ABUSE TRACKER

UNITED STATES
joanchittister.org

August 21, 2018

Joan Chittister began writing about the issue of sexual abuse in 2002. In light of the recent release of the Grand Jury Report on Sexual Abuse of Children within Six Dioceses of the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania, we have excerpted from two of her articles that dealt with the issue.

I’m beginning to wonder if we’ve been overlooking the real meaning, the ultimate impact, of two of the most powerful lines of scripture: “And a little child shall lead them” or, alternatively, “Let the little ones come unto me.” Pedophilia, the abuse of children, has finally unmasked for all to see the operational principles of an organization that has been able for years to ignore, reject– even disdain–the cries of multiple other groups of the ignored and abused.

In a church that newly calls itself “the people of God” but clearly still thinks of itself more narrowly in terms of the pre-Vatican II definition of the church—those faithful in communion with the local bishop who is in communion with the Bishop of Rome—hearing is not a strong point. In a church such as that, questions do not need to be addressed; they can simply be denied on grounds of “unity” or “obedience” or “faith.” But to ignore the questions of women was one thing; to ignore the children was entirely another. To dismiss married priests was one thing; to protect pedophile priests was another. To claim ultimate authority by the clerical one percent of the church was one thing. To reject the authority of the people in the pews who, the new Code of Canon Law says, have not only the right but the duty “to make known their needs to their pastors” is entirely another.

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.

SEATTLE (WA)
Raw Story

August 29, 2018

By Valerie Tarico

As Pennsylvania investigators worked to confirm up to 1000 cases of sexual abusecommitted by Catholic priests, a panel of Catholic ethicist-theologians appointed by the bishops was also hard at work.

Like the Pennsylvania team, the panel serving the bishops sought to ensure that Church-affiliated institutions weren’t ignoring sexual evils. Good on them! you might think. They’re finally taking responsibility for the mess created by their obsession with priestly abstinence.

You’d be wrong.

Bad, Bad Birth Control

The goal of the panel wasn’t to investigate, punish, heal or prevent child sex abuse. It was to ensure that Catholic-controlled healthcare systems don’t look the other way while doctors and other care providers offer contraception, vasectomies, tubal ligations, or abortions (or sexual transition care or death with dignity).

The panel concluded that the bishops must prevent these evils in any institution where they have a say, including secular hospitals that have been acquired by or affiliated with Catholic healthcare corporations. In the past, mergers between Catholic-owned and secular hospitals have sometimes carved out separate legal entities to allow continued provision of reproductive and end-of-life services that are prohibited by the religious directivesgoverning Catholic healthcare “ministries.”

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.

TUAM (IRELAND)
Daily Mail

August 25, 2018

By Sheron Boyle

Pope Francis was greeted by rapturous crowds as he toured the streets of Dublin yesterday at the start of his historic visit to Ireland – only the second ever to the country by a Pontiff.

It was a warmth that will no doubt have come as some relief, given the cold shadow of abuse now covering the Catholic Church. That shadow will be all-too apparent once again today when Francis travels to Knock and its famous shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

For Knock in the west of Ireland is just a short distance from another, darker landmark – a mass grave containing the remains of up to 800 babies and children at a former home for unmarried mothers in Tuam, Co Galway.

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.

NEWARK (NJ)
NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

August 29, 2018

By Kelly Heyboer

Two New Jersey priests have left their parishes in Hudson and Bergen counties while Catholic Church officials investigate separate sexual misconduct allegations that date back decades, an archdiocese official said.

The Rev. Gerard Sudol, priest in residence at Our Lady of Czestochowa Catholic Church in Jersey City, stepped down from his post last week, said James Goodness, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Newark. Sudol was accused of sexually abusing an altar boy while he was assigned to a church in Ridgefield Park in the 1980s and 1990s.

Sudol faced similar accusations in the 1990s but was permitted to return to working in parishes, church officials said.

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.

KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

August 22, 2018

By Phyllis Zagano

Pennsylvania is bad enough. What if the other 49 shoes drop?

Will other U.S. attorneys general follow Pennsylvania’s lead? Will they launch investigations? Will they rid of us these troublesome priests … and bishops?

Probably not. Even as we reel in heartsick disbelief at staggering stories, the problem’s roots may be too deep.

We must assume decay began long before the Pennsylvania report’s 1947 start date. In the U.S., as elsewhere, a generational infestation now exhibits its epic proportions. Too many priest-abuser’s stories begin with their own abuse at the hands of a priest or priests.

Maybe we should have paid more attention to last century’s priestly exodus. Many priests left to marry. Many others simply left. Why? Not all who remained are dishonest, but what honest man could maintain sanity and remain silent if he knew bishops and others hid more than simple shenanigans? For years.

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)
The New Yorker

August 22, 2018

By James Carroll

Pope Francis will make a fate-laden journey to Ireland this weekend. On Sunday, when he addresses a throng of Catholics in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, he will recall the last papal visit to Ireland, that of John Paul II, in 1979. But another papal address of that year should also come to mind. In June of 1979, John Paul II spoke to more than a million Poles in a field outside of Krakow and set in motion events that changed history. But that was then. Nowhere is the difference between what the Polish Pope confronted and what the Argentinian Pope now faces greater than in Ireland, which is ground zero of the collapse of Roman Catholic moral authority. Polish Catholicism was ascendant as the Cold War was winding down; Irish Catholicism is buckling. The hospitable Irish will receive Francis warmly, but an undercurrent of heartbreak and anger will also greet him. What can he possibly say?

Just two weeks ago, a Pennsylvania grand jury found that, over the course of seventy years, three hundred priests abused a thousand young victims—and likely many more who have not yet been identified—with bishops resolutely protecting the perpetrators rather than the children. “This is the murder of a soul,” one victim testified. The Vatican responded to the revelations in Pennsylvania with an expression of “shame and sorrow,” words that Francis repeated on Monday, in an unprecedented letter to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, though neither statement moved beyond perfunctory generalities of regret. But in Ireland, the priest-abuse scandal—in 2009, it was revealed that bishops had colluded with the police in order to protect predators—rocked the nation as, perhaps, nowhere else.

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.

LOUISVILLE (KY)
Courier-Journal

August 29, 2018

By Cal Pfeiffer

Archbishop Kurtz’s offensive and insensitive comments in a recent Sunday edition of the Courier Journal proves he is part if the problem of deceit and deception by bishops covering for pedophile priests.

As stated in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury’s Report, “It seemed as if there was a script. Through the end of the 20th century, the diocese developed consistent strategies for hiding child sex abuse. While the patterns were fairly apparent to us from the documents, we also had experts review them: special agents assigned to the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group: Behavioral Analysis Unit III – Crimes Against Children.

The agents identified seven factors that arose repeatedly in the diocesan response to child abuse complaints:

First – Use of euphemisms: Mischaracterizations of assaults and misleading designations for the removal of priests for a complaint of child sexual abuse. Violent criminal sexual acts, for example, were often described as “inappropriate” contact or “boundary issues.” The temporary or permanent removal of a priest from service was often coded as “sick leave” or “leave.”

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.

MALTA
manueldelia.com

August 29, 2018

The following is a statement by the Communications Office of the Archdiocese of Malta issued earlier this afternoon. I will comment on this in a separate post:

The Communications Office refers to articles published in the media over the last 48 hours about Fr Felix Cini, a priest of Maltese nationality incardinated in the Diocese of Grosseto, Italy. In view of the concerns that have been raised, the following clarifications ought to be made in the best interest of the community.

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.

MALTA
Times of Malta

August 29, 2018

Vatican allowed Fr Felix Cini to remain a priest after two years in therapy

Fr Felix Cini, a Maltese priest convicted in Italy of molesting 17 children, is not a full-time priest and is not allowed to exercise his ministry in Malta, the Curia has said.

In a statement, the Curia said Fr Cini was also not allowed to be in contact with minors or to work in any parish.

“On occasions, Fr Cini requested permission to concelebrate mass. This was only granted in exceptional circumstances such as funerals of relatives and neighbours, and on special occasions. The last Mass he concelebrated was in May 2018,” the Curia said.

This follows media reports that Fr Cini, who was convicted in 2004 of child molestation and possessing child pornography, had concelebrated mass in Bormla and taken part in a Pentecost procession in May, accompanying children receiving their first communion.

Reports quoted the Curia as saying that the priest was in Malta to assist his ailing mother.

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.

MALTA
manueldelia.com

August 29, 2018

The Church needed to manage the reaction to my blog post of two days ago reporting that a priest convicted of molesting 17 children and banned for life by a civil court from ever dealing with children was now working as a priest in Bormla.

I reported what they had told me when I published the first story, that he was only saying mass on “special occasions”. And today I carried in full their statement, which they sent out to all media, clarifying that Felix Cini is not, as reported by this website, working in Bormla parish “in practice as a full-time priest”. He appears to be working part-time instead.

I certainly agree that it is important that the facts are straight. But I think it is important to take into account what is not in doubt and has not be contested by the diocese today:

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)
The Week

August 30, 2018

By Edward Morrissey

In the 16 years since The Boston Globe conducted an award-winning investigation into child abuse in the local Catholic diocese, the church has found itself in a constant and recurring crisis over sexual abuse of children and seminarians. The crisis has stretched across three pontificates, numerous countries, and has involved an ever-expanding number of priests, bishops, and even cardinals. And it’s only getting worse.

Over the last two weeks, we have seen why. Three responses from the church’s leadership, in the U.S. and in the Vatican, paint the 2,000-year-old organization as still blind to its predicament — more caught up in politics than in resolution, and its ordained and laity more interested in fighting an ideological war than in demanding accountability at every level of the church.

The latest episode of this crisis started with a grand jury report in Pennsylvania that identified hundreds of alleged abusers within the Catholic Church, and the failings of leadership to put an end to it. The report itself is damning but complex, with outright villains and others who failed to confront evil forcefully enough. Cardinal Donald Wuerl came under particular criticism for failing to act, a charge that Wuerl decided to rebut at his current assignment in the archdiocese of Washington — by publishing a website called “The Wuerl Record.” The website extolled Wuerl’s efforts to curtail child abuse while serving as the bishop in Pittsburgh and his “work as a longtime advocate and voice on this issue.”

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

UNITED STATES
Yahoo Sports

August 29, 2018

By Jason Owens

On Tuesday, USA Gymnastics announced that it was hiring Mary Lee Tracy as the elite development coordinator for its women’s program.

During the early stages of the Larry Nassar scandal being exposed, Tracy, a coach and owner of the Cincinnati Gymnastics Academy, spoke on Nassar amid news that a coach who had worked at her gym in the early 2000s was found guilty of multiple sex crimes against children.

