VATICAN CITY
Reuters Videos

February 24, 2019

Pope Francis has promised zero tolerance on sex abuse at the end of a landmark conference. But survivors and activists say without concrete action such as defrocking abusing bishops, they don’t trust the Church to police itself. Lucy Fielder reports.

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

AUSTRALIA
The Age

February 26, 2019

By Adam Cooper

Cardinal George Pell has been found guilty and is set to be jailed for child sexual abuse in the most sensational verdict since the Catholic Church became engulfed in worldwide abuse scandals.

Pell, who was Vatican treasurer, close to the Pope and the most senior Catholic figure in the world to be charged by police with child sex offences, has been found guilty of orally raping one choirboy and molesting another in Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral 22 years ago.

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AUSTRALIA
The Associated Press

February 25, 2019

MELBOURNE, Australia — The most senior Catholic cleric ever charged with child sex abuse has been convicted of molesting two choirboys moments after celebrating Mass, dealing a new blow to the Catholic hierarchy’s credibility after a year of global revelations of abuse and cover-up.

Cardinal George Pell, Pope Francis’ top financial adviser and the Vatican’s economy minister, bowed his head but then regained his composure as the 12-member jury delivered unanimous verdicts in the Victoria state County Court on Dec. 11 after more than two days of deliberation.

The court had until Tuesday forbidden publication of any details about the trial.

The convictions were confirmed the same week that Francis concluded his extraordinary summit of Catholic leaders summoned to Rome for a tutorial on preventing clergy sexual abuse and protecting children from predator priests.

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AUSTRALIA
CNN

February 26, 2019

By Hilary Whiteman and Ben Westcott

One of the most powerful men in the Roman Catholic Church was found guilty of multiple historical child sex offenses at a secret trial in Melbourne in December, the existence of which can only now be revealed.

Australian Cardinal George Pell, 77, is almost certain to face prison after a jury found him guilty of one charge of sexual penetration of a child and four charges of an indecent act with or in the presence of a child in the late 1990s.

The conviction of Pell, the Vatican treasurer and a close adviser to Pope Francis, will send shockwaves through the church, which is already reeling from accusations of sexual abuse committed by priests worldwide.

Pell is the most senior Catholic official to be found guilty of child sex offenses to date. His conviction brings the escalating international controversy around the abuse of children in Catholic institutions straight to the doors of the Holy See.

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JACKSON (MS)
Clarion Ledger

February 26, 2019

By Sarah Fowler

In 2002, a bombshell investigation in Boston revealed that priests had been abusing children for decades and that — also for decades — the church had been attempting to silence the victims and cover up the abuse. As more victims came forward, it was soon clear the abuse was not just confined to a few parishes in Massachusetts — it was a global coverup that implicated hundreds of priests.

Mississippi was not immune. Despite an overhaul of policy and implementing a new program aimed at protecting children, new allegations emerged both locally and internationally. Lawsuits have been filed and either settled or dismissed. The church settled with 29 of 30 victims in 2006, paying them a total of $731,250. In the one case that was not settled, the victim was told he was “twenty years too late,” due to the statute of limitations, and his case was dismissed.

Today — as the Jackson diocese prepares to release names of priests who have been accused of sexual abuse and as the church as a whole continues to address claims of sexual abuse while continually reviewing measures to prevent future incidents — Mississippi Catholics find themselves balancing the love of their faith with their reactions to scandals old and new.

Over the last six months, the Catholic Diocese of Jackson has found itself dealing with the following:

A new lawsuit based on previous allegations of a child being victimized by a priest.
A federal affidavit alleging one priest lied to his congregation about having cancer and then raised money for treatment and for an orphanage that has not been proven to exist.
Priests speaking out as informants for the federal government against another priest.
A federal investigation related to the priest who lied about having cancer.
Mississippi Catholics have responded in different ways. Some parishioners are calling on the bishop to resign while others have found a newfound passion for their church community.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Commonweal

February 25, 2019

By Austen Ivereigh

The contrast was little short of amazing. On the one hand, you had the experience inside the synod hall by the end of last week’s Vatican abuse summit, with talk of a new resolve and clarity. On the other, you had the scorn from victims’ groups who saw only missed opportunities.

Nothing like this had ever been done before: to use a synodal process to effect a global institutional conversion aimed at overcoming mechanisms of denial and resistance. Inside, 190 church leaders were becoming crusaders against child abuse, a shift that was especially notable among the presidents of bishops’ conferences from Asia and Africa, some of whom began the February 21–24 meeting saying this wasn’t their problem. Yet outside, survivors’ spokespeople said the summit was just a wordy exercise for show, one that avoided the real task.

In fact, it was the victims who had been invited to tell the bishops their stories who were catalysts for the conversion of hearts and minds. Fr. Hans Zollner, the determined and methodical German Jesuit who is the pope’s point man on this issue, spoke at the final press conference about working groups and individuals who told him of the transformation they had undergone after hearing from the survivors—many on video, others in person: “When I hear people from Asia and Africa speaking now, in the same language, with the same determination, saying we need to confront this, own this, do something about it, at home—this is for me the most comforting and hopeful experience and impression I have.” Zollner mentioned an Italian woman who had shared an especially powerful story, breaking down at the end. The bishops, cardinals, and religious-order heads stepped forward to thank and comfort her. Their reaction, Zollner told us, was a “sign that this has reached the heart level, and if it reaches that level you can’t be as you were before.”

The victims’ groups demanded “concrete” measures and didn’t see them, despite the pope promising exactly that. “Why can’t he enact zero-tolerance into church law? He has the power to do that,” complained Peter Isely, who represents a group called Ending Clergy Abuse. Yet if “zero tolerance”—a phrase with many meanings—means holding bishops accountable for failures to act on abuse allegations, then the meeting demonstrated that real progress is underway. For one, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will produce a small handbook, a vademecum, so that every bishop in the world will understand his obligations exactly. If bishops don’t fulfill those obligations, the 2016 motu propio “Like A Loving Mother” makes it clear that they will be removed.

To make it easier to report such failures, two measures are likely to be enacted. The first is a proposal from Cardinal Blase Cupich that should make it easier to denounce, investigate, and report on a bishop’s failure to act. (Some version of it is likely to pass the USCCB in June, and will no doubt be copied in other countries.) The second is a plan now being studied by the pope’s C9 advisory body that would create a new dicastery dedicated to coordinating the Vatican’s anti-abuse efforts. According to Cardinal Oswald Gracias, who is one of the C9 advisors, this, too, would make it easier to hold bishops accountable.

Fr. Zollner also announced new “task forces” of experts that will parachute into resource-starved or remote dioceses to boost local safeguarding capacities. There will also be changes to the law. The definition of a minor in Vatican City State laws governing child pornography will be raised from fourteen to eighteen, as part of the introduction of laws to protect minors that will align the Vatican with best practices of the church worldwide. These laws would cover, for example, Holy See diplomats. (There have been two cases in recent years of nunciature staff downloading child pornography.)

One reform that looks certain concerns the so-called “pontifical secret” governing trials of abusive priests. The CDF’s adjunct secretary, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, said that whatever is not strictly necessary to protect the good name and privacy of accusers and the accused while trials are underway will be reviewed in the interests of accountability and transparency. This should make it easier to announce when priests have been tried and found guilty, so that victims can know justice has been done.

And it’s not as if there isn’t more to come. The pope gave the bishops and religious leaders twenty-one recommendations culled from pre-summit submissions that included the screening of candidates, the reporting of allegations, and so on. The small groups discussed these and added at least as many new ones, which organizers said would be studied immediately with the heads of Vatican dicasteries, who also attended the summit.

All of this sounded pretty concrete to me. The victims’ groups, however, were generally scornful. They had come seeking “zero tolerance” and had found only fine-sounding words. What especially annoyed and disappointed many of them was Francis’s speech at the summit’s conclusion, which Anne Barrett Doyle, a co-founder of BishopAccountability.org, the Boston-based advocacy organization, called a “stunning letdown.”

Whether one calls it clericalism, institutional idolatry, or corruption, the mindset that has governed too many bishops for too long makes them deaf to victims and protective of perpetrators.
In the speech, Francis laid down eight principles—culled from World Health Authority documents, and his own anti-abuse experts—to guide the church’s efforts to combat a worldwide evil that has struck at the heart of Catholicism’s credibility.

Francis presented a broad picture of the abuse of minors, a form of cruelty as old as humanity yet revealed as never before in our own time. Acts of sexual violence against children in homes, neighborhoods, schools, and various other institutions has created millions of silent victims, while the spread of internet pornography and the rise of sexual tourism has led to numbing levels of suffering. (In 2017 alone, the pope said, three million people traveled to have sexual relations with a minor.) Francis was implicitly addressing church leaders from Africa who had complained at the start of the summit that clerical sex abuse wasn’t their issue, and that what they had to tackle were other forms of child exploitation. Francis insisted that clerical sex abuse represents the same demonic abuse of power that lurks behind “other forms of abuse affecting almost 85,000,000 children, forgotten by everyone.” These include “child soldiers, child prostitutes, starving children, children kidnapped and often victimized by the horrid commerce of human organs or enslaved, child victims of war, refugee children, aborted children and so many others.”

In other words, these are all dimensions of the same evil that the church everywhere has to confront as part of its core mission. You cannot care about child soldiers without caring about the sexual abuse of children, starting with the abuse committed by priests. Yet rather than seeing the pope’s references as a way of dismantling the African church’s denial mechanism, victims’ groups see it as a PR exercise designed to diminish the church’s responsibility. Barret Doyle believes Francis was “rationalizing”—minimizing the church’s crimes by pointing out that abuse happens in all sectors of society.

In reality, there was nothing the bishops and the pope could have said that would have satisfied the victims’ groups. Their response to the issue is one that Francis has explicitly rejected: one-size-fits-all retribution. As Archbishop Scicluna pointed out, when the church administers sanctions or penalties, it is for the reform of the sinner and reparation of scandal, not simply punishment.

That doesn’t mean it is lenient. In a post-summit article that seeks to capture the clash of viewpoints, Rachel Donadio describes canon law as taking “a more pastoral approach, one that leans toward forgiveness.” Yet when it comes to the abuse of minors, church law offers no second chances: abuser priests will no longer be able to act as priests, and bishops who cover up for them will be removed. The point is that canon law takes a “common-good” approach, not a punitive one. “Removing from exercise of ministry should not be seen as a punishment but rather as the duty to protect the flock,” Archbishop Scicluna told journalists.

But if your view of laws is essentially retributive, canon law does looks lax. This in turn feeds the suspicion of victims’ organizations and some right-wing Catholics, who believe that if only the church were fiercer, or more punitive—if only it were less “merciful” and more draconian—this issue could be resolved very quickly.

The summit organizers didn’t believe this. They say that laws and regulations, though necessary, are incapable of attacking the issue at its roots. They say this is a problem that can be solved only by conversion, not coercion. Whether one calls it clericalism, institutional idolatry, or corruption, the mindset that has governed too many bishops for too long makes them deaf to victims and protective of perpetrators. The pope calls it the spirit of evil, which cannot be defeated by practical means alone, but by spiritual means of “humiliation, self-accusation, prayer, and penance.” Hence the penitential liturgy on Saturday, when a Chilean victim spoke slowly and piercingly of the effect of abuse of him—“there is no dream without the memory of what happened. No day without memories, no day without flashbacks.” Hence, too, the examination of conscience, the collective confession, and an appeal for “the grace to overcome injustice and to practice justice for the people entrusted to our care.”

“The pope is a supreme monarch: Can’t he just order everyone to do this?” asked an exasperated BBC interviewer when I tried to explain why the pope had brought together church leaders for a four-day summit. The Archbishop of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Hollerich, gave to La Croix the answer I should have given. Le pape est très sage, he said. “He knows very well that you can’t change the church by just giving orders from above. You have to change people’s hearts.” Hollerich, moderator of the French-speaking group, said he could see this happening in his group: “there is a development in their consciences, in the bishops’ thinking in the course of these few days,” he said. “The bishops are changing.”

The primary purpose of the summit was never to devise severe new legislation, for which a global meeting of church leaders would hardly be necessary. The purpose was what the pope called “personal and collective conversion, the humility of learning, listening, assisting and protecting the most vulnerable.” On the way to that conversion, there were two forms of resistance to God’s grace identified by the pope: defensiveness (the kind of attitude that says, “this isn’t our issue”) and juridicism (believing you can change everything by laws and regulations alone).

Of course, if you do not believe in the power of grace to transform consciousness, this will all sound like evasive palaver. If you believe bishops are essentially corrupt and self-serving and will only act against abuser priests when they see each other locked up in jail, you will hardly see the point of the pope’s analysis.

So we’re left with a kind of paradox. Real change can happen only through the involvement of survivors, whose testimonies are key to the church’s conversion on this issue. Yet too often survivors’ organizations do not recognize conversion as amounting to any kind of solution. Their anger is fully justified—and it has sometimes forced the issue when bishops would have preferred to see it remain buried—but it has left many of them blind to the significance of what just happened at the Vatican.

TagsSexual-abuse Crisis Pope Francis Clericalism

Austen Ivereigh is the pope’s biographer. His new book A Heart For Change: Inside the Tension of Pope Francis’s Reform will be published next fall by Henry Holt.

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EVANSVILLE (IN)
WFIE TV

February 25, 2019

By Jared Goffinet and Kate O’Rourke

While the Diocese included two of the priests on the Archabbey’s list, Saint Meinrad handled the allegations with its own review board.

As we reported Friday, Saint Meinrad’s list includes Robert Woerdeman with one credible allegation and Warren Heitz with two.

Saint Meinrad tells us they encourage victims to report abuse to authorities and that if victims don’t, the Archabbey will. We are told most of their monks serve in seminary school as teachers or administrators.

Now, we’ve learned Heitz’s alleged abuse occurred in the ′70s. One was reported in 1999 and the other in 2018.

Heitz was removed from public ministry in 2002. Since then, we are told he has lived at a supervised residential facility for offenders since 2009.

But up until that point, which was 10 years after abuse was reported, he lived at Saint Meinrad.

“Because he’s residing here does not mean he didn’t have restrictions, so in 2009 it was decided after further evaluation and input from professionals that the best course of action was to move him to a supervised residential facility, but that does not mean that he was not under restrictions when he was living here at St. Meinrad,” Explains Saint Meinrad Spokeswoman Mary Jeanne Schumacher.

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ERIE (PA)
Erie Times

February 25, 2019

By Ed Palattella

Erie Catholic Bishop Lawrence Persico said he is ready to restart an effort with colleagues to further address the clergy sex-abuse crisis in the United States.

