Teen was forced to watch priests having sex, court documents say

Note: The contents of this story are graphic and may be disturbing to some readers. 

A dead former B.C. Roman Catholic bishop convicted in 1997 of rape and indecent assault against residential school students has again been named in new allegations of sexual assault.

The now-dead Bishop Hubert O’Connor is one of three priests named in the lawsuit.

In 1997, O’Connor was convicted of rape and indecent assault of female students at schools. He was later acquitted of indecent assault in a 1999 appeal and a new trial was ordered for the rape charge but the Crown decided not to pursue the case after O’Connor apologized.

Now, Ronald Wayne Petruk, 76, has filed suit against The Roman Catholic Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Vancouver, a Corporation Sole and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

In the suit, Petruk describes multiple…

[Note from BishopAccountability: On 6/28/2021, the Polish bishops’ conference published on its website a brief abuse report in Polish, English and Italian. Here is the English version.]

In the period from July 1, 2018 to December 31, 2020, 368 declarations of sexual abuse against minors under and over 15 were received by dioceses and men’s orders in Poland. The reports concern the acts committed in the years 1958-2020. 292 priests and religious were accused of sexual crimes against minors during that period. These are the data of the latest report prepared by the Institute of Statistics of the Catholic Church in cooperation with the Office of the Delegate for the Protection of Children and Youth of the Polish Bishops’ Conference. The research was financed by the Saint Joseph Foundation of the Polish Episcopate.

From mid-2018 to the end of 2020, 300 declarations of sexual abuse against minors were made in…

[Note from BishopAccountability: On 6/28/2021, the Polish bishops’ conference published on its website a brief abuse report in Polish, English and Italian. Here is the Polish version.]

Na konferencji prasowej, która odbyła się w siedzibie Katolickiej Agencji Informacyjnej, zaprezentowano dzisiaj raport dotyczący wykorzystania seksualnego małoletnich w Kościele w latach 1958-2020, przygotowany przez Instytut Statystyki Kościoła Katolickiego we współpracy z Biurem Delegata KEP ds. ochrony dzieci i młodzieży. Zgłoszenia dotyczą czynów z lat 1958-2020. W okresie od 1 lipca 2018 r. do 31 grudnia 2020 wpłynęło do diecezji oraz zakonów męskich w Polsce 368 zgłoszeń dotyczących wykorzystywania seksualnego osób małoletnich poniżej oraz powyżej 15 roku życia. O przestępstwa seksualne wobec małoletnich, które miały być popełnione w tym czasie, oskarżonych zostało 292 księży oraz zakonników. Badania zostały sfinansowane przez Fundację Świętego Józefa KEP.

Od połowy 2018 r. do końca 2020 r. dokonano 300 zgłoszeń wykorzystania seksualnego osób małoletnich w diecezjach oraz 68 w zakonach….

(RNS) — The Catholic bishop of Syracuse, New York, is speaking out against the Doctrine of Discovery and revealing plans to ask Pope Francis to repudiate theological teachings used for centuries to justify the subjugation of Indigenous peoples.

In an interview with Religion News Service on Wednesday (June 30), Bishop Douglas J. Lucia explained he is exploring a possible meeting with the Holy See to discuss a series of 15th-century papal bulls, or decrees, used by European Christians to rationalize colonizing Indigenous people and their land.

“Since they were papal bulls in the beginning,” Lucia said, there should be “a public acknowledgment from the Holy Father of the harm these bulls have done to the Indigenous population” as well as some kind of statement “to repudiate” the Doctrine of Discovery.

The Doctrine of Discovery draws from a series of papal documents that date back to Pope Nicholas V, whose 1452…

A Roman Catholic priest serving several midcoast churches but who has worked throughout Maine is on temporary administrative leave while the diocese investigates a decades-old abuse allegation, officials said Monday.

According to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, the Rev. Robert Vaillancourt has been accused of sexually abusing an underage girl in the 1980s. He has been placed on administrative leave while the diocese’s Office of Professional Responsibility conducts an internal investigation, consistent with the diocese’s protocol for such allegations.

Vaillancourt currently serves as pastor of St. Brendan the Navigator Parish, which is composed of Our Lady of Good Hope Church in Camden, St. Bernard Church in Rockland, St. Francis of Assisi Church in Belfast, and St. Mary of the Isles Churches on Islesboro, Vinalhaven and North Haven. He was also recently appointed as hospital chaplain of Maine Medical Center in Portland.

“Fr. Vaillancourt has denied any wrongdoing and indicated…

As the two-year mark in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester’s bankruptcy draws nigh, a $35 million settlement proposed between the diocese and a handful of its insurers is not sitting well with the bankruptcy’s official creditors committee.

How the court comes down on the proposed Rochester diocese settlement could set the tone, not just for the Rochester case, but also for Chapter 11 bankruptcies of three other New York Catholic dioceses that asked for court protection months after the Rochester diocese’s September 2019 filing. 

“I believe that the settlement of $35 million is within the range of reasonableness and should be approved by the Court,” wrote diocese special insurance counsel James Murray in a June 24 brief supporting the proposal. Murray is a Washington, D.C.-based partner with Blank Rome LLP. He heads the firm’s policyholder-only insurance recovery group.

“We hope for the Court’s approval and we pray this settlement will be…

Terms like residential school are deeply inadequate. These were not schools; they were prisons and forced labour camps

We’d all heard the stories, long before they started to receive this summer’s 24/7 coverage by every news station in Canada. Long before ground-penetrating radars confirmed the presence of unmarked graves, we knew that our missing family members did not simply “disappear” nor attempt and fail to run away from residential schools, despite what we were told by missionaries and government officials. Indigenous communities are necessarily close-knit, and we live in the histories of our people despite every effort at the eradication of our knowledges, cultures, languages – and of our lives.

Published in 2015, the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) estimated that 4,100 named and unnamed students died in Canada’s residential schools. To keep costs low, the report said, many were probably buried in untended…

A trial date has been tentatively scheduled for the Catholic priest who was charged with rape in a local case. 

Mark Hession is scheduled to go to trial Oct. 5, according to a pretrial hearing Monday in Barnstable Superior Court. He faces two charges of rape, one charge of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, and one charge of intimidating a witness.

Hession, a 63-year-old Fairhaven resident, on Jan. 11 pleaded not guilty to the charges. Hession served at 12 different institutions in the Cape Cod and Fall River areas, including as parish priest from 2000 to 2014 at Our Lady of Victory church in Centerville.

At Monday’s hearing, attorney Sharon Thibeault with the Cape and Islands District Attorney’s Office said the discovery is almost finished, and sheneeds to receive the list of witnesses the defendant plans to call. She said…

In Catholic circles, it is widely known that Cardinal Joseph Tobin is close to Pope Francis. He oversees the Newark archdiocese, a very large flock in the vast New York media market once headed by the now-disgrace-and-defrocked former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

All of this might lead one to believe that Tobin would work hard to be more forthcoming about abuse and cover-ups than other bishops who head dioceses with less troubled histories.

That does not, however, seem to be the case.

In a very short time, we at Horowitz Law have found a number of accused child molesting clerics who are or were in the Newark archdiocese but who are NOT on Tobin’s ‘credibly accused’ list. They include

—Sr. Andre, a Dominican nun who was accused in 1967 of sexually abusing a 12 year old girl. (Letters from the nun to the girl and the nun’s journals confirmed the accusations.)

…

The Archdiocese of Santa Fe announced in a community letter that the effort to auction 732 properties for a bankruptcy settlement has been delayed.

The Rev. Glennon Jones, vicar general of the archdiocese, said last week in the letter the auction company doesn’t have a final list of properties because surveyors’ work continues, property titles still need to be acquired or analyzed, and opening prices haven’t been set.

Jones suggested the postponement reflected no setback and the auction would simply be rescheduled.

About 385 victims of sexual abuse by archdiocese clergy members have sued, prompting the Archdiocese of Santa Fe to declare bankruptcy three years ago. The archdiocese now seeks to raise money to settle the case, but the amount hasn’t been determined, an attorney for victims said. Numerous Catholic dioceses across the country have filed for bankruptcy because of abuse by priests.

