TEXAS
Herald Banner

By Gary E. Lindsley

A Greenville minister, facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit alleging he sexually abused a teenager at First Baptist Church of Rockwall in the 1990s, has resigned.

Billy Bob Burge, connect minister at Grace Community Church, resigned on Thursday, according to Lead Pastor Adam Brind.

Burge is accused of repeatedly sexually abusing John Jeremy Sweet-Gomez when he attended the church in Rockwall as a teenager.

Sweet-Gomez, according to the lawsuit filed in Dallas County District Court by his parents, Carla Sweet and Ed Gomez, committed suicide in January 2015.

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UNITED STATES
CBS News

By ROBERT HENNELLY MONEYWATCH September 25, 2015

Critics of Pope Francis have cast him as anti-capitalist, seizing on his warnings about global warming and the corrosive effects of inequality. But the reality is more complex, as shown by his efforts to turn the scandal-plagued Vatican bank into a more efficient — and profitable — financial institution.

Under Pope Francis’ watch the secretive bank, long linked to money laundering and tax evasion, is for the first time in its 73-year-history complying with international banking standards and other transparency rules, advancing reform efforts started by his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI. Francis upped the ante on the campaign by replacing many of the bank’s top advisers.

The Institute for the Works of Religion, as the bank is officially known, is also seeing its earnings rebound, which some commercial bankers might view as a kind of miracle given the financial industry’s aversion to regulations.

The bank’s profits have gone from $3.9 million in 2013, when the pontiff — born Jorge Mario Bergoglio — was elected Pope to $75.5 million last year. Other standard benchmarks of bank profitability also highlight the Institute’s gains. Both the Vatican bank’s average return on its holdings and its profit margin on interest-bearing assets have climbed since 2012, according to SNL Financial. The bank’s so-called Tier 1 capital ratio — for regulators, the most important measure of a lender’s financial strength — has also risen over that time.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

by Edward Pentin 09/24/2015

Further serious concerns are being raised about Cardinal Godfried Danneels, one of the papal delegates chosen to attend the upcoming Ordinary Synod on the Family, after the archbishop emeritus of Brussels confessed this week to being part of a radical “mafia” reformist group opposed to Benedict XVI.

It was also revealed this week that he once wrote a letter to the Belgium government favoring same-sex “marriage” legislation because it ended discrimination against LGBT groups.

The cardinal is already known for having once advised the king of Belgium to sign an abortion law in 1990, for telling a victim of clerical sex abuse to keep quiet, and for refusing to forbid pornographic, “educational” materials being used in Belgian Catholic schools.

He also once said same-sex “marriage” was a “positive development,” although he has sought to distinguish such a union from the Church’s understanding of marriage.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Spiritual Politics

Mark Silk | Sep 24, 2015

Church spokesmen and mainstream religion reporters like to make the point that the pope — any pope — hews not to a liberal or conservative line in secular politics, but marches to the distinctively different beat of Catholic social doctrine. And the point is sufficiently true that woe to those who deny it.

But the fact remains that popes, through what they choose to emphasize and how they choose to emphasize it, may offer more aid and comfort to one side of the political divide than the other. And at the end of Pope Francis’ Washington innings my scorecard reads: Liberals 7, Conservatives 2, with innumerable hits and one error.

On the liberal side, I score runs on immigration, climate change, the death penalty, caring for the poor, assuring the common good, ending the culture war, and political over economic decision-making. Conservatives scored on abortion and religious liberty.

Of course, conservatives will argue that they also care about the poor. They just don’t believe in robust government programs to help them. If anyone doubts that Pope Francis was sending anything but that message, I suggest a rereading of his speech Congress. As in: “I would encourage you to keep in mind all those people around us who are trapped in a cycle of poverty. They too need to be given hope. The fight against poverty and hunger must be fought constantly and on many fronts, especially in its causes.”

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NEW YORK
New York Times

Pope Again Sympathizes With Church Leaders over Abuse Fallout

“I know that, as a presbyterate in the midst of God’s people, you suffered greatly in the not distant past by having to bear the shame of some of your brothers who harmed and scandalized the Church in the most vulnerable of her members… In the words of the Book of Revelation, I know well that you ‘have come forth from the great tribulation.’ I accompany you at this time of pain and difficulty, and I thank God for your faithful service to his people.”

In the remarks he is delivering at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Francis is echoing the remarks he made on the church’s abuse scandals on Wednesday, when he told American bishops that he “supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims – in the knowledge that in healing we, too, are healed – and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated.” He also praised them for their “courage” and the “great sacrifice” they had made.

Advocates for the victims of sexual abuse by priests have condemned his words. They also questioned why Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the former archbishop of Los Angeles who was relieved of ministry duties over revelations that he had covered up for abusive priests, was traveling with Francis.

“Once again, he seems to be talking about the pain and embarrassment of the bishops, as opposed to the pain and embarrassment of the victims, who’ve been raped and sodomized,” said Barbara Dorris, the victims outreach director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. “Well, they created this crisis by protecting predators; children didn’t ask to be raped. So to compare the two things is grossly unjust.”

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NEW YORK
Washington Post

By Michelle Boorstein September 24

Defending Pope Francis’ comments in the United States on clergy sex abuse, his spokesman Thursday night hinted that the pope will meet with survivors during this visit. U.S. church leaders had said similar things in the months leading up to this visit, but not a concrete way at such a precise time.

At a news conference in New York, the Rev. Federico Lombardi was asked why the pope had spoken twice now — Wednesday to bishops and Thursday to seminarians and religious sisters, among others — about the abuse crisis, but never named it explicitly and focused on encouraging the clergy without speaking first about victims.

“It isn’t totally true what you say. He has spoken of ‘crimes,’ and said the bishops have to engage to avoid these crimes can happen again ..it is an incredible, terrible, terrible thing,” the Italian priest said in slightly broken English. “It may be the trip is not to end now, the pope has already said speaking to bishops, to the priests, maybe he will also have other occasions to approach this problem that was and is very big.”

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NEW YORK
San Diego Union-Tribune

NEW YORK (AP) — Latest developments in Pope Francis’ visit to the United States. All times local: …

10:20 p.m.

The Vatican spokesman has denied claims by advocates for victims that the pope has given short shrift to their suffering in his remarks on the clergy sex-abuse crisis.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi says Pope Francis has acknowledged victims by referring to children as the most vulnerable members of the church and speaking of child molestation as a crime.

Lombardi also noted Thursday that the pope has three more days of public events in the U.S., suggesting that further comments are ahead.

In two separate speeches, the pope has commended U.S. bishops for their response to victims and said he understood clergy had “suffered greatly” because of the shame from the scandal.

The crisis erupted in 2002 in the Archdiocese of Boston, then spread across the country and overseas.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

September 25, 2015

Jane Lee
Legal affairs, industrial relations and science correspondent

The states and territories have challenged Commonwealth Attorney-General George Brandis to say whether the Turnbull government will support a $4.01 billion national redress scheme for survivors of child sexual abuse.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse recommended last week, on the day Mr Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott as prime minister, that the federal government set up a scheme for about 60,000 survivors across Australia.

Attorneys-general of all states and territories except the Northern Territory said in a joint letter to Senator Brandis on Friday that the commission had “identified a clear role” for the federal government in the redress scheme, including giving it a deadline of the end of 2015 to announce whether it would establish a national scheme.

While institutions where historic child abuse occurred should bear most of the redress cost, the commission said in its report that federal, state and territory governments should cover any shortfall as “funders of last resort”. It estimated that this would be about $613 million, or 15 per cent of total redress funding

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NEW YORK
The New York Times

Pope Francis is warning clergy members, nuns and brothers that taking a business-inspired approach to their ministries can dampen their spirit of “generous self-sacrifice.”

The Archdiocese of New York has been going through a reorganization that has resulted in the closing of nearly 40 churches, and some have criticized the closures for being motivated by business rather than pastoral priorities. The pope’s comment will likely be welcomed by those critics.

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NEW YORK
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Sep. 24, 2015

NEW YORK
A Vatican spokesman has said that Pope Francis may yet have another opportunity during his continuing visit to the U.S. to address the sexual abuse crisis, in what could be a reference to an upcoming but unannounced meeting with abuse survivors.

The pope may “have other occasions to approach this problem,” Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi said at a press conference Thursday evening. Francis’ six-day, three-city trip to the U.S., he said, “is not to an end now.”

Lombardi was responding to an NCR question at the briefing regarding two speeches given by the pope Wednesday in Washington and Thursday in New York.

Both speeches addressed the sexual abuse crisis obliquely, and acknowledged the struggles faced by church officials in handling the issue but not the pain of survivors.

Speaking to some 300 U.S. bishops Wednesday, Francis told them: “I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you.”

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NEW YORK
News LI

by Nia Hamm

NEW YORK – The historic U.S. visit of Pope Francis has refocused attention on the Catholic Church’s sex-abuse scandal. Although the pontiff has vowed to root out child sex predators from the Church, which has cost billions in legal expenses, victims of clergy sexual abuse want the pope to do more.

In New York, Michael Mack, 58, who says he was abused by a priest when he was 11, hopes to bring more attention to the issue this week. He has written a one-man play, “Conversations with My Molester.”

“I truly believe that his intention is to heal around this process,” Mack said. “And since this play of mine really is all about healing – about my own personal healing journey, but also the journeys that it reflects for so many survivors – that it seemed like the timing was a natural.”

Mack, who began practicing Catholicism again about seven years ago, said reform efforts such as a Truth and Reconciliation Commission would give church sexual-abuse victims a true chance to heal. Mack’s play opened in New York City on Thursday, the same day Pope Francis arrived in the city.

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UNITED STATES
International Business Times

By Julia Glum

Bernie McDaid remembers staring at the stained glass the first time his Catholic priest molested him. He said he was about 12 years old, an altar boy standing in the sacristy of St. James’ Church outside of Boston, when the Rev. Joseph E. Birmingham grabbed him, started tickling and then put his hands down McDaid’s pants.

McDaid soon began skipping Mass, hoping to avoid the older man. When Birmingham realized he wasn’t seeing the boy in church, he started organizing beach trips with McDaid and his classmates. McDaid would try to hide in the bushes in front of his house when Birmingham’s gold Plymouth Fury came cruising down the street to pick him up. Once in the car, he and his friends would scramble to jump out at every stop, because if they were left alone, Birmingham would ask whether they’d been masturbating, McDaid said. Sometimes, he’d scream at them.

Since then, more than 30 men have reportedly come forward claiming Birmingham abused them as kids, and the Archdiocese of Boston settled on the grounds of at least one such victim’s claims in 1996. Birmingham died in 1989.

Years later, McDaid — no longer a Catholic — sat next to his mother in Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., watching as Pope Benedict XVI rode around in the popemobile. It was 2008, and McDaid said he had tears in his eyes as Benedict waved to the 46,000 cheering people packed into the stands for Mass. “The crowd treated him like a rock star, and I couldn’t get over that,” McDaid said. “He’s not God. He’s not a rock star.”

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NEW YORK
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Sep. 24, 2015

NEW YORK
Pope Francis has poignantly thanked U.S. Catholic women religious — until recently the subject of two controversial Vatican investigations — for their work in building and maintaining the church throughout the country.

But the pontiff has also made his second statement in as many days that only obliquely mentions the clergy sexual abuse crisis, and refers to the shame brought upon priests and religious due to the perpetrators but not the pain faced by survivors.

In a prayer service with priests and members of religious orders at St. Patrick’s Cathedral here Thursday evening, Francis said he wanted to express his “esteem and gratitude” to women religious of the United States “in a special way.”…

The pontiff opened his remarks inside the cathedral with an unplanned moment expressing condolences and prayers for the hundreds of people who were killed in a stampede in Mecca Thursday, during part of the traditional pilgrimage for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

The pope expressed sentiments for our “Muslim brothers and sisters” and said he wished he could greet them under warmer circumstances. He asked those in the church to unite in prayer with him for them. …

Francis had previously spoken obliquely about the sexual abuse crisis in Washington Wednesday during a speech to some 300 U.S. bishops in the Cathedral of St. Matthew.