The go-ahead, Persico said, came from Pope Francis, who on Sunday ended an unprecedented Vatican summit on clergy sex abuse by declaring “an all-out battle against the abuse of minors” within the Roman Catholic Church and beyond.

Though abuse victims criticized Francis for failing to propose measures of his own, Persico said the pope gave responsibility for developing new rules to bishops’ groups worldwide, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The Vatican frustrated Persico and others this past fall when the Holy See asked the conference to hold off on passing new regulations until Francis held the global meeting on abuse. With that four-day session over, Persico said, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is set to resume its work, with the Vatican to review its proposals later.

“The pope is very clear,” Persico said on Monday. “He wants progress on this. He wants something concrete and he wants effective measures. So I think now this is the green light.”

Persico said he believes the Vatican will be inclined to approve what the American bishops develop, including ways to discipline abusive bishops or bishops who covered up abuse. The final authority for punishing a bishop will remain with the pope, but the new rules are designed to give bishops more of a role in policing themselves.

If the Vatican is slow to approve the American proposals, Persico said, it risks even more of a backlash. Victims and others have advocated for change since the Aug. 14 release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in Pennsylvania.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Times-Picayune

February 25, 2019

By Kim Chatelain

Promising “unyielding vigilance” in attacking clergy abuse, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops wrapped an unprecedented Vatican summit by vowing to intensify a 2002 charter designed to create a safe environment for children in the church.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, who heads the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, released his statement Sunday (Feb. 24) at the end of a four-day meeting of church hierarchy in Rome to discuss sexual abuse and child protection.

At a meeting in Dallas in 2002, the U.S. bishops’ conference established what is formally called the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” which is also known as the Dallas Charter. Among other things, it requires dioceses to set up safe environment programs that include background checks and training for anyone who has contact with minors at any Catholic church or school event. The document has been updated several times since its adoption.

Some church leaders have said the number of sex abuse complaints has dropped dramatically since the charter was put in place. However, recent reports of child molestation by clergy members, most notably a shocking report by a Pennsylvania grand jury last year, brought the issue into public view again and prompted Pope Francis to stage the summit.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

February 25, 2019

After four long days in Rome, survivors and advocates who had hoped to see Catholic church officials take concrete action towards ending the clergy abuse and cover-up crisis were left disappointed. At the end, Pope Francis offered only words, “reflection points,” and policies to consider for the future.

No bishop who had been involved in covering-up or minimizing allegations was fired. No directive was handed down to order bishops to turn over their secret abuse files to police. No punishment was agreed upon nor system put in place for disciplining those bishops who continue to cover-up abuse cases in the future.

In other words, no child was made safer and no survivor was helped during this summit.

And so, in many ways, not only was the summit everything that survivors expected it would be, but is also an affirmation that we are right to lay our hopes for change at the feet of secular officials, not those in the church.

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YORK (PA)
Associated Press

February 25, 2019

A Pennsylvania county government disclosed it fired a former Roman Catholic priest from a job working with people who have mental disabilities shortly after his name appeared in a grand jury report into child sexual abuse .

York County officials told the York Daily Record/Sunday News they had not been aware of allegations against David H. Luck before the August publication of the grand jury report that included information about him.

Luck was suspended from serving as a priest in the Harrisburg diocese in 1990. He was subsequently hired as a caseworker in the mental health and intellectual and developmental disabilities section of the York County Human Services Department.

County officials said Monday that 1994 and 2015 background checks on Luck yielded nothing.

Luck declined comment to the newspaper and did not return a phone message from the AP left at a York phone number linked to him.

The grand jury report cited secret diocesan archives that said Luck, who became a priest in 1987, was accused by a family in 1988 of raping a 15-year-old boy and fondling an 11-year-old boy.

The report alleged that Luck told church officials he was a pedophile in 1990, the year he was suspended from priestly duties.

The grand jury report said no one from the Harrisburg diocese alerted police. Luck was not charged criminally.

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WALTHAM (MA)
BishopAccountability.org

February 2019

To prepare for the Catholic church’s first global summit on child sexual abuse by clergy, attended by episcopal conference presidents, BishopAccountability.org has looked closely at how the conference presidents from eight of the world’s largest Catholic countries have handled the abuse crisis in their home countries.

Representing roughly half of the world’s Catholics, these eight prelates include:

an archbishop who estimates that only one percent of his country’s priests have abused children;

the head of a vast archdiocese who says he has dealt with only one abusive priest;

a cardinal who has never spoken publicly about the crisis;

a cardinal who has kept in ministry at least three accused priests.

We further examined the child protection guidelines and actions of the episcopal conferences in all eight countries. They range widely. Some conference websites, like those of France, Mexico, and the U.S., provide abundant information: how to report, the process for handling accusations, advice on prevention. It’s a challenge for the visitor to discern which documents are marketing materials and which are canonically binding. At the other extreme are the episcopal conferences of Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On their websites, the crisis is invisible, and no guidelines can be located.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

February 25, 2019

A new lawsuit against the Diocese of Buffalo, the Franciscan Order, and a high school school in upstate New York was filed today. We applaud the bravery of the victim and hope that this lawsuit helps her on her healing journey.

We are especially grateful to Gail Holler-Kennedy for exposing the wrongdoing by Fr. Mark S. Andrzejczuk and officials at the Buffalo Catholic Diocese, the Conventual Franciscan religious order and Cardinal O’Hara High School. We hope her courage will inspire others who are in pain to speak up.

According to media reports, the allegedly abusive priest also worked at Archbishop Curley High School in Baltimore. We hope officials at that school in Baltimore will aggressively reach out to their alumni in search of other victims of Fr. Andrezejczuk.

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Patheos blog

February 25, 2019

By Barry Duke

‘RECYCLED rhetoric’ was the actual phrase used at the conclusion of the summit this week by Anne Barrett Doyle, co-founder of Bishop Accountability, which tracks clergy sex abuse cases, but we all know that that means.

Doyle, above, told the Guardian:

I am utterly stunned. The Pope has undone the tiny bit of progress that possibly was achieved this week. He was defensive, rationalising that abuse happens in all sectors of society. Ironically and sadly, he exhibited no responsibility, no accountability and no transparency.

She is one of many activists for survivors of clerical sexual abuse who reportedly reacted with fury after Pope Francis failed to promise a “zero tolerance” approach to paedophile priests and the bishops who cover up their crimes as he closed a landmark summit at the Vatican.

Although he vowed that the Roman Catholic church would “spare no effort” to bring abusers to justice and would not cover up or underestimate abuse, a significant part of the his closing speech emphasised that Catholic priests were far from being the sole abusers of children.

Citing data, he said that the majority of cases arose within families and that the perpetrators of abuse were:

Primarily parents, relatives, husbands of child brides and teachers.

He also said that online pornography and sex tourism exacerbated the problem.

Our work has made us realise once again that the gravity of the scourge of the sexual abuse of minors is, and historically has been, a widespread phenomenon in all cultures and societies. I am reminded of the cruel religious practice, once widespread in certain cultures, of sacrificing human beings – frequently children – in pagan rites.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW TV

February 25, 2019

By Charlie Specht

A renowned Boston attorney is suing the Buffalo Diocese for $300 million on behalf of a Niagara County woman who said she was abused by a Franciscan priest in the 1970s and 1980s.

Mitchell Garabedian, made famous by the Academy Award-winning movie “Spotlight”, has filed a lawsuit in state court against the Buffalo Diocese, the Conventual Franciscan religious order and Cardinal O’Hara High School.

The suit alleges his client, Gail Holler-Kennedy, was sexually abused by Fr. Mark S. Andrzejczuk from 1978 to 1982 at O’Hara, where Fr. Andrzejczuk was a teacher.

The priest, who died in 2011, would write passes excusing Holler-Kennedy from another teacher’s class and he would then sexually abuse her, the lawsuit states.

“The abuse occurred approximately twice a week for approximately three years, beginning when Plaintiff was approximately 14 years old and ending when she was approximately 17 years old,” the filing states.

The diocese, the high school and the Conventual Franciscan order “had a duty not to aid a pedophile such a Father Andrzejczuk” and also also had the responsibility as mandated reporters to report the abuse, but did not, Garabedian claims.

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ROME (ITALY)
LaCroix International

February 25, 2019

By Nicolas Senèze

Did Pope Francis’ closing speech at the meeting of bishops conference presidents on child protection on Feb. 24 come as a disappointment?

The long text he read out in the Sala Regia inside the Apostolic Palace did not in fact contain any significant new announcements.

On the other hand, he had already warned well in advance against “inflated” expectations from the meeting. But the real point of his address had less to do with the concrete measures the Vatican has already started working on than the kind of Church that Pope Francis envisions.

In how it responds to sex abuse by priests, this will be a very different Church from the one that existed only a few years ago. No longer will it be a besieged citadel but rather a Church genuinely in the world.

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ROME (ITALY)
Agence France-Presse

February 25, 2019

By Fanny Carrier

At the end of three days of debate, Pope Francis promised an “all-out battle” against the scourge that has done so much damage to the Church’s reputation worldwide.

Victims’ groups, however, reacted sharply to the tone of his speech and what they said was a lack of concrete measures.

“The pope has announced a battle against child abuse but he has the weakest weapons imaginable,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org.

As a mark of good faith, the Vatican announced an interministerial meeting Monday on the protection of minors.

Urging more tangible progress, BishopAccountability.org and fellow campaigning group End Clergy Abuse (ECA) have drawn up a 21-point plan of action for the pope.

Their “Points of Action for Pope Francis” was intended to sharpen the Vatican’s good intentions, as the pontiff set out in his points of reflection at the start of the summit.

“These aren’t reflection points, these are action points, battle plans,” said Peter Isely, spokesman for Ending Clergy Abuse.

Referring to the pope, Doyle said: “If he were to do the 21 points in this list, he would end this scourge once and for all.”

Their plan of action pulls no punches.

Any cleric found guilty of even a single act of child sexual abuse should be permanently removed from the priesthood, they said — as should any bishop or religious superior helping cover it up.

All abusers or suspected abusers should be reported to the civil authorities, and any abuse-related files handed over to them, the campaigners added.

The Church should also draw up a public list of all abusers, past and present, they said.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Religion News Service

February 25, 2019

By Thomas Reese

On the last full day of the meeting in Rome on clergy sex abuse, a German cardinal and a Nigerian nun, each in his or her own way, explained that transparency was the only way for the Catholic Church to deal with the crisis. They spoke with bluntness unusual in meetings of bishops, practicing the transparency they preached.

In his presentation, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the archbishop of Munich, acknowledged that files were destroyed, silence was imposed on victims, and procedures for the prosecution of offenses were deliberately not complied with.

“The rights of victims were effectively trampled underfoot, and left to the whims of individuals,” complained the cardinal.

What is needed is transparency, he said, where “actions, decisions, processes, procedures, etc., are understandable and traceable.” He noted that similar transparency is also important in finances, another area where scandals have taken place.

While acknowledging the German love of administrative rules and procedures, he said that in the church, “administration should take place in such a way that people feel accepted in administrative procedures, that they feel appreciated, that they can trust the system, that they feel secure and fairly treated, that they are listened to and their legitimate criticism is accepted.”

Transparency is especially important so people “can uncover errors and mistakes in the administrative actions and defend themselves against such actions.”

He argued that “the principles of the presumption of innocence and the protection of personal rights, and the need for transparency, are not mutually exclusive.”

Marx even criticized the practice of secrecy in the Vatican, which imposes church penalties for revealing things the Vatican doesn’t want disclosed. He saw no reason “why pontifical secrecy should apply to the prosecution of criminal offenses concerning the abuse of minors.”

The cardinal also called for the publication of judicial proceedings and the release of statistics on the number of abuse cases.

Marx’s focus on administrative structures contrasts with Pope Francis’ stress on conversion and commitment: Francis focuses on changing the culture of the church, while Marx focused on making sure things are done properly.

These approaches are not in conflict; they are complementary. All the structures in the world will not work unless people are motivated to do the right thing. Likewise, all the good intentions in the world will not suffice if you don’t know what to do.

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
ABC 7 TV

February 25, 2019

By Richard Reeve

Becky Ianni is a sex abuse survivor.

She says the man who molested her decades ago was a newly ordained parish priest.

“As an 8-year-old, I knew how serious this was,” she said. “I knew this was a sin, I knew it was wrong.”

Ianni, now in her 60s, says the priest was like an adopted member of her family.

He ate dinner in her home, said mass in their basement, bought her family a TV and went on vacations with them.

“I felt like we had a little bit of God in our house,” Ianni said.

But around her 8th birthday, the relationship began to take a dark turn.

“He took that love and adoration and began to abuse me,” she said. “He would rape me with his hands in the basement, and then he would go upstairs and have dinner with my family. I would have dinner with my family and think, ‘Doesn’t anybody see I’m different?’”

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

ROME (ITALY)
Crux

February 25, 2019

By John L. Allen Jr.

Pope Francis’s keenly-anticipated Feb. 21-24 summit on clerical sexual abuse wrapped up Sunday, and it ended much the way it began: Offering reasons for hope, for those inclined in that direction, but also ample basis for skepticism for anyone disposed to distrust assurances from ecclesiastical officialdom.

The summit provided an amplifier for the rhetoric of reform, but relatively little in terms of concrete new policies or law. If anything, there’s actually some basis to suspect division and ambiguity about certain key accountability measures, such as defrocking as the more-or-less standard punishment for abuser priests and releasing the names of clergy facing credible accusations of abuse.

On Sunday, the Vatican vowed new anti-abuse guidelines for the Vatican City State, a handbook outlining the procedures to follow in abuse cases, and new task forces to help bishops’ conferences and dioceses that lack the resources to implement anti-abuse protocols on their own. It also announced that on Monday, summit organizers will meet with Vatican officials to discuss next steps.

In the immediate wake of the summit, here are a few take-aways that seem supported by the experience of the last four days.

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TORONTO (CANADA)
The Globe and Mail

February 25, 2019

By Michael Coren

They came, they spoke, they left – and nothing changed.

Pope Francis and 190 prelates gathered last Thursday for an unprecedented four-day summit in Rome to discuss the Church’s sexual abuse crisis, and the result is very much business as usual. Nothing had been guaranteed, but the sheer optics of the event implied that something, at long last, might be done to respond to a circus of horrors that unwraps by the week.

Instead, the Pope refused to enact the anticipated “zero tolerance” when dealing with pedophile priests, delivering instead a platitude that the Church would ”spare no effort” – sound that signified nothing.

To make matters worse, he then devoted a large part of his concluding speech to the subject of sexual abuse in general society, arguing that it’s not confined to the Roman Catholic Church and that most offenders were family members, “husbands of child brides and teachers.”

