ABUSE TRACKER

VATICAN CITY
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor December 21, 2015

ROME — In moves that clearly seem to afford English-speaking communications officials in the Vatican greater influence and visibility, Pope Francis has named two key aides to new roles, including putting the first American in line eventually to serve as his personal spokesman.

On Monday, the Vatican announced that Greg Burke, a former Time magazine and Fox News correspondent in Rome who has served as senior communications adviser to the Secretariat of State since 2012, has been named the new vice director of the Holy See Press Office.

Although the announcement did not say so explicitly, it’s believed that the appointment sets Burke up as heir apparent to the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the 73-year-old Jesuit who’s headed the press office and acted as spokesman for both Popes Benedict XVI and Francis since 2006.

Burke replaces the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, an Italian Passionist priest who has served as the vice-director of the Press Office since 1995. The appointment takes effect Feb. 1.

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VATICAN CITY
Mirror

BY HANNAH ROBERTS

Fears for the health of Pope Francis have resurfaced after he was unable to stand at an official event, explaining that he was ‘not feeling strong.’

Addressing Vatican officials in a Christmas speech on Monday, Francis said he had the flu. He said: ‘Dear brothers and sisters, Forgive me for not standing up as I speak to you, but for some days I’ve been suffering from flu and I am not feeling very strong. With your permission, I’ll speak to you sitting down.’

The pope has been unsteady of his feet at times in recent months, stumbling several times in public. Last week he celebrated his 79th birthday.

In November as walked up the steps in the Basilica of St John Lateran in Rome he seemingly tripped on his robes, forcing nearby priests to grasp his arms and help him up the steps.

The same week he tripped as he walked up some steps in St Peter’s Square, this time being brought to his hands and knees.

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VATICAN CITY
Los Angeles Times

Tom Kington

Pope Francis on Monday handed the cardinals and bishops working at the Vatican a 12-point to-do list for Christmas, warning them that nothing would stop his crusade to expunge bad behavior from the Holy See.

For the second year running, Pope Francis used his Christmas speech to Vatican prelates to criticize them for the scandals and corruption — “diseases,” he called them — that have bedeviled the Vatican in recent years.

“Some of these diseases became evident in the course of the past year, causing no small pain to the entire body and harming many souls, even by scandal,” he said.

Two Vatican consultants, an assistant and two authors are currently on trial at the Vatican, accused of leaking sensitive documents about mismanagement and sleaze in the Holy See. The authors’ bestselling books revealed mysterious break-ins at the Vatican and turf battles between bureaucrats.

Over the weekend, the Vatican’s former No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, gave a children’s hospital a donation of 150,000 euros ($164,000) after one of the books claimed hospital funds were used to redecorate his luxury penthouse.

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NEW YORK
The Journal News

Adrienne Sanders, asanders@lohud.com December 21, 2015

Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s message for Westchester County jail inmates and parishioners of Pearl River’s St. Margaret of Antioch was much the same on Monday.

“I love ’em. I’m with ’em all the way. I’m sorry for what they’re going through, especially this time of year,” he said.

The Archbishop of New York shared his message for the Rockland County parishioners shortly after presiding over a mass for roughly 150 inmates, clergy and visitors at the Westchester County Jail in Valhalla.

Dolan removed St. Margaret’s priest, Monsignor John O’Keefe, from his post last week pending an investigation of what he said was a “credible” 30-year-old child sex abuse charge. O’Keefe once led Archibishop Stepinac High School in White Plains and had served at St. Margaret’s since 2003.

Dolan, a charismatic and conversational speaker, brought words of hope and compassion to attendees, which included inmates, youthful offenders, visiting priests, jail chaplains and at least one busload of staffers from Westchester County Executive Robert Astorino’s office.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philly.com

Updated: DECEMBER 21, 2015

by Laura McCrystal, STAFF WRITER.

An Archdiocese of Philadelphia priest who had been temporarily removed in the wake of the sweeping 2011 investigation into clergy sex abuse then reinstated has again been removed from active ministry.

The Rev. Steven Harris, most recently the pastor of St. Bridget Church in East Falls, has been put on administrative leave by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput.

The Rev. Steven Harris, most recently the pastor of St. Bridget Church in East Falls.

“The Archdiocese was made aware of possible concerns regarding his suitability for ministry at this time,” said an announcement posted on the parish’s Facebook page.

The reason for Harris’ current leave of absence was not immediately clear Monday. The issues are a personnel matter, said Kenneth A. Gavin, a spokesman for the archdiocese, and “do not relate to any accusations of criminal activity.”

Harris was among more than two dozen parish priests removed from ministry in 2011 while the church re-examined past claims of clergy sex abuse or misconduct involving children.

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VATICAN CITY
Leadership (Nigeria)

Agency Report
— Dec 21, 2015

Catholic Pontiff, Pope Francis, said on Monday that the Catholic Church’s bureaucratic machine needed “painful and prolonged clean-up’’.

In a pre-Christmas address to the top echelon of the Vatican administration, Francis said that the clean-up became imperative at the wake of a fresh wave of scandals.

Since November, the so-called VatiLeaks 2 affair has exposed financial mismanagement, greed and resistance to reform in the Vatican’s administration.

“Administrative diseases requiring prevention, vigilance, care, and sadly, in some cases, painful and prolonged interventions have become evident in the course of the past year.

“These have caused no small pain to the entire body of the church and the scandals have harmed many souls,’’ the pope added.

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AUSTRALIA
Truth Justice Healing Council

Francis Sullivan – 17 December 2015

Sometimes words just are not enough!

At the end of another confronting and shameful public hearing for the Catholic Church the heavy sense of failure pervades our community. It is becoming an all-too-predictable scenario, in that in every case study ineptitude, maladministration, cover ups and corrupt practices have been revealed.

This miserable history cannot be denied, nor can it be rationalised away. The very fact that a faith-based institution would perpetuate such evil is incomprehensible. But it has – and now the time for reckoning has well and truly arrived.

As witness after witness fronts the Royal Commission the pretence falls away. At times the Commission’s patience is clearly tested but at least the stark realities are made plain for all to see.

Of course the Ballarat component of these past three and a bit weeks of hearings is only partially completed. It will reconvene again in the New Year in Ballarat. Cardinal Pell will also be required to give his evidence, health permitting. This will be a crucial component and has already been eagerly awaited.

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IRELAND
RTE News

Survivors of mother and baby homes and other residential institutions have gathered in Dublin to call for a widening of the terms of reference of the Commission of Investigation into the homes.

They want the Commission to urgently recommend to the Government that it be empowered to examine the plight of all survivors of the forced separation of single mothers and their children since 1922.

They are also seeking an immediate State apology and redress for survivors.

The protest began at 12pm in central Dublin with a small gathering to remember and honour those buried in our mass infant graves and angel’s plots.

A handful of participants said prayers at Mannix Flynn’s new installation, “Somebody’s Child”, in Temple Bar.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 21 December 2015 (VIS) – Missionary and pastoral spirit, idoneity and sagacity, spirituality and humanity, example and fidelity, reasonableness and gentleness, innocuousness and determination, diligence and attentiveness, charity and truth, openness and maturity, respectfulness and humility, intrepidness and alertness, and finally, accountability and sobriety. These are the qualities Pope Francis highlighted this morning in his greetings to the Roman Curia, as a practical aid to embracing the time of grace of Christmas and the Year of Mercy and ensuring the fruitfulness of service to the Church. “I would ask the Heads of Dicasteries and other superiors to ponder this, to add to it and to complete it”, he said. “It is a list based on an acrostic analysis of the word ‘Misericordia’ … with the aim of having it serve as our guide and beacon”.

During his traditional exchange of Christmas greetings with the members of the Roman Curia, the Holy Father addressed the prelates recalling their previous meetings: in 2013, when he stressed “two important and inseparable aspects of the work of the Curia: professionalism and service”, offering St. Joseph as a model to be imitated. Then, last year, as a preparation for the sacrament of Reconciliation, he considered “certain temptations or maladies – the catalogue of curial diseases … which could affect any Christian, curia, community, congregation, parish or ecclesial movement. Diseases which call for prevention, vigilance, care and, sadly, in some cases, painful and prolonged interventions”.

“Some of these diseases became evident in the course of the past year”, he continued, “causing no small pain to the entire body and harming many souls, also by scandal. It seems necessary to state what has been – and ever shall be – the object of sincere reflection and decisive provisions. Reform will move forward with determination, clarity and firm resolve, since Ecclesia semper reformanda. Nonetheless, diseases and even scandals cannot obscure the efficiency of the services rendered to the Pope and to the entire Church by the Roman Curia, with great effort, responsibility, commitment and dedication, and this is a real source of consolation. St. Ignatius taught that ‘it is typical of the evil spirit to instil remorse, sadness and difficulties, and to cause needless worry so as to prevent us from going forward; instead, it is typical of the good spirit to instil courage and energy, consolations and tears, inspirations and serenity, and to lessen and remove every difficulty so as to make us advance on the path of goodness’”.

Therefore, “it would be a grave injustice not to express heartfelt gratitude and needed encouragement to all those good and honest men and women in the Curia who work with dedication, devotion, fidelity and professionalism, offering to the Church and the Successor of Peter the assurance of their solidarity and obedience, as well as their constant prayers. Moreover, cases of resistance, difficulties and failures on the part of individuals and ministers are so many lessons and opportunities for growth, and never for discouragement. They are opportunities for returning to the essentials, which means being ever more conscious of ourselves, of God and our neighbours, of the sensus Ecclesiae and the sensus fidei”.

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VATICAN CITY
Yahoo! News

By Ella Ide

Vatican City (AFP) – Pope Francis vowed Monday to power ahead with the reform of the Curia, the Church’s “diseased” governing body, throwing down the gauntlet to those fostering a climate of intrigue, greed and double-crossing in the Vatican.

His annual address to cardinals, bishops and priests running the Holy See echoed his speech at this time last year, when he suggested the Vatican’s administrative hierarchy was beset by a “spiritual Alzheimer’s” and a lust for power.

Though the December 2014 speech embarrassed and infuriated many of the Vatican’s top figures, it appeared to have failed to convince the unruly Curia to change its ways — with fresh scandals blotting the government’s copybook in 2015.

The pope reminded the Curia he had chastised them last year for “certain temptations or maladies… diseases which call for prevention, vigilance, care and, sadly, in some cases, painful and prolonged interventions.”

“Some of these diseases became evident in the course of the past year, causing no small pain to the entire body and harming many souls,” he said, in a reference to a second embarrassing leaks scandal at the heart of the Holy See.

Three people accused of stealing and leaking secret papers are currently on trial at the Vatican, along with two journalists accused of publishing the documents, which depict irregularities and extravagance in the Holy See’s spending.

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NEW YORK
Road to Recovery

JESUIT PRIESTS AND BROTHERS CONTINUE TO RE-VICTIMIZE CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE VICTIM OF A JESUIT PRIEST – ENOUGH WITH THE DELAY!