Brad Hall, an Albuquerque attorney who represents…

[VIDEO]

Father Mark White still wears his clerical collar — he is still a Catholic priest after all — but without a church to serve and apparently grim prospects for being assigned a new one.

On April 2 White received a document written in Latin from the Apostolic Signatura, the Supreme Court of the Vatican.

“I struggled to translate it, but it reaffirmed the decision rendered by the Congregation of the Clergy in June 2020, that is: My appeal of the bishop’s decision to remove me as pastor of Rocky Mount and Martinsville did not come from the right source, a procurator,” White said. “Since then the clock has run out.”

White’s case before the court was dismissed the first time on a technicality, for White’s failing to refer to his canon lawyer as a “procurator,” the second time because the Vatican’s imposed statute of limitations had expired.

White’s final…

“The rent boy” was anonymous, just a voice down the line.

The voice haunted me afterwards, the way its inflections held a lifetime of pain and confusion, of fear and self-loathing. There was something awful yet fitting about the juxtaposition of intimacy and anonymity in our call. He told me about his abuse, his prostitution, his sexual confusion and above all, his shame. He just never told me his name.

“Rent boy” didn’t come close to who he was, but he was trapped in his past. I was used to hearing the lifelong effects of abuse, given all the interviews I had done regarding the Catholic church, but still, the rent boy pierced me. In his many conversations with psychologists, he never once talked about training for the priesthood. He never once mentioned the name “Mirfield”.

Mirfield was a seminary in Yorkshire, run by the Verona Fathers who later changed…

Sexual abuse alleged to have occurred at Bible camp on Gambier Island

A Chilliwack man who says he was sexually assaulted at a Bible camp in the late 1970s is suing the Roman Catholic archbishop and the archdiocese of Vancouver who operated the camp.

Not named in the lawsuit is the alleged perpetrator, referred to as John Doe, who was a counsellor and/or clergy member at the camp that was located on Gambier Island in Howe Sound.

Vernon Mulvahill’s notice of civil claim was filed in BC Supreme Court in Vancouver last month.

It was 1978 or 1979 when Mulvahill said he was sent by his parents to Camp Latona on Gambier Island in Howe Sound. He is now 49.

“During the week of camp activities, John D. sexually assaulted the plaintiff,” according to the civil claim.

The claim outlines specific demeaning and sexually explicit acts John Doe allegedly committed…

Guaranteeing the security and well-being of children in a society is a sacred trust. Both church and state were to blame in Canada for this terrible stain on the country’s history

My late mother spent her childhood in a Roman Catholic orphanage in Chicago with her siblings. She never talked about it.

She eventually left the church when I was young. She never fully explained why.

My family history is another reason why Canada’s renewed residential school scandal, because of the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves near some of these schools, has hit me harder than most. It’s an abomination and the Catholic Church has much to answer for. These unmarked graves were found near some of their schools and others are being probed.

The new revelations have sparked the burning of 10 Catholic churches thus far. Nearly three-quarters of Canada’s 130 residential schools were run by Roman Catholic missionary congregations….

Catholic clergy reportedly created a “Coalition Of Canceled Priests” to support those who allegedly speak up against wokeness and abuse.

WND reported that the coalition was established early 2021 due to the “Vatican’s cowardice,” “in response to ‘secular corruption’,” as an aftermath of “leftist backlash,” and from “wokeness” within the Catholic Church.

WND cited that one of the reasons for this was the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ refusal to deny Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians out of being “ever mindful of the feelings (and influence)” of said politicians, but “betrays” the rest of the Faithful.

“Ever mindful of the feelings (and influence) of nominally ‘Catholic’ politicians, these bishops have forsaken one of the first duties of priests. Such churchmen bring to mind the image of a commanding officer who, when the battle turns against his troops, goes over to the enemy and betrays his men,” WND quoted from…

A former Fargo bishop sexually abused two children in the 1960s when he was a priest in Michigan, church leaders said.

The accusations against former Bishop James Sullivan have been deemed credible by Catholic officials, the Fargo Diocese said in a statement issued Friday, July 2. An investigation found that Sullivan sexually groomed and inappropriately touched two boys when he was a priest living at the Church of the Resurrection Parish in Lansing , Mich., according to a news release issued Friday by the Lansing Diocese.

“I am saddened by the reports concerning Bishop Sullivan, and I am sure the faithful of the Diocese of Fargo share in my disappointment,” Fargo Bishop John Folda said. “I ask that we join in prayers for healing and continue in our resolve and efforts to protect those whom we serve.”

Sullivan did not face any credible allegations when he served as a bishop…

ROME — The Vatican indicted 10 people Saturday, including an Italian cardinal, for financial crimes over a botched investment in London that allegedly squandered money intended “for the personal charity of the Holy Father.”

The announcement marked a major escalation in a long-simmering investigation into the Vatican’s investment in a luxury residential building in London. Among those who will stand trial later this month is Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who was once the third-highest-ranked figure in the Vatican and who helped oversee a substantial asset portfolio.

A Holy See spokesman said a special procedure, involving Pope Francis’s personal approval, was needed for the indictment of a cardinal. Becciu, who was removed from his position by the pontiff last year, faces charges including embezzlement and abuse of office.

The prospect of a cardinal facing a Vatican trial appears unprecedented in the modern history of the church, and is sure to amplify what had already…

Archbishop Richard Gagnon says there is “a lot of blame, a lot of accusations, a lot of exaggerations, a lot of false ideas” over gravesite discoveries at former Church-run residential schools

The president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has in a recent homily said that the Church in Canada is being persecuted because of attention to gravesite discoveries at former residential schools.

Residential schools are “a big thing right now in Canada and I know that we Catholics, we’re troubled, we’re hurt by this a lot in our hearts”, Archbishop Richard Gagnon of Winnipeg said in his homily on Sunday.

 Archbishop Gagnon, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he is getting “bombarded a lot,” and that in dealing with the media, he’s noticing “a lot of blame, a lot of accusations, a lot of exaggerations, a lot of false ideas,” reported The Globe and Mail.

…

We are at a point in history where all the indications point to a perfect storm: sexual abuse crisis, loss of credibility…, says Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen, Australia’s first Asian-born bishop

Few Catholics have any appetite left for cosmetic changes, mediocrity or restorationism dressed up as renewal, warns an outspoken Australian Catholic bishop.

“We have struggled under the weight of the old ecclesial paradigm of clerical order, control and hegemony with a penchant for triumphalism, self-referential pomp and smugness.

“We yearn for a Church that commits to a God-oriented future of equal discipleship, relational harmony, wholeness and sustainability,” said Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen of Parramatta during the Dom Helder Camara Lecture at the Jesuit-run Newman College that is affiliated with the University of Melbourne.

His lecture entitled “My hope for the Plenary Council” comes a few months ahead of the first session of the Plenary Council 2020 (PC2020),…

OTTAWA — At times it was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who came for them. Other times, it was a school van. However it happened, for generations, Indigenous families in Canada had no choice but to send their children to church-run residential schools established by the government to erode their culture and languages, and to assimilate them.

A national Truth and Reconciliation Commission declared in 2015 that the schools, which operated from 1883 to 1996, were a form of “cultural genocide.”

But the profound damage inflicted by the schools didn’t stop there. The commission cataloged extensive physical, sexual and emotional abuse at the schools, which were often overcrowded, understaffed and underfunded. Disease, fire and malnourishment all brought death and suffering.

Now, the national shame of the schools is again dominating the conversation in Canada.

Since May, new technology has enabled the discovery of human remains, mostly of children, in many…

A Roman Catholic priest who previously led youth retreats is on temporary administrative leave while the Diocese of Portland investigates an abuse allegation, officials said Monday.

Known as “Father Bob,” the Rev. Robert Vaillancourt is accused of sexually abusing a girl in the 1980s, the diocese said. He has denied any wrongdoing and is cooperating with an investigation, the diocese said.

Vaillancourt, 67, attended several of the late Pope John Paul II’s World Youth Day events and led Maine’s delegation to the event at least once, in 2002 in Toronto, the Bangor Daily News previously reported.

The Lewiston native has served at parishes across the state and is currently the pastor at St. Brendan the Navigator Parish, which serves churches in Belfast, Rockland and Camden on the mainland, along with island churches on Islesboro, Vinalhaven and North Haven.

