,228 allegations of sexual abuse by clergy surfaced between July 1, 2019, and June 30, 2020, only 22 came from individuals who are now minors; the…

View Cache

Guam’s Catholic Church has come up with a revised proposed payment of US$27.96 million to US$34.38 million to those who claimed they were raped or sexually molested by priests and other members of the clergy when they were minors, dating back to the 1950s.

That’s more than US$100,000 per clergy sex abuse survivor if the award is based on equal amounts, although the process is far from over.

Clergy sex abuse survivors and other claimants would need to vote to either accept or reject the plan from the Archdiocese of Agana.

The bankruptcy court’s confirmation of the plan is also needed. Once the plan is confirmed after a hearing, payments may begin about three months later.

The proposed compensation to abuse survivors is part of the Archdiocese of Agana’s First Amended Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Plan of reorganisation filed Thursday with the District Court of Guam.

The plan is meant to…

View Cache

Portugal is going forward with a commission to investigate possible cases of child sex abuse within the Catholic Church, as the lay head of the committee urged victims to come forward on Thursday.

The Independent Committee for the Study of Child Abuse in the Church has been set up by the Portuguese bishops’ conference and will be headed by a child psychiatrist, Pedro Strecht.

Alongside him will be a team of six professionals including psychiatrists, a former supreme court judge, and a social worker.

The team will begin working together from January next year, collecting testimonies from all of those who want to come forward and report the abuse they have suffered.

Strecht said he hopes victims will overcome their fear and reluctance and get in touch, even if the abuse happened decades ago. He promised anonymity for anyone who does.

“Encouraging victims to come forward requires a lot of…

View Cache

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Archbishop Michel Aupetit of Paris, who had offered to step down to avoid “becoming a source of divisions,” after an article in the Le Point weekly claimed he mismanaged his archdiocese and had an affair with a woman while he was vicar general.

The pope also named retired Archbishop Georges Pontier to temporarily lead the archdiocese as the apostolic administrator; the 78-year-old archbishop had served as apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Avignon from January to July after deep divisions and financial difficulties lead to the early retirement of Archbishop Jean-Pierre Marie Cattenoz.

The Vatican made the announcement Dec. 2.

Archbishop Aupetit, 70, had told France’s Catholic La Croix daily Nov. 26 he had submitted his resignation to the pope and awaited his answer, adding that his behavior toward the unnamed woman “may have been ambiguous,” but had not extended to “an intimate…

View Cache

Well, the Holy Father turned that one around right quickly. “That” is the resignation of the Archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, which the Press Office of the Holy See on Thursday told the world Pope Francis has accepted. Francis had Aupetit’s letter late last month, just after Le Point published something between an exposé and an unflattering profile of the Parisian churchman, detailing his strongman governance of the French capital archdiocese and alleging an affair with a woman some years before he became a bishop.

Archbishop Aupetit denied his relationship with the woman was sexual, but called it a “mistake” in a statement and said he offered his resignation “to preserve the diocese from the division that suspicion and loss of trust are continuing to provoke.”

Other churchmen credibly accused of much worse wrongdoing have seen their offers of resignation languish for months and even years.

From Donald Cardinal Wuerl – who fudged…

View Cache

When I filed my story on the problems of the diocese of Paris, A Crisis of Governance in the French Church, for this week’s Tablet, I had little sense that Pope Francis would accept Archbishop Michel Aupetit’s resignation before the week was done. The news slipped out in the Vatican’s daily bollettino yesterday, while the Pope was on his way to Cyprus

Michel Aupetit was not the right man for Paris. He glaringly lacked the human, political and cultural skills to run the most important diocese in France. He alienated many of his priests; some saw him as an old-fashioned GP (he was one before coming a priest) with a “doctor knows best” attitude. The Vatican knew all this; Libération reports that the Papal Nuncio to France, Mgr Celestino Miglior, had been trying discreetly to move Aupetit for some time – perhaps to exfiltrate him to a position in the Roman curia.

Aupetit’s resignation…

View Cache

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Michel Aupetit from the position of Archbishop of Paris following reports that Aupetit had a consensual “intimate relationship” with a woman.

The move was announced in a statement from the Vatican Thursday after French magazine Le Point broke the news of the relationship on November 22.

Aupetit also released a statement after the Vatican announced its decision.

“I was, of course, greatly disturbed by the attacks I was subjected to,” reads the statement.

“I ask forgiveness of those whom I might have hurt and I assure you all of my deep friendship and my prayer, which will always be yours.

“The alleged relationship came to light due to a love email Aupetit sent to his secretary by mistake in 2012, when he was the Vicar-General of Paris, according to Le Point.

Despite admitting in the Le Point article that his…

View Cache

Pope Francis on Thursday accepted the resignation of the archbishop of Paris, who unexpectedly offered to step down last week after admitting to an “ambiguous” relationship with a woman in 2012.

Paris Archbishop Michel Aupetit said in a statement Thursday that he offered to step down “to preserve the diocese from the division that suspicion and loss of trust are continuing to provoke.”

The Vatican said in a statement that the pope accepted Aupetit’s offer, and named Monsignor Georges Pontier to serve temporarily in his place pending the pontiff’s appointment of a permanent new archbishop.

