ABUSE TRACKER

MINNESOTA
Journal Obsever

The diocese says it can’t afford its almost $5 million share of the settlement.

Given the “magnitude” of the jury’s award, “the diocese was left with no choice but to file for reorganization“, wrote the Rev. James Bissonette, diocese vicar general, in a public statement. The Diocese says the bankruptcy is keeping with their approach at putting victims first.

“There is sadness in having to proceed in this fashion”, wrote Bissonette.

The diocese says the move was necessary after efforts to reach a resolution with all abuse victims were unsuccessful.

The Duluth Diocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Monday, a month after a victim of priest sex abuse there was awarded $8 million in damages.

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

MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

Associated Press DECEMBER 7, 2015

DULUTH, Minn. — A Roman Catholic diocese in northeastern Minnesota has filed for bankruptcy protection after a jury found it partially responsible in a clergy sex abuse case.

The Diocese of Duluth filed for Chapter 11 reorganization Monday.

The diocese says the move was necessary after efforts to reach a resolution with all abuse victims were unsuccessful.

In November, a Ramsey County jury awarded $8.1 million to a man who says he was molested by a priest in northern Minnesota in 1978 when he was a boy. The diocese was held responsible for $4.8 million.

The diocese’s vicar general, the Rev. James Bissonette, says the bankruptcy filing safeguards the diocese’s limited assets while allowing the church’s day-to-day operations to continue.

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

MINNESOTA
KSTP

The United States Supreme Court has turned away an appeal from a Minnesota priest who was convicted of having sex with a woman who was seeking his spiritual advice.

The justices on Monday left in place the sexual misconduct conviction of the Rev. Christopher Wenthe. The priest was convicted in 2011 of third-degree criminal sexual conduct for having sex with the woman at a meeting in which she sought counseling in 2003.

State law makes it a felony for clergy members to have sex with people they are spiritually advising. Wenthe acknowledged that he and the woman had a 15-month sexual relationship, but he denied that he was providing spiritual aid in those months.

An intermediate appeals court threw out the conviction, but the Minnesota Supreme Court reinstated it in June.

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

MINNESOTA
KDAL

Monday, December 07, 2015 by Dave Strandberg

DULUTH, MN (KDAL) – Following a court decision last month that held the Diocese of Duluth partially responsible in an abuse case from 1978, the Diocese has now filed for bankruptcy protection in order to reorganize under Chapter 11. The judgement on November 4th awarded an 8.4 million dollar judgement for the victim with the Diocese responsible for 60 percent of it or 4.8 million. Father James Bissonette, the vicar general of the Diocese, says after attempts at reaching a mutually agreeable resolution failed, they were left with no choice but to file for reorganization. The decision safeguards the limited assets of the Diocese, ensuring that the resources of the Diocese can be shared justly with the victims while allowing the day-to-day operation of the church to continue.

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

MINNESOTA
Northlands News Center

By Ramona Marozas

Duluth, MN (NNCNOW.com) — The Diocese of Duluth filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy following last month’s court decision ordering the Diocese to pay $8.4 million to abuse victims, and Duluth’s chapter was responsible to pay $4.8 million of that.

The Duluth Diocese says they have filed for an emergency basis for bankruptcy protection.

The Diocese will continue to operate during this bankruptcy process.

The Diocese shared this statement by Father James Bissonette, the vicar general of the Diocese, on behalf of the Organization:

“There is sadness in having to proceed in this fashion. After the recent trial, the Diocese again attempted to reach a mutually-agreeable resolution. Up to this point, the Diocese has not been able to reach such a settlement, and given the magnitude of the verdict, the Diocese was left with no choice but to file for reorganization.

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

MINNESOTA
Duluth News Tribune

By Tom Olsen Today

Facing a nearly $5 million jury verdict and numerous pending lawsuits over child sexual abuse committed by priests, the Diocese of Duluth turned to bankruptcy protection Monday.

The Rev. James Bissonette, vicar general of the diocese, announced the filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in a statement on the diocese’s website.

A St. Paul jury last month found the diocese negligent in the supervision of a priest who was accused of sexually abusing a teenage boy in Itasca County in the 1970s. The diocese was ordered to pay about $4.9 million in damages awarded by the jury.

Five other child sexual abuse claims also are pending in State District Court, according to online records.

The claims all were brought under the Minnesota Child Victims Act, an act of the state Legislature which opened a three-year window for abuse victims to file lawsuits that would otherwise be barred by statutes of limitation. The window is set to expire in May, and attorneys have said they expect a flurry of activity as the deadline nears.

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VATICAN CITY
Yahoo! News

By Angus MacKinnon

Vatican City (AFP) – Pietro Parolin, the most senior cardinal in the Vatican hierarchy, and two close associates of Pope Francis can be summoned to give evidence in a controversial trial of journalists and alleged whistleblowers, a judge ruled Monday.

Overruling objections from the Vatican prosecutor, the judge agreed to putting the Holy See’s Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, on the stand, as well as Francis confidantes Cardinal Santo Abril y Castello and Archbishop Konrad Krajewski.

The decision raises the prospect of the church’s dirty linen being laundered in public, with Parolin in particular likely to be quizzed over the bitter internal battle that has erupted in the hierarchy as vested interests resist Francis’s drive to clean up Holy See finances.

The senior clerics are to be summoned to give evidence on behalf of Francesca Chaouqui, a former PR consultant to the Vatican who is one of the five people accused of conspiring to leak classified documents that exposed out-of-control spending at the top of the church.

Chaouqui’s lawyer told a hearing on Monday that she wanted the senior clerics to testify in order to demonstrate that she was working “only in the interests of the pope.”

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DULUTH (MN)
Jeff Anderson & Associates

[bankruptcy petition]

12/7/2015

WHAT: At a news conference today in Duluth, attorney Mike Finnegan will discuss today’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by the Diocese of Duluth.

WHEN: Monday, December 7, 2015 at 3:15 PM CST

WHERE: Holiday Inn – Lyric Room 2
200 West First Street
Duluth, MN 55802

Contact Mike Finnegan: Office/651.964.3523 Cell/612.205.5531
Contact Jeff Anderson: Office/651.964.3523 Cell/612.817.8665

Duluth Bankruptcy Petition

(Duluth, MN) – Today, the Diocese of Duluth filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection. The Diocese of Duluth is the fifteenth Catholic Diocese or Religious Order to file for bankruptcy in the United States. Earlier this year, the Archdiocese of St. Paul & Minneapolis filed for bankruptcy protection as well. Each of the previous bankruptcies filed by Bishops has ended with a settlement with survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

“We are saddened by the Bishop’s choice to file bankruptcy today instead of releasing the Diocese’s secret documents on child sexual abuse,” said Attorney Mike Finnegan. “Despite the Bishop’s actions today, we will continue to fight for the release of these documents and survivors of child sexual abuse can still come forward confidentially to hold the Diocese of Duluth accountable.”

Efforts by survivors to unseal the secret documents regarding clergy sexual abuse in the Diocese of Duluth began with the first lawsuit filed in June 2013. Since then, survivors have taken numerous actions to make the files public. The Diocese of Duluth fought these efforts in court. A hearing was scheduled for December 17, 2015, to determine whether some of these secret documents would be released to the public but the bankruptcy filing prevents this hearing from moving forward.

Sexual abuse survivors in Minnesota have until May 25, 2016 to come forward confidentially and bring a claim under the Minnesota Child Victims Act.

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MINNESOTA
Roman Catholic Diocese of Duluth

Dec 7, 2015

In the wake of last month’s court decision and its $8.4 million judgment, of which the Diocese of Duluth has been found responsible for $4.8 million, we have today filed on an emergency basis for bankruptcy protection in order to reorganize under Chapter 11. The necessity of this decision became clear after other efforts to reach a resolution that would assist all abuse victims and protect the Church’s mission had proved, as yet, unsuccessful. The Diocese will continue those good faith efforts during the bankruptcy process.

Father James Bissonette, vicar general of the Diocese, issued the following statement on behalf of the Diocese:

“There is sadness in having to proceed in this fashion. After the recent trial, the Diocese again attempted to reach a mutually-agreeable resolution. Up to this point, the Diocese has not been able to reach such a settlement, and given the magnitude of the verdict, the Diocese was left with no choice but to file for reorganization. The decision to file today safeguards the limited assets of the Diocese and will ensure that the resources of the Diocese can be shared justly with all victims, while allowing the day-to-day operation of the work of the Church to continue. This decision is in keeping with our approach since the enactment of the Child Victims Act, which has been to put abuse victims first, to pursue the truth with transparency and to do the right thing in the right way.”

Background information

* The Child Victims Act in the State of Minnesota opened up the possibility of civil lawsuits against the Church for cases dating back decades, resulting in an as-yet-unknown number of those historical cases being brought to court.

* The Doe 30 case, decided Nov. 4, held the Diocese of Duluth partially responsible for abuse suffered by a victim in 1978 with an $8.4 million judgment, with the Diocese held responsible for 60 percent of that judgment.

* For more than two decades, since 1992, the Diocese has had safe environment policies in place and diligently followed them. These policies involve mandatory reporting, cooperation with law enforcement, background checks and other safety precautions for Diocesan personnel and safety training for children, and these policies are continually updated and improved.

* The Diocesan operating budget for the last fiscal year was $3,294,627. Although there is insurance coverage and some Diocesan savings available in this case, it is insufficient for such a large judgment, and no resources would be available for the remaining abuse victims who have brought claims.

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MINNESOTA
Wall Street Journal

By TOM CORRIGAN
Dec. 7, 2015

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Duluth, Minn., filed for bankruptcy Monday after being hit with an $8.4 million verdict in a clergy sex abuse case.

The diocese, which spans 10 counties in northeastern Minnesota, filed for chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Duluth, court papers show.

Last month, a jury awarded $8.4 million to a man who says he was sexually abused in the late 1970s by a priest serving in the Diocese of Duluth. The diocese, which has said it is considering an appeal, says it knew nothing about the abuse and couldn’t have prevented it.

In a statement on the jury verdict posted on the diocese’s website, it said it was contemplating bankruptcy as a way to compensate abuse victims while preserving the diocese’s pastoral and charitable mission.

“With other victims of clergy sexual abuse pursuing their cases in the courts and a finite pool of resources from which they might be compensated for their suffering, bankruptcy might ensure a more equitable distribution,” the diocese said.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) The Vatican tribunal hearing the criminal case in the leaking of confidential documents – the so-called “Vatileaks II” case – resumed work on Monday morning.

The defendants – three officials and two journalists – were at the trial, with their lawyers.
According to a statement released by the Holy See Press Office, the morning’s session dealt primarily with the requests submitted the previous week by the defense.

The Court refused a request by Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui for dismissal of charges based upon lack of jurisdiction – reaffirming the laws place the case “without uncertainty” in the jurisdiction of the Court of the Vatican City State, and noting she had previously acknowledged this fact.

The Court refused a request for a psychological expert for Msgr. Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, since the court only admits “psychiatric” experts, not “psychological” ones – but adding any relevant personality and behaviour issues of the accused would be adequately ascertained from the trial.

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VATICAN CITY
Christian Science Monitor

By Nick Squires, Correspondent DECEMBER 7, 2015

VATICAN CITY — The trial of three Vatican officials and two Italian journalists resumed Monday at a tribunal within the stone walls of this tiny city state in a case that uncomfortably pits the Holy See’s interests against Italian press freedoms.

One of the journalist defendants has decried the proceedings as Kafkaesque, and he and other commentators have even invoked the Inquisition.

The two journalists are accused of procuring leaked confidential documents they used as the basis for two bombshell books published last month.

The books, one titled “Avarice” and the other “Merchants in the Temple,” described Vatican financial mismanagement, greed, and the misuse of funds, including the use of money from a charitable foundation to renovate a lavish penthouse apartment for a former Vatican secretary of State.

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VATICAN CITY
BBC News

A Vatican judge trying five people over the leaking of secret documents has agreed to let some of Pope Francis’s senior advisers be defence witnesses.

Officials who could be called include his Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin.