The diocese did not say where Vaillancourt was…

PORTLAND—In accordance with diocesan policy, Fr. Robert Vaillancourt has been placed on temporary administrative leave pending an investigation into an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor girl in the 1980s. Fr. Vaillancourt is currently the pastor of St. Brendan the Navigator Parish (Our Lady of Good Hope Church, Camden; St. Bernard Church, Rockland; St. Francis of Assisi Church, Belfast; St. Mary of the Isles Churches on Islesboro, Vinalhaven and North Haven). Bishop Deeley has appointed Monsignor Paul Stefanko, who has been serving at the parish in recent months, as temporary administrator of the parish, effective immediately.

Fr. Vaillancourt has denied any wrongdoing and indicated that he will cooperate with any investigation into the matter. The temporary administrative leave is not a presumption of guilt or a result of suspected wrongdoing, but is the protocol followed by the diocese. It is for the purpose of preserving the integrity of the…

Father Vaillancourt has denied any wrongdoing and indicated that he will cooperate with any investigation into the matter, the Diocese stated.

In accordance with diocesan policy, Father Robert Vaillancourt has been placed on temporary administrative leave pending an investigation into an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor girl in the 1980s, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland announced Monday, July 5 in a news release.

Father Vaillancourt is currently the pastor of St. Brendan the Navigator Parish (Our Lady of Good Hope Church, Camden; St. Bernard Church, Rockland; St. Francis of Assisi Church, Belfast; St. Mary of the Isles Churches on Islesboro, Vinalhaven and North Haven).

Father Vaillancourt has denied any wrongdoing and indicated that he will cooperate with any investigation into the matter, the Diocese stated.

“The temporary administrative leave is not a presumption of guilt or a result of suspected wrongdoing, but is the protocol followed by the diocese….

The Vatican City State’s chief prosecutor has indicted ten persons including Cardinal Angelo Becciu, his former priest secretary, the woman he hired to gather intelligence, and seven laymen. They are accused of crimes related to the misuse of funds managed by the secretariat of state, also in the purchase of a London property. The prosecutor asked that they be sent for trial, and the Vatican Tribunal acceded to his request.

The Vatican broke the news around midday July 3 when it published a decree from the president of the Vatican Tribunal, acceding to the request, and naming ten persons and four entities— financial companies and a private firm—who are to be sent to trial in relation to the financial investments of the Secretariat of State in London. It said the trial will begin on July 27.

A trial of this nature and dimension has no precedent in the history of…

A letter sent to the Vatican in April was published on the website of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on June 21. UN human rights experts expressed “utmost concern” about “the apparent pervasiveness of child sexual abuse cases” in the Catholic Church.

This was the third time during his pontificate that UN representatives made clear to Pope Francis the ways he has refused to protect our children and told him what measures needed to be taken.

UN Committee on the Rights of the Child

A UN Committee on the Rights of the Child issued a 15-page report on February 5, 2014. The Holy See had ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990. It was the first time a pope and his men had been called to account for their actions and omissions on protecting our children by an international body. The subject of the report…

Victims of abuse who endured assaults when they were pupils of a junior seminary have finally received an apology from the Church, more than 50 years after they were attacked.

The survivors, who all endured abuse at the hands of members of the Verona Fathers order of priests, received a heartfelt apology last week from the Bishop of Leeds, Martin Stock. He said he would raise their case with Pope Francis. He told them their abusers were people they should have been able to trust.

Eight of the survivors met Bishop Stock in person at Hinsley Hall, in Leeds, joined via Zoom by Cardinal Vincent Nichols and Archbishop Charles Scicluna, an adviser on abuse to Pope Francis, as well as three other survivors.

Bishop Stock told them: “I wish to apologise to you personally and unreservedly for the childhood sexual abuse you suffered, and I wish to apologise also to…

These figures detailing allegations of child sexual abuse by clergy do not tell the full story

Last Monday, Poland’s Catholic Church released new figures of the number of complaints it has received alleging sexual abuse at the hands of its clergy.

In total, 368 complaints were made to the Church between 2018 and 2020 relating to alleged abuse by more than 290 priests and other religious figures. The cases stretch as far back as 1958 and 173 of them concern children under the age of 15, which is the age of consent in Poland.

Following the release of these figures, the head of the Polish Catholic Church, Archbishop Wojciech Polak, apologised to survivors and asked for forgiveness. While some survivors will appreciate this, it does not excuse the fact that Poland’s church has arrived at the issue decades too late.

This is only the second time that Poland’s…

Churches are burning across western Canada in a spate of fires which local authorities are treating as suspicious, and which one local premier has identified as possible hate crime. 

The fires, which have damaged or destroyed at least seven churches in recent days, follow the still ongoing confirmation of hundreds of unmarked graves of First Nations children on the sites of residential schools operated by the Catholic Church throughout the twentieth century.

No direct link has been proven between the discovery of the unmarked graves and the church burnings, but the fires have mostly occurred on tribal lands, amid fierce criticism of the Catholic Church from many Canadians, and renewed expressions of pain by First Nations peoples over systematic injustices, both historic and recent.

As the situation continues to unfold, The Pillar brings you a brief guide to what has happened, and who has said what so far.

History

The residential schools…

Montreal – National Canadian police were investigating on Tuesday after two century-old Catholic churches burned to the ground within hours of one another on Indigenous lands in British Columbia.

Indigenous leaders said they were particularly disturbed by the timing of the fires, which took place on National Indigenous Peoples Day, which celebrates Indigenous culture. The fires come at a particularly raw moment, just weeks after the unmarked graves of 215 children were found near a former church-run school in British Columbia.

While the circumstances remained murky, investigators said one line of inquiry was arson, including the possibility that the Indigenous communities had been targeted.

Investigators said another possible motive was anger at the Roman Catholic Church. The two churches are about 120 miles from the Kamloops Indian Residential School, where the children’s graves were discovered on the grounds in May.

From 1883 until 1996, an estimated 150,000 Indigenous children were sent…

[Via Catholic Philly]

In an unprecedented move, Vatican prosecutors have indicted 10 individuals and entities, including Cardinal Angelo Becciu, former prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, on charges ranging from embezzlement to money laundering and abuse of office.

The indictment included charges against “ecclesiastical and lay personnel of the Secretariat of State and senior figures of the former Financial Information Authority, as well as external figures active in the world of international finance,” the Vatican said July 3.

Their trial at the Vatican was set to begin July 27.

In a statement released by his lawyers shortly after the announcement, Cardinal Becciu declared his “absolute innocence,” saying he was “the victim of a plot hatched against me.”

Cardinal Becciu said the accusations exposed him to “an unparalleled media pillory to which I did not defend myself, suffering in silence.” However, in November, he filed a lawsuit against the Italian…

I have been watching the College of the Ozarks lawsuit against the Biden administration over protections afforded to LGBTQ+ persons and cannot in good conscience keep silent about this very personal matter. I am a queer, non-binary trans person who was born an hour away from College of the Ozarks (C of O) on a cattle farm. My dad attended C of O, and it was expected that this was where I would go. I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s. My mother was a conservative Catholic and raised me in the church.

Although I wasn’t fully aware of my identity as a young child, I did get the message from my parents and my community that being LGBTQ wasn’t an option. I only started realizing I might be queer when it was used as a slur against me as a preteen. I was choked by some older boys…

The Survivors of Childhood Sex Abuse (SCSA) issued a letter to various law enforcement officials requesting that they read the sealed deposition of accused child rapist, and former Catholic priest, Lawrence Hecker. 

The President of SCSA Richard Windmann explained that a “Federal Court in New Orleans, Louisiana has sealed a deposition in which a Catholic priest admitted to raping a child. Because the deposition is sealed by the court, this predator is a free man on the streets of our community, and no child is safe, and he has escaped Justice…In the original filing of the motion, the filing attorneys (who conducted the deposition) admitted that Lawrence Hecker admitted to raping a child.” The court ended up sealing the deposition because of the Archdiocese of New Orleans’s bankruptcy filing. 

Archbishop Aymond, who runs the Archdiocese of New Orleans, has repeatedly stated that the church cannot release personnel records…

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Knoxville has settled an abuse lawsuit against “one of the most respected priests in the diocese” who was accused of sexually exploiting an adult woman he converted to the Catholic faith in 2000.