Tracy defended Larry Nassar in 2016

While she condemned that man, Ray Adams, in an interview with WCPO in Cincinnati, she spoke well of Nassar, who was later sentenced to 175 years in prison for serially abusing hundreds of young gymnasts over the course of several years.

“My Olympians have all worked with Larry,” Tracy told WCPO in the Dec. 2016 interview. “We were all defending him because he has helped so many kids in their careers. He has protected them, taken care of them, worked with me and worked with their parents. He’s been amazing.”

At the time of Tracy’s interview, more than 50 gymnasts and patients had accused Nassar of abuse.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Week

August 30, 2018

By Rachel Lu

Has Pope Francis been knowingly complicit in protecting sexual predators? That’s the question Catholics are debating this week, as the Church’s summer of scandal bleeds into what promises to be a very interesting fall.

The controversy exploded anew this weekend after Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a retired Vatican nuncio to the United States, published a detailed letter claiming that Pope Francis had personally rehabilitated the disgraced Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, with full knowledge of his history of sexual predation. According to Viganò, Pope Benedict XVI had ordered the former cardinal to retire from public ministry. McCarrick lived some years in uneasy defiance of this command until Francis, having been apprised of the situation, went out of his way to release the former cardinal from the ineffectual sanctions and elevate him to a position of high visibility and influence.

If this account is true, it will spell the end of Francis’ soft-liberalization agenda for the Church. Neither he nor his protegees will have any remaining credibility. Whether or not the pope immediately resigns, such a development would signal a new chapter for Roman Catholicism.

The Catholic world is still grappling with the staggering implications of Viganò’s testimony, scrambling to determine whether the available evidence supports his claims. No significant holes have yet been punched in Viganò’s account, though it is replete with references to people, dates, and documents. Francis’ closest supporters have tried to present the retired diplomat as a disgruntled careerist lashing out against old enemies. It’s clear enough that the whole affair is saturated in Church politics, but unfortunately, the pope’s own credibility is presently quite thin.

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.

ST. MARTINVILLE (LA)
KLFY

August 27, 2018

By Rebeca Marroquin

Although the name of a sexual abuse victim isn’t normally released, Doug Bienvenu says he’s speaking out for the first time in over 40 years because he feels it’s time his story came to light.

“Some horrible things happened… This priest was molesting me, and this went on for quite a while,” he says.

He tells us he was only 9 years old when he says he experienced sexual abuse at the hands of, now deceased, Father Kenneth Morvant of St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church.

“We were young, we were kids and we all wanted to be altar boys. We thought it was a cool thing and we got to get away for the weekends and spend the nights at the rectory where the priest lives,” explains Bienvenu.

He alleges that once there, the priest would provide him with alcohol and claims Morvant would wait until Beinvenu was drunk to sexually molest the then, 9-year-old boy. He says this continued until one day it was too much for the boy to handle.

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.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

August 28, 2018

By Colin Gleeson Thurles

Senior cleric coy on whether allowing priests to marry might solve shortage of priests

A senior cleric has insisted the Catholic Church will follow up Pope Francis’ apology to victims of clerical abuse with “concrete actions” to ensure children are protected and perpetrators are held to account.

Some 55 per cent of Irish people believe Pope Francis “did not go far enough” when he addressed the issue of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church on his visit to the Republic last week, according to an opinion poll in The Irish Times.

Cardinal John Dew, Archbishop of Wellington, New Zealand, has said Pope Francis did “extremely well” in his handling of the clerical abuse issue during his 36-hour visit.

“I thought he did extremely well to address it at the beginning of the mass at Phoenix Park. He was up front about it. He apologised for it.”

Cardinal Dew, who was speaking to The Irish Times on the fringes of a pastoral conference on “the future of the Irish parish” in Thurles, Co Tipperary, also addressed criticism that the Pope failed to outline concrete actions to be taken.

“It’s hard to know what people actually want,” he said. “But I think now that people have been speaking about this, I’m sure there will be. I’m sure there will be some concrete actions taken.

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.

ST. PAUL (MN)
Catholic News Service

August 28, 2018

By Matthew Davis

As the sun set Aug. 20, about 120 Catholics gathered on the steps of the Cathedral of St. Paul to pray for survivors of clergy sexual abuse and for a cleansing of the Catholic Church.

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Among them was Pennsylvania native Corey Furdock, for whom the grand jury report issued Aug. 14 detailing clergy sexual abuse claims in that state hit especially close to home.

“My childhood priest was on the list, and it [abuse] was speculated back when he was removed in 2006. He just kind of disappeared,” said Furdock, 27, a parishioner of the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis.

“It’s been really difficult,” he added. “Here, it’s a national headline that I think everyone can grieve [about], but being from there, having that relationship to the church … it’s painful.”

The prayer vigil included evening prayer from the church’s Liturgy of the Hours and petitions related to abuse survivors and the scandal.

Many attendees held candles. Most were in their 20s and 30s and came from parishes across the Twin Cities.

A group of young adult Catholics has been meeting for informal discussions in the wake of recent clergy sexual abuse revelations, including the Pennsylvania report, credible allegations of abuse against Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, and accusations of sexual harassment against a former vocations director in the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, who died in 2008.

Those gatherings led a few attendees to organize the Aug. 20 vigil, after discussions sparked a desire to bring people together to pray for the abuse victims and the church.

They spread news of the event by word-of-mouth and social media. “We don’t know where to begin. So join us for evening prayer and intercessions,” began the Facebook invitation. “It will be a simple evening on the steps of the cathedral to pray for the Lord’s healing, mercy, justice to be made present in these dark times. It is also an opportunity for us, as young adults, to band together and not be swayed by the evil that is so clearly present.”

“The fact that there were so many people here, I think is a really huge sign of hope that people haven’t become so bitter that they don’t want to pray for the church anymore,” said Jenny Lippert, 26, a parishioner of St. Paul in Ham Lake, about the vigil.

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

UNITED STATES
Commentary Magazine

August 29, 2018

By Sohrab Ahmari

Dissociation and projection.

The Catholic Church—the religious body which I joined in 2016 and which I affirm to be Jesus Christ’s One True Fold—is going through an ordeal. It is an ordeal, perhaps, of the kind that only comes about once every half a millennium or so. As a believer, my feelings seesaw between fear and joy. I fear for the future of the Church. I take joy in the long overdue cleansing, even if it means breaking the false truce between orthodox and heterodox forces in the Church.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Week

August 29, 2018

By Damon Linker

How will the Roman Catholic Church survive the scandals engulfing it on every side?

It’s a hyperbolic question, but one with a serious intent.

Of course the church will continue to exist in some form. Two-thousand-year-old institutions with a billion adherents and solid growth rates in the developing world don’t disappear overnight, no matter how thoroughly corrupt they are revealed to be.

But in what form will it survive?

Four decades ago, Ireland was among the most homogeneously and fervently Catholic countries in the world. When Pope John Paul II visited in 1979, he was greeted by crowds of well over a million people. Last weekend, three months after the overwhelming passage of a referendum that repealed the pro-life provision of the Irish constitution, Pope Francis addressed a crowd roughly one-tenth the size.

What has changed? In the intervening years, Irish Catholicism has been crushed by an avalanche of scandals involving the widespread decades-long abuse (sexual and otherwise) of children in the country’s schools and childcare system.

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DUBUQUE (IA)
KWWL

August 28, 2018

By Jalyn Souchek

Therapists for sexual abuse victims say abuse damages a person but abuse done so within a church only heightens the trauma.

Currently, the Vatican is struggling to respond to claims that Pope Francis helped cover up sexual abuse. He’s accused or protecting American Cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, who last month resigned in disgrace. This all comes after a Pennsylvania grand jury report that detailed hundreds of pedophile priests and suggested victim numbers may in the thousands.

Allegations against the church are nothing new nor are they new to the state of Iowa. In Dubuque, the archdiocese has paid over $5 million in settlements to sexual abuse survivors from cases that spanned the 1940’s to the 1970’s.

“With all sexual abuse there’s an element of power and control but then when you have the whole weight of the heighten of the church,” Catherine Essers, a sexual assault therapist at Riverview Center in Dubuque, said.

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Daily Beast

August 28, 2018

By Danielle Tcholakian

The renowned stand-up comedian made what many have labeled a “comeback” performance on Sunday night. But he’s yet to atone for his sins—far from it.

After a fall from grace that continues to roil the comedy community, Louis C.K. took a nine-month sabbatical (a trip to Europe, as disgraced men do). This week, he returned to the Comedy Cellar, apparently unannounced, and did a set in which he discussed “typical” topics for him—“racism, waitresses’ tips, parades,” according to The New York Times. It appears he did not address his past misdeeds or any lessons he may have learned in his time out of the public eye.

It seems C.K. would like everyone to forget his transgressions. For the record, he masturbated in front of women with whom he worked. He asked them first, but acknowledged himself “that when you have power over another person, asking them to look at your dick isn’t a question”—something many of his fans seem unable to accept. For the past nine months, his fans have continued to rage against the women who dared speak out about how he made them feel, how he took advantage of them, and how his power jeopardized their careers and their safety. Other than the lone statement he made in November 2017, he hasn’t spoken about the issue again—not to calm his raging fans, not to expound upon how wrong he was to get them to understand, not to share how he learned that what he did was wrong, not in any way at all.

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BUFFALO (NY)
The Buffalo News

August 28, 2018

News Editorial Board

Rejecting public calls to resign, Bishop Richard J. Malone on Sunday used a biblical metaphor.

“The shepherd does not desert the flock in a difficult time,” he said.

The sad truth is that Bishop Malone has lost his way, as well as his credibility, in his handling of abuse allegations against priests in the Diocese of Buffalo. It is time for him to step down. The diocese needs a leader who is not confused about the nature of the crisis enveloping the church.

To be clear, many of the sexual abuse scandals that have emerged in the past six months involved incidents that happened years or decades ago, well before Malone took over here. He has spoken of his desire to heal the past victims, and in March the diocese established the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, to give recompense to victims of priest sex abuse.

In an interview with The Buffalo News in June, Malone said “there’s nothing being hidden” from the public about abuse allegations.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Vulture

August 29, 2018

By Hunter Harris

As the New York Times reported, when Louis C.K. took the stage for a surprise set at the Comedy Cellar Sunday night, he was met with applause. The short set was his first appearance after he released a statement in November admitting to sexually harassing five women following a New York Times exposé. Two women who sat through C.K.’s set told Vulture that though the small venue’s audience was overwhelmingly supportive of the comedian, one joke about rape whistles was “uncomfortable,” and that there seemed to be a divide between how men and women reacted to C.K.’s presence.