The resignation comes amid great upheaval in the French Catholic Church. A report in October estimated some 3,000 French priests had committed sexual abuse over the past 70 years. And last year, the pope accepted the resignation of French Roman Catholic Cardinal Philippe Barbarin in connection with the coverup of sexual abuse of dozens of boys by a…

View Cache

Gone too soon

Philip James Saviano

June 23, 1952 – November 28, 2021

Philip James Saviano passed away on November 28, 2021. His funeral service will be live streamed from St. Denis Catholic Church (located in Douglas, Massachusetts) on Friday, December 3, 2021 at 10:00 a.m. EST.

[Note: This Catholic funeral Mass will be said by Fr. Ron Coyne; see his homily on clergy abuse. Eulogies will be given toward the end of the Mass.

Phil Saviano, clergy abuse victim who refused to stay silent, dies at 69, by Bryan Marquard, Boston Globe

Phil Saviano, advocate for survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, dies at 69, by Matt Schudel, Washington Post]

View Cache

A commission investigating allegations of historical child sexual abuse by members of the Portuguese Catholic church urged victims on Thursday to speak up and help them lift a veil of silence around the issue.

“We want (victims) to report, finally and without fear, what happened to them,” the head of the newly-created commission, psychiatrist Pedro Strecht, told a news conference during which he announced the team conducting the investigation.

Portugal’s Bishops Conference announced the creation of the body last month after a major investigation in France revealed that around 3,000 priests and religious officials sexually abused 200,000 children over the past 70 years. 

The Roman Catholic Church has been rocked by sexual abuse scandals around the world, often involving children, over the past 20 years.

“The Portuguese church is the first to want to shed light on this issue,” said Jose Ornelas, head of the Bishops’ Conference. “If I expect…

View Cache

A clergy sexual abuse case with ties to the Columban Fathers Mission House in Milton in the 1970s and 1980s was settled earlier this month with the plaintiff receiving a sum in the “high five figures,” according his attorney, Mitchell Garabedian.

The plaintiff, whose name is not listed in the complaint, said in the court case filed in Norfolk Superior Court on Nov. 3 that he was sexually abused by two priests working at St. Mark’s Parish in Dorchester starting in 1979 and 1980.

View Cache

Clergy sex abuse survivors and other creditors in the Archdiocese of Agana’s bankruptcy are proposing much higher payouts, including more real property asset transfers and insurance payments for the victims, compared to the church’s proposal of up to $34 million.

The creditors’ committee, for example, is looking at a minimum of $100 million in settlement payments from insurance firms: $45 million from the archdiocese’s insurers, and “not less than” $55 million from the Boy Scouts of America’s insurers.

When the archdiocese submitted its reorganization plan and disclosure statement Thursday, it anticipated getting only $13 million from its two insurers. 

The Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors on Tuesday filed its own archdiocese reorganization plan to get the church out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

A key part of the two competing plans is the cash, real property and other resources to help compensate some 270 individuals who claim they were raped, sexually…

View Cache

A once high-ranking Omaha priest, charged with stealing tens of thousands of dollars, is also now linked to several priests named in a recent state investigation detailing widespread sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. 

A once high-ranking Omaha priest, charged with stealing tens of thousands of dollars, is also now linked to several priests named in a recent state investigation detailing widespread sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. 

The report, released last month by Attorney General Doug Peterson indicates that Rev. Michael Gutgsell, when he was Chancellor of the Omaha Archdiocese from 1994 to 2003, knew about abuse allegations against three priests and all but ignored them.

The first case regarding the 73-year-old Gutgsell involves Rev. John Fiala who died in 2017.

[See our video report above]

According to the AG’s report, one of Fiala’s four victims met with Chancellor Gutgsell in 2002 and accused Fiala of sexually grooming him when he…

View Cache

[Note from BishopAccountability: Click on “Read original article” and scroll down to hear the 11-minute interview of BA co-director Anne Barrett Doyle about Phil. The interview opens with a wonderful clip from Phil’s remarks in accepting SNAP’s Pioneer Award in 2015. Here’s a link to the YouTube video of that powerful speech. The clip played by Boston Public Radio occurs at the 26:30 mark in Phil’s speech.]

Gov. Charlie Baker discussed why testing is not more widely available across the state, his efforts to create a single QR code showing proof of vaccination, and his dissatisfaction with the state legislature’s delay in spending the American Rescue Plan Act money. Baker is the governor of Massachusetts.

The Revs. Irene Monroe and Emmett G. Price III reacted to the conviction of Ahmaud Arbery’s murderers last week. Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist, the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail and…

View Cache

In the wake of a recent devastating report by a special commission in France investigating sexual abuse of minors by clergy, a new committee has been established by the religious men and women’s conference (the Conférence des Religieux et Religieuses de France or CORREF) to hear testimonials of victims of sexual abuse by religious men and women, including abuses suffered by adults and members of religious communities.

Many stories of abuses against nuns have been reported without action being taken. This new committee will allow any potential victim to state their case. Named “Commission Indépendante de Reconnaissance et de Réparation” (“Independent Commission for Recognition and Reparation,” or CRR) the new committee will collect testimonials of abuse. It will listen to victims of religious men and women, in the hope that a mediation could lead to an agreement between the parties. It will also look into what can be done in…

View Cache

New Jersey’s two-year window that made it easier for victims of child sexual abuse to file lawsuits is closing, and attorneys for some of the hundreds of plaintiffs say it could take years more for the cases against Catholic clerics and dioceses and other entities to be resolved.

