ABUSE TRACKER

ANN ARBOR (MI)
Michigan Live

July 5, 2019

By Darcie Moran

A former Ann Arbor and Jackson priest accused of sexually assaulting an altar boy nearly 30 years ago has been formally charged.

Timothy M. Crowley, 70, was arraigned Saturday, June 29 in Washtenaw County on eight felony counts of criminal sexual conduct, court records show.

Crowley’s arrest was announced in May along with that of four other priests amid a large-scale investigation by the Michigan Attorney General’s office into sex abuses in Catholic dioceses.

Crowley faces four counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and four counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct for incidents between 1986 and 1990 at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church, at 530 Elizabeth St. in Ann Arbor.

Michigan’s Attorney General is investigating hundreds of complaints of clergy abuse.

Ordained in 1976, Crowley served as a parochial vicar in Brighton, Flint and at Jackson’s St. Mary, Star of the Sea.

He served in Jackson from 1982-84, according to an affidavit filed in his criminal case. There, Crowley is accused of giving a 10-year-old altar boy cigarettes and alcohol, and touching his buttocks and genitalia over his clothing.

The boy also attended St. Anthony’s in Hillsdale and St. Thomas in Ann Arbor when Crowley served as pastor at those churches from 1984-87 and 1987-93, respectively, according to court filings.

Investigators say Crowley repeatedly gave the boy cigarettes and alcohol, and forced him to watch homosexual pornography while Crowley masturbated. They also accuse him of molesting him and threatening to kill him if he told nuns or his parents of the abuse.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

July 5, 2019

Allegations of financial impropriety against former Wheeling-Charleston Bishop Michael Bransfield went unheeded for years, according to a new report. Letters from lay men and woman, and from Bransfield’s own chancery staff raised serious concerns about the bishop’s spending and that he was using diocesan resources to “purchase influence.”

On July 3, the Washington Post reported that concerns about Bransfield’s spending were raised as early as 2012 with senior Church authorities in the Unites States and Rome. Several of those to whom complaints were made were themselves recipients of gifts of money from the bishop.

Bransfield’s resignation was accepted by Pope Francis last September, eight days after he turned 75, the age at which diocesan bishops are required by canon law to submit a letter of resignation to the pope. Following allegations of sexual and financial misconduct by him over a period of years, local metropolitan Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore was ordered by Pope Francis to conduct an investigation. Lori subsequently barred Bransfield from public ministry in both Wheeling-Charleston and Baltimore.

On Wednesday, The Post reported that specific concerns had been raised years earlier about the use of financial gifts to Church authorities by Bransfield, and the role they may have played in delaying action against him.

In an August 2018 letter addressed to Lori, Bransfield’s own judicial vicar, Monsignor Kevin Quirk, said he believed the gifts bought the bishop latitude.

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BERLIN (GERMANY)
Deutsche Welle

July 5, 2019

Retired priest Ulrich Zurkuhlen caused consternation in the city of Münster, northwest Germany, when he dedicated his sermon to the concept of forgiving priests who had sexually abused minors.

Zurkuhlen’s remarks come at a difficult time for the Roman Catholic Church, as it grapples with continued allegations, from various parts of the world, of priests’ predatory conduct and church attempts to cover it up.

In 2018, the German Bishops’ Conference published a report revealing that 1,670 priests, roughly 4.4% of clerics, had abused 3,677 people between 1946 and 2014 in Germany.

The controversial sermon took place in the Holy Spirit Church of Münster. The internet portal Kirche-und-Leben.de (Church and Life) reported that parishioners were incensed, with some 70 members of the congregation walking out in protest.

Several parishioners reportedly interrupted the 79-year-old Zurkuhlen and tried to argue with him. A worshipper told Kirche-und-Leben that the situation became chaotic and the priest was not able to finish the sermon.

Victims of abuse were said to have been present as the priest spoke.

In an interview with Kirche-und-Leben.de, Zurkuhlen griped about the fact that even bishops refer to predator priests as “criminals,” despite the fact that these men were also good clerics in their communities.

“Nobody is just profoundly evil,” the priest said. “Goodness and guilt are often combined with each other or stand side by side without touching,” he added.

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PORTSMOUTH (OH)
Daily Times

July 3, 2019

By Melissa Martin

Talking about religion can be a touchy topic—even among Christian believers.

The Most Post-Christian Cities in America: 2019 is a recent research study conducted by Barna research; an evangelical Christian polling firm. The ongoing study surveyed a random sample of 21, 378 American adults over a ten-year period. Visit their website for more detailed information. www.barna.com.

Please keep in mind that not all studies are created equal and all contain margins of error. Plus, Barna, a for-profit company, is commissioned to conduct research projects and they sell books. Nonetheless, I found the results interesting.

How did Ohio fare?

Among Ohio’s cities, Toledo was highest on the list in the number 35 spot—47 percent of residents considered themselves as post-Christian. In Columbus, 42 percent of residents qualify as post-Christian and the city ranked in the number 59 spot. Youngstown-Warren came in at 41 percent in the number 63 spot. Cleveland-Akron-Canton came in at 39 percent. Dayton and Cincinnati both tied at 38 percent.

To be identified as post-Christian, an individual had to meet nine or more of the factors: Do not believe in God. Identify as atheist or agnostic. Disagree that faith is important in their lives. Have not prayed to God (in the last week). Have never made a commitment to Jesus. Disagree the Bible is accurate. Have not donated money to a church (in the last year). Have not attended a Christian church (in the last 6 months). Agree that Jesus committed sins. Do not feel a responsibility to “share their faith.” Have not read the Bible (in the last week). Have not volunteered at church (in the last week). Have not attended Sunday school (in the last week). Have not attended religious small group (in the last week). Bible engagement scale: low (have not read the Bible in the past week and disagree strongly or somewhat that the Bible is accurate). Not Born Again.

I did not get a call from the Barna group, did you? The southern areas of Ohio are considered to be a part of the Bible Belt region—heavily influenced by socially conservative evangelical Protestantism. Results may have been different based on Belt Bible residents’ responses.

However, the larger cities in Ohio tell a story about declining Christianity.

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LITTLE ROCK (AR)
Bilgrimage blog

July 3, 2019

By William Lindsey

The essay by Ruth Krall that follows below is the fourth in a series of essays entitled “Recapitulation: Affinity Sexual Violence in a Religious Voice,” which I’ve had the honor to publish on Bilgrimage in the past weeks. The first essay in this series appeared in two installments, here and here. The second appeared in another two installments, here and here. The third essay is here. As Ruth’s introduction to the essay below notes, it follows on her three preceding essays, which hypothesize the endemic natural of religious and spiritual leader sexual abuse of followers by asking what might be the role played by various ideologies in establishing institutional climates that faciliate abuse and then cover it up. As with some of Ruth’s previous essays in this series, I’m posting this one in two parts: part one is below.

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CAROL STREAM (IL)
Christianity Today

July 5, 2019

The Bishop of Chester blocked a life-time ban from ministry being imposed on a minister who was jailed for child pornography, an independent inquiry has heard.

It emerged during a public hearing by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse that the Rt Rev Dr Peter Forster recommended that Rev Ian Hughes should instead receive a 20-year ban.

This was despite the Church of England’s own regulations – called the Clergy Discipline Measure – stating that a lifetime ban should be automatically imposed on ministers with child abuse convictions.

The shorter length recommended by the bishop received the approval of the President of the Tribunals after Dr Forster wrote to ask that the guidelines not be applied in this instance.

Mr Hughes was sent to prison for 12 months in 2014 over child pornography charges after he was found to have 8,200 indecent images of children in his possession.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholc News Agency

July 5, 2019

By Ed Condon

This week, Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Penitentiary, issued a document defending the sacramental seal, as civil governments in California, Australia, and other places attempt to pass laws that would force priests to reveal what they hear in the confessional.

Piacenza also defended professional confidentiality, including the pontifical secret, and appeared to take aim at the use of leaked Vatican information in the media – suggesting leaks from the Vatican are detrimental to the public good.

“In a time of mass communication, in which all information is ‘burned’ [leaked] and with it often unfortunately also part of people’s lives, it is necessary to re-learn the strength of word, its constructive power, but also its destructive potential,” the cardinal warned.

Following a year in which scandals of episcopal misconduct and accountability have combined to create a crisis of confidence in Church leadership in some places, reaction to the application and violation of confidentiality in the Church illustrates the emerging fault lines in a debate between parts of the hierarchy and faithful, in which both sides accept the need for transparency, though often with very different understandings of the word.

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NEWPORT (RI)
Newport Daily News

July 4, 2019

By Jim Gillis

We saw them this week, portraits of Catholic clergy “credibly accused” of sexually abusing children, a rogues’ gallery of grown men who preyed on youngsters.

The Diocese of Providence has a long history of denial, obfuscation and cover-up on this topic. So it’s significant Bishop Thomas J. Tobin released the names of 50 men, most now dead.

The release invites as many questions as it provides answers. It’s short on specifics, particularly how many attacks went on and what action the church took.

I think we now know the diocese here (and dioceses across the country) shifted accused priests from parish to parish, sliding them like chess pieces across the state. It amounted to a protection racket for pedophiles.

You may recognize some of the names on the list, several of whom served in Newport County. Father James Silva, for instance, assaulted one of my best friends when he as an altar boy at Jesus Saviour Church.

Maybe releasing the names provides further healing … or none at all. I was taught to respect priests as a boy, though I never had any interest in serving on the altar.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Church Times

July 3, 2019

By Hattie Williams

A CLERIC who was convicted of possessing 8000 indecent images of children should be able to minister again because he was “penitent” at the time of his arrest, was probably “lured” into downloading the images, and would not have carried out the abuse itself, the Bishop of Chester, Dr Peter Forster, has maintained.

The cleric, Ian Hughes, was found guilty in 2014 of possessing 8200 indecent images of children — 800 of the “worst kind” — and sentenced to a 12-month custodial sentence (News, 31 January 2014).

In oral evidence to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), on Wednesday, Dr Forster confirmed that he had written to the tribunal judge of the case, Sir Andrew McFarlane, to persuade him to go against guidelines of the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM), which stated that a lifelong ban be automatically imposed after a conviction of child abuse.

“They are guidelines, they have to be interpreted,” Dr Forster said. “I felt that in [Mr Hughes’s] case — given his relative youth, the fact that he was entirely penitent from the outset as to what had happened, and [that] his previous record of ministry was excellent — it was worth raising the possibility of a 20-year ban.

“The problem is that once you impose a lifetime ban there is no way to reverse it. . . if for 20 years he had lived out the penitence.”

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BROCKTON (MA)
The Enterprise News

July 4, 2019

By Cody Shepard

A deceased priest who was assigned to Stonehill College in the 1970s has been “credibly accused” of sexual abuse, according to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence.

Robert Marcantonio, who died in October 1999 at the age of 56, was one of 50 priests named this week as credibly accused of sexually abusing children. The names of the priests and where they were assigned are now published on the diocese website.

Marcantonio was assigned to Stonehill College in Easton from 1975 to 1979. He served as a counseling psychologist and director of counseling services.

There are no known accusations of sexual abuse while Marcantonio was assigned to the Easton college. But a lawsuit previously filed in Des Moines, Iowa states that Chancellor Daniel P. Reilly and other church officials were notified in 1970 that Marcantonio had sexually abused more than two dozen boys while he was assigned in Rhode Island. The lawsuit stated church officials decided to send him to Iowa for graduate work and to receive psychiatric treatment.

Between 1970 and 1975, Marcantonio was assigned to various locations in Iowa, according to the list released this week by the diocese. He was at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Ames from 1970-75; Iowa State University from 1971-75; Ames High School from 1972-73; and Drake University in Des Moines in 1974.

Although the Rhode Island Diocese does not list Marcantonio as having been assigned to St. Cecilia Church in Ames, he was accused of sexually abusing at least two boys there. The Archdiocese of Dubuque in Iowa has confirmed Marcantonio was at the church.

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KANSAS CITY (MO0
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

Vatican trial is set for KC predator priest
He abused kids, then was promoted to bishop
But victims say “No trial – just defrock him now”
SNAP also wants another KC bishop to be restricted
Under new rules, he can be banned from church gatherings
And 2 more ‘credibly accused’ clerics are exposed for first time

WHAT
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will release letters to
–Pope Francis urging him to immediately defrock of a credibly accused child molesting bishop who abused at least eight KC kids, &
–KC’s current bishop urging him to deny 2 former KC bishops – both proven wrongdoers – from attending future church functions.
They will also disclose the names of and details about two more credibly accused KC predator priests for the first time.

WHEN
Friday, July 5 at 11:15 a.m.

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PARIS (FRANCE)
Associated Press

July 3, 2019

One of a half-dozen men who have accused the Vatican’s ambassador to France of groping them is taking his complaint directly to the Vatican after claiming the Holy See had invoked diplomatic immunity in a French criminal probe.

Mathieu De La Souchere met with one of Pope Francis’s sex abuse advisers on Wednesday after filing a police report in Paris earlier this year. He accused Archbishop Luigi Ventura of touching his buttocks repeatedly in public, during an official reception Jan. 17 at Paris city hall, where he is an employee.

The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into alleged sexual aggression. The Vatican said Ventura was cooperating with the investigation. But De La Souchere said the French case was essentially stalled over the immunity question.

“The French government’s request to the Vatican to lift the diplomatic immunity remained unanswered,” he told The Associated Press.

His lawyer plans to file the complaint with the Vatican City State’s criminal tribunal next week. The tribunal largely follows the Italian penal code and is separate from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles sex abuse-related crimes under the Catholic Church’s canon law.