Neal E. Gumpel is a clergy sexual abuse victim of a previously named predator, Fr. Roy Alan Drake, SJ, now deceased and former teacher and professor at Fordham Prep, Fordham University, and Main Maritime Academy in Castine, Maine, where Fr. Roy Alan Drake, SJ, sexually abused Neal E. Gumpel

The Northeast Province of the Jesuits interviewed approximately six (6) individuals, including the victim, Neal E. Gumpel, who provided credible evidence confirming that Fr. Roy Alan Drake, SJ, held himself out at all times as a Jesuit priest at Maine Maritime Academy and sexually abused Neal E. Gumpel there

WHAT
A press conference and leafleting alerting the media, general public, and Fordham University and Fordham Prep students, parents, alumni, and staff that the Northeast Province of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and Fordham Prep and University keep dragging their feet in assisting a childhood clergy sexual abuse victim of one of its priest, Fr. Roy Alan Drake, SJ

WHEN
Tuesday, December 22, 2015 from 11:00 am until 1:00 pm

WHERE
On the public sidewalk outside the gates of Fordham Prep and University on Southern Boulevard (near the entrance to the Bronx Botanical Gardens) Bronx, NY

WHO

The victim/survivor of Fr. Roy Alan Drake, SJ, Neal E. Gumpel; his wife, Helen Gumpel; and members of Road to Recovery, Inc., a non-profit charity based in New Jersey that assists victims of sexual abuse and their families, including its Co-founder and President, Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D.

WHY
The Northeast Province of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) knows that Fr. Roy Alan Drake, SJ, was a serial molester of minor boys. They settled at least one claim against Fr. Drake in the past. Neal E. Gumpel’s credible story of having been sexually abused as a minor child by Fr. Roy Alan Drake, SJ, at Maine Maritime Academy was credibly supported by approximately five (5) other individuals. Now, the Northeast Province of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) is dragging its feet in settling Neal E. Gumpel’s claim, and the Jesuits are re-victimizing Neal E. Gumpel. Demonstrators will demand that the Jesuit Priests and Brothers of the Northeast Province, Fordham University, and Fordham Prep cease their foot-dragging, acknowledge and verify Neal E. Gumpel’s story, allow him to heal, and try to gain a degree of closure

CONTACTS
Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., Road to Recovery, Inc. – 862-368-2800
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, Boston, MA – 617-523-6250

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UNITED KINGDOM
Western Gazette

A PRIEST from Milborne Port who was charged with sexual assault will no longer face a re-trial, according to a letter from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) sent to his solicitors.

Roy Catchpole, 69, was charged with three counts of sexual assault and one of exposure but his trial was dismissed on Wednesday, October 14 when the jury at Bournemouth Crown Court could not reach a verdict.

It appeared the CPS would pursue a re-trial but the Western Gazette has seen a letter informing Mr Catchpole’s solicitors that “the prosecution will not proceed to a retrial” and that “no evidence” will be offered.

The CPS confirmed it would not seek a retrial on Monday and that all parties had been informed. It said that its decision was based on “further evidence” coming to light.

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ITALY
The Independent (UK)

Shehab Khan @shehabkhan

An Italian priest has been arrested after allegedly meeting teenage boys through gay dating app Grindr, according to Italian media reports.

Priest Antoello Tropea was arrested after suspicions were raised when police reportedly discovered him in a car with a teenager in a secluded area.

The 44-year-old, who is the priest of a parish in Messignadi in southern Italy, is said to have claimed he was a physical education teacher when approached by police. He was apparently found with “suspicious items” in his bag.

Italian media also claims an Italian bishop allegedly told Tropea to avoid talking to the police.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 21 December 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has appointed:

– Stefano D’Agostini, Italy, technical head of the Vatican Television (CTV), as director of the CTV.

– Gregory Burke, communications adviser at the Secretariat of State, as deputy director of the Holy See Press Office.

On Sunday 20 December, the Holy Father accepted the resignation from the office of auxiliary of the diocese of Orange, United States of America, presented by Bishop Dominic Mai Luong upon reaching the age limit.

On Saturday 19 December the Holy Father appointed:

– Fr. Joseph Raja Rao Thelegathoti, S.M.M., as bishop of Vijayawada (area 8,374, population 5,898,011, Catholics 283,062, priests 229, 1,132 religious), India. The bishop-elect was born in Peddautapally, India in 1952, gave his religious vows in 1980 and was ordained a priest in the same year. He holds a licentiate in biblical theology from the Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram in Bangalore, India and a doctorate in spiritual theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome. He has served in a number of roles, including rector of the minor seminary and of the Montfort Theologate in Bangalore, provincial counsellor, provincial superior, deputy president of the Conference of Religious of India, director of the Anugraha Institute for Poor Girls, director of the Montfort Marian Centre, Bangalore, and procurator general and postulator of the Congregation of Montfort Fathers in Rome. He is currently provincial of his congregation in Rome.

– Msgr. Leszek Leszkiewicz as auxiliary of Tarnow (area 7,566, population 1,097,479, Catholics 1.091,829, priests 1,455, religious 1.145), Poland. The bishop-elect was born in Gorlice, Poland in 1970 and was ordained a priest in 1996. He holds a licentiate in missiology from the Pontifical Urbanian University in Rome, and has served in a number of roles including parish vicar, missionary in Ecuador, deputy director of the department for missions of the diocese of Tarnow, and prefect of discipline in the major seminary of Tarnow. He is currently vicar forane and pastor of the parish of St. Nicholas, and custodian of the shrine to the Blessed Virgin in Bochnia.

– Cardinal Vinko Puljic, archbishop of Vrhbosna, Bosnia and Herzegovina, as his special envoy to the celebrations to be held on 3 February 2016 to commemorate the 17th centenary of the martyrdom of St. Blaise, patron of the diocese of Dubrovnik, Croatia, and the 600th anniversary of the abolition of slavery by the Republic of Ragusa.

– Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers (for Health Pastoral Care) as his special envoy to the celebration of the 24th World Day of the Sick, to be held in Nazareth on 11 February 2016.

– Msgr. Paul Tighe, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, as adjunct secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture, elevating him to the dignity of bishop.

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UNITED STATES
Raw Story

VYCKIE GARRISON, ALTERNET
21 DEC 2015

[We] knelt on bended knee and cried out to God, “This one has brought a great delusion that we can’t defeat. Remove him from our lives.” Within hours that one was destroyed. …We were stunned into holy silence. So we silently, behind closed doors, met eyes and fearfully marveled at God’s decisiveness. His answer was more than we asked for, and so completely terminal.

The abrupt answer built faith and brought extreme temporary relief in the battle that was waging against us. Now we must face a new enemy and are publicly asking God to make a new statement.

This chilling declaration is part of a public prayer request posted by Debi Pearl, wife of Christian evangelist, Michael Pearl, whose controversial parenting manual, To Train Up a Child, advocates child abuse and has been linked with at least three deaths of young children at the hands of their own Christian parents who implemented Pearl’s harsh, “spare the rod, spoil the child” discipline advice.

Debi Pearl is a regressive fundamentalist leader in her own right. Her book, Created To Be His Help Meet, teaches Christian wives to anticipate and meet their husbands’ every need, want, and desire, regardless of the cost to themselves and their children:

“God made you to be a help meet to your husband so you can bolster him, making him more productive and efficient at whatever he chooses to do. You are not on the board of directors with an equal vote. You have no authority to set the agenda. But if he can trust you, he will make you his closest adviser, his confidante, his press secretary, his head of state, his vice-president, his ambassador, his public relations expert, maybe even his speech writer — all at his discretion.”

According to Suzanne Titkemeyer, blogger and administrator of the spiritual abuse recovery site, No Longer Quivering, it appears that Michael and Debi Pearl are facing legal challenges related to their advocacy of male dominance and parental tyranny.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic Culture

December 21, 2015

Pope Francis has named an American layman, Greg Burke, as the vice director of the Holy See Press Office, effective February 1.

Burke, 55, worked for TIME Magazine and Fox News before becoming senior communications adviser to the Vatican Secretariat of State in 2012. He is a numerary, or lay celibate member, of the Opus Dei prelature, according to reports published on the Vatican website.

On December 21, Pope Francis also named Stefano D’Agostini as the new director of CTV, the Vatican Television Center. D’Agostini is currently the Center’s technical director, and he succeeds Msgr. Dario Edoardo Viganò, who was appointed prefect of the new Secretariat for Communications in June.

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

By Amanda Vanstone
Dec. 21, 2015

We like to think of ourselves as being civilised. We ban discrimination of all sorts. We believe you are innocent until proven guilty and that everyone is entitled to proper process. But there’s an ugly side to humankind that occasionally reverts to animal instincts.

Hunting in a pack is very primal. Rules go out the window. We go looking, desperately, for blood. We become hunters and if you’re the hunted, watch out. What’s ugly about this is not just the hunt but how few people care.

I have always found George Pell to be a decent, honest, intelligent man.

The slip into animal instincts often happens when we sense a wrong has been perpetrated and that our civilised system just hasn’t dealt with the perpetrators.

George Pell is the latest to fall prey to this ugly side of humanity. We know that children in institutional care and in the churches have been abused and we know it’s been covered up. It’s been hidden in the Catholic Church, the Church of England, the Salvation Army and seemingly endless state institutions. The crimes have been horrific. Now we want blood.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Bishops and senior clergy criticised over the handling of abuse allegations need to take personal responsibility for their roles, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has said.

Speaking in Dublin yesterday, the archbishop rejected claims by Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) co-founder Fr Tony Flannery that he had vilified Dublin bishops and senior clergy who were criticised in the Murphy report.

Archbishop Martin said after the report came out: “I made it very clear publicly that I felt there was an unwillingness to address the report and I said that I felt that every person that was named in the report should give an account. By that I was not saying they were guilty.”

Responsibility

He said what worried him was that people acknowledged certain actions but no one took overall responsibility.

One person would say “I put in the sugar, that’s all I did”, said the archbishop, while another would say “I put in the milk . . . I put in the flour”. But “nobody was responsible for the cake”.

In his comments, Fr Flannery referred to the ACP-commissioned critique of the Murphy report by barrister and retired Hong Kong district justice Fergal Sweeney.

The critique had convinced him “that there were serious faults with the work of Yvonne Murphy on this occasion, and also with the legislation underpinning the Commission of Investigation”.

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ITALY
The Local

An Italian bishop aided and abetted a paedophile priest, telling him to avoid the police and shrugging off warnings the prelate was meeting teenage boys on Grindr, Italian media reported on Sunday.

Priest Antonello Tropea, 44, was arrested after a police investigation allegedly uncovered he was using the US-based gay dating app to pick up the teenagers, with whom he sexual relations in his car or his rectory in Calabria.

Bishop Francesco Milito was accused by a prosecutor of failing to investigate widely-spread reports of the priest’s activities and encouraging him to “continue as before”, according to the reports.

Police suspicions were raised after officers found Tropea in a car in a secluded spot with a teenager, and the priest not only said he was a physical education teacher but had suspicious objects in his rucksack.

An investigation was launched and wiretaps revealed not only Milito’s anger over an anonymous letter about Tropea, believed to have been written by a nun, but also how the bishop warned his charge to “avoid speaking to the police”.

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VATICAN CITY
ANSA

(ANSA) – Vatican City, December 21 – Pope Francis said Monday some of the ailments of the Roman Curia have been tackled in the year that is about to end as he gave this Christmas greetings to the central body though which he manages the Catholic Church. Last year, as he gave his Christmas greetings to the body, the pope gave a list of the Curia’s illnesses. “Some of the illnesses manifest this year have led to sincere reflexion and decisive measures,” the pope said.