Tuesday marked the deadline under the Child Victims Act signed by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy in 2019, which gave victims who would otherwise have been barred by statute of limitations laws two years to file their claims.

Since Dec. 1, 2019, more than 1,200 lawsuits had been filed through the end of October. About two-thirds of those named religious entities, according to the state judiciary. Lawsuits against schools represent about 14% and about 9% name the Boy Scouts.

Attorneys who represent a total of several hundred plaintiffs said Tuesday they’ve received a flurry of inquiries in recent weeks as the deadline approached….

View Cache

A high school student gets assaulted. Their innocence is shattered; their life, forever changed.

School officials learn about the incident. They do worse than nothing; they cover it up, and even laugh about the matter. Their superiors look the other way. The enablers and abusers get protected; the survivor gets ostracized. And when critics cry foul, the institution plays the victim card.

Just another day at Mater Dei High School, the crown jewel of Catholic education in the Diocese of Orange.

Its powerhouse football team is making national news right now, and not just because the Monarchs are on the cusp of claiming their fourth national championship in five seasons. A lawsuit filed last month against Mater Dei and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange says a former football player suffered a broken nose, a traumatic brain injury and permanent scarring in a February hazing ritual called “Bodies” that amounted to…

View Cache

The departure of Aupetit creates a new challenge for the French Church.

The Pope has accepted the resignation of the Archbishop of Paris Michel Aupetit and has  appointed Mgr Georges Pontier as appostolic administrator.

The affair is a further blow to France’s Catholic Church, still dealing with a shocking report on clerical sexual abuse of minors.

Archbishop Aupetit had unexpectedly offered to resign last week over media reports about his brusque management style.

Discontent with the archbishop burst into the open when the centre-right newsweekly Le Point published a long inquiry into his controversial decisions and spoke of “his scathing ways, his singular lack of listening and empathy”.

It also reported a decade-old relationship with a woman, which Aupetit insists was not intimate and was reported to his superiors. 

The case has been a headache for Pope Francis, forced to decide whether to back a much-criticised bishop or find a new face…

View Cache

Pope Francis accepted the resignation of the archbishop of Paris. Michel Aupetit offered to step down over “ambiguous behavior” with a woman.

Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Michel Aupetit, the archbishop of Paris on Thursday over his “ambiguous” relationship with a woman, the Vatican and the French Bishops Conference said.

Aupetit offered his resignation after a report in Le Point magazine surfaced allegations that he had engaged in a consensual relationship with a woman, which he denied.

What has Aupetit said?

In a statement, Aupetit offered that he stepped down “to preserve the diocese from the division that suspicion and loss of trust are continuing to provoke.”

A spokeswoman for the diocese last week said Aupetit “had ambiguous behavior with a person he was very close to,” adding the relationship was neither sexual nor “a loving relationship.”

She said Aupetit’s resignation was “not a confession of guilt, but a humble…

View Cache

Members of a French Catholic academy have criticized the methodology of a landmark abuse report, prompting resignations from the group.

Eight representatives of the prestigious Académie catholique de France, which has around 250 members, questioned the conclusions of the final report published by the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) on Oct. 5.

The academy members wrote a 15-page document that acknowledged the need for an independent study of clerical abuse. But they argued that CIASE departed “in a troubling way” from its mandate and cast doubt on its headline figures.

The almost 2,500-page CIASE report said that the number of children who suffered abuse by priests, deacons, monks, or nuns from 1950 to 2020 was estimated to be around 216,000.

It added that when abuse by other Church workers was also considered “the estimated number…

View Cache

The leader of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston on Tuesday praised the courage of Phil Saviano, a clergy sexual abuse survivor who played a key role in bringing the global scandal to light and who died Sunday at the age of 69.

“We are very sorry to hear of the passing of Phil Saviano and are consoled to know that his brother, Jim, accompanied him during his illness,” said Cardinal Seán O’Malley in a statement. “Phil was a landmark voice of courage for survivors and played a significant role in uncovering the darkness of clergy sexual abuse in the life of the Church.”

O’Malley said the relentless advocacy of Saviano, whose personal story and precise documentation of perpetrator priests helped inform The Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the abuse crisis, forced the church to reckon with its history of harming minors.

“Phil’s…

View Cache

Phil Saviano, who was abused by a Catholic parish priest when he was a child in the 1970s and who as an adult in 2002 helped shed light on clergy sex abuse of minors in the Archdiocese of Boston, died Nov. 28. He was 69.

Saviano died at his brother’s home in Douglas after a long battle with bladder cancer. His brother Jim Saviano was his caretaker in his final days.

Boston Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley in a Nov. 30 statement called him “a landmark voice of courage for survivors” who “played a significant role in uncovering the darkness of clergy sexual abuse in the life of the church.”

“We are very sorry to hear of the passing of Phil Saviano and are consoled to know that his brother Jim accompanied him during his illness,” the cardinal said.