Those on trial include two journalists who published books detailing alleged financial mismanagement at the Vatican, and three members of a papal commission accused of leaking documents to them.

One of them, a priest, alleges a fellow defendant seduced him.

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VATICAN CITY
GMA News

By PHILIP PULLELLA, Reuters

VATICAN CITY – The “deputy pope” will be summoned to testify before a Vatican court hearing a trial over the theft of confidential papal documents, the first time such a high-ranking official will appear at a public trial inside the city-state.

The lawyer for Francesca Chaouqui, a former public relations consultant for a Vatican reform commission, asked that Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and two other high-ranking Vatican prelates appear before the court.

Parolin, who is sometimes known as the deputy pope, is second only to Pope Francis in the hierarchy of the Vatican, which governs the worldwide Roman Catholic Church.

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AUSTRALIA
Religion Digital

Una comisión del gobierno australiano analizó la actuación del cardenal George Pell, que dirige la secretaría para la Economía del Vaticano, frente a una denuncia de pederastia en el seno de la Iglesia Católica.

David Ridsdale, quien es víctima y sobrino del sacerdote pederasta Gerald Francis Ridsdale, acusa a Pell de intentar sobornarle en 1993 cuando supuestamente le dijo: “Quiero saber que es lo que se debe hacer para mantenerte quieto”, según la agencia local de noticias AAP.

La Comisión gubernamental que investiga la respuesta institucional a los casos de abusos sexuales en el seno de las organizaciones religiosas, estatales y públicas ha centrado su sesión este lunes a contrastar las versiones de ambas partes.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News NI

By Kevin Sharkey
BBC News NI

Barnardo’s children’s charity has paid more than £180,000 in civil claims linked to alleged abuse at a former home in County Antrim, an inquiry has heard.

On Monday, the Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry opened public hearings.

Two former Barnardo’s homes, Macedon and Sharonmore, both in Newtownabbey, are under scrutiny.

The inquiry’s counsel said the hearings would expose “abusive activities and practices” not previously known about.

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CALIFORNIA
The Raw Story

TOM BOGGIONI
07 DEC 2015

A group representing victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests has blasted the San Diego Catholic Diocese for appointing a priest who admitted to destroying documents detailing sexual assaults to oversee their sex abuse hotline.

Likening him to “an admitted embezzler [who] shouldn’t oversee bank accounts,” Melanie Sakoda of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) said Fr. Steven Callahan shouldn’t be allowed to “oversee abuse reports.”

Callahan is listed as the Victims’ Assistance Coordinator on the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego website — with a phone number to call the priest as well as an email address.

In a court deposition in 2007, after approximately 150 men and women filed suit against the San Diego diocese over sexual abuse claims, Callahan admitted to destroying documents in the early 90’s implicating a fellow priest.

According to the San Diego Union Tribune, Rev. Emmanuel Omemaga fled to his native Philippines in 1993 after admitting to Callahan that he had molested a 14-year-old girl.

Callahan claimed that he had urged Omemaga to turn himself in to the police before he left the country.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Rhymes with Religion

Boz Tchividjian | Dec 7, 2015

“If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one.” – Mitch Garabedian

Last week, I had the privilege of finally seeing the much-anticipated “Spotlight”. This powerful film focuses on the true story of an amazing group of journalists from the Boston Globe who worked alongside brave and tireless abuse survivors and a relentless plaintiff’s attorney to expose the untold horrors of child sexual abuse and cover up in the Boston archdiocese in 2002. What finally surfaced was hundreds of offending clergy and over 1000 victims in Boston alone.

Though I think everyone should watch this film, I especially think that my fellow Protestants can learn much from seeing it. However, learning will require a humility that enables us to be slow in pointing the finger at others, and quick to the difficult and sobering task of self-examination.

Some may be tempted to watch this film with disgust for the Catholic Church and a sigh of relief for Protestant churches. Such relief would be unfounded and misplaced. A number of years ago, the three companies that insure most Protestant churches reported that receiving approximately 260 reports a year of minors being sexually abused by church leaders and members. This is compared to the approximately 228 “credible accusations” a year of child sexual abuse reported by the Catholic Church. (Both numbers are much higher due to underreporting and the manner in which such information is collected and determined – that is another blog for another day.) In reality, the likelihood is that more children are sexually abused in Protestant churches than in Catholic churches. Regardless, the abuse of one child is one child too many. Instead of pointing fingers, we should be learning from each other and working together to bring an end to this epidemic that permeates all of Christendom. In order to do this, Protestants are going to have to accept the fact that we have many more similarities than differences with our Catholic brothers and sisters when it comes to how we have failed to protect and serve God’s children. Here are just three that surfaced in “Spotlight”:

Clergy who abuse: “When you’re a poor kid from a poor family and when a priest pays attention to you, it’s a big deal. How do you say ‘no’ to God?”

These were the gut-wrenching words of Phil Saviano, a clergy abuse survivor (and member of SNAP) who was attempting to describe the dark dynamics of how his nightmare began. In a later scene, another survivor explains, “He offered to get me ice cream. It’s a priest. I’m a kid. So I go.”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 7 December 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has appointed:

– Archbishop Luciano Suriani, delegate for papal diplomatic representations, as apostolic nuncio in Serbia.

– Archbishop Romeo Pawlowski, apostolic nuncio in Congo and Gabon, as delegate for papal diplomatic representations.

On Saturday 5 December the Holy Father appointed Archbishop Miguel Maury Buendia as apostolic nuncio in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 7 December 2015 (VIS) – The Council for the Economy, continuing the implementation of new financial management policies and practices in line with international standards, took an important step this week by appointing a new international auditing firm.

The Council accepted a recommendation from its Audit Committee and appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers “PwC”, one of the major international firms, as the external auditor for the consolidated financial statements.

PwC will work closely with the staff of the Secretariat for the Economy, and the 2015 audit will commence immediately.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 7 December 2015 (VIS) – The Holy See Press Office today issued the following communique:

“This morning at 9.30, in the Vatican City State Tribunal, a further hearing was held in the criminal trial for the dissemination of confidential news and documents.

The defendants were all present, accompanied by their respective lawyers (all five of whom are currently recognised as ‘private’ lawyers: E. Bellardini for Msgr. L.A. Vallejo Balda, L. Sgrò for F. I. Chaouqui, R.C. Baffioni for N. Maio, L. Musso for E. Fittipaldi and R. Palombi for G. Nuzzi).

The College of judges (President Prof. Giuseppe Dalla Torre, and the members Prof. Piero Antonio Bonnet, Prof. Paolo Papanti-Pellettier and Prof. Venerando Marano) heard the oral presentation from the defence, along with the objections and demands already submitted in writing prior to the established deadline (Saturday 5 December).

With regard to each objection and demand submitted, the opinion of the Promoter of Justice represented by Prof. Milano and Prof. Zannotti was heard.

The College therefore retired to the Counsel Chamber shortly before 10.30 for around one hour. Finally, it communicated its decisions, providing the proper detailed motivations. The hearing concluded before midday.

The objection presented by Chaouqui’s defence regarded the presumed lack of jurisdiction of the Tribunal given that the events took place in Italy and were carried out by a person declared a ‘political refugee’ in Italy. The objection was rejected, and the College clarified that the current law attributes without doubt the jurisdiction of the Vatican City State Tribunal, and observed that Chaouqui, by appearing before the investigators and the Tribunal, had in practice recognised such jurisdiction.

The demand presented by the Msgr. Vallejo Balda’s counsel for the defence for a psychological evaluation of the defendant was rejected. The Promoter of Justice explained that the Vatican legal system admits requests for a ‘psychiatric evaluation’ but not for a ‘psychological evaluation’, and that aspects of the personality and behaviour of the defendant can emerge adequately during the proceedings.

Practically all the other demands were admitted, in particular:

– A technical evaluation requested by Chaouqui’s counsel for the defence regarding the documentation available via PC and telephones, to be carried out by an expert designated by the Tribunal accompanied by an expert selected by the defence. The Promoter of Justice approved this request.

– The acquisition of various further elements of documentation and evidence required by various counsels for the defence (texts of email messages referenced in the investigation, text messages, articles published in various newspapers, and a ‘psychiatric evaluation’ of Msgr. Vallejo Balda previously carried out and conserved in his home). The Promoter of Justice was in favour of all the above.

– The College considered it suitable to admit the requests for further witnesses, presented by various counsels for the defence and for different reasons (including clergy such as Cardinals Santos Abril and Parolin, Archbishop Krajewski and Msgr. Abbondi, and figures from the worlds of journalism and communications, such as Mario Benotti, Paolo Mieli, Paolo Mondani, Paola Brazzale and Marco Bernardi), although the Promoter of Justice had expressed a contrary opinion in some cases”.

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UNITED STATES
Mediaite

by Joe Concha December 6th, 2015

If there was ever a weekend to escape the horrible reality our world and country has become in light of the mass killings in San Bernardino and Colorado Springs before it, this may be as good as any. And for me, that escape usual means a trip to the local movie theatre.

Those trips used to happen much more often as a single guy living in Hoboken, NJ. Wife, two kids and a dog in the suburbs? Not so much. So when that trek to the cinema does happen, the movie better damn well be worth the time. Painfully selective is how the wife deems the process. She’s not much of a buff, and it’s the one area she has 100 percent confidence in my ability to choose a winner, particularly films of the underrated variety (The Debt, Blood Diamond, The Pursuit of Happyness, Friends with Kids and The Prestige are my tops of the past decade). But if we’re talking about a movie that absolutely isn’t underrated but isn’t making much at the box office (only about $15 million despite a wide release over two weeks ago), Spotlight is the best journalism-themed movie since The Insider (Pacino, Crowe), arguably the best of all-time if removing All the President’s Men (Redford, Hoffman) from the equation, and easily, easily the best offering of any genre this year.

Spotlight takes place largely in 2001 Boston and centers on the meticulous, careful, tireless investigative efforts that went into the the Boston Globe’s exposé of clergy sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. Note: Director Tom McCarthy could have gone two ways in crafting the narrative: Focus on the investigative aspect and all the challenges the Globe’s “Spotlight” team had to overcome in being completely, unquestionably accurate before going to press, or use the investigation and its findings to pontificate some kind of bigger, darker message about the Catholic Church or religion in general.

And like The Insider (the mesmerizing true story of a 60 Minutes report–or modified report–about a big tobacco whistle-blower) and All the President’s Men (the must-see story behind Woodward and Bernstein blowing the lid off of Watergate), McCarthy avoids being self-righteous about the transgressions exposed and the entity that allowed it. Instead, it keeps the focus squarely on the behind the scenes battles and politics that are prevalent in newsrooms, along with the business aspect of journalism in general.

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UNITED STATES
WCF Courier

SCOTT CAWELTI

Why do we often miss what’s right in front of us? We have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear, as the Bible so memorably puts it.

Three instances worth pondering:

First, “Spotlight,” a disturbing new film about the Roman Catholic Church’s coverup of pedophile priests in Boston. It’s a horrific scandal that shook the church to its foundations worldwide.

Four smart and motivated Boston Globe investigative reporters — the “Spotlight” team, grew ever more amazed in 2001-02 when they uncovered church policies that enabled priests to continue abusing children for decades. The power of Boston Catholic church officials was all but absolute.

Yet the film reveals the scandal could have been exposed much sooner had these same reporters been paying attention. During their investigation, they learn they ignored hard evidence sent in by victims at least a decade earlier.

One of many victims, in frustration, tells the reporters flat-out: “I sent you all the facts years ago. But you buried it.”

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IRELAND
Sunday World

By Morgan Flanagan Creagh

A paedophile priest was housed at a Tipperary boarding school while on trial for abusing a student there.

77-year-old former priest Henry Moloney was staying at Rockwell College last week during a criminal case which was taken by a former student, reports the Irish Daily Mail.

In 2009 Maloney pleaded guilty in the Circuit Criminal Court to abusing pupils at St Marys College in Rathmines between 1969 and 1973.

He was handed a suspended sentence due to ill health and as he was already under strict supervision.

In 2000 he was caged for 15-months for sexually assaulting two other boys at St Mary’s in the early 1970s.