“The reform will continue with determination, lucidity and resolution”. The Vatican was recently hit by the so-called Vatileaks 2 scandal over the leaking of confidential Holy See documents and the relation publication of two books documenting alleged Vatican waste and mismanagement and lavish spending by clergymen. The Vatican said the revelations are unsensational because the pope’s reforms of the Church have rendered them out of date.

Francis on Monday also gave the Roman Curia a catalogue of necessary virtues, including a letter-by-letter analysis of ‘misericordia,’ the Italian word mercy, including M for “missionaryness”, R for “respectness” and A for “affidabilità” (reliability).

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has urged the Roman Curia to “return to the essentials” and follow a path of gratitude, conversion, renewal, penance and reconciliation as indicated by the Year of Mercy.

The Pope was addressing members of the Curia gathered in the Vatican Clementine Hall for the annual Christmas Greetings.

Please find below the full text of the Pope’s address to the Curia:

Dear brothers and sisters,

I am pleased to offer heartfelt good wishes for a blessed Christmas and a happy New Year to you and your co-workers, to the Papal Representatives, and in particular to those who in the past year have completed their service and retired. Let us also remember all those who have gone home to God. My thoughts and my gratitude go to you and to the members of your families.

In our meeting in 2013, I wanted to stress two important and inseparable aspects of the work of the Curia: professionalism and service, and I offered Saint Joseph as a model to be imitated. Then, last year, as a preparation for the sacrament of Reconciliation, we spoke of certain temptations or “maladies” – the “catalogue of curial diseases” – which could affect any Christian, curia, community, congregation, parish or ecclesial movement. Diseases which call for prevention, vigilance, care and, sadly, in some cases, painful and prolonged interventions.

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VATICAN CITY
ANSA

(ANSA) – Vatican City, December 21 – Pope Francis on Monday apologised for the scandals that have hit the Holy See as he gave his Christmas greetings to the workers.

“While I thank you, I also want to ask your forgiveness for the scandals that have taken place in the Vatican,” he said. “I’d like my and your attitude to be the same in this period, above all, by praying for the people involved, so that those who have done wrong can repent and refind the right path”.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

Pope Francis told members of the Vatican bureaucracy on Monday that reforms to make it more efficient and honest will move ahead “with firm resolve”, despite scandals that have rocked the Church.

At the start of traditional Christmas greetings to the Curia, as the central Vatican administration is known, the pope said he was suffering from a flu and excused himself for reading the speech sitting down.

However, he did not show any outward signs of illness and read his speech in a strong voice, noting cases “of resistance difficulties and failures” by some individuals in the central administration who were opposed to his reform drive.

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VATICAN CITY
Inquirer

Associated Press
December 21st, 2015

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has urged Vatican bureaucrats to show more honesty, humility and sobriety as he issued a Christmas-time “catalog of virtues” for his collaborators to follow after having excoriated them last year for a host of sins.

Francis joked Monday during his annual Christmas greeting that after last year’s public diagnosis of the “15 ailments of the Curia” that he should have come up this year with the “Curial antibiotics” to treat them.

In a way he did, issuing a list of virtues that should guide their work, including honesty, sobriety, respect and humility.

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NEW YORK
News 12

Protesters gathered outside Saint Patrick’s Cathedral Sunday morning in the wake of child sex abuse allegation against a Pearl River priest.

Monsignor John O’Keefe, a former priest at St. Margaret of Antioch, is being investigated by the church following multiple abuse allegations.

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NEW YORK
Fios 1

Protestors rally outside Manhattan church to call on Cardinal Dolan to ban Monsignor John O’ Keefe from ministry.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

Exclusive: Police and prosecutors were poised to bring a new set of charges against Lord Janner before his death

By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent 20 Dec 2015

Lord Janner was due to face a host of new sex abuse charges before his death, The Telegraph can disclose.

Legal and police sources said the Labour peer, who died on Saturday, was to have been accused of a “significant number” of additional charges before a court hearing which had been due to take place in the new year.

The planned new charges related to a number of complaints by four new alleged victims.

The four are understood to have come forward after publicity surrounding an investigation by Leicestershire Police into Lord Janner’s conduct, centring on a children’s home in the county – where the 87-year-old had been a Labour MP for 30 years.

The peer, who had been ruled unfit to plead due to severe dementia, was already facing 22 allegations of sexual offences which dated back 50 years and involved nine alleged victims, the majority of whom were 16 or younger at the time.

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UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on December 20, 2015

Last week, the Vatican announced that Mother Teresa will be made a saint sometime in May 2016.

The Macedonian nun founded the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a religious order whose mission is to help the poor. When the sainthood announcement was made, critics denounced the decision, citing the fact that she sought health care in the US (while saying the poor “accept their suffering“), her alleged misappropriation of money, and the nun’s close relationships with violent dictators.

And then there’s the whole miracle thing, which I always find a bit dubious, especially in the Internet age. But this is all irrelevant when it comes to making her a saint.

Why? Because the sainthood of Mother Teresa has nothing to do with holiness, her work in India, miracles (dubious or not), or the betterment of mankind and the Catholic faithful. It boils down to MONEY.

Let’s face it: Mother Teresa is a cash cow. Making Mother Teresa a saint will do the exact same thing that making JPII a saint accomplished: Billions of dollars in donations. Billions.

And these donations will not only be coming from developed nations—they will be coming from the poorest areas of Catholicism, because the poor were the focus of her work. The money won’t stop there.

Soon, we will be seeing her face on merchandise (Vatican sanctioned or not), Catholic appeal brochures, church bulletins, and cathedral banners. Her name and legacy will be invoked in homilies, used to encourage “sacrifice,” and publicized to widen the appeal of her and Catholicism as a whole.

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CALIFORNIA
CBS SF Bay Area

PINOLE (CBS SF) — After a two-month investigation, sheriff’s officials have arrested a Pinole resident on suspicion of child molestation, sheriff’s officials announced Friday.

On Dec. 10 Gabriel Lopez, 34, was arrested and the Contra Costa District Attorney’s office has filed six felony counts of child molestation against him, according to sheriff’s officials.

The investigation began in September when two juvenile females reported that Lopez has molested them. Both girls participated in the Student Ministry at Valley Bible Church, located at 1477 Willow Ave. in Hercules, and were also students at a John Swett Unified School District school, according to sheriff’s officials.

Lopez had worked as an “at will” employee at the Valley Bible Church as a youth pastor from July 2011 to March 2015. Lopez also worked as a “walk on” volunteer football coach at John Swett High School, located at 1098 Pomona Street in Crockett, sheriff’s officials said.

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GUAM
Pacific News Center

Written by Janela Carrera

Protesters held signs outside the Dolce Numbre de Cathedral-Basilica that called on Archbishop Apuron to step down.

Guam – Another protest was held in front of the Agana Cathedral-Basilica over the weekend by the Laity Forward Movement.

The protesters gathered for their seventh protest in the last several months, expressing their frustration with Archbishop Anthony Apuron.

One of the organizers of yesterday’s protest, Lou Klitzkie, says they will continue to hold these prayer protest rallies until they get their voices heard.

“Our purpose today is to restore the two priests that have been fired by the archbishop. We want Father Paul Back as pastor of Santa Barbara Church. We want Msgr. James [Benavente] back as rector of the Archdiocese of Agana and the Catholic Cemeteries. We also don’t like the way the archbishop is having a lot of the neo-catechumenal presbyters in parishes. We don’t want anymore presbyters in our parishes,” Klitzkie said.

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ARKANSAS
Arkansas Online

By Brandon Riddle

A former chaplain of the Arkansas Department of Correction has been charged with 50 counts of third-degree sexual assault stemming from reported encounters with three inmates in Newport.

Kenneth L. Dewitt, 67, faces the charges after reports of sexual assault at the McPherson women’s unit between January 2013 and September 2014, Third Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney Henry Boyce said in a statement Thursday.

Dewitt resigned from his position as chaplain at the women’s unit in a handwritten note Sept. 10, 2014, one day before former inmate Stacey Smith wrote a letter to the Department of Correction saying that she and Dewitt had a “moral failure” years after her release, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.

In a Sept. 16, 2014, memo to the McPherson Unit’s human resources department, John Mark Wheeler, assistant director of the Department of Correction, said Dewitt “called and confessed to having an inappropriate physical relationship with a subordinate in violation of AD 12-33.”

At that point, Wheeler said Dewitt accepted an offer to resign effective immediately from his chaplain position.

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ARKANSAS
THV 11

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) – The former chaplain for the Arkansas Department of Correction has been charged with sexual assault.

On Thursday, the Third Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney announced that 67-year-old Kenneth L. Dewitt was charged with 50 counts of third degree sexual assault.

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ARKANSAS
Arkansas Matters

NEWPORT, Ark. – A former chaplain for the Arkansas Department of Correction has been charged with 50 counts of Sexual Assault in the Third Degree.

Kenneth L. Dewitt, 67, of Woodruff and Saline counties is alleged to have committed these crimes from January 2013 through September 2014.

The charges were announced in a news release issued Thursday by Henry Boyce, Third Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney.

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ARKANSAS
The Daily Beast

Suzi Parker

Bill Gothard’s evangelical teachings found fans in Mike Huckabee and the Duggars, but he and another pastor allegedly used by them to take advantage of women.

LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas prison chaplain Kenneth L. Dewitt was charged last week with 50 counts of third-degree sexual assault for allegedly pressuring three inmates at a women’s state prison into providing him sexual favors.

Dewitt based his prison classes on the teachings of Bill Gothard, an influential evangelical minister who is also accused of sexually harassing as many as 30 women under his influence. Gothard has deep ties to former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who opened prisons to his teachings, and the Duggar family, who sent their son Josh to be counseled under a Gothard program after he molested two of his sisters.

Gothard, who received a degree in biblical studies from Wheaton College, became popular in the 1970s with a program called Basic Youth Conflicts, which focused on seven life principles based on the Bible. In 1989, he changed the name of the program, which by now had become a profitable business, to Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), based in Oak-Brook, Illinois. Over the years, Gothard also created many spin-off ministries and businesses including the Advanced Training Institute (ATI), a popular Christian-based homeschooling program that the Duggars use and promote. In fact, Josh met his wife, Anna, during the Duggars’ annual trip to the ATI conference, and family members appeared at the IBLP conference this year.

The ultra-conservative ministries also include programs on anger control, financial management, prison rehabilitation, and marriage counseling. (Gothard has never married.)

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UNITED STATES
Christian Today

Shianee Mamanglu-Regala 21 December 2015

A group fighting human trafficking is experimenting with ways to help save the hundreds of thousands of children who have been trafficked out of, or into the United States.

The Alliance for Freedom, Restoration and Justice said it has been working with Gateway Church in Dallas and many other churches and organisations to mobilise churches in America and worldwide to do their part to fight the problem and protect children from possible exploitation and slavery.

“It’s a massive problem,” says Ashleigh Chapman, president and chief executive officer of the alliance in Dallas, Texas. “The FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children pegs the number [of victims] at 300,000 children [in America alone].”