On that occasion, he told the bishops: “I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you.”

“I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims — in the knowledge that in healing we too are healed — and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated,” the pope said.

Survivors’ advocates widely criticized those words, saying they insufficiently addressed the scope of the clergy abuse crisis in the U.S. The National Survivor Advocates Coalition even said the pope had “described a fairy tale” of the bishops’ handling of abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

September 25, 2015

Christopher Knaus
Reporter for The Canberra Times.

Catholic community leaders told an alleged ACT child abuse victim to “forgive” her father and removed the religious mentor the girl had worked up the courage to confide in, police say.

The alleged abuser, now 73, was a leading member of a Canberra religious community closely linked to the Catholic Church, and stands accused of abusing a number of girls, including two of his own daughters.

The man, who has not been identified to protect his daughter, appeared in the ACT Magistrates Court on Friday, represented by lawyer Peter Woodhouse, and was committed for trial in the ACT Supreme Court after pleading not guilty to all charges.

Court documents allege the crimes took place in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, but were only brought to light recently as part of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philly.com

By Andrea Vettori
and Margie Winters

At a time when so many Catholics feel a sense of renewed pride and excitement about their faith because of Pope Francis and his message of acceptance and inclusion, we in Philadelphia are painfully reminded of the arrogance and abuse of power that laid the foundation for the sex-abuse scandal and that continues to afflict this diocese.

Once again, the church attempts to quiet the voices and experiences of the faithful by citing doctrine and creating policy. The most recent example is Archbishop Charles J. Chaput’s “memorandum of understanding” requiring parents of Catholic school children to sign a pledge of loyalty to the Catholic identity of the institution, as defined by the archbishop.

Such a policy is poorly supported by theological and historical realities and ignores the diversity of thought and practice among the faithful. With seeming indifference to the growing loss of moral authority engendered by the legacy of the sexual abuse of children, the archdiocese continues to create an adversarial relationship with its people.

The women and men of this archdiocese strongly lay claim to their Catholic identity and root their lives in its traditions. With pride and spiritual longing, we educate ourselves in our faith, immersed in Scripture and teachings rich in social justice, concern for the poor, and the dignity of the human person, even as we acknowledge the sins committed in our name. We own our baptismal call to be priest and prophet, challenging church teaching when it contradicts our understanding of God and the human person, a right of informed conscience bestowed on us through the catechism.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

25 September, 2015

The Royal Commission is holding a public hearing in Brisbane commencing on Tuesday, 3 November 2015 at the Brisbane Magistrates Court.

The scope and purpose of the public hearing is to inquire into:

1.The experience of former students of Brisbane Grammar School in Spring Hill, Queensland.

2.The experience of former students at St Paul’s School in Bald Hills, Queensland.

3.The response of the Board of Trustees, Headmasters and other members of staff of Brisbane Grammar School to complaints about the behaviour of Kevin Lynch, a former school counsellor at Brisbane Grammar School.

4.The responses of the Anglican Diocese of Brisbane Diocese, the School Council, Headmasters and other members of staff of St Paul’s School to concerns raised, or complaints made, about the behaviour of Kevin Lynch and Gregory Knight, former members of staff at St Paul’s School.

5.The past and current systems, practices, policies and procedures in place at Brisbane Grammar School and St Paul’s School in relation to raising and responding to concerns and complaints about child sexual abuse.

6.The circumstances relating to Gregory Knight’s employment and registration as a teacher in Queensland.

7. Any related matters.

Any person or institution who believes that they have a direct and substantial interest in the scope and purpose of the public hearing is invited to lodge a written application for leave to appear at the public hearing by 16 October 2015.

Applications for leave to appear should be made using the form available on the Royal Commission website.

Leave to appear will generally be granted when an applicant:
a. has been summoned to give evidence
b. is an institution, or is a representative of an institution, that is subject to the inquiry to be undertaken
c. may be the subject of an adverse allegation.

It is not essential for a person who will appear as a witness in a hearing to apply for leave to appear – witnesses may appear and give evidence without applying for leave.

The form should be lodged with the Royal Commission via:
Email: solicitor@childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au or
Mail: GPO Box 5283, Sydney NSW 2001.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Brisbane Grammar School (BGS) has reiterated its apology to former students who were sexually abused by a school counsellor, as a royal commission announces a public hearing in the city later this year.

The public hearings will provide an important opportunity for those who have suffered pain and hurt to be heard, and we acknowledge their courage in coming forward … It is important we hear these courageous men tell their stories.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse said BGS, also known as Grammar, at Spring Hill, and St Paul’s School, at Bald Hills, would be the focus of public hearings on November 3 at the Brisbane Magistrates Court.

About 70 former students sued BGS in the early 2000s, alleging former school counsellor Kevin Lynch sexually abused them during counselling sessions between 1975 and 1988.

The commission will inquire into the responses of the board of trustees, headmasters and other members and staff at BGS to complaints about the behaviour of Mr Lynch.

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NEW YORK
WRVO

[with audio]

By TOM MAGNARELLI

Victims of past sexual abuse by Catholic priests in central New York are calling for justice as Pope Francis makes his visit to America. But the victims are limited in what they can do by New York State law.

Victim Kevin Braney started an online petition on Change.org calling for the removal of Bishop Robert Cunningham of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse for his refusal to release the names of priests with credible allegations of sexual abuse against them.

“It’s not fair for us to stand in front of people and publicly have to describe what’s happened to us and face the shame and scrutiny that comes with it,” Braney said.

Braney and others have more than 1,200 signatures and want to present their petition to Pope Francis as he visits New York City. Braney’s allegations occurred past the statute of limitations in New York state for criminal and civil prosecutions of sex crimes against minors. Currently, the law only allows for a claim to be made up to five years after the victim turns 18.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Western Daily Press

A senior Church of England clergyman has been charged with eight sexual offences against children.

Peter Keeley-Pannett, 71, a non-stipendiary deacon in the Diocese of Chichester, is accused of making 150 indecent images of children.

He also faces two counts of causing a boy, aged 13 to 15, to watch images of sexual activity, and two charges of causing or inciting a boy, aged 14, to engage in sexual activity.

He is further accused of attempting to cause a boy over 13 to engage in sexual activity.

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NEW YORK
Grand Island Independent

NEW YORK (AP) — Pope Francis made a rousing show of gratitude for American nuns on Thursday while thanking clergy for persevering through the priest sex abuse scandal, seemingly intent on moving the U.S. church beyond recent crises.

The pope called religious sisters “women of strength” and “fighters” who had a “spirit of courage” as they served at the forefront of the church.

Six months ago, Francis abruptly ended a contentious Vatican overhaul of the leading umbrella group for U.S. nuns that had started under his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. The Vatican accused the Leadership Conference of Women Religious of straying far from church teaching, which the nuns denied, and overemphasizing social justice over abortion. The sisters received a wave of popular support, including parish vigils, protests outside the Vatican embassy in Washington and a congressional resolution commending the sisters for their service to the country.

“To you, religious women, sisters and mothers of this people, I wish to say thank you, a big thank you and to tell you that I love you very much,” Francis, an Argentine, said in his native Spanish, to applause from worshippers in an evening prayer service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By David Marchese

The lawyer acting for a Catholic Archbishop accused of concealing child sexual abuse is calling for a permanent stay of proceedings.

Adelaide’s Archbishop Philip Wilson has previously pleaded not guilty to concealing the serious indictable offence of another person.

The charge relates to when Wilson was an assistant parish priest in East Maitland in the 1970s and worked with paedophile priest James Fletcher.

Wilson’s lawyer Simon Buchen today sought a permanent stay of proceedings.

He also told Newcastle Local Court he would be filing an application seeking a court attendance notice be quashed.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Catholic Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson moves to stop criminal case over sexual abuse by colleague

AAP

Adelaide’s Catholic Archbishop is attempting to permanently halt criminal proceedings against him for allegedly concealing a colleague’s sexual abuse of a young boy.

Archbishop Philip Wilson was charged in March with concealing information about the 1971 sex assault of a 10-year-old boy by pedophile priest James Fletcher in the NSW town of Maitland.

The 64-year-old, who has pleaded not guilty, applied on Friday for a permanent stay of the proceedings against him when his matter came before Newcastle Local Court.

Both parties are expected to argue the application at a hearing in the local court in December.

Police allege Wilson became aware of the abuse between 2004 and 2006 when both men worked in the Maitland Diocese, in the NSW Hunter region.

They claim he concealed the information.

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NEW YORK
York Daily Record

By Rick Hampson, USA TODAY

NEW YORK – Pope Francis arrived here amid throngs of cheering, flag-waving fans for a historic visit to the Big Apple.

The pope stepped through the huge, recently renovated bronze doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, as a congregation of about 2,500 greeted him with a roar and the choir sang a sacred piece by Mozart written for evening prayer.

Francis walked down the center aisle of the church, sprinkling holy water on those gathered.

The pope entered midtown in his signature Fiat but moved to his Popemobile for the last few blocks down Fifth Avenue to the cathedral, waving to crowds en route. Church Bells chimed; the pope waved; the crowd roared.

In his homily, he avoided political issues and spoke instead to Roman Catholics, particularly the many priests, nuns and brothers in his audience, about spiritual issues.

Speaking in Spanish from a lectern on the high altar of St. Patrick’s, the pope focused on a call for “gratitude and hard work,” which he called “pillars of the spiritual life.”

But he was twice interrupted by loud applause when he praised U.S. nuns, who’d been the subject of a Vatican investigation that Francis closed after taking office in 2013 following the sudden resignation of Benedict XVI.

When he was a powerful member of the Vatican Curia and enforcer of church doctrine, Benedict – then Cardinal Ratzinger – was thought to look askance at American nuns who took liberal political and ecclesiastical stands.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
WAMU

By: Katie Davis
September 24, 2015

These past three days, we’ve been hearing loud cheers for Pope Francis. But this afternoon, a sharper call was made in Washington — this one for justice.

D.C. Council member David Grosso (I-At Large) joined a rally of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests at the Wilson Building today.

Grosso says he listened to Pope Francis’ message to the Catholic Bishops yesterday. He says he was hoping the pope would hold them accountable for abuse committed in the church, but came away disappointed.

“Basically the pope thanked for efforts, which is not an accurate assessment. They have done everything they can to stop, across the country, a real open conversation around how we heal from this sexual violence,” he says.

Grosso is adamant, and he doesn’t just want an open conversation about the issue. He introduced legislation earlier this year that would eliminate the statute of limitations for the recovery of damages arising out of sexual abuse that occurred when a victim was a minor.

He says that the bill came out of a personal experience.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Yahoo! News

Amy Sullivan
September 24, 2015

A seat for Pope Francis’ address to Congress on Thursday was one of the most sought-after tickets in this town’s history, with each member of Congress allowed to bring along just one guest.

But in the packed House chamber, there were three noticeable vacancies right in the front row. Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — all conservative Catholics — took a pass on the opportunity to hear from the leader of their church.

It’s possible that all three had scheduling conflicts. Perhaps they were finally able to score tickets to “Hamilton” and decided to make a day of it in the Big Apple. The three have skipped the State of the Union in the past (Alito calls it “a childish spectacle”), objecting to the partisan nature of that gathering.

More likely, however, the three justices were simply more discreet than Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., who announced to media this week that he was boycotting the pope’s talk over concerns that the pontiff was acting “like a leftist politician.”

The conspicuous absences were a bit surprising, given that the current Supreme Court is sometimes characterized as the “Catholic court.” Six of the nine justices are Catholic — the other three, John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy and Sonia Sotomayor, were in attendance — and the most conservative members of the court have not been shy about identifying with their church.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Institute for Public Policy

September 24, 2015

COLMAN McCARTHY, cmccarthy at starpower.net
A former Washington Post columnist, McCarthy is founder and director of the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington, D.C., and the author of the book I’d Rather Teach Peace. He recently wrote the piece “Francis Needs to go Beyond his Play-it-Safe Verbiage” for the National Catholic Reporter.

