ABUSE TRACKER

An Argentine bishop tapped by Pope Francis this month to lead one of the Vatican‘s most powerful departments admitted to making mistakes in responding to accusations that a priest in his diocese had sexually abused children.

Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez, the archbishop of La Plata, Argentina, told the Associated Press that he would have handled the case of Eduardo Lorenzo very differently today than he did in 2019. Lorenzo was accused of sexual abuse by several children and was found dead of an apparent suicide after an Argentine judge ordered his arrest in December 2019. Critics have accused Fernandez of not believing the allegations against Lorenzo.

“Today I would certainly act very differently and certainly my performance was insufficient,” Fernandez told the outlet about his handling of the accusations against Lorenzo.

Fernandez’s handling of the case has drawn renewed scrutiny since…

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In explaining the decision of the Archdiocese of Baltimore to add 42 names to the list of persons accused of sexual abuse, a spokesperson for the archdiocese stated that the decision builds on the commitment to “transparency, healing and to ridding the Church of the scourge of sexual abuse” (”Baltimore’s Catholic archdiocese adds 42 names to list of staff credibly accused of sexual abuse,” June 30).

Words alone will not rid the Catholic Church of the scourge of sexual abuse. Childhood sexual abuse often ruins lives well into adulthood. In response to this fact the Maryland General Assembly enacted and Gov. Wes Moore signed the Child Victims Act of 2023, waiving the statute of limitations which for many years had prevented abuse cases from being heard in court. The act passed the General Assembly with overwhelming votes (45-2 in the Senate and 132-2 in the House of…

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Former Catholic Diocese of Knoxville Staff members, Marcy Meldahl and Dave Wells, joined Hallerin to discuss Bishop Stika’s tenure and resignation.

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[A slightly more expansive version of the Associated Press article blogged yesterday in Abuse Tracker.]

El arzobispo argentino Víctor Manuel Fernández, elegido por el papa Francisco para dirigir una poderosa oficina del Vaticano, admitió el domingo que cometió errores en la forma en que manejó en 2019 el caso de un sacerdote denunciado por abusos sexuales a menores, lo que todavía le acarrea críticas por supuestamente haber protegido al clérigo.

“Hoy ciertamente yo actuaría muy distinto y ciertamente mi actuación fue insuficiente… Lo tengo absolutamente claro; hoy tengo más experiencia y tengo otros procedimientos”, dijo Fernández a The Associated Press durante una entrevista realizada luego de celebrar una misa en la ciudad de La Plata, a unos 70 kilómetros al sur de Buenos Aires.

El papa Francisco nombró el 1 de julio a Fernández para dirigir a partir de septiembre el Dicasterio de la Santa Sede para la Doctrina de…

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Around 2011, the family of a Pensacola middle-school student, who was struggling with bullying, moved the boy to a new school hoping the change would help.

The boy’s mother enrolled him at St. John the Evangelist, a private Catholic school in Pensacola. She shared with the pastor there, then prominent Pensacola priest Monsignor James Flaherty, how much her son had suffered and how he needed support.

“He grew up attending other Catholic schools and was just horrifically bullied,” the boy’s mother told the News Journal. “I brought him to St. John and thought I was ‘saving his life,’ only to find out I had shared the bullying he went through, and I think that put a target on him from the beginning.”

Twelve years later, the family is ready to talk, and to share their allegations against the man they thought was their protector with the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office.

…

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• Exclusive: Father Reginald Dunkling, 63, was seen as an idol by 17-year-old
• But the Roman Catholic priest betrayed him and escape justice for over 30 years 

A priest who escaped justice for three decades is facing jail after being convicted of abusing a theatre star, 17, who idolised him during a sleepover in his presbytery.

Father Reginald Dunkling, 63, struck after inviting the teenager to stay overnight at Our Lady of Muswell in north London in the early nineties.

Dunkling – known as Father Reg – was so trusted he had already been allowed to take the boy to Tenerife with another male friend.

But Wood Green Crown Court was told this week that sometime between April 1992 and April 1993 he indecently assaulted him.

During a sleepover after taking him to a concert in Wembley, Dunkling lay on the bedroom floor in his home and forced his hand under his covers, molesting…

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Dioceses faced with abuse allegations are declaring bankruptcy

When Joey Piscitelli was 14, he was sent to Silesian High School in Richmond, California. A self-described “runt”, he weighed 70 pounds and looked about 10. “I think that’s why I was picked,” he told me. He was befriended by the school’s vice principal, Father Stephen Wheelan, before being subjected to years of abuse. It began with priests masturbating in front of him and ended in violent rape. He is aware of at least four other victims of the paedophile ring at his school who have since committed suicide.

Piscitelli is now an advocate for other victims, having won $600,000 in compensation from a 2006 jury trial against the Diocese of Oakland — which last month declared bankruptcy, after receiving more than 330 legal claims of sexual abuse. It’s part of a growing trend in the Catholic Church of the United States, which…

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LA PLATA, Argentina (AP) — Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández, chosen by Pope Francis to head the Vatican office that ensures doctrinal orthodoxy, conceded Sunday he made mistakes in handling a 2019 case of a priest accused of sexual abuse of minors.

The case has drawn allegations by critics that Fernández tried to protect the priest, a charge that he has denied.

“Today I would certainly act very differently and certainly my performance was insufficient,” he told The Associated Press during an interview after celebrating Mass in La Plata, about 70 kilometers (40 miles) south of Buenos Aires.

Pope Francis appointed Fernández on July 1 to head the Holy See’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which guarantees doctrinal orthodoxy and one of whose areas involves handling sexual abuse allegations brought against clergy. He was also named a cardinal Sunday…

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[Please note: Since published in early July 2023, this timeline has been updated and lightly revised. To see the updated version, click here.]

On July 1, 2023, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis has chosen Archbishop Victor Fernández, the head of the Argentine archdiocese of La Plata since 2018, to lead the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF). As DDF prefect, Fernández will have authority over the office that processes allegations of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy worldwide.

The archbishop’s own handling of clergy sex abuse allegations is therefore highly relevant. The best known case during his five-year tenure in La Plata was against an influential priest named Eduardo Lorenzo.

We present the following timeline as a resource for those seeking a factual understanding of the archbishop’s handling of those allegations. See also our statement of 7/1/2023: Pope chooses archbishop with troubling record on abuse…

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Dioceses faced with abuse allegations are declaring bankruptcy

When Joey Piscitelli was 14, he was sent to Silesian High School in Richmond, California. A self-described “runt”, he weighed 70 pounds and looked about 10. “I think that’s why I was picked,” he told me. He was befriended by the school’s vice principal, Father Stephen Wheelan, before being subjected to years of abuse. It began with priests masturbating in front of him and ended in violent rape. He is aware of at least four other victims of the paedophile ring at his school who have since committed suicide.

Piscitelli is now an advocate for other victims, having won $600,000 in compensation from a 2006 jury trial against the Diocese of Oakland — which last month declared bankruptcy, after receiving more than 330 legal claims of sexual abuse. It’s part of a growing trend in the Catholic Church of the United States,…

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• Establishment of the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) had ‘gone wrong’
• ISB was intended to hold the church to account following a series of scandals 

The Archbishop of York last night admitted the Church of England had failed in its attempt to set up a clergy abuse watchdog.

The Most Rev Stephen Cottrell said the establishment of the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB), intended to hold the church to account following a series of scandals, had ‘gone wrong’.

And he revealed the church has had to refer the debacle to the Charity Commission. It came after the church sacked the three members of the ISB following claims it had tried to obstruct their work, including refusing to share data with them.

The archbishop told a meeting of its governing body, the General Synod, yesterday: ‘We can no longer think that we can deliver these things ourselves. 