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VATICAN CITY
ABC News

By NICOLE WINFIELD, ASSOCIATED PRESS
VATICAN CITY — Dec 7, 2015

A Vatican tribunal agreed Monday to let the defense call some of Pope Francis’ top advisers, including his secretary of state, to testify in a trial over leaked documents, as the Holy See sought to quash criticism that the five accused weren’t getting a fair trial.

Judge Giuseppe Dalla Torre also agreed to defense requests to admit more complete text messages and emails, as well as letters of recommendation and the results of a monsignor’s psychiatric exam into evidence as the trial got underway in earnest.

Three people affiliated with a papal reform commission are accused of leaking documents to two reporters who published blockbuster books detailing waste, mismanagement and greed among some cardinals and bishops, and the resistance Francis is facing trying to clean it up.

The two reporters are also on trial, accused of having illegally acquired and published the material — accusations that have drawn criticism from media rights groups around the world.

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AUSTRALIA
J-Wire

December 7, 2015

In a release issued today the organisation stated: “The Yeshivah Centre condemns any form of abuse and acknowledges the serious harm it causes the victim. The Yeshivah Centre deeply regrets the failure to protect those who were victims of sexual abuse perpetrated by people in a position of trust in the Yeshivah Centre and its schools. The Yeshivah Redress Scheme has been established to ensure that the wrongs committed against children while involved in the Yeshivah Centre and its schools will not go unnoticed or unacknowledged.

The design of the Scheme has been guided by learnings from schemes across Australia and the Redress and Civil Litigation Report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse released on 14 September 2015. The Report details the Commission’s ‘concluded views’ on its recommendations ‘to ensure justice for survivors’.

Yechiel Belfer, speaking on behalf of the recently appointed Yeshivah Centre Committee of Management said, “In establishing this scheme, our primary concern is for the welfare of anyone who may have experienced such abuse. We are offering to victims financial redress, access to specialist counselling, case management and support. And most importantly, we offer our sincere apology.”

“This support will not prejudice any individual’s rights to pursue further legal action,” Belfer added.

Mr Michael Debinski, will oversee the operation of the Scheme and is one of the case managers available to undertake reviews. Mr Debinski also draws on the experiences gained having recently overseen an abuse redress scheme at Jewish Care Victoria where he is President. Reviews will also be undertaken by Mr John Leatherland PSM, whose wealth of experience in child protection and youth justice services spanned over forty years. He was awarded a Public Service Medal for services to vulnerable families and children.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Melbourne’s Yeshivah Centre has set up a redress scheme to help support victims of sexual abuse.

Michael Debinski, who will oversee the independent scheme, said victims would be offered counselling and redress payments, starting at $10,000 and going up to $80,000.

He said he did not know how many victims would come forward.

“We’ve got trained professional social workers who’ll then meet with them, assess their claim and may also assist them if they have other issues they need psychological care or support [with],” Mr Debinski said.

“Yeshiva funds the scheme, but in every other respect we’ve been very careful and diligent to establish it in a way that all of the contact points are independent of Yeshivah.”

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AUSTRALIA
SBS

[with video]

By SBS News
7 DEC 2015

Victims of child sexual abuse at the Yeshivah Centre in Melbourne will be eligible for up to $80,000 in compensation under a redress scheme launched today.

Accepting the compensation will not remove their right to take further legal action, nor will they be required to sign any confidentiality agreements.

Melbourne’s Yeshivah Centre appointed an independent panel to design the scheme.

The scheme’s co-ordinator, Michael Debinski, said victims will be encouraged to report sexual abuse allegations to police, but the decision to report will be up to them.

Former student and abuse victim Manny Waks, whose case sparked the Child Abuse Royal Commission’s investigation of Yeshivah College, came back from his new home in Israel to hear details of a landmark compensation package and an apology.

“There are few cases like Yeshivah where a community turned on its victims and where good people stood by and did nothing,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
Manny Waks

​Redress Scheme Opening Remarks
Manny Waks
7 December 2015

Distinguished guests, friends,

From the very beginning of this journey, I said that one of my aims was to return to the Yeshivah Centre – to be welcomed back. This would indicate a certain level of comfort on my part – both in terms of my personal experience with Yeshivah, and more broadly in terms of how Yeshivah is addressing the issue of child sexual abuse.

It is in this context that I’m delighted and proud to be here to help launch Yeshivah’s Redress Scheme. My presence here today should be viewed both as a stark reminder of the past, and an optimistic reflection on the future. A desire from all of us to move forward.

The profound and long-term impacts of child sexual abuse have been well documented. Often it’s not only the sexual abuse itself that leads to trauma, but also the secondary abuse brought on by the institution’s response – the cover-ups and intimidation – which often is worse than the primary abuse.

There’s no doubt that many of us have been traumatised and re-traumatised by Yeshivah’s actions and inactions. Over many years. While the Royal Commission has heard many instances of abuse and cover-ups in institutional settings, there are few cases like Yeshivah, where a community turned on its victims and where good people stood by and did nothing.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Mark Dunn
Herald Sun

CARDINAL George Pell is ­alleged to have told a fellow cleric that notorious paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale was “r–ting boys again”, according to contested evidence before the royal commission.

In 1983, the then rising priest in the Catholic Church was allegedly overheard making the comment to Father Frank Madden at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Ballarat a decade before Ridsdale was first charged.

A witness, identified only as BWE, yesterday told the commission he was an altar boy, aged about 12, when he overheard Fr Madden ask the visiting Fr Pell, “how’s everything down your way?”.

“George Pell responded by saying, ‘I think Gerry’s been r–ting boys again’,” BWE said.

But Cardinal Pell’s lawyer, Sam Duggan, put it to BWE the conversation 32 years ago was “pure fantasy” and was not supported because Ridsdale had been moved to NSW at the time — a claim denied by BWE.

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VATICAN CITY
Europe Online

Vatican City (dpa) – The Vatican on Monday defended its decision to put on trial two journalists who published embarrassing information about the Catholic Church‘s finances, rejecting suggestions it was trampling on the freedom of the press.

Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, whose books were published last month in Italy, have been accused of maliciously soliciting leaks from Vatican officials and risk up to eight years imprisonment if found guilty.

“Many” comments about the trial, which has been dubbed VatiLeaks 2, “are inappropriate, or at times entirely unjustified,” Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said in a statement.

The legal system of the Vatican City State has “all the procedural guarantees characteristic of the most advanced contemporary legal systems,” and respects “all the fundamental principles” of a fair trial, Lombardi said.

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VATICAN CITY
ANSA

(ANSA) – Vatican City, December 7 – A Holy See court on Monday ruled that the Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin should be called as a witness at the Vatileaks 2 trial. The court granted a request by the defense team of one of the accused, Francesca Chaouqui, to call as witnesses Parolin and Santos Abril y Castellò, the president of the Commission of Cardinals of the Vatican bank, IOR. The court rejected a petition by Chaouqui’s lawyers challenging the Vatican’s jurisdiction for the case on the grounds that the alleged crimes took place in Italy. The court agreed to the Chaouqui team’s request for an expert to analyze electronic communication via email, text and Whatsapp messages between her and Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, a senior Spanish clergyman who is also among the five people in the dock.

But it rejected a request from Vallejo Balda’s lawyers for evaluation of his psychological state. Vallejo Balda and PR expert Chaouqui were both members of the now-defunct COSEA commission set up to advise Pope Francis on reform of the Holy See’s economic-administrative structure.

The trial was then adjourned without a date being set for the next hearing.

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ROME
The Commentator

If you asked a tabloid journalist to concoct the juiciest ever story, he could hardly have done better. It involves corruption, priestly sex, a young temptress, women’s underwear and Silvio Berlusconi. The Pope will have a job on his hands managing this one

Tim Hedges
On 7 December 2015

Pope Francis has returned from a successful trip to central Africa to a veritable domestic storm. The press are calling it Vatileaks II. The first episode of this, you may remember, involved blackmail and some documents leaked by Pope Benedict’s butler.

I don’t suppose Francis has a butler, but the press is relishing the new scandal. Indeed if you asked a tabloid journalist to concoct the juiciest ever story, he could hardly have done better. It involves corruption, priestly sex, a young temptress, women’s underwear, and Silvio Berlusconi.

It began with two journalists, Emiliano Fittipaldi and Gianluigi Nuzzi, who have written books on financial waste in the Vatican. They managed a few juicy exposures, including how much you had to bribe officials to get someone made a saint, but nothing really meaty to establish an existential threat to the Church.

Indeed, this is the sort of stuff which should be grist to the mill of this reforming pope. Instead, the Vatican made a daft mistake. Rather than promising to clean out its own stables in a humble, Christian way, it used a law passed by Francis after the first Vatileaks, and issued arrest warrants for four people, including Fittipaldi and Nuzzi.

Arresting two journalists has of itself gone down badly in a country which prides itself on a free press. Politicians are already involving themselves and several have urged Prime Minister Renzi to make diplomatic representations to the Holy See, which of course is a separate country.

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VATICAN CITY
ANSA

(ANSA) – Rome, December 7 – Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, a PR who is among five suspects in the Vatileaks 2 trial, said after a brief hearing Monday that she is not hoping to receive a pardon from Pope Francis since she is innocent of the charges levelled against her by the Vatican.

“I am not expecting anything from the pontiff and any such gesture is not what I want in any case,” she told reporters who asked her if she was hoping for a papal pardon. “I am innocent and one doesn’t pardon the innocent, one acquits them”.

Chaouqui is on trial along investigative journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and his former assistant Nicola Maio.

The trial opened last month and the second hearing last week, like Monday’s, was quickly adjourned.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) The Director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr Federico Lombardi, S.J., has published a “Note” concerning the ongoing trial concerning the leaking of confidential documents – the so-called “Vatileaks 2.”

Judges and lawyers at Vatican City State Tribunal: guaranteeing a fair trial – Note of Father Federico Lombardi

In recent weeks, since the opening of the trial for the dissemination of reserved documents commonly known as “Vatileaks 2”, many observations and evaluations have been written regarding the judicial system of Vatican City State and in particular on the Tribunal where this trial and its related procedures are taking place. Since many of these observations are inappropriate, or at times entirely unjustified, it would appear opportune to offer some considerations enabling a clearer view and a more just evaluation of this fundamental aspect of the situation.

Firstly, although this should be self-evident, it is necessary to recall that Vatican City State has its own legal order, entirely autonomous and separate from the Italian legal system, and has its own judicial bodies for the various levels of judgement and the necessary legislation in terms of criminal matters and procedure.

Within this latter there exist all the procedural guarantees characteristic of the most advanced contemporary legal systems. Indeed, all the fundamental principles are established and fully implemented: an independent and impartial tribunal constituted by law, the presumption of innocence, the right to a technical defence (by private or ex officio legal representation), and the freedom of the judicial college to form an opinion on the basis of evidence in public hearing and in debate between the prosecution and the defence, leading to the issuance of a sentence able to be substantiated and with the possibility of being contested by appeal and ultimately annulled.

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CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles Daily News

By Bob Strauss, Los Angeles Daily News
POSTED: 12/06/15

The journalistic procedural drama “Spotlight” won best picture at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s 2015 movie awards voting Sunday.

The film about The Boston Globe’s investigation of the Catholic Archdiocese’s pedophile priest cover-up also nabbed an award for Josh Singer and director Tom McCarthy’s screenplay.

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GHANA
Ghana Web

The medical director of the St. Joseph’s Hospital in Koforidua Rev. Brother George Castro Yankey has been caught pants down in an alleged sex scandal with a married nurse of the medical facility.

Starr News investigations at the St. Joseph’s Hospital reveal the director has been implicated in several allegations of sexual harassment against his female staff, but has vehemently denied until he was caught on camera.

The painstaking investigations by Starr News’ Eastern regional correspondent Kojo Ansah uncover an undressed Yankey in the hall of a married nurse, who is a staff, in an attempt to have sexual intercourse with her to facilitate her promotion.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

Lawyers for George Pell have cross examined David Ridsdale, who alleged Cardinal Pell offered him a bribe to keep quiet about being abused by his uncle, pedophile priest, Gerald Ridsdale. Courtesy Ten News.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

Megan Neil
December 7, 2015

A Victorian bishop who knew about a pedophile priest refused to take the word of a child over one of his priests, an inquiry has heard.