“This new judicial step here in the Vatican we hope will be one more step toward the trial that all the victims in France are waiting for,” De La Souchere said after meeting with Father Hans Zollner, a founding member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

De La Souchere met with Zollner and another man who has accused Ventura. Crux has reported as many as a half-dozen men have accused Ventura of unwanted groping over the course of his diplomatic postings, which have included Canada and Chile.

Ventura’s whereabouts are unknown, but he attended a meeting of all the Holy See’s apostolic nuncios, or ambassadors, at the Vatican last month. His lawyer didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said Ventura “has fully and voluntarily cooperated with French judicial authorities who are in charge of his case, and will continue to do so.”

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NASHVILLE (TN)
Baptist News Global

July 3, 2019

A former Southern Baptist missionary and denominational worker on Tuesday pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault 11 years after the denomination’s International Mission Board substantiated allegations of sexual abuse against him but did not report it the police.

Mark Aderholt, who resigned as associate executive director and chief strategist for the South Carolina Baptist Convention shortly before his arrest last July on charges of sexual assault of a minor, was ordered to spend 30 days in jail and pay a $4,000 fine.

After that, if he successfully completes 24 months of deferred adjudication, a form of probation, the conviction will not remain on his criminal record. Aderholt, 47, is currently in custody at the Tarrant County Correction Center.

Anne Marie Miller, the woman who told police that Aderholt sexually abused her when she was 16 and he was a 25-year-old student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1996-1997, said many people have expressed the opinion that he deserved a stiffer sentence, but she felt vindicated by hearing his admission of guilt.

“Over the last year, I have learned how unspeakably complicated the criminal justice system is,” Miller, an author of several books, said in a statement on her website. “So many variables go into each and every case.”

“While I think we all can agree that Mr. Aderholt is not facing the criminal penalty he should be, the DA’s office asked for my input and wishes during plea negotiations,” she said. “This included taking into consideration the emotionally charged prospect of a jury trial, facing a relentless and brutal cross-examination by his defense attorney, the impact of a trial on my family and a potential verdict of not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I fully trust the prosecuting attorney and the final outcome.”

In a victim’s impact statement she read to Aderholt in court, Miller said nine years ago she was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder because of what he did to her.

“You sexually abused me,” Miller said. Despite that, Miller said she has forgiven Aderholt and grieves over the pain his actions have caused his family.

“I used to believe that in order for this ordeal to be over, you needed to tell the truth and ask me to forgive you. I know now that’s not the case,” she said. “This is over because I have spoken the truth. It’s over because I have forgiven you. Your lies have no more power.”

“This is over, Mark. This is the end.”

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DONNYBROOK (IRELAND)
RTE – Raidió Teilifís Éireann

July 4, 2019

By Edel McAllister

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has apologised for his comments to Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin where he likened him to a sinning Catholic priest.

He said: “I offended people who I never intended to offend. I want to apologise for that and withdraw it.

“I have tremendous respect for priests, for the sacrifice that they give in the lives that they lead.

“And I have tremendous respect for people of faith. You know it didn’t come out the way I intended it and sometimes these things happen.”

The Taoiseach has faced strong criticism over his comments in the Dáil yesterday.

Independent TD Mattie McGrath called on the Taoiseach to come into the house and apologise for his comments.

He described them as “outrageous” and “utterly revolting”.

Fianna Fáil TD Mary Butler said the government had committed to a eliminating discrimination on grounds of religion in the programme for government.

“Unfortunately there was no such tolerance or respect shown to the Catholic religion yesterday,” Ms Butler said.

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AURORA (IL)
The Beacon-News

July 3, 2019

By Megan Jones

The pastor of Warehouse Church in Aurora sees himself in a unique position – his church sits directly between Wayside Cross Ministries and McCarty Park.

As a lifelong Aurora resident, the Rev. Randy Schoof said he is deeply committed to the safety of its citizens. But the 19 convicted child sex offenders who live at Wayside Cross near the park are not a risk to safety, and if anything, it is more of a risk to let these men scatter throughout the city unsupervised, Schoof said.

Eight clergy members gathered in the chapel of Wayside Cross Wednesday to speak out and show their support for the men who were told they have to move out of the mission in downtown Aurora because they live too close to McCarty Park. Under state law, registered child sex offenders are prohibited from living within 500 feet of a school, playground or daycare facility.

Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin repeated his stance Tuesday, saying that state laws concerning child sex offenders are clear.

“Wherever they go, it can’t be within 500 feet of where children play,” Irvin said.

After the city created addresses for all of its parks in late 2018, city staff realized the mapping tool used by Aurora police was incorrectly tracking the distance from one property to another, city officials have said, including the distance from McCarty Park to Wayside. Instead of mapping from property line to property line as the law states, the tool was measuring from the middle of one property to the other, they said.

Irvin said the eviction notices sent to Wayside were not in retaliation for the mission housing infamous “Ripper Crew” member Thomas Kokoraleis beginning in the spring.

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Catholic World News blog

July 4, 2019

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano has revealed that one of the most influential prelates at the Vatican has been accused of sexual abuse.

The archbishop, the former apostolic nuncio to the United States, said a “terrifying dossier” has been compiled about alleged offenses by Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, the assistant Secretary of State. “This might even be a scandal surpassing that of McCarrick,” Archbishop Vigano said.

As assistant Secretary of State—known commonly as the sostituto—Archbishop Peña Parra supervises the daily flow of paperwork at the Vatican, and meets regularly with the Pope. The sostituto is commonly regarded as the third most powerful figure at the Vatican, after the Secretary of State and the Pontiff himself.

Archbishop Vigano says that evidence of Archbishop Peña Parra’s misconduct with seminarians had been submitted to the Vatican as early as 2002. A native of Venezuela, Archbishop Peña Parra had been serving in the Vatican diplomatic corps when he was chosen by Pope Francis to become sostituto last year. The appointment was announced in August, just after the explosion of the McCarrick scandal.

Archbishop Vigano made his charge in an interview, conducted by email, with the Washington Post. While the bulk of the interview was published by the Post in June, the newspaper did not include the archbishop’s most stunning charges.

Archbishop Vigano also said that sexual misconduct had been discovered in a seminary on the Vatican grounds, and the perpetrator had been ordained to the priesthood while his victims had been dismissed. He said that abuse charges are still covered up by Vatican officials.

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LYON (FRANCE)
CNA

July 4, 2019

The French Catholic church has defrocked a priest charged with abusing dozens of boy scouts in a scandal that saw a cardinal convicted of a cover-up, according to a ruling seen by AFP Thursday.

The allegations against priest Bernard Preynat sparked the biggest crisis in the French church in decades, drawing in its most influential cleric, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin.

The decision was taken by the church’s ecclesiastical court.

“In light of the facts and their recurrence, the large number of victims, the fact that Bernard Preynat abused the authority vested in him within the scout group… the court has decided to impose the maximum penalty under Church law in such a case, namely, the removal of his status as a priest,” it said.

Preynat, 74, has one month to appeal the ruling.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Fox 43 News

July 3, 2019

By Jack Eble

On Tuesday, a spokesperson with the Diocese of Harrisburg said administrators for its Survivor Compensation Program have made offers to all participating survivors.

As of now, no payments have been made.

“The Diocese and Bishop Gainer continue to offer our profound sorrow, prayers and assistance to all survivors of clergy abuse,” said spokesperson Rachel Bryson.

A survivor anonymously told FOX43 his story of abuse at the hands of a former Diocese of Harrisburg priest, Herbert Shank, last year.

He said he received his offer at the beginning of this week and is now weighing his options.

“They call it compensation. I’m not sure you are ever able to compensate someone for the abuse that happened to myself and to all the people that are survivors,” said the survivor, who remains anonymous.

The Survivor Compensation Program was set up by the Diocese of Harrisburg in February as a response to the Grand Jury Report on child sex abuse within six Catholic Dioceses in Pennsylvania in an attempt to make financial amends to victims.

Our source explains he and his group of attorneys submitted information regarding the abuse from Shank.

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OTTAWA (CANADA)
Canadian Broadcast Corporation

July 4, 2019

A man who suffered at the hands of a serially abusive priest is welcoming changes made by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon aimed at preventing future abuses.

Over the last several months, the diocese has been working to update policies around abuse and misconduct, establishing several new positions outside of the bishop’s office and the Saskatoon pastoral centre to receive and investigate claims of abuse.

The new positions include an intake officer, a serious misconduct investigator and a victim support co-ordinator.

Brenda FitzGerald, who led the committee reviewing and updating the policies, said positions such as the intake officer will be filled by people who have an academic and professional background in the field of sexual assault, abuse and trauma.

“This was a really significant move to ensure that we would have [a system] as open and as transparent and as … sensitive to concerns of someone coming forward as possible, by not having the diocese investigate themselves,” she said. “That was a major change.”

Gary Mulligan, 73, was abused by Rev. William Hodgson Marshall while he attended Saskatoon’s St.Paul’s High School in the ’60s. It’s been reported that Marshall had a two-way mirror into the boy’s locker room at the school and had abused several of his students.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal

July 3, 2019

“My report was less than credible?”

That was Bristol photographer Stephan Brigidi’s reaction to a glaring omission, to him, on the list of “credibly accused” priests that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence posted on its website on Monday.

The name that was missing was the name of the “inebriated” priest at Saint Agnes parish in Providence who, he told the diocese, had fondled his genitals and attempted to kiss him when he was a 14- or 15-year-old altar boy, in a devout Catholic family, in the mid-1960s.

Brigidi, now 68 years old, said he had not felt compelled to file a complaint until he saw a quarter-page ad the diocese place placed in The Providence Journal last Nov. 29 that said, in part:

“The Diocese urges anyone who has been the victim of sexual abuse, or with credible knowledge of such abuse, by any member of the Catholic Church, to report allegations to RI State Police, local law enforcement, the RI Attorney General’s Office, and Kevin O’Brien, Director, Diocesan Office of Compliance.”

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In Account blog

June 27, 2019

By Lisa Pierce, Stephanie Krehbiel and Hilary Jerome Scarsella

Several weeks ago, we published two narratives on our survivor story blog Our Stories Untold, both written by our Director of Theological Integrity Hilary Jerome Scarsella. In the first narrative, Hilary tells her experience of being raped in 2009 by a fellow student at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, and the subsequent failure of the school to respond to that assault as a sexual assault. In the second narrative, Hilary describes the successful restitution process she went through with AMBS this year, a process made possible in large part because AMBS’s outgoing president, Sara Wenger Shenk, set the tone with her respectful and trauma-informed treatment of Hilary and of myself as Hilary’s advocate.

Many of you reading know just how rare this is. Higher education administrators are not, as a group, known for handing it well when survivors make demands. And to be clear: there are no just outcomes without demands. Hilary made demands; this was not a successful process because she was in any way compliant. Survivors frequently walk away from processes like these having been essentially branded as an enemy of the institution. That didn’t happen here, and it’s largely to Sara’s credit, because Sara demonstrated an understanding that restitution isn’t just window dressing.

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CHARLESTON (WV)
WTRF TV

July 3, 2019

The Survivors Network says a deeper dive by journalists into the West Virginia Catholic church sex and finances scandal reveals even more corruption than previously known.

SNAP officials are reacting to a new article published by the Washington Post.

The Post reports that a number of church members and employees wrote high ranking church officials warning them about Bishop Bransfield’s improper conduct, but were essentially ignored.

The Post also reports that “Bransfield wrote more than 500 checks to other clerics during his 13 years in West Virginia.

SNAP officials released a statement on the article saying

“In light of this new and disturbing information, we call on every one of the 500 clerics who got checks from West Virginia’s bishop to return that money to West Virginia Catholics, and we call on law enforcement officials – in the state and elsewhere – to look more vigorously and skeptically at church funds.”

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WESTCHESTER (NY)
Daily Voice Plus

July 3, 2019

By Bill Heltzel

The estate of an Ulster County man who killed himself earlier this year is asking a court to compel the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers to identify and preserve records of a priest who allegedly sexually assaulted the decedent for eight years when he was a boy.

Catherine Gallagher, the sister of Ralph “Chip” Gallagher, petitioned Westchester Supreme Court on June 7 to appoint a neutral party to preserve records, identify potential witnesses and notify others who may have come into contact with the priest when they were children.

“The Maryknolls take these claims very seriously,” attorney John P. Hannigan, of Bleakley Platt responded, “and we’re looking into assembling the facts.”

He later characterized the demands as a “thinly veiled effort” by Catherine Gallagher’s attorney, Barbara Hart of Lowey Dannenberg in White Plains, “to identify potential clients.” That would be an improper use of legal procedure, he stated in a court filing.

The Maryknolls, a Roman Catholic religious order based in Ossining, is primarily a missionary organization that combats poverty, provides health care, runs orphanages and schools, and advances social justice issues in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Ralph Gallagher was born in Mount Kisco and grew up in Chappaqua. When he died in January, he was living in Phoenicia, where he was a self-employed carpenter.

The petition concerns Edward Flanagan, who joined the Maryknolls 1956 as a religious brother, was ordained as a priest in 1964, voluntarily withdrew from the order in 1971 and died in 2016.

In the 1960s, he was assigned to the Church of St. John and St. Mary in Chappaqua.

Flanagan had been a guest in the Gallagher’s Chappaqua home over the years and family members attended his ordination into the priesthood.

Gallagher was first assaulted in 1962, according to the petition, when he was 4 years old. The alleged assaults continued through 1970, when he was 11, and included an incident in the Bahamas.

Flanagan had received significant psychological counseling, the petition states, yet the religious order moved him from position to position and allowed him to continue working with families and children.

The petition does not explain how it is known that Flanagan assaulted Gallagher.
BishopAccountability.org, does not list Flanagan on its database of U.S. Catholic clergy accused of sexually abusing children.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

July 3, 2019

The Diocese of Dallas has added another name to its list of clerics accused of child sexual abuse. We call on church officials in Dallas to explain two key facts to the public about this case: first, when did the accusations against Fr. Peter Barusseau surface, and when were they deemed “credible” by church officials?