The women were at the Comedy Cellar that night to see another comedian on the lineup when C.K. appeared onstage after a brief introduction from the night’s emcee. “It felt like he was being thrust upon the audience without telling them,” one woman, who asked to remain anonymous, told Vulture. “The audience was very loud when Louis C.K. walked in. They were clearly supportive and surprised when he showed up, but there were a number of women sitting in the front row,” the woman said. From her seat to the left of the stage, she could see a pair of women sitting stone-faced. Her friend, who asked be identified with the initials S.B., noticed the same reaction: “There were at least four to five females that I could see, and three or four of them were not having it. They were just looking at him, deadpan, straight, not having it.”

S.B. said the audience was mostly white, with lots of couples. Both women say the set was awkward, but the first woman was particularly upset by it. “It was an all-male set to begin with. Then, it’s sort of exacerbated by [C.K.’s] presence,” she said. “If someone had heckled him, I think they would’ve been heckled out. It felt like there were a lot of aggressive men in the audience and very quiet women. It’s the kind of vibe that doesn’t allow for a dissenting voice. You’re just expected to be a good audience member. You’re considered a bad sport if you speak out.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

August 29, 2018

Readers respond to Polly Toynbee’s claim that respect for the rights of religion has gone too far

Well said, Polly Toynbee (The culture of respect for religion has gone too far, 28 August). The dreadful deeds that have taken place in religious establishments responsible for teaching, instructing or caring for children over the generations is unconscionable. Under the badge of religious exceptionalism, evil people (mostly men) have wreaked huge damage on countless numbers of children, physically, emotionally and morally.

Now that the evidence of their misdeeds is being revealed, often through the bravery of victims who have succeeded in pulling back the curtain of secrecy and silence, we need to take a stand. We have acquiesced while the state stands back, allowing religion to occupy a place apart. Secular oversight is too often seen as unnecessary. We privilege religious schools, we take no interest in the fate of children consigned to their control, subjected to different codes of practice and, too often, the depredations of unscrupulous adults. We choose not to monitor the fate of children withdrawn from mainstream schools and educated in unofficial establishments, or “at home” by parents with religious intent.

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The Disclosure and Barring Service checks countless numbers of volunteers working with children in the open, public sphere, but sees no need to know what is happening in the private, religious domain. It’s time, as Polly Toynbee suggests, for us to rethink the religious presence in our legislature and be unequivocal as to the right of all children to receive the same level of protection decreed as necessary and required by the law of the land.
Gillian Dalley

London

• Polly Toynbee rightly highlights the shame of abuse within religious institutions, but takes the argument too far in launching a familiar attack on faith in general. She overlooks that many of the great social reforms have been led by religious figures, including William Wilberforce’s battle against slavery, Elizabeth Fry’s prison reforms and anti-apartheid campaigners such as Trevor Huddleston. Movements that have helped thousands of people have been founded out of the roots of faith, like the Salvation Army (William Booth) and the Samaritans (Chad Varah).

The NHS, whose 70th anniversary we mark this year, was inspired by the thinking of William Beveridge, but also influenced by the archbishop William Temple, who held this office from 1942 to 1944. Faith has and can be a catalyst, inspiration and motivator for social change.
Zaki Cooper

Trustee, Council of Christians and Jews

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IRELAND
The Guardian

August 28, 2018

By Polly Toynbee

Ireland’s confrontation with its dark past shines a searchlight on Catholicism. But all religions can be havens for abusers

The pope has flown home after a roughing-up in Ireland. Just a few years ago it was unimaginable that a gay taoiseach would dare berate a visiting pontiff face-to-face about the “dark aspects” of Ireland’s history and “brutal crimes perpetrated by people within the Catholic church”.

Leo Varadkar’s magnificent assault eviscerated his country’s past cultural capture by the church. “The failures of both church and state and wider society created a bitter and broken heritage for so many, leaving a legacy of pain and suffering,” he said. “It is a history of sorrow and shame.” The sorrow is not just for victims of monstrous priestly abuse, but the abuse of an entire society in thrall to clerical oppression: lives crimped, warped and blighted, no escape from the church’s domination of everything. The best Irish literature breathes that pernicious incense.

Pope Francis’s visit to Ireland had the opposite effect of the healing intended: it set a seal on the liberation of a nation broken free with its votes on same-sex marriage and abortion. Varadkar’s government plans to loosen the grip of the Catholic church over primary education, ripping out indoctrination by the roots.

The pope apologised for the “grave scandal”, for the failure “adequately to address these repellent crimes” that “remain a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community”. But the Irish horrors are beyond apology, the women enslaved in Magdalene laundries, babies snatched into forced adoption, and 800 children’s bodies dumped into a cesspit at a convent in Tuam. For thousands revealed to have been abused by Catholic priests around the world, whose crimes were covered up by bishops and the Vatican, no mere apology will do.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
The Los Angeles Times

August 27, 2018

By Michaek McGough

Let’s stipulate, as the lawyers say, that an Italian archbishop had an ideological ax to grind when he claimed that Pope Francis lifted the restrictions his predecessor had placed on a cardinal accused of sexual misconduct. Go ahead and assume for the sake of argument that Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano — a former Vatican ambassador in Washington, D.C., — was disgruntled and out for revenge.

That doesn’t mean the pope can continue to refuse to comment on it.

Vigano accused Francis of reversing a decision by Pope Benedict XVI to impose limitations on the activities of then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., who according to news reports had a a 50-year history of sexual relations with male seminarians and young priests. (After a church investigation found credible an accusation that McCarrick also had abused a minor, Francis accepted his resignation from the College of Cardinals.)

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NEW YORK (NY)
The Wall Street Journal

August 28, 2018

By James Freeman

What does a good shepherd owe to his flock?

Pope Francis doesn’t have to run for re-election and the world’s Catholics cannot choose to recall him from office. But given a detailed public allegation last weekend from an archbishop in the church that the Pope ignored evidence of sexual abuse by a cardinal, the spiritual leader of more than one billion people perhaps owes his flock at least an explanation. So far, they’re still waiting for one.

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UNITED STATES
Rewire.News

August 29, 2018

By Mary Hunt

What’s needed is a massive overhaul so that Catholic communities can be run by trained lay people rather than be ruled by incompetent and sometimes criminal bishops.

Catholics have a term for our current situation: in extremis. It means far out, near the end. For example, if an unbaptized baby is in danger of death and there is no priest to baptize, anyone can perform a valid and licit baptism. For all of the well-catalogued reasons of priest pedophilia, abuse of vulnerable adults, bishops covering up crimes, and now the ex-nuncio’s screed depicting dueling factions of higher-ups, the institutional church is in extremis. Extraordinary means are necessary not to save the institution but to give people their pastoral due. This is a Catholic Pastoral Emergency.

None of the however-well-meaning statements from church authorities has provided concrete, useful, outside-the-box solutions for Catholics who are grappling with the depth and breadth of clergy criminal behavior, its cover-up, and the morally tawdry crowd that’s airing their dirty vestments in public. While it will take years to absorb the depravity and deception, people have concrete pastoral needs today.

The primary concern ought to be for the victim/survivors and their families. It’s disconcerting to hear bishops continue to tell people to report crimes to church officials. If a child is abused, it’s a crime: report it to the police just as you would report any rape or robbery. Eventually, the institutional church may be involved, but it has proved itself incapable of handling such cases; the chances of being re-victimized are high and there’s no reason to put people at further risk.

Similar concern is for people in parishes whose priests and bishops were offenders. These folks have had their sense of church community shattered, their faith shaken. They’re questioning their deepest commitments and trying to figure their way forward. Again, Catholic priests are the last ones to consult. Catholic clergy have lost credibility. Insider arguments and jockeying for position have left even the most pious of Catholics disgusted. The priests’ training for and habits of handling sexual abuse are simply not up to the needs of their people. The pastoral problems are here and now. It will take resources from outside the Catholic Church to deal with them.

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NEWARK (NJ)
North Jersey Record

August 28, 2018

By Deena Yellin

A priest who says he was sexually assaulted three decades ago will lead a demonstration against church sexual abuses on Wednesday, in front of Newark’s Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

The Rev. Desmond Rossi, a priest in the Diocese of Albany, said the aim of the “National Day for Reform” is to gather the Catholic community together for prayer and to plan for the future.

The event, called for 1 p.m., will include prayers for the health of the church, and a call for changes that will lead the church back to sanctity, he said.

Father Robert Hoatson, a former priest with the Archdiocese of Newark, said he’s glad Rossi is having the event to push for change within the church.

Hoatson, who will be among the speakers Wednesday, said he’s distraught that those who knew about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s alleged misconduct did nothing. McCarrick resigned from the College of Cardinals in July amid abuse allegations.

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VATICAN CITY
Vox

August 28, 2018

By Tara Isabella Burton

The internal politics informing the church’s reaction to the clerical sex abuse crisis.

Reeling from new claims of unfettered sexual abuse at the hands of priests and cover-ups by high-ranking officials, the Catholic Church is facing one of its most serious and divisive crises of the 21st century.

Last weekend, a former Vatican official, ex-papal nuncio Carlo Maria Viganò, published an incendiary open letter calling for Francis to resign for willfully turning a blind eye to ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s decades of sexual abuse and harassment against junior seminarians under his authority. (McCarrick has also been accused of abusing two minors; Viganò does not make any mention of those cases and does not imply Francis knew about them.)

Viganò claims that Francis’s predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, had imposed sanctions against McCarrick, mandating that he carry out the remainder of his life in prayer and seclusion, only for Francis to lift the ban upon ascending to the papacy in 2013. During Francis’s papacy, McCarrick served as a trusted Vatican adviser and influential voice on both internal church appointments and global affairs.

Viganò’s letter contains serious charges. Fundamentally, it alleges that Francis was knowingly negligent in dealing with known abuse by a major Catholic figure. But reading between the lines, it’s also possible to see in Viganò’s letter a wider political concern: the accusation that Pope Francis’s liberal ideology and lax attitude toward homosexuality fostered a culture of sexual abuse, propped up by a gay lobby operating at the highest echelons of the Vatican.

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ALBUQUERQUE (NM)
Rewire.News

August 27, 2018

By Kathleen Holscher

The emphasis on largely white contexts in national media coverage of Catholic clerical sexual abuse in the United States obscures the ways race and colonialism have structured the crisis in other communities.

Like others who study American Catholicism, I’ve spent time recently with the Pennsylvania grand jury report naming credible allegations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy. The heavily publicized, 900-page document is a civic tour de force; it names 301 Catholic priests who, during the twentieth century, were employed across 6 dioceses in Pennsylvania. It records their alleged crimes—and those of bishops who protected them—in excruciating detail.