McCarthy said today about Pope Francis’ speech before Congress: “I thought it over emphasized meaningless pieties.” While the speech referred to stopping the arms trade, McCarthy noted “it didn’t refer to the militarism of U.S. government itself. It didn’t talk about lowering the military budget. He quoted from [Martin Luther] King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, but not King’s calling the U.S. government ‘the greatest purveyor of violence‘ — as King did. He mentioned Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, but they too spoke out against U.S. militarism. He should have quoted Dorothy Day and her commitment to pacifism.” See McCarthy’s piece on Dorothy Day in the Washington Post from 1980 just after her death. See also McCarthy’s piece “Rediscovering Thomas Merton.”

BARBARA BLAINE, bblaine at snapnetwork.org, @BarbaraBlaine

Blaine is with Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which just released the statement “Chicago Abuse Victims Blast New Papal Remarks,” which says that the pope “speaks of some alleged ‘great sacrifice‘ made by bishops because of the abuse and cover up crisis. What sacrifice? What bishop takes fewer vacations, drives a smaller car, does his own laundry or has been passed over for promotion because he’s shielding predators and endangering kids? None.” Blaine said today: “If you’re a woman, you can’t be a priest, if you’re married, you can’t be a priest, but if you’ve raped children, you can still be a priest.” The group has put out 20 steps the pope could take on the child sex abuse scandal.” Blaine appeared in The Real News segment yesterday “The Pope is Dishonest About Zero Tolerance for Child Sex Abuse.”

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CAMDEN (NJ)
Catholic Star Herald

by Carmela Malerba September 24, 2015

The Office of Child and Youth Protection is announcing CAP (Child Assault Prevention) sessions. CAP is the safe environment training program for adults who have regular contact with minors. Attendance is required in order to comply with the USCCB’s Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. The policy of the Diocese of Camden is that adults will attend CAP once every five years.

CAP 1 teaches attendees to recognize child abuse and neglect and how to report to the proper authorities. Adults are taught that children have the right to be safe, strong and free. CAP 1 is for new volunteers and employees.

CAP 2 is called CAP’s Bullying Prevention Program and is a workshop addressing bullying awareness and bullying prevention. Cyber-bullying is also presented.

CAP 3 is called Cyber-Empowerment and is a workshop which promotes adults understanding of cyber activity of youth while teaching them realistic ways to help children keep their own rights and guard the rights of others in the cyber-sphere.

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MASSACHUSETTS
The Catholic Free Press

By Tanya Connor

“It’s been wonderful, absolutely wonderful!”

That’s how Bishop McManus started his account of being with Pope Francis in Washington, D.C., as he spoke with The Catholic Free Press by telephone Thursday morning.

“The excitement in the city of Washington was palpable,” he said.

It started before he got there, as strangers in T.F. Green Airport in Providence asked if he was going to see the pope and requested his prayers, he said. And the stewardess commented, “Oh what a privilege!”

At St. Matthew Cathedral in Washington, Pope Francis gave a beautiful address to the United States bishops, Bishop McManus said. He said as a bishop he found the Holy Father’s words powerful; he assured the bishops he’s walking with them and recommended that they be courageous and welcome immigrants.

“His pastoral zeal really is an example to us bishops and priests,” Bishop McManus said. “It was like a 12-hour retreat, just listening to his message, his emphasis on joy and hope. We get bogged down in the complexities of running a diocese, a parish.”

The pope was a good example for a bishop “to stand with his priests and support them, especially when they need it most,” he said.

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RHODE ISLAND
Providence Journal

By 
John Hill and Donita Naylor
Journal Staff Writers

Posted Sep. 23, 2015

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Of the hundreds of Rhode Islanders who traveled to the nation’s capital Wednesday to see Pope Francis, among the most interested was Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin.

The bishop, who in addition to watching the events also participated in many of them, said one thing that particularly struck him, besides the enthusiasm of the crowds, was the pope’s stamina.
At the end of the day, he said of the bishops, “we were very tired, and we didn’t do anything.”

Earlier in the day, in an address to the bishops who were in Washington, Francis spoke of the church’s handling of sexual abuse involving priests. His remarks were widely criticized by victim support groups and others as overly sympathetic to the bishops, who are often blamed for hiding reports of abuse for, in some cases, years.

Tobin said he did not think the address to the bishops was meant to be Francis’ only comment on the issue.

“I had to remind myself, this is only his first speech,” he said. “He’s going to be making a number of them. I would tell everyone they should stay tuned. We’re only in the first inning.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington City Paper

Posted by Andrew Giambrone on September 24, 2015

Just a couple of hours after Pope Francis served lunch to 300 District homeless people outside of St. Patrick’s Church, a group of sexual-abuse survivors gathered outside of the Wilson Building to urge him to hold the clergy accountable, and to highlight legislation before the D.C. Council that would eliminate the statute of limitations on sex crimes committed against children.

The rally, organized by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a group with more than 10,000 members, was attended by six survivors who held pictures of themselves taken during the years they had been abused, and who gave candid testimony of their experiences. The survivors said the pope’s visit to the U.S. offers a unique opportunity to remind people that the Catholic Church has resisted confronting the sins of some of its priests, actively protecting them from prosecution and failing to explicitly punish bishops who have tried to cover up any scandal.

“I want to make sure victims know that they’re not alone out there,” says Becky Ianni, SNAP director for the District and Virginia. “And I think it’s really hard when every store you go into, there’s a poster of the pope. And that when the pope speaks out to Congress and to the bishops, [he does so] instead of speaking or reaching out to victims and telling them they’re courageous.”

During his speech to U.S. bishops at St. Matthew’s on Wednesday, Pope Francis remarked that clergymen had shown “courage” through the Church’s child-sex-abuse scandal. “I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims—in the knowledge that in healing, we too are healed—and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated,” he said. The Guardian reports that U.S. dioceses paid $1.7 billion in settlements between 2004 and 2013.

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NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015

Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 503 0003, bdorris@SNAPnetwork.org)

Yesterday, Pope Francis refused to criticize, even obliquely, even one US Catholic official yesterday for words or deeds that hurt innocent kids or wounded victims.

So today, while he’s in New York, we hope the pope will discipline or at least denounce two Syracuse bishops who have blamed victims of predator priests for their victimization. (This news just came to light last week. )

[Syracuse.com]

In 2011, current Syracuse Bishop Robert Cunningham was asked a clear, simple question, under oath: “did the (abused) boy commit a sin?” He made a clear, simple reply: “The boy is culpable.” He later used the word “accomplice.”

And his predecessor, Bishop James Moynihan, told abuse victim Charles Bailey ‘The age of reason is 7, so if you’re at least 7 you’re culpable for your actions.’

These are inexcusable, irresponsible comments from powerful, smart men. They will deter others who were raped and sodomized from reporting criminals and protecting kids.

Pope Francis should punish these prelates or at least harshly and publicly criticize them so that other bishops might think twice before uttering such callous views in the future.

This warped, self-serving view – that a child is to blame for his or her victimization by a priest – stems from the exalted and ‘superior’ status clerics give themselves. Bishops think this way because they’ve been indoctrinated since childhood to believe that the ordained are ‘above’ the common folk.

Bishops often talk of “the dignity of every person.” But deep down, many of them are convinced that they really are better than the rest of us, which is why many of them almost compulsively blame others when clerics commit crimes.

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UNITED STATES
Press TV (Iran)

Pope Francis is sidestepping the widespread sexual abuse committed by Christian priests in the US Catholic Church, as he visits the United States for the first time, a writer and activist in Boston says.

The pope’s remarks to US bishops in Washington on Wednesday praising their response to the sex scandal while failing to mention the words sexual abuse is “extremely disappointing for the victims of clergy sex abuse,” said Daniel Patrick Welch.

“The pope is more or less sidestepping what is the biggest issue for American Catholics in the last 50 years; it dwarfs everything else,” Welch told Press TV on Thursday.

“It’s not a scandal of course, it’s a crime, it’s a huge crime and the cover up is also a crime,” he added.

Allegations of sexual abuse by the Christian clergy go back decades, but exploded into a full-blown crisis in 2002 when US media revealed widespread abuse and cover-ups by bishops.

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UNITED STATES
PBS – Frontline

Pope Francis’ arrival in the United States this week has focused the nation’s attention on the man who two-and-a-half years ago became the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.

Francis inherited a church beset by scandal and many Americans are wondering what comes next. What has Francis done to reform the church? What do some of his early statements on issues like the environment and income inequality mean for the future of the faith? And what impact could his address to Congress on Thursday — the first ever by a pontiff in U.S. history — have on the nation’s political landscape?

For the answer to some of these questions, FRONTLINE spoke recently with John Thavis, the former Rome bureau chief for the Catholic News Service. Thavis is the author of The Vatican Diaries: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Power, Personalities and Politics at the Heart of the Catholic Church, and the recently released follow-up, The Vatican Prophecies: Investigating Supernatural Signs, Apparitions, and Miracles in the Modern Age.

The pope has arrived in the U.S. after only two-and-a-half years at the Vatican. He inherited a long list of problems and set out on a pretty ambitious reform agenda it seems. What have we learned about him so far?

I think we’ve learned first of all that he’s very determined. A lot of popes have been elected and come in with vague ideas of instituting reforms. I think Pope Francis came in with a mandate to institute reforms, and he’s taken it very seriously. And I think to a great degree he’s had a level of success that no previous pope has really enjoyed.

I would say that his greatest accomplishment so far in the area of reform has been bringing transparency and accountability to the Vatican’s financial operation.

In a sense that was the easiest task facing him, because he had the most support for that. Although there was some Vatican resistance, in this day and age it’s kind of hard to resist the idea of transparency in financial operations, and it’s hard to resist the idea that the Vatican bank and other entities should be in line with international guidelines and regulations.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

KATHERINE TOWERS
THE AUSTRALIAN
SEPTEMBER 25, 2015 1

Police will not investigate members of the Adass Israel School board for squirrelling headmistress and serial sex abuser Malka Leifer out of Australia to avoid ­investigators, despite law experts saying it is a clear case of criminal behaviour.

Victorian Supreme Court judge Jack Rush was scathing in a judgment delivered last week on the actions of some members of the board for their role in helping Leifer flee Australia, despite knowing she might have sexually ­abused more than eight female students at the ultra-orthodox school.

Police confirmed yesterday that they had not, or would not, ­investigate those members even though Justice Rush made it clear that board members helped and funded Leifer out of the country to avoid an investigation.

In one of the biggest payouts in Australian history for a sex-abuse case, Justice Rush awarded more than $1.2 million to a former ­student who was abused by Leifer.

Rob Melasecca, a former head of the criminal law section of the Victorian Law Institute and criminal law expert, said yesterday that at “a bare minimum” the actions of individual board members in helping Leifer out of the country in the middle of the night “warranted a serious investigation”.

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UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

by Kristine Ward, September 24, 2015

We welcome sexual abuse survivors and their families and all men and women of goodwill to our pages today as a safety spot, a haven, a place to know that you are not alone in the midst of the massive news coverage of the visit of Pope Francis to the United States.

We chose the images of the good people of BishopAccountability.org Terry McKiernan, Anne Barrett Doyle, Suzy Nauman for the images today because of BishopAccountability.org’s relentless, vital, intense, hard work in building the repository of the documents that chronicle this crushing crisis.anne barrett doyle

The truth lives in the documents.

The truth is sacred.

Without the documents, and the depositions, and the testimonies of the survivors, the scandal would remain as bishops and the Vatican intended for it to remain: hidden.

We believe this because it is in legislative bodies across the breadth of this country and in United States territories that Roman Catholic bishops and many of their Church’s adherents have blocked, sucker punched, delayed, watered down and deep sixed statute of limitation reforms for victims of sexual abuse – not only those raped and sodomized by Roman Catholic clergy and religious sisters and religious brothers but any citizen of the United States and its territories who have been so violated.

The largest lobbying group against statute of limitation reform is the band of brothers that Pope Francis calls his own and to whom he addressed these incredulous words yesterday at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC:

I am also conscious of the courage with which you have faced difficult moments in the recent history of the Church in this country without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice. Nor have you been afraid to divest whatever is unessential in order to regain the authority and trust which is demanded of ministers of Christ and rightly expected by the faithful. I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims – in the knowledge that in healing we too are healed – and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated.