‘Not only do we need independent…

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The founder of Peru’s Pro-Family Pro-Life Movement has been accused of systematically abusing his daughter. She gave birth in 2003, when she was only 13-years-old

Since 1989 – when he founded the Pro-Family and Pro-Life Movement, at the young age of 22 – José Linares Cerón has claimed to lead an exemplary life. This evangelical pastor – a self-proclaimed defender of children – used to look forward to Peruvian Family Day, which is celebrated every second Sunday in September, to give advice on how to guide children with love and wisdom. “The child begins to understand who they are through the relationship with their parents,” he said.

Recently, one of his daughters – now 33-years-old – denounced what she had kept silent for years: that Linares Cerón systematically raped her and, as a result of that abuse, she gave birth at the age of 13, back in 2003.

“I…

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It was hard to breathe in southern New England this past weekend – again – after smoke from the ongoing wildfires in northern Quebec wended their way to us here. There are fires burning all across Canada this summer, in fact, making this already the worst season for them on record.

Early in June, when the smoke first blew down from the great north, it got so bad that one couldn’t see the waters of the Hudson from the George Washington Bridge, let alone New York or Fort Lee in New Jersey on either side of the span.

I heard on the radio as I waited with my family to get out of the municipal beach parking lot on Saturday night after the local fireworks display that the air quality in our neck of the woods was worse than in New York this time. There’s been lots of talk about…

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The one-hundred Catholic bishops forced to resign, a measure of how hard is for the victims to get justice from the Catholic Church. English Edition One hint of sexual abuse are the “early” resignations of Catholic bishops, since a Dutch serving in Zambia did it in 1958.

Religion and public life: Lack of official information regarding the resignation of Catholic bishops feeds a perverse “guessing game” eroding the trust in the Church.

Countries with better performing systems of justice and more independent media, such as Canada, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and France provide a better context for victims to achieve a measure of relief, a measure of justice.

It has been a long process. Major changes in key principles of civil law have happened in such countries. We have witnessed the reports coming from Grand Juries in Pennsylvania and reports from the General Attorney…

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Since April 4, The Baltimore Sun has continued its hyper-focus on Catholic Church abuses in the Archdiocese of Baltimore (”Gallagher family lawsuit against Baltimore archdiocese aims to shift burden from abuse onto Catholic Church,” July 5). The Sun clearly doesn’t know many active Roman Catholics. If it did, it would know that their own disgust with the abuses has driven many to the point of leaving the church entirely.

The Sun would know that the scandal has made Catholic youth retreats or children’s gospel readings ancient history virtually overnight. The Sun would know about priest shortages, shrinking congregations and church closures. Worst of all, The Sun would know about the gathering schism in the church — that arch-conservative Catholics (and certainly non-Catholic evangelical Christians) are using the child abuses to bolster their more generalized homophobia and taking it straight to the voting booth.

Let us not be…

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Pope Francis on July 9 named 21 new cardinals, including the Vatican’s ambassador to the U.S., Archbishop Christophe Pierre; American-born Archbishop Robert Prevost, who oversees the appointments of Catholic bishops worldwide; and the new head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández. 

The pope made the announcement at the end of his weekly Sunday Angelus prayer from a window in the Apostolic Palace overlooking St. Peter’s Square. Francis said he would install the new cardinals during a consistory at the Vatican on Sept. 30, saying these new cardinals represent the universality of the global church and the “inseparable link” between the pope and dioceses around the world. 

Of the 21 new cardinals, 18 are under the age of 80 and would be eligible to vote in a papal conclave. As of Sept. 30, with the new additions, the total number of eligible cardinal electors will be 137.

Among…

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El caso tiene dos denuncias en la Arquidiócesis de Medellín y una en Fiscalía, pero el sacerdote continuaría oficiando misas y confesando personas.

Después de casi 20 años y tras la poca gestión, que según denuncia ha recibido su caso por parte de las autoridades, Natalia Restrepo decidió hacer una denuncia pública de su caso de abuso sexual por parte de un sacerdote reconocido en Envigado, al que la mujer habría denunciado tanto en la Arquidiócesis de Medellín como en la Fiscalía.

Sin embargo, según su relato, el caso no ha avanzado, debido a la cantidad de años que han pasado desde que ocurrieron los hechos. Ella quiso hacer ahora una denuncia pública para contar su historia.

Los hechos sucedieron, según lo que ha narrado, en el 2004, cuando ella vivía en Envigado y asistía, junto a su abuela, a la iglesia Santa Gertrudis, la principal de este municipio de Antioquia.

Natalia contó su testimonio…

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Natalia Restrepo denunció haber sido víctima de abuso sexual por parte de un sacerdote, cuando ella era monaguilla y menor de edad en Envigado. BBC Mundo cuenta su historia

Me llamo Natalia, tengo 32 años y acabo de emprender el viaje más importante de mi vida.

Volví a Medellín con mi pequeña hija, dos maletas y el firme propósito de romper mi silencio, de denunciar, de nuevo y por todos los medios posibles, al sacerdote que me violó y me obligó a abortar en 2004, cuando yo tenía 14 años.

Este es un viaje a mi pasado, a la historia más dolorosa que he vivido y que ni siquiera mi familia conoce a profundidad.

_____________________________________________________________________________

El 25 de agosto de 2022 estalló el mayor escándalo de abuso sexual a menores de edad en la Iglesia católica que haya golpeado a Medellín, y uno de los más recientes que se ha…

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Child consultation centers identified 65 cases of child abuse related to religious faith from fiscal 2017 to fiscal 2022, a recent survey by The Yomiuri Shimbun has discovered.

Problems regarding the children of religious followers, or shukyo nisei (second-generation followers), surfaced following the fatal shooting of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in July last year. The cases identified by child consultation centers may only be the tip of the iceberg — there has been at least one private-sector survey in which about 1,000 people said they were forced to engage in religious activities during childhood.

One expert stressed the need to build a framework to help people around such children be aware when something unusual is happening.

The Yomiuri Shimbun conducted the survey in May and June on 78 local governments that have child consultation centers, including those of prefectures, ordinance-designated cities and special areas. It tallied the reports and…

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The U.S. District Court for New Mexico has set a September trial date for a former Santa Fe priest facing federal charges of sex abuse of a minor. 

Daniel Balizan was a pastor at Santa Maria de la Paz Catholic Community in Santa Fe for a decade before he was removed by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe in 2022. He is accused of enticement of a minor with the intent to engage in sexual activity during a relationship prosecutors say he had with a 15-year-old boy in 2012, according to a previous report in The New Mexican. 

The federal court in Albuquerque issued a notice Tuesday setting a Sept. 11 trial date in the case.

Balizan was arrested June 29 in Springer. He will be allowed to await trial at his home there on house arrest with electronic monitoring, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laura Fashing ruled Monday.

Balizan, who has…

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Man claims he was abused over 10-year period by Rene Touchette, priest also named in May lawsuit

WARNING: The following story contains distressing details about sexual abuse of a child.

A man who says a Catholic priest in southern Manitoba sexually abused him over a 10-year period when he was a child is suing the Archdiocese of St. Boniface, becoming the second person to take the religious organization to court over abuse allegations in recent months.

The man, now 59, claims that the priest, Rene Touchette, sexually assaulted him multiple times while he was a member of the Notre-Dame-de-la-Nativité parish in Somerset, the lawsuit says. The abuse began in 1972, when the plaintiff was eight years old, and continued until 1982, the suit alleges.

Touchette, who died in 2012 at the age of 71, is one of two priests named in a separate lawsuit filed in May of this year, which also…

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YouTube has banned channels belonging to Philippine megachurch pastor Apollo Quiboloy, who the United States sanctioned for alleged sex abuse and is an ally of former President Rodrigo Duterte.

The online video sharing platform took down the channels of Quiboloy’s Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC) and one of its programs as well as of Sonshine Media Network International (SMNI), a television channel he also owns, YouTube’s parent company Google confirmed on Friday. 