“Our work has made us realize once again that the gravity of the scourge of the sexual abuse of minors is, and historically has been, a widespread phenomenon in all cultures and societies,” he continued. “I am reminded of the cruel religious practice, once widespread in certain cultures, of sacrificing human beings – frequently children – in pagan rites.”

The degree of digression here is incredible. Nobody has ever claimed that the Church is the only offender, but that it has denied and obfuscated, protected its own, and even attacked victims who spoke out for justice. The phenomenon of child marriage is something entirely different; that human sacrifice was even mentioned is bewildering. This is what is known as “Rome speak”, where much is said and little admitted.

Abuse, tragically, exists everywhere there is a power dynamic, and that includes families, schools, sports clubs and other religious institutions. But the Church continues to refuse to examine why it is especially vulnerable, and even under the allegedly progressive Pope Francis, it still cannot acknowledge the depth and extent of the problem. In spite of papal protests, the Roman Catholic Church remains a magnet for this kind of crime, and nothing will change without reckoning with and resolving five basic aspects that in some ways are built into the religion’s bones: Enforced celibacy, patriarchy, clericalism, secrecy and sexual dishonesty.

Celibacy does not lead to abuse, and if it’s voluntary, it can be deeply spiritual. But when it’s demanded, it can attract the sexually immature and broken, and can enforce a dark stigma around sexuality. Patriarchy within Roman Catholicism is staggeringly obvious – the image of almost 200 middle-aged and elderly men discussing sexual abuse surely says it all. Women perpetrate abuse too, of course, but a culture so lacking in gender balance and female influence can never function healthily.

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
Allentown Call

February 25, 2019

By Paul Muschick

The papal summit that wrapped up at the Vatican on Sunday to address sex abuse in the Catholic church went where I expected it would. Nowhere.

It was just more talk. We must take this problem seriously, Pope Francis said. We’re going to do this. We’re going to do that.

So do it already.

The longer the church delays taking action, the harder it gets to have faith that it ever will appropriately address this plague. Talk is cheap.

By calling together leaders from around the world to meet for four days, Francis set high expectations. He should have been ready to implement a concrete plan of action, and called on the global leaders to publicly endorse it. Instead, the weekend was full of more mea culpas. During his concluding address, Francis just rattled off a host of talking points.

There was plenty of time to prepare. The Pennsylvania grand jury investigation that brought this issue back into the spotlight in the U.S. was released six months ago. The pressure has mounted since, with other states launching similar probes. There have been scandals in Chile, Australia and Honduras, too.

The church no longer can address them one-by-one. It needs to take a hard stand.

What should it be doing?

For starters, any clergy — a priest, a bishop, a cardinal — proven to have looked the other way when confronted with abuse allegations should be banished from the church. It goes without saying that those who commit the abuse should be banished, too.

There should be a global requirement to report allegations to law enforcement. And the Vatican should open its files so the world can get a better grip on just how extensive the abuse, and any cover-ups, really are.

The lack of action is especially disappointing because bishops in the United States were prepared to take action in November, until Pope Francis told them not to.

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LITTLE ROCK (AR)
Bilgrimage

February 24, 2019

I have not read Frédéric Martel’s explosive new book In the Closet of the Vatican, about which there has been a flurry of commentary since it was officially released this past week as the Vatican meeting on sex abuse began. So I’m not able to comment on the book itself. I do intend to read it soon.

What I can comment on is some of the commentary I’ve read. There is, of course, much hand-wringing from predictable quarters that always mount reflexive defenses of the clerical club running the Catholic institution; there’s the defensive suggestion that Martel’s book is a gotcha gossip-fest that ought not to be taken seriously. There’s also the more substantive concern that it’s a nifty tool being handed to the hard homophobic right wing of the Catholic church to engage in further gay-bashing and blaming of gay priests for the abuse crisis.

Of the commentary I’ve read, analysis by a number of out gay Catholic thinkers seems to me most worth noting This book is an opportunity for the Catholic journalistic world to move beyond its usual refusal to listen seriously or give a place of respect to out gay (and lesbian and transgender and bisexual) Catholic voices and do some receptive listening — for a change — to such voices. What they have to tell us about Martel’s book may be among the most important things that are being said by the book’s readers.

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BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA)
Buenos Aires Times

February 25, 2019

The Network of Survivors of Ecclesiastical Abuse of Argentina denounced Pope Francis’ historic Vatican summit against pedophilia in the Catholic Church, describing it as an “act of simulation and hypocrisy.”

“We have witnessed a new act of simulation and hypocrisy by officials of an independent state. It’s a serial breach of international human rights conventions,” the Network said in a harsh statement titled “The Lying Liar” on Sunday.

The network urged “the global public to declare a ‘genocidal state’ in the Holy See” for having “developed, applied and maintained a system of protection and concealment of abusive priests over time.”

The group will encourage international denunciations against the Vatican, ask for Church archives to be opened and for registers of ecclesiastical abusers to be released.

“The objective (of protecting minors) is blurred and loses value in concluding that ecclesiastical pedophilia is only part of the abuse as a transverse and very broad problem,” the Network lamented regarding the summit that will be led by Pope Francisco.

The Argentine Network of Survivors of Ecclesiastical Sexual Abuses integrates more than a hundred victims.

“Not all the victims have made a criminal or ecclesiastical complaint. Some have not yet been encouraged, many have not yet spoken and are trapped in the institution,” psychologist Liliana Rodríguez told AFP. “Everything that happens (at the Summit) will cause a setback, which is why the summit is being denounced.”

The agency accused the Catholic Church of prioritizing “its credibility as an institution to the life and physical and mental health of victims and survivors.”

It also alleged that there was “disrespectful, degrading and victimizing treatment of survivors.”

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Get Religion blog

February 25, 2019

By Julia Duin

The second shoe dropped Saturday when the Washington Post came out with the on-the-record account of another priest who’d been sexually abused by former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

By “shoes,” I mean the three former New Jersey priests who filed lawsuits against the Catholic Church or one of its dioceses regarding McCarrick. The first ‘shoe’ was Robert Ciolek, who went public early on in this saga. The other two were refusing to talk until now.

When reading this story, let’s keep the big picture in mind. The key questions remain: Who moved McCarrick higher and higher in the church, while reports circulated about his private affairs? Who protected him later? Who benefited from his favors?

Now, back to the new chapter in this story:

Less than a week after Theodore McCarrick became the first cardinal ever defrocked, a New Jersey priest has for the first time agreed to be interviewed about his accusations that McCarrick sexually abused him in the 1990s and the effect the alleged abuse has had on his life and career.

In exclusive interviews with the Post, the Rev. Lauro Sedlmayer said the interactions with McCarrick, who was then his archbishop, in Newark, set off a downward spiral that severely damaged his psyche and career. Now 61, the priest says he told three bishops but nothing was done.

Note the crucial detail: Bishops were informed about this and nothing happened.

The Post folks have known about this guy since last summer. I wrote about that here, but it’s taken eight months for this guy to go on the record. Better late than never.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

February 24, 2019

At the papal summit this week, Pope Francis presented 21 points for reflection. SNAP is about action, so instead we’re providing 21 steps that you can take to help prevent abuse, protect children, and support survivors:

If you see something, say something! Report any suspected child sexual abuse to local law enforcement who are trained to investigate these cases. Here’s a list of reporting hotlines you can use for every state in the US.

Educate yourself about child sexual abuse. Learn more about warning signs for sexual abuse here and be prepared to make a report if anything seems wrong.

Encourage open dialogue and don’t be afraid to talk about abuse. Ask all your children – including your adult children – if anything ever happened to them.

Talk to your children about sex abuse. Make sure children understand that you are always there to help and that if anything happens to them you will believe them and that it is not their fault. This resource can help.

Encourage your friends and neighbors to learn about child sexual abuse. Educated communities are better able to prevent cases of abuse and intervene in ongoing cases.

Be open to hearing about someone’s trauma. If someone tells you they were abused tell them “I am so sorry; I believe you; this isn’t your fault, how can I help you?”

Invite survivors to share their stories at your church. The more that people are aware of sexual abuse, the more likely they are to get involved in prevention.

Write letters to the editors about articles you see about abuse. Every article is an opportunity to educate others about prevention and protection.

When you read an article about someone who was abused make a positive comment in the comment section. Victims read the comments and you can make them feel they made the right choice by speaking out.

Donate to an organization that works to protect children. Non-profits rely on your donations to provide programs that support survivors and help prevent abuse. Support SNAP here.

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SIOUX CITY (IA)
KMEG 14

February 24, 2019

by Katie Copple and Jetske Wauran

News of Monday’s announcement from the Diocese of Sioux City broke Sunday morning during Sunday Mass as the Diocese of Sioux City follows other Diocese nationwide in releasing names of abusive priests.

Sunday morning during services, parishioners were told of the impending Diocese announcement, along with more details of the investigation into the sexual abuse allegations.

The letter from Bishop R. Walker Nickless, which was given to Siouxland News, states that the first alleged sexual abuse incident occurred in 1948 and the last in 1995.

Bishop Nickless hopes that by releasing this list, the church can mark a new chapter in history in which Nickless commits to quote “a future of trust, openness and accountability.”

He goes on to state that by releasing the names of the priests with credible allegations against them, the healing process can begin, showing the victims and their families that the church believes them.

The release of this list comes after years of accusations against the church here in Sioux City and worldwide.

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BROOKLYN (NY)
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

February 22, 2019

By David Brand

Survivors of clergy sex abuse have named 112 additional clergy members from the Archdiocese of New York, who they say molested and abused them when they were children.

Attorney Jeff Anderson, who represents survivors of clergy sex abuse, said that 57 of the alleged perpetrators are alive, 42 are dead and 13 could not be located. Anderson joined survivors to publicize the list today in Manhattan.

“We are releasing this list publicly because Cardinal [Timothy] Dolan will not release a list,” Anderson said. Dolan is cardinal at the Archdiocese of New York. “He has made a conscious and calculated choice to keep these names and documents secret and he has the power to release the names right now.”

On Friday, the Diocese of Brooklyn, which includes Queens, released the names of 108 clergy members “credibly” accused of sexual abuse.

The Archdiocese of Brooklyn and The Archdiocese of New York did not provide a response to requests from the Eagle.

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ROME (ITALY)
CBS News

February 25, 2019

Three clergy abuse survivors all want to know why the Catholic Church still has not laid out concrete steps to stop child sex abuse. “CBS This Morning” has followed their fight for justice since last year, all the way from the U.S. to Rome, where they attended a summit with church leaders and called for a zero-tolerance policy for abuse.

On Sunday Pope Francis addressed the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, promising to confront abusers with “the wrath of God,” end the cover-ups by church officials, and prioritize the victims of what he termed “brazen, aggressive and destructive evil.”

But the survivors told CBS News correspondent Nikki Battiste they all want to know why the Catholic Church still has not laid out concrete steps to stop child sex abuse.

Battiste asked them how they’re feeling after the pope’s speech.

Mary Dispenza, a former nun, said, “I don’t think our children are any safer now than four days ago, by what I heard.”

“What’s one word you would use to describe how this summit went?”

Dispenza said, “Disappointing.”

Shaun Dougherty, who was molested by a teacher at a Catholic grade school when he was 10, said, “Shortfall.”

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania State Legislator Mark Rozzi, who said his priest raped him when he was 13 years old, characterized it as “a start.”

Battiste asked, “What would you say to survivors and victims listening who might be disappointed by this summit?”

“Don’t give up,” said Dougherty.

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ROME (ITALY)
US Conference of Catholic Bishops

February 24, 2019

Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston and President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), has issued the following statement on the final day of a four day meeting attended by Presidents of Bishops’ Conferences from across the globe.

“The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth.” Psalm 145:18

“These have been challenging, fruitful days. The witness of survivors revealed for us, again, the deep wound in the Body of Christ. Listening to their testimonies transforms your heart. I saw that in the faces of my brother bishops. We owe survivors an unyielding vigilance that we may never fail them again.

How then to bind the wounds? Intensify the Dallas Charter. Pope Francis, whom I want to thank for this assembly, called us to ‘concrete and effective measures.’ A range of presenters from cardinals to other bishops to religious sisters to lay women spoke about a code of conduct for bishops, the need to establish specific protocols for handling accusations against bishops, user-friendly reporting mechanisms, and the essential role transparency must play in the healing process.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

February 24, 2019

By Nicole Winfield

Pope Francis’ summit on preventing sexual abuse was never going to meet the expectations placed on it by victims groups, the media and ordinary Catholics outraged over a scandal that has harmed so many and compromised the church’s moral authority so much.

Indeed, no sweeping new law was announced to punish bishops who cover up abuse. No files were released or global reporting requirement endorsed requiring priestly rapists to be reported to police. In his final speech to the summit Sunday, Pope Francis even fell back on the hierarchy’s frequent complaint of unfair press coverage.

But something has changed.

By inviting the leaders of Catholic bishops conferences and religious orders from around the world to a four-day tutorial on preventing sex abuse, Francis has made clear that they all are responsible for protecting the children in their care and must punish the priests who might violate them, or risk punishment themselves.

“In people’s justified anger, the church sees the reflection of the wrath of God, betrayed and insulted by these deceitful consecrated persons,” the pontiff said.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Service

February 23, 2019

By Junno Arocho Esteves

If they are truly serious about fighting clerical sex abuse, bishops must join forces with journalists and not view them as enemies plotting against the Catholic Church, Mexican journalist Valentina Alazraki said.

Alazraki, who has covered the Vatican for over four decades, told bishops at the Vatican summit on abuse Feb. 23 that journalists can help them root out the “rotten apples and to overcome resistance in order to separate them from the healthy ones.”

“If you do not decide in a radical way to be on the side of the children, mothers, families, civil society, you are right to be afraid of us, because we journalists — who seek the common good — will be your worst enemies.” Valentina Alazraki

“But if you do not decide in a radical way to be on the side of the children, mothers, families, civil society, you are right to be afraid of us, because we journalists — who seek the common good — will be your worst enemies,” she warned.

The veteran journalist was invited to speak at the summit about the importance of transparency with journalists and media outlets.

Alazraki, who began covering the Vatican in the final years of St. Paul VI’s pontificate, said church leaders too often blamed journalists’ coverage of the abuse scandal as a plot “to put an end to this institution.”

“We journalists know that there are reporters who are more thorough than others and that there are media outlets more or less dependent on political, ideological or economic interests,” she said. “But I believe that in no case can the mass media be blamed for having uncovered or reported on abuses.”

Recalling the words of Pope Benedict XVI, Alazraki told bishops that clerical sex abuse is neither a rumor or a gossip but a crime that “comes not from external enemies but arises from sins within” the church.