This, dear readers of NSAC News and all persons to whom these words reach, is a fairy tale.

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NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY ADAM EDELMAN NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, September 24, 2015

Timothy Cardinal Dolan on Thursday praised Pope Francis’ speech to his brother Bishops about their handling of the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal as “beautiful.”

“He spoke about the courage, he spoke about the ongoing sorrow, and most importantly he spoke about the fact that we can never drop our vigilance, that we’ve always got to be as vigorous as we now are,” Dolan said on NBC’s “TODAY” about Francis’ approval a day earlier of how the Church has tried to restore order and make peace with victims.

“He is for us bishops what we’re supposed be for our people. He’s the bishop of bishops,” Dolan said. “He spoke to us in a very affirming, yet challenging way, like a father, like sheppard, and that moved me very much.”

On Wednesday, during a speech to Catholic bishops, Francis offered praise for a “generous commitment to bring healing to victims” and for acting “without fear of self-criticism.”

The remarks drew a slew of criticism from an organization that represents abuse victims.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Magazine

By Victor Fiorillo | September 24, 2015

On Wednesday, Pope Francis addressed the United States bishops at the Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C., and the subject of the clergy sex abuse scandal came up, though he steered clear of using the words “sexual abuse.”

Pope Francis praised the bishops for their “courage” and “great sacrifice,” and seemed to recognize the bishops themselves and the church as additional victims, saying, “I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims – in the knowledge that in healing we, too, are healed – and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated.”

None of this sat very well with Bryn Mawr’s John Salveson, who was sexually abused by a Catholic priest when he was a teenager. These days, Salveson is the co-founder of Radnor executive-search firm Salveson Stetson Group and president of the Foundation to Abolish Child Sexual Abuse. We got him on the phone for his reaction to Pope Francis’ comments.

Were you surprised that Pope Francis addressed clergy sex abuse with the U.S. bishops in the way that he did?

I was very surprised by his comments. Really shocked. Now, I’m a bit of an outlier on this, but I’m not one of those people holding their breath for the pope to do something to make everything better. The object is not to get the Catholic church to be good to people again, to take care of victims, or to do the right thing.

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UNITED STATES
TWC News

By Erin Clarke
Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Pope Francis is widely viewed as progressive, but advocates say the pontiff needs to do more to stop priest sex abuse in the church. Erin Clarke reports.

(Efforts to reach the Vatican for comment on this story were unsuccessful.)

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

September 24

The following is the prepared text of Pope Francis’s address to a joint meeting of Congress, delivered Thursday in Washington. (Follow our liveblog for the latest)

Mr. Vice-President,

Mr. Speaker,

Honorable Members of Congress,

Dear Friends,

I am most grateful for your invitation to address this Joint Session of Congress in “the land of the free and the home of the brave”. I would like to think that the reason for this is that I too am a son of this great continent, from which we have all received so much and toward which we share a common responsibility.

Each son or daughter of a given country has a mission, a personal and social responsibility. Your own responsibility as members of Congress is to enable this country, by your legislative activity, to grow as a nation. You are the face of its people, their representatives. You are called to defend and preserve the dignity of your fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good, for this is the chief aim of all politics. A political society endures when it seeks, as a vocation, to satisfy common needs by stimulating the growth of all its members, especially those in situations of greater vulnerability or risk. Legislative activity is always based on care for the people. To this you have been invited, called and convened by those who elected you.

Yours is a work which makes me reflect in two ways on the figure of Moses. On the one hand, the patriarch and lawgiver of the people of Israel symbolizes the need of peoples to keep alive their sense of unity by means of just legislation. On the other, the figure of Moses leads us directly to God and thus to the transcendent dignity of the human being. Moses provides us with a good synthesis of your work: you are asked to protect, by means of the law, the image and likeness fashioned by God on every human face.

Today I would like not only to address you, but through you the entire people of the United States. Here, together with their representatives, I would like to take this opportunity to dialogue with the many thousands of men and women who strive each day to do an honest day’s work, to bring home their daily bread, to save money and –one step at a time – to build a better life for their families. These are men and women who are not concerned simply with paying their taxes, but in their own quiet way sustain the life of society. They generate solidarity by their actions, and they create organizations which offer a helping hand to those most in need.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Today News

Eun Kyung Kim

Pope Francis’s comments on the clergy sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the church for decades, focusing on Catholic leaders rather than victims caught in the crisis, was not a misstep, Cardinal Timothy Dolan said Thursday.

The pope directly addressed the sex scandal during his speech Wednesday to U.S. Bishops in Washington, praising bishops for their “courage” and “generous commitment to bring healing to victims — in the knowledge that in healing we too are healed.”

While the speech drew criticism from advocates who argued it should have focused more on the victims, Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, described the pope’s speech as “beautiful” and said it set the right tone.

“He spoke about the courage, he spoke about the ongoing sorrow and most importantly, he spoke about the fact that we can never drop our vigilance,” said Dolan, the former president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “We’ve always got to be as vigorous as we are now.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on Pope Francis’ first day in the U.S.:

The most significant thing about the pope’s first day in the United States was his unscheduled visit to the Little Sisters of the Poor. By embracing this order of nuns, Pope Francis laid down an unmistakable marker: He rejects efforts by the Obama administration to force Catholic nonprofit organizations to pay for, or even sanction, abortion-inducing drugs in their health care plans.
Earlier in the day, Pope Francis spoke pointedly about the need to protect religious liberty. That he did so in the company of President Obama, at the White House, was critically important. The pope’s commitment to our first freedom was then underscored with his visit to the Little Sisters of the Poor.

I got a chance to meet the pope briefly following the prayer service at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle. It was a moment I will never forget. Whatever Cardinal Donald Wuerl said to him as he introduced me must have struck a chord: the pope broke out into a radiant smile.

Bernadette Brady-Egan, our vice president, was also thrilled to meet the Holy Father.
Of course, not everyone is pleased with the pope. From that preppy school-boy atheist George Will on the right, to the militant atheist Catholic-bashers at the Freedom From Religion Foundation on the left, cheap shots abound. And, of course, the professional victims’ advocates are cashing in on this historic trip. No matter, as we saw at the canonization Mass yesterday, those who love the pope represent the most diverse community on earth. Go Pope Francis!

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 24 September 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has:

– accepted the resignation from the pastoral care of the metropolitan archdiocese of Messina-Lipari-Santa Lucia del Mela, Italy, presented by Archbishop Calogero La Piana, S.D.B., in accordance with canon 402 para. 2 of the Code of Canon Laws.

– accepted the resignation from the pastoral care of the diocese of Alba, Italy, presented by Bishop Giacomo Lanzetti, in accordance with canon 402 para. 2 of the Code of Canon Laws.

– accepted the resignation from the pastoral care of the diocese of Goya, Argentina, presented by Bishop Ricardo Oscar Faifer, upon reaching the age limit. He is succeeded by Bishop Adolfo Ramon Canecin, coadjutor of the same diocese.

– appointed Archbishop Luis Gerardo Cabrera Herrera, O.F.M., of Cuenca, Ecuador as archbishop of Guayaquil (area 14,637, population 3,275,192, Catholics 2,783,913, priests 202, permanent deacons 21, religious 607), Ecuador. He succeeds Archbishop Antonio Arregui Yarza, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same archdiocese upon reaching the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 24 September 2015 (VIS) – The challenges of a nation whose vast resources require not insignificant moral responsibility in a world seeking new equilibria of peace, prosperity and integration, the importance of never again repeating past “crimes” against victims of abuse, the need for dialogue instead of hard and bellicose language, and the defence of the excluded, migrants and the environment were some of the themes that Pope Francis considered yesterday in the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington D.C., during his meeting with the episcopate of the United States. The following are extensive extracts from his address.

“My first word to you is one of thanksgiving to God for the power of the Gospel which has brought about remarkable growth of Christ’s Church in these lands and enabled its generous contribution, past and present, to American society and to the world. … I appreciate the unfailing commitment of the Church in America to the cause of life and that of the family, which is the primary reason for my present visit. I am well aware of the immense efforts you have made to welcome and integrate those immigrants who continue to look to America, like so many others before them, in the hope of enjoying its blessings of freedom and prosperity. I also appreciate the efforts which you are making to fulfil the Church’s mission of education in schools at every level and in the charitable services offered by your numerous institutions. These works are often carried out without appreciation or support, often with heroic sacrifice, out of obedience to a divine mandate which we may not disobey. I am also conscious of the courage with which you have faced difficult moments in the recent history of the Church in this country without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice. Nor have you been afraid to divest whatever is unessential in order to regain the authority and trust which is demanded of ministers of Christ and rightly expected by the faithful. I realise how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims – in the knowledge that in healing we too are healed – and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated.

“I speak to you as the Bishop of Rome, called by God in old age, and from a land which is also American, to watch over the unity of the universal Church and to encourage in charity the journey of all the particular Churches toward ever greater knowledge, faith and love of Christ. … I too know how hard it is to sow the Gospel among people from different worlds, with hearts often hardened by the trials of a lengthy journey. Nor am I unaware of the efforts made over the years to build up the Church amid the prairies, mountains, cities and suburbs of a frequently inhospitable land, where frontiers are always provisional and easy answers do not always work. What does work is the combination of the epic struggle of the pioneers and the homely wisdom and endurance of the settlers”.

“It is not my intention to offer a plan or to devise a strategy. … I have no wish to tell you what to do, because we all know what it is that the Lord asks of us. Instead, I would turn once again to the demanding task – ancient yet never new – of seeking out the paths we need to take and the spirit with which we need to work. … We are bishops of the Church, shepherds appointed by God to feed his flock. Our greatest joy is to be shepherds, and only shepherds, pastors with undivided hearts and selfless devotion. … The heart of our identity is to be sought in constant prayer, in preaching and in shepherding the flock entrusted to our care”.

“Ours must not be just any kind of prayer, but familiar union with Christ, in which we daily encounter His gaze and sense that He is asking us the question: ‘Who is My mother? Who are My brothers?’. One in which we can calmly reply: ‘Lord, here is Your mother, here are Your brothers! I hand them over to You; they are the ones whom You entrusted to me’”.

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

BY ABBOTT KOLOFF
STAFF WRITER | THE RECORD

Pope Francis’ brief reference Wednesday to clerical sex abuse left advocates for victims wanting him to go further in the coming days, and expressing confusion by what appeared to be the pope’s praise for the way American bishops handled the matter.

The pope, on the first day of his visit to the United States, did not directly address the sex abuse issue but was widely believed to be making a reference to it when he told bishops they have shown “courage” in the face of “difficult moments in the recent history of the church in this country.”

He said he has supported their “generous commitment to bring healing to victims – in the knowledge that in healing we too are healed – and to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated.”

Some victims’ advocates said they expected the pope to make a statement about clerical sex abuse this week, and were hoping he would focus on bishops who covered up crimes. The pope has discussed setting up a tribunal in Rome to punish bishops who are found guilty of negligence in sex abuse cases, a move that would be unprecedented in the church.

Mark Crawford, the director of the New Jersey chapter of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said he was disappointed by the pope’s first words on the subject during his visit and surprised by his use of the term “courage.”

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MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

09/23/2015

Jennifer Haselberger

With Pope Francis scheduled to lead a prayer service at 11:30am ET at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington DC, the American bishops have assembled- including the former Archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, John Nienstedt.

Of course, there is no reason that Archbishop Nienstedt should not be in attendance. He resigned from his position as leader of the Archdiocese without any admission of guilt, and as we know he claims that his conscience is clear.

However, his presence creates a potential problem for Pope Francis, who must respond to critics who say that he has not done enough to address the issue of sexual abuse by clergy. In addition, for the Holy Father to greet Nienstedt before meeting with victims of sexual abuse by clergy is a bit of a faux pas.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Sep. 23, 2015 NCR Today

WASHINGTON Pope Francis made an unscheduled visit to a U.S. community of Catholic women religious that has been fighting against an Obama administration mandate covering contraceptives in health care plans, the Vatican spokesman said late Wednesday.