In the lawsuit, Celeste Arnone accused the Rev. Michael Sweeney of sexual assault and exploitation, severe psychological distress, defamation, the loss of faith in God and the loss of her marriage. She also accused the diocese of negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress for its handling of her allegations after they were first reported.

“I hope my case will help survivors to, first of all, realize that this is not your fault, even if you might think it is, and it may take years to realize what actually did happen to you,” Arnone said in a statement to the Times Free Press.

The news comes as Pope Francis has moved to…

Friday the Diocese of Lansing announced it has deemed two allegations of sexual abuse leveled against the late Bishop James Sullivan as credible. Bishop Sullivan, who died of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 76, was Auxiliary Bishop of the Diocese of Lansing from 1972 to 1985. Sullivan then became Bishop of Fargo in North Dakota from 1985 to 2002.

Both accusations stem from the mid-1960′s when then-Father Sullivan was living at a parish in Lansing. Both male victims were subject to sexual grooming and inappropriate contact by Sullivan.

“Following investigation and review, the Diocese of Lansing has found two allegations against the late Bishop James Sullivan to be credible,” said David Kerr, spokesman for the Diocese of Lansing, July 2, 2021.

“Bishop Sullivan’s actions were gravely immoral, deeply scandalous and betrayed both the trust of the Catholic community within the Diocese of Lansing and, more significantly, the faith placed…

This week marks the 70th anniversary of retired Pope Benedict XVI’s ordination as a priest – an anniversary his personal secretary says will be celebrated with things of personal significance: The liturgy, and former members of his late brother’s choir.

Speaking to Rome Reports, German Archbishop Georg Gänswein, head of the Prefecture for the Papal Household and Benedict XVI’s personal secretary, said the choir was a surprise for Benedict.

For Benedict XVI, “surprises are always related to the liturgy,” Gänswein said, noting that for the June 29 anniversary, “We’ve invited a group of former members of the choir from Regensburg who learned to sing alongside his brother.”

By now, the chorists, who were children at the time of their participation in the Regensburg choir, are between 40 and 60 years old, and “some of them will sing in the chapel during Mass,” Gänswein said.

Gänswein was among the speakers for a…

A Vatican judge on Saturday indicted 10 people, including a once-powerful cardinal, on charges including embezzlement, abuse of office, extortion and fraud in connection with the Secretariat of State’s 350 million-euro investment in a London real estate venture.

The president of the Vatican’s criminal tribunal, Giuseppe Pignatone, set July 27 as the trial date, according to a Vatican press statement.

The indictments were handed down following a sprawling, two-year investigation into how the Secretariat of State managed its vast asset portfolio, much of which is funded by the Peter’s Pence donations from the faithful. The scandal has resulted in a sharp reduction in donations and prompted Pope Francis to strip the office of its ability to manage the money.

Five former Vatican officials, including Cardinal Angelo Becciu and two officials from the Secretariat of State, were indicted, as well as Italian businessmen who handled the London investment.

Also indicted on…

The Judge handling the coordinated Clergy childhood sex abuse cases in Los Angeles and Orange Counties ruled on June 11, 2021 that California Statute, CCP 340.1(b)(1) is unconstitutionally vague and that it violates the ex post facto clauses of the state and federal constitutions. The ruling let stand the core of CCP 340.1 which provides a window in the Statute of Limitations for survivors of childhood sex abuse to bring cases from years or decades ago that would have otherwise been time barred.  Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed by survivors of childhood sex abuse since AB 218 was passed by the California Legislature and signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2019.

The section of Statute 340 that was stricken states:

(b) (1) In an action described in subdivision (a), a person who is sexually assaulted and proves it was as the result of a cover up may recover up…

Patrick Sanders insists he is innocent, saying, “I feel an injustice has been done to me and my life’s vocation has been taken away.”

NEW ORLEANS — A former New Orleans-area priest who was removed from the ministry over credible allegations of child sex abuse before becoming a successful personal injury attorney recently surrendered his law license forever because he hid his scandalous past from bar exam administrators.

According to documents filed with the Louisiana Supreme Court, which metes out discipline to attorneys in the state, Patrick Sanders signed up to take the bar exam in 2007 and 2009. Both times, the application asked, in various forms, whether he had ever been forced out of a job, disciplined for misbehavior or simply accused of misconduct.

Sanders answered “no” each time, even though Catholic Church leaders in New Orleans had stripped him of his position as the pastor of Our Lady…

LANSING, Mich. — The Diocese of Lansing has determined that two allegations of sexual abuse against former Bishop James Sullivan are credible.

Both victims were boys who were “subject to sexual grooming and inappropriate contact by Sullivan” in the mid-1960s when Sullivan was living at the Church of the Resurrection Parish in Lansing, according to a statement released by the diocese on Friday.

Sullivan, who died in 2006, was auxiliary bishop of the diocese from 1972 to 1985 before becoming Bishop of Fargo in North Dakota from 1985 to 2002.

“Bishop Sullivan’s actions were gravely immoral, deeply scandalous and betrayed both the trust of the Catholic community within the Diocese of Lansing and, more significantly, the faith placed in him by the victims and their families to whom we say: ‘This should not have happened to you and we are profoundly sorry that it ever did,’” said David Kerr, spokesman…

FARGO (KFGO) – The Fargo Roman Catholic Diocese says sexual abuse claims of a minor by former Bishop James Sullivan have been substantiated while he was serving as a priest in Lansing, Michigan.

The diocese says the abuse took place several decades ago.

There were no credible abuse allegations made against Sullivan while he was in Fargo. Sullivan died in June 2006 after his retirement.

As a result of the substantiated claims in Michigan, the diocese has changed the name of Sullivan Middle School in Fargo to Sacred Heart Middle School.

A former Vatican adviser who campaigned against same-sex marriage and gay priests is facing trial over claims he told gay men he could cure them with sex.

Tony Anatrella, an 80-year-old French psychotherapist, Catholic priest and former Vatican adviser, who has been plagued by accusations of sexual abuse for the last 20 years.

Finally, the Paris Archdiocese has confirmed that Anatrella will face trial in a church court, according to the National Catholic Reporter.

There are not yet any details on the charges he will face, or when the trial will begin.

In 2006, a man named Daniel Lamarca went public with his accusations of sexual abuse by Anatrella in an interview with Dutch newspaper Nederlands Dagblad. 

Lamarca said he tried to report the alleged abuse to the archbishop of Paris in 2001, but was ignored. “I know details about Anatrella’s body that could only be known…

A proposed law in New York would clear the way for people who were abused after turning 18 to sue for damages

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — After months of video calls and group emails, Robert Druger and Robert Bender agreed to meet for the first time on Memorial Day and revisit the places that had caused so much parallel anguish, four decades ago.

Here, Druger said, was the loading dock at the rear of a Syracuse University residence hall. This was where a charming graduate student who happened to be a former Olympic hurdler had sneaked high school athletes like Druger into his suite, only to groom and molest them later.

There, Bender pointed, behind the glass doors, was the elevator that he rode up to his room, the day he arrived on campus in 1980. This was where that same Olympian, upon learning Bender was a gymnast, had promised elite…

Talk about lousy timing.

The biggest religion story in Iowa last week was a jaw-dropper. Attorney General Tom Miller announced he has concluded a three-year investigation of sexual abuse allegations against priests in the four Roman Catholic dioceses in our state.

Miller’s staff examined church records, some dating to the 1930s, that involved about 100 priests. His office also received and looked into 50 allegations against 36 priests, many of whom were the subject of earlier complaints.

Most of the cases involved priests who are now either deceased or retired. But three of the allegations involved priests who are still active in the church’s ministry.

“Sexual abuse took place over decades,” Miller’s report said. “The complaints, the victims, the duration of the abuse were overwhelming.”

He continued: “The cover-up was extensive. The image and reputation of the church were put ahead of the enormous harm to young people.”

Here we…

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced a new initiative that would delve into the records of the federal schools to which Native American children were forcibly relocated for 150 years.