“Google is committed to compliance with applicable U.S. sanctions and enforces related policies under its Terms of Service,” Google said in a statement to reporters. “After review and consistent with these policies, we terminated the Laban Kasama ang Bayan, KOJC and SMNI YouTube channels.” 

SMNI’s YouTube channel now shows a tag that says “This account has been terminated for a violation of YouTube’s Terms of Service.” 

The Laban Kasama ang Bayan (Fight with the people) program has accused…

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A member of what investigators have called a child pornography ring in Vandalia filed a jury trial waiver Friday morning and is now scheduled to change his plea in the case later this month.

Former Patoka pastor Ferrell Kissiar is the third person charged in Fayette County Court as playing a role in the pornography ring, while the other two members, Amber and Andrew Wehrle have already pleaded guilty and been sentenced to 13 years and 26 years in prison respectively.

Kissiar was arrested and charged in 2021 with two Class X felonies for possession of child pornography depicting a child under the age of 13.

The three cases were initially joined together and were slated to be tried together by a Fayette County jury in June, but the Wehrles pleaded guilty and Kissiar pushed forward toward a jury trial.

He was advised at a June court hearing that he had until July 5 to…

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Justice for victims of child sex abuse in Pennsylvania remains elusive. Budget agreements are being worked through in the state’s capital, but none mentions window legislation for survivors.  A constitutional amendment, as well as a stand-alone bill, remain in the senate chambers after both HB1 and HB2 passed overwhelmingly this spring in the State House of Representatives.

Sadly, it appears that victim-survivors will have to wait until the Senate returns in September to see if either of the bills makes it onto the voting calendar. As far as we can tell, the constitutional amendment will not make an administrative deadline for it to appear on the November ballot for voters.

We’re also disappointed in Governor Shapiro who made ‘justice for survivors’ part of his campaign platform and promised to ‘get this done.’ In our opinion, providing a pathway to justice for survivors of…

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Huge lawsuits and the inability to renew insurance policies are among the potential dangers for hundreds of California Southern Baptist churches that apparently have yet to comply with a state law aimed at preventing child sexual abuse.

“Your nightmare scenario is [that] you fail to comply,” said Kimberlee Norris, an attorney and co-founder of MinistrySafe, an organization that helps churches prevent sexual abuse. “This law has created a standard of care for child protection in your state. If a child is sexually abused in your program” and sues, “you’re kind of a sitting duck. These [types of cases] are the largest settlements and judgments that exist in the United States today.”

The result can be “mission-killing” for a church, she said.

The law at issue, California Assembly Bill 506, is set to take full effect Jan. 1. That deadline was pushed back by a companion bill, AB 2669, adopted last…

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Five years ago, charismatic teacher Jonathan Welton’s misconduct caught up to him, imploding his multinational ministry. Now, Welton is staging a ministry comeback, backed by prominent Christian author Danny Silk, who claims Welton is “completely transformed.”

But the women who say Welton groomed and abused them, and some of his former board members, say Welton hasn’t changed or apologized. And they fear he’ll continue his predatory ways.

Welton is best known for his books and his now-defunct online teaching ministry, Welton Academy. The ministry crashed in 2018 after several women alleged Welton had a pattern of unwanted physical advances, sexually explicit remarks in texts and social posts, and sexual misconduct.

Renee Bosco, former chief operations officer at Welton Academy, told The Roys Report (TRR) that Welton suggested via text that she repay a debt to him by “giving blowjobs.” Another former staff member, Dawn Weaver, claimed in an article posted…

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Catholics in Lithuania have urged their bishops to follow other countries’ example in setting up an inquiry on sexual abuse in the church in the wake of scandals that shocked the Catholic community.

“The faithful have numerous unanswered questions, and public trust in the institutional church is diminishing,” they said in an open letter. “Recent experience by local churches across Europe and the world shows the most productive way to reunite the Catholic community, reclaim society’s trust and heal wounds is through investigations by an independent commission of experts. Only with the revelation of past events, acknowledgement of guilt, compensation of victims and an examination of conscience is a new path forward made possible.”

The letter, signed by over 150 Catholic professors, school directors, media workers and public figures, as well as priests and nuns, said recent abuse cases from Vilnius and other dioceses had been confirmed by court hearings….

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The Vatican was concerned about his lack of theological orthodoxy but the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith says ‘everything was resolved serenely.’

Cardinal Gerhard Müller has confirmed the Vatican’s doctrinal office had a file containing theological concerns about Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández, whom Pope Francis last week appointed to head that office. 

The file, also confirmed by a second senior Church source, dates to when Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires appointed then-Father Fernández rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina in 2009. 

In July 5 comments to the Register, Archbishop Fernández downplayed the file’s contents, saying the Vatican’s concerns related to “accusations” based on his writings “were not of great weight,” and that after an exchange of letters with Vatican officials in which he “clarified” his “true thinking, everything was resolved serenely.” 

On July 1, Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Fernández, a close papal…

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A Pennsylvania grand jury investigating child sexual abuse in the Jehovah’s Witnesses community has charged five more people with raping or molesting children as young as 4, the latest developments in an ongoing probe that has identified 14 suspects.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry, at a Friday news conference, said that while the misconduct dates back years or even decades, “the trauma endures for these victims.”

Henry did not address the church’s handling of complaints, but said the investigation would continue.

Critics say that Jehovah’s Witnesses elders have treated child sexual abuse as a sin rather than a crime, documenting complaints in internal files but not reporting them to authorities. And they say the church often required a second witness to substantiate a complaint, a standard that can be impossible to meet when perpetrators often isolate their victims.

Mark Haugh of York Haven, Pa., a former elder who…

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A Pennsylvania grand jury investigating child sexual abuse in the Jehovah’s Witnesses community has charged another five people with raping or molesting children as young as 4, the latest developments in an ongoing probe that has identified 14 suspects.

In the allegations that were made public on Friday, Attorney General Michelle Henry said that the men had groomed or obtained access to the kids using the church, sometimes by inviting them into the kid’s family’s house. One woman said that between the ages of 7 and 12, a church member who was 18 at the time of the assaults raped her at least 50 times. Related charges have appeared against other perpetrators.

We strongly suspect that the named defendants have other victims, some of whom the statute of limitations likely expired. Just think about how many victims could have been spared if the courtroom doors…

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A man who alleges he was repeatedly sexually assaulted as a child by a Catholic priest in rural Manitoba and Winnipeg is taking the Archdiocese of St. Boniface to court — the second such legal action over abuse claims in as many months.

The man, 59, claims the alleged abuse began in 1972, when he was eight years old.

In the court documents, the man says the violations lasted until 1982, while he was a member of the Notre-Dame-de-la-Nativité in Somerset, a small community about 150 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg.

The man, who the Free Press is not naming due to the nature of the allegations, claims the sexual violations came at the hands of the church’s priest, Rene Touchette.

Touchette, who died in 2012 at 71, was charged with sexual assault and battery in Somerset in 1992, and convicted the next year. He was sentenced to 30 months, which was later…

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Land was owned by brother of sex offender who was sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for sexually abusing underage girls

A tract of land in Minnesota with links to a polygamous religious sect once led by Warren Jeffs has been put up for sale by the convicted sex offender’s brother

Residents near the town of Grand Marais had feared the remote 40-acre plot of forest land, bought by Seth Jeffs in 2018, would be used to establish a new compound for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS).

Warren Jeffs led the Utah-based sect until he was sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for sexually abusing underage girls among his dozens of child brides.

The land is for sale at $189,000, according to the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, from a Montana-registered entity Emerald Industries LLC, linked to Seth Jeffs.

The Associated Press reported…

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Twenty years before he died, Francis “Frank” X. Gallagher Jr. wrote a letter to a Catholic bishop seeking information about Father Mark Haight, saying Haight abused him as a 14-year-old.

Had Haight had interactions with other children in Baltimore? Had the archdiocese made any effort to find other victims? What about assistance for other victims? Was there anything in Haight’s record to indicate a potential for abuse?