The pontiff met with a Washington-area community of the Little Sisters of the Poor, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi said at a press briefing about the pope’s day in DC Wednesday.

Lombardi did not provide any further details about the visit.

The Little Sisters are one of a few Catholic and other faith-based groups that have been protesting the administration’s mandate, saying it forces them to support contraception and sterilization services that contradict their religious beliefs.

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NEW YORK
The Jewish Week

Wed, 09/23/2015
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor And Publisher

Ludwig “Lou” Bravmann, a prime force behind the direction and financial stability of the Riverdale Jewish Center for decades, says that lately he wakes up in the middle of the night “feeling terrible, depressed — I’ve never felt this bad.”

At 90, after more than 45 years of daily prayer attendance and lay leadership at the 600-family Modern Orthodox synagogue, he has resigned from the board of the congregation and is praying on the High Holy Days at a newly formed service a few blocks away.

The service, now known as The Riverdale Minyan and made up of more than 100 families, was created this summer as a response to widespread dissatisfaction among some members of RJC over decisions made in the last three months by the rabbi, Jonathan Rosenblatt, and its lay leadership.

On Rosh HaShanah, making the trek with a wheelchair and walker, Bravmann was one of an estimated 240 adults, almost all RJC congregants, and 40 children, who prayed at an Orthodox service in a room rented in a nearby Reform temple. A similar service was scheduled for Yom Kippur, and efforts are under way to find a more permanent space for the group to use for Shabbat, and perhaps daily, services — a potentially stunning blow to the makeup and sustainability of the RJC, which was founded more than 60 years ago.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Erzdioezese Wien

Papst Franziskus hat die mehr als 200 US-amerikanischen Bischöfe aufgerufen, sich der großen Themen der Zukunft der Welt anzunehmen und sich nicht nur auf Binnenkirchliches zu konzentrieren. Die Vereinigten Staaten seien eine Weltmacht und für die Entwicklungen auf der Erde stark verantwortlich. Mit seinen riesigen materiellen, politischen, technologischen und kulturellen Ressourcen stehe das Land in der Pflicht für die ganze Welt, sagte der Papst am Mittwoch, 23. September 2015 vor den Bischöfen in der St. Matthew’s-Kathedrale der Hauptstadt Washington. Die Welt suche nach einem neuen Gleichgewicht des Frieden, des Reichtums und der Integration.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Spiegel

Papst Franziskus und US-Präsident Barack Obama haben bei ihrem Treffen in Washington zum gemeinsamen Kampf gegen den Klimawandel aufgerufen. “Angesichts der Dringlichkeit bin ich der Überzeugung, dass der Klimawandel ein Problem ist, das nicht länger einer kommenden Generation überlassen werden darf”, sagte Franziskus in seiner Ansprache bei der Begrüßungszeremonie.

Man habe nicht mehr viel Zeit, den Klimawandel aufzuhalten, sagte Franziskus. Es sei ein “kritischer Moment”, man müsse nun “mit Ernst und Verantwortung erkennen, was für eine Welt wir hinterlassen wollen”.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Telegraaf (Nederland)

WASHINGTON –
Paus Franciscus heeft woensdagmiddag tijdens een bijeenkomst met ongeveer driehonderd Amerikaanse bisschoppen gezegd dat seksueel misbruik van minderjarigen door rooms-katholieke geestelijken nooit meer mag voorkomen. Hij sprak in de kathedraal van St.Matthew in de Amerikaanse hoofdstad Washington.

Hij had ook troostende woorden voor zijn gehoor: “Ik weet hoeveel de pijn van de afgelopen jaren op u drukt en ik heb uw inzet om de slachtoffers bij te staan en herhaling van dit soort misdrijven te voorkomen, ondersteund”, aldus de paus in zijn toespraak tot de geestelijken.

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UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Pope Met with Bill Donohue, Nuns Fighting Obamacare. He Insulted Native Americans and Sex Abuse Survivors.

Posted on September 24, 2015 by Betty Clermont

Catholic League president, Bill Donohue, who “demagogically conflates progressive and liberal dissent with hate,” met with Pope Francis yesterday following his prayer service with the US bishops at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle.

Also not shown on his public schedule, the pope visited the Little Sisters of the Poor,
the religious order that is involved in a contentious legal battle with the Obama administration over the order’s refusal to comply with an accommodation to provide contraceptive coverage to its employees …

One, it showed that the pope is behind the bishops in their battle with the Obama administration, support which the pontiff signaled in his talk at the White House earlier that day. [“Pointedly, Francis turned and looked at Obama as he delivered the line” about religious liberty.]

And two, it demonstrated how the pope likes to address contentious topics in a low-key, behind-the-scenes way.

Yesterday, Pope Francis canonized Fr. Junipero Serra, “who has a large degree of responsibility for the death of approximately 100,000 California Indians and the complete extermination of many Native tribes, cultures and languages.”

In his sermon, the pope claimed that Serra “protected and defended Native Americans from mistreatment and abuse.” Jeb Bush was in attendance.

Two days ago, three former US ambassadors to the Vatican appointed by President George W. Bush endorsed Jeb Bush for president. Among them was Mary Ann Glendon who was appointed by Pope Francis to his board of the Vatican bank. Glendon also served on the board of several theocon “think tanks” and is probably most famous for refusing an honor from Notre Dame University because the school awarded President Obama an honorary degree. Glendon is just one of the many plutocrats appointed by this pope to a Vatican position.

“I like Jeb Bush a lot,” the prelate of Wall Street, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, said. “I especially appreciate the priority he gives to education and immigration.”

The most immediate danger from this pope is to children around the world. Yesterday, Pope Francis praised his bishops for their response to the clergy sex abuse crisis. He noted their courage in facing “difficult moments in the recent history of the Church in this country without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice.”

By failing to commit to any action to protect children, the pope put all prelates on notice that they can continue to leave them exposed to dangerous pedophiles as the pope himself did with his ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Archbishop Josef Wesolowski. The US bishops can continue their lobbying to allow all American child sexual predators to avoid apprehension and prosecution.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
CBS St. Louis

Fred Bodimer
September 24, 2015

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) – Local clergy abuse survivors aren’t happy with what they are hearing from Pope Francis so far during his visit to the United States.

In remarks to America’s Bishops, Pope Francis commended what he called their courage in the face of the church’s sexual abuse scandal. Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests’ (SNAP) National Director David Clohessey says that bishops have made no sacrifices.

“He essentially made one oblique reference to the crisis…didn’t apologize,” says SNAP’s National Director David Clohessy. “More importantly, didn’t suggest much less mandate, any reforms at all by the U.S. church hierarchy.”

Clohessy says the Pope is minimizing the crisis and won’t use the word cover-up. He adds instead of praising victims for coming forward, the Pope praises the bishops, which he (Clohessy) says have continued to cause the issue.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Breitbart

The Archdiocese of Washington stands accused of rejecting a journalist from BuzzFeed for special press passes to cover Papal events this week in the nation’s Capitol.

BuzzFeed foreign correspondent Lester Feder and his colleagues have been trying since January to get approval to cover the Pope’s events. They were finally told flat out this week that their request had been denied and were told that the decision had been made by the press office of the Archdiocese of Washington. BuzzFeed News believes it is because a spokesman for Cardinal Donald Wuerl does not approve of BuzzFeed’s and specifically Feder’s coverage of LGBT issues.

In a letter sent yesterday to Don Clemmer of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Chieko Noguchi of the Archdiocese of Washington DC, BuzzFeed Washington Bureau Chief John Stanton lays the blame on Archdiocesan spokesperson Noguchi and points to an exchange dating back nearly a year.

Feder had approached Cardinal Wuerl at the Bishops meeting Baltimore last year and asked for a background meeting so he could better understand LGBT issues from the Church’s point of view. Wuerl agreed and asked him to contact his office to schedule a time, at which point, according to the email exchange provided by BuzzFeed to Breitbart News, Feder got the runaround that lasted months.

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IRELAND
Mirror

BY GARRETH MACNAMEE

A caged paedophile priest who is facing another sex abuse charge may have forced himself on a dozen more victims, police believe.

The serial sex beast, who was recently jailed for the horrific abuse of a child, was brought before the courts last month over an alleged attack on a young boy.

The cleric, a pillar of his community in Ireland before the revelations, paid his victims following his horrific attacks on them.

And now police in the region believe there are at least 12 more victims to come forward.

Sources have told the Irish Mirror the shamed priest will have to spend a lot more time in court in the coming months.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC News NI

By Kevin Sharkey
BBC News NI

The PSNI has received complaints against 500 people in connection with allegations of historical abuse.

They include cases currently being examined by the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) Inquiry.

This is as well as claims of abuse against some clergy and some other state and church institutions.

The PSNI is currently running two big operations into historical abuse – Operation Charwell and Operation Danzin.

The investigations began five years ago.

They include cases before the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry which is examining claims of abuse at 16 institutions and by Fr Brendan Smyth.

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UNITED STATES
Pope Francis CON-artist & Vicar of Plutocrats

Paris Arrow

The Vatican Circus is in town with its fattest clown-in-white Pope Francis, the greatest Jesuit Master of Deceits papal farting at idiots Americans Catholics in Washington, DC. Read his itinerary here and what the mainstream media are not telling you http://pope-francis-con-christ.blogspot.ca/2015/09/washington-subversive-guide-to-pope.html

This time Pope Francis proved how out-of-touch with reality (VA) Vatican Autocracy is in his tiny fake country and how Machiavellian he is as the theocratic monarch when he praised bishops who should all be rotting in jail for aiding and abetting more than 6,500 pedophile priests for decades and paying millions of dollars to lawyers to deprive thousands of American victims of justice and fair compensation. Obviously Pope Francis is out-of-touch with reality and he should study and converse with hundreds of victims of the current and latest most unjust diocesan “settlements” in Milwaukee, read 575 victims in Dolan’s former diocese urging Pope Francis to hold him accountable

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NEW YORK
Road to Recovery

Pope Francis’ comments in Washington, DC today about clergy sexual abuse were offensive toward victim/survivors

Victim/survivors have been re-abused by Pope Francis’ insensitive congratulatory message to the bishops of the United States today in Washington, DC

Victim/survivors will have the opportunity to get together on Thursday outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral to support one another and express disapproval of Pope Francis’ message to the US Bishops about clergy sexual abuse

What
A gathering of victim/survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their supporters in order to express disappointment in Pope Francis’ strange and dangerous address to the bishops of the United States in which he applauded the bishops for handling the clergy sexual abuse scandal with courage. Courageous is the last word the Pope should use to describe the bishops of the United States.

When
Thursday, September 24, 2015 from 5:00 pm until 7:00 pm

Where
On Fifth Avenue between 47th and 48th Streets in Manhattan. The NYPD has set up an area there where groups can gather to demonstrate. We must approach the area from the south only!

Who
Members of Road to Recovery, Inc. who are victim/survivors of clergy sexual, and any other victim/survivors who wish to gather for support, encouragement, and to express disapproval of Pope Francis’ statements to the United States bishops at St. Matthew’s Cathedral on September 23, 2015

Why
Pope Francis, instead of admonishing the bishops of the United States for their mishandling of clergy sexual abuse cases, congratulated them for their courage and applauded them for confronting the scandal. In St. Matthew’s Cathedral today were some of the worst offenders regarding clergy sexual abuse, and many at the Mass at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception should never have been allowed to show their faces. Cardinal Theodore Mc Carrick was in Cuba with the Pope and all over Washington, DC today (and probably tomorrow). He should have been fired years ago. Cardinal Justin Rigali was there today. He was lambasted by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office for mishandling cases of clergy sexual abuse. He should have been fired years ago. And, Cardinal Roger Mahoney was there today after countless numbers of children were abused by clergy on his watch in Los Angeles.

The phone at Road to Recovery has been ringing off the hook since the Pope made his comments today, and the calls have been from victim/survivors who feel as if they have been re-abused all over again by the Church. Victim/survivors will gather together to support and console one another, and stand once again against the evil of child sexual abuse which Pope Francis seemingly has forgotten about.