The list put out by Dallas church officials in January was already woefully incomplete as it left off key details such as the work histories of the accused priests, when the allegations against them were received, and what church officials did in response to those allegations. Such information is critical to understanding what went wrong in the past, who was involved in the wrongdoing, and what must be done to prevent cases of abuse in the future.

Given that the Diocese of Dallas has only done the bare minimum when it comes to keeping communities informed about abusive priests, the news about Fr. Barusseau has us concerned that there are other accused priests that have been left off this list. Considering that the Diocese of Dallas was raided by police in May, it would appear that the Dallas Police Department shares our concerns.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Washington Post

July 3, 2019

By Robert O’Harrow Jr. and Shawn Boburg

Senior Catholic leaders in the United States and the Vatican began receiving warnings about West Virginia Bishop Michael Bransfield as far back as 2012. In letters and emails, parishioners claimed that Bransfield was abusing his power and misspending church money on luxuries such as a personal chef, a chauffeur, first-class travel abroad and more than $1 million in renovations to his residence.

“I beg of you to please look into this situation,” Linda Abrahamian, a parishioner from Martinsburg, West Virginia, wrote in 2013 to the pope’s ambassador to the United States.

But Bransfield’s conduct went unchecked for five more years. He resigned in September 2018 after one of his closest aides came forward with an incendiary inside account of years of sexual and financial misconduct, including the claim that Bransfield sought to “purchase influence” by giving hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash gifts to senior Catholic leaders.

“It is my own opinion that His Excellency makes use of monetary gifts, such as those noted above, to higher ranking ecclesiastics and gifts to subordinates to purchase influence from the former and compliance or loyalty from the latter,” Monsignor Kevin Quirk wrote to William Lori, the archbishop of Baltimore, in a letter obtained by The Washington Post.

At least four senior clerics outside West Virginia who received parishioner complaints about Bransfield also accepted cash gifts from him, more than $32,000 in all, according to an analysis of letters and other documents obtained by The Post.

The previously unreported Quirk letter and the complaints from parishioners raise questions about when Catholic leaders first knew of Bransfield’s conduct and why they took no action for years. They also reveal the roots of a church financial scandal that exploded into public view in June with a Washington Post account of the findings of a Vatican-ordered investigation of Bransfield.

Five lay investigators concluded early this year that Bransfield abused his authority by sexually harassing young priests and spending church money on personal luxuries, according to their final report and other documents obtained by The Post. Bransfield spent $2.4 million on travel, often flying in private jets, as well as $4.6 million in all to renovate his church residence, church records show. His cash gifts to fellow clergymen totaled $350,000, the records show.

Bransfield drew on a little-known source of money for the diocese: millions of dollars in annual revenue from oil wells in west Texas, on land that was donated to the diocese a century ago. The wells have yielded an average of about $15 million annually in recent years.

Bransfield wrote more than 500 checks to other clerics during his 13 years in West Virginia, gifts for which he was reimbursed by the diocese. The recipients who also received parishioner complaints include Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, then the nuncio, the pope’s ambassador to the United States; Cardinal Raymond Burke, then the leader of the church’s judicial authority in Rome; Archbishop Peter Wells, then a senior administrator in the pope’s Secretariat of State at the Vatican; and Lori, the archbishop in Baltimore who later oversaw the Vatican investigation launched after Quirk’s account.

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PHOENIX (AZ)
New Times

July 3, 2019

By Michael Clancy

Did the Diocese of Phoenix provide a home to 109 clergymen accused of sexual abuse?

A new report compiled by one of the nation’s leading law firms on clergy sexual abuse identified that many, saying they lived, worked, retired or visited in the territory of the diocese.

Many of the accused have been convicted of their crimes. Others were the subjects of civil lawsuits, and quite a few died before the accusations were revealed. Some were “credibly accused,” as the church says, in other dioceses and came to the Phoenix diocese later, sometimes no longer allowed to work as priests.

According to the diocese, none are working here now.

The latest compilation of perpetrators comes from Jeff Anderson and Associates, which has been involved in clergy abuse cases since the early 2000s.

About 50 priests, other clergy, and church staffers were identified 16 years ago, when Bishop Thomas O’Brien was still in office. Some of the identities were released by the diocese, others through the court system, and direct contact between abuse victims and the media.

On its website, the diocese now lists only 43, but it has not been updated to reflect religious communities, such as Jesuits and the like, that have ministries in the diocese.

It’s confusing.

The additional numbers in the Anderson report come from the inclusion of names released by religious orders that have ministries in the Phoenix area, and by adding in priests who were ordained in other dioceses, then came to Phoenix to vacation, work, or retire. The final group would be listed as accused abusers in their home dioceses.

Several on the Anderson list worked for other dioceses in the area now covered by the Phoenix diocese, which was carved out of the dioceses of Gallup, New Mexico, and Tucson in 1969. The diocese covers Maricopa, Yavapai, Mohave, and Coconino counties, as well as the Gila Indian Reservation. Navajo and Apache counties remain part of the Gallup Diocese, as well as the entire Navajo Reservation. The remainder of the state is part of the Diocese of Tucson.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Church Times

July 3, 2019

By Hattie Williams

THE “unhealthy and excessive” centralisation of power in bishops in the Church of England means that they are not being held accountable for safeguarding decisions which should not be theirs to make in the first place, the Area Bishop of Buckingham, Dr Alan Wilson, has said.

He was giving evidence on Tuesday to the final hearing being conducted by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) to investigate safeguarding in the Anglican Church.

“The centralisation of all sort of things on bishops is unhealthy and excessive, and that raises the question of the accountability of bishops,” he said.

Asked by the chair of the Inquiry, Professor Alexis Jay, whether he thought that diocesan bishops should play a part in decision-making in cases of alleged abuse, Dr Wilson said: “No. Emphatically no. And that’s one of the fundamental problems with where we are right now.”

He called for an independent safeguarding body to hold bishops and dioceses to account. It was unreasonable to expect diocesan safeguarding advisers to do this.

“You cannot expect somebody who is a mid-range employee of the bishop to hold the bishop to account. It simply doesn’t work that way. . . Advice is just advice. If they [the bishop] respond badly, who is to hold them to account on that advice?”

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MILWAUKEE (WISCONSIN)
Crux

July 3, 2019

By Christopher White

Responding to trauma has become something of a vocation for Dr. Mike Lovell, an engineer turned university president, who in recent years has unexpectedly made trauma care a centerpiece of his professional life, despite having no background in it.

What began as a Marquette University campus wide focus on health inequities and disparities has turned out not only to have ramifications for the surrounding city of Milwaukee, but also the entire Catholic Church, which has once again found itself plagued by the clergy sexual abuse crisis this past year.

“We must first recognize that people have been harmed and the first thing we can do as an institution is to help people heal,” Lovell told Crux in an interview from his office that overlooks Milwaukee and is directly across from the Church of the Gesu – one of the Midwest’s most iconic Catholic monuments.

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LAVAL (CANADA)
The Gal Post

June 27, 2019

By Lilly Nice

In Belarus opened a new criminal case against the priest from the village of Gatovo (Minsk region) Konstantin Burykina, better known as “the priest with the swastika.” About this informed the official representative of the Investigative Committee, Yulia hancharova, writes TUT.BY.

According to her, we are talking about a crime against sexual integrity of a minor. “Any details on ethical considerations will not be disclosed” — said the interlocutor of the edition.

A criminal case under part 3 of article 167 of the criminal code (“Violent actions of sexual character”). The perpetrator could face imprisonment of eight to 15 years.

Burykina detained in 2016 after, according to relatives, he “moved someone the way” led by Belarusian powerlifting Federation (BFP). During the investigation, information surfaced that the priest kept the house file with the military chronicle of the Third Reich, was worn on the hand (according to others, on the breast) tattooed with symbols of fascism, and in his office hung a chandelier in the shape of a swastika.

During interrogation he said that in 2000, he was appointed spiritual head of the Russian neo-Nazi paramilitary organization “Russian national unity” (RNU), which aims at the restoration of historical Russia — great, little and White Russia — as a nation-state. “Hold them spiritual conversations, meetings, baptized and married. (…) Nothing wrong just did not see, and then it seemed to me that they have become destructive. (…) We are with them ceased contact” — recalled the priest. As a result, in 2017 Burykina was convicted of illegal possession of weapons and ammunition and sentenced to three years in prison.

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MUMBAI (INDIA)
Crux

July 3, 2019

By Nirmala Carvalho

A court in India has told police not to take any further action against Cardinal Oswald Gracias of the Archdiocese of Bombay and two of his auxiliary bishops in a case where they are accused of not informing the authorities of an abuse accusation against a priest.

Father Lawrence Johnson was arrested in 2016 on allegations of the sexual abuse of a child, but the family of a boy abused by the priest met with Gracias on November 30, 2015, just hours before the cardinal was scheduled to leave for Rome.

Gracias maintains that when he arrived in Rome, he asked his Auxiliary Bishop John Rodrigues to inform the authorities in conformity of the 2012 Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, but the family had already done so.

Another auxiliary bishop, Savio Dominic Fernandes, is named in the complaint, even though he was outside the city at the time.

Records show the family went to the police on Nov. 30, 2015, made the official First Incident Report shortly thereafter, and Father Lawrence Johnson was arrested Dec. 2.

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DENVER (CO)
National Catholic Register

July 2, 2019

By Patrick Reilly

According to secular news reports about Brebeuf Jesuit High School in Indianapolis, which Archbishop Charles Thompson declared to be no longer Catholic, you’d think the decision was all about the Church’s eagerness to fire a “gay” teacher.

Likewise, articles about Cathedral High School in northeast Indianapolis, which upheld its Catholic identity by dismissing one of its teachers, also emphasize the teacher’s sexuality.

Such is “fake news”—it’s rooted in some fact, but not in truth. In fact, the Indianapolis situation is primarily about a Catholic school’s obligations to teach the faith clearly and without contradiction.

The Indianapolis Star proclaimed, “Indianapolis Archdiocese Cuts Ties with Jesuit School Over Refusal to Fire Gay Teacher.” FOX News claimed Brebeuf was “Stripped of ‘Catholic’ Label Over Gay Teacher.” Newsweek announced that Cathedral “Fires Gay Teacher,” and the USA Today headline likewise reported that Cathedral “Is Firing a Gay Teacher.”

And now, a New York Times contributor has lectured the bishops on the need to defend our “L.G.B.T.Q. brothers and sisters.” The article is titled, “How to Defy the Catholic Church.”

To be sure, at both Brebeuf and Cathedral the teachers under scrutiny are identified as “gay”—but what caused the controversy is not that directly, but instead their public actions contradicting what they are supposed to be teaching in a Catholic school. Both entered into civilly approved same-sex marriages. Such public scandal makes someone ineligible to teach in a genuinely Catholic school, and this would be true of scandal leading children into any type of grave sin, whether homosexual or otherwise.

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VICTORIA (AUSTRALIA)
The Advocate

July 2, 2019

By Carol Oliver

Thank heavens, I am not religious. Which is not to say that I don’t respect those people who are. We are all entitled to our beliefs, and many religions have played a huge and positive part in the lives of individuals and societies for centuries.

But right now – despite news fading rapidly into the ether – I remain scandalised by the widespread abuse and cover up by religious figures around the world.

It’s bad enough to hear about one abuser in a family or community, but the depth and breadth of abuse in the Catholic Church is unforgivable. So when the Pope says he’s ashamed of the church’s failure to adequately address “repellent crimes”, I go into a giant cringe because it appears to be too little … and way too late.

Of course, he is not personally to blame and I am sure he’s probably a good bloke. But because the institution of the church created and covered up these crimes, and because he is the leader at this time, I find his responses too polite and vague. It seems to me he had the chance to re-energise respect and allegiance for believers by rooting out perpetrators so that, by example, the church could uphold its own laws as well as those of society.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
ABC 6 News

July 2, 2019

By Daniel Keith

One day after the Diocese of Providence released its bombshell report naming 50 priests and deacons credibly accused of abuse against minors, reaction is pouring in from lawmakers, lawyers, and even former priests.

The investigations were conducted by a former State Police detective who was able to investigate each account independently, according to the Diocese website.

After the report was released, Bishop Tobin said the church is being as transparent as possible, but some believe the church is hiding something.

Robert Hoatson is a former priest and now president of the New Jersey-based victim advocacy group Road to Recovery. As a victim of clergy abuse himself, and with knowledge of the workings of the church, he claims that Bishop Tobin is hiding some crucial information from the public.

He calls this information “the secret files”, claiming that each Bishop has access to complete files related to claims of abuse, in accordance with church law, Hoatson said.

“Bishop Tobin did not publish any of the information that we need. The files, the details, the names and information of each and every priest named in that list [Monday] is crucial,” Hoatson said, as he donned signs outside the Diocese. “We are not satisfied with the list that was published [Monday].”

The report names 50 priests and deacons, with 17 that are still alive. But in court documents from 2007, the church said they were aware of 125 allegations of priests within the jurisdiction.

The list was released just hours before Gov. Raimondo signed a bill into law that extends the statute of limitations for victims.

That law’s sponsor is Carol Hagan McEntee (D-Narragansett, South Kingstown) who said that the report does not say how many victims each priest had, as well as leaving out information that she calls a safety issue.

“Unless they’re dead, it really doesn’t tell you where they [live] now. So I think that’s important information, especially for parents to have,” McEntee said.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Fox 43 News

July 2, 2019

By Sean Naylor

Administrators of the Diocese of Harrisburg Survivor Compensation Program have made payment offers to all victims of child sex abuse who participated in the program, according to a statement from the diocese.

“The administrators for our independent compensation program have made offers to all survivors who participated in the program,” the statement said.