“One of my many regrets is that it took me 28 years to come forward,” Gallagher wrote in April 2002. “The thought that my silence on this matter could have contributed to others being abused is something that I will have to live with forever.”

What followed was largely silence and apathy on behalf of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, according to a wrongful death lawsuit Gallagher’s children filed June 27 against the archdiocese, the seminary where…

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The list of priests and brothers accused of child sexual abuse grew by dozens of names, the Archdiocese of Baltimore announced on Friday.

The archdiocese voluntarily began publishing its online list in 2002. The addition of the names comes after Baltimore Archbishop William Lori made a recommendation to the Independent Review Board and is an acknowledgment of the Maryland attorney general’s recommendation that the archdiocese expand the list.

“Today’s transparency and culture of child protection in the church certainly does not erase the untold trauma, deep pain and lasting anguish of those who have been impacted by child sexual abuse,” Lori said in a statement.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office spent years on an investigation before it released a report in April that paints a damning picture of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, which is the oldest Catholic diocese in the country and spans much of Maryland. The report…

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Vast wounds remain. This was the conclusion of a consultation on the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church held at the University of Notre Dame in 2021. A day’s conversation involved theologians, therapists, church leaders, and lawyers, including several survivors of abuse and many activists in church affairs.

I had not necessarily expected this conclusion. The idea for the consultation was that of Dr. Katharina Westerhorstmann, a German theologian who has written and spoken on sex abuse in the church and was on leave at Notre Dame in 2019 when our president, Fr. John Jenkins, announced a grant competition for faculty to develop ideas for addressing the crisis in the aftermath of the revelations surrounding former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Dr. Westerhorstmann approached me because of my work as a scholar and activist in the efforts of nations to address the wounds of dictatorship, civil war, and genocide: South Africa and Germany,…

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Fighting to prevent abuse, they successfully lobbied for a new policy requiring background checks and other safeguarding measures.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints repeatedly has proclaimed that it has zero tolerance for abuse of any kind. That’s all well and good, some British Latter-day Saints reasoned, but not enough.

They wanted their faith to do more, to undertake concrete reforms that could help prevent abuse from happening in the first place. So they launched a widespread public and private lobbying effort. They surveyed members. They wrote to their church leaders. They contacted national lawmakers.

All that praying, pleading and prodding finally paid off when, starting this month, the church adopted a new policy mandating, among other measures, background checks for any church volunteers in the United Kingdom who work with children, youths or vulnerable adults.

On this week’s show, Sara Delaney and Jane Christie, who…

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The Order of the Pious Schools, commonly known as the “Piarists”, admit that one of its Spanish priests abused “a significant number” of Senegalese youths between 1980-2005

The Holy See dismissed Manel Sales Castellà, a former member of the Order of the Pious Schools, from the clerical state in 2019.

But leaders of the 17th century Catholic teaching order known as the “Piarists” waited until this past June to acknowledge that, for the past 18 years, they have been covering up acts of sexual abuse that Sales committed against “a significant number” of youths in Senegal. The assaults took place while the Spaniard was working in the West African country between 1980 and 2005, when the first cases were reported to Piarist officials.

In a statement issued last June with the Commission for the Defense of Minors Sexually Abused in the Church in Senegal – made up, among others, Spaniards…

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The state Supreme Court ruled last week that a 2019 law extending the deadline to sue over childhood sexual abuse doesn’t retroactively apply to people or institutions who may have enabled child sexual abuse, but didn’t actually commit it.

The decision comes in the cases of three men who said they were abused by priests in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence when they were boys. The justices upheld a lower court’s dismissal of the men’s lawsuits against the diocese and its leaders, finding that the old deadline — which already ran out — applied to their suits.

In 2019, the state extended the deadline to sue over childhood sexual abuse from seven years to 35 years after a victim’s 18th birthday. Victims could use that new deadline to file lawsuits even if the deadline had run out under older versions of the law, but only if they were suing…

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It would be terrible if a focus on the Catholic Church and other religious schools meant that the victim survivors in public schools were not given the opportunity to share their story publicly and, in doing so, encourage others to come forward.

Along with an estimated 60 million others around the world, I was an avid listener of The Australian’s Teacher’s Pet podcast. Released in 2018, the investigative-journalism-meets-true-crime serial led to the conviction of former rugby league player and high school teacher, Christopher Dawson, for the murder of his first wife, Lynette. The motive for the murder, the court found, was Mr Dawson’s desire to have unfettered access to his young lover, one of his students to whom the court gave the pseudonym AB. AB moved into the family home just two days after Lynette’s “disappearance” and married Mr Dawson shortly after.

Last week, Mr Dawson was convicted of carnal knowledge of…

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A federal judge who will decide if a sealed deposition linked to a former priest accused of child abuse will stay on the case.

Judge Jane Triche Milazzo is the federal judge overseeing a case where former New Orleans priest Lawrence Hecker is accused of sex abuse.

Attorneys involved in the case asked Milazzo to recuse herself after she voiced that she made donations to the Archdiocese of New Orleans, who is trying to keep Hecker’s deposition on the child sex abuse allegations sealed.

Court documents show Milazzo will stay on the case.

Last month WDSU spoke with Hecker, who did not comment on the abuse allegations but did say there was “good and bad in everybody.”

Attorneys for Hecker’s accusers are still pushing for his deposition to be made public. Milazzo has not ruled yet on that decision.

The Archdiocese of New Orleans says it is protected after they…

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The lawsuit, brought by a woman from Haida Gwaii, seeks damages against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver and Father James Comey, who worked in parishes in Vancouver, Delta, Langley, Richmond and North Vancouver.

A Haida Gwaii woman has filed a lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver (RCAV) alleging a priest groomed and sexually abused her while she sought help in Vancouver

In a B.C. Supreme Court notice of civil claim filed July 4, the woman – known only as A.B. – names as defendants Father James Comey, the archdiocese, now-Bishop Gary Franken, who served as a Vancouver priest and RCAV vicar general, and former Vancouver archbishop Adam Exner.

The claim said Comey was ordained as a priest in 1970 and, between 1972 and 2015, worked for the archdiocese in parishes in Vancouver, Delta, Langley, Richmond and North Vancouver.

“Comey’s priesthood represented to the…

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As the newest Vatican appointment, Archbishop Fernández has faced significant criticism, including over the 1995 work, which is no longer included in most official lists of the archbishop’s publications.

Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández has responded to criticism from what he termed “anti-Francis groups” of a book he wrote as a priest in the mid-1990s called Heal Me With Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing.

Writing on his personal Facebook page on July 3, Archbishop Fernández said the book was written as “a pastor’s catechesis for teens” and “not a theology book.”

Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Fernández, the archbishop of La Plata, Argentina, the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. The theologian will take up the Vatican post in September.

As Pope Francis’ newest Vatican appointment, Archbishop Fernández has faced significant criticism, including over the 1995 work, which is no longer included in most official lists of the…

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Pope Francis has appointed Archbishop Victor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández to succeed Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer as the head of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, its central doctrinal office. In the days since his appointment was announced on July 1, conversations and debates have swirled about Archbishop Fernández’s mandate, as described by Pope Francis in a letter, and about controversies from his past.

Archbishop Fernández is currently the archbishop of La Plata, Argentina, a city just outside the pope’s hometown of Buenos Aires. He has worked closely with the pope over the years and was credited as a “ghostwriter” for Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”). Turning 61 years old this month and likely being made a cardinal later this year, Archbishop Fernández appears to be one of Francis’ “legacy appointments”—someone who will continue to wield influence in the Catholic Church well…

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Judge had been asked to recuse herself over donations she made to church run by archdiocese that employed admitted child abuser

A federal judge overseeing a request to unseal secret files related to a Roman Catholic priest – and self-confessed predator – won’t recuse herself from the case over donations to her church, as a clergy abuse claimant had asked.