Contact
Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., Road to Recovery, Inc., Livingston, NJ 07039 – 862-368-2800

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UNITED STATES
YouTube

Published on Sep 23, 2015

An artist and sexual abuse victim at the hand of a Catholic priest uses her artwork for survivors and supporters to connect.

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NEW YORK
Buffalo News

A silent candlelight vigil was held Wednesday evening outside the residence of Bishop Richard J. Malone to support a local man and woman who were abused as children by a priest and a teacher in the Diocese of Buffalo. Bishop Malone was in Washington, D.C., for the visit of Pope Francis.

Antonio “Tino” Flores says he was abused for five years in the 1970s by a now-deceased Franciscan father associated with Bishop Timon High School. Vanessa DeRosa says she was sexually harassed in 2002 and 2003 by a teacher at St. Dominic Savio Middle School in Niagara Falls who later served a prison term for possession of child pornography.

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CHILE
El Dinamo

[Felipe Berrios leads the list of witnesses to be called in the lawsuit against Fernando Karadima.]

El abogado Juan Pablo Hermosilla elaboró una lista de 23 personas que deberían ser llamadas a testificar en la demanda que las víctimas de Fernando Karadima entablaron contra el Arzobispado de Santiago por eventual encubrimiento de los abusos sexuales cometidos por sacerdotes.

De este modo, el representante de James Hamilton, Juan Carlos Cruz y José Andrés Murillo detalla quienes serán requeridos para exponer sobre los puntos de prueba fijados por el magistrado Juan Manuel Muñoz.

La acción judicial busca una indemnización por perjuicios de 450 millones de pesos y un acto de perdón público por parte del Arzobispado para quienes han sido víctimas de abusos sexuales por parte de religiosos, ya que alegan que la Iglesia insiste en descartar negligencia y encubrimiento en los delitos cometidos por el ex párroco de El Bosque.

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CHILE
Diario U Chile

[Bishop Juan Barros does not resign despite pressure.]

Fernando Seymour D. | Miércoles 23 de septiembre 2015

A las críticas por su participación y encubrimiento en el caso Karadima, se suman sus persecuciones a los sacerdotes de esa ciudad. Todo ello, amparado por la Conferencia Episcopal, donde varios obispos estarían presionando para evitar la que podría ser la primera de varias renuncias que se sucederían.

A sus 59 años Juan Barros Madrid no está tranquilo. Desde que fuera nombrado por el Vaticano como Obispo de la Diócesis de Osorno, en enero pasado, las críticas y cuestionamientos en su contra no han cesado. Y no solo desde el ámbito laico. También desde el propio clero.

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CHILE
Terra

El ex capellán de La Moneda, Percival Cowley, declaró ante el ministro Juan Manuel Muñoz en el marco de la demanda que enfrenta el Arzobispado de Santiago luego que las tres víctimas de Fernando Karadima demandaran a la Iglesia por los supuestos actos de encubrimiento de obispos en materia de abuso sexual.

Junto a él también lo hará el sacerdote y vicario judicial del Tribunal Eclesiástico Nacional de Apelación, Jaime Ortiz.

La diligencia es parte de los testimonios que durante los próximos días deberían entregar las 23 personas incluidas en la lista de testigos elaborada por el abogado Juan Pablo Hermosilla, representante de James Hamilton, Juan Carlos Cruz y José Andrés Murillo.

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CHILE
Bio Bio

[Ecclesiastical Court made self-criticism of the church responses to sexual abuse]

El sacerdote y vicario judicial del Tribunal Eclesiástico, Jaime Ortiz de Lazcano, hizo una autocrítica por la forma en que ha reaccionado la Iglesia Católica en casos de abusos sexuales. El religioso declaró -este martes- en el marco de la demanda civil contra el Arzobispado de Santiago por el Caso Karadima.

En la tercera jornada de la etapa testimonial de la demanda civil en contra del Arzobispado de Santiago, por encubrimiento en causas de abusos sexuales y en específico por el Caso Karadima, declararon dos sacerdotes ante el juez de fuero de la Corte de Apelaciones de Santiago, Juan Manuel Muñoz.

Se trata del ex capellán de La Moneda, Percival Cowley, que entregó su declaración por más de dos horas ante el ministro de Corte a cargo de la investigación que surge tras la demanda interpuesta por tres víctimas del párroco del El Bosque, Fernando Karadima, James Hamilton, Andrés Murillo y Juan Carlos Cruz.

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MASSACHUSETTS
Fox Boston

(MyFoxBoston.com) — It’s been more than 50 years since Susan Renehan and her sister were abused by a priest their Irish Catholic family trusted and more than 50 years later, she’s still in a lot of pain.

“I went to a Catholic school and he came to confession on first Fridays and he would pull me out of the classroom after these confessions and would sexually assault me in the hallway of the school,” Renehan said.

Renehan is no longer a practicing Catholic, but she has been watching the pope’s visit from afar.

She was upset Wednesday by the way the pope addressed the clergy sex abuse scandal when speaking to hundreds of bishops in DC.

In Italian, the pope said he knows how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon bishops and said he supports their commitment to bring healing to victims. But for Renehan, it’s the bishops who should be apologizing after some helped cover up the abuse.

“That’s the only thing he said about the sex abuse scandal and I think that when I look at his agenda,” Renehan said, “He’s not planning on meeting with the survivors so far and the whole crisis is not even on his agenda.”

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CALIFORNIA
KTLA

Cardinal Roger Mahony, Retired from L.A. Archdiocese After Sex Abuse Scandal, Attends Events During Papal Visit

Cardinal Emeritus Roger Mahony, retired in 2011 and then in 2013 relieved of public duties over his handling of sex abuse cases in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, was attending papal events during the six-day visit to the U.S. by Pope Francis. Mahony’s presence generated complaints from sex abuse survivors. Chip Yost reports for the KTLA 5 News at 6 on Sept. 23, 2015.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service

David Gibson | September 23, 2015

(RNS) When the cardinals gathered in the Sistine Chapel in March 2013 to elect a new pope, they faced a sobering state of affairs: The Vatican had been plagued by scandals and dysfunction during the eight-year papacy of Benedict XVI, who stunned the Catholic Church by becoming the first pope in six centuries to resign.

The sense of crisis in Rome hung like a pall on the rest of the church, and that burden weighed heavily on the 86-year-old pontiff, playing a key role in his decision to retire to make way for a younger, more energetic successor.

But the 113 cardinal-electors also faced a stark choice: select an outsider from among their ranks who would come in and clean house, or go with another insider, someone who knew the Roman Curia — the papal bureaucracy that was widely blamed for the crisis — and could fix it.

“It takes a thief to catch a thief,” the reasoning went.

The problem with that argument was that Benedict, previously known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had worked in the Curia for decades before he was elected pope, and his familiarity seemed to breed complacency.

It didn’t take the cardinals long to make up their minds: In 24 hours they elected Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, a pope “from the ends of the earth” as Francis said in introducing himself to the world from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. Bergoglio had never liked traveling to Rome on church business, much less playing church politics, and he had a healthy suspicion of the Vatican’s curial culture.

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NEW YORK
Politico

By BILL MAHONEY

ALBANY — Assemblywoman Margaret Markey is using Pope Francis’s visit to New York to highlight her bill to remove the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse.

Markey sponsors legislation that would remove the existing statute of limitations for future child sexual abuse incidents.

It would also allow for a one-year window in which victims of sexual abuse could bring suits against individuals or private institutions involved in past crimes.

“I respectfully plead with Pope Francis to intervene with New York Bishops, to melt their hearts, to convince them to adopt his own message of healing and reconciliation toward survivors of child sexual abuse,” Markey said. “With New York as one of the very worst states in America for how it treats victims of child sex abuse, it is the Bishops of New York State who are the biggest roadblock to changing that.”

The New York State Catholic Conference has vehemently opposed this bill for years.

Earlier this year, a spokesman for the conference suggested the bill was being advanced in the Democratic Assembly to punish Catholics for their support of education tax credits that were opposed by teachers’ unions, yet supported by private schools. (Both measures failed to pass.)

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

Francis’s Oblique Comments Today on Abuse Crisis: Open Mouth, Insert Foot — Taking Us Back to Square One

As Jerry Slevin says in a comment here earlier today, Dennis Coday has some pointed things to say after Pope Francis’s address to the bishops when they and he gathered for a prayer service in D.C.’s Cathedral of St. Matthew. In that gathering, Francis told the U.S. bishops,

I am also conscious of the courage with which you have faced difficult moments in the recent history of the Church in this country without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice. Nor have you been afraid to divest whatever is unessential in order to regain the authority and trust which is demanded of ministers of Christ and rightly expected by the faithful. I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims – in the knowledge that in healing we too are healed – and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated.

As Dennis Coday says in response, the oblique reference to the clergy sexual abuse crisis here is more than a foot-in-mouth remark: it’s one that brings the entire discussion of the abuse crisis in the U.S. back to square one, suggesting that Pope Francis doesn’t get it, hasn’t gotten it, doesn’t intend to get it:

Praising the bishops for the courage they have shown before acknowledging the pain of the victims, will undoubtedly raise the charges of “he just doesn’t get it.”

Since his election as pope, NCR has both challenged Francis to do more for the sex abuse crisis and encouraged the moves he has made. But the message he delivered today puts him back to square one.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Click On Detroit

(CNN) –
They may be embattled by the culture wars and bruised by the clergy sexual abuse scandal, but American bishops should not stoop to self-pity or harsh responses, Pope Francis said Wednesday.

It was the Pope’s first full day in the United States, but he made it clear, in a speech to 300 bishops in Washington, that he knows the strains his American church is under.

Millions of Catholics have fled the flock, leaving for other religions or for no religion at all. Meanwhile, the Catholic bishops have fought — and largely lost — public battles over same-sex marriage and abortion.

Referring to the clergy sexual abuse scandal, which harmed thousands of children and cost the church billions in legal settlements, Francis praised the bishops’ “courage.”

“I know how much the wounds of these last few years have weighed on your spirit, and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims — in the knowledge that in healing we too are healed — and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated.”

But advocates for victims of clergy sexual abuse called the bishops anything but courageous.

“Almost without exception, they have shown cowardice and callousness and continue to do so now,” said Barbara Dorris of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Japan Times

Pope couches sexual abuses as ‘difficult moments’ in call to U.S. bishops to avoid further costly scandals

REUTERS
SEP 24, 2015

WASHINGTON – Pope Francis on Wednesday told U.S. Roman Catholic bishops that crimes of sexual abuse of minors by clergy should never be repeated, acknowledging the damage caused by years of scandal in the U.S. Catholic Church.

In the remarks, delivered at Saint Matthews Cathedral in Washington on the first full day of his visit to the United States, the pope did not utter the words “sexual abuse” but referred to the scandal by talking about “difficult moments” and providing help for victims.

“I know how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you, and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims … and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated,” Francis told the bishops, who applauded.

Wounds from the scandal, which saw priests who abused children moved from parish to parish instead of being defrocked, are still festering and draining church finances.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
USA Today

Gregory Korte, USA TODAY September 23, 2015

WASHINGTON — A group representing victims of priest sexual abuse blasted Pope Francis Wednesday for his remarks to U.S. bishops praising their response to the scandal while failing to utter the words “sexual abuse.”

Francis referred to the crisis only obliquely, telling the bishops he was “conscious of the courage with which you have faced difficult moments in the recent history of the Church in this country without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice.”

“What sacrifice?” said Barbara Blaine of Chicago, the president of Survivor’s Network of Those Abused by Priests. “What bishop takes fewer vacations, drives a smaller car, does his own laundry or has been passed over for promotion because he’s shielding predators and endangering kids? None.”

The Vatican stood by the pope’s handling of the issue. “I am not surprised that there are critics that are not happy. This is not the first time,” said the Vatican Press Secretary, Rev. Federico Lombardi.

Allegations of sexual abuse by priests date back decades, but exploded into a full-blown crisis in 2002 when the Boston Globe published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series detailing a litany of abuses and cover-ups by bishops.

Thirteen years and two popes later, U.S. bishops say they have made reforms that prevent the abuse and require reporting of any allegations to civil authorities.