From the vantage point of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I live and teach, the grand jury report provides not only a horrific portrait of some parts of Catholic life in a mid-Atlantic state; it offers reminders too of the devastating and often overlooked history of clerical sexual abuse here in the U.S. Southwest. New Mexico was arguably the epicenter of 20th century priestly sexual violence; several of the clergy named in the grand jury report made their way eventually from Pennsylvania to New Mexico. They came because, for much of the century, bishops from across the nation disposed of their worst offenders by sending them for “treatment” here. The priests came to the Via Coeli Monastery, run by the Servants of the Paracletes in the mountains near Jemez Springs. The monastery opened in 1947, and over the years more and more of its residents were men who, according to the congregation’s founder, were “addicted to abnormal practices” including “sins with the young.”

Many of the priests who moved to Via Coeli were eventually released into work with children and adults in New Mexico. The career of Fr. Edward Graff, detailed in the Pennsylvania grand jury report, exemplifies this pattern. Graff was a priest in the Diocese of Allentown for nearly thirty years. During his time there, the grand jury tells us, he “raped scores of children.” Eventually, in the late 1980s, Graff was removed to the Paracletes for treatment. Upon his release, Bishop Thomas Welsh of Allentown “authorized [the priest] to begin ministry to the needy in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico” under the continued supervision of the congregation. Archbishop Robert Sanchez of Santa Fe agreed, and granted Graff “limited faculties” to carry out work with the homeless and with AIDS patients in Albuquerque.

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VATICAN CITY
Good Morning America

August 28, 2018

By Ben Gittleson and David Wright

Pope Francis has no intention of stepping down as he fights accusations that he protected a former archbishop accused of sexual abuse, Italian news agency ANSA reported, citing “close associates” of the pope.

The pontiff was “embittered” by a letter written by the Vatican’s former ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, in which the former diplomat accused the pope and his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, of knowing of abuse allegedly carried out by the former archbishop in Washington, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the associates said, according to ANSA.

But, they said, Francis, 81, “is not thinking about resignation,” ANSA reported.

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UNITED STATES
NPR

August 28, 2018

By Tom Gjelten

A group of Catholics empowered to advise U.S. bishops on their handling of clergy sex abuse is accusing the bishops of “a loss of moral leadership” and recommending that lay Catholics like themselves should henceforth be responsible for investigating clergy misconduct.

The National Review Board, a lay panel established in 2002 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a strongly worded statement that allegations against former Washington, D.C., Archbishop Theodore McCarrick and accounts of clergy abuse detailed in a recent Pennsylvania grand jury report reflect “a systemic problem within the Church that can no longer be ignored or tolerated by the episcopacy in the United States.”

The NRB was created as part of the U.S. bishops’ response to revelations in 2002 that Catholic authorities had covered up evidence of criminal sexual misconduct by Catholic clergy in the Boston area. The 11-member panel was supposed to work “collaboratively” with the bishops’ Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, but the statement released Tuesday suggested that model had proved inadequate.

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NEW YORK (NY)
AFP

August 28, 2018

US cardinals defended themselves Monday against accusations of a Catholic Church cover-up on sex abuse detailed by a conservative bishop who has called on Pope Francis to resign.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, a progressive, expressed “shock, sadness and consternation” at the wide-ranging allegations, which he said “cannot be understood as contributing to the healing of survivors of sexual abuse.”

“Together with Pope Francis, we are confident that scrutiny of the claims of the former nuncio will help to establish the truth,” Tobin said.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former Vatican envoy to the United States, said Saturday he had told Francis of the allegations against prominent US cardinal Theodore McCarrick in 2013.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington — who himself faces calls to resign for covering up abuse while formerly bishop of Pittsburgh — denied any knowledge that his predecessor had been either sanctioned or accused of abuse.

“During his entire tenure as archbishop of Washington no one has come forward to say to him, ‘Cardinal McCarrick abused me’ or made any other like claim,” said a statement from his archdiocese.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the questions raised by Vigano “deserve answers that are conclusive and based on evidence.”

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UNITED STATES
Yahoo Celebrity

August 28, 2018

By Taryn Ryder

Was there a Men of #MeToo conference we didn’t know about? Louis C.K., Matt Lauer, and Aziz Ansari — three stars who have grappled with sexual-misconduct scandals — reemerged within days of each other, perhaps with the hope of putting their respective allegations in the rearview mirror.

Louis C.K. made a surprise appearance at the Comedy Cellar in New York City on Sunday night, performing a 15-minute set that touched on what owner Noam Dworman called “typical Louis C.K. stuff” — racism, waitresses’ tips, and parades.

“It sounded just like he was trying to work out some new material, almost like any time of the last 10 years he would come in at the beginning of a new act,” he told the New York Times.

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UNITED STATES
Yahoo View

August 27, 2018

“The corruption has reached the very top of the Church’s hierarchy,” the Vatican’s former ambassador to the U.S. purportedly wrote in a letter calling on Francis to resign.

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[Sex abuse complaint lodged against suspended Puerto Aysén priest]

CHILE
El Mostrador

August 29, 2018

Ayer se materializó el ingreso de una querella por abuso sexual contra el cura de Puerto Aysén Porfirio Díaz, por parte de María Fernanda Barrera, quien hace unos meses hizo pública esta denuncia. Según consigna Cooperativa, los hechos sucedieron en 2003, lo cual significa que la causa podría ser declarada prescrita. No obstante, según la abogada Betsabé Carrasco, la posible existencia de otras denuncias podría empujar el avance de la causa.

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[Court to consider appeal by Precht against the Archbishop of Santiago]

SANTIAGO, CHILE
BioBioChile

August 29, 2018

By María José Villarroel and Nicole Martínez

A las 9:00 horas la Corte de Apelaciones de Santiago revisará el recurso de amparo interpuesto por el sacerdote Cristián Precht en contra del Arzobispado de Santiago y el cardenal Ricardo Ezzati, por la medida cautelar que lo obliga a residir en Santiago, mientras dure una investigación en su contra por el denominado Caso Maristas, lo que, a juicio del cura, afecta sus derechos constitucionales.

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[“I woke up and I saw him naked:” Former seminarian shares detailed accusation against priest]

CHILE
BioBioChile

August 29, 2018

By Nicolás Parra

Sin revelar su identidad -en sus propias palabras “por miedo y vergüenza”- el exseminarista que denunció haber sido violado por el investigado párroco de Hualqui, Reinaldo Méndez Sánchez, entregó un desgarrador testimonio y relata su verdad: fue obligado a embriagarse y durante la madrugada siguiente despertó cubierto de semen.

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[Priest accused of rape: Archbishop Penquista ratifies reopening of investigation]

CHILE
BioBioChile

August 29, 2018

By Nicolás Parra and Óscar Valenzuela

El Arzobispado de Concepción confirmó que se reabrió una investigación canónica contra del párroco de Hualqui, Reinaldo Méndez, tras la denuncia de un exseminarista por una violación que habría ocurrido en 2002 en la comuna de Santa Juana.

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[Church suspends two clergy members after sex abuse allegations deemed credible]

CHILE
The Clinic

August 28, 2018

By EFE [news agency]

La Iglesia suspendió hoy a otros dos sacerdotes tras comprobar que los hechos relacionados con abusos sexuales en los que se habían visto envueltos en el seno de la institución son verosímiles. El primer caso viene consignado en un comunicado de la diócesis de Talca, donde se explica que con fecha 28 de agosto se ha decretado el cierre de la investigación previa efectuada por una denuncia de abuso sexual a un menor, que fuera recibida en contra del presbítero Luis Felipe Egaña Baraona.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Herald

August 29, 2018

By Sean Philip Cotter

Voice ‘frustrations’ at meeting

Catholic priests voiced their “frustrations and anxieties” over renewed church sex abuse scandal as Cardinal Sean O’Malley sought to address cover-up allegations to the clergy of the Boston archdiocese yesterday.

“Is this 2002 redux?” The Rev. Paul Soper, the archdiocesan secretary for evangelization and discipleship, said was the overriding concern of the approximately 300 priests who attended O’Malley’s meeting at St. Julia’s in Weston.

Soper was referring to the year the massive Boston archdiocese sex abuse scandal made worldwide headlines.

“They worry we’re falling into that kind of abyss,” Soper said of the churchwide scandal now exploding in Pennsylvania with allegations of official mishandling reaching Boston and even Rome.

O’Malley’s closed-door meeting at the church lasted more than an hour and a half. Priests speaking afterward said O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, gave his side of the story in the scandal involving the ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick — which he is alleged to have ignored. He had another archdiocesan official talk about the ongoing investigation into abuse allegations at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton. The meeting also included a town-hall section where priests were able to speak their piece, with many voicing worries or frustrations.

“It was a struggle for everybody,” said one priest who didn’t give his name.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Forward

August 28, 2018

By Ari Feldman

By his own admission, Stanley S. Rosenfeld, a Jewish educator who worked primarily in New York City and Rhode Island, sexually abused “hundreds” of children — nearly all middle school-aged boys — during his five-decade career. From a beloved summer camp in New Jersey, to elite Orthodox schools in New York, to a small Conservative synagogue in Rhode Island, Rosenfeld assaulted and molested children with near impunity, charged with a crime exactly once.

Nearly all the people who knew him, including his victims, described him as friendly, pleasant and a good teacher. But his acts of sexual violence — ranging from genital groping to performing nonconsensual fellatio — marred the childhoods of people now between 30 and 76 years old.

The Jewish institutions that employed him are still reckoning with the aftermath.

So is Rosenfeld.

The Forward first published an article about Rosenfeld in July. At the time, it was not known whether he was still alive. The next day, this reporter located Rosenfeld living in a nursing home in Providence, Rhode Island. He is 84 years old.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
WMAR-2 News

August 28, 2018

By Christian Schaffer

Calls for Grand Jury Investigation into church

On a table inside Jean Hargadon Wehner’s home in Howard County, sits a rock with the word “Courage” carved into it — right next to a picture of Sister Catherine Cesnik.

“This is a woman who I felt should be spoken of, should be honored, should be discussed within the church,” Hargadon Wehner told WMAR-2 News’ Christian Schaffer, in an exclusive interview.

In the 1990s Hargadon Wehner sued the Archdiocese of Baltimore, under the name of “Jane Doe.” Then last year she re-surfaced, in the Netflix series “The Keepers.” This is the first time since the release of that series that we are hearing from her.

Hargadon Wehner is featured prominently. She names the disgraced priest Joseph Maskell as one of her abusers, when she attended Archbishop Keough High School back in the late 1960s.