“We are deeply concerned that many are being trafficked in this nation. Many are being raped for profit every night. It’s pornography, selling children online through the dark web. It is prostitution of children on the streets. It’s a horrible thing,” she was quoted by Newsmax as saying.

Chapman said the alliance has created the Engage Together Church Teaching Series, an eight-session series to equip churches with the knowledge, resources and strategies they will need to combat sex trafficking and protect the vulnerable in their communities.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

The Catholic archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has strongly defended the 2009 Murphy report on the handling of clerical child sexual abuse in the archdiocese, while praising the work of the late bishop Dermot O’Mahony, who was criticised in that report.

“I stand over the conclusions of the Murphy report,” he said, pointing to the fact that nobody had challenged it in the courts.

The report found that Bishop O’Mahony’s handling of complaints and suspicions of child sexual abuse was “particularly bad”, adding that he had been aware of such complaints involving 13 priests.

At the bishop’s funeral in Dublin last Tuesday, auxiliary bishop of Dublin Eamonn Walsh said the deceased had been “scapegoated in a society that at the time ignored the principle of equity, audi alteram partem, to hear the other side”.

Bishop Walsh said his late colleague “stood silently before his hearers knowing that to speak would cause greater pain to those who suffered”.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Sarah MacDonald
PUBLISHED
21/12/2015

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has strongly defended the findings of the 2009 Murphy Report into the handling of clerical sexual abuse in the Dublin diocese following criticism of the treatment of Bishop Dermot O’Mahony.

Bishop O’Mahony died on December 10, aged 80.

At the conclusion of his funeral Mass, Bishop Eamonn Walsh said the society in which Bishop O’Mahony lived “ignored the principle of equity – audi alteram partem – hear the other side”.

However, speaking to journalists yesterday after a Mass and rite to open a Door of Mercy at the Pro Cathedral in Dublin, Archbishop Martin said that Bishop O’Mahony had had “ample opportunity during the working of the commission and afterwards” to put his case across.

He said Dr O’Mahony had had “a robust engagement” with Judge Yvonne Murphy’s commission.

He was assisted by “very competent” lawyers, paid for by the archdiocese of Dublin following his refusal to use the diocese’s lawyers.

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CALIFORNIA
The Orange County Register

By THERESA WALKER / STAFF WRITER

Age: 45

Role: Author, speaker and advocate for victims of sexual abuse; western regional director for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

Bio: Victimized by her high school choir director in the late 1980s, when she was a teenager, Casteix emerged in 2003 as an outspoken critic of the Catholic Church and its handling of child sex abuse cases. In 2005, she won a $1.6-million settlement from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange. Since then, she’s continued to advocate on behalf of abuse victims around the world. She lives in Newport Beach.

Why she’s an influencer: In August, Casteix published her book, “The Well-Armored Child: A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Sexual Abuse.” Earlier, she gave a TEDx talk on responsibility and empowerment and, in June, she was named an Ambassador of Peace by the Violence Prevention Coalition of Orange County. In September, during Pope Francis’ visit to the United States, Casteix made several media appearances, calling for transparency from the Vatican in dealing with abuse.

Biggest challenge: Lingering reluctance to the idea that people who have been sexually abused should speak out and be acknowledged as victims. “There’s a certain closed-mindedness, the idea that these bad things can’t happen here and everything is fine in my home.”

Work philosophy: “It is a series of very, very small vicious battles that are slowly pushing the needle in the direction it needs to go.”

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NORTH CAROLINA
Catholic News Herald

CHARLOTTE — Effective immediately, Oblate Father Albert J. Gondek has been temporarily removed from ministry following an accusation of child sexual abuse alleged to have occurred about five years ago.

Father Gondek, a priest with the Wilmington-Philadelphia Province of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales for nearly 50 years, served as pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary of Church in Lexington for the past 17 years. “In consultation with Bishop Peter J. Jugis,” head of the Diocese of Charlotte, his order placed him on administrative leave from his pastorate “in an abundance of caution” while an investigation of the allegation is conducted, a Dec. 19 statement from the province’s spokesman Father Kevin Nadolski said.

“The allegation was reported to the Oblates from an incarcerated man who claims Fr. Gondek touched him in a sexually inappropriate way about five years ago when he was 18. The man also claimed that this occurred with minors, who have not come forth,” the statement said.

“The Oblates and the (Charlotte) diocese will work with local law authorities to address this matter,” the Oblates’ statement continued.

Holy Rosary parishioners were informed of the allegation Dec. 19 by members of Father Gondek’s order who are staffing the parish this weekend.

During the investigation Father Gondek will not publicly celebrate Mass or the sacraments or exercise ministry. “He will live in an Oblate community, outside of North Carolina, that is not connected to a church property,” the Oblates’ statement said.

The move to place Father Gondek on administrative leave follows the U.S. bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, and does not imply guilt or innocence. The charter, adopted in 2002, codifies the Church’s commitment to respond effectively, appropriately and compassionately to cases of abuse of young people by priests, deacons or other Church personnel.

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NORTH CAROLINA
The Dispatch

By Steve Harrison
The Charlotte Observer (TNS)
Published: Sunday, December 20, 2015

A pastor of the Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Lexington has been placed on administrative leave after an allegation that he sexually abused minors about five years ago.

The Rev. Albert J. Gondek will not publicly celebrate Mass or exercise ministry during the investigation, according to a news release from the Diocese of Charlotte.

The diocese said a man who is incarcerated said that Gondek “touched him in a sexually inappropriate way” about five years ago, when the man was 18. The man said that the same contact had also occurred with minors.

The news release said the diocese would work with local law enforcement during the investigation.

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NORTH CAROLINA
Fox 8

LEXINGTON, N.C. — A Lexington priest was placed on administrative leave after being accused of sexually abusing minors about five years ago.

The-Dispatch reported that Rev. Albert J. Gondek of Our Lady of the Rosary Church will not be able to publicly celebrate Mass or exercise ministry during the investigation.

The diocese told The-Dispatch that a man came forward and said Gondek “touched him in a sexually inappropriate way” when he was 18. He also said Gondek had done the same with other minors.

Now, the diocese is working with law enforcement to complete the investigation.

Gondek was the subject of a similar investigation in 2007. The diocese told The-Dispatch that Gondek was reinstated after two investigations found no evidence to back the allegations of sexual misconduct.

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ITALY
Breitbart

An enthusiastically pro-mass migration progressive bishop has been questioned by police over his use of church funds after €430,000 were found to have been misappropriated.

Bishop Domenico Mogavero was questioned by Italian financial police on Thursday this week after he was found to have some €180,000 resting in his personal account. The former diocesan economist Father Franco Caruso is also under investigation, having allegedly spent a further €250,000 of church money.

Some of the money is alleged to have been given to another priest who was suspended and jailed in 2011 for sexually assaulting another man, begging the question whether the corruption in the case may go deeper than merely fiscal.

The Sicilian bishop involved is responsible for the diocese of Mazara Del Vallo and has been active in welcoming migrants to the area. He is also a long standing critic of right-wing politics in the country, and was outspoken against the former right-wing government of Silvio Berlusconi, reports TheLocal.it.

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ITALY
GlobalPost

Agence France-Presse on Dec 20, 2015

An Italian bishop aided and abetted a paedophile priest, telling him to avoid the police and shrugging off warnings the prelate was meeting teenage boys on Grindr, Italian media reported Sunday.

Priest Antonello Tropea, 44, was arrested after a police investigation allegedly uncovered he was using the US-based gay dating app to pick up the teenagers, with whom he sexual relations in his car or his rectory in Calabria.

Bishop Francesco Milito was accused by a prosecutor of failing to investigate widely-spread reports of the priest’s activities and encouraging him to “continue as before”, according to the reports.

Police suspicions were raised after officers found Tropea in a car in a secluded spot with a teenager, and the priest not only said he was a physical education teacher but had suspicious objects in his rucksack.

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CANADA
CBC News

The Law Society of the Northwest Territories is launching an action group to study ways that northern lawyers can respond to recommendations from the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was released last week.

Shannon Cumming, president of the law society said the project will confront the legacy of residential schools in the N.W.T. and find ways for lawyers to contribute to reconciliation.

“As lawyers that have an obligation to act in the public interest we think we need to inform ourselves about things that have happened in our history,” Cumming said.

“This is the start of a conversation among lawyers about how we can work together to help see if we can find some ways to respond to the calls to action from the TRC.”

The report urged the Federation of Canadian Law Societies to ensure that lawyers receive training in cultural competency, “which includes the history and legacy of residential schools.”

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ITALIA
Il Fatto Quotidiano

[A priest has been arrested for pedophilia in Goia Tauro. It appears that Bishop Francesco Milito knew of the priest’s behavior.]

E’ quanto emerge dall’ordinanza di custodia cautelare nei confronti di un sacerdote a cui è stato sequestrato materiale pedopornografico, droga, vibratori e lubrificanti. Il giudice scrive che l’alto prelato della diocesi di Oppido Mamertina-Palmi “pur al corrente delle voci che circolavano non ha adottato nessun provvedimento”. Su Facebook pagina a sostegno del parroco

di Lucio Musolino | 19 dicembre 2015

“Gli chiesi circa 40 euro per un rapporto orale e lui me ne offrì 20. Io accettai”. È agghiacciante il racconto del ragazzo minorenne abusato dal sacerdote della Piana di Gioia Tauro arrestato venerdì 18 dicembre dalla squadra mobile di Reggio Calabria che, durante la perquisizione nella canonica del religioso, ha sequestrato numerosi file con immagini e video pedopornografici, 16 grammi di marijuana, lubrificanti, un vibratore, manette, cerotti afrodisiaci. Ma anche uno strumento per l’aumento delle dimensioni del pene.

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CALIFORNIA
KRON

By Mario Sevilla, KRON
Published: December 20, 2015

PINOLE (KRON) — An East Bay youth pastor has been arrested on suspicion of molesting two girls, and authorities believe there may be more victims, Contra Costa County Sheriff’s officials announced Friday.

Gabriel Lopez, 34, of Pinole, was booked into County Jail in Martinez on Dec. 10 on six felony counts of child molestation following a two month investigation.

According to authorities, Lopez was an “at will” employee at the Valley Bible Church where he worked as a youth pastor from July 2011 to March 2015. The victims, both female juveniles, participated in the church’s student ministry, officials said.

The girls also attended school in the John Swett Unified School District, the Sheriff’s Office said. Lopez worked as a “walk on” volunteer coach for John Swett High’s football team.

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RHODE ISLAND
Boston Globe

By Bella English GLOBE STAFF DECEMBER 14, 2015

Anne Scott entered St. George’s School as a 10th-grader in 1977, just a few years after the prestigious prep school first admitted girls at its campus in Middletown, R.I. She was a good student, and a three-sport athlete, from the suburbs of Wilmington, Del.

But a month after she arrived, a field hockey injury brought her into the orbit of the school’s longtime athletic trainer. He molested and raped her, and threatened to come after her if she told anyone.

For years, terrified and ashamed, she did not. Finally, in her mid-20s, her life a shambles of diagnoses and hospitalizations, she told her parents, who took her to see Eric MacLeish, an attorney who would later gain renown representing abuse victims of Catholic priests. It was his first sexual abuse case.