Addressing the accusation that reporters are often harsher on the church than on other institutions when it comes to sex abuse, the Mexican journalist said that is natural “by virtue of your moral role.”

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HOUSTON (TX)
Click 2 Houston

February 24, 2019

By Bill Balleza

The papal summit on clergy abuse has come to a close in Rome.

Those expecting concrete results worldwide will be disappointed.

But here at home, Catholics can expect meaningful change, including accountability of bishops who covered up clergy abuse of minors for decades, sometimes guilty of abuse themselves.

On the final day of the summit, Pope Francis delivered an address after celebrating mass. He had strong words for those priests guilty of abusing minors, saying they and future abusers will face the wrath of God.

The pope also talked about preventing abuse and the next generation of priests.

Three priests from Texas visited while in Rome, Joe White, of Lake Jackson, Sam Bass, of Austin and Ismael Rodriguez, of Dallas.

Survivors who traveled to The Vatican for answers have been vocal and visible.

“The summit has always centered on victims and survivors,” said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“It was there from the get-go in the beginning. It punctured and went through every talk.”

As for meaningful change, the pope offered only hope, relying on his bishops for change worldwide.

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SAN DIEGO (CA)
KGTV

February 24, 2019

By Rina Nakano

A landmark four-day Vatican Summit concluded today in Tome. The Pope addressed the Catholic Church’s long history of child sex abuse and cover-up scandals. He concluded the event with a speech, saying that those guilty of child sex abuse are “tools of Satan.”

While many thought the Pope’s “all-out-battle” to fight sex abuse was refreshing, local survivors hoped to see more.

A spokesperson for the Catholic Diocese of San Diego immediately praised the Pope’s transparency, sending 10News this statement:

The summit hosted by Pope Francis accomplished everything we hoped for and more. The Pope and the bishops assembled in Rome endorsed tough policies to promote accountability for bishops and other church authorities and made it very clear that covering up the abuse of minors was every bit as criminal and sinful as the acts of abuse themselves. They heard first-hand from victims and from Pope Francis himself who called for an ‘all-out battle’ to fight sexual abuse.
“We expect additional guidelines to issued by the Vatican in coming days and specific policies and regulations to be voted on by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in June.”

Kevin Eckery, spokesperson for the Catholic Diocese of San Diego

But for Paul Livingston, Pope Francis’ words did not fix the damage he said he experienced as a victim of clergy abuse.

“It’s a day late and a dollar short,” Livingston said. “All we wanted was an apology. We didn’t get an apology. We got a ‘That never happened here’.”

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

February 24, 2019

By Ashley Murray

The day before a meeting of bishops convened Thursday in Rome to discuss clergy sex abuse, Jim VanSickle made his way to the front of Pope Francis’ weekly address and handed a letter to an aide.

“I wrote on it in Italian that I was a survivor of [clergy] sexual abuse in Pennsylvania,” Mr. VanSickle, 55, said Sunday from Rome. “Only time will tell if he actually reads it, or it finds its way to a garbage can.”

The Coraopolis, Pa., resident shared a collective disappointment with other survivors as Pope Francis concluded the four-day summit with “a lot of rhetoric” rather than concrete actions.

“Even though they’re now talking about [clergy abuse] as crimes, they’re not talking about changing internal procedures,” John Faluszczak, a former priest in the Diocese of Erie and a clergy abuse survivor who also was in Rome, said. “That’s kind of concerning.”

Pope declares ‘all-out battle’ against clergy abuse, but ends summit with no concrete reforms
The meeting called more than 100 top Roman Catholic bishops from around the world Thursday through Sunday for the unprecedented summit.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Premier

February 25, 2019

The former head of GCHQ resigned his post after it emerged he gave a character reference in support of a paedophile priest who went on to reoffend, it has been reported.

Robert Hannigan stood down as director of the spy agency in 2017 after less than three years in the post, citing “family reasons”.

The Mail on Sunday reports his departure followed the discovery that in 2013 he had given a character reference on behalf of a Catholic priest charged with possessing child pornography.

The priest, who was said to have been a long-standing family friend of Mr Hannigan, was given a non-custodial sentence and went on to offend again, the paper said.

Mr Hannigan’s involvement in the case was said to have been discovered during a major investigation into online chatrooms by the National Crime Agency.

Mr Hannigan told the Mail the priest had been a “close family friend” for 20 years and they had submitted a character reference to the court “in good faith” after he pleaded guilty to the offences.

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ALBUQUERQUE (NM)
KOB 4 TV

February 25, 2019

By Marian Camacho

The trial of a priest accused of sexually abusing children is set to begin Monday in Santa Fe.

Arthur Perrault faces seven charges of child sexual abuse in addition to several civil cases. He is accused of sexually abusing an 11-year-old boy on Kirtland Air Force Base in the ’90s while he was a chaplain. Other cases allegedly took place at the Santa Fe National Cemetery around the same time.

According to court documents, there are dozens of other accusers who claim they were sexually assaulted by Perrault in the ’60s. One of the victims says Perrault’s trial is another example of delayed justice.

Perrault was originally scheduled to go on trial in November and was offered a plea deal that he refused. Instead, he pleaded not guilty.

Perrault fled the country in 1992 amid allegations of sexual abuse and spent years on the run in Morocco. He was extradited to New Mexico last year.

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[Evangelical church announces protocol for sexual abuse cases]

CHILE
BioBioChile

February 24, 2019

By Emilio Lara and Joaquín Aguilera

La Iglesia Evangélica anunció la implementación de un protocolo de acción respecto de los casos de abuso sexual en la institución religiosa, fortaleciendo los canales de denuncia, colaboración con la justicia y brindando apoyo a las víctimas.

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[José Andrés Murillo: “It is the first time there is recognition of the Church’s responsibility”]

CHILE
La Tercera

February 24, 2019

By María José Navarrete

La víctima del exsacerdote Fernando Karadima criticó la ausencia de medidas concretas para llevar a cabo los anuncios de la Iglesia. También, dice, está la falta de intenciones para investigar “de manera seria” porqué ocurren estos casos.

A pocas horas del término de la cumbre para tratar temas de protección a menores en la Iglesia, convocada por el Papa Francisco en el Vaticano, José Andrés Murillo, director de la Fundación para la Confianza, habló con La Tercera respecto de sus apreciaciones de esta actividad que reunió a obispos de todo el mundo.

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[Fernando Ramos, general secretary of the Episcopal Conference: “It is necessary to accompany and have closeness to the victims”]

CHILE
La Tercera

February 25, 2019

By María José Navarrete

Además, el prelado manifestó que se debe cambiar la tipificación penal de los abusos en el código de derecho canónico y apoyar a las diócesis más pequeñas.

Desde Roma, y tras finalizar la cumbre sobre “La protección de los menores en la Iglesia”, el representante chileno y secretario general de la Conferencia Episcopal, Fernando Ramos, hizo una pausa para conversar con La Tercera respecto de los desafíos que el encuentro dejó para la Iglesia en Chile.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

February 25, 2019

By Charles Collins

After the heads of the world’s bishops’ conferences and Eastern Churches listened to four days of talks on the effects of sex abuse, it can now be said that no Church leader can claim that the issue isn’t a problem in their neck of the woods.

This is probably the most significant achievement of the unprecedented Feb. 21-24 Vatican summit on the topic which has been plaguing the Catholic Church for decades.

Yet there is a sense that for this giant step forward, there has also been a significant step backward: “Zero tolerance” – a buzzword since the scandal exploded in Boston in 2002 – no longer means priests who abuse minors will be defrocked even after one incident of abuse.

This policy was stated in its most succinct form by St. John Paul II, when he called every U.S. cardinal to the Vatican in April 2002 in the fallout of the revelations of abuse and cover-up exposed in the Boston Globe that year: “People need to know that there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young.”

This is in contrast to removal from active ministry, when a priest does not have a pastoral assignment – and often is told not to even present himself as a priest in public – but is still, technically, a cleric.

In the countries hardest hit by the sexual abuse crisis in the late 20th century – including the United States and Ireland – the families of victims were told an abusing priest was going to be removed from ministry, only later to find out he was serving as a priest in another location.

This is why most victims support groups – including the Ending Clergy Abuse advocacy group, which had a large contingent in Rome – have insisted abusive priests should be removed from the priesthood.

From the beginning of the meeting, the Vatican showed it was resisting this policy.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

February 25, 2019

By Christopher White

If the global clergy sex abuse crisis was once thought of as an “American” problem, Pope Francis’s efforts to get the global Church to take the issue seriously may now be drawing on American solutions.

Seventeen years ago, 2002 marked a turning point for the U.S. clergy abuse crisis. Bishops tangled with Rome to amend canon law and enact a “one-strike and you’re out” policy for abusive priests – something which, at the time, was criticized in Rome and elsewhere as a distortion of Church law and a typically American form of “cowboy justice.”

Yet as bishops gathered around the world in Rome this week for an anti-abuse summit convened by Francis, Archbishop Eamon Martin of Ireland told reporters he believed the universal Church was moving “much closer” to enacting that American innovation as a global policy.

In an interview with Crux on Saturday, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, offered a similar conclusion.

“The Church is moving toward zero tolerance,” he said, but “it isn’t quite there yet.”

Further, the case of former cardinal and priest Theodore McCarrick, who rose through the ranks of power in the U.S. and within the Vatican, while abusing both minors and seminarians, has now prompted a global conversation in the Catholic Church on the need for oversight of the Church’s bishops.

On Friday, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago and one of the members of the summit’s organizing committee, called for “new legal structures of accountability” for bishops who abuse or are negligent in handling cases of abuse.

His proposal would charge the metropolitan archbishop with the responsibility for overseeing investigations into bishops accused of abuse in conjunction with a local review board. Cupich later added that it’s a model that would allow a more local response and follow-up with abuse survivors.

Speaking at a press conference on Friday, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston and president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, said that the 2002 Dallas charter on the protection of children made “a huge difference” in the way the Church responds to sexual abuse.

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BOSTON(MA)
WBUR Radio

February 25, 2019

By Rich Barlow

The moral order has flipped upside down when civil authorities must force religious leaders to honor the Eighth Commandment against lying. Yet we are in such a Bizarro World, as I learned after my native New Jersey was among a half dozen states to investigate Catholic dioceses, following Pennsylvania’s searing catalog of decades of abuse of 1,000 children by hundreds of priests.

In the wake of Jersey’s probe, Catholic dioceses in the state recently released the names of priests credibly accused of abuse. Monsignor Thomas J. Frain, pastor of my childhood parish, was among them. (He, like many on the list, is deceased.) Though the nature of his abuse and age of his victim(s) weren’t specified — priests have preyed on adults, including nuns, as well as kids — I thank God that neither my brother nor I were ever altar boys or left alone with him.

I’d place my faith in prosecutors over prelates.

I mention this by way of suggesting, as a practicing Catholic, that attention to the just-ended Vatican summit on child abuse is misplaced. If it’s church reform you want, turn your gaze from Rome to U.S. states, where law enforcement, having lost patience with Catholic leaders (as have we in the laity), have started probing abuse.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
WUSA TV

February 24, 2019

Pope Francis’ landmark Vatican summit ended early Sunday morning. In the District, some local survivors said the Pope’s words stop short.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

February 25, 2019

By Elise Harris

Though Pope Francis’s high-stakes Feb. 21-24 summit on clerical sexual abuse has not yet yielded any major policy moves, one message was clear throughout the four-day gathering: The problem is global, and no one should leave thinking it’s not a concern in their own backyard.

Francis himself in his Sunday Angelus address said abuse is “a widespread problem on every continent,” and because of this, he wanted bishops throughout the world “to face it together, in a co-responsible and collegial way.”

Since the beginning of the abuse scandals three decades ago, they’ve sometimes been pegged as primarily an “American” or “Western” problem by Church leaders in countries where the crisis has yet to erupt. Cracking down has been met with a certain level of resistance by prelates in these regions who see the problem as secondary in comparison to other, more pressing issues.

However, speakers this week challenged that notion with direct, bold language.

During Friday’s morning session, Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai, India, a member of the pope’s council of cardinals and one of four members of the summit’s organizing committee, said, “No bishop may say to himself, ‘This problem of abuse in the Church does not concern me, because things are different in my part of the world.’”

“This, brothers and sisters, is just not true,” he said. Acknowledging that “we in leadership roles did not do enough,” Gracias said the “entire Church must take an honest look [and] act decisively to prevent abuse from occurring in the future, and to do whatever possible to foster healing for victims.”

Similarly, Sister Veronica Openibo of Nigeria, one of just three women tapped to speak at the summit, reinforced the message Saturday, telling the 190 participants that “probably like many of you, I have heard many Africans and Asians say that this is not our issue in countries in Africa and Asia.”

“It is a problem in Europe, the Americas, Canada and Australia,” Openibo said, adding that other problems in the region such as poverty, illness, war, and violence “does not mean that the area of sexual abuse should be downplayed or ignored…The Church has to be proactive in facing it.”

Prelates did not mince words, vocalizing the Church’s failures to properly address the abuse crisis and calling for the “humility” to recognize these errors and to repent.

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LAFAYETTE (LA)
Lafayette Daily Advertiser

February 24, 2019

By Elaina Sauber

As nearly 200 leaders of the Roman Catholic Church from around the world convened at a first-ever summit on sexual abuse at the Vatican on Thursday, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lafayette still hadn’t released a list of priests over the last half-century who were credibly accused of sexually abusing children.

Bishop J. Douglas Deshotel of the Diocese of Lafayette said earlier this week that he expected the summit to address “pastoral outreach and accompaniment toward healing” for sexual abuse victims and the removal of any cleric who is guilty of abuse, and reporting those crimes to law enforcement.

In a Daily Advertiser story first published on Feb. 11, diocesan spokeswoman Blue Rolfes said they hoped “within the next week or two to release the list.”

Nearly two weeks later, Rolfes hasn’t responded to repeated phone calls and emails seeking an update on when the list will be published.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

February 23, 2019

By Jamie Doward

The head of one of the country’s most powerful Catholic orders was made aware of sex abuse allegations dating back to the 1970s at one of its schools but did not alert the authorities – contrary to the recommendations of a church commission on which he sat.

The wide-ranging Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse has been shown a handwritten document compiled by Abbot Richard Yeo, who as president of the Benedictines conducted an inquiry at St Benedict’s School in Ealing, west London, in June 2010 following reports that there had been widespread abuse of pupils by teachers and monks.

The year before Yeo’s visit, Father David Pearce, the former head of the junior school, had been jailed for eight years – reduced to five on appeal –after being found guilty of abusing five boys over a 36-year period.