New Orleans-based US district court judge Jane Triche Milazzo had been asked to recuse herself by Aaron Hebert, who is pressing a 2019 lawsuit asserting that the admitted clerical child abuser Lawrence Hecker had victimized him decades earlier.

Hebert and his legal team cited Milazzo’s disclosure during a 15 June court hearing that she made an unspecified amount of financial contributions to a church run by the archdiocese that employed Hecker and provided him with retirement benefits.

They contended that recusal was appropriate because the standard for…

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‘The Keepers’ probed the case of the 20-year-old Baltimore woman who was killed in 1969

The FBI plans to exhume the body of Joyce Malecki, who was found killed in 1969 on Fort Meade property in a case explored in the documentary “The Keepers,” according to her brother and one of the family’s legal advocates.

“They’re working on the paperwork to exhume her body,” said Darryl Malecki, one of Joyce’s brothers. “I’m just thinking and hoping and praying that they have a good reason for doing that.”

Malecki said the FBI investigator assigned to his sister’s case told him last week that they were beginning the process to get approval to dig up her body to look for more evidence. He did not know when the exhumation would take place, but said an FBI investigator said a family member could attend.

An FBI spokesperson declined to comment because it is…

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The FBI plans to exhume the body of Joyce Malecki, who was found killed in 1969 on Fort Meade property in a case explored in the documentary “The Keepers,” according to her brother and one of the family’s legal advocates.

“They’re working on the paperwork to exhume her body,” said Darryl Malecki, one of Joyce’s brothers. “I’m just thinking and hoping and praying that they have a good reason for doing that.”

Related stories: 

• ‘Jane Doe’ Featured In ‘The Keepers’ Discusses Her Story
• Baltimore Archdiocese Declines To Release Records Related To Father Maskell
• Victim Of Notorious Baltimore Priest Says Police Were In On Sexual Abuse

This story by Justin Fenton and Julie Scharper continues. Read the rest at The Baltimore Banner: FBI to exhume body of Joyce Malecki, whose death was…

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Coadjutor Archbishop Christopher Coyne, named to succeed Hartford Archbishop Leonard Blair, once served as spokesman for Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, the most well-known cleric involved in the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandals.

Coyne later was named bishop of the Diocese of Burlington, Vermont, in 2014.

Coyne was named coadjutor archbishop of Hartford on June 25, meaning he will automatically succeed Blair when Blair retires next year. According to his curriculum vitae, which has been removed from the Diocese of Burlington’s website, Coyne served as secretary for communications and principal spokesman of the Archdiocese of Boston from 2002 to 2005.

Since his Hartford appointment, his handling of abuse cases has come under criticism.

According to a spokeswoman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Coyne could have been more transparent about priests who had been accused of sexual abuse in Vermont.

“…His Burlington list of abusers was incomplete,” Melanie…

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The Rhode Island Supreme Court affirmed that three alleged victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests cannot sue the bishops who supervised those priests. The law draws a clear dichotomy between perpetrators and non-perpetrator defendants for retroactive application of the amended 35-year statute of limitations. The new, extended limitations period applies only to perpetrators.

Read the ruling here. [From BA: See our cached version here.]

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Pope Francis has dismissed a pastor convicted of multiple abuses from the clergy. According to the Archdiocese of Cologne, the former clergyman will finally lose all rights and privileges associated with priestly ordination.

A Catholic minister sentenced to 12 years in prison for multiple abuses has been released from the clergy. At the request of Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, Pope Francis imposed this maximum penalty under canon law, as announced by the Archdiocese of Cologne.

As a result, the former clergyman will lose all rights and privileges associated with priestly ordination forever. According to the Archdiocese, he is no longer allowed to administer the sacraments, to be pastoral or to exercise the priestly ministry in any way. The ecclesiastical proceedings against the pastor were thus concluded.

Dismissal meets approval

Archbishop Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne welcomed the decision from Rome. The dismissal is more than appropriate, “even though I know…

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On June 20, Cardinal Cupich sent letters to Our Lady of Hope Mission and Mary, Seat of Wisdom Parish informing them of the reinstatement of Father John Clemens.

“As I previously informed you, the archdiocese received an allegation of child sexual abuse against Father Clemens dating back approximately 50 years ago. In accordance with our policies for the protection of children and youth, the archdiocese’s Independent Review Board, assisted by our Office of Child Abuse Investigation and Review and outside investigators, conducted a thorough review of the allegation,” the cardinal wrote.

“In light of the information presented, the IRB determined that there is not a reasonable cause to believe Father Clemens sexually abused a minor. In addition, the board recommended that the file be closed and Father Clemens be returned to ministry. Having given careful consideration to their recommendation, which I accept, I now inform you that I am…

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Following his appointment Saturday as the new prefect for the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Pope Francis’ choice of Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández faced immediate criticism. 

While much of the reaction to Fernández’s appointment has concerned his theological writing and engagement with issues like blessings for same-sex couples, some has focused on his canonical qualifications and experience handling accusations of clerical sexual abuse.

As the incoming head of the DDF, beginning in September, Archbishop Fernández will lead the Vatican department charged with overseeing doctrinal matters, but also the legal processes by which instances of abuse of minors are investigated, prosecuted, and judged.

But while some commentators have noted Fernández’s lack of canonical qualifications and the criticism of his record as a local bishop, what is actually expected of the prefect in matters of discipline, and is he actually underqualified for the role?

At the time of Fernández’s…

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The abuse continued from 1980 to 2005, and only now has the Escola Pia in Barcelona accepted the facts and given an apology

The Catalan branch of the Piarist Order of the Roman Catholic church – known as the Escola Pia in Catalonia – has finally recognized 25 years of sexual abuse of minors committed by a priest of the order, Manel Sales, when he was working as a missionary in Senegal. The abuses took place between the years 1980 and 2005 and both students at the Piarist schools and the local people in the African country were aware of these abuses. However, due to a “cultural issue” as well as the fact that in Senegal homosexuality is illegal and punishable by prison sentences, no one has denounced the crimes for all this time.

It wasn’t until 2005, after more than two decades of abuse by Manel Sales, when a group of Catalan women became aware of the abuse and decided to report…

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Victims talk to EL PAÍS about the abuse they suffered at the hands of Manel Sales Castellà, who worked as a missionary for years, even though ‘everyone knew’ he was preying on minors

“I was 19 years old, and I wanted to be a priest. Father Manel called me to his office and after asking me for my papers, he stood behind me and began to touch my private parts. I didn’t understand anything, I thought it was a fertility test or something like that to be a priest. But I noticed that he was aroused and he was sweating a lot. Back then, we didn’t understand that a man could have sex with another man, it’s not part of our culture. But when he saw children, he couldn’t resist.” That’s how the Phillipe (not his real name) describes the abuse he suffered at the hands of Manel Sales Castellà,…

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Legal arguments are set to begin Wednesday behind closed doors on whether redactions will be lifted from the state’s 456-page report on the history of child sexual abuse within the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

The Maryland Office of the Attorney General issued its report in April, with the names of five archdiocesan officials and 10 church figures redacted. The five officials are accused of failing to take appropriate action when presented with allegations of abuse and the 10 church figures are accused of acts of abuse. Authorities shielded the identities of these men and women by also redacting names of their parishes and Catholic schools.

Catholic church investigation

• Two more alleged Catholic Church abusers revealed: ‘It still haunts me’
• ‘They are all still at large’: Clergy abuse survivors call for suspensions, release of names after investigative articles
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A statement by the Mission and Ministry Board of the Church of the Brethren, approved July 4, 2023

Current Church of the Brethren, Inc. organizational leaders have become aware of sexual abuse by an employee in a work setting, reported to have taken place several decades ago. Both the abused victim and the alleged perpetrator were adults at the time of the abuse and both are now deceased. Action was taken by church leaders at that time, but a recently published book, Her Words, My Voice, has expanded and brought new attention to that reporting.