On the last day of school in the spring of 1969, Sister Cesnik asked Jean whether she was being made to do something she didn’t want to do, and whether priests were involved. And she said yes. The nun told her she would take care of it, and to have a good summer.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Trib Live

August 28, 2018

By Wes Venteicher and Natasha Lindstrom

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro accused Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik of lying about an alleged cover-up of child sex abuse in his diocese and said bishops in Greensburg and Harrisburg fought to block the release of a grand jury report detailing abuses.

“Those insinuations are false,” Matt Haverstick, legal counsel for the Greensburg and Harrisburg dioceses, told the Tribune-Review late Tuesday. “The dioceses of Greensburg and Harrisburg have always supported the release of an accurate grand jury report. I’m not sure I can say the same thing about the Attorney General’s office.”

Shapiro fought to get the grand jury report released publicly two weeks ago. It contained allegations against 301 priests in six of Pennsylvania’s dioceses and efforts by church leaders to cover up the abuse.

He told the New York Times in a story published Monday that bishops of the Greensburg and Harrisburg dioceses worked “behind the scenes to shut the report down” while saying publicly that they supported the release.

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HARTFORD (CT)
The Associated Press

August 26, 2018

Court records say a former Roman Catholic priest dubbed “Monsignor Meth” because he ran a meth distribution ring has failed a drug test and may have to return to prison.

The Hartford Courant reports that court documents show Former Bridgeport Diocese Monsignor Kevin Wallin recently tested positive for amphetamine at the facility where he’s been receiving treatment.

Probation officer Jose Vargas is urging the court to suspend Wallin’s supervised release.

“Mr. Wallin has rendered a positive drug test for amphetemine, failing to follow the conditions of supervised release by re-engaging in the illegal use of drugs,” Vargas wrote.

Wallin is expected to appear before Judge Alfred V. Covello on Aug. 30. His public defender didn’t immediately respond to an email on Saturday.

Wallin was sentenced to 65 months in federal prison and entered a supervised release program in November 2016.

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

August 27, 2018

By Erin Heffernan

A retired Roman Catholic priest with the Archdiocese of St. Louis is being investigated in connection to child pornography, the diocese announced Monday.

Church officials were informed Friday that a retired priest had been discovered viewing what appeared to be child pornography and they immediately contacted police and the Missouri Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline, the archdiocese announced in a statement.

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BUFFALO (NY)
The Buffalo News

August 26, 2018

By Mark Sommer

Too little, too late.

That was the view of two leading critics of Bishop Richard J. Malone’s handling of the sex abuse scandal after he refused to resign Sunday and put forward remedies for the diocese to move forward.

“I believe the only appropriate course of action in light of the investigation, and the facts that have been revealed, is for the bishop to resign and allow a new leader to commence the reforms that need to be done,” said Paul L. Snyder III, chief executive officer of the Snyder Corp., echoing an earlier call.

“It’s an extraordinarily disappointing day in the history of our diocese,” he said.

Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, also reiterated that Malone needs to resign.

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UNITED STATES
GMA

August 28, 2018

By George Costantino and /michael Rothman

Rose McGowan had some strong words for her #MeToo ally Asia Argento on Monday: “Do the right thing.”

In a statement sent to ABC News, McGowan described the events leading up to her discovery that Argento had allegedly paid off actor Jimmy Bennett, who has claimed the Italian actress sexually assaulted him when he was 17 and she was 37, according to a report published by The New York Times a week ago.

McGowan, 44, writes that she learned of Argento’s alleged sexual encounter with Bennett through her partner, Rain Dove, whom she’d introduced to Argento a month ago.

McGowan said that Argento, 42, revealed in a series of text messages to Dove that she had “indeed slept with” Bennett years back, and had “been receiving unsolicited nudes of Jimmy since he had been 12,” but had not taken any action to stop Bennett from sending more.

A representative for Rain Dove confirmed that everything McGowan said in the statement was “factual,” and said that Dove will soon put out a statement as well.

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CANADA
CBC News

August 26, 2018

By Neil Macdonald

Federal authorities should treat it like one

WARNING: This column contains disturbing details

Imagine for a moment that a big, admired multinational corporation, one selling a beloved product, was employing large numbers of male pedophiles and rapists, operating in rings all over the world, and that their crimes had been uncovered in Australia, Ireland, Canada, the Philippines, Belgium, France, Austria, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, Britain, Germany and the United States, and, further, that senior executives had systematically covered up and suppressed evidence, transferring and enabling hundreds of predators, betraying thousands of victims.

What would happen to the company is not terribly difficult to imagine.

At a minimum, the U.S. government would likely use its Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law to go after not only the rapists and molesters, but also the company’s executives, up to and including its CEO if possible, seizing the company’s assets and seeking the harshest possible prison terms. That’s the sort of thing RICO was invented for. The company would almost certainly collapse.

But of course no company’s warranty guarantees everlasting life, and no company maintains that its CEO is chosen by God.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Podles.org

August 28, 2018

By Leon J. Podles

A significant portion of sexual abusers of boys in the Catholic Church – I would estimate half – fall into the pattern of multigenerational incest.

One case which I witnessed from various angles over forty years exemplifies this pattern.

In 1964 I entered Calvert Hall College High School in Baltimore, an all-boys’ school. So did Jeff (Jerome) Toohey. He was not in the advanced class, so I did not know him well, but we had many mutual acquaintances.

After high school Toohey entered the seminary for the archdiocese of Baltimore. He studied at St. Mary’s Seminary in Roland Park, near where I live. At that time Richard Sipe, a psychologist and later an expert in clerical sexual abuse, was teaching there. Years later Sipe told me that he witnessed Toohey being seduced by a member of the seminary faculty. The faculty member, whose name Sipe never told me, told Toohey that he had to get in touch with his sexuality etc. Toohey succumbed.

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AUSTRALIA
The Northern Daily Leader

August 22, 2018

By Breanna Chillingworth

AN EX-PRIEST now faces more than 90 charges of historical sexual abuse of children in the New England after Armidale detectives laid 30 new offences.

The Leader can reveal David Joseph Perrett is now accused of molesting or abusing more than 30 alleged victims, all children over a 30-year period.

Armidale detectives – working as part of Strike Force Bennett – laid 30 new charges this month, as the now 81-year-old fronts court on Wednesday.

He now stands accused of 92 allegations upon children dating between 1960 and 1990.

The new charges include five counts of aggravated sexual assault; two counts each of sexual assault of a child category four, carnal knowledge of a girl under 10, aggravated indecent assault; 14 allegations of indecent assault on a male, three counts of buggery and two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Reuters

August 28, 2018

The Vatican knew of a cover-up of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania through secret archives that bishops in the state shared with church leaders in Rome, the state’s attorney general Josh Shapiro said on Tuesday.

Though Catholic Bishops in Pennsylvania systematically denied the sexual abuse of thousands of children over a 70-year period, they secretly documented the cases and often sent information on them to the Vatican, Shapiro told two national news shows.

Shapiro first made the allegations against the Vatican during an Aug. 14 news conference to unveil a report on a two-year investigation into how Catholic clergymen in the state allegedly groomed and sexually abused children.

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[Diocese of Talca appeals to Vatican in sex abuse case]

CHILE
La Tercera

August 28, 2018

By Carlos Reyes

Esto luego de realizar una indagatoria previa que estableció la verosimilitud de los hechos.

La diócesis de Talca informó el fin de la investigación previa por una denuncia de abuso sexual contra un menor que pesa sobre el presbítero Luis Felipe Egaña Baraona. La indagatoria concluyó que los hechos denunciados son verosímiles. Pero también se establece que dada la fecha en que habrían ocurrido los hechos, estos estarían prescritos.

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[Prosecutor of the Marist case on the confiscation of church documents: “We cannot appear before the world doing nothing”]

SANTIAGO, CHILE
Emol

August 17, 2018

By Tamara Cerna

El persecutor Raúl Guzmán también aseguró que no se descartan nuevas citaciones por el caso, las que podrían llegar a tocar a los cardenales Francisco Javier Errázuriz y Ricardo Ezzati.

A días de haber liderado una seguidilla de allanamientos en distintos recintos ligados a la Congregación de los Hermanos Maristas, el fiscal a cargo del caso, Raúl Guzmán, se refirió a las criticas por una supuesta vulneración al acuerdo de colaboración pactado entre el Ministerio Público y los enviados del Papa, Charles Scicluna y Jordi Bertomeu.

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[Crisis in Chilean church: two priests resigned and another suspended for sexual abuse in Puerto Montt]

CHILE
Publimetro

August 26, 2018

By ATON [news agency]

Los casos fueron hechos públicos por el arzobispado de capital de la Región de Los Lagos.

El Arzobispado de Puerto Montt hizo públicos tres casos de abusos sexuales a menores cometidos por sacerdotes de la arquidiócesis, dos de ellos ya fuera de la iglesia tras haber renunciado, y manifestó su disposición a colaborar con la justicia después de que la Fiscalía de Los Lagos inició las investigaciones.

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[New case hits the Church: Hualqui priest accused of rape, forced drinking]

CHILE
BioBioChile

August 28, 2018

By Nicolás Parra and Óscar Valenzuela

Un hombre que denunció en 2015 al actual párroco de Hualqui por violación, entregó su testimonio y dijo que a la hora de llevar los antecedentes a la Iglesia Católica, fueron desestimados, por lo que acusó encubrimiento por parte de los sacerdotes a cargo de llevar adelante este tipo de casos. Actualmente el Arzobispado de Concepción le paga el tratamiento psiquiátrico al joven.

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[In Chile, they distance themselves from the Vatican struggles]

CHILE
La Tercera

By Sergio Rodríguez

“Queremos escuchar hablar más de Dios que de conflictos de poder”, dicen en Voces Católicas.

“Si bien somos mencionados como Iglesia chilena, para nosotros es un escenario difícil, porque esta carta se da dentro de una lucha vaticana de la cual somos ajenos. Sin embargo, las acusaciones son graves y se deberían investigar”. Así, con reticencia, se manifestó Juan Carlos Claret, vocero de la Agrupación Laicos de Osorno, respecto de la polvareda romana tras la misiva del arzobispo de Ulpiana, Carlo Maria Viganò, al Papa Francisco.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
WJZ

August 27, 2018

New developments in WJZ’s investigation into systemic abuse at some of Baltimore’s catholic schools in the sixties and seventies.

Previously, WJZ’s investigation revealed that one nun must have known about the abuse — now the fallout from the investigation.

It’s a dark chapter for Baltimore’s catholic schools.