According to notes Yeo took when he visited St Benedict’s, and which will soon be uploaded on to the inquiry’s website, many at the school had been concerned about Pearce decades before he was jailed. Yeo’s notes state: “Mid 70s knew David engaged in dubious activities.” Another monk told him: “Knew since I was junior school head there was something wrong. Graffiti ‘Fr David is bent’.” A third said he was aware of rumours of abuse when he arrived 25 years ago, and expressed disbelief that a former abbot claimed to Yeo he “never knew anything about it”.

The Catholic church’s failure to confront systemic clerical sexual abuse was acknowledged last week at an unprecedented summit on the issue opened by Pope Francis, attended by 180 bishops and cardinals. “The holy people of God are watching and expect not just simple and obvious condemnations, but efficient and concrete measures to be established,” he warned.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
WTOP TV

February 24, 2019

By Keara Dowd

An organization that serves survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic priests is responding to the Pope’s points of action with their own list of ways Catholics can help victims every day.

The Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests (SNAP) released a list of 21 things that they say everyday Catholics can do to help the crisis. Local leaders handed out copies to people as they left mass at the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception Sunday morning.

“When I listened to those eight points, I thought of them as being very vague, and they weren’t really some action points,” said Becky Ianni, who leads SNAP’s local chapter. “It’s really important that we keep vigilant, and that we work towards holding the church accountable and pushing them to take action on some of the items they listed.”

Listening, donating to organizations that help victims and educating people about sexual abuse are all on SNAP’s list of things people can do to help. Ianni, a survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of a priest herself, says that the Pope’s points of reflection sounds like it’s mostly just talk.

“One of the things that struck me was that he said that he wants bishops and cardinals to understand the severity of this problem. And I think as a survivor, you know, as an 8-year-old I knew how severe this was, I knew how devastating this was. So I don’t know why this is one of the points,” said Ianni.

Some members of SNAP made the trip to Rome for the Pope’s summit, with the hope of contributing to the solutions that the meetings hoped to find. But those who went told the National Catholic Reporter that none of their suggestions made it on to the Pope’s list.

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SIOUX CITY (IA)
Sioux City Journal

February 24, 2019

The Diocese of Sioux City announced Sunday that it plans to publicly release a list of 28 priests who were credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors while serving in the diocese.

According to a press release from the diocese, each case was investigated by the Diocesan Review Board to determine credibility. The board reviewed priest files dating back to 1902.

The diocese will host a press conference at 1:30 p.m. Monday at 1821 Jackson St. to release the list. Bishop R. Walker Nickless; Father Brad Pelzel, Vicar General and Moderator; and Mark Prosser, a Review Board member and Storm Lake Police Chief, will all be on hand.

After the press conference the list will be available at www.scdiocese.org.

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[“When I denounced my abuser, Bergoglio refused to receive me”]

ARGENTINA
Tiempo Argentino

February 24, 2019

By Pablo Taranto

Mientras el Vaticano discute qué hacer con las denuncias de abuso sexual, Sebastián Cuattromo sostiene que se trata de “un triunfo de las víctimas”, pide “además de gestos, acciones concretas”, y recuerda que el entonces arzobispo porteño subestimó la gravedad del delito.

A los 13 años, Sebastián Cuattromo fue víctima de abuso sexual en el Colegio Marianista del barrio de Caballito. Durante diez años no pudo siquiera ponerlo en palabras, pero al cabo se sobrepuso a ese duro silencio y denunció a su abusador, el hermano marianista y docente Fernando Picciochi, también agresor de otros niños de su misma edad. “Luego de 20 años de dolor y de lucha –cuenta–, en 2012 logré el juicio y la condena penal de quien fuera mi abusador, a 12 años de cárcel por el delito de corrupción de menores calificada y reiterada. Entonces hice pública mi historia, convencido de que no era una cuestión personal y privada, sino colectiva y de interés público, con la clara convicción de que mi testimonio podía contribuir a visibilizar esta enorme injusticia.”

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[New accusation: “My mother told the director of the Salesians that Don Pablo had abused my sister and me”]

MADRID (SPAIN)
El País

February 22, 2019

By Julio Nuñez

Otro exalumno del colegio de Deusto denuncia que dos clérigos le agredieron sexualmente a él y a sus dos hermanos

Como tantos otros, Claudio (nombre anónimo) sintió un extraño alivio a sus 55 años cuando leyó por primera vez que los abusos sexuales en el colegio salesiano de Deusto estaban saliendo a la luz. Durante 45 años, nadie en su barrio le creyó cuando contaba que los religiosos del centro “metían mano” a los niños. En su historia personal y familiar se mezclan los abusos de dos de los cuatro acusados de pederastia y malos tratos: el sacerdote Pablo Ortega –investigado por la orden salesiana por pederastia– y José Miguel San Martín –conocido como don Chemi y denunciado por una treintena de antiguos alumnos–.

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[A precedent for fighting pedophilia in the Church]

ALICANTE (SPAIN)
El País

February 23, 2019

By Rafa Burgos

Un sacerdote fue condenado en 1933 a tres años de prisión por abusar de dos niñas acogidas en un orfanato de Orihuela tras la investigación de una comisión municipal

Un rumor recorre la Orihuela de 1932, en plena Segunda República. En el asilo de La Beneficencia, un orfanato tutelado por monjas, están sucediendo “irregularidades de orden moral”. Al parecer, alguna de las niñas recluidas en la institución han sufrido abusos sexuales y ninguno de los responsables del centro se libra de la sospecha. El Ayuntamiento, a instancias del Gobernador Civil de Alicante, José Echevarría Novoa, impulsa una investigación que determina que el culpable de violar a dos niñas menores, de 15 y 16 años, es el capellán del asilo, José Escurra, que será acusado ante la Fiscalía, juzgado y, finalmente, condenado a tres años de prisión.

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[Brazil: Church with the most Catholics listens to abuse victims in pilot program]

SAO PAULO (BRAZIL)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Naiara Galarraga Gortazar

Una archidiócesis acaba de ser condenada por explotación sexual de menores en el mayor caso de pederastia del clero conocido en Brasil

La Iglesia católica de Brasil, la que con 123 millones más fieles aporta en el mundo entero, llega a la cumbre convocada por el Papa recién condenada por el mayor escándalo de abusos sexuales conocido en su seno. La archidiócesis de Paraíba fue sentenciada en enero por un tribunal laboral a pagar 12 millones de reales (2,9 millones de euros) por explotación sexual de menores porque un grupo de sacerdotes pagaba habitualmente por sexo, con dinero o comida, a seminaristas, monaguillos y aparcacohes. El caso ya había tenido consecuencias para la jerarquía. El Vaticano obligó a dimitir en 2016 por encubrir esos crímenes al entonces arzobispo, Aldo Pagotto. La sentencia, desvelada por el programa Fantástico del canal O Globo, ha sido recurrida por la Iglesia. Este es el caso con mayor repercusión en un país donde no ha habido grandes investigaciones de los abusos sexuales del clero a niños por parte de los jueces, de la prensa ni de la jerarquía eclesiástica.

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[Ecuador: Psychological help for the victims of the “dynamics of sin”]

QUITO (ECUADOR)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Soraya Constante

El presidente de la conferencia episcopal asegura que su Iglesia está lista para responder al Papa

María, de 14 años, fue violentada en su cuarta clase de catequesis. Era el primer sábado de febrero y el sacerdote Néstor Bustos, párroco de una iglesia del norte de Quito, le había tocado sus partes íntimas y besado a la fuerza. La adolescente volvió a su casa llorando y habló con una prima y luego con sus padres. Estos, indignados, convencieron a unos cuantos vecinos para tomarse la justicia por su mano. La muchedumbre llegó a la casa parroquial y el religioso intentó huir por la puerta trasera. La policía llegó a tiempo para evitar el linchamiento y se llevó al cura, quien se defendía diciendo que solo había hecho “cosquillitas” a la menor.

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[Colombia: Immediately go to the Prosecutor’s Office with abuse complaints]

BOGOTA (COLOMBIA)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Santiago Torrado

Aunque no existe un rastreo oficial del número de víctimas, varias decenas de religiosos católicos han sido señalados de abusos sexuales contra menores en los últimos años

En Colombia, un país cuya principal discusión pública se concentra en pasar la página de un conflicto armado de más de medio siglo, el escándalo mundial por la pederastia en la iglesia ha aterrizado sin tanta resonancia, ni casos tan emblemáticos como en otros lugares. Aunque no existe un rastreo oficial del número de víctimas, varias decenas de sacerdotes católicos han sido señalados por abusos sexuales contra menores en los últimos años.

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[Peru: Compensation and therapy for upper class abuse victims]

LIMA (PERU)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Jacqueline Fowks

La organización apostólica ultraconservadora Sodalicio fue un nido de pederastia y sus responsables aún no han sido sancionados

La Conferencia Episcopal de Perú no ha encubierto a religiosos acusados de abusos sexuales a menores y los ha puesto a disposición de la justicia. Pero el arzobispo saliente de Lima, Juan Luis Cipriani, protegió a una organización ultraconservadora, el Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana, en la que los líderes cometieron abusos contra 19 menores y 10 adultos. La cifra procede de un informe que esa agrupación difundió en 2017.

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[Guatemala: Few cases of known abuse in a country where being a child is a high-risk situation]

GUATEMALA CITY (GUATEMALA)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By José Elías

En un país profundamente religioso, las víctimas temen el ostracismo social. Se conocen tres casos

En Guatemala, un país donde ser niño es una situación de alto riesgo en la medida en que la mayoría sobrevive en la pobreza extrema, la explotación laboral o la violencia sexual, los casos de pederastia que involucren a la Iglesia católica son minoritarios, desconocidos o, por pudor, no denunciados. Por ahora solo se conocen tres casos. “Los tres fueron condenados a penas de cárcel, uno de ellos era un varón y los dos restantes chicas adolescentes. Uno de los sacerdotes mantiene abiertamente su inocencia y ha apelado su condena”, cuenta a EL PAÍS el obispo de Huehuetenango (norte, en la frontera con México), Álvaro Ramazzini, en una conversación vía Internet.

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[Panama and Honduras: Silence over abuses is imposed on Catholic hierarchies]

SAN JOSE (COSTA RICA)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By José Meléndez

Las cúpulas religiosas de ambos países rechazan informar sobre los casos de pederastia

Cuando el papa Francisco inició el pasado 24 de enero sus primeras actividades en Panamá, reprendió a la cúpula eclesiástica por mantenerse alejada de los fieles católicos por su secretismo y su política de puertas cerradas, y exhortó a los peregrinos de todo el mundo a “hacer lío” sin importar edad, sexo, raza o ideología. Pero el hermetismo persiste en las jerarquías católicas de Panamá y de Honduras para enfrentar los casos conflictivos de pederastia ante la cumbre mundial de conferencias episcopales en el Vaticano.

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[El Salvador: A pedophile biographer of a saint]

SAN SALVADOR (EL SALVADOR)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Juan Jose Dalton

La Justicia enjuicia ahora otros dos casos en el país sudamericano

Los casos de pederastia denunciados e investigados en la Iglesia de El Salvador son escasos. “Hemos concluido los procesos penales eclesiásticos en contra de los sacerdotes acusados de abuso sexual de menores. Los tres sacerdotes procesados fueron encontrados culpables en sus respectivos juicios, por lo que en los tres casos se impuso la pena de dimisión del estado clerical”, dijo el 18 de diciembre en su homilía dominical el arzobispo de San Salvador, José Luis Escobar Alas. Los tres sacerdotes destituidos por el Vaticano, en 2016, son Juan Francisco Gálvez, Antonio Molina y Jesús Delgado.

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[Western Africa: Priests denounced for abuses returned to Europe]

DAKAR (SENEGAL)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Jose Naranjo

Los medios de comunicación han sacado a la luz cuatro casos

En África occidental se han registrado escasas denuncias por pederastia contra miembros de la Iglesia católica en los últimos años, lo cual no significa que no haya casos. Monseñor André Gueye, obispo de Thiès y vicepresidente de la Conferencia Episcopal —que agrupa a Senegal, Mauritania, Cabo Verde y Guinea Bissau—, dice conocer dos casos: un intento de abuso sexual de un profesor de una escuela religiosa que acabó siendo expulsado y el de un cura denunciado por acoso sexual que fue sancionado por su obispo y ya no está en activo. Sin embargo, algunos trabajos periodísticos han sacado a la luz que cuatro religiosos occidentales han sido investigados. Entre ellos el sacerdote español Juan José Gómez, que trabajaba en Benín con niños de la calle, tal y como desveló EL PAÍS.

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[The Bishop of Astorga about an abusive priest: “I have to take care of him because he is a priest, isn’t he?”]

MADRID (SPAIN)
El País

February 21, 2019

By Julio Núñez

Juan Antonio Menéndez, presidente de la comisión antipederastia, se compadece de un cura pederasta en una grabación oculta durante una reunión con afectados

Cuando Javier recibió en 2017 la carta del obispo de Astorga y actual presidente de la comisión antipederastia de la Conferencia Episcopal, Juan Antonio Menéndez, comunicándole que el sacerdote que había abusado de él a finales de los ochenta, José Manuel Ramos Gordón, solo había sido condenado a un año de apartamiento como párroco, sintió que “el infierno” que había vivido para denunciar su caso ante el Papa y buscar justicia en el obispado había sido en balde. Tampoco le sirvió quejarse a Menéndez. Decidió, entonces, contarlo todo a los medios. Una treintena de antiguos seminaristas del seminario leones de La Bañeza (centro donde sucedieron los abusos) salieron a la calle para apoyarle y protestar contra “el encubrimiento” y el silencio que la Iglesia había seguido durante su proceso canónico y contra la pena de Ramos Gordón.

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[Analysis: A clamorous crisis of credibility]

MADRID (SPAIN)
El País

February 24, 2019

By Juan G. Bedoya

El descubrimiento de casos de pederastia en la Iglesia, que acaba de empezar, requiere reformas de fondo

Eufemismos aparte (Santa Sede, Su Santidad el Papa, Vicario de Cristo…), resulta ya obsceno sostener que el Pontífice romano y los obispos son una referencia moral para el mundo, si es que alguna vez lo fueron desde que Constantino los encumbró como religión del Imperio y una iglesia hasta entonces perseguida con saña se convirtió en la religión perseguidora. “De pronto, cuánta suciedad”, lamentó Benedicto XVI hace diez años. Para entonces, ya se sabía que él mismo había sido encubridor, enviando, incluso, una carta a los obispos que ordenaba que actuasen en secreto y remitiesen a la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe, que presidió cuando era el cardenal Ratzinger, todos los casos de pederastia.