“Phil’s strident advocacy and his role in the investigative reporting of clergy…

View Cache

The Springfield Diocese has added another name to the list of clergy who have been credibly accused of sex abuse.

The list continues to grow for clergy who have been accused of sex abuse within the Springfield Diocese. The Diocese said the late Father Joseph Quinlan was added to the list based on a credible finding by their review board. His name was added due to an alleged incident involving sexual abuse to a minor in 1974.

The late Fr. Joseph P. Quinlan added to list of credibly accused clergy by the Diocese of Springfield 

Quinlan now joins a list of more than 40 names after the Diocese began a new policy this past summer amid a scandal over rape allegations against late Bishop Christopher Weldon. Bishop William Byrne said the Diocese has been working to publish names who have a credible allegation of sexual abuse against them.

In…

View Cache

A former assistant pastor at a Catholic church in Northwest Washington who is serving a prison sentence for sexually abusing children was found guilty Monday in a separate case of sexually abusing an adult parishioner, officials said.

After a one-day trial in D.C. Superior Court and hearing a victim impact statement, Judge Juliet McKenna sentenced Urbano Vazquez, 49, to the maximum sentence of 180 days on one count of misdemeanor sexual abuse, officials said. That term will be served consecutively to a 15-year sentence that was imposed after Vazquezwas convicted in 2019 of four felony counts of child sexual abuse, according to a statement by the District’s U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves and Police Chief Robert J. Contee III.

Catholic priest found guilty of sexually abusing girls at his D.C. parish

The abuse of the woman occurred in April 2017 during a confession at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart…

View Cache

Robert Brennan has officially assumed the role as the eighth Bishop of Brooklyn, taking over the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens from scandal-plagued Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, who has presided over the Diocese’s 1.3 million Catholics since 2003.

Brennan, 59, formally assumed the role at an installation ceremony, presided over by Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, and Archbishop Christophe Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the US, at the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph in Prospect Heights. Brennan previously served as the Bishop of Columbus, Ohio since 2019.

“From the day that my appointment was announced at the end of September through today and going forward, I just experienced such an incredible welcome,” Brennan said at a press conference before the mass on Tuesday morning. “Back in September my heartstrings were tugging as I was leaving Columbus, but now that I’ve been here a couple days, I can’t wait to get started.”

DiMarzio…

View Cache

Indigenous people in Canada and the U.S. have been reckoning with the legacy of assimilationist boarding schools for years. Now non-Native people must too.

North america’s indigenous peoples carry a painful past.This truth was laid bare when the mass graves of hundreds of Native children who died while attending residential schools were discovered in Canada this summer. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, thousands of Native children in the United States and Canada were forced into assimilationist boarding schools that sought to strip them of their culture and heritage. Many died from disease, starvation, or physical abuse. Most were buried hastily, sometimes two or three small bodies to a grave. Outside the Native community, their deaths have been lost to obscurity, a painful chapter in a long-ago history, willfully forgotten. But try as they might, non-Native people cannot dodge the past.

Indigenous people on both sides of what Natives people call the…

View Cache

‘The Veil of Silence,’ a new book by Vatican reporter Salvatore Cernuzio, details the racism, abuse and discrimination faced by nuns in female Catholic congregations.

In a newly published book, a Vatican journalist details the mental and physical abuse, oppression and racism experienced by religious sisters. Their treatment is often considered one of the most hidden issues within the Catholic Church.

The book, “The Veil of Silence: Abuses, Violence and Frustrations in Female Religious Life,” is written by Salvatore Cernuzio, a Vatican reporter from Italy, after he began to hear the stories of abuse and belittlement that exist in many female religious congregations.

Cernuzio tells the story of 11 nuns from different backgrounds and from countries all over the world who experienced forms of abuse — verbal, physical and sexual — while in a religious congregation. The stories differ in terms of who perpetrated the abuse, the reactions of the…

View Cache

Catholic Academy blasts abuse report released last October, but the independent commission’s head, Jean-Marc Sauvé, defends his group’s work in an exclusive interview with “La Croix”

The president and seven other members of the Catholic Academy of France (l’Académie catholique de France) have sharply attacked the country’s Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) for producing what they consider to be a skewed document that could be “ruinous” for institutional Catholicism.

In private letters to the president of French Bishops’ Conference (CEF) and the papal nuncio to France, which were leaked to the media, the Academy members say the CIASE report was wrong to impute the Church with systemic responsibility for sexual abuse.

The eight members of the Academy – including its president, Hugues Portelli, a French senator and current dean of social sciences and economics at the Institut Catholique of Paris – questioned certain juridical and theological…

View Cache

• Vatican journalist Salvatore Cernuzio revealed the torment endured by 11 nuns
• His book ‘Veil of Silence’ chronicles the sexual, physical and psychological abuse
• Some nuns say they have been molested by priests or subjected to brutal labour
• Others complained of overt racism and a culture of protectionism in the church 

A new book has revealed horrors endured by Catholic nuns with some blamed for ‘provoking’ a priest’s sexual abuse and others told they ‘must suffer for Jesus’ with back-breaking labour.  

‘Veil of Silence’ by Salvatore Cernuzio, a journalist for the Vatican’s online outlet, Vatican News, recounts the experiences of 11 nuns as part of an age-old system in which their Mother Superiors exacted cruel punishments and Catholic priests molested them.