It added that as of Tuesday, July 2, no payments have been made.

“The Diocese and Bishop Gainer continue to offer our profound sorrow, prayers and assistance to all survivors of clergy abuse,” the statement concluded.

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DENVER (CO)
Catholic News Agency

July 2, 2019

After an investigative series by the Chicago Tribune uncovered numerous cases of sexual abuse and cover-up in the city’s public schools, a local commentator is looking to the Archdiocese of Chicago as an example of putting safeguards for children into practice.

In an article last week, Kristen McQueary, a columnist and member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board, highlighted the scandal surrounding Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and the need for greater transparency regarding sexual abuse there.

Police investigated 523 reports that children were sexually assaulted or abused inside city public schools from 2008 to 2017, or an average of one report each week, McQueary reported.

“Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Public Schools officials for months fought records requests from Tribune reporters on sexual assaults within schools,” she said.

“CPS only relented under threat of a lawsuit…It was not an exercise in protecting students.”

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Boston Globe

July 2, 2019

By Amanda Milkovits

Margaret A. McKenna says she was around 12 or 13 when a young priest in the rectory across from her home in Central Falls took her for a drive to Lincoln Woods State Park and fondled her in the car.

She remembers him saying that no one would believe her if she told, but she could confess her sins to him. He sought her out for months, touching her in the school, in his car, at the rectory.

McKenna, who would go on to become the president of two Boston universities, has shared her story many times — with a priest when she was young, with the Rhode Island State Police, with Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of Providence, with Rhode Island legislators in March — and yet she said she felt invisible when the Providence diocese released a list Monday of nearly 50 clergy accused of child molestation.

The late Rev. Peter Tedeschi — the priest she’d accused of molesting her in the 1960s — was listed as “publicly accused.” He and the late Monsignor Anthony Deangelis were separated from those the diocese deemed “credibly accused.”

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
WPRI Target 10 News

July 2, 2019

Attorney General Peter Neronha says Rhode Islanders may learn less about sex abuse in the Catholic Church because lawmakers decided to bury a bill that would have allowed grand jury reports to be made public even without indictments.

Neronha’s bill — which failed to get a vote before the General Assembly recessed Friday — is garnering new attention this week after the Diocese of Providence released a list of 50 clergymen “credibly accused” of sexually abusing minors. It’s unclear how many additional accusations were not deemed credible by church officials.

Neronha, who is conducting his own investigation into past claims of sexual abuse in the church, said publishing information gathered by a grand jury could provide greater transparency surrounding a historically opaque issue. Pennsylvania’s attorney general took that route in compiling an explosive report on abuse in the church that came out last year.

“While our legislation would have no impact on our ability investigate clergy sex abuse, it could have a profound impact on what the public eventually learns about the investigation,” Neronha said in a statement.

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Patheos blog

July 2, 2019

By Barry Duke

AN intransigent Vatican is digging its heels in over pressure to have priests report sexual abuse confessions to the authorities, and is complaining of anti-Catholic bias.

According to this report, a document issued by the Vatican’s Apostolic Penitentiary, which deals with issues of the sacrament of confession, said no government or law could force clergy to violate the seal:

Because this duty comes directly from God.

The document, which did not mention any countries or the sexual abuse crisis, complained of:

A worrying negative prejudice against the Catholic Church.

Most countries’ legal systems respect the religious right of a Catholic priest not to reveal what he has learnt in confession, similar to attorney-client privilege.

But the sexual abuse crisis that has embroiled the Catholic Church around the world has seen this right challenged more frequently.

In Australia, an inquiry into child abuse recommended that the country introduce a law forcing religious leaders to report child abuse, including priests told of it during confession.

So far, two of Australia’s eight states have introduced laws making it a crime for priests to withhold information about abuse heard in confession. Others are still considering their response.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal

July 2, 2019

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. It was right of Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin to release a list of 50 clergy members who had been “credibly accused” of sexually abusing children.

We saw the faces of some of the accused spread across the front page of The Providence Journal Tuesday — many of them surely guilty of monstrous acts of cruelty and betrayal. Readers no doubt scanned the list for clergy that had worked in their churches. Only 19 of the 50 are still alive, and none still serve the diocese.

In a letter that Mr. Tobin read in a video, the bishop said that publishing the list “is a difficult but necessary moment in the moment in the life of our Diocesan church.”

He said “our thoughts and prayers turn first of all to those who have been harmed by the grave sin of sexual misconduct by clerics — priests and deacons — over the years.” He offered to the victims, their families and faithful Catholics who have been “rightly scandalized by these disgraceful events … the profound apology of the Church and the Diocese of Providence. We pray fervently that God will give you the grace of healing and peace.”

The list was released as Gov. Gina Raimondo signed into law a new measure extending from seven years to 35 the time limit for victims to file suits against their molesters. The legislation generally looks forward. Institutions through which molesters acted are protected from further lawsuits if the seven-year statute of limitations has already passed, except in cases of recovered memory.

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AUSTRALIA
10 Daily News

July 2, 2019

By Katie Hill

A Roman Catholic nun is due face court tomorrow, after a new request for ‘preventative detention’ was made following a new accusation of abuse. Kosaka Kumiko allegedly helped priests cover up rape at an institution for deaf students in Argentina. The abuse allegedly took place in bathrooms, dorms, a garden and a basement at the school north west of Buenos Aires. Five priests were arrested following raids in November 2017, Kumiko was taken into custody in April 2017. The accused, who was released on bail of $2 million, claims she is innocent and will fight to clear her name.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Daily News

July 2, 2019

By Michael Gartland

A priest at an Upper West Side church is stepping down amid accusations that he sexually abused a number of children, a New York Archdiocese spokesman said.

Eight accusers have claimed they are victims of Monsignor John Paddack, who on Tuesday told parishioners at the Church of Notre Dame on W. 114th St. that he will be resigning his post there.

“Msgr. Paddack has written to his parishioners to tell them that, although he denies the allegations against him, for the good of the parish and the people, he has decided to step aside while the investigation into the allegation proceeds,” Archdiocese spokesman Joe Zwilling told the Daily News.

Paddack’s accusers claim he abused them at various postings throughout the city, including Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx, St. Joseph by the Sea High School on Staten Island and the Church of the Incarnation in Upper Manhattan.

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GREEN BAY (WI)
Press-Gazette

July 2, 2019

By Haley BeMiller

The names of priests at St. Norbert Abbey accused of molesting children could be made public this summer.

The abbey is in the final stages of reviewing sexual assault allegations against Norbertines over the years, the Green Bay Press-Gazette has learned. Montie Chavez, a spokesperson for St. Norbert, said the abbey aims to release the names of those priests by the end of summer.

Chavez declined to identify the independent agency handling the investigation, but the Right Rev. Dane Radecki, abbot of St. Norbert Abbey, told the Press-Gazette earlier this year that Praesidium was assisting with it. Praesidium is an organization that works with Catholic dioceses on their responses to clergy abuse.

Norbertines, sometimes known as Premonstratensians, differ from diocesan priests in the vows they take, according to St. Norbert’s website. Locally, the order is based at an abbey in De Pere and serves Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church and Holy Cross, among other parishes. Their priests also work at four Catholic schools, including St. Norbert College.

St. Norbert’s findings would follow the release of a list by the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay earlier this year of 48 priests with “substantial allegations” of sexual abuse of a minor against them. The diocese initially released 46 names but added two more as additional survivors came forward.

The abbey’s investigation also comes amid heightened scrutiny of the Catholic church as survivors and their advocates call for greater transparency worldwide. Pressure is coming from the Vatican, too, as Pope Francis recently issued a decree requiring clergy to report abuse to church officials.

Meanwhile, at least 14 state attorneys general in the U.S. have launched their own investigations into clergy abuse.

Allegations against Norbertine priests have surfaced throughout the years. Perhaps the most well-known is former priest James Stein, who was convicted in 2004 of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy in a hot tub at the abbey.

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DALLAS (TX)
Morning News

July, 2, 2019

By David Tarrant

The Dallas Catholic Diocese has added a new name to its list of clergy members credibly accused of sexual abuse of children.

The diocese, embroiled in scrutiny over its handling of past sexual abuse allegations, posted on its website over the weekend that Peter Barusseau was accused of abusing a minor while serving in North Texas. The diocese’s short news item says the alleged abuse occurred in 1960. Diocese leaders did not release any further details about the alleged abuse.

According to church records, from 1960-61, Barusseau substituted for other priests at Immaculate Conception in Denton, St. Anthony in Dallas and St. Mary in Sherman.

Born in 1909, Barusseau is believed to be dead, but the diocese is attempting to confirm his date of death with his home diocese in France.

The diocese first released its list of 31 credibly accused clergy — both living and dead — on Jan. 31. The list was part of a joint transparency effort by all Texas dioceses. Combined, those lists included nearly 300 names of clergy members who have been “credibly accused” of sexual abuse of children since 1950.

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BUFFALO (NY)
Buffalo News

July 2, 2019

By Jay Tokasz

The 2019 Catholic Charities appeal finished more than $1.5 million short of an $11 million goal, as the Buffalo Diocese struggled to overcome dismay over its handling of clergy sexual abuse claims.

The Catholic human service agency did not have a final tally of the amount raised, said spokeswoman Rose Caldwell, adding that a full announcement would happen in mid-July.

But, she said, “To my knowledge, there hasn’t been any major significant change that would put it over goal.”

Sunday was the final day of the annual appeal. A progress tracker at the Catholic Charities website shows the appeal raised $9,251,843. The final tally might end up being more, but Caldwell she was not aware of any large last-minute gifts that would have closed the gap.

It was the first time since 2010 that the appeal fell short of goal.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Associated Press

July 2, 2019

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York has filed a lawsuit against more than two dozen insurance companies seeking to compel the firms to cover claims filed by people who say they were abused by clergy members.

Church officials anticipate that numerous alleged abuse victims will file lawsuits under New York’s Child Victims Act. The new state law gives victims a one-year window to file claims alleging sex abuse that were previously barred by the statute of limitations.

The archdiocese says in its lawsuit filed Friday in Manhattan state Supreme Court that many of its insurers “intend to dispute, limit, or deny coverage” for abuse.

Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the Child Victims Act into law in February. The one-year window to file claims starts in August.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
WPRI Target 12 News

July 2, 2019

By Eli Sherman, Ted Nesi, Darren Soens, Kim Kalunian

When the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence gave the late Rev. Robert Marcantonio his 16th and final pastoral assignment in 1989, he’d already been accused of sexually abusing minors multiple times over the previous two decades.

Marcantonio, who died in 1999, started out at Sacred Heart Church in West Warwick in 1967. Within three years diocesan leaders were alerted that he had molested multiple boys, according to documents compiled by the group BishopAccountability.org.

Rather than remove Marcantonio from ministry, however, the diocese sent him to Iowa. He returned to Rhode Island in 1975 and resumed active ministry, spending four years at St. John Vianney Church in Cumberland and then a decade at Rhode Island College, along with overlapping assignments at the University of Rhode Island, Bryant College and the U.S. Navy Reserve. More abuse allegations followed.

The Providence Diocese finally removed Marcantonio from ministry in 1989, according to a list of “credibly accused” priests released Monday by Bishop Thomas Tobin. His alleged misconduct was hardly a secret: a year after his removal, Marcantonio was the subject of an explosive investigative report on WPRI 12 that led then-Bishop Louis Gelineau to revoke the station’s right to televise Thanksgiving and Christmas Masses.

Over the 22 years leading up to his removal, Marcantonio served as a pastor at five parishes, six colleges, a high school and a seminary, spanning three states. Survivor advocates say such frequent reassignments were a common trend for abusive priests.

“Moving around predators was typical,” said Tim Lennon, president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.

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By CBCP News

July 1, 2019

Manila, Philippines

A Catholic priest has been accused of sexual abuse and was relieved of his duties, a church leader said Sunday.

The alleged victim, a 17-year-old girl, was not identified. She accused Fr. Daniel Baul of abuse that happened at a church-based center for women and children in Pampanga.

A formal complaint was made by the alleged victim to the authorities which resulted in the issuance of a warrant of arrest.

The Archdiocese of San Fernando said it is cooperating with officials investigating the case, but provided no other information.

Archbishop Florencio Lavarias said they would exert all efforts “so that truth and justice may be served for both parties”.

“As a matter or protocol, the accused, though innocent until proven guilty, has been relieved from his assignment,” Lavarias said.

He also said that “pastoral care” is being extended to the alleged victim, while the archdiocese is conducting its own investigation.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Observer

July 2, 2019

By Sophie Partridge-Hicks

Nine years ago, Esther Harber was sexually assaulted by a Fordham Alumnus. After years of attempting to resolve the issue within the Catholic Church, Harber has decided to make her story public with the goal of protecting others in the future. She hopes that, by sharing her story, necessary change will be made to the Catholic Church and the way it supports victims of sexual assault.

Harber says she was raped by the Reverend Edwin Erhimeyoma in 2010. At the time of the assault, Rev. Erhimeyoma was pursuing a doctoral degree at Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, which he completed in 2015. According to Bob Howe, assistant vice president for communications at Fordham University, Fordham was never informed of the allegations against Erhimeyoma.

Harber shared in an interview with the Catholic News Agency (CNA) that she had met Erhimeyoma while she was working as a lay missionary serving women and children in New York CIty. Erhimeyoma was a priest at Holy Rosary Parish, a church in Edgewater, New Jersey, which Harber often visited. Over the next two years, the two engaged in what Harber calls an abusive relationship.

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OTTAWA (CANADA)
Canadian Catholic News

July 2, 2019

By Deborah Gyapong

Pope Francis is leading efforts to heal the wounds of the sexual abuse scandals so the Church can fulfill her mission, says Canada’s apostolic nuncio.