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[Chilean survivors testifies at the Vatican: “An abuse is the greatest humiliation”]

CHILE
Emol

February 23, 2019

El joven, que actualmente vive en Alemania, contó ante los obispos y el papa que luego del episodio vivido hay una parte de la persona que “es como un fantasma que los demás no pueden ver”.

Un joven chileno víctima de abusos leyó su desgarrador testimonio durante la celebración penitencial que se ofició este sábado en la cumbre vaticana sobre protección de los menores y recordó a los obispos que “un abuso, de cualquier tipo, es la mayor humillación que un individuo puede sufrir”.

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[Catharsis behind the Jesuits’ closed doors]

CHILE
La Tercera

February 23, 2019

By Carla Pía Ruiz Pereira

Las acusaciones de abuso sexual en contra de varios de sus miembros -entre ellos Renato Poblete- marcaron la reservada cita en Padre Hurtado. Golpeados. Así llegaron los 115 jesuitas al último Encuentro de Provincia, en el que se cuestionaron todo. Su estructura, su formación, su relación con el poder. Su soberbia. La crisis que vive hoy la Iglesia Católica chilena les recordó algo: todos han caído. Y los jesuitas también.

“Los jesuitas siempre nos hemos sentido un poco distintos. Así como mejores que el resto de los curas. Pero el tema de los abusos nos puso, con todo el dolor y vergüenza del mundo, los pies en la tierra”.

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ROCHESTER (NY)
WHAM TV

February 24, 2019

A Rochester priest has been put on administrative leave after he was accused of sexual misconduct with a minor.

Parishioners of St. Christopher Church in North Chili learned at this weekend’s Masses that their pastor, Rev. Robert Gaudio, is being investigated over a complaint that he abused a minor in the 1970s, according to a press release from the Diocese of Rochester.

Rev. Gaudio denied the allegation. No other previous allegations of sexual abuse of a minor have ever been received, according to the diocese.

While he is on leave, he can not engage in public ministry. Rev. Edward Palumbos will serve as temporary administrator.

Rev. Gaudio was ordained in 1974. Before serving at St. Christopher’s, he previously served at Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Brockport, St. Alphonsus Church in Auburn, St. Andrew Church in Rochester, Holy Name of Jesus Church in Greece, St. Monica Church in Rochester, and St. Ann Church in Palmyra concurrent with ministry at St. Gregory Church in Marion..

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ROME (ITALY)
Reuters

February 24, 2019

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis ended his conference on the sexual abuse of children by clergy on Sunday by calling for an “all-out battle” against a crime that should be “erased from the face of the earth”.

But victims and their advocates expressed deep disappointment, saying Francis had merely repeated old promises and offered few new concrete proposals.

In his closing address to the almost 200 Church leaders he had summoned to Rome, Francis said national guidelines on preventing and punishing abuse would be strengthened and the Church’s definition of minors in cases of possession by clergy of pornography would be raised from the current age of 14.

At least two Vatican officials have been convicted in recent years of possessing child pornography.

Shortly after the conference, the Vatican said it would enact a law to protect minors and vulnerable adults within the Vatican City – the tiny enclave surrounded by Rome which is one of the few countries without one.

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ROME (ITALY)
Daily Beast

February 24.2019

By Barbie Latza Nadeau

Several moments during the four-day summit on clerical sex abuse truly were inspirational. Like when Nigerian nun, Sister Veronica Openibo, scolded Pope Francis and the 190 church leaders who had gathered there. “How could the clerical Church have kept silent, covering these atrocities?” she asked, at one point turning to the pope who was seated near her. “The silence, the carrying of the secrets in the hearts of the perpetrators, the length of the abuses and the constant transfers of perpetrators are unimaginable.”

Other moments focused on the suffering at the center of the scandals. “From the age of 15 I had sexual relations with a priest,” the prelates heard on the first day, listening to one victim’s recorded testimony. “This lasted for 13 years. I got pregnant three times and he made me have an abortion three times, quite simply because he did not want to use condoms or contraceptives. At first I trusted him so much that I did not know he could abuse me. I was afraid of him, and every time I refused to have sex with him, he would beat me.”

On Saturday evening, an unnamed young man, the victim of a predatory priest for years, spoke at an evening service where the conference attendees asked for forgiveness. He seemed to look each leader, including the pope, directly in the eye as he fought back tears. “What you carry inside you is like a ghost, which others are unable to see,” he said, describing his years of abuse. “They will never fully see and know you. What hurts the most, is the certainty that nobody will understand you. That lives with you for the rest of your life.” Then he went on to play a song so mournful on his violin that he seemed to bring that ghost to life.

But what will be remembered most from this extraordinary summit is likely to be what didn’t happen. Francis called for an “all-out battle against the abuse of minors” and said that his church now “feels called to combat this evil that strikes at the very heart of her mission, which is to preach the Gospel to the little ones and to protect them from ravenous wolves.”

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ROME (ITALY)
The Telegraph

February 24, 2019

By Andrea Vogt

Pope Francis wrapped up a landmark Vatican summit on clerical sex abuse on Sunday pledging to bring the “wrath of God” upon clergy who abuse children, and likening paedophilia to “human sacrifice”.

“We must deliver justice to whoever did this and never try to cover up any case,” Pope Francis told the 190 cardinals, bishops and participants gathered for the unprecedented four-day Vatican summit on the clerical sexual abuse crisis that has dogged the Roman Catholic Church for decades.

“The echo of the silent cry of the little ones, who, instead of finding in them fathers and spiritual guides, encountered tormentors, will shake hearts dulled by hypocrisy and power.”

Support groups for the victims of clerical sexual abuse, however, said Pope Francis had lost a unique, high-profile opportunity for momentous change, instead opting for empty promises and “meaningless” reflection points.

His references to the devil and emphasis on the fact that the Church was not the only place children were abused particularly rankled.

Describing predatory priests as “tools of Satan”, the Pope said paedophilia was “a widespread phenomenon in all cultures and societies”.

“I am reminded of the cruel religious practice, once widespread in certain cultures, of sacrificing human beings – frequently children – in pagan rites,” he said.

“Honestly it’s a pastoral ‘blabla’, saying it’s the fault of the devil,” Swiss victim Jean-Marie Furbringer said.

Pope Francis wrapped up a landmark Vatican summit on clerical sex abuse on Sunday pledging to bring the “wrath of God” upon clergy who abuse children, and likening paedophilia to “human sacrifice”.

“We must deliver justice to whoever did this and never try to cover up any case,” Pope Francis told the 190 cardinals, bishops and participants gathered for the unprecedented four-day Vatican summit on the clerical sexual abuse crisis that has dogged the Roman Catholic Church for decades.

“The echo of the silent cry of the little ones, who, instead of finding in them fathers and spiritual guides, encountered tormentors, will shake hearts dulled by hypocrisy and power.”

Support groups for the victims of clerical sexual abuse, however, said Pope Francis had lost a unique, high-profile opportunity for momentous change, instead opting for empty promises and “meaningless” reflection points.

His references to the devil and emphasis on the fact that the Church was not the only place children were abused particularly rankled.

Describing predatory priests as “tools of Satan”, the Pope said paedophilia was “a widespread phenomenon in all cultures and societies”.

“I am reminded of the cruel religious practice, once widespread in certain cultures, of sacrificing human beings – frequently children – in pagan rites,” he said.

“Honestly it’s a pastoral ‘blabla’, saying it’s the fault of the devil,” Swiss victim Jean-Marie Furbringer said.

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MARKSVILLE (LA)
Avoyelles Today

February 24, 2019

By Raymond Daye

There are calls you wish you had not received because of the emotional toll it takes on you, but yet are glad you had the conversation because some good may come from it.

One such call came to my desk a few days after the article on priests the Diocese believes were most likely guilty of sexual abuse, molestation or impropriety with juveniles over the past several decades.

This caller is now over 70, but his story of a near tragedy occurred when he was 13.

The priest was serving in Bunkie. He was friendly and often asked the caller and his friends to help him around the church. He would give them gifts to show his appreciation for their help.

One day, he and the priest were alone.

“He gave me something to drink,” he recalled, noting that he may have had more than one.

“I know now it was a martini, with olives in it. It was very strong and made me dizzy,” he said.

The priest drove him to the Cow Palace in Marksville — which has since been torn down to make way for the Paragon Casino.

“He tried to take my pants off in the car,” he said. “I fought back, even though I was woozy from the martini.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
USA Today

February 24, 2019

By Lindsay Schnell

The Latino family entered the church after worship started, hustling to a pew in the back. The two young boys sat between their parents, while the little girl, a big white bow adorning her hair, perched on her dad’s lap, giggling.

During the homily, while the Rev. Mike Walker preached in English about finding joy in Jesus Christ despite hardships, the father whispered in Spanish for his children to be quiet and hold still. The mother handed the boys books with a Spanish translation. She wanted them to follow along.

Two hours later at St. James Catholic Church, located 50 miles southwest of Portland in the heart of Oregon’s wine country, the pews were packed again, this time entirely with Latino families. Now, the hymns were upbeat — full drums, a boisterous choir, congregants moving their hips.

Walker invited children to the front. “Escuela mañana?” he asked. Did they have school the next day on Presidents Day? The crowd of elementary school children shook their heads shyly, then headed for the Sunday school classroom, while Walker addressed his congregation and preached the same homily — this time entirely in Spanish.

McMinnville is 72 percent white and 22 percent Latino, but St. James is majority Latino, a growing trend in the U.S. Catholic Church.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholic News Service

February 24, 2019

By Lou Baldwin

A report on the first financial settlements by the Independent Reconciliation and Reparation Program for victims of clergy sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia has been made public.

The IRRP began Nov. 13, 2018, as a way to compensate individuals who had been abused years ago as minors by priests of the archdiocese but whose cases are time-barred from civil prosecution due to Pennsylvania’s statutes of limitation.

The program’s Oversight Committee released its first interim report on the awards Feb. 15. Of the $8.425 million authorized for payment to date, more than $4.5 million has been paid, according to the report, with the remaining pending victims’ acceptance of the terms. The paid claims number 16; there are 20 pending.

While the awards are paid by the archdiocese, it has no control over who receives them or in what amount, since the IRRP is run independently of the archdiocese. The program’s decisions are final and may not be appealed.

According to the report, packets were mailed to 348 previously known individuals who had reported sexual abuse. Of this number 70 have filed claims. Some packets were returned by the post office as undeliverable and there are at this time approximately 15 individuals that the archdiocese is still trying to locate and invite to participate in the program.

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TORONTO (CANADA)
CTV News

February 23, 2019

As the Roman Catholic church hosts a historic summit on sexual abuse, new Canadian guidelines are being used as a possible roadmap for reformation.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ guidelines on Protecting Minors from Sexual Abuse include tougher background checks, compassion for victims and abandoning confidentiality clauses in settlements with victims.

Ron Fabbro, a bishop in London, Ont., spent years working on the 69 recommendations that were published last year and which are being considered at the summit underway at the Vatican.

“I think it’s very important for them to hear that we acknowledge that there have been failures,” Fabbro tells CTV News.

Fabrro says the most difficult part of the scandal has been knowing that those who suffered the abuse have “lost their trust in the church.”

He’s hopeful the church can change, but others have lost hope. Some were disappointed that Pope Francis did not attend a meeting with survivors on Wednesday, and has not apologized for the church’s role in abuse of Indigenous people at Canadian residential schools.

Rod MacLeod is one of those still waiting for the church to change.

In 2015, MacLeod won a $2.6 million settlement for the abuse he suffered at the hands of a Sudbury, Ont., priest and high school gym teacher in the 1960s. William Marshall was found guilty of abusing 17 people in 2011. He died in 2014.

“After gym, you’d go to the showers and he would grab you and pull you into his office where he had all these venetian blinds that he had kept closed all the time,” MacLeod recalls.

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ROME (ITALY)
NBC News

February 24, 2019

By Claudio Lavanga, Yuliya Talmazan and Anne Thompson

Pope Francis strongly condemned clerical sexual abuse during a speech ending a landmark Vatican conference on the subject Sunday, but stopped short of proposing new policies to combat the crisis engulfing the Catholic Church.

“No abuse should ever be covered up as was often the case in the past or not taken sufficiently seriously, since the covering up of abuses favors the spread of evil and adds a further level of scandal,” he said.

At the end of the four-day summit — the Vatican’s latest attempt to come to grips with the issue — Francis promised that guidelines used by bishops’ conferences to prevent abuse and punish perpetrators will be reviewed and strengthened.

Speaking to some 190 senior Catholic bishops and religious superiors, the pope called abuse involving children a “universal problem.”

“The church has now become increasingly aware of the need not only to curb the gravest cases of abuse by disciplinary measures and civil and canonical processes, but also to decisively confront the phenomenon both inside and outside,” Francis said. “She feels called to combat this evil that strikes at the very heart of her mission, which is to preach the Gospel to the little ones and to protect them from ravenous wolves.”

“The church will never seek to hush up or not take seriously any case,” he added at the end of Mass celebrated in the Sala Regia, one of the grand, frescoed reception rooms of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.

The Jesuit pope added that the vast majority of sexual abuse occurs within the family, and in a bid to contextualize what he said was once a taboo subject, offered a global review of the wider problem of sexual tourism and online pornography.

But while he acknowledged the grief of victims and offered a list of measures to combat abuse, Francis offered little in the way of new approaches during the speech.

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EDINBURGH (SCOTLAND)
The Scotsman

February 24, 2019

Internet DNA-testing sites have led to a wave of adults discovering that they were fathered by Catholic priests and then banished to Scotland, it was claimed.

The Catholic Church in Scotland has admitted it has no idea how many Scottish priests, or those working in the country, have fathered children. But campaigners have claimed children were sent to Scotland from Ireland and England as a way of keeping them hidden from parish communities which may find out about their parentage.

Campaign group Coping International, founded by Vincent Doyle, who grew up in Ireland believing a priest was his godfather only to discover he was actually his dad, has warned it can push people to ‘psychosis’.

Mr Doyle said: “We are supporting eight Scottish people.

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NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

February 24, 2019

By Michael J. O’Loughlin

In the months leading up to the Vatican’s four-day summit on the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests, some U.S. prelates, activists and even some journalists tried to link homosexuality with the abuse crisis, attempts to urge church officials to take a hard line against gay priests.

But the topic was barely broached during the summit, and when it was, leading prelates dismissed any connection.

“To generalize, to look at a whole category of people is never legitimate. We have individual cases. We don’t have categories of people,” said Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, who has become one of the Vatican’s point man in the fight against sex abuse.

Responding to a reporter’s question during a press briefing on Feb. 21 about why the Vatican was not discussing homosexuality, he said that homosexuality and heterosexuality are “human conditions,” adding, “they are not something that predisposes to sin.”