The General Secretary’s office, represented by acting general secretary Shawn Flory Replogle during general secretary David Steele’s recent sabbatical, has been responding to this new knowledge. Replogle and Mission and Ministry Board chair Carl Fike have met with the family of the abused person. More actions related to past practices and current policies and procedures are…

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Artificial intelligence can also be used to protect children but needs a strong leader to stand against online pedophilia

Recently I came across a research article by Angus Crawford and Tony Smith published by BBC News that said: “Paedophiles are using artificial intelligence [AI] technology to create and sell life-like child sexual abuse material.”

The opening statement tells us something shocking about the human species that has made the sexual abuse of children a brutal destructive entertainment, a money-making business to satisfy the lust and evil desire to have sex with children.

It is the most unnatural act one could think of, but what is more unnatural and more shocking is that most humans ignore, tolerate, and even approve of it and law enforcers and internet corporations are unwilling or incapable of stopping it.

It should make us rethink our own human nature and admit it is morally flawed as it tends…

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Asian campaigner accuses Anglican church of preventing abuse survivors from reporting crime

THE Church of England stands accused of failing survivors of child abuse and punishing whistle blowers who give them a voice, a former independent advocate has told Eastern Eye.

The church sacked Jasvinder Sanghera, who founded Karma Nirvana, a charity for mainly south Asian survivors of domestic abuse, forced marriage and honour-based violence, and her white colleague, Steve Reeves.

She said by firing the pair, abuse survivors will lose confidence in the church and prevent them from complaining.

Documents seen by this newspaper reveal the extent of the acrimony between C of E leaders and its former independent board members.

The pair took out a ‘dispute notice’ grievance after relationships broke down.

“What became apparent was, as we started to develop the work, that there was this resistance to independence,” Sanghera said.

Sanghera went through a panel interview in…

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Longtime Santa Fe priest Daniel Balizan, facing federal charges of sex abuse of a minor, will await trial at his home in Springer, a judge has ruled.

Federal Magistrate Judge Laura Fashing in Albuquerque on Monday ordered Balizan to be released from custody to house arrest with electronic monitoring.

Balizan, who for a decade was a pastor at Santa Maria de la Paz Catholic Community in Santa Fe before he was removed by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe in 2022, is accused of enticement of a minor with the intent to engage in sexual activity during a relationship prosecutors allege he carried on with a 15-year-old boy in 2012.

Balizan was arrested June 29 in Springer.

Federal prosecutors had argued Balizan should be placed in a halfway house in the run-up to the trial, writing the weight of evidence in the case “favors detention.”

Balizan, who has pleaded not guilty,…

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David Lloyd Walther, 57, admitted downloading the materials to a computer at Faith Baptist Church in Round Rock, where he was pastor before his arrest in November.

A Texas pastor pleaded guilty to an enhanced charge of possession of child sex abuse images after he admitted having downloaded some of the materials at his church, according to federal prosecutors and court documents.

David Lloyd Walther, 57, “knowingly searched for, downloaded, distributed and possessed” child sex abuse images, some of which depicted prepubescent minors, on a peer-to-peer file sharing network while he was the pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Round Rock, a city 18 miles north of Austin, the U.S. attorney’s office for Western Texas said Thursday.

Walther…

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Northview Church in Indiana is defending the hiring of CJ Johnson to serve as their senior pastor in 2021 despite former members of the now defunct Southland City Church in Minnesota, where he served in a similar role, accusing him of leadership abuse in an environment that also lacked financial transparency.

The allegations against Johnson were first highlighted in a report by Current in which a number of former members and employees of both Southland City Church and Northview Church raise concerns about what they characterize as a troubling pattern of abuse by the megachurch pastor.

Johnson, 38, is accused of “speaking dishonestly from the pulpit, lacking transparency about church finances and threatening or manipulating those who questioned his ideas or leadership” according to Current.

Johnson’s alleged abuse allegedly forced a majority of Southland’s staff to quit without new jobs lined up within…

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• A woman is suing the Church of Scientology, its leader, and one of its recruiters
• She alleged in a lawsuit that after the recruiter raped her she had to marry him

A woman born into the Church of Scientology and drafted into its inner circle at 14 was raped by a notorious recruiter at 16 and forced to marry him when she spoke out, according to a newly unsealed lawsuit.

The woman, anonymized as Jane Doe, alleges she was groomed and sexually abused by high-ranking recruiter Gavin Potter during a series of car rides while enrolled in a ‘billion-year contract’ with the Sea Organization – a ‘clergy’ that runs the church’s operations.

The attacks are said to have taken place in California, where the age of consent is 18, with the accuser two years younger than that when the attacks began. 

On reporting them, Jane Doe says she was offered the chance to…

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Marie-Dominique Philippe was so revered that the community accepted his claim that his abuse was a spiritual gift.

The Brothers of St John have published a scathing report on sexual and spiritual abuse in its ranks, implicating its founder Fr Marie-Dominique Philippe OP of exploiting members under the guise of spiritual development.

The 800-page report, “To Understand and to Heal”, was commissioned by the general chapter in 2019, and covers the past 35 years. Of the 872 professed brothers in that time, 72 were abusers while 167 members of the community were victims. 

Most victims were adult women, many of them nuns, and abuse ranged from “solicitations to rape”. The report uses testimonies from victims and hitherto unknown archives.

One of its key findings is that Philippe was so revered that the community accepted his claim that his abuse was a spiritual gift that must be hidden not to “cast pearls…

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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — An Argentine bishop named by Pope Francis to lead a powerful Vatican office that ensures doctrinal orthodoxy on Monday rejected accusations that he refused to believe victims of sexual abuse by a priest, saying he took actions when the allegations resurfaced in 2019.

Monsignor Victor Manuel Fernández, archbishop of La Plata, Argentina, was appointed to head the Holy See’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, whose mandate includes handling sex abuse allegations lodged against clergy.

BishopAccountability.org, a Massachusetts organization that maintains an online archive of abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, said over the weekend in a statement that Fernández refused to believe victims who accused Eduardo Lorenzo, a priest in the La Plata archdiocese, of sexually abusing boys.

In a statement sent by La Plata Archbishop’s office to the Associated Press on Monday, Fernández stated that he “never” said…

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QUESTION CORNER Q: I read that Father Marko Rupnik (the famous mosaic artist who has been credibly accused of sexual abuse) was expelled from the Jesuit order but remains a priest. How does that work? (Flushing, New York)

A: First for some background, priesthood and religious life are actually two distinct vocations, even if they often go together in many cases. Religious life is a call to follow Christ more closely by living a vowed life in community according to the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience. On the other hand, priesthood is a sacramental sharing in Christ’s mission of sanctification, with a priest being specially empowered to celebrate the sacraments, particularly by making Jesus truly present in the Eucharist.

There are male religious who are not priests, called religious brothers. Conversely, there are priests who are not members of religious communities. Still, there is no such thing as a…

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How does safeguarding work now in the Church of England?

Every parish church, cathedral, church plant or other local church body has a safeguarding policy and a volunteer appointed to act as safeguarding officer. They are supposed to be a first point of contact for disclosures of abuse, promote good practice and training, and uphold the policies.

Then, each diocese also has a diocesan safeguarding adviser (DSA). This person, often with a background in social work or the police, is responsible for leading safeguarding training and advice in the diocese. They, and whatever team the diocese has, may manage directly cases arising from their area and liaise with other statutory agencies such as the police or social services if a particular case involves a priest or church officer. There has been controversy around the exact powers of the DSA and the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse has recommended they become…

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ROME – Argentinian Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, Pope Francis’s pick as the new head of the Vatican’s powerful Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, has said that he originally declined the position in part because he feels incompetent in handling the clerical abuse crisis.