MacLeish filed a lawsuit seeking $10 million, but when the school pushed back aggressively, Scott backed off — and moved abroad to rebuild her life.

This year, almost 40 years after she first arrived at St. George’s, Anne Scott felt strong enough to pursue her unfinished business with St. George’s.

Reunited with MacLeish, she has sought not money but accountability from the school — an end to what she and her attorney call a pattern of coverup and denial concerning the alleged sexual assaults of multiple students at the school in the 1970s and 1980s. They have urged the school to launch an investigation, to inform alumni of its findings, and to set up a therapy fund for victims.

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RHODE ISLAND
Change.org

[petition]

We, the undersigned, insist that St. George’s School take clear and powerful restorative action to assist the many alumni from the school who were sexually assaulted as students at St. George’s.

Dozens of alumni have come forward since The Boston Globe ran its story, Former student forces R.I. prep school to confront its past, on December 15th, and yet many do not feel safe in recounting their experiences as part of the School’s “independent investigation” or appealing to the victims’ assistance fund set up by the school. This is because the investigation is being undertaken by a law firm that represents the School. The fund is administered by that same firm. And, as a condition for reimbursement from the fund, alumni are required to agree not to tell anyone that St. George’s is paying for their therapy. At the same time, the School gives no assurance that it will uphold the confidentiality of alumni seeking reimbursement.

Many alumni who were abused at SGS by Gibbs and other former employees have contacted us since the Boston Globe story appeared on the front page of Boston Globe on December 15. They have also contacted our lawyers. Almost all of these alumni need clinical help and there are several alumni that are suffering from PTSD, depression or other mental illness and who have expressed thoughts of suicide. SGS has refused to engage in discussions with us on the need to appoint an independent clinician who can provide crisis management counseling, case management and referrals for alumni who require immediate care.

St. George’s “independent” investigation and victims’ assistance fund are inconsistent with the approach taken by virtually all other independent schools in similar situations. When faced with credible allegations of sexual abuse, the majority of those schools have retained independent clinicians to coordinate mental health assistance for alumni and have hired investigators with no prior relationship with the school.

Many alumni who did tell their story to St. George’s prior to December 15th feel devastated and betrayed now that they realize the investigator they had been assured was “independent” is actually the law partner of St. George’s own legal counsel.

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NEW YORK
12 News

Several parishioners in Pearl River are defending a local priest accused of abuse.

Monsignor John O’Keefe, a former priest at St. Margaret of Antioch, is being investigated by the church following multiple abuse allegations.

Two incidents reported by one man, allegedly took place in the Bronx, and in Virginia back in the 1980s.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Thu, Dec 17, 2015

Joe Humphreys

A trust controlling the only Catholic school to be divested to a non-denominational patron insisted on getting “fair” economic value for the arrangement, correspondence released under the Freedom of Information Act shows.

The Edmund Rice Schools Trust (ERST), an entity chaired by Mr Justice Peter Kelly that controls the property interests of the Christian Brothers, refused to surrender a vacant school premises to the Department of Education to promote diversity of patronage until it had secured financial concessions, the documents reveal.

They also show that Mr Justice Kelly clashed with the department over his non-attendance at a meeting between it and the ERST board in February 2013 to discuss the planned divestment.

The department had then sought to obtain the building at Basin Lane, Dublin, for a nominal rent under a 24-year lease to “provide for a level of security of tenure” for the new patrons Educate Together.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
UTV

Fr John McManus, a senior priest who stepped aside from his role after claims of abuse were made against him has returned to the ministry more than three years after being cleared of any wrongdoing.

The allegations against the Portaferry priest were first reported to the Diocese of Down and Connor child safeguarding office in early 2011 but the Public Prosecution Service later decided Fr McManus had no case to answer.

He always denied the allegations but temporarily left the Diocese when police investigations began.

Bishop Noel Treanor welcomed Fr McManus’ return with a statement on Sunday.

He said: “I am pleased to announce the return of Fr John McManus to priestly ministry within the Diocese.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

DECEMBER 21, 2015

John Ferguson
Victorian Political Editor
Melbourne

Cardinal George Pell’s chief critic and accuser has failed to declare in his public statement to the child sex abuse royal commission that he indecently assaulted a 12-year-old boy he groomed while performing youth work.

David Ridsdale has emerged as a de facto spokesman for Ballarat victims of Catholic abuse and has accused Cardinal Pell of impropriety during a 1993 telephone conversation discussing Mr Ridsdale’s abuse at the hands of his uncle Gerald.

David Ridsdale, now 49, is the most well-known victim of Gerald Ridsdale, who as a priest in the Ballarat diocese abused hundreds of children, including relentlessly attacking his nephew.

However, David Ridsdale failed to detail in his statement to the commission, the centrepiece of his evidence, how he had groomed the 12-year-old boy in 1984 while working for the YMCA. The Australian has established he used his position as a YMCA activities leader to indecently ­assault the child on two occasions in bushland outside Ballarat, about 100km west of Melbourne.

The evidence against David Ridsdale, then 18, was that he tricked the boy into joining him on a visit to a local video store but drove him to bushland and then exposed himself. David Ridsdale refused to comment to The Australian, which offered through his lawyers to articulate his full story on the assaults.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Live

BY MAURICE FITZMAURICE

A priest who had been facing abuse allegations is back saying Mass nearly three and half years after prosecutors said he had no case to answer.

Fr John McManus celebrated Mass along with Bishop Noel Treanor in Portaferry, Co Down last night and this morning (Sunday Dec 20) in Ballygalget.

The move came after he stepped aside in 2011 after allegations were made against him. However in June 2012, the Public Prosecution Service said there was no case to answer.

Fr McManus, from Portaferry, had always denied any wrong-doing but stepped aside during the investigation.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News

A senior priest who was cleared of abuse allegations more than three years ago has returned to his duties.

Fr John McManus, from Portaferry, County Down, stepped aside in March 2011 during an investigation.

In June 2012, the Public Prosecution Service decided he had no case to answer.

Fr McManus told parishioners he was “delighted and privileged” to be joining them in celebrating Mass.

“The last time I celebrated Mass in this Church of Saint Patrick was on 9 March 2011, Ash Wednesday, when I informed you that I had requested administrative leave from ministry for the duration of the necessary inquiries.

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CALIFORNIA
Contra Costa Times

By David DeBolt ddebolt@bayareanewsgroup.com

POSTED: 12/19/2015

HERCULES — A former Valley Bible Church youth pastor and John Swett High School volunteer football coach has been arrested on suspicion of molesting two girls, the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Office said.

After a two-month investigation, Pinole resident Gabriel Lopez was booked into County Jail in Martinez on Dec. 10 on six felony counts of child molestation, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Authorities said the 34-year-old worked from July 2011 to March 2015 as an “at will” youth pastor at the Hercules-based church, which was founded in 1971. The victims, both female juveniles, participated in the Valley Bible Church Student Ministry, officials said.

They also previously attended school in the John Swett Unified School District, the Sheriff’s Office said. Lopez worked as a volunteer coach for John Swett High’s football team. He is in custody on $520,000 bail.

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ALABAMA
Daily Home

By GARY HANNER, Home staff writer

Two women who were in Brian Pesnell’s youth group at a church in Fultondale 15 years ago are speaking out on how he was inappropriate with them both when they were teenagers.

Pesnell, 40, of Amelia Circle in Moody, was arrested Dec. 16 on charges of child sex abuse. Pesnell turned himself in at the St. Clair County Jail in Pell City. He was later released on a $25,000 bond.

Both women asked to remain anonymous because Pesnell is out of jail and they fear he would harass them. To protect their identity, The Daily Home will refer to one as Riley and the other as Sarah.

Riley’s story

Now 31, Riley said back in 2000 at the age of 16, she attended Gateway Baptist Church in Fultondale and was in Pesnell’s youth group.

“He was inappropriate with me on several occasions. I informed my parents, and they allowed me to stop attending his youth program,” Riley said. “The first time it happened was when we were on a youth trip to Nashville.

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IRELAND
The Journal

FOR THE BETHANY Home survivors, 2015 was a year of continuing to campaign for justice.

They had some good news in that they were included in the commission of investigation into mother and baby homes, but now they fear that all the survivors won’t live to see their experiences recognised.

In 2016, they want to finally see some movement on the investigation, one Bethany Home survivor, Derek Leinster, indicated. The commission has three years to do its work.

Leinster lives in the UK and was brought up in Northern Ireland, but spent some of his childhood at the Bethany home. His mother gave birth to him there and he said he was subject to neglect but there and after being sent to live with another family.

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KENTUCKY
WLKY

By Kimberly Crowe

POWELL COUNTY, Ky. —A Kentucky minister was arrested after being accused of sexually abusing two girls in his church.

According to the Powell County Sheriff’s Office, deputies arrested Steve Williams, 52, Friday afternoon. He is charged with two counts of sexual abuse of a minor.

Officials said the charges stem from allegations that Williams inappropriately touched two girls, one during a field trip and the other at church.

“You have a defendant who has access to all kinds of different children through the church that he pastored,” Chief Deputy Robert Matthews said. “You have to act fact to make sure you don’t have any more victims.”

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KENTUCKY
Lex 18

A school bus driver and youth pastor in Powell County is currently facing shocking allegations. 52-year-old Steve Williams is accused of sexually abusing at least 2 minors.

“That’s just appalling. I hope it’s not true. Everybody is wondering, did he really do this? I hope to God he didn’t,” said Powell County resident Carla Reeves.

Williams was a school bus driver for Powell County Schools and pastor of the Bowen First Church of God for about two and a half years. Powell County deputies say the church has one of the largest youth groups in the area, and Williams was very involved with many children in the congregation.

“It’s somebody we trust with our children. It’s not just some guy at the grocery store that rolls your buggy out and helps you with groceries. He’s driving a bus, he’s taking care of our children,” said Powell County resident Don Reeves.

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FLORIDA
Naples Daily News

By Eve Samples, Treasure Coast Newspapers

There’s a scene in the movie “Spotlight” that Marty Baron gets asked about all the time.

It’s his first day on the job as editor of The Boston Globe. The year is 2001. Baron (played by actor Liev Schreiber) is in a news meeting, and other editors are describing the stories their reporters are chasing.

Baron asks, rather directly, how the newsroom plans to follow up on a column about secrecy surrounding the case against a priest, Rev. John Geoghan, accused of serial sexual abuse of children.

Baron suggests challenging the Catholic Church in court to unseal legal documents that could reveal the role of church leaders.

Silence follows.

“The general response when there’s silence is, ‘Why don’t we talk about it after the meeting?’ ” Baron said, recalling the real-life scene.

During a telephone interview last week, I pressed Baron on this.

How did he have the guts, on Day 1, to challenge the most powerful institution in his new city?

He didn’t see the move as gutsy. It’s the essence of a journalist’s job.

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UNITED STATES
Reading Eagle

By Steven Henshaw

There’s a scene in the critically acclaimed film “Spotlight” in which a Boston Globe reporter is told by a civil servant that he can’t see the file in a court case.

The reporter argues that those documents, which contain Boston archdiocesan records pertaining to the sexual abuse scandal involving a Catholic priest who was the subject of numerous victim lawsuits, were not sealed by a judge.