“Pope Francis sees the Church as a community of men and women who live for others, who care for those in need, for those who are injured, for those who find themselves on the margins of life,” Archbishop Luigi Bonazzi told a gathering of about 300 people, including diplomats, bishops, church officials, lay leaders and friends at a June 27 reception at his Ottawa residence honouring the sixth anniversary of Pope Francis’ election. “But in order to heal others, we need to be cared for and healed ourselves.”

Bonazzi, the Vatican’s representative in Canada, spoke of Pope Francis’ “unique image” of the Church as a “field hospital,” based on the story of the Good Samaritan.

“Precisely to help and ensure the good health of the Church, which in recent times has found itself sick and wounded by the serious scandals of sexual abuse, Pope Francis is leading a serious and ongoing process of healing and reconciliation, a process which had one of its most significant moments in the convocation last February, of bishops and religious Superiors from around the world on The Protection of Minors in the Church.”

The nuncio called it an open and transparent process, noting Pope Francis is not asking the Church to “hide or ignore” her wounds, but to instead put Christ at the centre since He is the One who can heal them.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WWL Radio

July 2, 2019

By Tommy Tucker

“The defense of the sacramental seal and the sanctity of confession can never constitute some form of connivance with evil, on the contrary, they represent the only true antidote to evil that threatens man and the whole world,” states the note signed by the head of the penitentiary, Cardinal Mauro Piacenza on July 1.

What all of the above means, simply stated, is that if you’re a priest hearing the confession of a pedophile who says he’s molesting a child, you can’t tell anyone. You can’t tell the police. You can’t tell the Bishop. You can’t tell parents to keep their kids away the pedophile. In other words, you forgive the offender and send him on his way. Most experts will tell you a pedophile cannot be cured; so odds are you’re sending him off, cleansed of his sins, to victimize more children.

I’m a cradle Catholic, but, I gotta tell ya, that’s the most un-like Christian thing I can imagine. Do you REALLY think, in your heart of hearts, that Jesus would approve of that? My heart tells me that CHILDREN ALWAYS COME FIRST! If there’s only food for one, they eat FIRST. If there’s only shelter for one, THEY SLEEP INSIDE. If only one person can be protected it is, WITHOUT DOUBT, THE CHILD.

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FORT WORTH (TX)
Star Telegram

July 1, 2019

By Nichole Manna

The June 2018 resignation of the Rev. Richard Kirkham, of Prosper, is valid, according to the Diocese of Fort Worth, which received a decree on the matter from the Congregations for Clergy at the Vatican.

Under Catholic Canon law, Father Kirkham remains a priest of the Diocese but must vacate the parish rectory, the Diocese of Fort Worth said in a statement.

“The Congregation has lifted the suspension of Father Kirkham, but he is without assignment. Bishop (Michael) Olson will assess how to proceed after meeting with Father Kirkham; however, he will not return as pastor of St. Martin de Porres,” the statement from the Diocese said.

Olson asked Kirkham to resign after a letter Kirkham wrote to another priest in Dallas was deemed intimidating, manipulative and inappropriate by the bishop.

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NASHVILLE (TN)
Baptist News Global

July 1, 2019

By Bob Allen

One of Houston’s leading law firms is handling the appeal of a lawsuit alleging sexual abuse by former Southern Baptist Convention leader Paul Pressler.

A district judge recently signed final orders dismissing the three remaining claims in a lawsuit filed by Gareld Duane Rollins Jr., a 54-year-old man who says sexual abuse that began when he was a teenager sent him on a downward spiral of substance abuse and multiple arrests that continued until he made an outcry statement to a prison psychologist in 2015.

Last year Houston Judge Ravi K. Sandill dismissed counts of abuse alleged prior to 2004, saying the claims are too old to litigate due to the state’s statute of limitations.

Rollins filed a notice of appeal June 18 represented by attorneys with Baker Botts, a firm with history dating back to the Republic of Texas in 1840 that now employs about 725 lawyers in 14 cities around the globe.

Rollins discharged his former lawyer, Daniel Shea, in April. Shea previously represented Rollins in a lawsuit against Pressler settled in a confidential agreement in 2004.

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RICHMOND (VA)
Richmond Times-Dispatch

July 2, 2019

By C. Suarez Rojas

Parishioners, employees, volunteers and clergy in the Catholic Diocese of Richmond have a new way to report suspected misconduct that isn’t sexual abuse.

As of Monday, the diocese has a third-party company, EthicsPoint, managing an anonymous hotline intended for people to report financial mismanagement or administrative issues in local churches, offices and schools in the diocese’s jurisdiction. The diocese covers most of the state.

The implementation of the new ethics hotline comes as the diocese is reckoning with its admission that approximately 50 of its priests have been credibly accused of sexually abusing children in incidents that took place between the 1950s and 2000s.

In a video announcing the hotline, Richmond Bishop Barry Knestout said the diocese hopes more people will feel encouraged to report misconduct, but that sexual abuse allegations should continue to be reported to law enforcement authorities and child protective service agencies before a caller contacts the diocese’s confidential sexual abuse hotline.

“We must uphold the commitments we have made and the legacy we have been handed in a fair and honorable manner. This includes reviewing existing policies and procedures and revising them in order to ensure that the diocese is providing the tools and environment needed to strengthen our Church, our communities and one another,” Knestout said in a letter to the church community.

A report from the National Catholic Reporter about fraud in churches published earlier this year quotes a Diocese of Richmond officer who said all of the diocese’s parishes are regularly audited and mandated to have procedures for money collection and accounting.

The article also mentions recent major embezzlement cases in the archdioceses of Philadelphia and Miami, and the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri.

Knestout has declined to be interviewed by the Richmond Times-Dispatch at least four times since August, but has said in communications with parishioners that the diocese is committed to improving transparency.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

July 1, 2019

By Chaz Muth

When Ethan K. Alano walks into the reconciliation room at Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Salem, he bares his soul before God and goes into detail about his sins during confession. Alano’s trust in the priest is solid.

He is certain that anything he says in the confessional is confidential, allowing him to air his sins in complete specificity so that he may receive a just penance, reaffirming his relationship with the Lord.

That penitential confidence is a centuries-old rite in Catholicism and protecting it from governmental intrusion goes beyond tradition, religious freedom and church law, said Auxiliary Bishop Peter L. Smith of Portland, who also is a canon lawyer.

It disenfranchises the sacrament if the faithful believe there is the slightest possibility that civil authorities could compel a priest to reveal what they have shared in the confessional, Bishop Smith told Catholic News Service in a May interview.

In the confessional, “people encounter the mercy of God,” he said. “They encounter God’s forgiveness of them, but they also encounter the Lord helping them to live their lives more fully as he calls them to. So, that’s what we should experience in the sacrament of reconciliation.”

It’s the humanitarian benefit for the individual and society that has motivated the church in making the priest-penitent privilege absolute.

So much so that the Code of Canon Law states the penalty for a priest who violates the seal of confession is automatic excommunication, which can only be lifted by the pope himself.

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SACRAMENTO (C)
ABC 10 News

July 1, 2019

There is new fallout following ABC10’s exclusive discussion with Bishop of the Sacramento Catholic Diocese Jaime Soto. Now the Sacramento Diocese has identified five new victims, bringing the total of known survivors to 135.

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MANILA (PHILIPPINES)
Manila Bulletin

July 2, 2019

By Leslie Aquino

The Archdiocese of San Fernando in Pampanga said it was cooperating with officials investigating the case of Father Daniel Baul, who has been accused of sexual abuse.

Pampanga Archbishop Florencio Lavarias said they would exert all efforts “so that truth and justice may be served for both parties”.

He also revealed that the concerned priest has already been relieved from his assignment as a matter of “protocol”.

“As a matter of protocol, the accused, though innocent until proven guilty, has been relieved from his assignment,” Lavarias said in a CBCP News post.

He also said that “pastoral care” was being extended to the alleged victim, while the archdiocese is conducting its own investigation.

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CHARLOTTE (NC)
WBTV News

July 2, 2019

A former Catholic priest in Charlotte was listed among credibly-accused clergy in the Diocese of Providence in Rhode Island.

William Tanguay served the Diocese of Charlotte from 1995 to 2002, and worked with the Hmong Ministry.

Tanguay’s name was listed by the Diocese of Providence in Rhode Island where he also served for years.

He’s served in the church since 1969 and was removed from the ministry in 2002. The church did not detail any of the allegations, or if they’re based in Charlotte.

The Diocese of Providence released the list Monday and provided the following statement on its website.

At the direction of the Bishop, the Director of Compliance was tasked with conducting an independent, thorough and objective review of files dating back to 1950, a year used by many other dioceses as a benchmark. Many files were several decades old, and the Director was not the initial investigator. The Director reviewed all diocesan files compiled over seventy years, and employed his training and expertise as a twenty-three year State Police detective to make assessments and judgments regarding the available and developed evidence within the files. In some instances, the Director made additional inquiries to corroborate and bolster certain allegations. In some cases of his own choosing, the Director of Compliance consulted the Director of Outreach and Prevention and/or the Diocesan Review Board for further advice. In all instances, however, the Director of Compliance ultimately exercised his own independent, expert judgment in determining whether to place particular clergy on the list.

The Catholic Diocese of Charlotte has not yet released a full list of names of credibly-accused clergy, but the Diocese says they plan to release that list by the end of the year.

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BOSTON (MA)
WGBH News

July 1, 2019

By Marilyn Schairer

Rhode Island survivors of clergy sex abuse are saying that the list of 50 clergy members credibly accused of sexual abuse released Monday by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island is far from enough.

Psychologist Dr. Ann Hagan Webb, who is a member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said she’s certain the list is incomplete.

“It feels like damage control. It’s a little bit too late, certainly,” she said. “This list is names they have known for a very long time. There are priests on there that have been moved around 15 times.”

Hagan Webb, who says she was molested by her parish priest in West Warwick, Rhode Island between the ages of 5 to 12, said she hopes the authorities step in and prosecute.

The Providence diocese posted on its diocese website 50 names of clergy, religious order priests and deacons that are “credibly” accused of sexual abuse. The published list includes 19 men who are still alive, although all have been removed from ministry. The diocese list also posts where each of those “credibly” accused men once worked.

SNAP said in a statement that it hopes the release of this information will lead to safer, more informed communities, and that survivors will be encouraged to come forward and make a report.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Morning Call

July 2, 2019

By Paul Muschick

The Catholic church clergy sex abuse scandal has claimed new victims — employees who were let go or suffered other consequences because the church finally had to compensate victims.

The Allentown Diocese announced Monday that it has cut operating costs and is reducing its office work force by 24 percent. Pay freezes were instituted and departments were restructured.

A news release said the changes were necessary so the diocese could “continue its charitable and pastoral mission throughout its five counties while freeing up funds to compensate victims of clergy sexual abuse.”

Most of the 23-person reduction occurred through attrition, including a voluntary retirement program, the diocese said. A spokesman wouldn’t disclose how many workers were laid off.

I feel for people who lost their jobs or suffered other repercussions. But if they’re looking for someone to blame, don’t blame the abuse victims who filed claims and were compensated. Blame church officials for not heading off this problem decades ago.

Remember, the diocese could sell assets and borrow money. Those were other sources it said it could tap when it opened the compensation fund in April. The diocese doesn’t have to make its staff bear the brunt.

It also could cut back on the charitable services it provides. That’s a tough choice, and could create even more victims — the aid recipients who don’t get the help they need. But it’s an option.

Allentown and other Pennsylvania dioceses created compensation funds in response to a grand jury report released last summer that detailed sexual abuse accusations against 301 priests statewide who had abused hundreds of children over several decades.

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NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

July 1, 2019

By Ellen K. Boegel

The Catholic Church is campaigning against California’s proposed changes to its mandatory child abuse reporting law that could compromise the ancient Catholic defense of the “seal of the confessional.” Currently, clergy members are mandated reporters of child abuse and neglect, but need not report abuse if their reasonable suspicions are based on “penitential communications.” Several bills have been proposed that would eliminate or limit this reporting exception.

The version of SB 360 passed by the California Senate and scheduled for a July 9 hearing before the Assembly’s Public Safety committee narrows the definition of penitential communications to those similar to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, in that they must be “made in the manner and context that places the clergy member specifically and strictly under a level of confidentiality that is considered inviolate by church doctrine.” The bill, if enacted, would also require reporting of child abuse revealed through “penitential communications between a clergy member and another person that is employed at the same site or facility as the clergy member” and “between a clergy member and another clergy member.”

This change is significant, but SB 360 does not apply to most confessions and, as currently written, would not change California’s Evidence Code, which retains the priest-penitent privilege and grants everyone the right “to prevent another from disclosing a penitential communication.” The laws of other states are more severe and less religiously accommodating, although practical considerations have limited their impact on religious adherents.

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PEMBERTON (CANADA)
Globe and Mail

July 1, 2019

By Nancy MacDonald

Hubert Jim says he can smell visitors long before he ever sees them. The wind, he says, carries their scent: sunscreen, deodorant, soaps, shampoos – all of it sickly sweet, unmistakably human and foreign to the alpine wilderness he calls home.

This sounds, of course, like total hokum. But a few hours after saying it, Hubie, as Mr. Jim is better known, suddenly went pounding down the winding one-kilometre trail leading to a sturdy, log bridge he built years ago. There, on the far side of the churning, white waters of the Cayoosh Creek stood a pair of bemused retirees from Britain, blinking in the hot, spring sun. They were stretching their legs – a pit stop on a camper trip across the province. Hubie had apparently nosed them out.

He was 37 when he moved to the mountain for good. This fall Hubie turns 57, marking almost 20 years living alone in a shack in B.C. grizzly territory, 40-kilometres northeast of Pemberton. Unless he is forcibly removed, Hubie, a Lil’wat Nation hereditary chief, says he will die here.