‘They chose to protect the good name of the institution by sacrificing the victim,’ Cernuzio’s introduction reads. 

‘The abused nun is transferred, accused of seducing the priest, and the priest stays at…

View Cache

A priest who served the Diocese of Springfield from 1971 until his death in 1989 was added Monday to the list of those credibly accused of sexual abuse.

The diocese listed the name of Joseph P. Quinlan on its online directory of priests and other church personnel against whom an allegation of abuse — in this instance, it was sexual abuse of a minor — has been upheld by the Review Board.

The diocese says it updates that list quarterly.

Quinlan was ordained at age 43 and was a longtime director of Cathedral High School in Springfield. He served or lived in four parishes. He never was in charge of a parish in Berkshire County, according to the diocese, whose list of credibly accused priests, updated in June, included 33 from Berkshire County.

A 34th priest from Berkshire County, the late James Paul Menge, was added to the list in…

View Cache

Most drivers and pedestrians who travel a part of Washington Street in West New York are oblivious to what the man whose name graces the thoroughfare has been accused of doing.

At least four people have said Msgr. Eugene Fanelli abused them when he was pastor at Our Lady of Libera Roman Catholic Church and they were children in the West New York parish.

“The fact that a street was named after him is heinous,” said Jason Schack, who filed a lawsuit in November alleging that Fanelli abused him for seven years, beginning when he was 8. “The sign needs to come down.”

In early November, Schack rallied in West New York with a number of clergy abuse victims and advocates who urged officials in the Hudson County town to remove the sign, which was erected to honor the longtime priest of the Newark Archdiocese, who was made a monsignor in 1989.

This isn’t the first time a…

View Cache

The Diocese of Springfield has added another priest to their list of credibly accused clergy.

Officials said Monday that the late Father Joseph Quinlan was added to the list by the diocesan review board.  He was added to the list based on an allegation from 1974 involving a minor.

Quinlan was ordained in 1971 and held positions at St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Palmer and Cathedral High School in Springfield.  He also served in residence at Our Lady of Sacred Heart Parish in Springfield, St. Joseph Parish in Springfield, and St. Joseph’s Mission in East Longmeadow.

The diocese noted that an allegation being found credible doesn’t indicate a finding of guilt and because Quinlan died in 1989, he could not respond to the allegation.  The diocesan review board carefully reviewed the allegation, which included a report by their investigative team, and found the allegation to be…

View Cache

[Includes news video featuring photos and clips of Phil, along with comments by Terry McKiernan and Ann Hagan Webb]

View Cache

Phil Saviano, a clergy sex abuse survivor and whistleblower who played a pivotal role in exposing decades of predatory assaults by Roman Catholic priests in the United States, has died. He was 69.

Saviano’s story figured prominently in the 2015 Oscar-winning film “Spotlight” about The Boston Globe’s investigation that revealed how scores of priests molested children and got away with it because church leaders covered it up. He died on Sunday after a battle with gallbladder cancer, said his brother and caregiver, Jim Saviano.

In late October, Phil Saviano announced on his Facebook page that he was starting hospice care at his brother’s home in Douglas, Massachusetts, where he died.

“Things have been dicey the last few weeks,” he wrote, asking followers to “give a listen to Judy Collins singing ‘Bird On A Wire’ and think of me.”

Saviano played a central role in illuminating the scandal, which led to…

View Cache

After recovering from AIDS, he found a new sense of purpose as an activist.

In December 1992, Phil Saviano was at the lowest point of his life. He was 40 years old, out of work and dying of AIDS. Leafing through the Boston Globe, looking for some last-minute Christmas gifts, he saw a small item that contained a familiar name.

He read that a Catholic priest, David A. Holley, had been arrested for abusing boys in the 1970s at a church in New Mexico.

“It was a life-changing moment,” Mr. Saviano later told the British newspaper the Daily Mail. “It was the day all the bells went off for me. I suddenly saw how naive I had been in assuming he had only done this to me.”

Almost three decades earlier, beginning when Mr. Saviano was 11, he had been repeatedly molested by Holley at St. Denis Catholic Church in…

View Cache

Phil Saviano, who survived sex abuse by Catholic clergy and who helped blow the whistle on a decades-long pattern of abuse and cover-ups by the Catholic church, died Sunday. He was 69.

“Phil decided it was okay to let go,” read a post on Saviano’s Facebook page, where supporters and loved ones flooded the comment section with messages of support.

In October, Saviano had posted that his health had been “dicey” after a pair of doctors were “unable to offer any effective treatment for my gallbladder cancer.” He started staying with his brother, Jim, under hospice care in Douglas, Massachusetts, Saviano said at the time.

Saviano established the New England chapter of SNAP, the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests, in the late 1990s.

According to the biography on his website, Saviano first broke his silence in 1992 about being sexually…

View Cache

Phil Saviano, a longtime advocate for victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests and a key source for The Boston Globe‘s Pulitzer Prize–winning reports on church coverups, died Sunday at his brother’s home in Douglas, Massachusetts. He was 69. Saviano had revealed in October that doctors could no longer treat his gallbladder cancer and he was starting hospice care.