Parish priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale himself has said he was out of control and “went haywire” in the Victorian town of Mortlake, where he is believed to have abused every boy in school.

A victim’s parents met with then Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns in 1982, saying: “We’ve got big problems in Mortlake.”

The child abuse royal commission heard before they said anything else, Bishop Mulkearns said: “How am I to take the word of a child over one of my priests?”

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AUSTRALIA
Bunbury Mail

By Melissa Cunningham
Dec. 7, 2015

MORE victims and their parents are expected to appear at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in the coming days.

In her opening address on Tuesday, counsel assisting the royal commission Gail Furness said Bishop Ronald Mulkearns remains subject to a summons to appear before the commission, but is receiving palliative care and is unfit to give evidence.

Between January 1980 and February 2015, 140 claims of sexual abuse made against Ballarat priests and religious operating within the Diocese of Ballarat.

“Should his health improve sufficiently royal commission intends to call him to give evidence in public,” she said.

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AUSTRALIA
CQ News

Geoff Egan | 7th Dec 2015

CARDINAL George Pell was allegedly overheard discussing convicted pedophile priest Gerald Risdale “rooting young boys” in the 1980s – before he was made a bishop.

The witness known as BWE told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse he had overheard a conversation between Father Pell, who was a priest at Ballarat at the time, and Father Frank Madden .

BWE said Father Madden asked Cardinal Pell “How are things going down your way?”.

He said Cardinal Pell replied “I think Gerry has been rooting young boys again”.

Cardinal Pell’s lawyer Sam Duggan suggested BWE must be wrong due to the coarse language.

“That has never been language that Father Pell has ever used,” Mr Duggan said. “It’s simply something he would not say.”

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AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

AAP

A former altar boy has told an inquiry he overheard Cardinal George Pell say a Victorian priest was abusing boys again.

Witness BWE told the child abuse royal commission he heard Cardinal Pell, then a Ballarat priest, tell Fr Frank Madden in September 1983: “I think Gerry’s been rooting boys again.”

The reference is to Gerald Francis Ridsdale, who has been jailed for child sex offences against 53 victims and who is the subject of 78 abuse claims to the Catholic Diocese of Ballarat.

BWE on Monday said he felt scared and stopped being an altar boy after overhearing the conversation.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Sarah Farnsworth

Cardinal George Pell was overheard in the 1980s discussing the sexual abuse of boys at the hands of convicted paedophile Gerald Ridsdale, a royal commission has been told.

The explosive allegations about what Australia’s most senior Catholic knew of abuse by priests in the Ballarat diocese before he became the Archbishop of Melbourne was aired at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

A man, referred to as BWE during the hearing, told the inquiry he overhead a conversation between Father Frank Madden and then-auxilary priest George Pell at St Patricks Cathedral in 1983.

He said Father Madden asked: “How are things going down your way?”

He said Cardinal Pell replied: “I think Gerry has been rooting young boys again.”

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OREGON
KEZI

By Bailey Miller Dec. 6, 2015

EUGENE, Ore. — A local Eugene insurance agent, church volunteer, and family man is accused of dozens of sex crimes.

After turning himself into the Eugene Police Department, the local insurance agent, Rick Jackson was booked on Friday for 30 counts of sex crimes.

The charges include sodomy, unlawful penetration, and sexual abuse. All are felony charges.

Jackson owned an insurance agency on River Road in Northwest Eugene.

Neighbors said he recently took down his insurance signs and spray painted over his slogan, “the most beloved insurance agent in town.”

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

December 7, 2015

Susie O’Brien
Herald Sun

IF the Catholic Church is serious about its response to child sex abuse, then it must get rid of Cardinal George Pell.

Pell is expected in Australia this month to face the child sexual abuse royal commission.

His presence here is a start, but it isn’t enough. Nothing less than the defrocking of Australia’s most senior church member will indicate the church is a fully reformed beast.

No one action can fully compensate victims, but the downfall of Pell — the third-most powerful Catholic in the Vatican — would bring a certain quiet satisfaction to many.

One of the big problems is that Pell continues to keep his head in the sand.

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AUSTRALIA
Brisbane Times

December 7, 2015

Jorge Branco
Journalist

One of two organisations at the centre of a royal commission into horrific sexual abuse across two decades in two Brisbane schools has pledged to proactively seek out confirmed victims and refund their school fees

The other is yet to indicate whether it will follow suit.

The Anglican Diocese of Brisbane is responsible for St Paul’s School, which employed a paedophile music teacher for four years in the 1980s and a sexually abusive student counsellor a few years later.

Last month the diocese adopted a policy to refund the tuition and boarding fees of what’s believed to be dozens of students from the Bald Hills school and any other confirmed cases of abuse under the diocese’s control.

New complaints of abuse would be referred to police before a refund.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

December 7, 2015

Jane Lee
Legal affairs, health and science reporter

A survivor has told a royal commission he overheard George Pell joking about paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale “rooting boys again” more than a decade before Ridsdale was convicted of multiple counts of child sexual abuse.

Cardinal Pell – who will appear at the child abuse royal commission in Melbourne next week – was widely criticised for supporting Ridsdale at his first court appearance for child sex offences in 1993. Cardinal Pell was also present at at least one meeting of senior priests which decided Ridsdale should be moved to another parish, but maintains he never knew children were being abused while he was in Ballarat.

The survivor, known as BWE, told the commission on Monday he was aged between 10 and 12, and getting ready to serve as an altar boy for a funeral mass, when he overheard Cardinal Pell speaking to parish priest Father Frank Madden in the sacristy at St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1983. Cardinal Pell, he said, was officiating the mass because the deceased woman was either his former parishioner or close friend.

“After they had exchanged pleasantries, Father Madden said ‘How’s everything your way?’ or words to that effect. George Pell responded by saying ‘Haha I think Gerry’s been rooting boys again’.”

BWE said that the door between the alcove and the sacristy was usually open because altar boys did not need to remove their clothes to wear their church robes.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/george-pell-accused-of-joking-about-gerald-ridsdales-abuse-of-children-20151207-glhlmd.html#ixzz3tdN0tgFw
Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook

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CALIFORNIA
Hollywood Reporter

by Ashley Lee, Ryan Parker 12/6/2015

The top acting awards went to Michael Fassbender for ‘Steve Jobs’ and Charlotte Rampling for ’45 Years.’

Spotlight, Tom McCarthy’s drama about the Boston Globe reporters who exposed sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, was named this year’s best picture by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, edging out George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, which was runner-up in the top category. Spotlight, which was written by McCarthy and Josh Singer, also earned took home the award for best screenplay.

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NORTH CAROLINA
The News & Observer

BY JOHN MURAWSKI
jmurawski@newsobserver.com

Marty Baron, the newspaper editor who has overseen 10 Pulitzer Prize-winning projects, told a Raleigh audience Sunday that investigative journalism could become an endangered species if journalistic budgets continue to erode.

Baron, 61, was in town Sunday for a screening of “Spotlight,” the Hollywood account of the Boston Globe’s exposé of the Catholic Church pedophilia scandal, coverage that won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. Now editor of The Washington Post, Baron noted that the 7-month Boston Globe investigation ultimately yielded 900 news stories during two years and cost well in excess of $1 million in legal fees, travel expenses and staff time.

The movie is being strongly reviewed for its depiction of the Globe newsroom of the era. The imperturbable, taciturn Baron depicted on the big screen represents the power of the press in a different time, before the Internet siphoned off advertisers and the invisible hand of the economy decimated many newsrooms.

In the years since Baron’s reporters uncovered the child abuse and coverup scandal, the relevance of the old-guard media has come under fire and the future nature of journalism has become the object of much speculation. Amid the endless experimentation underway with podcasting and videos and other formats, Baron said investigations must remain the soul of the newsroom.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
Sunday 6 December 2015

A Victorian priest warned a police officer to drop his investigation into a colleague over child abuse allegations, an inquiry has heard.

Father Peter Taffe told the police officer he would be out of a job if he pursued an investigation into the Mildura parish priest Monsignor John Day, the child abuse royal commission was told.

Senior counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness SC, said 140 people had made child sex abuse claims against priests and others in religious orders in the diocese of Ballarat since 1980. Ninety per cent of the claims were against seven priests, including 78 against Gerald Francis Ridsdale and 15 against Day.

Furness said a man had told Mildura assistant priest Taffe in January 1972 his son had been abused by Day. She said Taffe’s first words had been: “I thought he was over all this.”

A former Mildura police officer, Denis Ryan, had already been investigating complaints against Day, she said, and would tell the commission Taffe had warned him in December 1971: “Drop the inquiry into Monsignor Day or you’ll be out of a job.”

Ryan wrote to then Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns setting out allegations from seven complainants. The inquiry was told Mulkearns had said he had been assured police were satisfied there was no substance to the charges, and it was impossible to move Day out of Mildura.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

December 7, 2015

Jane Lee

A dying retired bishop who moved paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale to chuches around Victoria for decades could still be called to give evidence at a royal commission amid claims he covered up and ignored complaints of clergy abuse.

Ronald Mulkearns, 85, the bishop of Ballarat from 1971 to 1997, was expected to appear at the commission’s second hearing into Ballarat Catholic Church authorities.

Senior counsel asssisting the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Gail Furness, SC, said in her opening address on Monday that the commission had accepted “medical advice that Bishop Mulkearns is receiving palliative care and is unfit to give evidence in this public hearing.”

“Bishop Mulkearns remains subject to a summons to appear before the commission and, should his health improve sufficiently, the royal commission intends to call him to give evidence in public.”

Ms Furness said the commission would hear evidence of Bishop Mulkearns’ repeated refusals to deal with complaints of clergy abuse from a nun, a mother of a survivor and a fellow priest.

The commission has previously heard that Bishop Mulkearns was first told of Ridsdale’s offending in 1975, but moved him to numerous parishes until Risdale was charged and later convicted of multiple child sex offences in 1993.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

AAP
DECEMBER 7, 2015

CARDINAL George Pell said he believed a priest had been abusing boys again, a former altar boy has told an inquiry.

BALLARAT-BORN BWE has told the child abuse royal commission he overheard a conversation between Cardinal Pell, then a Ballarat priest, and Fr Frank Madden before a funeral in September 1983.

He said Cardinal Pell commented to Fr Madden about Gerald Francis Ridsdale: “I think Gerry’s been rooting boys again”.

BWE said he told his mother in 1984 or 1985 that he overheard Cardinal Pell confirm, more or less, that Ridsdale was still having sex with boys.

“She said to me ‘don’t be ridiculous’,” BWE told the commission on Monday.

BWE stopped being an altar boy towards the end of 1983, after overhearing the conversation.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Sarah Farnsworth

A lawyer for Cardinal George Pell has quizzed two victims over allegations Australia’s top Catholic offered a bribe and turned a blind eye to claims of abuse.

Cardinal Pell, now one of the Vatican’s most senior clerics, is due to give evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse next week about the church’s handling of sex abuse allegations in the Ballarat Diocese.

Ahead of his highly anticipated appearance, Pell’s lawyer Sam Duggan cross-examined abuse victim David Ridsdale over his allegations the Cardinal tried to bribe him to stay quiet about abuse he suffered at the hands of his uncle, Gerald Ridsdale.

Mr Ridsdale has previously said he called then Bishop Pell in 1993 and told him about the abuse.

Under questioning, Mr Duggan put to Mr Ridsdale that the conversation never happened.

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AUSTRALIA
Sky News

Cardinal George Pell appeared very concerned for an abuse victim who claims the then bishop tried to bribe him to keep quiet, a fellow priest has told an inquiry.

David Ridsdale, a victim and nephew of pedophile priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale, has accused Cardinal Pell of trying to bribe him in 1993 by saying: ‘I want to know what it will take to keep you quiet.’