The protest camp named Sutikalh was erected in 2000 by a group of First Nations people aiming to stop the last, pristine watershed on Lil’wat lands from being turned into a ski hill. The resort would rival Whistler, the co-host of the 2010 Winter Olympics and playground to the global super rich that also happens to be located on the traditional territories of the Lil’wat Nation.

Within a year, every protester except Hubie had gone home.

Construction on the Cayoosh Resort at Melvin Creek was mothballed owing to Indigenous opposition. The developers – former Olympian Nancy Greene Raine and her husband, Al Raine, the mayor of Sun Peaks, B.C. – however, could still build on the land in the future depending on the outcome of consultations with First Nations in the area. Because of this, Hubie still doesn’t feel it is safe to leave the mountain untended.

“So much of the world has already been destroyed,” he says. “I’m looking after the mountain not just for the Lil’wat, but so the whole world can enjoy it.”

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FALL RIVER (MA)
WPRI TV

July 1, 2019

By Eli Sherman and Ted Nesi

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Fall River is continuing to conduct an internal review into sexual abuse allegations against its priests and clergymen, but is still not setting a date for when a list of credible accusations will be released.

Fall River Bishop Edgar Moreira da Cunha announced in January he had hired William Gavin, a former FBI assistant director, as an independent consultant to review all past claims of sexual abuse against Fall River clergy. Gavin’s hiring followed a reorganization of personnel files last fall.

The bishop said at the time he expected the review would be done “in the spring.” However, diocesan spokesperson John Kearns said Monday the review wasn’t finished yet and he didn’t know when it would be.

“I don’t want to speculate at this point,” Kearns told WPRI 12. “When the review is finished, we will be publishing the list.”

BishopAccountability.org, a website that tracks the Catholic abuse crisis nationwide, lists 31 members of the Fall River diocese who have faced some past accusation of sexual abuse. The diocese includes Bristol County, Cape Cod and the Islands, as well as Marion, Mattapoisett and Wareham.

In a January letter to the region’s Catholics, de Cunha indicated he expected the list would reveal relatively few unknown abuse cases.

“While most of these names have already been reported in the media, the publication of a list is necessary for greater transparency on our part in response to clerical sexual abuse,” he wrote. “I wish that this information could be made available sooner; yet it takes time and diligence to compile a list that is accurate and complete.”

Fall River’s diocesan leaders also established an Office of Safe Environment a year ago, led by retired law enforcement officers, to oversee child protection in the diocese.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
Morning Call

July 1, 2019

By Emily Opilo

The Allentown Diocese has cut its office staff by nearly a quarter and enacted a pay freeze to help compensate victims of clergy sexual abuse, officials announced Monday.

The cuts, effective last Friday, were centered in the diocesan’s administrative office, where 96 people worked prior to the reductions, according to a news release from diocese spokesman Matt Kerr. Most of the cuts were made through attrition, and a voluntary retirement program was offered, according to the diocese.

Kerr would not disclose how many of the 23 affected positions were eliminated via layoffs.

A victim’s compensation fund was created earlier this year in response to a grand jury report released last summer that detailed sexual abuse accusations against 301 priests statewide who had abused hundreds of children over several decades. The report named 37 priests from the Allentown Diocese, and the diocese itself added another 15 names until the list.

A five-month window to file claims with the fund will close in September.

Allentown has set aside millions for the fund, which will not tap future collections from masses, or school and parish funds, according to the diocese. The fund was expected to be built on available cash, borrowed money and the sale of assets.

While no future collections will be used, the diocese’s existing assets were accumulated via donations — the church’s only source of revenue — and investments of that money made by the diocese, Kerr said Monday.

Diocese officials would not specify in April how much money was available in the fund, but said it would provide a public report on the number of victims and the total amount paid to them at the conclusion of the program.

The number of claims filed so far, which has not been disclosed, was not a factor when making the staffing reductions, Kerr said.

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TOLEDO (OH)
The Blade

July 1, 2019

By Nicki Gorny

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Toledo announced a routine series of clergy appointments and transfers on Monday, including the retirement of the Rev. Nelson Beaver, who remains on administrative leave as the diocese continues an internal investigation into sexual abuse allegations against him that began to emerge last year.

Authorities in Williams County, where an initial allegation of sexual abuse of a minor arose in October, closed their investigation at the request of the accuser in March. The allegation had dated back more than 25 years. In the course of that months-long investigation, two additional and also decades-old allegations arose in Lucas County and in Huron County.

Lucas County authorities did not investigate the allegation, which would have fallen beyond the statute of limitations, in line with the wishes of the accuser.

Huron County authorities, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Blade in March, have since closed their investigation, Kelly Donaghy, diocesan spokesman said. That leaves the matter to the diocese, which will investigate according to its own policy and ultimately determine whether Father Beaver, who is now retired or of “senior status,” is suitable for ministry.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Law Journal

July 1, 2019

By Dan M. Clark

The Archdiocese of New York has filed a lawsuit against its various insurers over the years after one company said it’s not planning to cover claims brought through a new law enacted this year that will open a window for older victims of child sex abuse to file civil litigation in New York.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Sun

July 1, 2019

By Amy Nickell

However this wasn’t an innocent childhood romance – perverted Graham was Rachel’s 28-year-old teacher, and he would go on to abuse the teen over three years.

Rachel says: “You think you’re grown up and as a teenager you know everything but you realise you don’t and you are still a child.

“That makes what Graham did worse because it’s taking away somebody’s innocence, and that’s what he did to me.”

Sadly, she’s not alone. In the last five years in the UK over 200 teachers have been struck off as a result of sexual misconduct with students.

Groomed and sexually abused, married mum-of-one Rachel, now 43, kept her personal ordeal secret for 25 years.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

July 1, 2019

By Cindy Wooden

The first time Archbishop Michael J. Byrnes of Agana, Guam, celebrated Mass in his cathedral, he had to cross a picket line to do so.

Australian Archbishop Peter A. Comensoli of Melbourne said Catholics in his archdiocese are angry.

The two were among 30 archbishops from 25 nations who received their palliums — woolen stoles — from Pope Francis June 29.

In interviews with Catholic News Service before the Mass, both archbishops spoke of the impact of clerical sexual abuse on the people of their dioceses and said survivors are the members of their flocks most in need of care.

The first week of August, both Archbishop Byrnes and Archbishop Comensoli will celebrate their first anniversaries as archbishop of their dioceses. For both archdioceses, it has been a year of coming face-to-face with the abuse crisis.

Archbishop Byrnes was an auxiliary bishop of Detroit when Pope Francis sent him to Guam in October 2016 as the coadjutor bishop with special powers in the midst of accusations of sexual abuse and financial mismanagement against Guam’s Archbishop Anthony Apuron.

The appointment “was a little overwhelming,” the archbishop said. Guam was far away and Catholics there were in an uproar.

Meeting Pope Francis before he went to Guam for the first time, he said he told the pope that when a sports team is doing badly, the important thing is to return to the fundamentals and that’s what he planned to do in Guam: “Being friends with Jesus Christ.”

But “my first meeting when I arrived in Guam was with lawyers,” he said. “At that time we had six complaints of sexual abuse of minors and to date over 230 victims have come forward — it’s a lot for a small island.”

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
GoLocalProv News Team

July 1, 2019

The Diocese of Providence on Monday morning released the names of clergy, diocesan and religious order priests as well as deacons, who have been “credibly” accused of sexual abuse of minors. Bishop Tobin stated last year that the names would be released in 2019.

In February, the Diocese of Providence’s Rhode Island Catholic Conference in written testimony to the House Judiciary Committee disclosed that the church has made tens of millions of dollars in payments to sexual abuse victims over the past few decades.

The testimony had been offered in opposition to legislation — recently passed by the General Assembly — to extend the statute of limitation of those who are sexually abused from the existing seven years to up to 35 years.

Payments to Victims

The disclosure of the payments may, in part, be an indicator as to the Diocese’s financial issues and why the church failed to make proper contributions to the pension fund of the now collapsed St. Joseph Health Services retirement fund — the largest pension fund failure in Rhode Island history.

“Reflecting [on] our commitment to justice, the Diocese of Providence has resolved over 130 claims and paid out over $21 million in legal settlements. Additionally, a pastoral outreach program has provided victims with nearly $2.3 million for the cost of counseling in order to facilitate healing and wholeness. There have been many long-standing and effective efforts towards prevention here,” said the Church in written testimony to the House committee.

Last October, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a national non-profit, has called on Democratic candidate for Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha to commit to investigating the Diocese of Providence.

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Wrestling World blog

July 1, 2019

By Joan Jalbuena

The community of Henderson in Nevada, located just south of Las Vegas is a small one of only about 300,000 people. It’s a quiet place, which is why, earlier this year they were shocked to rack up their third homicide in a year.

The victim was a 70 year old man, who was supposedly “quiet” and who neighbors believed was merely a retired teacher who occasionally ran tutoring sessions in his home.

According to Fox 5, the Henderson police were conducting a welfare check at the home of John Capparelli, at around 9:30 am on March 9. They found Capparelli’s body in the kitchen. He had been shot in the neck in an apparent robbery.

It was only then that his neighbors realized that their “quiet” neighbor had come to their community to hide allegations of a dark past.

Capparelli was a defrocked priest accused of molesting multiple boys in the guise of “teaching” them to wrestle.

Capparelli had been a Catholic Priest for the period of 1980 to 1992, until multiple allegations of sexual misconduct were brought against him. Several young men alleged that he had groped them and worse. He was suspended from the church in 1992.

Even after he was defrocked, however, Capparelli continued to work with children and young boys as a public school teacher, said a report from NJ.com. He only stopped in 2011 after a report in the Star-Ledger made public, the allegations against him.

“Submission” wrestling
An earlier story that the NJ.com ran about John Capparelli’s life in New Jersey also reveals that Capparelli was linked to a fetish website called nhb-battle.com, which he was supposed to be running out of his home in Belleville.

Two of Capparelli’s victims during the years he was a priest have been vocal about their molestation at his hands. They were to testify against Capparelli during his hearing with the New Jersey State Board of Examiners but didn’t get a chance to as the case reached a settlement.

“I am happy that after all this time, he’s finally being held accountable,” said Rich Fitter, who has stated that Capparelli used to touch him inappropriately during “submission wrestling” matches in the 1980s.

“He should not be around children. To me he should be in jail,” said Fitter.

According to Fitter and another of the alleged victims, Andrew Dundorf have shared their experiences with Capparelli both which involve “wrestling”.

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ROME (ITALY)
CBS News

July 1, 2019

By Anna Matranga

The Vatican’s highest court issued a document on Monday approved by Pope Francis strongly reiterating Catholic teaching that priests may not, under any circumstances, reveal information learned inside the confessional. The document was a response to mounting political and social pressure for priests to report details of sexual abuse of minors acquired during confessions to authorities.

The document states that any legislation aimed at forcing priests to report such information would be an “unacceptable offense” against the church’s freedom from secular power, as well as a violation of the religious freedoms of both the penitent and the confessor.

The Vatican said it felt it was “necessary to intervene,” to explain the importance of the confessional seal to the church, and to promote understanding of it.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal

July 1, 2019

By Brian Amaral

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence on Monday morning released a list of clergy, priests and deacons who have been “credibly accused” of sexually abusing children.

The list, posted on the diocese’s website just after 8 a.m., represented generations of private torment for victims and public disgrace for abusers and their enablers. It includes 50 names, 19 of them still living but none still active.

The state recently extended the statute of limitations for victims to file lawsuits over child sexual abuse from seven years to 35.

To find the list of credibly accused Diocese of Providence priests and deacons, click here.

Bishop Thomas J. Tobin announced in December that the list would be released sometime in 2019; in a statement, the diocese said it hopes the list will provide “healing and consolation.”

The list was broken down into several categories, including credibly accused living clergy, credibly accused living deacons, credibly accused deceased clergy, credibly accused deceased religious order priests, and two “publicly accused” deceased clergy. All but one of the 19 living clergy and deacons were listed as “removed from ministry.” The one who wasn’t removed had resigned before an allegation was received, the diocese said.

One priest was born in 1904, and was ordained in 1930. He died in 1977, before any allegation was received. The youngest living credibly accused priest is now 60, and was ordained in 1990.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

July 1, 2019

This morning, the Diocese of Providence, RI has finally taken the step of posting the names of clergy who have been accused of abuse. Now we call on church officials in Rhode Island to aggressively reach out to parishioners, informing them of this list and urging anyone with information or allegations of their own to report to local police and prosecutors.

While it is likely that this list was only published in response to growing public pressure, we hope that the release of this information will lead to safer, more informed communities We also hope that survivors who may be suffering in silence will be encouraged to come forward and make a report to police and the attorney general.

Unfortunately, the list released today Rhode Island church officials only includes names, ages, years of ordination, and their current status. While this information is valuable, it is not enough for a complete list. Bishop Thomas Tobin should work immediately to update his list and include, at a minimum, the work histories of each accused priest so that communities where abusers served know to look for survivors in their midst. Similarly, he should include information about when the archdiocese first received the allegations and what they did in response. Only by knowing what went wrong to enable abusers in the past can we best know how to prevent similar situations in the future.

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AUSTRALIA
The Leader

June 28, 2019

By Murray Trembath

A former Church of England Boys’ Society lay leader and scripture teacher at Sutherland has been sentenced to a minimum three years and seven months jail for historical child sexual assault offences.

Many of the offences occurred in church-run camps for boys in Royal National Park.

William Richmond Sandwell, 78, of Loftus, appeared in the District Court, Downing Centre, after a jury found him guilty of 11 child sexual assault offences, committed against six children between 1965 and 1985.

Sandwell, who also used the name Sandell at one time, denied the offences.

Among “survivors” in court for the sentencing was Alexander Hayes, who now lives in Perth.