But the clerk isn’t risking his neck, so the reporter tracks down a judge to intervene.

The judge points out that a lot of sensitive stuff is contained in the file.

“With all due respect,” the reporter replies, “that’s not the point.”

Many of my colleagues can relate to this scene. Custodians of public records sometimes feel it’s their job to block access to reporters on grounds that someone could be hurt or embarrassed if certain information got out.

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NEW YORK
The Journal News

Jane Lerner and Michael D’Onofrio, mcdonofrio@lohud.com December 19, 2015

Rockland authorities are prepared to launch an investigation into a longtime Pearl River priest who has been accused of sexually abusing a child more than 30 years ago.

But no allegations of wrongdoing in Rockland by Monsignor John O’Keefe, a pastor at St. Margaret of Antioch, have been received by authorities, Rockland District Attorney Thomas Zugibe said Saturday.

“At this time there are no allegations of misconduct in Rockland County,” Zugibe said.

His office has been in touch with the Archdiocese of New York, which earlier this week told St. Margaret parishioners that O’Keefe was suspended from the parish where he has served since 2003.

Zugibe urged anyone with information to contact the Orangetown police, whose jurisdiction includes Pearl River.

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UNITED STATES
The Independent (UK)

Rupert Cornwell Washington @IndyVoices

It’s called Spotlight, after the name of The Boston Globe’s in-house investigative reporting unit. It opens in Britain next month. And it may just be the finest film about journalism that’s yet been made.

Let’s start with the place: America’s most Catholic city: Boston, with its dark-panelled clubs, its Brahmin caste with family ties to the very founding of America, its liberal and decent flagship newspaper, its Irish and Italian tribes, and its fanatical embrace of the local sports teams, none more so than the Red Sox. Into this ordered, generations-old universe steps a complete outsider, the Globe’s new editor, Marty Baron. He is a Floridian by birth, Jewish by faith and he hates baseball.

In his very first days on the job in 2001, a Globe column catches Baron’s eye; it’s about paedophile priests, a topic that has frequently cropped up, but which has never been properly investigated. Maybe the paper had never really tried, aware that some 55 per cent of its readers were Roman Catholics, and daunted by a sense that the church measured its existence not by human lifespans but by eternity.

Midway through the film comes a wonderful scene where the outsider meets the ultimate insider. Baron is paying a courtesy visit to Cardinal Bernard Law, Archbishop of Boston, close to the Pope and the Curia in Rome and probably America’s mightiest Catholic churchman of his day. Ah, says Law, the city works best when our two great institutions work in tandem. Baron gently demurs. As he leaves, the cardinal summons an underling to give the editor a present. Baron unwraps it in his car as he leaves. It is the Catholic catechism.

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IRELAND
The Sunday Times

Colin Coyle Published: 20 December 2015

PRIESTS will no longer have to undergo garda vetting unless they work with children or vulnerable people, following lobbying by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Under legislation introduced in 2012, anyone engaged in “work or activity as a minister or priest, or any other person engaged in the advancement of religious beliefs” had to be vetted by gardai.

In October, Teresa Devlin, chief executive of the board, met officials from the Department of Justice and requested a change to the provisions so that clergy would require garda checking only when “engaged in activities which consist mainly of working with children”.

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VATICAN CITY
Europe Online

Vatican City (dpa) – A top cardinal has pledged to return 150,000 euros (163,000 dollars) after he was exposed in the so-called VatiLeaks 2 affair for having his retirement flat redone at the expense of a Vatican hospital for children.

Tarcisio Bertone, former no. 2 under Pope Benedict XVI, was said to have received 200,000 euros from the Foundation of the Ospedale Bambino Gesu to renovate a 300-square-meter penthouse inside Vatican walls.

“Cardinal Bertone, recognizing that what happened damaged the Bambino Gesu, has decided to help us, devolving the sum of 150,000 euros,” said hospital president Mariella Enoc, as quoted by the ANSA news agency on Saturday.

Her announcement came on the day Bertone‘s successor paid a pre-Christmas visit to the clinic‘s patients and staff. “What I can say is that the issue is being solved, or rather, has been positively solved,” Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin said.

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ROME
Channel News Asia

Rome – An Italian cardinal accused of using charity money to refurbish his luxury apartment has donated 150,000 euros ($163,000) to the Catholic foundation which allegedly footed the bill, media reports said Saturday.

Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s former Secretary of State, a role equivalent to prime minister, has insisted he paid for the 300,000 euros renovation of the flat overlooking Saint Peter’s Square himself.

But a document published in a book this month by Italian investigative journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi purportedly shows he used 200,000 euros from the Bambin Gesu Foundation which collects donations for a children’s hospital in Rome.

“Acknowledging that what has happened has been detrimental to the Bambin Gesu, Cardinal Bertone wanted to meet us half way, donating a sum of 150,000 euros,” the hospital’s president Mariella Enoc said Saturday, according to the reports.

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ROME
BBC News

An Italian cardinal has donated €150,000 (£109,000) to a Catholic charity which allegedly footed the bill for renovations to his luxury flat.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone was donating the money for medical research “to make amends”, said Mariella Enoc, head of the Bambino Gesu Hospital.

Cardinal Bertone said he had paid for the work on his residence himself.

However, documents leaked to reporters earlier this year allege the €200,000 came from the Bambino Gesu Foundation.

The foundation collects donations for a children’s hospital in Rome.

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ROME
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By FRANCES D’EMILIO Associated Press

ROME • An Italian cardinal whose penthouse apartment was reportedly renovated using funds from a Vatican-owned children’s hospital is making a large donation for medical research in a bid to make amends, the hospital’s president said Saturday.

Bambino Gesu Hospital President Mariella Enoc told reporters that Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone is donating 150,000 euros ($165, 000) for research on orphan diseases.

Bertone has insisted that he paid for the renovations himself. The scandal put him on the defensive, since lavish lifestyles clash with Pope Francis’ insistence that prelates live modestly.

Bertone was formerly the secretary of state, the Vatican’s No. 2 official, under Pope Benedict XVI and for the first months of Francis’ papacy. Now 81, he no longer holds any top Vatican post.

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UNITED STATES
PopeCrimes& Vatican Evils.

Paris Arrow

According to Nuzzi, one of the Vatileaks 2 Italian journalists, (read more here http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2015/11/2-italian-journalists-defy-vatican.html), the average price tag for sainthood comes to about €500,000. “We then have to consider the costs of all the thank you gifts required for the prelates who are invited to festivities and celebrations held at crucial moments in the process, to say a few words about the acts and miracles of the future saint or blessed,” he writes. “Record spending on these causes has reached as high as €750,000.”

Mother Teresa has surpassed that amount more than ten times because she already sent to John Paul II and hoarded in the Vatican Bank more than $100 million dollars that were meant to build a hospital and a university in India, (read more http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2011/07/mother-teresa-was-not-living-saint.html).

But what is more troubling about the half-truth saint Mother Teresa – is what she did may not been so Christian or Christ-like after all. Eyewitness and volunteers said — that while it’s true she helped a lot of people who were dying in the streets of Kolkata, she also did NOT help them become better or to live longer – but rather she helped them to die faster by saying to them: “You are suffering like Christ on the cross. So Jesus must be kissing you.” See specific page here. And she denied any medical help to those who could have been treated and cured even by simple antibiotics. Christopher Hitchens wrote in detail about her practise in his book, The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice

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ITALY
Europe Online

Italian journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi speaks to dpa after his Vatican scandal revelations prompt a top cardinal to return 150,000 euros for misusing funds intended for a children‘s hospital.

Vatican City (dpa) – Emiliano Fittipaldi revealed last month how former top cardinal Tarcisio Bertone used a 200,000-euro (217,000-dollar) grant from a Vatican children‘s hospital to renovate his retirement penthouse.

The Italian journalist, who is facing a Vatican criminal trial for publishing a book on the Bertone affair and other financial shenanigans, spoke to dpa after it was announced that the cardinal would return 150,000 euros.

dpa: What do you think about this development?

Fittipaldi: It proves that even in Italy investigative journalism, reporting on real and verified information, can make a difference. Now I hope that was what wrongly taken away from the hospital will be invested in the right way, namely on medical research.

I also hope this will only be the starting point. My book also talks about the hospital‘s secret bank accounts worth 500,000 euros at the IOR [Vatican bank] and at [the Vatican central bank] APSA, invested on multinationals like PepsiCo. This has nothing to do with its mission.

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VATIKAN
Radio Vatikan

[Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski died of a heart attack, the Vatican said.]

Der des Kindesmissbrauchs angeklagte Vatikandiplomat Erzbischof Jozef Wesolowski ist eines natürlichen Todes gestorben. Das hat nun auch ein weiterer medizinischer Befund ergeben, wie der Vatikan am Freitag mitteilte. Die chemisch-toxologische Untersuchung von bei der Autopsie entnommenen Proben wurde von Gerichtsmedizinern durchgeführt, die dazu von der vatikanischen Staatsanwaltes am Tag nach dem Tod des Erzbischofs beauftragt worden waren, hieß es.

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DEUTSCHLAND
NDR

[Abuse: Victims’ association calls for further steps]

Nachdem der Hildesheimer Bischof Norbert Trelle am Freitag zum ersten Mal Versäumnisse bei der Aufarbeitung eines Missbrauchsfalls eingeräumt hat, der im Jahr 2010 gemeldet wurde, fordert der Opferverband Eckiger Tisch weitere Konsequenzen. Die Stellungnahme des Bischofs gehe nicht weit genug, heißt es. Immerhin werde eingeräumt, dass sich das Bistum nicht richtig verhalten hat, sagte Matthias Katsch, der Vorsitzende des Verbands. Er sei allerdings der Meinung, dass jemand Verantwortung für dieses Fehlverhalten übernehmen müsse – etwa durch einen Rücktritt. Außerdem hätte er sich gewünscht, dass sich Bischof Trelle für das Fehlverhalten entschuldigt, so Katsch. Das sei aber nicht der Fall.

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ALABAMA
WKRG

[with video]

A local pastor is accused of sexually abusing teenagers and committing sodomy for at least the past seven years in Washington County.

48-year-old Tommy Joe Newberry has been arrested by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office on counts of sodomy 2nd degree, sexual abuse 1st and 2nd degree, and enticing a child to enter for immoral purposes.

Newberry is a pastor at Red Creek Church of God in Buckatunna, Mississippi.

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ALABAMA
WTVM

[with video]

By Kellie Jones, FOX10 Investigative Producer

WASHINGTON COUNTY, AL (WALA) –
A Washington County pastor has been arrested on child sex abuse charges.

Washington County Sheriff Richard Stringer told FOX10 News Tommy Joe Newberry was taken into custody Wednesday afternoon.

Sheriff Stringer said Newberry was placed under a $36,000 bond Friday.

Investigators say Newberry, who is the pastor of the Red Creek Church of God in Buckatunna, Mississippi, is facing several charges of sexual abuse, sodomy and sexual enticement of a child.

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ALABAMA
AL.com

By Erin Edgemon | eedgemon@al.com
on December 18, 2015

A south Alabama pastor sexually abused at least six underage boys over the course of several years, Washington County Sheriff Richard Stringer said.