The child abuse royal commission has heard another priest who was living with Cardinal Pell at the time has given a statement that his strong recollection is that the then bishop was concerned for Mr Ridsdale.

Mr Ridsdale, who has been recalled for cross-examination by Cardinal Pell’s barrister Sam Duggan, said he stood by his evidence.

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

A FORMER Kings Cross sex worker has opened his little black book containing the names and details of high profile clients he claims were a part of a “sick” and elaborate paedophile ring.

Dave*, 47, told news.com.au that high profile judges, lawyers, navy captains, a prominent lord mayor and business executives were among hundreds of clients who prowled the Sydney red light district and the “Darlinghurst Wall” pick-up spot to lure underage boys into their hotels and penthouses for sex in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Dave, aged 18 at the time, said a pimp forced him into prostitution and a “seedy” underworld where he was abused, sodomised, threatened and taken advantage of by “hundreds” of men in Sydney over four years.

“The main thing I was concerned about was the people I was meeting, their jobs and positions and things like that and what bothers me was they had underage people,” he said.

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EL SALVADOR
Reuters

SAN SALVADOR

El Salvador’s highest-ranking Roman Catholic cleric on Sunday denied an accusation that he tried to bribe a woman who was sexually abused by a priest to keep her quiet, as the country’s church faces a growing number of abuse cases.

The woman, who has not been named, said last week that Leopoldo Deras, a priest who died in 2009, sexually abused her when she was between 13 and 21 years old. She became pregnant and gave birth to Deras’ child, which he later legally recognised as his own in 2001.

She alleged that Jose Escobar, archbishop of San Salvador’s Catholic Church, tried to bribe her with a $5000 (£3,311) cheque to keep quiet about the case.

Escobar said in a news conference that he had helped the woman and her child economically but that he has never bribed anyone and added that the woman never said she was abused by Deras.

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SOUTH AFRICA
Times LIVE

André Jurgens | 07 December, 2015

Catholic priests have been implicated in 33 cases of sexual abuse in South Africa.

Cardinal Wilfrid Napier issued a public apology 13 years ago, promising sweeping reforms after sexual abuse by priests was exposed in an international scandal.

That painful chapter of history is back on the agenda after being made into an acclaimed film that will be screened in South Africa next year. Spotlight relates how the Boston Globe exposed clergy abuse in the US during an investigation that morphed into a global scandal.

The secretary-general of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Sister Hermenegild Makoro, said 33 cases of clergy sexual abuse had been reported since the scandal broke in 2003.

Of those, seven were reported to police. One priest was charged and later prosecuted in Germany. Two more priests were dismissed. The remainder were either still under investigation or the complaints had been withdrawn.

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EL SALVADOR
Diario Colatino

En la acostumbrada homilía celebrada en Catedral Metropolitana, Monseñor José Luis Escobar Alas acompañado del obispo auxiliar, Gregorio Rosa Chávez y el abogado Abrahan Flores, denunció que está siendo víctima de calumnias.

Las declaraciones del jerarca católico, fueron luego que una mujer aseguró a medios locales, que fue violada hace unos años por el padre Leopoldo Antonio Deras Guillén, fallecido en 2009, y producto de esta relación existe un hijo.

Tras la muerte de Guillén, tres propiedades, según su testamento, pasan a ser de la iglesia.

La mujer aun no identificada, reclamó $5 mil dólares para su hijo y amenazó con hacer daño a la iglesia.

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EL SALVADOR
Ultimas Noticias

[El Salvador Archbishop denies alleged sexual abuse cover-up – Reuters]

ÚN | Reuters .- El arzobispo de El Salvador, José Escobar Alas, negó el domingo que haya intentado sobornar a una supuesta víctima de abuso sexual por parte de un sacerdote para que guardara silencio, mientras la Iglesia enfrenta varios casos de pederastia en el país centroamericano.

Una mujer, cuya identidad no ha sido revelada, denunció la semana pasada que el sacerdote Leopoldo Deras, quien falleció en el 2009, abusó sexualmente de ella entre sus 13 y 21 años, en un caso que habría iniciado en 1977.

La mujer quedó embarazada producto de esos hechos y dio a luz a un hijo que Deras reconoció legalmente en el 2001.

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AUSTRALIA
Wangaratta Chronicle

Jamie Kronborg
jkronborg@nemedia.com.au
December 7, 2015

WANGARATTA’S John Parkes is one of 23 Anglican bishops across Australia preparing answers to 51 questions put to them by the Commonwealth royal commission examining institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

The commission is seeking information about the structure and financial affairs of each Anglican diocese and details of clergy and lay appointees and the roles performed by them.

“At the heart of it there is something like 70 enactments or statements of the general synod or standing committee in relation to child sexual abuse,” Bishop Parkes told the Wangaratta Chronicle.

“I think the commission is interested to see how each diocese has dealt with those, what’s been adopted, (and) what the safeguards are.”

The bishop said the royal commission currently had a particular interest in the former Church of England Boys’ Society in dioceses across Australia.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Sunday 6 December 2015

The second part of public hearings into child sexual abuse by the Catholic clergy within Ballarat institutions begins in Melbourne on Monday, culminating in evidence from Australia’s most senior Catholic and the Vatican’s secretary for the economy in Rome, George Pell.

The first part of the hearings was heard in Ballarat in May, when the commission heard allegations that Pell tried to bribe a child sex abuse victim, David Ridsdale, to keep quiet about his molestation at the hands of his uncle and then priest, Gerald Francis Ridsdale.

Gerald Ridsdale committed more than 130 offences against children as young as four between the 1960s and 1980s, including while working as a school chaplain at St Alipius boys’ school in Ballarat, the royal commission into institutional responses into child sexual abuse has previously heard. He is now in prison.

Pell, who supported Ridsdale during his first court appearance for child sex offences in 1993, has always denied knowing of any child abuse occurring in Ballarat while he worked there as a priest and with a clerical group called the College of Consultors during the 1970s and 1980s. Pell also spent time living with Gerald Ridsdale in 1973, but has said he had no idea he was a paedophile.

The commission has previously heard Pell was involved in a College of Consultors decision to move Risdale from the Mortlake parish in Ballarat to Sydney in 1982.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (background article, updated 5 December 2015)

This Broken Rites article is the most comprehensive account available about how the Catholic Church harboured this child-abuse criminal — Father Gerald Francis Ridsdale — for 30 years in western Victoria while his superiors and fellow-priests remained silent to protect the church’s public image. In 1982, when Father Ridsdale had been abusing children for 20 years, a clergy committee (of which Father George Pell was a member) noted that Ridsdale was being transferred away from Victoria. Thus, he was inflicted on potential victims in New South Wales. Eventually, in 1993, Victoria Police detectives charged Ridsdale in court. He was accompanied to court by his support person, George Pell, who had become an assistant bishop in Melbourne. However, no bishop accompanied the victims. Encouraged by Broken Rites, more victims later spoke to the detectives. In his four court cases between 1993 and 2014, Ridsdale has been jailed for a minimum of 24 years for assaulting 54 of his victims. Broken Rites is proud of its role in exposing the church’s cover-up of this criminal priest.

This 1993 photo helped to expose the cover-up

On every page of the Broken Rites website (in the right-hand column), there is a photo of Father Ridsdale (with his features obscured by dark glasses and a cap) walking to the Melbourne Magistrates Court on 27 May 1993 with his support person, auxiliary bishop George Pell (wearing clerical garb). This was the day when Ridsdale received his first conviction for child-sex crimes. [In 1993, Pell was an Auxiliary Bishop for Melbourne, and three years later he became the Archbishop of Melbourne.]

By 27 May 1993, unknown to Ridsdale and Pell, one of Ridsdale’s victims had alerted the media that Ridsdale was due to appear in court that day for sentencing. Therefore, when Pell and Ridsdale approached the court building, a Channel Nine camera man obtained video footage of their arrival.

That evening, Channel Nine’s news bulletin showed this footage of Father Ridsdale and Bishop Pell arriving at the court. This bulletin was viewed throughout the state of Victoria, including by many church-abuse victims. Viewers noticed that a bishop was accompanying the criminal priest, rather than accompanying the victims.

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AUSTRALIA
NT News

MEGAN NEIL AAP DECEMBER 07, 2015

VICTIMS of widespread child sex abuse by clergy in the Ballarat diocese hope a royal commission will bring out the truth, a victims’ advocate says.

THE child abuse royal commission’s inquiry into Catholic Church authorities’ handling of decades of abuse in the Victorian regional diocese resumes on Monday.

Lawyer Judy Courtin, who has worked with Ballarat victims, says the public hearing will be traumatic for abuse survivors but is a necessary step towards getting justice.

“They want the truth to be told about the cover-up and concealment,” Dr Courtin said.

The inquiry’s first stage in Ballarat in May heard as many as 14 priests have been found to have sexually abused children in the Ballarat diocese.

There have been at least 130 claims and substantiated complaints against the Ballarat diocese since 1980, mostly against pedophile priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

Teri Untalan December 6, 2015

This is the beginning of Advent in the Catholic Church. Rather than words to uplift the faithful during this period of preparation for the coming of Christ, the erstwhile church leaders instead continue their charade that the multimillion-dollar property in Yona still belongs to the archdiocese.

A copy of a certificate of title was posted to support this claim. One can have a certificate of title showing that one owns a particular piece of property, but it would not show that said property has been leased for 99 years, for example.

And a long-term lease is similar to what the archbishop of Agana, Anthony Apuron, did with the property now in the control of the Redemptoris Mater Seminary. Unfortunately, rather than 99 years, this valuable piece of the patrimony of the Archdiocese of Agana was deeded in perpetuity to be used and conveyed by, and transferred and sold to, the Redemptoris Mater.

Be informed that the Redemptoris Mater is not part of the Catholic Church in Guam. It is a nonprofit corporation whose organizational documents show that the majority of the principals do not live in Guam, do not worship here, and whose only connection to Guam are that they are the Neocatechumenal-responsible team for which Guam is part of their area. This deed restriction also does not limit the use of the Yona property to be solely as a seminary, as we have been told.

We, Catholics, are being bedazzled with semantics. The property was not transferred, we are told. Its use was just restricted. It did not change hands, just assured that it would remain a seminary.

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AUSTRALIA
9 News

New documents have revealed a conflict of interest between Cardinal George Pell and the experts he appointed to investigate child sexual abuse allegations in the church.

Cardinal Pell has claimed his discredited “Melbourne Response” to abuse within the church was a world-first in assisting and compensating victims – however he faces allegations the church sought to protect pedophile priests.

Never-before-published documents shown on 60 Minutes tonight suggest the response was not in fact “independent” and “compassionate”, but a smokescreen designed to protect the church at all costs.

As part of an investigation into claims of sexual abuse perpetrated by school priest Kevin O’Donnell at the Sacred Heart Primary School in Ballarat, Cardinel Pell named psychiatrist Richard Ball a key appointee.

Mr Ball, whose duty was to assess and treat victims of child abuse such as sisters Emma and Katie Foster, also happened to be the go-to expert witness used by lawyers to defend pedophile priests, including the very same priest who raped the Foster sisters, Kevin O’Donnell.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

Margaret Sullivan
THE PUBLIC EDITOR

This is the first of two parts exploring the threatened state of local investigative reporting.

In the recently released movie, “Spotlight,” an investigative reporter for The Boston Globe, Sacha Pfeiffer, grinds away at her job. She gets doors slammed in her face in working-class neighborhoods, she cajoles sources in coffee shops, and she pores over phone directories until the library lights are about to dim.

Her colleagues on the Globe’s investigative team, known as Spotlight, put in their own long hours. The reporter Michael Rezendes (played with manic, twitchy verve by Mark Ruffalo) hangs around courthouses and lawyer’s offices, digging out information through sheer persistence.

The movie tells the story of what the Spotlight team turned up: that startling numbers of Catholic priests in Boston, and beyond, had sexually molested children, and that these priests were systematically protected at the highest levels of the church. The Globe’s investigation, which began in 2001, took many months before a single word was published. It ended up winning a Pulitzer Prize for public service — and changing the world.