The United States will search federal boarding schools for possible burial sites of Native American children, hundreds of thousands of whom were forcibly taken from their communities to be culturally assimilated in the schools for more than a century, the interior secretary announced on Tuesday.

The initiative is likely to resemble a recent effort in Canada, where the discovery of the remains of 215 children at the site of a defunct boarding school rekindled discussion of the traumatic history and treatment of Native populations.

Addressing a virtual conference of the National Congress of American Indians, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said the program would “shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past, no matter how hard it will…

FARGO (KVRR) – The Diocese of Fargo says an investigation has found that sexual misconduct allegations against former Bishop James Sullivan have been deemed credible.

The investigation was conducted by the Diocese of Lansing, Michigan.  The allegation involves a minor and took place several decades ago when Sullivan was a priest in Lansing.

There have been no allegations made against Sullivan during his time as Bishop of Fargo or after his retirement.

Sullivan was Bishop of the Fargo Diocese from 1985 to 2002.  He died in 2006.

“I am saddened by the reports concerning Bishop Sullivan, and I am sure the faithful of the Diocese of Fargo share in my disappointment” Diocese of Fargo Bishop John Folda said.  “I ask that we join in prayers for healing and continue in our resolve and efforts to protect those whom we serve.”

Sullivan Middle School, part of the St. John Paul II Catholic…

The Diocese of Fargo has been informed by the Diocese of Lansing, MI that after an investigation, accusations of sexual misconduct with a minor made against the late Bishop James Sullivan, sixth Bishop of Fargo, and previously a priest of the Diocese of Lansing, have been deemed credible. The Diocese of Lansing has added Bishop Sullivan’s name to its list of clergy with credible accusations of sexual misconduct with a minor.

As a result of this, the Diocese of Fargo has also added Bishop Sullivan’s name to its list of clergy who served or ever lived within the Diocese of Fargo who are on the list of another diocese/religious order. 

“I am saddened by the reports concerning Bishop Sullivan, and I am sure the faithful of the Diocese of Fargo share in my disappointment,” said Bishop Folda. “I ask that we join in prayers for healing and continue in our resolve and efforts…

Sullivan Middle School, part of the St. John Paul II Catholic Schools network, was named after Bishop Sullivan. Due to the allegations, Sullivan Middle School has been renamed Sacred Heart Middle School, the Fargo Diocese said.

FARGO — Accusations of sexual abuse of a minor against a former Fargo bishop have been deemed credible by Catholic officials, the Fargo Diocese said in a statement issued Friday, July 2.

The accusations are against the late Bishop James Sullivan, the sixth bishop of Fargo, who was previously a priest of the Diocese of Lansing, Michigan.

“The accusations allege the incidents took place several decades ago when Bishop Sullivan was a priest in the Lansing Diocese. There have been no allegations made against Bishop Sullivan during his time as Bishop of Fargo or after his retirement,” the Fargo Diocese said in its statement.

Sullivan died June 12, 2006, in Fargo.

Sullivan Middle School,…

Over the course of eighteen months, from July 2018 to December 2020, the Catholic Church in Poland recorded 368 allegations of sexual abuse of minors, with accusations going as far back as 1958.

The nation’s Catholic bishops presented the figures at a press conference on Monday. It was the second report on abuse cases released by the Bishops’ Conference, with the first detailing 382 cases reported between January 1990 and June 2018. Monday’s report reflects new allegations since then.

At Monday’s press briefing, the Conference’s coordinator for the protection of children and young people, Adam Zak, said, “We have a wave of revelations. This is a continuous wave, you can see that this is not a downward trend, but there are consistently quite high figures.”

The cases reported between 2018 and 2020 involved 292 priests and religious, with 58 having more than one allegation against them. Half of the cases…

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court sent shockwaves through the sex assault survivor community when it let Bill Cosby off on a narrow technicality. Over 50 women have accused Cosby of assault, and the testimony at his second criminal trial sealed the truth: this man is a predator. A jury said so, because the evidence is overwhelming.

So why did the Pennsylvania Justices let him out? Because they said District Attorney Bruce Castor gave Cosby a deal that his successor couldn’t renege—a promise not to prosecute the charges brought by Andrea Constand in a press release, which then opened the door to Cosby being sued for civil damages. He settled for $3.4 million in that case and admitted to slipping Quaaludes to women to have sex with them, aka, to rape them.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s majority held that Castor’s public promise not to prosecute was binding and that, therefore, Cosby never should have been…

A Catholic priest is facing multiple charges stemming from an alleged sexual assault on an 8-year-old boy on two occasions 23 years ago at a parish in Plum.

The Rev. Robert Cedolia is charged by Allegheny County Police with aggravated indecent assault, corruption of minors, two counts of indecent assault and one count of unlawful contact with minor.

The accuser, now 31, told county detectives on Oct. 20, 2020, that both incidents occurred prior to his first Holy Communion in spring 1998 at Our Lady of Joy in Plum, according to a criminal complaint.

In the first incident, according to the complaint, the accuser said he was removed from the other students attending the training and taken to the Sacristy room by Cedolia. Because the boy had previously requested to be more involved in Mass as a bell ringer, he thought that Cedolia was sizing him for a robe. But the…

Two people who attended the Holy Angels Residential School in Fort Chipewyan are accusing Father J.A. Turcotte, who has an elementary school named after him in Fort McMurray, of sexually abusing their peers in the 1960s.

“I could hear him do things to the others,” the man said. “He didn’t get what he wanted from me but I watched out for him all the time.”

Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation said the older students used to call Turcotte “Father Jerk-off.” He was not at the school at the same time as Turcotte, but said stories were common among the older children, including siblings, who knew him.

“They honour him while we walk the streets of Fort McMurray,” said Adam.

Adam made his accusations while speaking at the Bring Our Children Home Healing Rally outside St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church in downtown Fort McMurray.

During his…

A search has revealed 182 human remains in unmarked graves at the site of another residential school in British Columbia.

The Lower Kootenay Band, a member band of the Ktunaxa Nation, has announced that remains were found at the site of the former St. Eugene’s Mission School near the city of Cranbrook.

This announcement comes after hundreds of unmarked graves thought to contain the remains of Indigenous children were recently discovered at the sites of two other former boarding schools in Canada and many First Nations communities having called for a halt to Canada Day celebrations Thursday.

“It is believed that the remains of these 182 souls are from the member Bands of the Ktunaxa nation, neighbouring First Nations communities, & the community of aqam,” the Lower Kootenay Band said in a statement released Wednesday.

A search conducted by the Aqam community using ground-penetrating radar showed…

OXFORD, United Kingdom — Catholic campaigners have demanded action to curb growing online pornography and child abuse in the European Union, as the bloc’s Catholic bishops welcomed new legislative proposals but also urged tighter controls.

“Internet access and digitization have greatly increased during the coronavirus pandemic, and we’re deeply concerned about the effects on children of harassment, abuse and grooming,” said Bénédicte Colin, policy manager with the Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe.

“In most EU member-states, it’s illegal for minors to access online pornography, but these regulations aren’t put into practice. However effective your laws, they count for little or nothing if not implemented.”ADVERTISING

The French lay Catholic spoke as the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, representing over a thousand bishops, published a statement on current EU efforts to combat online crime.

In a June 20 interview with Catholic News Service, Colin said her federation,…

Quebec’s Brothers of the Sacred Heart agreed to pay 60 million Canadian dollars (US$48.5 million) to settle two class action lawsuits on clerical sexual abuse.

The suits, filed in 2016 and 2019, were settled out of court at a conference presided over by retired Judge Claudette Picard. The agreement must be approved by the Superior Court.

The two class actions “targeted no less than 90 aggressors,” said Pierre Boivin, one of the victims’ lawyers. The aggressors — several of them are named in the applications to institute proceedings — are religious and ex-religious. Many are now deceased.

In a statement issued June 29, the Quebec leaders of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart made a point of officially apologizing to the victims.

“Any form of abuse is in flagrant contradiction with the values and educational mission of religious communities who want to establish a relationship of trust with the young…

The wave of sexual abuse accusations within the Church is intensifying in John Paul II’s homeland, according to a new report published by Poland’s Catholic bishops

The Catholic bishops of Poland have released new statistics on sexual abuse in the Church, following the Holy See’s recent sanctioning of a several prelates for “negligence” in handling cases of priests who abused minors.