Tommy Joe Newberry, 48, of Millry, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with second-degree sodomy, first-degree sexual abuse and second-degree sexual abuse, court records show. Additional charges could be forthcoming.

Newberry is the pastor of Red Creek Church of God, which is near the Alabama/Mississippi state line.

He was released from the Washington County Jail after posting $36,000 bond on Friday.

Stringer said the sexual abuse occurred over the course of several years beginning as early as 2003.

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SCOTLAND
The Press and Journal

18 December 2015 by David Kerr

A former Catholic monk at Fort Augustus Abbey school is to be extradited from Australia to face child sex abuse charges.

The Crown Office has confirmed they haven begun proceedings against Father Denis Chrysostom Alexander.

The final decision on whether he will return to Scotland to face charges will be taken by the Australian authorities.

Last night a spokeswoman for the Crown said: “Crown Counsel have instructed proceedings against Denis Alexander.

“Charges are being finalised with a view to seeking his extradition.”

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SCOTLAND
Scotsman

A FORMER Catholic monk who taught at the Fort Augustus Abbey school is set to be extradited from Australia to face charges of child sex abuse.

Victims have long called for Fr Denis Chrysostom Alexander to face trial in Scotland.

He denies the allegations.

Run by Catholic Benedictine monks, Fort Augustus Abbey school in the Highlands closed in 1993.

Allegations of decades of child sexual and physical abuse at the exclusive boarding school were made public in June 2013.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

December 18, 2015

In an exhaustive report for Australia’s Catholic Weekly, Monica Doumit clears up several popular misconceptions about the role of Cardinal George Pell in the sex-abuse crisis, and the cardinal’s responses to a royal investigation commission.

Cardinal Pell did not seek to postpone his appearance before the royal commission, Doumit emphasizes. When he disclosed that a medical condition would prevent him from flying to Australia to testify in person, the cardinal offered to provide his testimony on schedule by a video link. The commission’s chairman declined that offer.

Moreover, it is unlikely that Cardinal Pell’s testimony will offer any dramatic new insights, Doumit writes: “There is sufficient evidence already publicly available which provides us with a very clear and comprehensive picture of the response to the allegations made against the cardinal.”

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NEW YORK
News 12

Local parishioners received letters Friday detailing a sexual abuse investigation into their monsignor.

Monsignor John O’Keefe has led the parish at the Church of St. Margaret of Antioch, but has been on medical leave for a couple of months. He is under investigation by district attorneys in two different states over allegations of abusing a minor.

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NEW YORK
Patch

By ALFRED BRANCH (Patch Staff)
December 18, 2015

Monsignor John O’Keefe, former head of Stepinac High School and the priest at St. Margaret of Antioch Church in Pearl River, has been accused of sex abuse of a minor — 30 years ago.

Timothy Cardinal Dolan wrote the parishioners a letter Wednesday describing the charges and explaining the process.

He said the archdiocese received an allegation that on two occasions more than 30 years ago, O’Keefe had abused a minor. That allegation was shared with the Rockland and Bronx county district attorneys and forwarded to the district attorney in Virginia, where one of the incidents is alleged to have taken place. Their determination was that the allegations were credible, and so the archdiocese has put its policy into effect.

O’Keefe, 70, may not function as a priest until the matter is resolved; the whole matter is being reviewed by professionals and the lay advisory board; and he is in a supervised setting undergoing evaluation and risk assessment, the cardinal said.

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NEW YORK
Daily Voice

PEARL RIVER, N.Y. — Allegations of sex abuse against the well-known monsignor of Church of St. Margaret of Antioch in Pearl River have prompted an investigation by the Rockland district attorney’s office, according to multiple reports.

The New York Archdiocese has removed Monsignor John O’Keefe from practicing, parishioner were told in a letter from Cardinal Timothy Dolan that went out on Friday afternoon. O’Keefe had been out on medical leave.

The case involves alleged incidents with a boy that allegedly occurred in the 1980s at Cardinal Hayes in the Bronx and, that same person claims, on a trip to Virginia, according to News 12.

The allegations have not been substantiated and O’Keefe denies them, Dolan said in the letter.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Michael Owen
SA Bureau Chief
Adelaide

A family that has been battling for 15 years for compensation after their disabled son was ­abused by a South Australian Catholic school volunteer in the 1980s has settled its claim with the church.

Peter Mitchell, the father of the victim, now aged in his 40s, yesterday said the confidential settlement “means a great deal in going towards my son’s care and we can finally start moving on after so many years”.

“The Catholic Church has settled our case after 15 years of battling for compensation for my disabled son’s sexual abuse by a pedophile at their school,” Mr Mitchell said yesterday.

“This showed just how horrific the abuse and failures of the church were at St Ann’s Special School, with 30 other disabled children being abused.

“As a parent, I’ll never be able to fully recover from how this has hurt my son.”

Mr Mitchell said he had launched an online petition two years ago because the church was “refusing to come to the table to negotiate”; it had attracted more than 110,000 signatures.

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AUSTRALIA
Gympie Times

Colin Claridge | 19th Dec 2015

IT’S Christmas time. A time one prays for peace, happiness, joy and all good wishes to our fellow God’s creatures. However, there is sadly one creature who purports to be one of God’s most superior creatures who isn’t giving any presents to Australians this year. In fact, many of us were highly anticipating his arrival last week, only to be severely disappointed by his no-show.

We were expecting the appearance at the Royal Commission investigating Institutionalised Child Abuse of Cardinal George Pell. However, survivors have again been dealt a cruel blow and denied the opportunity of seeing this bloke grilled in a forum where he would be regarded as being no better than anybody else.

After the previous week, where we saw counsel for one institution accuse one survivor of “making it up”, we were hoping that the appearance of Pell would be a better week. Because let’s face it, accusing a survivor of abuse of “making it up” is an attitude that clearly points to why we are having this inquiry in the first place. Isn’t it? I’m actually dismayed that the Commissioner didn’t pull counsel up on that statement.

So, after we were hoping that it would be Pell to be the one being the subject of a grilling. Now, I must confess that I have never liked the bloke and it had nothing to do with his close personal friendship with a recently deposed PM. Deep in my heart, I have always had this gnawing feeling that there was something not quite right about that chap.

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INDIA
The Hindu

The priest arrested in connection with a case relating to the rape of a minor girl at North Paravur on Friday filed a bail petition in the Kerala High Court.

Fr. Edwin Figarez, the accused, who went into hiding after the registration of the case, was arrested recently by the police. He had fled to the UAE and thereafter to other states. In his bail petition, the accused who is a priest with the Lourdes Matha Church, Puthenvelikkara, said he was innocent and the case had been foisted on him.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

DECEMBER 18, 2015

How we got here

• In 2013, the Legislature passed the Minnesota Child Victims Act. It gives people until May 2016 to file sex abuse lawsuits about incidents that happened years, even decades ago.

• The law prompted a wave of lawsuits against the six Catholic dioceses in Minnesota, as well as other churches, the Boy Scouts of America, and recently the Children’s Theatre Company.

• In January 2015, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, saying it would not be able to pay all the claims. That is still in mediation.

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ALABAMA
WVTM

[with video]

By Fred Davenport

TALLADEGA COUNTY, Ala. —A former associate pastor at Munford Baptist Church is being accused of more sex crimes, according to Moody police.

In 2011, a grand jury indicted Brian Pesnell of Moody on rape and sex abuse charges. Now, he’s facing additional charges.

“He was indicted by a grand jury last week for sexual abuse for a child under 12 and enticing a child,” said Lt. Eric Hansen with the Moody Police Department.

“It’s very troubling because you want to think that that’s the place to go for peace to build your faith and it didn’t work that way,” said a church member who did not wish to be identified.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

BY MARK SHEA 12/17/2015

“The good news about the Catholic Church,” said a friend of mine “is that it’s like a big family.”

“The bad news about the Catholic Church,” he continued, “is that it’s like a big family.”

A basic fact of life is that the same Body of Christ that is the sacrament of salvation, the fountain of so many graces, the home of so many amazing and wonderful people, so much healing, so much beauty, and the glorious treasury of saints to whom we owe so much…that same Church is the scene of incredibly devastating hurts dealt out by traitors, perverts, scoundrels, monsters, selfish jerks, liars, grasping careerists, Pharisees, libertines, and fools.

Just about everyone has a story to tell: the scheming chancery functionary bent on inflicting economic harm on some struggling Catholic self-employed businessman; the priest who was an insulting, despair-inducing buffoon in the confessional; the sexually abusive cleric and the bishop who protected him; the Church Lady with her petty hurtful gossip; the jackass who poses as the uber-pious Catholic while he cheats on his wife; the nun who shamed and scarred the little girl in third grade; the crazy mom who destroyed her kids lives while yakking about God, dragging them from one quack visionary to the next and then running off with the priest; the liturgist who decided the mandate was not “Feed my sheep” but “Try experiments on my rats”; the Catholic schoolteacher who destroyed your shot at college because she was a vindictive psycho who hated males.

It is, in fact, a story as old as the New Testament. Jesus’ story is, after all, a story of betrayal. It’s easy to forget that Judas was, at one time, a friend of Jesus’. And so one of the great psalms of the Passion records the messianic sufferer lamenting, “Even my bosom friend in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread, has lifted his heel against me” (Psalm 41:9).

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AUSTRALIA
The Courier

By Melissa Cunningham
Dec. 18, 2015

A survivor likened the Royal Commission into Child Sex Abuse to peeling back the layers on an onion.

Each time you peel back a layer, there is another underneath but slowly and steadily you move closer to the core of it. To the truth. With each layer another survivors emerges from out of the darkness with their own story to tell. Often, their stories are so gut-wrenchingly similar, it’s as if each of the survivors are holding a mirror to one another. And, there are those who don’t have a voice because they’ve died prematurely and the ones who turned to suicide because the pain of the sex crimes was too great to bear. The commission gives the ones they left behind somewhere to finally place their precious story in the hope their death will be a part of a profound change to protect children of the future.

A friend told me recently how her dad had been sexually abused by priest in Ballarat diocese. He never told her about the abuse until she nursed him on his death bed. For as far back as she could remember, her dad had been a broken man. He loved his kids immensely but his path was one of self destruction, alcoholism, violence and relentless sadness.The hardest part for her, was the glimpses she would catch of the man her dad could have been had his childhood not been so abruptly interrupted. She described it as being like dropping a rock into a pond. Its effects are felt for a long time before the final ripples reach the shore and come to rest.

After he died she wrote everything down in the hope that one day she would have somewhere to put his story. She made a submission to the Royal Commission this year. There are so many stories like hers. The Catholic Church believes that the abuse is in the past but the fact remains people live with this every day. Until the church acknowledges the extent to which it covered-up sex crimes against children, the hurt will continue. The church hierarchy of today must answer for the past. All is needed is one courageous priest for truth to prevail. For eight days, I caught a glimpse into the lives of survivors who carry this burden everyday. I saw a man, barefoot, unkempt, with wild long hair, sitting on the floor outside court-room because it was all too much. I saw men wipe tears from their eyes. I saw mothers cry for the sons they had lost. It was incredible strength and sadness. But I also saw so much hope in their hearts and eyes of the Ballarat survivors. One of the survivors Peter Blenkiron said to me hope for the future must overcome everything else. He said admission from the church would pave the way for healing and change across the world. The survivors are the light in the darkness. It’s time the church showed their courage.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 19, 2015

Chris Vedelago, Cameron Houston

The Catholic Church attempted for nearly a decade to conceal incriminating documents about child sex abuse using a controversial legal tactic that it has since renounced as “inappropriate”.