“To generalize, to look at a whole category of people is never legitimate. We have individual cases. We don’t have categories of people.”
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“I would never dare to indicate a category as a category that has a tendency to sin,” Archbishop Scicluna said.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

February 23, 2019

John L. Allen Jr.

Since the beginning of the clerical abuse crisis, some voices in Catholicism have warned that going too far towards secular standards of transparency and corporate “best practices” could ruin the reputations of innocent priests by circulating false allegations, as well as eroding traditional guarantees of pontifical secrecy.

On Saturday, bishops gathered for a special summit heard one of their own, German Cardinal Reinhard Marx, tell them bluntly that such arguments just aren’t “particularly forceful.”

“The protection of rights and transparency are not mutually exclusive,” Marx said. “The opposite is the case.”

“A clearly defined and public procedure,” the German prelate said, “is the best safety mechanism against prejudices and false judgments. Such a procedure has the credibility to restore the reputation of a wrongly accused person who otherwise would be subject to rumors.”

Ultimately, Marx said, the aim of building and maintaining effective administrative procedures in dealing with abuse cases is to “bring humanity to God.”

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

February 24, 2019

By John L. Allen Jr.

One hallmark of Pope Francis’s style is that during big moments, he prefers to have his friends and allies in the spotlight. That’s certainly the case during his high-stakes summit on the clerical abuse scandals this week, as the prelates given choice speaking slots would be on any short list of Francis’s biggest supporters.

As a result, it’s worth paying attention to what these prelates say, because if it doesn’t directly reflect the pope’s personal thinking, it’s at least a point of view he’ll be inclined to take seriously.

In that spirit, here’s one clear take-away: The concept of “pontifical secrecy,” if not quite on life support, has certainly seen better days.

Over the last three days, two prominent speakers took direct swipes at pontifical secrecy, both heavy-hitters in Francis’s papacy: Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Germany, a member of the pope’s “C9” council of cardinal advisers, and Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, essentially the pope’s go-to man in the United States.

Speaking on Friday, Cupich went first. Though his reference was brief, it was directly on point: “The reporting of an offense should not be impeded by the official secret or confidentiality rules.”

By “reporting,” of course, Cupich meant informing police and civil prosecutors of child abuse allegations against Church personnel. Over the years, officials often cited obligations to secrecy imposed under Church law as a reason for not making those reports – so, in context, Cupich was basically saying that’s bunk.

Next up was Marx, who, in essence, argued that pontifical secrecy needs to have its wings clipped – from a blanket requirement of keeping virtually everything confidential to a more 21st century concept of “data protection,” meaning shielding personal details from hackers with malicious intent, not withholding information from people or agencies with a legitimate right to know.

“We need to consider the definition and limits of pontifical secrecy,” Marx said. “In light of changing communications patterns in the age of social media, when each and every one of us can establish instant communication, we need to redefine confidentiality and secrecy and distinguish them from data protection.”

If the Church doesn’t do so, Marx warned, “we’ll either squander the chance to maintain some level of self-determination or expose ourselves to the suspicion of covering up.”

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ROME (ITALY)
New York Times

February 24, 2019

By Jason Horowitz and Elizabeth Dias

Pope Francis ended a landmark Vatican meeting on clerical sexual abuse with an appeal “for an all-out battle against the abuse of minors,” which he compared to human sacrifice, but his speech did not offer concrete policy remedies demanded by many of the faithful.

In the speech at the end of a Mass in the Apostolic Palace’s frescoed Sala Reggia hall, Francis argued that “even a single case of abuse” in the Roman Catholic Church — which he said was the work of the devil — must be met “with the utmost seriousness.” He said that eradicating the scourge required more than legal processes and “disciplinary measures.”

“To combat this evil that strikes at the very heart of our mission,” the pope said, the church needed to protect children “from ravenous wolves.”

Faithful Catholics — especially those in the United States and other countries that had grappled with the problem for years — had demanded more than homilies: They wanted action that would hold their leaders accountable, once and for all.

They did not get it from the pope’s speech.

But church officials have hinted that concrete policy changes were on the horizon, especially on issues of transparency and bishop accountability that were discussed during the meeting.

Pope Francis had sought to get the church’s leaders on the same page for the first time, summoning them to the meeting in September, decades after the sexual abuse crisis first exploded in the United States. He sent a message to his bishops and the faithful that he, too, wanted concrete remedies to come out of the meeting.

After the pope’s speech on Sunday, the Vatican announced several forthcoming measures, including one that church officials described as bringing the Vatican City State itself into line with the church’s existing rules on child protection.

Another was what the Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, called a “very brief” handbook for bishops to “understand their duties and tasks” on cases of sexual abuse and the introduction of a new task force of experts and canon lawyers to assist bishops in countries with less experience and resources to handle the issue.

But when asked about the measures on Sunday, the Vatican acknowledged that all had already been in the pipeline well before the meeting began on Thursday, and Father Lombardi said that none included any input from the four-day meeting.

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ROME (ITALY)
USA Today

February 24, 2019

By Trevor Hughes

Pope Francis on Sunday vowed to confront the Catholic Church’s clergy sex abuse scandal head-on, calling for priests to be guided by the “holy fear of God” while victims are believed and supported.

“The church will spare no effort to do all that is necessary to bring to justice whosoever has committed such crimes,” Francis told a group of about 190 Catholic bishops and religious superiors he summoned to Rome. “The church will never seek to hush up or not take seriously any case.”

The sex-abuse scandal has rocked the church for two decades as journalists and prosecutors have uncovered hundreds of examples of predator priests who abused children and were allowed to continue in their ministry. The scandal has prompted many American Catholics to leave the church, which counts about 70 million Americans as members.

Last week, Francis defrocked former U.S. cardinal Theodore McCarrick, 88, after Vatican officials found him guilty of sex crimes against minors and adults. McCarrick is the most senior Catholic official to be defrocked for such crimes, and church experts say that’s a reflection of how slowly the church has moved in response to the ongoing scandal.

After a damning grand jury report released last summer uncovered 300 abusive priests in Pennsylvania, multiple state attorneys general have opened their own cases, and hundreds of new victims are expected to come forward across the U.S.

The Rev. James Bretzke, a theology professor at Marquette University, said the pope demands a change in clerical culture, which has focused more on protecting the church’s reputation than the abuse of children by priests.

“The pope is saying this isn’t just a problem for the United States or Europe or elsewhere,” Bretzke told USA TODAY last week. “The problem is the clerical culture that looks to protect the institution even at the expense of individuals who have been harmed.”

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

February 24, 2019

By Nicole Winfield

Pope Francis may have wrapped up his clergy sex abuse prevention summit at the Vatican, but a scandal over an Argentine bishop close to him is only gaining steam.

The Associated Press has reported that the Vatican knew as early as 2015 about Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta’s inappropriate behavior with seminarians. Yet he was allowed to stay on as bishop of the northern Argentine diocese of Oran on until 2017, when he resigned suddenly, only to be given a top job at the Vatican by Francis, his confessor.

New documents published by the Tribune of Salta newspaper show that the original 2015 complaint reported that Zanchetta had gay porn on his cellphone involving “young people” having sex, as well as naked images of Zanchetta masturbating that he sent to others.

The age of the “young people” isn’t clear. But Francis told his summit Sunday that Vatican legislation criminalizing possession of child porn involving children under age 14 should change to include older victims.

“We now consider that this age limit should be raised in order to expand the protections of minors and to bring out the gravity of these deeds,” Francis said.

It wasn’t clear if Francis was referring to the Zanchetta case, which is now under investigation by both the Vatican and Argentine judicial authorities after alleged victims came forward accusing Zanchetta of sexual abuse.

The Vatican has insisted that Zanchetta was only facing “governance” problems at the time of his 2017 resignation and appointment at the Vatican, and that the first sexual abuse allegation was made in late 2018.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Salon

February 24, 2019

By Matthew Rozsa

In my seven years as a published writer, no single interview has had a greater impact on me than my conversation with Pennsylvania state Rep. Mark Rozzi. Rozzi, a Democrat, has made it his personal mission to hold the Catholic Church accountable for allowing priests to sexually abuse children — and, on a broader level, to make it harder for any institution that conceals child sex abuse to get away with it.

When speaking to Salon last year, Rozzi went into graphic detail about the sexual abuse he experienced at the hands of his priest as a child, details too harrowing and upsetting to be repeated here. This week he spoke to Salon about the summit held by Pope Francis at the Vatican on Thursday, one in which the pontiff vowed to implement “concrete, effective measures” to hold wrongdoers accountable and prevent future abuses. These included creating a set of protocols for dealing with accusations against bishops, requiring psychological evaluations for priests, establishing codes of conduct for priests and other church officials that will recognize personal boundaries and creating a semi-autonomous group that can serve the needs of victims of sex abuse.

These promises sound good on paper, but are they enough? According to Rozzi, his concern is that the summit will be viewed as “a publicity stunt, if we don’t see concrete action.”

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ROME (ITALY)
Daily Beast

February 24, 2019

By Barbie Latza Nadeau
Several moments during the four-day summit on clerical sex abuse truly were inspirational. Like when Nigerian nun, Sister Veronica Openibo, scolded Pope Francis and the 190 church leaders who had gathered there. “How could the clerical Church have kept silent, covering these atrocities?” she asked, at one point turning to the pope who was seated near her. “The silence, the carrying of the secrets in the hearts of the perpetrators, the length of the abuses and the constant transfers of perpetrators are unimaginable.”

Other moments focused on the suffering at the center of the scandals. “From the age of 15 I had sexual relations with a priest,” the prelates heard on the first day, listening to one victim’s recorded testimony. “This lasted for 13 years. I got pregnant three times and he made me have an abortion three times, quite simply because he did not want to use condoms or contraceptives. At first I trusted him so much that I did not know he could abuse me. I was afraid of him, and every time I refused to have sex with him, he would beat me.”

On Saturday evening, an unnamed young man, the victim of a predatory priest for years, spoke at an evening service where the conference attendees asked for forgiveness. He seemed to look each leader, including the pope, directly in the eye as he fought back tears. “What you carry inside you is like a ghost, which others are unable to see,” he said, describing his years of abuse. “They will never fully see and know you. What hurts the most, is the certainty that nobody will understand you. That lives with you for the rest of your life.” Then he went on to play a song so mournful on his violin that he seemed to bring that ghost to life.

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ROME (ITALY)
Washington Post

February 24, 2019

By Chico Harlan

At a Mass marking the end of an unprecedented Vatican summit, Pope Francis on Sunday called for an “all-out battle” against clerical sexual abuse, saying the church needed to take “every necessary measure” to end the scourge.

But his remarks were short on specifics and roundly criticized by victims of abuse, who said the four-day summit amounted to a training seminar that concluded with no concrete steps and advocated for behavioral changes that should have been obvious years ago.

Speaking at a gilded and frescoed hall at the Vatican, Francis said that abuse should never be “covered up” or tolerated. But the pontiff’s words, which included general calls for improved national-level guidelines, underscored the looming challenges for an institution that has long acknowledged the seriousness of clerical abuse but nonetheless struggled to curtail it.

Francis mentioned unspecified “legislation” that the Catholic Church will draw up, and said it will “spare no effort to do all that is necessary to bring to justice” anyone who has committed the “crimes” of abuse. He did not mention a zero-tolerance policy — a step that advocates have long called for to codify the idea that clerics found guilty of abuse be removed permanently from the priesthood.

The pope had called for the abuse summit while facing abuse-related scandals on multiple continents — stemming from cases that sometimes showed the complicity of church higher-ups in protecting abusers. At the start of the summit Thursday, Francis had called for “concrete and effective measures” to contend with the problem. And though some of the Vatican’s handpicked speakers described their ideas for such measures, it is clear that any follow-through will have to come in the months and years ahead — if at all.

The event organizers have said they will remain in Rome in the coming days to discuss some of the ideas aired at the summit.

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ROME (ITALY)
Washington Post

February 23, 2019

By Chico Harlan

When Benjamin Kitobo arrived in Rome this week along with more than 100 other survivors of clerical sexual abuse from around the world, something quickly stood out. He was the only victim he could find representing a country in Africa.

“In some places, it is still life-threatening to speak out,” said Kitobo, 51, who says he was abused by a priest in the Congo, known then as Zaire. Kitobo now works as a nurse in St. Louis.

But Kitobo — and, increasingly, Vatican leaders — say that in many parts of the vast Catholic empire, the scale of clerical sexual abuse probably far exceeds what is publicly known.

Some go so far as to describe Pope Francis’s landmark four-day summit on child protection, which ends Sunday, as a direct warning for Catholic authorities across Asia, Africa and other parts of the world where abuse scandals have not yet left a searing mark.

They say the next decades of the Catholic Church’s efforts against clerical abuse depend on whether those countries can be pushed to take safeguarding measures preemptively, rather than responding only after a crisis explodes into the open.

“No bishop may say to himself, ‘This problem of abuse in the church does not concern me because things are different in my part of the world,’ ” Cardinal Oswald Gracias, the archbishop of Mumbai, who has been criticized for his own handling of cases, told the Vatican gathering of 190 bishops and other Catholic leaders. “I dare say there are cases all over the world, also in Asia, also in Africa.”

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Service

Feb. 23, 2019

By Cindy Wooden

In an opulent Vatican room designed in the 16th century for papal meetings with kings, a cardinal read, “We confess that we have shielded the guilty and have silenced those who have been harmed.”

“Kyrie, eleison,” (Lord, have mercy) responded Pope Francis and some 190 cardinals, bishops and religious superiors from around the world to the confessions read on their behalf by Cardinal John Dew of Wellington, New Zealand.

After three days of meetings, nine major speeches and heartbreaking testimony from survivors of clerical sexual abuse, participants at the Vatican summit on child protection and the abuse crisis gathered in the Sala Regia (literally, “royal room”) of the Apostolic Palace Feb. 23 for a penitential liturgy.

The centerpiece of the liturgy was the reading of the story of the prodigal son or, as the Vatican termed it, “the merciful father” from Luke 15:11-32 and a long “examination of conscience” that asked the bishops as individuals and as presidents of bishops’ conferences to be honest about what they have done and what they have failed to do to protect children, support survivors and deal with abusive priests.

While Pope Francis presided at the penitential service as part of the Vatican summit on child protection and ending clerical sexual abuse, Archbishop Philip Naameh of Tamale, Ghana, gave the homily.

He told the pope and his brother bishops that they all preach often about the parable of the prodigal son, encouraging their people to return to God and seek forgiveness.

But, he said, “we readily forget to apply this Scripture to ourselves, to see ourselves as we are, namely as prodigal sons. Just like the prodigal son in the Gospel, we have also demanded our inheritance, got it, and now we are busy squandering it.”