Mr Hayes said outside the court Sandwell’s assaults on him between the ages of 11 and 15 had had a “catastrophic effect on my life and a horrific impact on many families, including his own.”

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VATICAN CITY
La Croix

June 28, 2019

By Robert Mickens

How Pope Francis is initiating processes of Church reform that will be hard to undo

How many cardinals does it take to help Pope Francis reform the Roman Curia? And how many years do they need to get the job done?Many Catholics – at least those who are hoping the pope can succeed in decentralizing ecclesial power away from the Vatican – have grown frustrated that after some six years there have been no definitive answers to those questions.After meeting roughly five times annually, the Council of Cardinals (a body initially made of eight members or C8, then quickly expanded to C9 and more recently depleted to C6) has still not given the pope a final draft for a new apostolic constitution to reform the Church’s central offices.But they are getting closer.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal

June 30, 2019

By Donita Naylor

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence will publish a list Monday of clergy, priests and deacons who are “credibly accused” of sexual abuse of minors.

The complete list of names as well as other pertinent information will be published at 8 a.m. Monday on the diocesan website: www.dioceseofprovidence.org

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UNITED STATES
ABC News

June 29, 2019

By Cho Park, Erin Brady, Juju Chang and Eamon McNiff

[PHOTO: These four women and two other families filed a civil lawsuit against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints alleging they failed to warn or protect them from a sexual predator.]

The following report was put together by reviewing trial testimony and court documents, and interviewing multiple plaintiffs who were involved in a lawsuit against the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints. The plaintiffs in that lawsuit alleged that the Church and several Church officials failed to take steps to protect the plaintiff’s children from a teenager who was ultimately convicted of sexually abusing two young children.

The Church told ABC News in a statement, “These allegations are false, offensive, and unsubstantiated. As soon as Church leaders learned of abuse by this individual, they encouraged the parents of the abused children to report to West Virginia police and confirmed the report.”

The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed payment in 2018.

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ALBANY (NY)
Albany Times-Union

June 29, 2019

By Paul Grondahl

Claims of “unspeakable atrocities” by ex-area priest come as legal window opens

In his bedroom upstairs at the Home for Wayward Boys in Knox, the priest had a king-sized waterbed with royal blue satin sheets.

The Rev. Gerard R. “Jerry” Miller, a priest of the Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette order founded in Hartford, Conn., repeatedly sexually assaulted teenage boys in his care on that waterbed for three years beginning in 1984, two of his victims alleged in legal documents their lawyers sent recently to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany and the Albany County district attorney’s office.

In outlining their case in preparation for filing a lawsuit, Martin Smalline and JoAnn Harri, a husband and wife team who run an Albany law firm, laid out allegations of “rape and sexual assault … but also the trafficking of children across state lines, along with obstruction of justice and concealment of criminal behavior.”

The victims’ accounts in the legal documents allege that in addition to assaulting boys in Albany County, Miller drove teenagers under his care to Agawam, Mass., and Atlanta, Ga., where they were sexually assaulted by Miller and another priest identified only as Father Jim.

In the spring of 1986, according to statements attorneys provided to authorities, the two alleged victims who are part of the legal action were sexually assaulted at the same time on the waterbed by Miller and Father Jim when the second priest visited Altamont.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WBFO-FM (NPR affiliate)

June 30, 2019

By Mark Scott

Three Catholic priests who were placed on leave after making inappropriate remarks during a party with seminarians in April are being reinstated.

Bishop Richard Malone is returing Fr. Arthur Mattulke, Fr. Patrick O’Keefe and Fr. Robert Orlowski to active ministry, effective this Friday.

Malone said an investigation found no inappropriate physical conduct by the priests. He said corrective measures were taken, including retraining in the Diocesan Code of Conduct.

The Bishop praised the seminarians for coming forward.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
The Boston Globe

June 26, 2019

By Amanda Milkovits

The Rhode Island General Assembly overwhelmingly passed legislation on Wednesday to give victims of childhood sexual abuse more time to sue perpetrators and hold institutions and public entities accountable.

The legislation heads to the desk of Governor Gina Raimondo, who is expected to sign it into law.

It extends the statute of limitations to 35 years after victims reach adulthood.

Victims will have 35 years to bring lawsuits against individual perpetrators, regardless of whether the case had been “time-barred” under previous laws. The bill also keeps state law allowing victims to file suits within seven years of “discovering” they’d been abused.

They will also have 35 years to bring lawsuits against institutions and organizations, as well as the state, municipalities and quasi-public agencies. Nesslebush said she insisted on adding those agencies, after seeing the widespread abuse by Jerry Sandusky at Penn State and Larry Nassar at Michigan State University.

However, the 35-year extension is prospective only against institutions, except under the seven-year “discovery rule.”

The bill caps a years-long battle brought by survivors of sexual abuse, and in the waning days of this session, appeared that the effort was going to fail when the House and Senate brought forward conflicting bills.

Then Wednesday afternoon, Senator Donna Nesselbush, D-Pawtucket, suddenly announced a compromise with the “best parts” of her bill and the bill sponsored by Narragansett Representative Carol Hagan McEntee.

The legislators didn’t waste time. Within two hours, the compromise legislation flew through the Senate Judiciary Committee, unanimously passed the Senate to applause, and then sailed through the House, 70 to 1. (Representative Brian C. Newberry, R-North Smithfield, was the only nay.)

The governor said Wednesday evening that she intended to sign it into law.

“Abuse of any kind cannot be tolerated anywhere. As a mother, I find reports of child abuse particularly disturbing,” Raimondo said in a statement. “I’ve long supported efforts to hold abusers accountable and ensure that victims are given the time needed to come forward.”

The sudden revival of the bill had surprised McEntee, as well as some of the victims who had testified on the legislation and admitted losing hope as time ran down.

Nesselbush praised their courage and singled out two victims who were invited to the announcement and the votes — McEntee’s sister Dr. Ann Hagan Webb, who’d testified about being molested by the family’s parish priest, and Jim Scanlon, whose accusations against a priest at Boston College High School were part of the movie “Spotlight.”

Scanlon trembled a little after the announcement. “I’m surprised, pleasantly surprised,” he said.

This was for the victims, who could finally get justice, Scanlon said.

In short, victims will be able to sue their alleged abusers, as well as institutions such as the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts and other “youth-serving” organizations.

Kathryn Robb, executive director of Child USAdvocacy, said the bill was a move in the right direction, but there was still more work needed. “Unfortunately, it still allows institutions to conceal their horrific acts of child abuse and cover-up, and hence many victims are left without any justice,” she said in a statement.

However, the lobbying arm of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence announced it supported the bill. “It is now time for the process of achieving justice and healing for victims to move forward,” the Rhode Island Catholic Conference said in a statement.

McEntee had sponsored the bill in honor of her sister, Dr. Ann Hagan Webb, who had testified in despairing details about being molested starting when she was five.

The two sisters hugged each other after the bill passed the Senate. They beamed at each other across the House floor as the vote came through.

House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, who’d backed the legislation, congratulated Webb. Noting that Wednesday was her birthday, he added, “I don’t believe in coincidences,” and wished her a happy birthday.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Tribune Democrat

June 30, 2019

By Paul Guggenheimer

David Egan is well aware of the stigma attached to priests in the wake of the Catholic Church child sex abuse scandal.

“I assume that other people assume things about me, that they’re very suspicious of me now,” Egan said. “If you walk out in public with a collar on, I think people are questioning ‘Is this one of the good guys? Or is this someone who has committed some terrible sin among his own flock?’ ”

Egan is one of four area men who were ordained to the priesthood Saturday by Bishop David A. Zubik of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh during a Mass of Ordination at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Oakland.

In addition to Egan, 30, of Glenshaw, the new priests are Timothy Deely, 37, of Greenfield, Brendan Dawson, 30, of West Deer and Mingwei Li, 31, who immigrated with his family from China and grew up in the South Hills.

“Freedom of religion is limited in China. Coming to the U.S. was part of God’s plan,” Mingwei said.

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VATICAN CITY
La Croix International

June 21, 2019

By Robert Mickens

American alt-right leader enlists Catholic allies to turn people against the pope

Among all the world’s political and social leaders, Pope Francis stands increasingly alone as the most powerful force for global peace and stability. Thank God – and the cardinals who elected him in March 2013 – that the Argentine Jesuit is the current Bishop of Rome.

In an age when alt-right populists are masquerading as Christians and using religious symbols to scare believers into embracing racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and ultra-nationalism – all so starkly at odds with the Gospel, by the way – Francis has played an indispensable role in preventing a dangerous spiral into a full-blown clash of civilizations.

This is because there are people as crazy as the populists in other currents, as well.
Another pope may not have had the courage, fortitude or deep and genuine faith to stand against all this and not allow himself to be co-opted to the Christian sovereigntists’ cause.
And while the 82-year-old Francis has not been able to convince enough voters to reject the populists, he has kept most bishops, cardinals and other Catholic leaders from publicly endorsing them. This is no small matter.

Populists state that their intention is to defend the Judeo-Christian heritage of the Western world. And, unfortunately, this is quite enticing to those for whom Catholicism is, in essence, a Eurocentric philosophical ideology and moral code.

Tribal Catholics of the “no salvation outside the Roman Church” type like the message.

And the man who has enlisted them is Steve Bannon.

The American millionaire populist who rails against the elites

Chief architect of Donald Trump’s election to the U.S. presidency and co-founder of the far-right Breitbart News, the 65-year-old Bannon is now the most famous ringleader of the alt-right’s populist fear-mongering movement.

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VATICAN CITY
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

June 25, 2019

U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke has resigned from the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, saying it has become “more and more identified with the political program” of Steve Bannon.

In a letter posted on his Twitter feed, Burke said June 25 he had urged the institute to return to its original purpose of promoting the respect of human dignity but “it has not done so,” so he was terminating his relationship, including being the institute’s honorary president. Eleven other cardinals make up the institute’s advisory board and Bannon, former chief strategist at the White House, is a patron and member of the board of trustees.

“I have been made aware of a June 24 LifeSiteNews online article — now removed — entitled ‘Steve Bannon hints at making film exposing homosexuality in the Vatican,’ in which the insinuation is made that somehow, through my association with Mr. Benjamin Harnwell of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, I was involved in a meeting between Mr. Bannon and Mr. Frederic Martel, author of the book, ‘In the Closet of the Vatican,’ to promote a film version of Mr. Martel’s book,” Burke said in his letter.

“LifeSiteNews made no contact with me to verify my possible involvement,” he said. “Given the overall content of the article and given several statements made by Mr. Bannon in the article, I must make the following clear:

“I do not, in any way, agree with Mr. Bannon’s assessment of the book in question,” Burke said. “Furthermore, I am not at all of the mind that the book should be made into a film. I disagree completely with a number of Mr. Bannon’s statements regarding the doctrine and discipline of the Roman Catholic Church.

“Above all, I find objectionable his statement calling into question the church’s discipline of perpetual continence for the clergy, in accord with the example and desire of Christ …” he said.

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UNITED STATES
Patheos

June 30, 2019

By guest writer William M. Shea

James Carroll’s recent essay on the priesthood in The Atlantic, the critical responses by Thomas Reese and James Martin, and the tempered comments by Donald Cozzens (NCR) indicate to me that the discussion of reform has taken a significant turn. We seem now to be asking questions about the structure of authority in the Roman Catholic church rather than only about sin and how to counter it. The pope and bishops, for all their admirable attempt to amplify the reporting and handling of changes of abuse and cover-up by bishops, are struggling to keep the reform urges inside the boundaries of the received structures of authority, i.e., there are to be no independent lay bodies to open and review cases. All is to remain under hierarchical control.

In my own reading experience it was Garry Wills’ book, Why Priests? A Failed Tradition (2013) that decisively kicked open the door on the dissolution of the clericalism and hierarchism that, in my view, plague the Catholic church and, one way or another, most of the Christian churches, none of which has found an ideal solution. This intensified discussion in the last decade is fraught with many dangers, I admit. Even I, a retired and increasingly breathless old man, have been accused of apostasy by the renowned archbishop of Philadelphia for my memoir, Judas Was a Bishop (2015).

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ENGLAND
Premier Christianity

June 30, 2019

The leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales has referred to the abuse inquiry into the Catholic church but swiftly moved on to celebrate priests.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols celebrated a National Mass of thanksgiving and renewal for priests at Westminster Cathedral on Friday lunchtime, welcoming everyone and then saying:

“In recent days, in the IICSA Report and in the media, there has been sharp criticism of our work of Safeguarding in the Catholic Church, and of aspects of my ministry in Birmingham. I acknowledge this, of course.

“Yet this not the time nor place for those matters. Rather today is about you, my brother priests, about your faithfulness, your steadfast generosity, your ministry of healing, your endurance, not least under the burden of the grievous damage done to innocent victims by just a very few of our brother priests. I thank you for your faithfulness, your generosity, your perseverance. I thank you, as do each of us bishops, and the people of your parishes. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you!”

He then moved on and did not refer to the topic again in his homily.

In June, Cardinal Vincent Nicholls was criticised in the report from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse for putting the reputation of the Church before welfare of children.

He was the Archbishop of Birmingham between 2000 and 2009, the Archdiocese which was looked into thouroughly.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Public Radio

June 30, 2019

By Andrea Y. Henderson

Giving Voice, a peer-led national organization for nuns and religious sisters under the age of 50, convened for a four-day conference to build bridges between religious life and social justice issues.

Eighty of the group’s sisters from around the country and other nations worked together at Fontbonne University to push for change within the church and create a cross-generational culture of community and growth.

In 2016, Pope Francis wrote a letter to men and women religious calling for the church to become experts in spiritual conversation. And at this year’s convention the sisters examined his letter and found ways to “live boldly” in their faith by communicating and witnessing to others who live various lifestyles.