Father Joseph Maskell, a counselor at Seton Keough High School, is accused of molesting dozens of students.

WJZ’s investigation also revealed abuse at the hands of at least one other priest, police and a teacher at catholic community middle school, John Merzbacher.

Linda was one of Merzbacher’s victims: “I was in the 8th grade. Merzbacher kept me after school. He locked the door, he tripped me to the floor. He straddles me. He unbuttoned my shirt blouse. I was petrified and then I heard the click of the door being unlocked. In walked sister Eileen Wiseman and stood over both of us. Her comment to him was, ‘Oh John, I told you never to lock the door’. and she looked at me and said, ‘You are never to stay after school again’. (and she was a nun?) I thought this woman was going to save me when she came in the door and she did absolutely nothing.”

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DES MOINES (IA)
Des Moines Register

August 16, 2018

By Shelby Fleig

Des Moines Bishop Richard Pates on Thursday called the child sex abuse by hundreds of Pennsylvania priests, detailed in a 900-page report made public this week, a “great moral failure.”

“There is no way that we can justify this, neither on the behalf of those who have committed the abuse among young people, nor the failure of our leadership in trying to protect them,” he said.

Pates joined the Vatican in publicly condemning the report’s findings of systematic abuse.

“We showed no care for the little ones,” wrote Pope Francis in a letter Monday, almost a week after the report was released. “We abandoned them.”

The product of a two-year grand jury investigation ordered by Pennsylvania’s Attorney General, the report is one of the most comprehensive looks into such abuse by the Catholic church in history. In the report, at least 300 priests in six of the state’s eight dioceses are accused of abusing more than 1,000 children since the 1940s.

The report also says the Catholic Church engaged in a “systematic cover-up’’ by moving abusive priests from one parish to another.

Ten other state-level investigations — all on the East Coast — have documented similar abuse by clergy since 2002, according to BishopAccountability.org. Some victims’ advocates are calling for attorneys general across the country to launch their own investigations.

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NEWTON (NEW JERSEY)
New Jersey Herald

August 28, 2018

By Michael Reagan

Am I the only Catholic who thinks the church needs to consider getting rid of the old guard — all the way up to the Pope?

That may be the only way to finally purge the predatory priests who have been allowed to exist within the bowels of the Catholic Church for so long.

The church has been rocked in recent years by sexual abuse scandals in Ireland, Australia, Chile, Boston, LA …

Then two weeks ago we got the shocking results of the country’s largest investigation ever into the sex crimes of Catholic priests.

A grand jury in Pennsylvania identified more than 300 “predator priests” in six dioceses who over the course of 70 years had molested and raped nearly 1,000 children, mostly boys.

The bombshell report named the priests who had been caught abusing kids, and in graphic and sordid detail it described what they did — again and again, even after their superiors learned of their molesting.

According to the grand jury report, the priests’ serial sexual abuse was only possible because of a church-wide cover up that reached all the way to the Vatican.

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UNITED STATES
The Conversation

August 27, 2018

By Carolyn M. Warner

A grand jury report recently found shocking levels of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church. It uncovered, in six dioceses, the sexual abuse of over 1,000 children and named 301 perpetrator priests. It also found that religious officials had turned a blind eye to the abuse.

In response, Pope Francis, head of the Roman Catholic Church, wrote a letter addressed to “the People of God,” saying,

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SCOTLAND
Scottish Daily Mail

August 23, 2018

By Graham Grant

– Police probing Smyllum Park in Lanark have arrested 12 people, including nuns
– More nuns reported to prosecutors amid a widening police investigation
– A further four have now been reported to the Crown Office, aged up to 93

More nuns have been reported to prosecutors amid a widening police investigation into claims of abuse at a notorious orphanage.

The Mail revealed yesterday that police probing Smyllum Park in Lanark had arrested 12 people, including nuns.

A further four have now been reported to the Crown Office, some of them nuns, with ages ranging between 71 and 93.

Police Scotland also disclosed that the 12 who have been arrested and charged consisted of 11 women and one man, aged between 62 and 85.

Yesterday a force spokesman said: ‘A further four individuals will be reported today. Inquiries are continuing.’ Claims of historic abuse at the home have come under scrutiny at the ongoing Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI).

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UNITED STATES
BuzzFeed

August 27, 2018

By Paul Mones

Every Roman Catholic diocese and archdiocese must be held publicly accountable for their complicity in the sexual abuse of generations of children.

Ever since the Boston Globe’s 2002 revelations of widespread sexual abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, a wave of lawsuits have been filed against dioceses around the nation. The goal of these cases was to get justice for the physical and emotional suffering endured by victims of abuse and to reform the child protection practices of the church.

In most states, however, the church does not need to be the least bit concerned about being sued by abuse survivors or paying even a nickel for the devastation wrought by its criminal behavior. Firstly, it knows most victims of abuse will never reveal or report it. But more importantly, even if they do come forward, in all but a handful of states the justice system unfortunately operates to protect the church from being sued in the first place.

Most states, like New York and Pennsylvania, have draconian statutes of limitations that prevent a person from suing unless they do so within a few years of being abused. This means the system has no recourse for those who summon the courage to come forward years, and often decades, after the abuse took place — and keep in mind, the majority of people never report their abuse at all. And it is not only a victim’s embarrassment, confusion, and shame that prevents them from reporting. Church leaders, aware of their liability, have been repeatedly shown deliberately failing to disclose complaints against their own clergy to law enforcement and taking actions that stymie victims from reporting.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Penn Live

August 28, 2018

By James Downie

Catholic priest abused five sisters in one Harrisburg family: Grand jury report

It seemed the news couldn’t get more troubling for American Catholics, already inundated with new sexual abuse scandals ensnaring (in different ways) former Washington Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, his successor Donald Wuerl and hundreds of Pennsylvania priests.

Then, on Saturday, another hammer blow landed.

The Washington Post reports that “A former Vatican ambassador to the United States has alleged in an 11-page letter that Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis – among other top Catholic Church officials – had been aware of sexual misconduct allegations against former D.C. archbishop Cardinal Theodore McCarrick years before he resigned this summer.”

It’s the latest sign that the church likely needs nothing less than a complete overhaul of its hierarchy.

Let’s be clear: The letter’s author, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, is no fan of Francis.

Vigano “was recalled [by the Vatican] from his D.C. post in 2016 amid allegations that he’d become embroiled in the conservative American fight against same-sex marriage,” and he has criticized Francis’s papacy.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
The Associated Press

August 28, 2018

It took 50 years, until the release of a landmark investigative report, for sisters Mary Robb Jackson and Cynthia Carr Gardner to realize that the parish priest in the Pittsburgh-area suburb where they lived as children had molested both of them, a couple of years apart.

The sisters’ discovery — during a long-distance telephone conversation between Massachusetts and Pennsylvania — added theirs to the cases of siblings cited throughout the state grand jury report on the sexual abuse of children by clergy within six Roman Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania.

The nearly 900-page report, released Aug. 14 after a two-year investigation, cited at least two dozen sets of siblings victimized by clergy among the scores of abuse cases it documented going back to the 1940s. Two of the cases involved five siblings.

Clergy members often won the trust of parents before going on to molest siblings, sometimes in a home while parents were present, sometimes on trips with the children, the report said. The priests then parlayed that trust into leverage against children, who were afraid to say no to an authority figure trusted by their parents.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Associated Press

August 28, 2018

The Kansas City Star Aug. 24

Josh Hawley warns Catholic bishops: ‘If we get any pushback, we’ll go to the public’

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley wants victims of sex abuse by Catholic priests to know that he is determined to learn everything there is to know about such crimes and cover-ups in this state. “They need to have confidence that this isn’t a whitewash,” he said in a Friday phone interview with The Star’s editorial board.

Along with victims’ groups, we called on Hawley earlier this week to launch a thorough statewide investigation of the kind recently completed in Pennsylvania, where more than 1,000 children were found to have been sexually abused by priests over the last 70 years. For all of those 70 years, that abuse was covered up and victims treated with stunning indifference.

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SAN ANTONIO (TX)
San Antonio Express-News

August 23, 2018

By Elaine Ayala

Since a Pennsylvania grand jury’s report on sexual abuses by Catholic clergy last week named a priest who later worked in San Antonio, the Archdiocese of San Antonio has received dozens of angry calls and emails.

Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller said people have registered scorn and resentment toward church leaders who knew of the abuses and systematically covered them up — but so far none have raised additional allegations against the late Father David Connell, he said.

García-Siller, in an extended interview, said he has been overwhelmed by his own sadness, anger and shame at the Pennsylvania report. Local responses to it, which the archdiocese asked for after it was released, have been difficult to take in, García-Siller said, but he has embraced the criticism because, “It’s a way for conversion and change.”

The archbishop was also emphatic this week about how such crimes must be handled.

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SCRANTON (PA)
The Citizen’s Voice

August 26, 2018

By Borys Krawczeniuk

In July 1985, Diocese of Scranton Bishop the Most Rev. James C. Timlin issued a memo instructing priests and diocese staff to follow a law that requires reporting child abuse to a state agency.

Timlin then repeatedly ignored his own advice, according to a statewide investigating grand jury report that exposes decades of priests’ sexual abuse of children in six Pennsylvania Roman Catholic dioceses, including Scranton. The Citizens’ Voice does not identify victims of sexual abuse.

In an eight-page written response to the grand jury, Timlin’s lawyers say he acted with his best judgment and his handling of clergy abuse cases improved as his understanding of medical science’s ability to identify and treat offenders evolved.

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ITALY
BBC News

August 28, 2018

A former Vatican diplomat who accused the Pope of covering up reports of clerical sex abuse has fled Italy in fear of his life, it is claimed.

In an 11-page letter published on Sunday, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano said Pope Francis knew about allegations against a US cardinal for five years before accepting his resignation.

Italian blogger Aldo Maria Valli says the archbishop told him before the letter emerged that he had “already purchased an aeroplane ticket”.

Recounting a meeting between the pair, Valli describes what the archbishop told him, writing: “He will leave the country. He cannot tell me where he is going. I am not to look for him. His old mobile phone number will no longer work. We say goodbye for the last time.”

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ALBANY (NY)
Press-Republican

August 25, 2018

By Joe Mahoney

LAW: Action follows revelation of reports of alleged sexual abuse in Pennsylvania

The group representing county prosecutors across New York says it will assist in a statewide investigation into alleged sexual abuse of minors by Roman Catholic priests.

The move comes after a similar review in Pennsylvania identified more than 1,000 such reports dating back 60 years.

District attorneys in all 62 counties are poised to assist in the probe launched by state Attorney General Barbara Underwood and will convene grand juries to delve into allegations “when necessary,” said David Soares, president of the District Attorneys Association of New York and the top prosecutor for Albany County.