Louisville Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the bishops have made progress over the last 13 years with prevention strategies and mandatory reporting policies. “We continue to need to do more. We need to do more in recognizing the pain that victim survivors themselves experience,” Kurtz said.

“I took to heart the Holy Father’s words today,” he said. “I think he called upon the bishops to restore trust. As you know, rebuilding trust in a relationship takes time, but it also takes positive actions.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review

By Paul Peirce
Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2015

Elizabeth Williams tried to keep her composure as people filed into a courtroom in U.S. District Court in Johnstown to hear the news: Did a jury find a Somerset County priest guilty of sexually abusing three boys at a Honduran orphanage she operated for years as president of a nonprofit foundation?

When four Honduran men she hadn’t seen since they were boys living at the orphanage were led into the courtroom by federal agents, she couldn’t hold back the tears.

Days before, three of the men had testified that the Rev. Joseph D. Maurizio, 70, molested them. The fourth told jurors he saw the priest touching a boy in the front seat of a car and having sex with other boys in a church and outside a dormitory.

“I did become emotional at that point,” Williams said Wednesday. “It had been years since I first saw those tapes (of victim interviews) taken by our own staff in Honduras of those same kids.

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UNITED STATES
Malta Independent

Watch: Pope Francis praises US bishops’ response to sexual abuse by priests, angering victims

Pope Francis praised American bishops on Wednesday for their “generous commitment” to helping victims of clergy sex abuse, drawing an angry rebuke from advocates who said the bishops acted only under the threat of hundreds of lawsuits.

Addressing church leaders in a prayer service at the Washington cathedral, Francis said they had faced the crisis “without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice.”

“I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you, and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims — in the knowledge that in healing we, too, are healed — and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated,” the pope said to loud applause from the bishops.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Philadelphia Inquirer

DAVID O’REILLY, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
LAST UPDATED: Thursday, September 24, 2015

WASHINGTON – Pope Francis on Wednesday surprised and irked victims of Roman Catholic clergy sex abuse when he praised a gathering of U.S. bishops for their “courage” in handling the crisis, and consoled them for how stressful it had been.

He also insisted that sex abuse at the hands of clergy must never happen again.

His remarks brought a stinging rebuke from some abuse victims, who said courage should be reserved for themselves.

“The bishops are poster boys for the fainthearted and timid. They have been cowards in the face of rape and sodomy of innocent children,” said the National Survivor Advocates Coalition.

To the bishops assembled for the first full day of Francis’ six-day U.S. visit, the pope said, “I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you. And I have supported your generous commitment to bringing healing to victims – in the knowledge that we, too, are healed – and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated.”

Bob Hoatson, a former priest in Newark, N.J., and an abuse survivor, said, “I think he let the bishops off the hook.” Hoatson, who runs a group called Road to Recovery for victims and their families, said he had received numerous calls from “disappointed” victims.

“He would have been better off not saying anything about the issue rather than sugarcoating it,” Hoatson said.

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UNITED STATES/LATIN AMERICA
GlobalPost

Will Carless on Sep 24, 2015

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Earlier this year, federal prosecutors in Manhattan made history by arresting officials at the Federation Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA, on charges of racketeering and money laundering.

The case, a groundbreaking example of US authorities policing far beyond America’s borders, raised an interesting question: If prosecutors could target FIFA — an organization headquartered outside the US — could they also take aim at the leaders of another sprawling international enterprise, say, the Roman Catholic Church?

The sex crimes that Catholic priests have committed across the globe are arguably far more harmful than anything FIFA executives are accused of. Thousands of priests been accused of destroying the innocence of society’s most vulnerable individuals: children. And in many cases, the church hierarchy has looked the other way, or worse. Yet throughout decades of abuse, the Holy See — the church’s central government, housed at the Vatican — has evaded legal consequences.

Objectively, the sex abuse crisis has been destructive for the church. Billions of dollars have been paid out to survivors of sexual abuse by clergy, leading some of the largest Catholic dioceses in the United States to declare bankruptcy. Dozens of priests have been criminally convicted and thrown in prison. But all of this has played out at the local level.

Despite aggressive efforts to put the pope and his senior leadership on trial for concealing priests’ sex crimes, to date not one Vatican official has been successfully sued or jailed, and the Vatican’s coffers have remained untouched — largely thanks to esoteric legal arguments and diplomatic immunity.

The Vatican remains a legal fortress for anyone suspected of aiding predator priests. In some cases, survivor advocates say the Rome-based enclave of Vatican City has even served as a literal sanctuary for prelates: Archbishop Josef Weselowski, for instance, was whisked off to the Vatican following allegations that he abused young boys. The move sheltered him from prosecution in the Dominican Republic.

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MALTA
Malta Independent

Neil Camilleri

Fr Charles Fenech this morning testified in a court case in which the victims of sex abuse carried out by catholic priests are calling for compensation. Fr Fenech, who is himself charged with sexual abuse in separate proceedings, had failed to turn up when summoned last week for the compensation case.

Laurence Grech and Philip Cauchi are calling on the Constitutional Court to stop Mr Justice Joseph Micallef from presiding over the civil case for compensation because he is involved in the institution that abused them. The judge is the President of the Dominican Order-owned Radju Marija. This, according to Mr Grech and Mr Cauchi, puts his impartiality in question.

Last week, Mr Justice Mark Chetcuti fined Fr Charles Fenech, who is the founder of Radju Marija, €150 for contempt of court. He also ordered the police to arrest the priest and bring him to the next sitting. Today the court heard how Fr Fenech had not turned up in court because of a misunderstanding with his lawyer Dr Franco Galea. The court revoked the fine imposed.

Testifying today, Fr Fenech said Radju Marija was set up to convey the message of the Catholic Church, insisting it did not have any political or marketing content. Lay people managed the radio station. The president – until last October Judge Joseph R Micallef – took care of administrative work.

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NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

They remember hundreds of victims who committed suicide
SNAP: Pope’s callous defense of bishops opens new wounds
Organization says papal visit “provokes pain in hundreds”
They beg victims to “reach out, get therapy, call loved ones”

What:
Holding signs and childhood photos of suicide at a sidewalk vigil, clergy sex abuse victims and their supporters will

–remember and honor adults who were molested as kids and took their own lives, and
–express support and concern for other victims who are suffering because of Pope Francis’s visit and the laudatory attention the Catholic hierarchy is enjoying.

They will urge all victims, witnesses and whistleblowers to

–keep coming forward and seeking help (from independent sources),
–stay in therapy, support groups and 12 step programs,
–remember that recovery is possible, and
–focus less on church officials and more on their mental health and well-being.

When:
Thursday, September 24 at 5:30 p.m.

Where:
Outside of St. Joseph’s Church,
371 6th Ave at Washington Place
Greenwich Village, NYC

Who:
Seven-eight members of an international support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org), including 1) an Illinois woman and attorney who is the organization’s long time president and 2) a California woman who is a best-selling author on abuse prevention.

Why:
Pope Francis’ first-ever US trip is already provoking considerable anxiety and pain among many clergy sex abuse victims, SNAP reports. Many struggle with seeing the pontiff’s popularity and what they see as his callous disregard of the sex abuse scandal across the United States, the group says.

“During the past few days, Pope Francis has been treated like a king, while victims of sexual abuse have been minimized and marginalized,” said Megan Peterson, SNAP’s volunteer New York director. “Seeing the Pope meet with the President Obama and address a joint session of Congress is enormously damaging to survivors, especially since the crimes and cover-ups are not over.”

“Learning that disgraced Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony was a part of the entourage was even more upsetting,” said Peter Isely, SNAP’s Mid-West director. “Cardinal Mahony covered up for hundreds of child sex crimes across California and allowed countless men to prey on children. He’s reviled in his own archdiocese. How can we trust that kids are safer from abuse when Pope Francis allows a man like Mahony to accompany him?”

“This week, Pope Francis told the U.S. bishops that many of them have made ‘great sacrifice’ because of the abuse and cover-up crisis,” said Judy Jones, SNAP volunteer Missouri leader. “Families, communities and children are destroyed by child sexual abuse. The bishops have made no sacrifices. They have only made excuses.”

SNAP believes that hundreds of US clergy abuse victims have taken their lives. In the Wichita diocese, five young men who were sexually violated by Fr. Robert K. Larson committed suicide.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Philadelphia Inquirer

Part of Pope Francis’ address to U.S. bishops in Washington, D.C., Wednesday addressed the clergy sex-abuse scandal, and raised the possibility that the pontiff would meet privately with victims:

David O’Reilly
‏@DOREILLYINQ
#PopeInPhilly Francis offers much compassion to US bishops for how stressful the clergy sex abuse crisis has been! Praises their “courage. ”

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UNITED STATES
Los Angeles Times

By ALAN ZAREMBO AND VICTORIA KIM

Pope Francis on Wednesday appeared to praise the Roman Catholic Church’s handling of widespread sexual abuse by priests, drawing rebuke from victims who said his brief remarks were a setback for justice and healing.

Speaking to hundreds of U.S. bishops at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in downtown Washington, the pope told them he was “conscious of the courage with which you have faced difficult moments in the recent history of the church in this country without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice.”

He continued: “I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you, and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims — in the knowledge that in healing we too are healed — and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated.”

Victims said those comments grossly misrepresent how the church has dealt with the scandal, which it managed to cover up for decades.

“The people he was talking to are the people who moved the pedophiles around to prey on kids,” said John Salveson, a 59-year-old Philadelphia businessman who was abused as a child by a priest.

“If you gave me 100 years to pick a word to describe the U.S. bishops’ reaction to this crisis, ‘generous’ would never make the list,” he said.

Terry McKiernan, who runs BishopAccountability.org, a nonprofit group that tracks the abuse scandal, said Francis failed to acknowledge that most dioceses across the country have not disclosed the names of abusers and continue to lobby against reforming statute of limitations laws that shield priests from prosecution for crimes committed many years ago.

“It would be a shame if the pope’s words were taken as encouragement by the bishops to continue that behavior,” he said.

While Francis enjoys worldwide popularity and is widely seen as the best hope for reinvigorating the church, he has yet to win support from many abuse victims. By some counts, there are more than 17,000 in the United States, with some cases dating as far back as the 1950s.

See the most-read stories this hour >>
The National Catholic Reporter, which has been a strong supporter of the pope on many issues, has consistently challenged him to do more in punishing and preventing sexual abuse.

“But the message he delivered today puts him back to square one,” the editor, Dennis Coday, wrote in an online editorial Wednesday.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Huffington Post

Antonia Blumberg
Associate Religion Editor, The Huffington Post

Pope Francis praised U.S. Catholic bishops for their response to the clergy sex abuse crisis Wednesday during an address in Washington — comments that victims called “insulting” and “hurtful.”

The pope applauded what he said was bishops’ “generous commitment to bring healing to victims.” And he praised them for courage in facing “difficult moments in the recent history of the church in this country without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice.”

John Salveson, a Philadelphia business owner who was victimized by clergy sex abuse, said he found the pope’s comments “bizarre.”

“First of all, he’s characterizing the bishops’ response as generous,” Salveson told The Huffington Post. “They have treated victims for decades like adversaries. It’s just been horrible. I don’t know how you could ever characterize them as generous.”

Barbara Blaine, of Chicago, president of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, released a statement decrying the years of clergy abuse that the church tolerated. By praising bishops, Blaine said in the statement, Francis revealed his own reluctance to take decisive action.

“His remarks today confirm what we’ve long said and suspected: this pope, like his predecessors, is doing and will do little if anything to bring real reform to this continuing crisis,” Blaine said. “Those who care about kids must focus on secular authorities, not church figures (however popular they may be).”

Dennis Coday, an editor for National Catholic Register, [note: He is with the National Catholic Reporter] criticized the pontiff for dancing around the issue without offering specifics.