The film is powerful and moving. And it raises troubling questions about the state of local investigative reporting today and in the future.

For decades, local investigative reporting has been done largely by regional newspapers like The Globe. With their substantial staffs — often several hundred journalists — newspapers could do the painstaking, time-consuming and often unglamorous work that can lead to breakthrough stories.

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UNITED STATES
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor December 6, 2015

Last week I was in Youngstown and Akron, Ohio, where I’ve been speaking at First Friday clubs for several years. My wife Shannon, who handles my speaking calendar, is very loyal to these folks, and insisted that I offer them something new and original.

In response, I did something that’s basically an act of madness: I delivered a set of predictions for 2016 regarding the almost metaphysically unpredictable Pope Francis.

Spousal obedience, as it turns out, trumped professional caution. Herewith, those five forecasts for a pope of surprises in the New Year.

1. The next US cardinal Francis names will be a shocker.

It’s not clear whether Francis will create new cardinals in 2016, or whether one of them would be an American. If so, however, it probably won’t be anyone people are expecting — Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, for instance, or Blase Cupich in Chicago.

When distributing red hats, Francis likes to bypass the usual centers of power. In Italy, Turin and Venice don’t have cardinals, but Perugia and Ancona do. In the Philippines, Francis ignored Cebu and named a cardinal in Cotabato. In Haiti, he skipped the capital, Port-au-Prince, in favor of the small diocese of Les Cayes.

If there is a new American cardinal, look for him to be from some place out of the ordinary. One good candidate would be Bishop Gerald Kicanas in Tucson, Arizona, both to make a statement about the hardships of immigrants who cross the border there, and also to lift up a social justice-oriented bishop cut from the pope’s own cloth.

2. Francis will have a health issue.

So far, this pope has not had a serious health crisis. A bogus report in October of a benign brain tumor doesn’t count, since it fell apart almost as soon as it appeared.

On the other hand, Francis turns 79 on Dec. 17 and keeps up a schedule that would destroy people half his age. Those closest to Francis have long said they’re worried about the pope not taking care of himself, for instance by canceling his summer vacation at Castel Gandolfo. Watching him up close, he often seems visibly fatigued, and his struggles with sciatica seem more pronounced.

At some point, physical reality may assert itself and compel the pontiff to take some time off. If that happens, it won’t necessarily mean the end is near, but simply that he’s managing his time and energy more carefully.

3. The pope will be a player in the US elections.

Pope Francis is likely to emerge as a major factor in the US elections in 2016, an especially plausible prospect given that five of the GOP contenders are Catholic (Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, and George Pataki; Bobby Jindal dropped out of the race in November).

One moment when the pope appears destined to inject himself into the race will come in February, when he travels to Mexico. The trip will feature a stop in Ciudad Juarez at the US/Mexico border, where Francis will make a major statement about immigration.

At that same moment, Americans will be heading to the polls in New Hampshire and Iowa. Media coverage will certainly draw the connection, turning the pontiff into a political point of reference.

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VATICAN CITY
BBC News

The Vatican has ordered the first ever external audit of its accounts as part of Pope Francis’ efforts to reform the Roman Catholic Church.

The auditor, accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers, will start work immediately, a papal spokesman said.

Pope Francis has promised to make the Vatican’s finances more transparent after a series of scandals.

Last year he created a new ministry to oversee papal finances, headed by Cardinal George Pell.
Cardinal Pell later said he had discovered millions of euros “tucked away”.

While he did not say any wrongdoing had occurred, he added Vatican departments long had “an almost free hand” with their finances.

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AUSTRALIA
60 Minutes

DECEMBER 6, 2015

From parish priest in Ballarat to third in charge at the Vatican, George Pell’s rise through the Catholic hierarchy has been impressive. But he’s been dogged every step of the way by what he knew, and what he did, about the sexual abuse of children at the hands of paedophile priests. If it wasn’t for Richard Carleton’s interview with the Cardinal on 60 Minutes in 2002, he might just have been believable. But he has since appeared to be a liar, and someone willing to go to great lengths to protect his own reputation. 60 Minutes presents damning new evidence against Pell. He has always argued his intervention on behalf of child abuse victims was innovative, independent and compassionate. But now, secret documents reveal it as a cynical smokescreen designed to protect the Catholic Church at all costs.

Reporter: Tara Brown
Producer: Gareth Harvey

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

THE victims of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church just want to be heard.

And an investigation by journalist Tara Brown on 60 Minutes tonight on Nine exposes the secrets of George Pell’s Melbourne Response and its potential to gag victims and fail them.

The Melbourne Response was a program set up by Cardinal Pell in late 1996 when he was Archbishop of Melbourne.

It investigates allegations of child sexual abuse inflicted by people within the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne.

Complaints are assessed by an independent commissioner and referred on to a compensation panel.

Victims can receive compensation up to $50,000.

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UNITED STATES
Concord Monitor

Sunday, December 6, 2015

The half-smile on Cardinal Bernard Law’s lips doesn’t really reach his watchful eyes as he looks at Marty Baron, the newly installed editor of the Boston Globe, who has been summoned to meet with the prelate in his private study.

“I find this city flourishes when its great institutions work together,” says the cardinal.

His words hang in the air for a few moments before Baron responds. “I’m of the opinion that for a newspaper to do its job, it has to stand on its own.”

This is a succinct summation of the drama at the core of the movie Spotlight, now showing (through Thursday, Dec. 10) at Concord’s Red River Theatres. The film, which opened last month to near-universal acclaim, tells – pretty much accurately – the story of the Globe’s long investigation into the pedophile scandal that enveloped the Catholic Church in Boston and eventually across the country and the world.

It was a case study of clerical power vs. secular power, and secular power won. The movie is brilliantly done. Although we all know what happened and how it ended, this story of the Church’s longtime denial of the existence of pedophile priests in Boston – even as it was shielding the offenders – is almost unbearably suspenseful. It’s well worth seeing.

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NEW MEXICO
Albuquerque Journal

By Olivier Uyttebrouck / Journal Staff Writer
Sunday, December 6th, 2015

Brian Gutierrez, 46, said he filed a lawsuit last year against the Archdiocese of Santa Fe to spare others the anguish he has endured for nearly 30 years and promote a “new era of openness” in the Catholic Church.

A key goal is to require the archdiocese to publicly disclose records that he says reveal the facts of his alleged rape by a priest in 1986, when Gutierrez was a 17-year-old freshman at the University of New Mexico.

The Catholic Church still keeps too many secrets, he contends.

And, in fact, few records ever have been released by the archdiocese in the hundreds of clerical abuse cases that have been filed and settled, or in the 18 now pending.

Depositions and other records, including the personnel files of 48 “credibly accused” priests, are sealed under a confidentiality order sought by archdiocese lawyers and approved by District Judge Alan Malott.

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NEW MEXICO
Albuquerque Journal

By Olivier Uyttebrouck / Journal Staff Writer
Sunday, December 6th, 2015

SANTA FE, N.M. — The names of many of the former priests identified as alleged sexual abusers in recent New Mexico lawsuits have turned up frequently since the pedophile crisis erupted publicly in the early 1990s, here and in other states.

Among the former priests are those who were expelled from dioceses across the U.S. after being accused of sexually abusing children and were then sent to a treatment facility for priests in Jemez Springs operated by a Catholic religious order, Servants of the Paraclete.

Albuquerque attorney Brad Hall has filed 53 lawsuits since 2011 in 2nd Judicial District Court against the Archdiocese of Santa Fe on behalf of alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests. Of those, 35 have been settled, 18 remain active and at least 10 are scheduled for trial next year.

Some of the most notorious of the alleged pedophile priests:

David Holley pleaded guilty in 1993 to sexually molesting eight boys in Alamogordo and was sentenced to 275 years in prison, where he died in 2008.
A 2013 lawsuit filed by an Albuquerque man, now 36, alleged that Holley abused him at St. Jude’s Church in Alamogordo in the mid-1970s while Holley served as an assistant pastor.

Holley was sent in 1971 by a Massachusetts diocese to the Servants of the Paraclete in Jemez Springs after he was accused of molesting boys.

Jason E. Sigler, 76, pleaded guilty in 2003 to two counts of criminal sexual misconduct for molesting boys at a Catholic church in Michigan.

Sigler was a central figure in clerical abuse lawsuits filed in New Mexico in the 1990s. A Las Vegas man alleges in a 2014 lawsuit that Sigler sexually abused him from 1973-76 at Immaculate Conception Church in Las Vegas.

Sigler was released from a Michigan prison in 2014 and moved to a house in Albuquerque’s Taylor Ranch subdivision.

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UNITED STATES
PopeCrimes& Vatican Evils.

Paris Arrow

Introduction: Half-truth means a statement that is only partially true; a statement that mingles truth and falsehood with deliberate intent to deceive. A half-truth is a deceptive statement that includes some element of truth. The statement might be partly true, the statement may be totally true but only part of the whole truth, or it may use some deceptive element, such as improper punctuation, or double meaning, especially if the intent is to deceive, evade, blame or misrepresent the truth. The purpose and or consequence of a half-truth is to make something that is really only a belief appear to be knowledge, or a truthful statement to represent the whole truth… A half-truth deceives the recipient by presenting something believable and using those aspects of the statement that can be shown to be true as good reason to believe the statement is true in its entirety, or that the statement represents the whole truth. A person deceived by a half-truth considers the proposition to be knowledge and acts accordingly.

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UNITED STATES
Democrat-Gazette

By John Brummett
Posted: December 6, 2015

You should get out and see the Oscar-buzzed movie called Spotlight.

It dramatizes in realistic tones and with credible characters the finest in newspaper reporting, which is usually tedious, often resented, sadly fading and sometimes heroic.

After you’ve seen the movie, consider renewing your newspaper subscription.

Do that regardless of whether you can abide the editorials and columnists. Those can be taken or left. Investigative reporting can change the world.

Invest a few dollars in your community and in a principle.

I refer to the principle of hardworking and obsessively passionate and curious people who sometimes can be societal misfits–they’re called newspaper reporters–and who toil night and day for modest pay in a limping industry to ask in your behalf the things you can’t or won’t.

I refer to the age-old principle of a newspaper daring to pursue truth to afflict the comfortable, like the Catholic Church in an overpoweringly Catholic town like Boston, and comfort the afflicted, like the hundreds of priest-abused children in and around Boston.

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UNITED STATES
Los Angeles Review of Books

December 5th, 2015

IT’S A MOMENT we’ve seen dozens of times: the incorruptible newcomer summoned to an audience with the local heavy. On the surface, it’s a friendly meeting. The big shot is affable, welcoming. He offers to help the newcomer with anything he might need. Right below the surface, he’s issuing a warning: there’s a certain way things are done in this town, and if you’re smart, you won’t get in the way. Whether the scene is played out between a sheriff and a cattle baron, a crusading DA and a power broker who holds himself above the law, or an honest cop confronting a veteran on the take, we understand that the scene defines the stakes the hero is playing for, as well as the son of a bitch he’s going to have to go up against. It’s a measure of how uncompromised Spotlight is, then, that in this case, the s.o.b. is the head of the Boston Roman Catholic Archdiocese, Cardinal Bernard Law.

Spotlight is about what happened when, in 2001, the Boston Globe’s new editor, Marty Baron — the man called in for that sit-down with Cardinal Law (played as a pious old ward heeler by Len Cariou) — pushed the paper’s investigative reporting unit, the Spotlight team, to look into why a local priest who had molested more than 130 boys had been shuffled from parish to parish instead of turned over to the cops. What that four-person team uncovered was not a “few bad apples,” the term the Church and their defenders used to classify pedophile priests, but documentation that nearly 100 Boston-area priests had molested children and that in most of the cases, their superiors in the Archdiocese had known. The Spotlight team’s report, which ran in January 2002, won the Globe a Pulitzer Prize and effectively ended the career of Bernard Law, who resigned in 2002.