But the organization representing Catholic bishops in New York said the focus of the probe is “insufficient,” contending it should also examine allegations arising from spheres unrelated to the clergy.

“While the Catholic Church has made major changes in its handling of abuse, we continue to see modern-day stories of abuse and cover-ups in education, the state foster care system, public university athletic programs and elsewhere,” said Dennis Poust, spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference.

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KEYSTONE CROSSROADS (PA)
WSKG

August 28, 2018

By Min Xian

Following the grand jury report on the alleged widespread clergy abuse in Pennsylvania’s Roman Catholic Church, state lawmakers are pushing for reforms. State Representative Scott Conklin, D-Centre, introduced two new bills on Monday, which would demand greater accountability from religious organizations.

Taking into account one of the report’s recommendations, which asks the legislature to “clarify penalties for a continuing failure to report child abuse,” Conklin’s first bill would make it a first-degree misdemeanor, or a third-degree felony, if there’s reasonable cause to believe there’s more than one victim.

“In my belief, if that individual or that organization had knowledge of it, it doesn’t matter whether it’s today or a hundred years ago,” Conklin, the Democratic chair for the House Children and Youth Committee, said in a press conference. “They’re still responsible for allowing this to go on.”

Currently, a mandated reporter is required to report suspected child abuse. Failure to do so, under varying circumstances, could result in a third-degree felony or second-degree misdemeanor.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
NBC 10

August 28, 2018

By Marc Levy

It took 50 years, until the release of a landmark investigative report, for sisters Mary Robb Jackson and Cynthia Carr Gardner to realize that the parish priest in the Pittsburgh-area suburb where they lived as children had molested both of them, a couple of years apart.

The sisters’ discovery — during a long-distance telephone conversation between Massachusetts and Pennsylvania — added theirs to the cases of siblings cited throughout the state grand jury report on the sexual abuse of children by clergy within six Roman Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania.

The nearly 900-page report, released Aug. 14 after a two-year investigation, cited at least two dozen sets of siblings victimized by clergy among the scores of abuse cases it documented going back to the 1940s. Two of the cases involved five siblings.

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READING (PA)
Reading Eagle

August 28, 2018

By Karen Shuey

The Wyomissing resident alleges in the lawsuit that he was assaulted in 1989 by the Rev. Richard J. Ford, who died in 2005.

A Berks County man is suing the Diocese of Allentown for sexual abuse he says he suffered decades ago as a student at Holy Guardian Angels Regional School in Muhlenberg Township.

Albert F. Shore of Wyomissing alleges in the lawsuit that he was assaulted in 1989 by the Rev. Richard J. Ford, who has since died.

He is suing the diocese, asserting it allowed known pedophiles to remain in their positions and failed to report sexual assault by priests to law enforcement.

“I’ve been going through therapy for this for over two decades. I felt like it’s time,” Shore said Monday by phone in explaining why he waited nearly 30 years to file suit. “I feel strong enough to really delve into the honest, brutal facts of this case, and I feel that the people I know have been affected, they too will have the strength to move forward.”

Allentown Diocese spokesman Matt Kerr said Monday that the diocese, which covers Berks, Carbon, Lehigh, Northampton and Schuylkill counties, had not yet seen the lawsuit.

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LAFAYETTE (LA)
Lafayette Daily Advertiser

August 27, 2018

A teenager who has reported abuse by St. Landry Parish priest Michael Guidry has filed suit against the priest and the Diocese of Lafayette, a media outlet has reported.

The teenager and his parents — his father is a Diocese of Lafayette deacon — claim in the St. Landry Parish lawsuit that Guidry’s molestation of the teen has fueled the teenager’s alcohol abuse and put a strain on the family’s relationship. And although the Diocese has paid for the teen’s and family’s counseling since the allegations surfaced, the family claims a “high Diocesan official,” who’s also a priest, threatened to halt that treatment should the family sue.

The Daily Advertiser does not identify victims of sexual abuse.

Guidry, 75, served as priest of St. Peter Church in Morrow.

He surrendered in June at the St. Landry Parish jail and was charged with molestation of a juvenile or a person with a physical or mental disability and with contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile.

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DULUTH (MN)
Eyewitness News 10/13 ABC

August 24, 2018

By Baihly Warfield

A priest who sued a man accusing him of sexual abuse has an answer from a jury.

A jury decided Thursday that the accuser, who came forward Friday and identified himself as TJ Davis, did interfere with the Rev. William Graham’s employment but did not intentionally cause emotional distress for the priest.

In 2016, Graham was named in a sexual abuse lawsuit filed by “Doe 446.” The then-anonymous victim sued several parishes; Graham himself was not named as a defendant, but the Diocese of Duluth placed him on administrative leave as a result of the allegations.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
WTAE

August 28, 2018

The first lawsuit against the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese since the release of the grand jury report into child sex abuse was filed Tuesday morning.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a victim who said he was 12 years old when the abuse by John Hoehl began in 1979.

Hoehl was employed as a priest, pastor and later as a high school headmaster by the diocese.

The report shows that more than 20 complaints of abuse by Hoehl were in diocese files, most of which happened during the period the plaintiff in the suit that was filed was abused.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, Bishop David Zubik and Cardinal Donald Wuerl are all named as defendants in the lawsuit.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
The Wall Street Journal

August 27, 2018

By Jacob Gershman

Pending bill would temporarily waive civil statute of limitations for child sexual-abuse claims

The recent Pennsylvania grand-jury report detailing child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church could pave the way for granting adults who were victimized as children more opportunity to sue for damages.

Legislation pending in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives would temporarily waive the civil statute of limitations for child sexual-abuse claims, opening a two-year window for lawsuits that were previously time-barred. The House returns from vacation on Sept. 12 and it is expected to consider the measure.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
CBS News

August 28, 2018

CBS News has learned authorities in Pennsylvania have re-opened an investigation into a decades-old case in which sexual abuse claims were made against a Catholic priest. A grand jury report released this month identified hundreds of abusive priests and more than a thousand child victims across the state.

This comes as Pope Francis faces a call to resign over a claim he knew about alleged sex abuse by a former American cardinal and allowed him to serve unpunished.

Over the past few weeks, CBS News has spoken with many alleged victims who, as adults, came to grips with what they say happened to them as children. Almost all report they were blocked from getting justice because the statute of limitations had expired, reports CBS News correspondent Nikki Battiste.

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ALBUQUERQUE (NM)
Albuquerque Journal

August 26, 2018

By Mike Gallagher

Roman Catholic bishops in Pennsylvania used a treatment center in Jemez Springs for decades as a “laundry” to recycle priests who abused more than 1,000 children so they could return to their parishes in their diocese back home, according to a Pennsylvania grand jury report released this month.

Only one of the more than 300 priests mentioned in the grand jury report stayed in New Mexico, briefly, after being sent for treatment at the Servants of the Paraclete foundation in Jemez Springs that operated from 1947 until it closed in the 1990s.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
The Beaver County Times

August 24, 2018

By Daveen Rae Kurutz

A spokesman for the Diocese of Pittsburgh said there was no formal process for monitoring priests accused of sexual abuse prior to the release of the grand jury report earlier this month.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the correct church that the Rev. Ernest Paone served at in the 1960s.

Dozens of Roman Catholic priests who had credible accusations of sexual abuse against them were not monitored by the Diocese of Pittsburgh once removed from the ministry during the past 70 years, diocesan officials admitted.

After a grand jury report detailed how more than 300 Pennsylvania priests in six dioceses — including 102 from the six-county Diocese of Pittsburgh — sexually abused more than 1,000 children, Bishop David Zubik, an Ambridge native, announced plans to begin monitoring the 22 living priests who were removed from ministry since 1976.

“There was no formal process for monitoring,” the Rev. Nicholas Vaskov, executive director of communications for the Diocese of Pittsburgh said. “This is a step that needed to be taken in keeping the safety of children in mind.”

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Catholic News Service

August 27, 2018

By Chaz Muth

Pennsylvania survivors of clergy sex abuse spent the week after the release of the grand jury report finding their voice as bishops and priests in the state wrestled with how to address the growing scandal.

Several of the survivors traveled around the state to speak publicly about their victimization at the hands of predator priests, many of whom said their “coming out” is liberating them from decades of shame.

Ed Rodgers of Bradford said he found the courage to re-emerge more than 20 years after he accused a priest of molesting him as a youth.

Though Rodgers, now 45, said he was publicly shamed by the Diocese of Erie, lay Catholics in his hometown and the state legal system in the late 1990s, he said a recent scathing grand jury report inspired him to break his silence.

A Pennsylvania grand jury report released Aug. 14 detailed more than 1,000 claims of sex abuse in six dioceses in the state going back 70 years and identified 301 priests and church workers who may have committed the crimes. The report also singled out some bishops for their improper handling of accused abusers.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

August 23, 2018

By Joycelynn Atalig

Yet another priest has been accused of sexual abuse, the late Father John “Jack” Nilan, the 12th priest named out of the Archdioses of Agana.

A release out of the Archdioses of Agana states, “With sadness once again, the Archdiocese of Agana acknowledges that a new allegation and lawsuit related to clergy sexual abuse has been filed in local courts this week. In the lawsuit naming the archiocese and Capuchin Franciscan order, a person listed by the initials J.E.L said she was sexually abuse by the late Father John “Jack” Niland in 1976 when she was 10 years old.”

The late Capuchin priest of the Agat Parish has been accused of exposing himself to the then 10 year old victim J.E.L. According to court documents, the victim was plaing alone on her family beach in Agat when she was allegedly approached by a heavy set American man wearing a priest collar who identified himself as Father Jack. Niland then allegedly asked her if she wanted to see his “gun” before exposing his genitalia and then masturbating in from of the 10 year old. In addition, according to court documents, Niland allegedly stated, “its like a real gun because it can shoot.” The victim then says that the late priest asked her if she wanted to hold it and because she did not respond, he allegedly zipped up his pants and told her that he will be seeing her at Eskuelan Pale Sunday School. The victim says, the incident caused her fear and anxiety when seeing Niland and she requests 5 million dollars in damages.

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UNITED STATES
KGX News

August 27, 2018

By Skip Essick

A Banning school administrator who’s in jail facing child sex charges is a defrocked priest.

The Banning Unified School District says 55-year-old Charles Mayer is now on unpaid leave.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of L.A. says Mayer has not been in active ministry for nearly 20 years. Mayer was caught in a sting operation allegedly sending nude photos of himself to a person he thought was a 14-year-old boy.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Fox News

August 27, 2018

By Ryan Gaydos

A former Pennsylvania altar boy who was molested by a priest as a child admitted in an interview Friday to stealing thousands of dollars in what he called payback for the abuse.