In a Facebook post Saturday, Fernández told his friends and followers that when the pope initially asked him to take over at the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), “I gave him various reasons for saying no.”

“One of them is that the task includes the issue of child abuse, and I do not feel prepared nor trained for these issues,” he said, reiterating the point in a second Facebook post on Sunday in which he said the abuse crisis “pains and embarrasses us,” but insisted that “I do not feel qualified or trained to guide something like this.”

Currently the archbishop of…

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A former Santa Fe priest is accused of sexually abusing a minor. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Daniel Balizan was arraigned in front of a federal judge this morning.

He’s accused of sexually abusing a minor from 2012 to 2022 while he was a priest of the Santa Maria de La Paz Catholic Church in Santa Fe.

Balizan is also facing two lawsuits, claiming he did the same thing to two other minors while at the Santa Fe church.

He’s being held at a half-way house until trial, and a date has not been set.

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A spokesperson for Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, the Vatican’s newly appointed head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, responded to accusations that he has been soft on sex abusers by firmly denying the allegations.

In an email to CNA late Monday afternoon, a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of La Plata, Argentina, said that “the archbishop never expressed that he did not believe them [the victims], beyond what some blogs that issue free opinions may have said.”

“When asked by the journalists, the archbishop clearly responded that ‘when someone presents an accusation of this type, in principle, THEY ARE ALWAYS BELIEVED, but beyond that, an investigation and due process are necessary because the legislation itself establishes it,’” the spokesperson wrote.

Fernández, who turns 61 later this month, has served as the archbishop of La Plata since 2018.

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A bishop accountability group that tracks sexual abuse in the Catholic Church released a statement July 1 voicing serious concerns about Pope Francis’ new appointment of Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández to head the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The group keeps an online database of sexual abuse by clergy on its website, BishopAccountability.org.

In its statement, written by co-director Anne Barrett Doyle, the group called Fernández’s appointment “a baffling and troubling choice” for a position that “will have immense power, especially when it comes to judging and punishing priests who abuse children.”

Fernández, who is almost 61, has served as the archbishop of La Plata, Argentina, since 2018.

Pope Francis announced Fernández’s appointment to the influential dicastery on July 1. A longtime personal theologian and ghostwriter for the pope, Fernández is expected to take up his new post in mid-September.

“As the new prefect of the Dicastery for…

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Several survivors of alleged priest abuse and other advocates gathered in Orinda near the Church of Santa Maria.

The group protested an accused priest who is still ministering.

NBC Bay Area first reported on the story of Father George Mockel on June 30. He’s named in a “John Doe” lawsuit against the Oakland Diocese for allegedly sexually abusing a teenage altar boy in the mid-1970’s.

The bishop and Mockel deny the allegations.

The protesters who gathered in Orinda Sunday said they want Mockel suspended and more transparency from the church concerning accused priests.

“He’s in ministry. He’s not supposed to be in ministry. He should have been suspended,” said Dan McNevin with the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. “The policy of the church is to suspend those who have been accused and to investigate…

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The Archdiocese of Baltimore on Friday added the names of 42 people to its online list of priests and brothers accused of child sexual abuse.

One of the accused, the Rev. Michael Miller, taught religion at Archbishop Curley High School in the 1990s and was later arrested in Connecticut for possessing child sex abuse materials, according to the archdiocese.

Most of the people, 39 in total, were identified last April in the Maryland attorney general’s 464-page report on the history of child sexual abuse within the church. None of the 39 had served in the archdiocese for years, and 33 of them are dead, according to the church.

Archdiocese officials also added three additional names to the list; these three had not been identified in the attorney general’s report. They are Miller and the Revs. Phillip Linden and Joseph O’Meara.

The Baltimore Banner previously…

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Archbishop Fernández’ appointment is significant in light of the Church’s ongoing synod process.

The appointment of Archbishop Victor Fernández to lead the Church’s doctrine office has set off an ecclesial earthquake. Not only has Pope Francis chosen a trusted theological adviser and fellow Argentinian to lead one of the most important Holy See offices, but he has announced a total overhaul in how the doctrine department does business. 

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the oldest department in the Roman Curia, is responsible for doctrine and discipline and was formerly known as the Holy Office responsible for the Inquisition.

During the 20th century, including under the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, it gained a reputation for investigating and silencing theologians. Some recent high-profile cases include Fr Jacques Dupuis, a Belgian Jesuit, and Fr Tony Flannery, an Irish Redemptorist, who said he experienced…

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The priest selected by Pope Francis to lead Vatican investigations of child sex abuse helped cover up such abuse in Argentina, according to a watchdog group.

Victor Manuel Fernandez, 60, was chosen Saturday to lead the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles sex abuse allegations against members of the clergy.

Bishop Accountability, a U.S.-based organization that tracks allegations against priests, called Fernandez’s appointment “baffling and troubling.”

“Fernandez’s recent handling of a clergy sex abuse case in his home archdiocese of La Plata raises great concern,” said Bishop Accountability co-director Anne Barrett Doyle. “In his response to allegations, he stood in stout support of the accused priest and refused to believe the victims.”

La Plata priest Eduardo Lorenzo was accused of child sex abuse in February 2019. Fernandez publicly backed the alleged perv and said the accusers had alternate motivations. While Lorenzo was investigated…

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Pope Francis’s decision to appoint Argentine Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández as prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is “a baffling and troubling choice,” Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, said in a statement.

BishopAccountability.org hosts the largest public collection of information on the clergy abuse crisis.

“Fernández’s recent handling of a clergy sex abuse case in his home Archdiocese of La Plata raises great concern,” said Doyle. “In his response to allegations, he stood in stout support of the accused priest and refused to believe the victims.”

“Showing disregard for the safety of children, Fernández kept the priest at his parish post even as more victims came forward,” Doyle added. “For his handling of this case, Fernández should have been investigated, not promoted to one of the highest posts in the global Church. Nothing about his performance suggests he is fit to lead the Pope’s battle against…

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Editor’s note: Join John Dougherty for a discussion of this and other films by visiting the Catholic Movie Club on Facebook.

July is Blockbuster Month at the Catholic Movie Club! Blockbusters are movies at their most maximalist: the ones that draw the biggest crowds and earn the biggest box office. Often they’re dismissed as empty noise, but they can also hold deep insights about God and life. So join me as we dig into some of the biggest summer movies of all time and search for the soul in the spectacle.

There is no better place to start than with the original blockbuster: “Jaws” (1975). Directed by the then-unknown Steven Spielberg, “Jaws” made a record-shattering amount of money, reinvented the summer movie landscape and still frequently appears on “best of” lists (including the American Film Institute’s 100 Greatest American Films).

In “Jaws,” a ravenous great white shark prowls the waters…

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A Maryland judge acquitted a former Catholic high school wrestling coach Friday in a sex abuse case.

Neil Adleberg, 75, of Reisterstown, had been charged with second-degree rape, second-degree attempted rape, sex abuse of a minor and sexual solicitation of a minor. His was the sole indictment stemming from the state’s attorney general’s yearslong investigation into child sex abuse and coverups within the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Outside the Circuit Court for Baltimore County, Adleberg thanked his family and friends who stuck with him and the judge for his “attentiveness to the facts,” news outlets reported. The accusations prevented him from participating in Maryland wrestling and helping other young wrestlers, he said.

“I have to regain that reputation somehow,” Adleberg said. “The wrestling community in Maryland, in my opinion, has suffered a little bit because for the year and a half that I’ve been waiting for a trial. I…

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A Roman Catholic priest removed last year from his parish church in Santa Fe was arrested Thursday on a federal charge alleging that he sexually assaulted a boy in 2012.

Daniel Balizan, 61, a former pastor at Santa Maria de la Paz Catholic Community in Santa Fe, was indicted last week by a federal grand jury for a reported case of child sexual abuse in August and September of 2012, according to the indictment.