At least in America. Law was given a cushy Vatican appointment and with that, of course, the diplomatic status that would keep him from being extradited back to the States. But the effect of the Spotlight team’s work went far beyond Law. By shattering the few bad apples scenario, the Spotlight reporters — Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James) — identified child sexual abuse not as an aberration but an accepted practice within the Church, given no more thought than the way old-time pols regard the corruption within their ranks. If that sounds like an exaggeration, Spotlight ends with a list of cities in which child sexual abuse scandals have been uncovered in the Catholic Church. Beginning with the US and then moving to the rest of the world, the list takes up four screens of small triple-column type.

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VATICAN CITY
Independent (UK)

Peter Popham @peterpopham

In 2013, when Pope Francis appointed outside management consultants to shed light on the inner workings of the Vatican, he hoped to bring order to an organisation mired in corruption and intrigue. The embarrassing leaks that resulted in the publication of hundreds of secret letters are believed by many to have contributed to Pope Benedict XVI’s unprecedented step of resigning earlier that year.

Now Pope Francis faces a somewhat similar scandal. But this time, sex and blackmail allegations have been thrown in – and his own management consultant appointees are at the heart of it.

On Monday, the trial of five people resumes inside the Vatican, including Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, a PR expert and the only female member of the Pope’s commission. The other four include Gianluigi Nuzzi, a journalist whose earlier book about papal secrets brought the original “Vatileaks” scandal to a head, and, also from the commission, Lucio Vallejo Balda, a Spanish priest.

The trial centres on claims that Balda, Chaouqui and another plaintiff leaked confidential documents relating to the Vatican’s finances to Nuzzi and another journalist, who is also on trial.

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UNITED STATES
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Roy J. Harris Jr. Dec. 5, 2015

The best lessons about how journalists work come from seeing them in action. And no film ever has done a better job of showing reporters and editors in their “watchdog” role, digging out important news others want kept secret, than “Spotlight.”

The film tells the story of four members of The Boston Globe’s investigative unit, the Spotlight Team, and what happens after the Globe’s editor, on his first day on the job in 2001, has them look into the case of a defrocked Roman Catholic priest who had been repeatedly accused of sexually abusing children in his care. This leads them to investigate whether church leaders in Boston knew about the abuse by that priest and by others — and protected them by transferring them to new parishes, where they were free to harm other children.

Because the Globe did its job so well — eventually documenting shockingly widespread abuses by priests and the coverup by the Boston Archdiocese of a pervasive problem — “Spotlight” offers many lessons about the way news organizations can have a positive impact in their communities and beyond. (The Globe won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2003 for this work.)

The movie’s biggest lesson is that bringing about significant societal change requires courage, risk-taking, and a willingness to upset powerful people and institutions.

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UNITED STATES
Questions from a Ewe

Truly, when I publish a blog article, I think it is my last one…until…something in the church cries out for commentary that does not seem to be getting expressed.

First, my last blog article about sexually active priests quickly catapulted to one of my most read articles. I am always humbled that people invest their time reading my blog.

But, I neglected to highlight one extremely important point in that article so I will do so now before delving into some recent comments Pope Francis made. The one African priest discussing priests’ sexual activity with me blurted out, almost as a defense for priests not honoring the implied chastity of their celibacy, that such sexually active priests do so in “secret.” What he saw as insignificantly dismissible, making priests’ sexual activity permissible, to me exposes significant moral disconnect and systemic foundational rot in the church.

Over 125,000 priests have fallen in love and done the honorable and healthy thing for themselves, their lovers and their relationships…they married. And as a reward for their honest, healthy relationships, these men were expelled from the priesthood.

Instead, we are left with the cowardly, selfish priests who engage in sexual relationships that they hide as though their lovers are some sort of embarrassing sin whom they publicly pretend do not exist so that they may continue in their prestigious role, deluding themselves that they serve some higher purpose as a priest, and therefore it’s ok to stuff their lovers in closets…for the greater good of humanity. These insidious men, who number 50% of the priesthood, are the ones we are stuck with…playing some perverted charade that they, who are fundamentally dishonest about their relationships and sexuality, provide the most astute moral guidance to lay people about human relationships and sexuality. Is my mind the only one numbed by the painful realities this demonstrates about the clergy’s moral fiber and the resulting systemic societal impact of revering categorically dishonest men as ultimate guardians of truth?

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) The Vatican’s Council for the Economy has appointed a new External Auditor for consolidated financial statements, PricewaterhouseCoopers.

A statement from the Council for the Economy said the “important step” was taken to continue “the implementation of new financial management policies and practices in line with international standards.”

The Council appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers (“PwC”), one of the “Big Four” major international auditing firms, after accepting the recommendation from its Audit Committee.

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VATICAN CITY
Deutsche Welle

The Vatican has hired an external auditor to review its finances following a series of scandals and concerns about transparency. The pope has vowed to clean up murky and wasteful finances at the Holy See.

With the Holy See plagued by financial scandals that have seen millions of euros go off the books, on Saturday papal spokesman Federico Lombardi said one of the world’s top auditing firms would examine the Vatican’s financial statements.

PricewaterhouseCoopers will audit church records including assets, income and expenses in order to implement “new financial management policies and practices in line with international standards,” Lombardi said.

Pope Francis has vowed to clean up church finances after a series of recent scandals have revealed widespread waste. Some of his reform efforts have come up against resistance from clergy.

A Vatican financial statement released this year found 1.1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) of assets off the books, as departments and clergy intent on maintaining power attempt to avoid scrutiny from a central accounting office.

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VATICAN CITY
Business Standard

AFP

The Vatican today announced that accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers will carry out its first external audit, as Pope Francis seeks to make the Holy See’s finances more transparent,

PwC will work “in close cooperation” with the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy, headed by Australian cardinal George Pell, a statement said.

On Thursday the pope unexpectedly took part in a meeting of his economy council to thank its members and encourage them to continue overseeing the Vatican’s administrative and financial workings.

The move to submit the Vatican’s finances to an external auditor comes a month after the publication of a book describing the pope’s fury over uncontrolled spending and an inadequate accounting system.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

The Vatican said on Saturday it had ordered the first external audit of its assets as part of a drive by Pope Francis to bring transparency to its finances where millions of euros have gone unrecorded without any central oversight.

Papal spokesman Federico Lombardi said auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers [PWC.UL] would start work immediately.

The pope has promised to overhaul the Vatican’s murky financial management, which have been hit by repeated scandals in recent years, however he has met resistance from Church officials who want to maintain tight control over operations.

Lombardi told reporters that the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy had called on PwC, the world’s second-largest audit firm by revenue, to review the Vatican’s consolidated financial statements, which includes assets, income and expenses.

The decision to work with one of the world’s top four auditors continued “the implementation of new financial management policies and practices in line with international standards,” he said.

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VATICAN CITY
ABC News

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
VATICAN CITY — Dec 5, 2015

The Vatican has engaged an outside auditor for its consolidated financial statements as part of economic reforms.

The Holy See said Saturday it has chosen PricewaterhouseCoopers, which will get to work immediately on the 2015 audit.

Turning to an outside auditor puts the Vatican, long known for its secretive banking and other financial practices, more in line with international standards.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

December 6, 2015

Chris Vedelago, Cameron Houston

The Catholic Church avoided paying up to $62 million in compensation to sexual abuse victims by creating the controversial Melbourne Response program, which capped payments at $50,000 for each victim.

Internal documents also show church leaders ordered written records about sex abuse be “kept to a minimum” to avoid losing lawsuits, and hired one of the country’s best spin doctors in a bid to prepare for the scandal in the early 1990s.

The revelations come after a week of explosive hearings at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse where former Melbourne archdiocese vicar-general Bishop Peter Connors referred to the church’s knowledge about paedophile priests preying on parishioners as “time bombs ticking away”.

The testimony and records tendered to the royal commission also detail the church’s preoccupation with protecting its reputation and financial position ahead of a flood of sexual abuse compensation claims, lawsuits and counselling expenses.

In 1996, concerns about managing the looming crisis led to the creation of the Melbourne Response program, which capped compensation payments at $50,000, and later, $75,000.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Spiegel

[Abuse in the Catholic Church: The Father, the girl and a secret protocol. The Hildesheim bishop is being criticized for being slow to act on report of the abuse of a girl.]

Für den Hildesheimer Bischof Norbert Trelle steht in diesen Tagen seine Glaubwürdigkeit auf dem Spiel.

Grund ist der Fall Peter R. Die Möglichkeit, den Priester als mutmaßlichen Missbrauchstäter vor ein ordentliches Gericht zu bringen, hat das Bistum Hildesheim im März 2010 offensichtlich leichtfertig vertan. Anzeige erstattete man erst geraume Zeit später.

Am 4. März 2010 kam eine Religionslehrerin mit ihrer 14-jährigen Schülerin in die Hildesheimer Bistumszentrale, um einen sexuellen Missbrauch anzuzeigen. Das Mädchen bestätigt: “Ich berichtete dort, dass der Priester Peter R. sich nachts zu mir ins Bett gelegt und mich geküsst hat.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

By Travis Andersen GLOBE STAFF DECEMBER 05, 2015

Parishioners who have kept vigil at a shuttered Catholic church in Scituate for more than 11 years were dealt a potentially crushing blow this week, when the state’s highest court declined to review a lower court ruling ordering them to leave the property.

The group keeping a round-the-clock vigil at St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church said they were notified of the Supreme Judicial Court’s decision on Thursday.

“The faithful of St. Frances continue to ask the Cardinal to reconsider and show us the mercy that Pope Frances has indicated is the way of the Gospel,” the Friends of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini said in a statement on their Facebook page.

“At this juncture, The Friends of St. Frances are taking this decision under advisement with their attorney and reviewing as a community potential options and next steps.”

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MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Herald

Brian Dowling Saturday, December 05, 2015

Parishioners at St. Frances X. Cabrini Church in Scituate said they will decide tomorrow how to respond to losing their appeal to keep their vigil — considering every “peaceful” option from a hunger strike to an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We are going to take the good ideas and take the bad ideas,” said Jon Rogers, a spokesman for the parishioners who have occupied the church for 11 years. “Everything peaceful and prayerful is on the table.”

The parishioners have been asking Boston Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley to visit and understand their opposition to closing the church to replenish the Archdiocese of Boston’s coffers that were drained by the sex abuse scandal and the outflow of people from the pews.

The state Supreme Judicial Court rejected the group’s appeal to stay in the church yesterday.

“I’m a little angry,” Rogers said. “The archdiocese’s response has been to close the church and sell it off — in essence stealing the place of worship and selling it to the highest bidder.”

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CHILE
Puranoticia

[The Santiago Court of Appeals upheld the ruling that denied the disclosure of documents held by the Archbishop of Santiago.]

La Corte de Apelaciones de Santiago ratificó la sentencia que denegó la exhibición de documentos en poder del Arzobispado de Santiago, solicitada por las víctimas de Fernando Karadima que demandaron a la iglesia de la capital.

En fallo unánime, la séptima sala del tribunal de alzada –integrada por las ministras Javiera González, María Soledad Melo y Romy Rutherford– confirmó la decisión que denegó la solicitud, porque la exhibición de dichos documentos vulneraría el Código de Procedimiento Civil y la reserva que impone el Código Canónico.

James Hamilton, Juan Carlos Cruz y Andrés Murillo, las víctimas de Karadima, habían solicitado el acceso a estos documentos en el marco de la demanda que presentaron contra el Arzobispado de Santiago por el supuesto encubrimiento de los abusos sexuales. Por estos hechos, el Vaticano condenó a Karadima a una vida de retiro en oración y penitencia.

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BOSTON (MA)
The Pilot

Protection of minors

Sunday, the Feast of Christ the King, I celebrated Mass at the Cathedral, and then set out for Costa Rica as part of a group of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors that was asked to address the bishops of the six episcopal conferences of Central America, called SEDAC, who were holding their annual gathering.

As you know, the Holy Father has asked that every bishops conference establish clear policies and protocols on the issue of child protection, and the bishops were very eager to have us advise them on this. I was joined by Msgr. Robert Oliver and Father Juan Molina, director for the Church in Latin America of the USCCB. Bishop-elect Luis Manuel Ali Herrera was unable to be with us because of problems with his visa. Bishop-elect Ali was recently named auxiliary Bishop of Bogota and serves on the child protection commission.