Mike McDonnell, now 49, said he was abused starting when he was just 10 years old. But the incident that changed him came when he was 12, McDonnell said, when he woke up to a priest molesting him in a bed he was forced to share with a clergyman, he told Reuters.

“From that day forth, I would never be that same child,” he said. “I went into shock mode and shut down. I would hold onto those secrets for 20-plus years.”

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DULUTH (MN)
Brainerd Dispatch

August 24, 2018

By Tom Olsen

A jury’s verdict has both sides claiming victory in the lawsuit that brought a prominent Duluth priest against a man who accused him of child sexual abuse.

The eight-member Duluth jury concluded late Thursday night that T.J. Davis interfered with the contractual duties of the Rev. William Graham when he filed abuse claims in May 2016, but that he did not intentionally inflict emotional distress on the priest.

Davis, who alleges that he was abused by the priest on three occasions in the 1970s, when he was approximately 15 years old, was ordered to pay Graham $13,500 in damages.

Graham, 68, was pastor at St. Michael’s Catholic Church in the Lakeside neighborhood. He was placed on administrative leave immediately after the abuse allegations surfaced, and the Diocese of Duluth earlier this month announced that he had been removed from public ministry after an investigation determined that he was “credibly accused.”

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NEW JERSEY
New Jersey 101.5

August 25, 2018

By Sergio Bichao

Catholic Church officials in New Jersey have paid tens of millions of dollars in the last three decades to men and women who have accused priests and clergy of child sexual abuse.

The exact number of victims and predators is countless because legal settlements often include confidentiality agreements and many victims may never come forward.

But a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Newark last week acknowledged that the five dioceses in the state have paid at least $50 million to settle sex abuse claims in the last 10 years.

Published reports for previous years accounted for another $10 million in settlements.

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DAYTONA BEACH (FL)
Click Orlando

August 24, 2018

By Emilee Speck

More than 75 sex acts caught on camera since May, Chitwood says

Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood didn’t hide his disgust Friday after the arrest of eight men caught performing sex acts at two public parts in the county, including a local pastor and a former Catholic priest.

“It’s out of control,” he said of the repeated acts happening in Doris Leeper Spruce Creek Preserve and Sleepy Hollow Park.

After receiving complaints in May about men having sex in the two parks, Chitwood said his deputies set up cameras around the park, which captured more than 75 sex acts happening in the parks between May and August.

Deputies then conducted a two-day undercover operation this week during which Chitwood said some of the undercover deputies were propositioned walking on the trials at the parks and witnesses the sexual acts for themselves.

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PENSACOLA (FL)
Pensacola News Journal

August 27, 2018

By Melissa Nelson Gabriel

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee said Monday that it has removed a well-known Pensacola priest from his office.

Sharmane Adams, spokeswoman for the diocese, said Bishop William Albert Wack had asked Monsignor James Flaherty to “step away from his duties” as the diocese’s judicial vicar, director of office of the tribunal, director of the lay formation institute and director of priestly formation.

Adams said Flaherty was removed within two days after a fellow priest and two parishioners approached the bishop with “non-specific concerns.”

“The issues were not mandatory to report because they were not involving sexual abuse of a minor,” she said.

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BUFFALO (NY)
The Associated Press

August 26, 2018

The Roman Catholic bishop of Buffalo, New York, on Sunday rejected calls to resign over his handling of sexual abuse allegations against priests, saying: the “shepherd does not desert the flock” in difficult times.

Bishop Richard Malone said he is appointing a task force of clergy, lay people and “an elected official or two” to review how sexual abuse claims from adults are handled.

The diocese released a list in March of 42 priests facing sex abuse allegations. A Buffalo television station reported last week that Malone allowed one accused priest to remain in his parish and gave multiple chances to another who’d been suspended by the previous bishop.

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BOSTON (MA)
Boston Herald

August 28, 2018

By Sean Philip Cotter

O’Malley, priests to meet today amid scandal

Cardinal Sean O’Malley will be meeting behind closed doors with priests from across the archdiocese today and Catholic activists say the clergy are expected to hit him with hard questions amid a growing church sex abuse scandal.

“He has created a crisis of confidence for both priests and the laity in the archdiocese,” said Louis L. Murray, a Catholic activist and president of the board of Boston Catholic Radio, who has spoken with a number of priests in recent days.

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TOWN HILL (PA)
Times Leader

August 23, 2018

By Bill O’Boyle

For one area family, allegations of abuses committed by the Rev. Thomas D. Skotek stand at odds with memories of a priest who provided support and comfort during their toughest days.

In 1999, Leon and Susan Zimolzak of Town Hill, near Shickshinny, lost their son, Seth, to cancer after a five-year battle.

Skotek had been at St. Mary and Ascension in Mocanaqua from June 1999 to April 2002, where the Zimolzaks remain parishioners today.

They said Skotek got them through the loss of their son.

“If it weren’t for (Skotek) we would probably have left the church,” Leon said. “He was there for us during a very dark time in our life.”

Leon said he and Susan and their daughter, Erica Zimolzak Coe, still keep in touch with Skotek.

“We still consider him a friend,” Leon said.

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NORTHRIDGE (CA)
California News Wire Services

August 24, 2018

Charles Patrick Mayer served as priest at Our Lady of Lourdes Church. Now he is accused of trying to lure an underaged boy.

A Banning school administrator accused of trying to lure an underage boy for sex is on “inactive leave” as a Roman Catholic priest and served for four years at a church in Northridge, according to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Charles Patrick Mayer, 55, of Menifee, is “not in ministry and living privately, since September of 2000 due to a failure to adhere to Archdiocesan policies concerning interaction with youth and young adults. The Archdiocese has no record of allegations of sexual misconduct by Charles Mayer,” according to a statement from the archdiocese.

The statement, released Thursday, was part of a bulletin to parishioners at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Northridge, which was Mayer’s first assignment as a priest after his 1996 ordination until 2000.

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UNITED STATES
OlympicTalk

August 28, 2018

Judge Rosemarie Aquilina denied disgraced former sports doctor Larry Nassar’s request for a new sentence in his sexual assault convictions.

“This is not Burger King,” Aquilina said Monday. “He will not have it his way.”

In denying Nassar’s request, she didn’t feel there was an error in the sentence she issued.

Before Monday’s hearing, Nassar’s attorneys asked the Court of Appeals to stop the proceeding and allow them to appeal rulings that kept Aquilina on the case. The Court of Appeals refused to intervene.

Aquilina sentenced Nassar in January to 40 to 175 years in prison on seven first-degree criminal sexual conduct charges. The sentence came after seven days of victim-impact statements from 156 women and girls.

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INDIANAPOLIS (IN)
Indianapolis Star

August 23, 2018

By Holly V. Hays

The first married priest in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis will spend a year under GPS monitoring following his conviction in a 2017 domestic battery case involving his wife.

Luke Reese, who in June was found guilty of criminal confinement, domestic battery and battery resulting in bodily injury, received a three-year sentence on Aug. 17, court records indicate.

Two years of his sentence are suspended, leaving him to serve a year of home detention with GPS monitoring followed by a year of probation. As part of his sentence, he also will undergo a mental health evaluation and counseling.

A message left with one of Reese’s attorneys was not immediately returned Thursday afternoon.

Reese was charged in October 2017 following a September altercation with his wife in which he was alleged to have locked her in the car and repeatedly hit her after finding his wife in a car with another man, according to court documents.

At one point, Reese is alleged to have taken her to Holy Rosary Church, where he served, and continued to strike her inside the church.

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CHARLOTTE (NC)
The Charlotte Observer

August 26, 2018

By Tim Funk

A letter released over the weekend by the Vatican’s ex-ambassdor to the United States has identified a former Catholic priest who worked for a time in the Diocese of Charlotte as an alleged victim of sexual misconduct by a former cardinal, Theodore McCarrick.

In the 11-page letter, which is being called a bombshell and a right-wing attack on Pope Francis, Archbishop Carlo Vigano called on the current pope to resign. He charged that Pope Francis and other high-ranking officials in the Catholic Church covered up sexual harassment and abuse accusations against McCarrick long before they became public this year.

Among other things, McCarrick has been accused of sexual abuse of seminarians and priests when he was a bishop in New Jersey.

In Vigano’s letter, which was first published by conservative Catholic news sites, he said that his predecessor as apostolic nuncio to the United States had “transmitted” to the Vatican’s then-secretary of state in 2006 “an Indictment Memorandum against McCarrick by the priest Gregory Littleton of the diocese of Charlotte.”

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BRADFORD (PA)
WXXV25

NBC News

August 27, 20180

Pennsylvania authorities have opened an investigation into a Catholic priest who was accused of sexually abusing a student 30 years ago but was never questioned because too much time had passed since the alleged abuse, according to the district attorney.

The priest, Monsignor H. Desmond McGee, 71, was not one of the 301 “predator priests” accused of sexual abuse who were named in a recent bombshell Pennsylvania grand jury report.

But investigators in McKean County said Monday they decided to look into McGee after his accuser, Edward Rodgers, went public following the release of the report — and repeated allegations that the monsignor molested him when he was a student at Bradford Central Christian High School in Bradford, Pennsylvania.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
Republican Herald

August 27, 2018

By Peter E. Bortner

Already charged in connection with a purported indecent assault against a teenage girl, a Roman Catholic priest who lives in Pottsville might face additional scrutiny after his diocese forwarded an additional allegation to Lehigh County prosecutors.

The Rev. Kevin M. Lonergan, 30, who has been charged with corruption of minors and indecent assault in Lehigh County, had been investigated by the Northampton County Children and Youth agency while he was while serving at St. Jane Frances de Chantal Church in Easton, the Diocese of Allentown announced this past weekend.

“Northampton County Children and Youth investigated and determined the concern to be ‘unfounded’,” according to the message from Matthew T. Kerr, the diocese’s director of communications.

Lonergan served the church in Easton from June 2014 until may 2016, and the report occurred during that period, Kerr said.

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AMERICAN FORK (UT)
KUTV

August 27, 2018

By Cristina Flores

Father David R. Gaeta, the pastor of St. Peter’s Catholic Church in American Fork who is accused of sexual misconduct with children, served at several Utah Catholic parishes since the early 1980s.

The recent accusations, which were reported to the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake last week, involve Gaeta’s time at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Ogden, where he served as a new priest in the early 80s.

Gaeta served in Ogden after he was ordained. He then served at the following parishes in Utah:

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