The publication of the new data this past Monday also followed a lengthy visit to Poland by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, president of the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE).

The Italian was in the Eastern European country to investigate similar accusations of negligence against John Paul II’s former secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz.

“We are facing a wave of accusations,” said Adam Żak, the Jesuit priest in charge of the Polish episcopal conference’s office for the protection of minors.

“The trend is not downward; it remains at a…

The Boy Scouts of America have reached an agreement that will pay around $850 million to more than 60,000 men who say they were abused as scouts, the Daily News has learned.

The deal, announced late Thursday, is major step toward the embattled youth organization emerging from bankruptcy.

Under the agreement filed in Delaware Bankruptcy Court, the Boy Scouts of America will pay $250 million. Local councils of the Scouts will pay at least $600 million, some of it through the transfer of property.

The deal is the result of months of negotiations between survivor groups, the Boy Scouts of America and more than 250 local councils, which are akin to franchises. Victims will continue to seek money from insurers, former insurers and chartered organizations of the Scouts such as the Catholic and Mormon Churches.

The process of distributing money to victims will begin once the Scouts exit chapter 11…

Following the 10 June 2021 announcement regarding the delegation of Indigenous people to meet with the Holy Father to foster meaningful encounters of dialogue and healing, the Catholic Bishops of Canada are pleased to announce that the delegation is scheduled to take place from 17‑20 December 2021 in compliance with global travel restrictions.

Pope Francis is deeply committed to hearing directly from Indigenous Peoples, expressing his heartfelt closeness, addressing the impact of colonization and the role of the Church in the residential school system, in the hopes of responding to the suffering of Indigenous Peoples and the ongoing effects of intergenerational trauma. The Bishops of Canada are deeply appreciative of the Holy Father’s spirit of openness in generously extending an invitation for personal encounters with each of the three distinct groups of delegates – First Nations, Métis and Inuit – as well as a final audience with all delegates together on…

OTTAWA — Pope Francis will meet with Indigenous leaders later this year to discuss coming to Canada to apologize for the church’s role in operating schools that abused and forcibly assimilated generations of Indigenous children, a step toward resolving the grievances of survivors and Indigenous communities, the head of Canada’s largest Indigenous organization said on Wednesday.

In a statement, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said that the pope will meet separately at the Vatican with the representatives of Canada’s three biggest Indigenous groups — the First Nations, the Métis and the Inuit — during a four-day series of meetings in December that will culminate in a joint session with all three.

“Pope Francis is deeply committed to hearing directly from Indigenous Peoples, expressing his heartfelt closeness, addressing the impact of colonization and the role of the Church in the residential school system,” the bishops wrote.

Canada’s Indigenous…

Deb Haaland, the U.S. interior secretary, is the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary.

Deb Haaland discusses this piece in more detail on James Hohmann’s podcast, “Please, Go On.” Listen now.

As I read stories about an unmarked grave in Canada where the remains of 215 Indigenous children were found last month, I was sick to my stomach. But the deaths of Indigenous children at the hands of government were not limited to that side of the border. Many Americans may be alarmed to learn that the United States also has a history of taking Native children from their families in an effort to eradicate our culture and erase us as a people. It is a history that we must learn from if our country is to heal from this tragic era.

I am a product of these horrific assimilation policies. My maternal grandparents were stolen from…

Outlines Path Forward on Troubled Legacy of Federal Boarding School Policies in Remarks to National Congress of American Indians

Contact: Interior_Press@ios.doi.gov

WASHINGTON — In remarks to the National Congress of American Indians 2021 Mid Year Conference today, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced a Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, a comprehensive review of the troubled legacy of federal boarding school policies.

Today’s announcement is accompanied by a secreterial memo in which Secretary Haaland directs the Department to prepare a report detailing available historical records, with an emphasis on cemeteries or potential burial sites, relating to the federal boarding school program in preparation for a future site work. This work will occur under the supervision of the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs.

“The Interior Department will address the inter-generational impact of Indian boarding schools to shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past, no matter how hard it will be,” said Secretary…

[VIDEO]

KESHENA, Wis. (WBAY) – The recent discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves on the grounds of former residential schools for Indigenous children in Canada is triggering pain and anger on the Menominee Indian Reservation.

Tribal members say many of their ancestors suffered traumatic experiences at similar boarding schools on the reservation and across the country. They say their grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ stories, along with many unmarked graves near where boarding schools once stood, are proof of rampant abuse and neglect.

Behind a Catholic church in Keshena, Lorraine Shooter leads us into the woods where a number of Menominee children a buried.

“Some of the ages are pretty young and it makes you wonder how they passed away,” says Shooter.

Most of the graves on this land, though, are unmarked.

“Back here some of the elders had said that they just pushed the graves back there and there are people…

Beloved Upper Midwest Diocese:

I am writing to give you an update on the ongoing independent investigation that I announced to you in this pastoral letter several weeks ago about a heartbreaking situation in one of our former congregations in Big Rock, Illinois. 

As some of you may be aware, one of the survivors recently spoke about this on social media, identifying herself as a victim of sexual violence and raising important questions and concerns about the diocese’s investigative process related to Mark Rivera.

Let me first say that I and our diocesan leadership continue to be deeply grieved and disturbed that anyone within our diocesan community has been victimized. This is an extremely painful, traumatic experience. We long for our diocese to be a place of true safety for all. 

Not only that, but we are committed to responding to any allegations of abuse within any of our churches in…

THE “twin-track” replacement for the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM) proposed by the Lambeth working group and due to be discussed at General Synod in a week’s time is missing a track, critics say.

The Vicar-General of York, the Rt Worshipful Peter Collier QC, chaired an independent working group on the CDM set up by the Ecclesiastical Law Society (News, 24 February; Comment, 11 December 2020). In an online article for the Church Times this week, he expresses appreciation of the acknowledgement done by the society (ELS) that is contained in the short paper produced for the Synod by the Lambeth Working Group, which was commissioned by the House of Bishops to find reforms and, latterly, a replacement for the discredited CDM.

But he writes: “I don’t understand how we can be said to have assisted to shape their proposals when they appear to have rejected the fundamental thrust of what we…

The apostolic nunciature in Poland announced on March 29 that the Vatican had sanctioned Archbishop Głódź after a probe under the norms of Pope Francis’ 2019 motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi.

A Polish Catholic archbishop sanctioned by the Vatican has defended his election as a village mayor.

Archbishop Sławoj Leszek Głódź told Radio Zet on June 29 that his role as mayor of Piaski, in northeastern Poland, did not conflict with canon law. 

Canon 285 of the Code of Canon Law says that “clerics are forbidden to assume public offices which entail a participation in the exercise of civil power.”

But Archbishop Głódź, who holds a doctorate in Eastern Catholic canon law, insisted that the canon did not apply to his new role.

“This is not a government function,” he said.

Archbishop Głódź served the archdiocese of Gdańsk from 2008 to Aug. 13, 2020, when the pope accepted his resignation on his…

A former Storm Lake priest and Fonda man affiliated with the Catholic church have been accused of sexually abusing young boys decades ago, according to an Iowa Attorney General’s report that commended the Sioux City Diocese for keeping an active list of “credibly accused” priests and clergy members.

The attorney general’s report released last week said Everett Apt of St. Mary’s Parish and an unidentified “non-clergy member who was involved in a Catholic organization” in Fonda were among its list of 31 alleged abusers. The allegations reportedly occurred in the 1940s and mid-1960s, which falls out of Iowa’s statute of limitations for criminal prosecution. 

The report said a woman told “several priests” in the 1980s about sexual abuse allegedly committed by Apt against her husband when he was in high school. Apt was already leveled with 10 credible allegations. The woman’s claims were made after Apt’s death.

The diocese withheld…

A retired Buffalo priest who is accused of child sex abuse in two recent Child Victims Act lawsuits has been put on administrative leave.

Bishop Michael W. Fisher suspended Monsignor James G. Kelly from active ministry Wednesday after an unnamed plaintiff said in court papers that Kelly molested him from 1980 to 1982. The plaintiff was an 8-to 10-year-old student of the Diocesan Educational Center and attended church at St. Nicholas and St. Benedict the Moor at the time of the alleged abuse. The school and both parishes are now defunct.