Saviano was 40 when he first went public with his sexual abuse, at age 11, by the parish priest at St. Denis Church in East Douglas. He had read in the newspaper that his abuser, former priest David Holley, was convicted of molesting eight boys in New Mexico, and his recounting of his own abuse to the Globe in 1992 made him one of the first survivors to come forward. Holley died in prison in 2008 while serving a 275-year sentence.

In 1991, Saviano became very ill with AIDS….

View Cache

When young nuns at a convent in Eastern Europe told their Mother Superior that a priest had tried to molest them, she retorted that it was probably their fault for “provoking him”.

When African nuns in Minnesota asked why it was always they who had to shovel snow they were told it was because they were young and strong, even though white sisters of the same age lived there too.

As the Roman Catholic Church pays more attention to the closed world of convents, where women spend much of their time in prayer and household work, more episodes of psychological, emotional and physical abuse are coming to light.

A new book, “Veil of Silence” by Salvatore Cernuzio, a journalist for the Vatican’s online outlet, Vatican News, is the latest expose to come from within and approved by authorities.

Cernuzio recounts experiences of 11 women and their struggles with an age-old…

View Cache

Archbishop Michel Aupetit of Paris has sent a letter to Pope Francis effectively offering to resign following reports of a questionable relationship with a woman dating back to 2012 when he was vicar general of the Paris Archdiocese. 

In an interview with La Croix on Nov. 26, the embattled French archbishop said he had “handed over my office to the pope to preserve the diocese.”

His remarks come after a Nov. 22 article by the French magazine Le Point, which reported on correspondence between Aupetit and a woman with whom the archbishop admitted having an ambiguous relationship prior to him being made a bishop, while adamantly denying any sexual involvement. 

The archbishop went on to state that he eventually informed the woman in question that the two should not have any further contact. 

Following the report, Aupetit told La Croix that while he did not explicitly…

View Cache

Prosecutors in Scotland have dismissed a case against a retired Catholic priest who was extradited to the United Kingdom from Saskatchewan to face decades-old abuse charges.

Scotland’s prosecution service says in a statement that after careful consideration of the case against Robert Mackenzie, Crown Counsel has concluded there should be no further proceedings.

Mackenzie was living in Saskatchewan when he was returned to Scotland in February 2020 after losing an appeal of the extradition order, and the prosecution service says he was granted bail in March of this year.

Prosecutors say he was accused of offences alleged to have taken place at the Fort Augustus school in the Scottish Highlands from 1955 to 1988.

The Regina archdiocese said when it revealed the allegations against Mackenzie that they were physical and sexual in nature, but that no allegations had surfaced from his time serving with the archdiocese.

Mackenzie maintained his innocence…

View Cache

A recent lawsuit alleging that a religious order priest sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl in 2006 was among the nearly 180 sex abuse civil complaints filed this month alone against the Catholic Church in New Jersey.

The claim caught the attention of the attorney for the Diocese of Paterson, who said he routinely passes allegations of abuse to law enforcement authorities. This one warranted added urgency because of when the abuse allegedly occurred. The attorney sent information about the complaint to the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office on the day he received it several weeks ago.

“It’s possible there still could be a prosecutable offense,” said the attorney, Kenneth Mullaney. New Jersey lifted its criminal statute of limitations for the most serious sex offenses in 1996.

The accused priest, Benoit Guichard, who no longer works in New Jersey, belongs to a religious order — the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter — and is…

View Cache

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC)’s call to action No. 58 asks the pope to “issue an apology to Survivors, their families, and communities for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the spiritual, cultural, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of First Nations, Inuit and Métis children in Catholic-run residential schools,” and to journey to Canada for this purpose.

Pope Francis has not yet provided such an apology. Now, he looks to be taking steps to do so.

Regrettably, these steps were only taken after the media spotlighted unmarked graves at multiple sites of former Indian Residential Schools, including news of the discovery of 215 unmarked graves identified by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation at the former Catholic-run Kamloops Indian Residential School.

On request, I — a settler academic with doctoral training, teaching and research experience in both Christian ethics and peace and conflict studies — am addressing the…

View Cache

WHEN Robert Friscic was being molested by a Catholic priest from the age of 11 until he was 18, he kept asking his abuser why he was being subjected to to such intolerable behaviour. The answer he got was “because I love you.”

Father Anthony Bongiorno, since deceased, also told him and other victims that he was simply performing:

An old Spanish custom in which the altar boy sleeps with the priest.

Decades on Friscic decided to lodge a civil claim against the Catholic Church for the abuse he suffered at the hands of Bongiorno, and this week ABC News reported that he had been awarded an out-of court settlement of $3-million (£1.6) by the Archdiocese of Melbourne.

Friscic’s lawyers say the settlement, combined with previous payments, makes it the highest award for an historical abuse claim.

The abuse began when Friscic ran away…

View Cache

Decades-old abuse charges withdrawn in Scotland

The prosecution service in Scotland has dropped its case on historical child abuse charges against a retired Catholic priest who used to live and serve in Saskatchewan, according to the BBC.

Rev. Robert MacKenzie was extradited from Canada in 2020 to stand trial in Scotland.