“The current abuse crisis is an expression of this,” Archbishop Naameh said.

“Too often we have kept quiet, looked the other way, avoided conflicts,” he said, adding that the bishops were often “too smug” to confront “the dark sides of our church.”

Failing to act, he said, they “squandered the trust placed in us.”

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ROME (ITALY)
Reuters

February 23, 2019

By Philip Pullella

A nun and a woman journalist delivered the toughest criticism of Church leaders heard so far at Pope Francis’ sexual abuse conference on Saturday, accusing them of hypocrisy and covering up horrendous crimes against children.

Some 200 senior Church officials, all but ten of them men, listened at times in stunned silence in a Vatican audience hall as the women read their frank and at times angry speeches on the penultimate day of the conference convened by the pope to confront a worldwide scandal.

Sister Veronica Openibo, a Nigerian who has worked in Africa, Europe and the United States, spoke with a soft voice but delivered a strong message, telling the prelates sitting before her: “This storm will not pass”.

“We proclaim the Ten Commandments and parade ourselves as being the custodians of moral standards and values and good behavior in society. Hypocrites at times? Yes! Why did we keep silent for so long?” she said.

She told the pope, sitting near her on the dais, that she admired him because he was “humble enough to change your mind,” apologize and take action after he initially defended a Chilean bishop accused of covering up abuse. The bishop later resigned.

“How could the clerical Church have kept silent, covering these atrocities? The silence, the carrying of the secrets in the hearts of the perpetrators, the length of the abuses and the constant transfers of perpetrators are unimaginable,” she said.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

February 23, 2019

By Alice McDermott

No Christian should need to be reminded of the moral error of discrimination. We hold at the center of our faith the belief that every human life is of equal value. And yet the Roman Catholic Church, my church, excludes more than half its members from full participation by barring women, for reasons of gender alone, from the priesthood.

The moral consequences of this failing become abundantly clear each time another instance of clergy abuse, and cover-up, is revealed. It is the inevitable logic of discrimination: If one life, one person, is of more value than another, then “the other,” the lesser, is dispensable. For the male leaders of the Catholic Church, the lives of women and children become secondary to the concerns of the more worthy, the more powerful, the more essential person — the male person, themselves.

The Catholic Church needs to correct this moral error.

I was visiting a Catholic university in Boston in 2002 as the clergy abuse scandal involving Cardinal Bernard Law was breaking. I was there to discuss a novel I had written, but the questions from the audience at my talk — and at the book signing after, and on the sidewalk as I walked to my car — were mostly, if passionately, rhetorical: What do we do now? Where do we go from here? Do you think the church understands our pain? Do you think the church understands what we’ve lost? How much corruption should we tolerate?

At the time, I could offer only small commiseration — as well as my regret that these Catholics had been so betrayed by their spiritual leaders that they were left to seek solace from the likes of me, a reluctant and often contrarian Catholic, a novelist, a woman. “Awful, yes,” I said. “Outrageous, yes.” “Hope,” I said now and again. “Hope for change, perhaps.”

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ANNAPOLIS (MD)
WUSA TV

February 23, 2019

By Liz Palka

Advocates and child sex abuse survivors will stand before members of the Maryland House of Delegates on Thursday to testify. The judiciary committee will have a bill before them that would remove the statute of limitations for all child sex abuse cases.

Currently, Maryland law says a victim has until age 38 to file a civil lawsuit. However, those who are older than 25 when they come forward must prove gross negligence, which is something notoriously difficult to prove.

Maryland Delegate C.T. Wilson of Charles County was part of the negotiations for the current law and has sponsored the proposed bill. The delegate has been open about the sexual abuse he experienced as a child.

“I don’t believe [38-years-old] is enough time. That was a negotiation I had with the Catholic Church at the time, as well as the gross negligence, and I’m not negotiating anymore,” said Wilson.

Delegate Wilson says House Bill 687, which will be before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday for a hearing, would remove the statute of limitations.

The bill would make it so a child sex abuse victim could file a lawsuit no matter their age. Wilson is also adding what’s called a “two-year look back window” to include anyone precluded by the statute of limitations.

One of the people testifying on Thursday will be David Lorenz, the Maryland Director of SNAP (the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.) He himself is a survivor of child sex abuse in Kentucky. He expects about a dozen survivors and advocates to testify as well.

“When you’re 16 years old, it’s hard to come to the realization that this mentor of yours was actually a criminal,” explained Wilson. “It’s hard to make that mental leap.”

He went on, “That’s why it’s important to me. I want my fellow survivors to be able to experience the sense of justice I was able to experience. And I think the church needs to be exposed for what they’re doing.”

Wilson says recent news involving the Catholic Church has encouraged him to pursue to House Bill 687.

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[Chile: 148 open investigations and 225 victims of abuse]

SANTIAGO (CHILE)
El País

February 20, 2019

By Javier Sáez Leal

Tras la visita de Francisco hace un año, los obispos han comenzado un drástico proceso de reestructuración

El papa Francisco recibió en Roma a los miembros de la Conferencia Episcopal chilena el pasado 14 de enero. Quería que estos le informaran del avance de las investigaciones contra los miembros de la Iglesia relacionados con denuncias de abuso sexual a menores. La cita fue catalogada como “un diálogo preciso” por parte del obispo auxiliar de Santiago, Fernando Ramos, quien además será quien presente los antecedentes chilenos en la cumbre que arranca este jueves. En Chile, donde tras la visita del Papa, la Iglesia comenzó un drástico proceso de reestructuración, hay 148 investigaciones abiertas y 225 víctimas.

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[Argentina: The Pope’s country does not keep statistics or talk to abuse victims]

BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA)
El País

February 20, 2019

By Federico Rivas Molina

El Episcopado argentino viaja a Roma dispuesto a “ahondar en las consecuencias” de los delitos sexuales

A diferencia de Chile, donde los escándalos sexuales en la Iglesia forzaron a los obispos a poner su renuncia a disposición del Papa, el drama de los abusos de menores en Argentina se comenta en voz baja. En el país de Francisco, el Episcopado no lleva una estadística de los casos que involucran a sus sacerdotes con el argumento de que dependen de cada diócesis. Reconstruir el mapa de las denuncias es, sin embargo, posible. La Red de Sobrevivientes de Abuso Eclesiástico de Argentina patrocina 40 casos en todo el país. La agencia pública de noticias Telam, en tanto, realizó a mediados de 2017 una lista basada en casos de abuso publicados por los diarios desde 2002. Así contabilizó otros 22.

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[Mexico: 152 priests suspended for abuse]

MEXICO
El País

February 20, 2019

By Georgina Zerega

La Iglesia crea una comisión para investigar la pederastia y romper con el silencio

Con la cumbre de pederastia del papa Francisco sobrevolando, los años de indolencia de la Iglesia mexicana parecen entrar en un terreno desconocido hasta ahora: el de la acción. Tras, al menos, seis décadas de silencio e impunidad, la conferencia episcopal mexicana abre una instancia para investigar los casos de abuso sexual, ha comunicado la suspensión de 152 sacerdotes en nueve años por “agravio a menores” y se ha reunido con víctimas y organizaciones civiles. Pero el pasado de encubrimiento y desdén que caracterizó a la institución genera un clima de incredulidad que se atisba difícil de disipar.

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ROME (ITALY)
CBC News

February 23, 2019

By Megan Williams

A dramatic feature of the sex abuse summit now underway at the Vatican has been the testimony of eight victims from around the world anonymously recounting their experience of abuse.

But the Vatican has no idea of if the victims’ abusers are still active as priests, a main organizer of the summit told CBC News.

Father Hans Zollner told CBC that none of the people who gave testimony at the four-day conference told the Vatican who their abusers were or where their cases had been dealt with.

When asked if the Vatican had looked into whether the priests accused by the victims are still in active ministry, Zollner, a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and president of the Center for the Protection of Minors at the Pontifical Gregorian University, said: “No, they [the victims] have not disclosed it to me and my understanding is that maybe they don’t know [if the priests are still active in the Church]. But I can’t say because I don’t know it.”

Zollner said all but one of the victims the Vatican chose to provide testimony to a closed-door room of bishops wanted to protect their anonymity.

“They went to great effort not to reveal any detail,” Zollner said. “In some cases the family doesn’t know that they have been abused. In some places it would destroy the family. It would destroy their professional career and so forth.”

When CBC sent a text message later asking Zollner if he wanted to further comment on his statement that the Vatican had not verified the victims’ accounts since none had identified an abuser to the Vatican, he responded that was “not accurate.”

When asked to be more specific, his answers were vague.

He said the victims he was in contact with “did not disclose where their proceedings are,” adding that the victims were “verified by the people on the ground who had first contact with them.”

When asked what that meant, he did not respond.

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[Canada: A new guide that protects abuse victims and points out cover-up]

MONTREAL (CANADA)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Jaime Porras Ferreyra

En 2015 una comisión presentó un informe sobre los internados que evidenciarion castigos físicos, racismo y abusos sexuales

Canadá, como tantos otros países, no tiene cifras para medir la pederastia en el seno de la Iglesia católica. Han sido, como en tantos otros países, los reportajes periodísticos, los acuerdos extrajudiciales y las condenas a algunos responsables los que han mostrado que el asunto es copioso y de larga data en el país. Con estos mimbres llega Lionel Gendron, presidente de la Conferencia Canadiense de Obispos Católicos a la cumbre convocada por el papa Francisco.

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[Portugal: The Church recognizes fewer than five abuse cases this century]

LISBON (PORTUGAL)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Javier Martín del Barrio

Dos sacerdotes han sido condenados a prisión incondicional, de los que uno huyó a Brasil

En la Iglesia católica portuguesa los abusos sexuales con menores no existen (casi) ni han existido (casi) en este siglo. Los tribunales eclesiásticos del país investigaron una decena de denuncias y desecharon más de la mitad, según el portavoz de la Conferencia Episcopal Portuguesa (CEP), Manuel Barbosa.

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[Italy: To the tail of Europe, without an investigative commission and only 300 cases of known abuses]

ROME (ITALY)
El País (Spain)

By Daniel Verdú

La Conferencia Episcopal Italiana, muy influyente en el Vaticano, no ha avanzado prácticamente nada en la lucha contra la pederastia

Italia vive completamente de espaldas a los abusos a menores de la Iglesia católica. El nivel de transparencia y tratamiento de la cuestión, pese a ser un país donde el catolicismo impregna todos los estamentos educativos, está a la cola de sus vecinos europeos. Los medios han mostrado poco interés por la cumbre que comienza este jueves en el Vaticano. Y ni la Conferencia Episcopal Italiana se ha mostrado especialmente activa, ni la magistratura del país ha exhibido demasiado interés ejecutivo por un asunto crucial al otro lado del Tíber. Tanto, que la ONU reprochó a Roma hace solo una semana el bajo número de investigaciones judiciales que se habían llevado a cabo y exigió que se cree una comisión como ha sucedido en otros países.

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[Ireland: Only 82 priests condemned for abuses among 1,300 defendants]

LONDON (ENGLAND)
El País (Spain)

February 20, 2019

By Rafa de Miguel

La Iglesia irlandesa cree haber realizado ya gran parte de la expiación por los casos de pederastia, documentados en varios informes oficiales

El arzobispo de Irlanda, Eamon Martin, bendijo a principios de febrero las “velas de la expiación” destinadas a recordar, el pasado día 15, a las víctimas de abusos sexuales en la Iglesia católica. Iglesias y parroquias de todo el país las encendieron para recordar a los miles de fieles cuyo sufrimiento fue ignorado durante décadas por la jerarquía eclesial. “Es mi intención relatar las experiencias vitales y todos los sentimientos de los supervivientes irlandeses al papa Francisco en persona, y a todo el cónclave que se reunirá en Roma a finales de este mes”, anunció Martin.

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[France: Independent commission begins to investigate abuses since 1950]

PARIS (FRANCE)
El País (Spain)

By Silvia Ayuso

Los obispos franceses acuden a Roma a punto de conocerse el fallo del principal juicio, en Lyon, por el silencio de la Iglesia francesa ante la pederastia

Los obispos franceses acuden a la cumbre en el Vaticano para tratar el problema de la pederastia en el seno de la Iglesia católica entre dos fechas angustiosas. Pese a los intentos de aplazarlo, la víspera del encuentro en Roma se estrena en los cines de toda Francia la película Gracias a Dios, sobre la creación de Palabra Liberada, la asociación de víctimas del cura pederasta de Lyon Bernard Preynat, responsables en buena parte de haber roto el muro de silencio sobre los abusos de religiosos a menores en el país.

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[Holland: Between 10,000 and 20,000 victims of abuse since 1945]

THE HAGUE (NETHERLANDS)
El País (Spain)

February 21, 2019

By Isabel Ferrer

La Iglesia holandesa abrió una investigación en 2010 y ha pagado 28 millones en indemnizaciones

En 2010, cuando las denuncias de abusos sexuales en el seno de la Iglesia católica holandesa empezaron a hacerse públicas, la Conferencia Episcopal y la Asociación de Órdenes Religiosas, pidieron a Wim Deetman, antiguo ministro de Educación, que investigara los hechos. Un año después, la sociedad enmudeció ante la magnitud de cifras recabadas: entre 10.000 y 20.000 fueron víctimas de estas agresiones, perpetradas desde 1945 por unos 800 religiosos en internados, orfanatos, colegios y seminarios. En sus conclusiones, la Comisión Deetman dijo que “no puede hablarse de ocultamiento deliberado de los hechos, o destrucción en masa de archivos eclesiásticos, pero los obispos y los superiores de las congregaciones no siempre informaron a Roma”.

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[Belgium: Almost five million euros for victims of Church abuses]

BRUSSELS (BELGIUM)
El País (Spain)

February 21, 2019

By Álvaro Sánchez

Las autoridades han recabado 1.054 denuncias de víctimas de pederastia

La Iglesia católica belga vivió durante décadas sumida en un plácido silencio sobre los abusos cometidos por algunos de sus representantes más insignes. El velo de oscuridad se descorrió abruptamente el 20 de abril de 2010, cuando el entonces obispo de Brujas, Roger Vangheluwe, se vio forzado a dimitir tras reconocer que a lo largo de 13 años abusó en reiteradas ocasiones de uno de sus sobrinos. En medio de la estupefacción por sus revelaciones, la tormenta creció al admitir que en realidad había abusado de otro sobrino más. El escándalo provocó una cascada de anulaciones de actas de bautismo, y sobre todo, abrió un proceso irreversible que llevó a la jerarquía eclesiástica a pedir perdón y colaborar con las autoridades para ayudar a las víctimas y desenmascarar a los pedófilos, muchos de los cuales salieron indemnes al haber prescrito sus delitos.

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