The Buffalo Diocese is launching a monitoring program that will include monthly home visits and other restrictions for offending priests.

Kelly, 83, also was accused in a June 11 lawsuit by an unnamed plaintiff of engaging in unpermitted sexual contact with a minor from 2005 to 2007 while assigned to St. Margaret Church in North Buffalo.

Diocese officials said…

OTTAWA — Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde says there are no guarantees an Indigenous delegation travelling to the Vatican will lead to Pope Francis apologizing in Canada for the Catholic Church’s role in residential schools — but they must try.

Bellegarde confirmed AFN representatives will join Metis and Inuit leaders making the trip in late December to seek a papal apology.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report into the residential school system released in 2015 called for the pope to come to Canada to apologize to survivors as well as their families and communities for the abuses faced by Indigenous children.

It asked for that to happen within one year of the report’s release and to be similar to the papal apology delivered to victims in Ireland that suffered different abuses through the Catholic Church.

Outrage over the lack of an apology has been reaching new…

SASKATOON — When the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) was signed in 2006, the Roman Catholic Church agreed to provide $25 million in compensation for historical wrongs – and the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) says the church hasn’t done enough to reach that goal.

According to a release from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon, those who signed the IRSSA committed to the following:

•  Payment of $29 million in cash, which was directed to programs and services und the supervision of First Nations organizations, and to the “Returning to Spirit’ program. The diocese of Saskatoon’s share of this amount was $25,000.
•  A “services-in-kind” commitment, whereby various community services and programs worth more than $25 million were organized by the various Catholic entities to be provided for Indigenous communities. The diocese of Saskatoon’s services-in-kind contribution to restorative ministry was valued at $43,000.
•  A final fundraising appeal that…

A retired Buffalo priest, who still helps in parish ministry, has been placed on administrative leave after allegations of abuse were levied against 83-year-old Rev. Msgr. James G. Kelly.

The Catholic Diocese of Buffalo says a complaint was filed anonymously pursuant to the Child Victims Act by someone who claims they were abused as a child 15 years ago by Msgr. Kelly. The complaint wasn’t served directly to the diocese, it was discovered “during a recent search of publicly filed complaints.”

Msgr. Kelly denied committing any acts of abuse. The diocese notified the Erie County District Attorney’s office and contacted the plaintiff’s attorney after learning of the complaint. The matter has also been reported to their Independent Review Board — responsible for appointing an independent investigator. 

The diocese says they’re working to see if the victim is willing to participate in an investigation.

While waiting for a response from the…

Pope Francis has agreed to meet in December with Indigenous survivors of Canada’s notorious residential schools amid calls for a papal apology for the Catholic Church’s role in the abuse and deaths of thousands of native children.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said Francis had invited the delegations to the Vatican and would meet separately with three groups — First Nations, Metis and Inuit — during their Dec. 17-20 visit. The pope will then preside over a final audience with all three groups Dec. 20, the conference said in a statement Tuesday.

The Vatican didn’t confirm the visit Wednesday, but the Holy See’s in-house news portal reported on the bishops’ statement. The Canadian bishops said the trip was contingent on the pandemic and that the delegations would include survivors of the residential schools, Indigenous elders and youths, as well as Indigenous leaders and Canadian bishops.

In recent weeks, investigators…

A Canadian Indigenous group said Wednesday a search using ground-penetrating radar has found 182 human remains in unmarked graves at a site near a former Catholic Church-run residential school that housed Indigenous children taken from their families.

The latest discovery of graves near Cranbrook, British Columbia follows reports of similar findings at two other such church-run schools, one of more than 600 unmarked graves and another of 215 bodies. Cranbrook is 524 miles (843 kilometers) east of Vancouver.

The Lower Kootenay Band said in a news release that it began using the technology last year to search the site close to the former St. Eugene’s Mission School, which was operated by the Catholic Church from 1912 until the early 1970s. It said the search found the remains in unmarked graves, some about 3 feet (a meter) deep.

It’s believed the remains are those of people from the bands of the…

Archbishop Jerome Listecki discusses his challenge to the Wisconsin attorney general’s request to reopen old sexual abuse cases.

Archbishop Jerome Listecki of Milwaukee is one of only a relative handful of clergy in the Catholic Church to hold canon law and civil law degrees. Putting his knowledge of the law to work, the archbishop of Milwaukee has challenged the Wisconsin attorney general’s request to review reports of clergy abuse in the state, seeing it as an infringement on the Church’s rights and a constitutional violation of religious freedom.  

Wisconsin attorney general Josh Kaul announced this past April that it was heading up an investigation into alleged sexual abuse in “the state’s Catholic dioceses and at least three religious orders.”. The review would begin with Wisconsin Department of Justice (WDOJ) requests for files and documents from Catholic dioceses and religious orders. 

Kaul’s review follows on similar reviews by his counterparts in other…

The allegation was reported to Charleston Police Department on June 18, reports show.

The employee was identified by the diocese but his position was not noted. The Post and Courier is not naming the accused. 

“(The employee) was terminated after officials with the Diocese of Charleston learned of an allegation of sexual misconduct with a minor,” Aselage wrote on June 29.

Charleston police are investigating the allegation. No charges have been filed.

“The complainant, a security consultant for the Catholic Diocese, reported a fondling incident from the summer of 2016 that occurred at or near Blessed Sacrament and the victim’s home,” according to the incident report.

Follow Olivia Diaz on Twitter @oliviardiaz.

Olivia Diaz covers breaking news and public safety in the Charleston area. She spent the past four years in Richmond, Virginia, double majoring in journalism and global studies at the University of Richmond.

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has helped all Canadians and First Nations communities grapple with the sorrowful realities of their nation’s colonial past, particularly the gruesome legacy of its residential schools for Indigenous children. Those schools, many administered by Catholic religious orders and intended to be engines of assimilation, became centers of despair and brutality.

The recent discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at two schools, and the likelihood that thousands more will be found at other residential school sites, have added to the anguish. But at least in Canada, a foundation for healing is being laid by the government-sponsored truth and reconciliation commission.

No similar process has started in the United States, though many of the same outrages likely occurred on this side of the border, in the system of more than 350 Native American boarding schools in the 19th century that were the model for the Canadian network….

It is time to open the window to justice to give survivors their day in court, no matter when they were born. Other states have done it.

In an episode of “This is Us,” the show depicts a scene of a woman in labor in a 1960s delivery room. The camera toggles between the woman struggling through the final minutes of labor and the wall clock above her. The baby’s birthday is about to be determined — before midnight or after. Just two minutes before midnight, the baby is born. 

Earlier in the same episode, two young brothers are sitting at a bar watching television intensely as the Selective Service draft lottery pulls the birthday of one of the young men, the baby born in the other scene. That birthday, right before midnight, got assigned a single0digit draft number, which sent the young man to Vietnam and changed the…

After the discovery of 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former school for Native children in Canada, it is time to investigate similar abuses in the US

There is so much mourning Native people have yet to do. The full magnitude of Native suffering has yet to be entirely understood, especially when it comes to the nightmarish legacies of American Indian boarding schools. The purpose of the schools was “civilization”, but, as I have written elsewhere, boarding schools served to provide access to Native land, by breaking up Native families and holding children hostage so their nations would cede more territory. And one of the primary benefactors of the boarding school system is the Catholic church, which is today the world’s largest non-governmental landowner, with roughly 177 million acres of property throughout the globe. Part of the evidence of how exactly the church acquired its wealth in North America…

To contribute to a dialogue of healing and understanding following the Kamloops Indian Residential School announcement, The B.C. Catholic is sharing stories of individuals who have been working toward truth and reconciliation. We are publishing first-person accounts as well as interviews over a few weeks.

The news coming out of Kamloops has been very deflating for me. As a permanent deacon I have worked very hard in the communities I serve – Sts’ ailes and Seabird Island –  to promote the Church where First Nations people have distanced themselves from the Church.

It’s been difficult for me to encourage them to give the Church another chance. There are difficult questions, such as why the Church would be involved in such a thing, and how priests and nuns abused people while representing the Church. No one is here to help me answer those questions.