The now 87-year-old was accused of physical and sexual abuse during his time as a teacher at two schools in Scotland from the 1950s to the 1980s.

The former priest has denied the allegations. 

No allegations from his time in Sask., says Archdiocese of Regina

According to the BBC, the alleged victims were informed there was a change in circumstances in the case.

Senior Crown lawyers decided there would be no further proceedings, the BBC said. Charges against Mackenzie have been withdrawn.

After his time at the schools in Scotland, MacKenzie moved to Canada and worked in Saskatchewan before retiring, according to the BBC.

The Archdiocese…

View Cache

Children at a Catholic boarding school in Scotland were sexually abused and subjected to sadistic treatment that “destroyed childhoods”, an inquiry has found.

Lady Smith, chair of the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, found that children were sexually abused at two schools run by the Marist Brothers: St Columba’s College, Largs, and St Joseph’s College, Dumfries.

The abuse included masturbation, oral sexual activity and rape and children also endured physical and emotional abuse.

Her findings in relation to the provision of residential care by the Marist Brothers at the two schools between 1950 and 1981 were published on Wednesday.

Lady Smith said that Marist Brothers in positions of trust at both boarding schools “violated their monastic vows” and “breached the trust of children and their families”.

Her report noted that several members of the order sexually abused children at St Columba’s and that two particular Marist Brothers with easy access to…

View Cache

The archbishop of Paris has offered to step down after admitting to having had an “ambiguous” relationship with a woman in 2012, the archdiocese said.

Archbishop Michel Aupetit, who has led the Paris church since 2018, sent a letter to Pope Francis offering to resign following a report in Le Point magazine. There was no indication if or when Francis might act on it; he has refused to accept similar offers from other prelates caught up in scandal.

In an article published this week, Le Point said Aupetit had a consensual, intimate relationship with a woman. The report relied on several anonymous sources who said they had seen a 2012 e-mail Aupetit sent by mistake to his secretary.

Aupetit denied being the author of the email and told Le Point that he didn’t have intimate and sexual relations with the woman.

Roman Catholic prelates take vows…

View Cache

Harte was convicted in 2010 on 11 counts of sexually assaulting seven schoolboys in Dublin school

Former school principal Patrick Harte has failed in a bid to have his convictions for sexually abusing schoolboys in classrooms over 50 years ago overturned on appeal.

In dismissing the appeal, the Court of Appeal rejected what was described as an “extraordinary” submission by Harte that he was prejudiced after it emerged during the trial that he had not sought the blessing of a priest before entering a teacher training course.

Court President Mr Justice George Birmingham had described any such risk as “fanciful” during submissions.

Harte (79) appealed his Circuit Criminal Court conviction of March 2020, when he was found guilty of 11 counts of indecently assaulting seven pupils at the Sancta Maria Christian Brothers primary school on Synge Street, Dublin, between September 1968 and September 1970.

A trial jury found Harte, who…

View Cache

A former priest who was extradited to Scotland from Canada to face historical child abuse charges will no longer stand trial, prosecutors have confirmed.

Father Robert Mackenzie, 87, had been accused of committing offences at two Catholic boarding schools.

The 18 charges involved allegations of physical and sexual abuse at Fort Augustus Abbey in the Highlands and Carlekemp Preparatory School in North Berwick between 1955 and 1988.

Fr Mackenzie had denied the allegations and it is understood he planned to plead not guilty when the case came to trial

However, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) has confirmed there will should be no further proceedings.

One of the complainers, David Walls, told BBC Scotland that he asked for the decision to be reviewed but it was upheld and the charges against Fr Mackenzie have been withdrawn.

Mr Walls said: “My gut reaction is very complex. Disappointment, to put…

View Cache

[Via Yahoo News.]

A federal bankruptcy judge has set a deadline of March 15, 2022 for receipt of claim forms from people who say they were sexually assaulted by priests and employees of Roman Catholic Diocese of Norwich.

Victims who fail to do so will likely lose their right to obtain compensation from the diocese and possibly its parishes.

The diocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July as it faced more than 60 lawsuits filed by young men who charge they were sexually assaulted as boys by Christian Brothers and other staff at the diocese-run Mount Saint John Academy in Deep River from 1990 to 2002. Mount Saint John was a residential school for troubled boys whose board of directors was headed by retired Bishop of Norwich Daniel Reilly. Since then, additional people whose sexual assault allegations involved not only Mount Saint John but diocesan churches have filed claims…

View Cache

Some 270 clergy sex abuse claims await payment

Guam’s Catholic Church has come up with a revised proposed payment of $27.96 million to $34.38 million to those who claimed they were raped or sexually molested by priests and other members of the clergy when they were minors, dating back to the 1950s.

That’s more than $100,000 per clergy sex abuse survivor if the award is based on equal amounts, although the process is far from over.

Clergy sex abuse survivors and other claimants would need to vote to either accept or reject the plan from the Archdiocese of Agana.

The bankruptcy court’s confirmation of the plan is also needed. Once the plan is confirmed after a hearing, payments may begin about three months later.

The proposed compensation to abuse survivors is part of the Archdiocese of Agana’s First Amended Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Plan of reorganization filed Thursday with the U.S. District…

View Cache

Two men who claim a local priest sexually abused them as minors decades ago are demanding action from the diocese.