In our meetings we spoke about the need for educational programs, the importance of cooperating with civil authorities and reporting crimes of clergy sexual abuse, as well as the importance of pastoral care for victims and those accused. We also spent a great deal of time addressing the importance of prevention, including screening procedures and the need for human formation the seminaries.

The bishops were very receptive to what we had to say and, as you might expect, they had many questions, which we tried to answer to the best of our abilities.

Members of the Pontifical Commission have addressed other bishops’ conferences, but I was very happy to be able to attend this one and to be part of this very important work. I see this task of helping bishops conferences develop strong policies and to implement them well as one of the most important functions of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

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SOUTH CAROLINA
WCNC

Dustin Wilson, WCNC December 4, 2015

ROCK HILL, S.C. — A Rock Hill pastor accused on inappropriately touching a young boy more than four years ago saw his day in court Friday in York County.

The prosecution and defense literally spent years preparing for a jury trial in the case of Johnny Cabe, but within the last few months a plea deal was struck.

Reverend Johnny Cabe stood before a judge and pleaded no contest to five counts of unlawfully practicing medicine. In 2010, while Pastor at Riverside Baptist Church, Cabe was accused of touching an 11-year-old boy’s private parts during a so-called medical exam. At that time Cabe faced charges of committing a lewd act with a child and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

“Mr. Cabe, in his mind, did not do anything wrong with the medical exam. It’s part of his religion that there’s healing, he does have some training,” said B.J. Barrowclough, Cabe’s Defense Attorney

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MAINE
CentralMaine.com

BY GREG KESICH

“Spotlight” is a movie about journalism. If you haven’t seen it, you should.

It tells the true story of how a team of editors and reporters at the Boston Globe connected “isolated incidents” of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests into a 2002 series of stories that exposed an institution more concerned with protecting its reputation than it was in protecting children.

The movie shows reporters who run down leads and pore over documents. Editors have vision and guts. Stories get banged out on deadline, presses roll and the world changes.

It had to be a movie about journalism, because movies are stories and stories have an ending.

It’s not that way for the survivors of child sex abuse, who can spend their whole lives trying to get back what had been stolen from them. The rest of us may get smarter and vow not to make the same mistakes, but their pain is forever.

So that’s why, I guess, when the credits filled the screen at the end of the movie, I found myself sobbing.

Back in 2002 and 2003, a big part of my life was interviewing survivors of sexual abuse by priests in Maine.

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INDIA
The Asian Age

A priest was arrested at a church in Shivaji Nagar on Wednesday evening for allegedly molesting a 13-year-old boy. He has been booked under Section 377 of IPC and molestation. He was produced at court and the police has been granted his custody till December 5.

A complaint was lodged against the priest on December 1 but the arrest was made on Wednesday as the police were waiting for reports of medical tests conducted on the minor. The accused has been identified as Father Johnson Lawrence (52), the priest-in-charge of Christ The King Church, at Shivaji Nagar. “On Wednesday, after all medical checkup reports of boy turned out to be positive, we arrested the priest,” a police official said.

“During interrogation, father Lawrence he told us that the molestation happened by mistake. He said that his intentions were not wrong and that he has not done any wrong to the child,” said an official from the Shivaji nagar police station. He further added, “The priest was insisting that the boy must have misunderstood his behaviour.”

On November 27, the alleged victim attended the church proceedings in the evening accompanied by his parents. After the prayer mass ended, the victim’s parents met other friends and left the church. The boy was left by himself inside the church.

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INDIA
The Free Press Journal

By FPJ Bureau | Dec 04, 2015

Mumbai : The Mumbai Police have arrested the church priest accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old boy. Father Johnson Lawrence, 52, is the priest of a prominent church in Govandi area of Shivaji Nagar.

The incident occurred on November 27, in the church premises after the boy and his parents had attended the prayer mass in the evening. The boy was alone in the church after talking to his friends. His parents had met up friends and left for home.

“He was arrested and booked under Sections 376 and 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and various sections of the Protection Of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act,” said Balasaheb Jadhav, Senior PI, Shivaji Nagar Police station. Police officers said they were investigating whether Lawrence has any previous cases against him. He is currently placed in police custody till December 5.

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INDIA
Times of India

Bella Jaisinghani,TNN | Dec 4, 2015

MUMBAI: Fr Lawrence Johnson (51), accused of abusing a teenage boy from his parish in Shivaji Nagar, could be disrobed or divested of priesthood if allegations against him are substantiated.

Fr Johnson was arrested for allegedly sodomising the 13-year-old at Christ the King Church in Govandi on November 27. The police have registered offences under Section 377 of the IPC and POCSO.

Senior inspector Balasaheb Jadhav told TOI that a medical examination had revealed grievous injuries to the victim’s private parts. “We have also sent fluid samples for chemical tests but those reports could become available after weeks. Such cases from all parts of the state are examined in sequential order,” he said.

Another officer said Fr Johnson did not appear remorseful. He said, “Even as the boy and his mother were sobbing, Fr Johnson shrugged and said, what is the need to arrest me?”

The case’s outcome will be the benchmark for how the Church deals with abuse. Fr Nigel Barrett, spokesman of the Archdiocese, indicated that they have a zero-tolerance policy in such matters. The Church has appointed a three-member committee to conduct an internal investigation.

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AUSTRALIA
The Saturday Paper

MARTIN MCKENZIE-MURRAY

There is a sound you’ll hear often in these hearings. It follows a victim’s swearing in – a secular affirmation, never on a Bible – and precedes their reading of a prepared statement on their abuse. The sound is a quick inhalation of breath, followed by an anguished release. It is swift but unmistakable. It is the sound of emotional preparation, a quick steadying of the nerves.

It preceded BTU’s statement this week, as it did BTO’s. Before BTO began on Monday, he tearfully told the hearing he was ashamed to speak his own name. His name was spoilt, he felt: sullied by the abuse he experienced as a boy at the hands of Father Wilfred Baker. It is sorrowful testament to the suggestibility of children, the way others’ behaviour becomes integrated with a child’s psyche, that today he still blames himself.

It was the 1970s, and BTO was attending Catholic schools in Gladstone Park, a suburb of Melbourne. He was a prepubescent boy when Baker began showing a special interest in him. BTO was flattered. “When I first met Father Baker,” BTO said this week, “I found him
to be very engaging. He took time to listen to me and gave me attention that I felt I was not getting at home. I’d
only recently moved to Gladstone Park and really didn’t 
know many people. I felt special around him and found
 Father Baker and the church a bit of a refuge.”

It is an unmistakable pattern of these hearings – abusers exploiting the nascent egos of their victims; cultivating their need for belonging, guidance and identity. Baker made BTO an altar boy, and he relished the role. It gave him a sense of prestige, membership in a warm and noble club – a community given to the advancement of souls. This was something on which he could base a life. Meanwhile, Baker was not only grooming BTO, but also ingratiating himself with his family – another pattern. Baker would have dinner at BTO’s home at least once a week.

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PHILIPPINES
Philippine Daily Inquirer

According press reports in the United States, in May 2007, the Society of Jesus agreed to a tentative payout of $16 million to settle claims that one of its priests, Fr. Mark Falvey, sexually abused at least nine children in Los Angeles from 1959 to 1975.

Accusations against Falvey began in 2002. He was never charged with a crime.

Ordained in 1928, Falvey was sent to Asia in 1933. The reports did not say when he came to the Philippines.

Falvey was assigned as a teacher at St. Ignatius High School (did not indicate in what country) from 1949 to 1950.

He was assigned to St. Rita’s Church in Balingasag, Misamis Oriental province, in 1952.

He returned to Los Angeles in 1959 and was assigned as assistant pastor at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Hollywood until his death in 1975. The report did not say if Falvey was assigned at the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Davao.

In May 2008, the Diocese of Sacramento paid $100,000 settlement to a person allegedly raped and molested by Mark’s brother, Fr. Arthur Falvey

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PHILIPPINES
Manila Times

December 5, 2015

by JEFRY TUPAS, CORRESPONDENT

Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday night named the Jesuit priest who allegedly abused him and several others while he was a student at the Ateneo de Davao University.

Duterte said a certain Fr. Mark Falvey molested him when he was between 14 and 15 years old.

“It happened during our generation, two years ahead of us and two years following us,” he added.

“It cost him some P25 million because other victims filed a case, it was a case of fondling–you know what–he did during confession, that’s how we lost our innocence early,” Duterte said.

As a young boy, according to him, he was afraid, thus, no case was filed against the priest.
“It was a sort of sexual awakening for each of us,” he said. “We realized quite early that ganun talaga ang buhay [life was like that], “Paano magreklamo [How to complain].”

But he said he still respects some members of the Catholic clergy, particularly Archbishop Oscar Cruz. …

Who is Fr. Falvey?

A 2007 report of the Los Angeles Times said the Jesuit order paid $16 million to settle claims against a certain Mark Falvey who allegedly sexually abused nine children over 16 years ending in 1975.

“Mark Falvey was accused of molesting four girls and five boys between 1959 and 1975 at Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic Church in Hollywood. Falvey died 31 years ago (1976) and “was never charged with a crime,” the LA Times report read.

According to lawyer Raymond Boucher, one of Falvey’s victims was an 8-year-old girl who tried to commit suicide.

“This guy brought a lifetime of misery to a group of young children. They’ll never get over it,” Boucher said.

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PHILIPPINES
Philippine Daily Inquirer

By: Germelina Lacorte
@inquirerdotnet
Inquirer Mindanao
December 5th, 2015

DAVAO CITY, Philippines—Mayor Rodrigo Duterte has named the priest who allegedly molested him and several other high school boys when he was a teenager studying at the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Davao University (AdDU) here.

Duterte said the sexual abuser was the late Fr. Mark Falvey, SJ, one of the Jesuit priests at AdDU, and that the abuse happened once when he was a high school freshman in 1956. And he spelled out the name of the American Jesuit priest.

“It happened during our generation, two years ahead of us and two years following us,” Duterte told reporters here late Thursday.

“It was a case of fondling, you know, during confession, that’s how we lost our innocence early,” he said.

“It was a sort of sexual awakening for each of us. We realized quite early that ganun talaga ang buhay (life is really like that),” Duterte said.

He said Falvey was later involved in a payout amounting to P25 million in the United States after a number of his victims filed a case against him.

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UNITED STATES
Church Militant

By Dr. Monica M. Miller

“If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one.” This dialogue sums up the primary lesson of the film “Spotlight,” currently playing in a major nationwide release. The movie, “based on actual events” and starring Michael Keaton, chronicles a Boston Globe four-person investigative team’s discovery of Cdl. Bernard Law and the archdiocese of Boston’s cover-up of the priest sexual abuse scandal. The title of the film, taken from the name of the investigative team, of course does double-duty as a reference to a painful journalistic laser beam cast on the priest sexual abuse scandal when the Globe story broke on January 6, 2002.

“It takes a village to abuse a child” refers to the manner in which priest sexual abuse of young boys was mishandled, ignored and covered up by clergy, lawyers, school principals, teachers, public relations personnel — and even family members of the victims themselves. In other words, as the Globe editor Marty Baron, played by Liev Schreiber, opined, “This isn’t about one bishop; it’s about the system itself.” The Spotlight team is committed to exposing a broken, dysfunctional ecclesiastical system that, instead of defrocking offending priests or turning them over to law enforcement, often simply reassigned them while settling victims’ cases out of court in confidentiality agreements.

If you are a devout Catholic, as is this film reviewer, and believe that no matter what, the gates of Hell shall not prevail against Christ’s Church — sitting though “Spotlight” may be the longest two hours you’ll ever spend in a theatre. You will not be able to exit the multiplex reassured that this is a horrible movie, a hastily thrown-together thoughtless Hollywood hatchet job produced by people who obviously loathe the Catholic Church and are just out to get Her. Instead this is an intelligent, well-written, acted and directed movie. Due to the subject matter, Catholic filmgoers cannot help but feel “Spotlight” is rubbing their noses into one of the most demoralizing, pathetic and despicable episodes in the history of Catholicism.

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