COVID has been tough on the ministry,…

The latest progress report from the committee studying clerical sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Vancouver names five more clergymen involved in abuse settlements, lawsuits, or other cases.

The previously unpublished names are Father Roland Joncas, Brother Edward Patrick English, Father Frederick Robert Neilsen, Father Duncan George Goguillot, and Father William Crawford Mendenhall.

The cases of Joncas, English, and Goguillot involved allegations of abuse of a minor, while Mendenhall reportedly admitted to sexual misconduct with adult men. Information published about Neilsen doesn’t specify the age of those who came forward alleging sexual abuse, but says he served as a high school counsellor for five years.

Joncas and Goguillot are deceased and Neilson and Medenhall were removed from ministry or laicized. A lawsuit involving allegations against Goguillot is currently before the courts, while English was named as an accused in a class action lawsuit in 2021.

More details about the allegations and…

Church authorities said they had received 368 reports of the sexual abuse, and almost half involved children under 15.

Poland’s Catholic Church, assailed by accusations that it for years ignored the sexual abuse of minors by clergy members, on Monday acknowledged that from July 2018 through the end of last year, it had received complaints of abuse against 368 boys and girls.

Pleading for “forgiveness” from “those wronged and all those shocked by the evil in the church,” the head of the Polish church, Archbishop Wojciech Polak, said the figures “do not express the full depth of the drama of sexual abuse of minors perpetrated by some clergymen.”

Nearly half the latest cases reported related to accusations of abuse against victims under age 15.

The timing of the figures’ release — just days after the Vatican said it was investigating accusations against a retired Polish cardinal of negligence on sexual…

• Investigators treating fires in British Columbia as suspicious
• Anger over church’s historical role in forced assimilation

Two more Catholic churches on First Nations reserves in western Canada have been destroyed by fires that investigators are once again treating as suspicious.

Over the weekend, crews in southern British Columbia responded to early morning blazes at St Ann’s Church on Upper Similkameen Indian Band land, and the Chopaka Church on the lands of the Lower Similkameen Indian Band. Both churches, built from wood and more than 100 years old, were burned to the ground.

The fires come nearly a week after two other churches were destroyed , and amid growing anger over the church’s role in Canada’s campaign to forcibly assimilate Indigenous people.

In recent weeks, the country has been rocked by the discovery of nearly a thousand unmarked graves at the sites of church-run residential schools where Indigenous children were forcibly converted to Christianity and…

Pennsylvania legislators and Gov. Tom Wolf all claimed some level of victory after the state budget passed the General Assembly late Friday night. 

Wolf, a Democrat, championed what he saw as wins for his party, especially the largest education funding increase in state history. 

But the $416 million state funding increase in public education was less than the $1.3 billion Wolf wanted, which he intended to pay for with a tax hike on high earners before federal stimulus money and bigger tax revenues flowed in.

When Republicans cheered the budget passage on their way out of Harrisburg, they were quick to say they blocked Wolf’s “huge tax burden.” 

But for all the political theater, lawmakers left the state capital with a lot of unfinished business.

Despite the lingering pandemic fallout and the challenges Pennsylvania faced before COVID-19, lawmakers did little to solve problems this session other than passing a budget. 

…

Monsignor John Paddack, a former principal on Staten Island, faces a new allegation of sexual misconduct during his time at Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx.

The Advance/SILive.com previously reported on claims of sex-abuse levied against the priest while he served in administrative positions at Monsignor Farrell High School in Oakwood and St. Joseph by-the-Sea High School in Huguenot.

Overall, more than a dozen individuals have filed lawsuits accusing Monsignor Paddack of abuse at the cleric’s various assignments throughout the Archdiocese of New York since the 1980s.

Monsignor Paddack and former religious Brother Christopher Keogan are referred to as “serial pedophiles” in a lawsuit filed in Bronx Supreme Court on May 31 by the Herman Law Firm on behalf of an anonymous male victim.

The defendants in the case, brought under the state’s Child Victims Act, are the archdiocese and Cardinal Hayes…

A former priest in Oakland County previously charged with sexually assaulting a minor is now facing two additional cases, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced Monday.

Gary Berthiaume, 80, was charged last year with one count of second-degree criminal sexual conduct – a 15-year felony.

A preliminary exam is set in that case for July 21 at 9 a.m. before Judge James Brady in Oakland County’s 47th District Court.

He was arraigned Friday on two additional cases.

All three cases stem from allegations of abuse in the 1970s involving three different victims who were between 13 and 15 years old at the time.

Berthiaume was a priest at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Wyandotte and later Our Lady of Sorrows in Farmington during that timeframe.

He now faces two counts of gross indecency – 5-year felonies or $2,500 – in Oakland’s 46th District Court.

In the 47th District Court, where he was charged…

A former priest in Oakland County charged with sexually assaulting a minor decades ago now faces two more cases, the Michigan Attorney General’s office announced Monday.

The three cases against Gary Berthiaume stem from allegations in the 1970s involving victims who were between 13 and 15 at the time, investigators said in a statement.

Berthiaume, 80, was then a priest at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Wyandotte and later Our Lady of Sorrows in Farmington, according to the release.

Last year, he was charged with one count of second-degree criminal sexual conduct, a 15-year felony.

The victim was 14 and told authorities an assault took place in August 1977 at the Our Lady of Sorrows rectory in Farmington, officials have said.

A preliminary examination in that case is scheduled for 9 a.m. July 21 in Oakland County’s 47th District Court. 

On Friday, Berthiaume was arraigned in two other cases. 

He now faces two counts of gross indecency,…

In its latest report released Monday on the sexual abuse of minors, Poland’s Catholic Church lists 292 clergymen who are alleged to have abused over 300 boys and girls from 1958 though 2020.

The cases were reported to church authorities from mid-2018 until the end of 2020. The reports came from the victims, their families, other clergymen, the media and from other sources.

At an online conference in Warsaw, the head of Poland’s Catholic Church, Archbishop Wojciech Polak, apologized to the victims and asked their forgiveness, echoing apologies he has made before.

According to church statistics gathered from all dioceses, 368 reports of abuse of people under the age of 18 were made to church authorities between July 1, 2018, and Dec. 31, 2020. They cover a period ranging from 1958 though 2020.

Of them, 144 cases have been confirmed or considered credible at an initial stage of an investigation…

[Includes audio clips of the interview.]

The former Iowan who pushed the attorney general to investigate cases of priest abuse says the report just released by the A-G is another positive step forward.

Tim Lennon was living in Sioux City when he got involved in the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests or SNAP.

Lennon says things are much different now than they used to be.

He says this report and Iowa’s recent change in the law that lifts the statute of limitations on child sex abuse charges are examples of the progress made.

The four catholic bishops in Iowa released a statement saying the Attorney General’s report will be studied for suggestions on how the catholic church’s efforts might be improved.

Lennon says the church has not stepped up like others have.

Lennon says he was abused when he was 12, but it took until he was 63…

Proving a case decades after the schools ceased to operate would be very difficult, experts say

Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme said he is treating the site of 751 unmarked graves at the former Marieval Indian Residential School “like a crime scene.”

Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) Chief Bobby Cameron said the deaths of children at the school was “a crime against humanity.”

And yet, after the second discovery in less than a month of hundreds of previously unknown burials at former residential schools, there is no indication that criminal charges of any kind will be laid in connection to those deaths.

The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) says those charges are not only warranted, but necessary if Canada wants to fulfil its pledge of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.

“If they have committed a crime, then they need to be held criminally responsible for those actions,” said Lynne Groulx, NWAC’s CEO.

The…

On the grounds of the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan, where an estimated 751 unmarked graves have now been identified, Carol Lavallee remembers a skating rink.

At the time Lavallee, who was forced to attend the school at just six-years-old, had no idea the rink was situated above a burial site. It wasn’t until she was an adult that she heard rumours of unmarked graves on the school grounds.
“There was a barn there. There used to be a chicken coop, a pig sty, and a cattle corral was over those graves… why would any religion condone something like that,” Lavallee told CTV National News.

“The priest was in charge of the school, he knew there were bodies there…. There must be records of it.”

On Thursday, Cowessess First Nation, located 164 kilometres east of Regina, announced the discovery of the unmarked graves, found after radar scanning of the…