“I’m tired of waiting for justice,” said Richard Eldridge, who has publicly accused retired priest the Rev. Edward Byington of sexual abuse. “(Bishop Edgar da Cunha) needs to step forward and get things done.”

Eldridge spoke at a press conference on Tuesday morning with attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who has represented victims of clergy sexual abuse for several decades, and Robert Hoatson, co-founder and president of Road to Recovery, an advocacy group for victims of sexual abuse and their families.

In the early 1970s, when Eldridge was a teenager, he said, he attended a Catholic retreat. Afterwards, Byington insisted on driving him home.

“We went past my street. He brought me to a convent,” he said, referring to the rectory of Sacred Heart Church in Taunton.

There, Eldridge…

View Cache

Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson’s recent report on his three-year criminal investigation of church-related sexual abuse, which ranged all the way back to the 1930s and focused almost exclusively on the Catholic Church, raises one primary question: “What was the purpose of all this?” It appears to have had very little to do with law enforcement.

Why did the chief law enforcement officer of the State of Nebraska spend so much of the citizens’ tax dollars, and divert his staff from other current criminal investigations, knowing in advance most of the statutes of limitations already had expired?

This was an enormously expensive investigation: 426 subpoenas issued to Catholic churches and schools and 30,000 documents analyzed. After all that, the AG came up with almost nothing new of any significance. Primarily, it was a historical report, just restating what already had been reported by the Church and sensationalized in the media…

View Cache

An 86-year-old priest has been removed from the ministry following an investigation conducted by the Brooklyn Diocese that determined that a claim of child molestation against him dating back to the 1970s was credible.

Rev. Peter Mahoney–who had been ministering part-time to the Hispanic community at Saint Anne Catholic Church in Flushing and St. Nicholas of Tolentine in Jamaica, Queens—is no longer permitted to celebrate mass publicly, or exercise any public ministry. He is also not permitted to live in an ecclesiastical residence.

Mahoney was investigated follow a claim that he sexually abused a minor between 1975 and 1978 while serving at St. Martin of Tours in Brooklyn.

The allegation came into the Diocese of Brooklyn’s Reporting Line on Oct. 2, 2020, and was referred for investigation and forwarded to law enforcement on that date.

The allegations, however, date back to the 1970’s – so it is past the statute…

View Cache

“The church for its part must find a voice that assertively stands up to those who would do it down while at the same time acknowledging that Ireland is now a diverse country.”

Whenever the Irish government is criticized, or a politician wishes to divert attention away from themselves or their party, it is fast becoming a default position for them to blame the Catholic Church, an institution that can usefully be identified in order to deflect attention from the real cause, and whose very name can rustle up abuse and blame.

Let me be clear from the start — the church has a lot to answer for. Recently, Canada and France joined with Ireland and the U.S. in having to deal with historical sex abuse. 

Another case in point is the Mother and Baby Home scandal here. Last week, the Irish government launched an…

View Cache

New York Attorney General Letitia James is launching an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse at a Long Island high school.

As CBS2’s Jennifer McLogan reports, a lawyer, a police officer and a PhD candidate are the latest among multiple former students from Babylon Junior-Senior High saying they were victims of sexual misconduct at the hands of their teachers and coaches.

“I initially came forward when I was 16 years old with my story and I wasn’t taken seriously. And now I’m 30 years old, coming back to the place where I was traumatized,” said Babylon HS graduate Darcy Orlando Bennet.

The attorney general say her office is taking the complaints seriously and has launched a civil investigation.

“Every student on Long Island and across New York deserves to feel safe and protected at school. The reports of sexual abuse of students at the hands of their teachers and coaches…

View Cache

Defrocked Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is facing another sexual abuse lawsuit, from a man who claims McCarrick abused him in the 1980s in New Jersey.

In the lawsuit filed in state court and announced Tuesday, Michael Reading alleged McCarrick engaged in sexual contact with him in 1986 while on a trip to the New Jersey shore, around the same time McCarrick ordained Reading as a priest.

The claim comes as a two-year window nears completion in New Jersey for people to file abuse lawsuits regardless of how far back the alleged abuse occurred. The suit names McCarrick and the Newark archdiocese and also alleges Reading was abused in 1978 by Father Edward Eilert, a priest employed by the Newark archdiocese.

In a videotaped statement, Reading said he wrote a letter to Cardinal Joseph Tobin, the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Newark, three years ago about the alleged abuse but…

View Cache

A former Catholic priest who has previously alleged that ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick sexually abused him when he was a seminarian has filed a lawsuit against McCarrick and the Newark archdiocese.

“I’m only doing the lawsuit mainly because three years ago when I did that, I also wrote a letter to Cardinal (Joseph) Tobin, and the Archdiocese of Newark and I never heard anything back,” plaintiff Michael Reading said in a video message posted to his attorneys’ website. “The whole thing is disappointing, but I’m just very disappointed that I never heard anything and got no response from the Church.”

When he sees media coverage of McCarrick’s court appearances, he said, “it all comes back again.”

“Today is actually the anniversary of the day I was ordained by him, 35 years ago today,” he said in the Nov. 22 video, adding that he “felt like telling my story could be helpful.”

…

View Cache