The bid to manipulate “legal privilege” to keep its records from public disclosure was one in a series of controversial measures taken to protect the reputation and assets of the church after complaints about paedophile priests began “coming out of the woodwork” in the 1980s.

Internal documents show the Australian Catholics Bishops Conference – a panel comprising the church’s senior leaders in Australia – was warned in April 1988 that church records were vulnerable to discovery and public disclosure in the event of civil lawsuits by alleged victims.

The problem would be summarised by Bishop Peter Connors as “too many people are keeping too many records” in 1992, according to a document obtained by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The records at risk of exposure included the findings of internal investigations, interviews with alleged offenders, and correspondence among church officials and insurance underwriters about the cases.

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MINNESOTA
Catholic Spirit

Maria Wiering | December 18, 2015

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office entered into a settlement agreement Dec. 18 on a civil petition the county filed against the archdiocese in June. Archbishop Bernard Hebda, the archdiocese’s apostolic administrator, called the settlement “the latest and most public indicator that this archdiocese has earnestly embarked on a journey of self-reflection, evaluation and action.”

“If there were any doubts about the archdiocese’s pledge to keeping kids safe, the provisions announced today, going beyond what the law would require, should help put those doubts to rest,” he said at a news conference.

The 24-page agreement outlines child protection measures the archdiocese has already implemented or has promised to implement, and Ramsey County’s oversight of those measures for three years.

Among them are continuing the role of the archdiocese’s newly established Ministerial Review Board in examining claims of clergy sexual abuse, creating a comprehensive set of policy documents readily available online, and an increased level of involvement from lay people at the parish, seminary and school levels.

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CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles Daily News

By City News Service
POSTED: 12/18/15

A settlement was reached between the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and two brothers who sued alleging they were sexually molested nearly three decades ago by a visiting cleric from Mexico, an attorney for the archdiocese said Friday.

The plaintiffs, now young men, were between 9 and 11 years old when they were allegedly abused by Father Nicolas Aguilar-Rivera on the grounds of St. Agatha Church in Los Angeles in 1987. They sued the archdiocese in June 2014.

“Plaintiffs were both terrified of Father Aguilar-Rivera’s conduct and frozen because of their obedience to and reverence of Father Aguilar-Rivera,” their lawsuit stated.

Los Angeles police believe the boys were among some 26 boys molested during a nine-month period in 1987-88.

Attorney J. Michael Hennigan, on behalf of the archdiocese, said the settlement was reached Wednesday, the same day Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Barbara Scheper heard a defense motion to dismiss the case, then took the issues under submission.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

18 December

On 5 January 2016, the Inquiry will invite applications from individuals or institutions that wish to be designated as a core participant in relation to a number of its investigations. The inquiry is not able to accept applications before 5 January, so please do not submit your application before the Inquiry provides further details on this date.

In advance of those announcements the Inquiry has published the following documents on the Library page of its website:

Protocol for potential core participants; and

FAQs for potential core participants

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MINNESOTA
America

Dec 18 2015 – 5:47pm | Kevin Clarke

The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office announced a landmark civil settlement with the Archdiocese of Saint Paul-Minneapolis related to a civil case that alleged grave breakdowns in the archdiocese’s child protection policies and execution of same. According to Ramsey County Attorney, John Choit, the primary objective of the settlement is to transform the organizational culture of the archdiocese “into one that is vigilant about ensuring that no child will ever again become the victim of clergy sex abuse.”

“Today’s historic agreement increases oversight and transparency to systemically change how the Archdiocese protects children and responds to suspected incidents of child sexual abuse,” said Choi. “As a result, it is my expectation that the facts of this case will never be repeated and the protection of children will forever be of paramount importance within this Archdiocese.”

The agreement runs for three years and will include oversight and enforcement mechanisms by Ramsey County authorities. An accompanying criminal action remains active case and will proceed toward resolution, the county attorney’s office reports.

Archbishop Bernard Hebda, Apostolic Administrator, in a letter to parishioners, described the agreement as “an opportunity for us to do all we can to make sure children are as safe as possible now and into the future.”

For the archdiocese’s priests and parishes, he said the settlement will “require all of us to renew our commitment to continue building a culture that makes the protection of children a priority.”

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MINNESOTA
CBS Minnesota

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A 12-person panel comprised of doctors, lawyers and church laypersons will oversee any suspicions of clergy sex abuse in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

It’s part of a breakthrough settlement reached on Thursday with the Ramsey County Attorney to resolve a civil suit that was filed last June.

Under the terms of the settlement, efforts to assure the safety of all children will be scrutinized by annual audits and reports to the county and district court.

Allegations and settlements involving clergy sex abuse have plagued victims and the Archdiocese for years. It has also resulted in forcing the church into bankruptcy protection and the departures of top Archdiocese leaders.

In June, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi took legal steps with hopes of preventing future abuses. Under the agreement, that framework is now in place.

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MINNESOTA
Wall Street Journal

By TOM CORRIGAN
Dec. 18, 2015

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis settled civil charges that it failed to protect children from abusive priests in a deal that allows Minnesota prosecutors to continue pursuing criminal charges against the archdiocese.

The settlement, unveiled Friday during a hearing in Ramsey County Court in Minnesota, requires the archdiocese to improve how it handles clergy sex abuse allegations and to establish more rigorous oversight practices. The archbishop must also apologize to, and offer to meet with, victims of an abusive priest and their families.

The archdiocese, home to 187 parishes and 825,000 parishioners, didn’t admit any wrongdoing under the settlement and denied the specific civil charge of contributing to the need for protective services for children.

In a letter posted Friday to the archdiocese’s website, Archbishop Bernard Hebda, who is serving as the administrator of the Twin Cities archdiocese until a new archbishop is appointed, said the archdiocese agreed to more than it would have been compelled to do by a court but that it and prosecutors share the goal of ensuring children’s safety.

“It should be no surprise that we have diligently been working together since [June] to find the best ways to make the achievement of that shared goal a reality,” he said. “Today’s agreement will require all of us to renew our commitment to continue building a culture that makes the protection of children a priority.”

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MINNESOTA
New York Times

By TODD NELSON and MONICA DAVEY
DEC. 18, 2015

ST. PAUL — The Roman Catholic archdiocese here has reached an agreement with prosecutors in a civil case accusing church officials of failing to protect children from sexual abuse.

The unusual settlement, announced Friday in a Ramsey County courtroom, calls for more transparency when claims of child sexual abuse are raised and would allow prosecutors and courts to monitor the church’s progress on such matters for three years.

John J. Choi, the Ramsey County prosecutor, said the most important provision of the settlement was that all allegations of clergy misconduct, including sexual abuse of a child, would be examined by a board made up mostly of lay people. Such boards exist in most dioceses, and most include lay people. But here, one or two clergy members typically determined how to proceed.

The settlement must also be approved by the federal bankruptcy judge overseeing the archdiocese’s reorganization.

In June, Mr. Choi filed six criminal charges, misdemeanors with maximum fines of $3,000 each, accusing the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis of failing to protect children from sexual abuse. Both sides said they were continuing to discuss the charges, which are pending, even as the deal was struck on the civil petition that accompanied them.

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KANSAS
Kansas City Star

BY IAN CUMMINGS
icummings@kcstar.com

A Missouri man has filed a sexual abuse lawsuit against a priest who formerly worked at a Roeland Park church.

The suit, filed earlier this week, alleges that in the mid-1980s a St. Agnes Catholic Parish priest abused the victim, who was then between 15 and 17 years old.

The suit says the cleric held parties at a Table Rock lake house where he provided liquor to minors and sexually abused them, at times taking the victim on trips to California, Hawaii and the Cayman Islands.

The victim, now in his 40s, lives in Missouri, according to Rebecca Randles, the Kansas City attorney who filed the case. The priest was identified in the lawsuit only by the initials J.H.W., Jr.

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NEW YORK
The Journal News

[with copy of a letter from Cardinal Timothy Dolan]

Michael D’Onofrio, mcdonofrio@lohud.com December 18, 2015

A Rockland priest who once led Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains has been suspended after a “credible” allegation that he sexually abused a minor more than three decades ago, the archdiocese told parishioners.

Monsignor John O’Keefe, a pastor at St. Margaret of Antioch Parish in Pearl River, was accused of abusing the minor on two occasions, according to a letter issued on Wednesday to members of the parish from Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York.

See the entirety of Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s letter below.

O’Keefe has denied the allegations, which have not been substantiated, Dolan wrote.

“But in keeping with the policy and practice of the archdiocese, … Monsignor O’Keefe is not permitted to publicly function as a priest until the matter is resolved,” Dolan said in the letter.

O’Keefe, in 1992, was named the first president of Archbishop Stepinac High School. He is also listed on the school’s Alumni Hall of Fame on the school website.

In 2003, he was reassigned to St. Margaret’s. While pastor of St. Margaret parish in 2012, O’Keefe celebrated his 40th anniversary of his ordination.

Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese of New York, said the archdiocese was contacted by a lawyer from the person making the allegation. The person alleged two acts of abuse — one in New York and another in Virginia — happened in the early 1980s.

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MINNESOTA
National Catholic Reporter

Brian Roewe | Dec. 18, 2015

The St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese will be subject to judicial oversight by local authorities for the next three years to certify compliance with a series of provisions aimed at protecting children from sexual abuse, under the terms of a new civil settlement announced Friday.

The agreement, presented in district court by the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office and the archdiocese, concludes the civil aspect of charges Attorney John Choi brought this summer against the local church; the criminal case, which includes six misdemeanor charges each carrying $3,000 fines, is ongoing, Choi said during a press conference.

But he emphasized several times the importance of the “unprecedented and landmark civil settlement,” which he said goes beyond the impositions that a court could have enacted under child protection laws. The agreement establishes two independent audits in 2017 and 2018 to ensure compliance; if the archdiocese is found noncompliant, it will an opportunity to correct deficiencies before the matter proceeds to the courts. At the end of the agreement, the attorney’s office agrees to dismiss the civil action.

With the archdiocese having filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, the agreement must be approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, which the archdiocese said could come at a hearing early next year.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Patch

By DANIEL LIBON (Patch Staff)
December 18, 2015

A former Milton man who pleaded guilty to extorting the former rabbi for Temple Israel will serve time in prison.

Nicholas Zemeitus, 31, was sentenced Friday afternoon to four to five years in a state prison with three years of probation to follow, according to the Norfolk County District Attorney’s office. The state requested a prison term of six to eight years.

In November, Zemeitus admitted to extortion and larceny charges in a scheme to blackmail former Temple Israel Rabbi Barry Starr. In 2011, Zemeitus encountered Starr after responding to an online listing for sex with an older woman. When Zemeitus arrived at Starr’s home, he was greeted by the former rabbi who was wearing women’s clothing.

Starr gave Zemeitus $100 to remain quiet, but the he threatened to go public with underage sex allegations, which Starr denied happened and authorities found no evidence of.

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