Balizan is scheduled for his first appearance on Friday before Magistrate Judge Jennifer Rozzoni in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque. If convicted, Balizan faces 10 years to life in prison.

A Tennessee man filed a lawsuit in 2022 alleging that Balizan sexually assaulted him a decade ago when he was 15 years old. The alleged abuse occurred on the premises of Santa Maria de la Paz Church, where Balizan served as pastor from 2012 to 2022,…

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Then a professor at Notre Dame, the supreme court justice was on a board that selected Jon Balsbaugh to head the Trinity Schools

A senior administrator of Christian private schools closely linked to People of Praise, conservative supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett’s controversial faith group, abruptly resigned from his post earlier this year following complaints that allegations of teacher misconduct had been mishandled.

Jon Balsbaugh, an influential figure within the Christian education movement, was appointed president of Trinity Schools in February 2017, after being selected by a board of trustees that included Barrett, who was a professor at Notre Dame at the time.

Trinity is closely affiliated with People of Praise, the covenanted Christian charismatic community that has counted Barrett as a lifelong member. Her role as a trustee of Trinity from July 2015 to March 2017 is controversial in part because she served at a time when the…

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‘No one would remove Caravaggio’s paintings because of his grave moral mistakes’

The Gozo diocese has said it is “distinguishing between the artist and the work of art” following the expulsion from the Jesuits of the famous artist priest Marko Rupnik, who is behind the mosaics that adorn Ta’ Pinu Sanctuary,  in Gozo.

Catholic commentators have raised the question of what should be done with Rupnik’s art after he was accused of “spiritual, psychological or sexual abuse” of multiple women, including nuns, over the course of more than 30 years. 

Asked a similar question, the spokesperson for the Gozo diocese told Times of Malta that one had to distinguish between the artist and the work of art.

“No one would ever imagine removing Caravaggio’s paintings because of the grave moral mistakes he committed. Even though we are here speaking of sacred art, the same argument applies,” he said.

A similar conclusion was…

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The Brothers of St. John Community in France published on June 26 the findings of its internal investigation into a system of sexual and spiritual abuse initiated and propagated by its founder, Father Marie-Dominique Philippe, a charismatic figure who died in 2006.

The 800-page report, titled “Understanding and Healing: Origins and Analysis of Abuse in the St. John Family,” revealed that since its foundation in 1975, 167 people have been victims of abuse committed by 72 brothers — about 8% of all the brothers belonging to the community since its creation.

In a press release, the brothers stated that the majority of incidents have been committed against adult women in the context of spiritual accompaniment and that they range from inappropriate language to rape.

The fruit of a three-year investigation, the report was commissioned after the release, at the community’s general chapter in 2019, of a…

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A U.S.-based group that tracks how the Catholic hierarchy deals with allegations of sexual abuse by clergy says Pope Francis made a “troubling” choice in appointing an Argentine prelate to a powerful Vatican office that handles such cases.

On Saturday, the Vatican announced the pontiff had picked Monsignor Victor Manuel Fernández, archbishop of La Plata, Argentina, to head the Holy See’s watchdog office for doctrinal orthodoxy. Its mandate includes handling sex abuse allegations lodged against clergy.

BishopAccountability.org, a 20-year-old Massachusetts organization that maintains an online archive of abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, said in a statement that the prelate in 2019 refused to believe victims who accused a priest in the La Plata archdiocese of sexually abusing boys.

Francis “made a baffling and troubling choice,’’ the group said in statement emailed late Saturday in the U.S., citing how Fernández handled the case.

“In his response to allegations,…

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The Archdiocese of Baltimore added more than 40 names to its public list of Catholic Church staff credibly accused of sexually abusing children, including for the first time deacons, nuns and lay teachers.

The additions, approved at the direction of Archbishop William Lori, mark the largest single expansion of the archdiocese’s credibly accused list since it first published 57 names in 2002 as part of its response to the national clergy abuse scandal. With Friday’s update, the church’s list now runs to more than 180 names.

Although the vast majority of newly added names already were known publicly — 41 of 42 had been published either in news reports or in the Maryland Attorney General’s Office report on eight decades of clergy sexual abuse and cover-ups in the archdiocese — the church said the move demonstrated its commitment to transparency.

The attorney general’s report identified 36 priests, brothers, nuns, deacons…

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In an unexpected and highly significant move, Pope Francis has appointed the Argentine theologian and archbishop Victor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández as the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican announced today.

Pope Francis wrote a letter to the new prefect in which he told him in Spanish, “As prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, I entrust to you a task that I consider invaluable. It has as its main purpose to safeguard the teaching that comes from the faith ‘to give reasons for our hope, but not as an enemy who critiques and condemns.’ (Evangelii Gaudium, 271).”

“The dicastery that you will preside over in other epochs came to use immoral methods. Those were times when more than promoting theological knowledge they chased after possible doctrinal errors. What I expect from you is something without doubt much different,” Francis…

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Pope Francis has named an Argentine theologian and prolific author who decades ago wrote a book on the healing properties of kissing to be the Catholic Church’s new doctrinal chief, one of the Vatican’s top posts.

A Vatican statement on Saturday said Francis had chosen fellow Argentine Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez to be the head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF).

The DDF, modern-day successor of the notorious Inquisition which persecuted heretics, is tasked with promoting and safeguarding doctrine on faith and morals. It monitors theological work to make sure it adheres to Church doctrine and issues guidance, clarifications, and corrections.

In an apparent reference to the Inquisition, known for torture and executions in Medieval times, Francis said in a letter to Fernandez that in the past the department had used “immoral methods” and itself made doctrinal mistakes.

The powerful post of DDF prefect was held…

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The controversial Argentine theologian Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández is the new prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Vatican announced July 1 that the Archbishop of La Plata would succeed the 79-year-old Spanish Jesuit Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer as head of the dicastery, as well as president of the Pontifical Biblical Commission and the International Theological Commission. Fernández, who will take up the role in mid-September, is the first Latin American to serve as the dicastery’s prefect.

Since Francis’ election in 2013, Fernández has been known as an influential papal theological adviser. He has been described as the “ghostwriter” of several papal documents, including the 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia, which sparked intense debate with its reference to the admission of divorced and remarried Catholics to Holy Communion. 

Alongside the announcement of the appointment, the Vatican released a July 1 letter from Pope Francis to the…

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A Texas judge has dismissed a Carmelite monastery’s civil lawsuit against Fort Worth Bishop Michael Olson.

Without comment, Tarrant County District Court Judge Don Cosby, sitting in Fort Worth, issued a ruling June 30 granting the Fort Worth Diocese’s motion to dismiss the monastery’s complaint, which accused Olson of theft, defamation, and abuse of power.

In response, Matthew Bobo, attorney for the Carmelite nuns of the Most Holy Trinity Monastery in Arlington, Texas, said his client would appeal the decision.

“We are shocked, extremely disappointed, and respectfully disagree with Judge Crosby’s decision,” Bobo said in a statement.

“This decision indicates that anyone who goes into a Catholic church in Texas can be required to turn over his mobile device, the church can make a copy of all of its contents, keep them for an indefinite period of time, trounce private citizens’ constitutionally-protected civil liberties, and that the Catholic Church may…

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The announcement on July 1 that Pope Francis has named Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández to lead the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith was accompanied by a letter the Holy Father addressed to the Argentine theologian.

While Fernández’s appointment came as a surprise to many, the pope’s letter also has attracted attention because of what it reveals about Francis’ vision for the dicastery, one of the most important and powerful offices in the Roman Curia.

The pope says in the letter that the dicastery at times has promoted pursuing “doctrinal errors” over “promoting theological knowledge.”

“What I expect from you is certainly something very different,” Francis said. “I ask you as prefect to dedicate your personal commitment in a more direct way to the main purpose of the dicastery, which is ‘guarding the faith.’”

Quoting from his first apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, which Fernández reportedly helped to draft, Pope Francis…

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