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IRELAND
Irish Central

June 30, 2019

Top Irish newspapers The Irish Times, The Irish Examiner, and The Evening Echo have printed formal apologies for a seminarian sex scandal story regarding the Pontifical Irish College in Rome that proved to be fake.

In May 2018, The Irish Times published a story claiming that two seminarians were dismissed from the Pontifical Irish College in Rome after being found in bed together. The story was subsequently reported by a number of other media outlets.

Claims that the sex scandal occurred after students attended a Mass commemorating Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae on artificial birth control also proved to be false. There was no such Mass.

Connor Gannon, a former clerical student at the college in Rome, launched High Court proceedings against a total of eight newspapers to clear his name.

The Irish Times, The Irish Examiner and the Evening Echo have all issued apologies acknowledging they referred to and identified Gannon. The three newspapers have said there was no truth in and no basis for the allegations made, TheJournal.ie reports.

Each publication acknowledged that the article was “false and should not have been published” and have agreed to pay damages to Gannon for the “upset and distress caused to him by the article.”

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TOLEDO (OH)
The Blade

June 29, 2019

By Jay Skebba

Rossford Schools is considering changes to its sexual harassment policy after being criticized for concluding female students touched against their wishes by a former school administrator weren’t sexually harassed because their academic performance didn’t suffer.

The move would make Rossford an outlier among most of its neighbors, as many school districts throughout the Toledo area — including Rossford — use the exact same policy language to determine if an employee committed sexual harassment.

But what actions specifically fall under those guidelines can be left up to interpretation, and that means different districts likely would have interpreted the sort of situation that transpired in Rossford in different ways.

The debate over what constitutes sexual harassment at Rossford Schools surfaced this spring when Pat Murtha resigned as athletic director and assistant high school principal. Mr. Murtha resigned April 22, and records from a district investigation obtained by The Blade in May concluded he engaged in the following behavior:

Mr. Murtha, who served as an anti-harassment compliance officer, often pinched or pulled a girl’s nose, tugged on her ears, rubbed her head, messed up her hair, and took her food without asking. She asserted Mr. Murtha touched her about 40 times since the middle of the 2017-2018 school year.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

June 28, 2019

By John L. Allen Jr.

In “The Simpsons,” the annual Halloween episodes are known for their spoofs of the supernatural. Back in 1993, one of my favorites featured a vision of Hell, where the legendarily donut-loving Homer has been assigned to the “Ironic Punishment Division.” He’s tethered to a chair as a machine force-feeds him pastry after pastry.

(Homer appears delighted, mumbling “more please!” after each mouthful, leading a frustrated demon to say: “I don’t understand it … James Coco went mad in 15 minutes!”)

I thought of that episode this week, speaking to a visiting clergyman who was astonished to discover that German Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van-Elst – better known to the world as the “Bling Bishop,” whose exuberant spending in the Diocese of Limburg in 2013 caused such a furor that he was granted a “sabbatical” by the newly-elected Pope Francis – is actually now a Vatican official.

My cleric friend recently attended a meeting in the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization, where Tebartz-van-Elst led the discussion. He said he spent a few minutes trying to figure out where he’d heard the name before, until realization dawned: “My God, he’s the bishop of bling!”

Welcome to the “Ironic Employment Division” in Pope Francis’s Vatican.

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MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
The Age

June 30, 2019

By Farrah Tomazin

The controversial scheme set up by George Pell to handle sex abuse claims against Melbourne’s Catholic Church spent almost as much money paying its independent commissioner as it did compensating hundreds of victims.

The church’s own figures reveal that between 1996 and March 2014, the archdiocese spent $34.27 million to run its so-called Melbourne Response, but only $9.72 million – or 28 per cent of it – was used to compensate 307 child sex abuse victims.

The bulk of the money during that period was spent on other operational costs for the scheme, including $7.8 million to employ barrister Peter O’Callaghan, QC, as its independent commissioner, and a further $4.7 million on general legal fees.

Mr O’Callaghan’s job was to determine the credibility of victims’ claims and make suggestions about what action to take against alleged abusers.

Another $432,000 was used to fund the compensation panel that made recommendations about ex gratia payments, and $11 million was used to fund the church counselling service known as Carelink, most of which was spent on staff and administration.

The figures, contained in a spreadsheet labelled “strictly confidential”, are the most up to date the archdiocese has ever been required to provide publicly. They were subpoenaed by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as “supplementary information” and until now have been buried in thousands of documents that form part of the commission’s landmark inquiry.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Pennsylvania Record

June 28, 2019

By Karen Kidd

The state Superior Court recently reinstated a lawsuit against the Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown filed by a woman who alleged she was repeatedly molested by a pedophile priest in the 1970s and 1980s.

In its 38-page decision, the Superior Court reversed a December 2017 Blair County Common Pleas Court decision dismissing the lawsuit filed by Renee’ A. Rice, saying the diocesan defendants were not entitled to judgment on the pleadings based upon the statute of limitations. “All three of Ms. Rice’s issues on appeal have merit,” the Superior Court said in remanding the case.

Judge Deborah A. Kunselman wrote the Superior Court decision in which judges Eugene B. Strassburger and Jacqueline O. Shogan concurred. Strassburger is a retired senior judge was assigned to the Superior Court in this case.

In her lawsuit, Rice alleged that she was about 9 when a then-priest at St. Leo’s Church in Altoona, Rev. Charles F. Bodziak, began molesting her and continued to do so for years, as often as twice a week. Rice said the abuse occurred in the church’s rectory, a cemetery and in Bodziak’s car and did not end until 1981.

The diocesan defendants argued that the statute of limitations on Rice’s claims ended in October 1987, two years after her 18th birthday.

Blair County Judge Jolene Grubb Kopriva agreed and dismissed Rice’s lawsuit.

“To support that contention, they [the diocese] predominately relied upon two cases from this court that had affirmed judgments on the pleadings in favor of pedophile clergy and various, corporate manifestations of the Catholic Church under the statute of limitations,” the Superior Court’s decision said.

The Superior Court reinstated Rice’s lawsuit based on a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision in Nicolaou v. Martin, which was handed down about 10 months after Kopriva’s dismissal and which abrogated the Superior Court decisions upon which Kopriva had relied.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

June 29, 2019

By Inés San Martín

As the Catholic Church in Germany prepares to embark on a synodal process motivated in part by a desire to stop a hemorrhage of faithful, Pope Francis has sent them a letter reminding them they don’t walk alone but with the universal Church.

In the missive he also reminds the Germans that a “structural” reform, simply changing to adapt to modern times, is not the solution.

The Church’s raison d’etre, Francis wrote in a letter released by the Vatican Saturday, is that God “so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that all who believe in him may not die, but may have eternal Life.”

This means that the transformation and revitalization sought after by the German Church, with a synod called by the bishops’ conference, cannot simply be a “reaction to external data or demands,” including a drop in births and aging communities. Though these are “valid causes,” Francis wrote, seen outside the ecclesial mystery they could stimulate a reactionary attitude.

The pope’s letter to the Catholics of Germany comes three months after Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising announced that the local church was embarking on a “binding synodal process” to tackle what he says are the three key issues arising from the clerical abuse crisis: Priestly celibacy, the Church’s teaching on sexual morality, and a reduction of clerical power.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

June 29, 2019

By Inés San Martín

Australian bishops spent the past week in Rome meeting with Pope Francis and the head of various Vatican offices, and the matter of Cardinal George Pell, convicted of historical sexual abuse but awaiting the result of his appeal, risked becoming the elephant in the room.

Yet, according to Archbishop Peter Comensoli of Melbourne, it didn’t, because it was directly addressed in most of the official conversations the 40 bishops had during their June 24-28 ad limina visit to Rome.

Though he wouldn’t reveal what was said about Pell, the archbishop told Crux on Thursday that there have been “two things” running through most of their meetings: The clerical sexual abuse crisis (Pell included), and the upcoming plenary council for the Church in Australia.

“The reality is that, in Australia, in a very real way, we stand at the feet of the Cross,” Comensoli said.

“The people who’ve been abused and their families, the devastation it’s caused, the suffering associated with that, the further traumatization that comes from the processes they’ve been put through in the past by the Church, all of that is part of the realness of where things are at.”

In addition, he noted the suffering of those who, without being survivors or members of their families, have been “traumatized” by the scandals, who are “disgusted by the way processes were applied.”

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

PASADENA (CA)
The Good Men Project

June 29, 2019

By James A. Haught

By now, it’s clear that religion is fading in America, as it has done in most advanced Western democracies. Dozens of surveys find identical evidence: fewer American adults, especially those under 30, attend church—or even belong to a church. They tell interviewers their religion is “none.” They ignore faith.

Since 1990, the “nones” have exploded rapidly as a sociological phenomenon—from 10% of U.S. adults, to 15%, to 20%. Now they’ve climbed to 25%, according to a 2016 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). That makes them the nation’s largest faith category, outstripping Roman Catholics (21%) and white evangelicals (16%). They seem on a trajectory to become an outright majority. America is following the secular path of Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and other modern places. The “Secular Age” is snowballing.

Various explanations for the social transformation are postulated: the Internet exposes young people to a wide array of ideas and practices that undercut old-time beliefs: That family breakdown severs traditional participation in congregations. That the young have grown cynical about authority of all types. That fundamentalist hostility to LGBTQ+ persons and abortion has soured tolerant-minded Americans. That clergy, child-molesting scandals have scuttled church claims to moral superiority. That faith-based, suicide bombings and other religious murders horrify normal folks.

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

NEW YORK (NY)
ABC News

June 29, 2019

By Cho Park, Erin Brady, Juju Chang and Eamon McNiff

The following report was put together by reviewing trial testimony and court documents, and interviewing multiple plaintiffs who were involved in a lawsuit against the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints. The plaintiffs in that lawsuit alleged that the Church and several Church officials failed to take steps to protect the plaintiff’s children from a teenager who was ultimately convicted of sexually abusing two young children.

The Church told ABC News in a statement, “These allegations are false, offensive, and unsubstantiated. As soon as Church leaders learned of abuse by this individual, they encouraged the parents of the abused children to report to West Virginia police and confirmed the report.”

The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed payment in 2018.

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SACRAMENTO (CA)
ABC 10 News

June 28, 2019

Bishop Jaime Soto is speaking with us in his first sit down interview since revealing the names of 44 priests and two deacons credibly accused of sexually abusing children and young adults over the past 70 years.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

June 28, 2019

Now that five men have bravely disclosed their childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a priest, Arkansas Catholic officials must work to find others who were hurt and may be trapped in silence, shame and self-blame.

We are grateful to the survivors of Fr. John McDaniel who stepped forward, sought justice and exposed this predator. We believe that other victims of sexual violence will feel vindication because of their courage, and we hope this settlement brings them some measure of healing.

But while this case has settled, the work is far from over. Most abuse victims never report what happened to them and instead live silently with their pain. If Bishop Anthony Taylor wants to be a real shepherd, he will use parish bulletins, church websites and pulpit announcements to urge anyone with information or suspicions about Fr. McDaniel – or any other abusive priest, nun, deacon or other church staffer – to come forward to independent sources of help, like police, prosecutors, therapists and support groups like ours.

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PARIS (FRANCE)
LaCrois International

June 28, 2019

By Father Amado L. Picardal

(This is the final part of a three-part series from Redemptorist Father Amado Picardal on the clerical sex abuse crisis.At the root of clergy sex abuse is the “dark side” of leadership. To overcome the dark side, a priest must be aware of it and acknowledge its existence. This requires spending time in solitude, silence and prayerful reflection.

This is a time spent for examining his life and conscience. This should be done regularly and be part of the rhythm of his life. This is a time for introspection — to examine the lights and the shadows of his exercise of leadership.

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MERCED (CA)
Sun Star

June 28, 2019

By Vikaas Shanker

A Catholic priest twice convicted of possessing child pornography in Merced County — and recently released from prison — has continued to receive checks from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno since he was first arrested nearly five years ago.

Father Robert Gamel, 69, was released on post-release community supervision from the California Institution for Men prison in Chino on April 13, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Gamel was incarcerated four years, including 605 days of time served in Merced County jail, following his second arrest on possession of child pornography, according to a CDCR statement.

Gamel, the former head of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Los Banos, where he was affectionately known as “Father Bob,” now resides in Tulare County with his family. He remains on paid administrative leave, pending a canonical investigation, said Diocese of Fresno Chancellor Teresa Dominguez.

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HOUSTON (TX)
ABC 30 News

June 28, 2019

By Guy Davies

A priest at the center of an alleged child sex scandal in Houston has been indicted on charges of exposing himself to a teen during confession.

Father Manuel La Rosa-Lopez of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston faces his fifth sexual-abuse charge in Conroe, Texas, based on alleged incidents in the 1990s and 2000s. La Rosa-Lopez exposed himself to an unnamed 15-year-old during confession in the year 2000, according to the indictment.

The minor alleges that after confessing his homosexuality to the priest, La Rosa-Lopez asked him vulgar questions and “proceeded to open the partition window in the confessional booth and exposed (himself).”

The victim spoke about the incident in a session with a therapist in 2017, according to the lawsuit.

The indictment means there are now five charges against La Rosa-Lopez involving three alleged sexual-abuse victims.

ABC News contacted the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, which referred questions about the case to La Rosa-Lopez’s attorney, Wendell Odom, who did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon told ABC News that they are hoping to get to trial by the end of this year or early 2020.

“Obviously, we feel strongly about the evidence against La Rosa-Lopez and our pursuit of justice for victims,” he said. “We look forward to presenting our case to a Montgomery County jury soon.”

Michael Norris, the head of the Houston arm of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told ABC News that his hope is that La Rosa-Lopez pleads guilty, and that the Catholic Church is in need of reform.

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