“At the very least he could have used the words ‘clergy sexual abuse of minors,’” Coday wrote in an National Catholic Register [Reporter] opinion piece. “This oblique reference will do nothing to assuage the fears of victims’ advocates who believe Francis is more public relations manager than crisis manager when it comes to sexual abuse.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
VICE news

By VICE News

September 23, 2015

One of the world’s oldest and largest support groups for survivors of clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse today blasted the pope after he commented that US bishops showed “courage” in handling a string of Catholic Church abuse scandals over decades, while failing to apologize to victims on behalf of the church.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), which has about 20,000 members, criticized Pope Francis over his choice of words, particularly the “great sacrifice” he said bishops have made in facing “difficult moments in the recent history of the church in this country without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification.”

“[The pope’s] remarks today confirm what we’ve long said and suspected: this pope, like his predecessors, is doing and will do little if anything to bring real reform to this continuing crisis,” SNAP said in a statement Wednesday after the pope delivered his speech in Washington DC. “Those who care about kids must focus on secular authorities, not church figures, however popular they may be.”

In March, a new report released by BishopAccountability.org raised troubling questions about Pope Francis’ complicity in the sexual abuse scandal that has plagued the Catholic Church for more than a decade.

The report, titled “Pope Francis and Clergy Sexual Abuse in Argentina,” focuses on the pope’s stint as archbishop of Buenos Aires from 1998 to 2013, and includes a database with links to public documents and media reports about 42 priests in Argentina previously accused of sexual misconduct. Specifically, the report focuses on five cases of sexual abuse by priests in which it alleges that the then archbishop “knowingly or unwittingly slowed victims in their fight to expose and prosecute their assailants.”

Although Francis has been outspoken on a litany of other issues, he has remained surprisingly silent on the topic of clergy sexual abuse. In his 2010 book, On Heaven and Earth, the future pope claimed his priests never misbehaved during his tenure as archbishop of Buenos Aires.

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UNITED STATES
National Survivors Advocates Coalition

National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC) Statement on Pope Francis’ statement regarding Sexual Abuse during visit to the United States

Pope Francis’ description of bishops and the sexual abuse crisis in the United State is a fairy tale.

The Pope praised the bishops’ courage in the scandal. The word courage should never be used to describe the bishops, it should be reserved for the survivors alone. The best are best described as cowards who were unmoved by the survivors suffering until their neglect and complicity in criminality was unmasked by the news media and the courts.

The hurt and desolation that this Pope of mercy has heaped on the survivors in this one miscalculated section of an address is jaw droppingly stunning.

Pope Francis is aware of words can do. He is a wordsmith but what he constructed in this speech is a faulty scaffolding that needs to be torn down.

Pretty words are not a firm purpose of amendment.

Pretty words do not make a sexual abuse commission work.

Pretty words, even those from a popular Pope, do not soothe wounds, protect children or provide justice to survivors.

The Pope should never have said these words.

The fact that he did is evidence that he believes them, and that it is his intent to push the argument that the crisis is history, the bishops are put upon heroes, and the victims are afterthoughts mentioned only to give lip service while wrapping them in the envelope of the healing that never comes.

This tin ear towards the victims of sexual abuse is a resounding rebuke to survivors and its damage is heavy.

— Kristine Ward, Chair, National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC) 937-272-0308

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release, September 23, 2015

Statement by Peter Isely of Milwaukee, SNAP Midwest Director (414 429 7259, peterisely@yahoo.com)

The editor of the independent National Catholic Reporter takes Francis to task today – as he should – for his first remarks about the church’s seemingly-endless scandal of sexual violence and secrecy.

An NCR reporter says that Francis made “an oblique” reference to the abuse and cover up crisis. And NCR editor Dennis Coday said that the pope’s “sadly disappointing” message was “a glaring oversight” that “will undoubtedly raise the charges of ‘he just doesn’t get it.’”

[National Catholic Reporter]

Both journalists are right. Francis today basically ignored those who are vulnerable because of the crisis: children. He basically ignored those who are suffering because of the crisis: victims.

He praised, instead of chastising, those who are causing the crisis: bishops. And he offered not a single step forward, other than his vague plea that these crimes, still happening now, somehow “not be repeated.”

Francis continues to please many who want a more merciful church but disappoint most who want a safer one.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
New York Magazine

By Marin Cogan

“I saw a news report last night on ‘Pope pizza,’” Becky Ianni, a 57-year-old woman with light-brown hair cropped in a bob, is saying. “We were in Barnes & Noble and it was plastered with stuff about the Pope. Everything was about the Pope.” It’s Monday afternoon, and Ianni and seven other people — most of them former Catholics, most of them sexual-assault survivors or their family members — are protesting outside the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Headquarters in northeast Washington.

This is a rough week to be a Catholic Church protester. The American public’s interest in the Catholic Church right now seems to begin and end with Pope Francis — as a global celebrity, charismatic spiritual leader, and transformative political figure. Francis will make his debut before Congress this week as more than just a media darling: Only 3 percent of Catholics view him unfavorably, according to a recent Times poll. The view of the Pope is so favorable among Catholics here, according to another Pew survey from earlier this summer, that 55 percent of them rated him as doing an “excellent” or “good” job addressing the abuse scandal — a number that, when compared to his approval rating on other issues, was actually considered low. Meanwhile, the decades-old conversation about the church’s legacy of sexual abuse, which for a long time has been the dominant one around the institution, has quieted somewhat.

Francis made remarks to U.S. bishops about sexual abuse and is likely to meet with abuse survivors on this trip, as he has done in the past, but that’s far from enough for this group of abuse survivors, many of whom are pained by the huge celebration surrounding his arrival. “Last week, when we were getting ready for him to come, I started getting more and more anxious,” Ianni says. She and the others who say they were abused by priests don’t think Pope Francis has lived up to his responsibilities on the church’s legacy of abuse. In June, the Pope called for the creation of a Vatican tribunal to judge bishops who covered up the abuse scandal, but the bishops by and large still haven’t faced any consequences for their actions. The Pope has the authority to discipline them on his own, but hasn’t done so. Ianni was sexually victimized by a priest named William T. Reinecke when she was a child growing up in Virginia, but she wasn’t able to step forward with her story until 2006, she says. (Her claim was later ruled credible by her local diocesan review board.) She says she’s never been able to fully get over the betrayal she felt.

Barb Dorris, a grandmother who says she joined the group after discovering a priest in her parish molesting a child and church officials failed to oust him, pointed toward a news report last week showing that American priests accused of sexual assault were sent to Latin American countries to continue working in the church rather than being turned over to the authorities. She, too, wants the Pope to move on disciplining bishops as soon as possible. “I’m one old lady standing on a corner. This Pope has all the power. He could make the changes necessary,” she says.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
NBC New York

By Gabriella Iannetta

A handful of women dressed in traditional priest stoles and albs were arrested after they staged civil disobedience during Pope Francis’ visit in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.

They held signs that read: “Women priests are here.”

The women are calling on the pope and the entire Catholic community to shake up policies of the past, saying it is time to allow women to be priests.

“Women are all parts of life,” Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan with the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests told NBC Owned Television Stations. “Including at the altar.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
DCist

BY RACHEL SADON

With signs draped across their body advocating for the ordination of women priests, a group of protesters lay down in a crosswalk outside St. Matthew’s Cathedral shortly before Pope Francis arrived this afternoon. The seven men and women were removed by police officers from the intersection of Connecticut and Rhode Island Avenues and issued criminal citations for blocking the passageway, according to a spokeswoman for MPD.

The protesters argued that the church should open the priesthood to women, wearing signs in both English and Spanish saying “This is what a Roman Catholic woman priest looks like” and “We’re all equal in God’s eyes; ordain women.”

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NEW YORK
Jamestown Sun

By Reuters Media on Sep 22, 2015

NEW YORK — An artist and sexual abuse victim at the hand of a Catholic priest uses her artwork for survivors and supporters to connect.

“To me it’s just a different thing that people can relate to,” said Megan Peterson, a leading member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) in New York on Tuesday.

“It’s a very raw expression of what many of us go through and I feel like a lot of times for me personally as an artist the abuse and the things that I’ve endured, I can’t necessarily put words to it. So I just feel like this is an opportunity for people to connect on that level and people that are walking that path currently.”

Twenty-five-year-old Peterson is one of the tens of thousands of people who allege sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests across the globe.

As a child, Peterson was a devout Catholic who attended church in the diocese of Crookston, Minn. Every morning, before school, she would stop by her local church to pray in the hope of becoming a nun. She says everything changed one morning in 2004 when, as a 14-year-old, she was assaulted by Father Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul. Jeyapaul came from India in 2004 to preach at the Blessed Sacrament Church in Greenbush, Minn., a small town near the Canadian border. In 2005, after being accused of sexual misconduct by another girl, a 16-year-old, Jeyapaul left Minnesota and returned to India to attend to his ailing mother.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release, September 23, 2015

Statement by Barbara Dorris (314-503-0003 cell, bdorris@SNAPnetwork.org

We’re sad that Francis claims US bishops have shown “courage” in the abuse crisis. Almost without exception, they have shown cowardice and callousness and continue to do so now. They offer excuses, exploit legal technicalities and hide behind expensive lawyers and public relations professionals, hardly the marks of courage.

We’re also sad that Francis can’t bring himself to call this crisis what it is – not “difficult moments in recent history,” but the continuing cover up of clergy child sex crimes by almost the entire church hierarchy.

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UNITED STATES
Foundation to Abolish Child Sexual Abuse (FACSA)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 23, 2015

Contact: John Salveson at 215-870-0680 salveson@abolishsexabuse.org

Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse (FACSA) Statement Regarding Comments by Pope Francis on Clergy Sex Abuse

BRYN MAWR, PA – John Salveson, President of FACSA, (Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse) released the following statement regarding Pope Francis’ comments in a speech to 300 bishops in Washington regarding their treatment of clergy sex abuse victims in America.

“The Pope’s comments to U.S. bishops this afternoon were both insulting and hurtful to survivors of clergy abuse. To characterize the response of American Bishop’s to clergy abuse victims as ‘generous’ and ‘courageous’ is bizarre. In reality, the Roman Catholic Church in America has treated clergy sex abuse victims as adversaries and enemies for decades.

In addition, his concern about how the abuse crisis has weighed on the bishop’s spirits, and his hope that all of their good deeds will help them heal from the crisis reflects a profound misunderstanding of the role the church has played in this self-inflicted crisis.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
WPXI

By RACHEL ZOLL
The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Pope Francis praised American bishops Wednesday for their “generous commitment'” to helping victims of clergy sex abuse, drawing an angry rebuke from advocates who said the bishops acted only under the threat of hundreds of lawsuits.

Addressing church leaders in a prayer service at the Washington cathedral, Francis said they had faced the crisis “without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice.”

“I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you, and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims — in the knowledge that in healing we, too, are healed — and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated,” the pope said to loud applause from the bishops.

But the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests said that the bishops had displayed “cowardice and callousness” in response to victims who came forward and that they “hide behind expensive lawyers and public relations professionals” instead of fully confronting the scope of the problem within the church.

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, an advocacy group that collects records on abusive priests from around the world, called the pope’s remarks “distressing and quite off-base.”

The abuse crisis erupted in 2002 with the case of one pedophile priest in the Archdiocese of Boston, then spread nationwide. The revelations in Boston, about guilty priests kept in ministry without any warning to parents or police, persuaded thousands of people across the country to come forward with new abuse claims, prompted grand jury investigations in several states and compelled the bishops to take an inventory of how every American diocese had dealt with perpetrators and victims going back decades.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

By Terrence McCoy, Sarah Pulliam Bailey and Perry Stein September 23

Advocates for victims of sexual abuse called Pope Francis’s apparent praise of the U.S. church’s handling of the sexual abuse scandal “a slap in the face” that will only inflame the suffering of the abused.

At the Cathedral of St. Matthews, before a gathering of U.S. bishops, Francis lauded the American church on Wednesday for its “courage” in the face of what he called “self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice.” Calling instances of abuse “crimes,” he added: “I realize how much pain the recent years has weighed upon you and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims.”

Advocates expressed outrage and surprise at these comments, which address a scandal that exploded in the early 2000s. Activists have consistently criticized U.S. Catholic Church, which has spent millions on prevention and training, for continuing to fight survivors in legal battles and declining to hold some bishops explicitly accountable. In 2012, Monsignor William Lynn in Philadelphia, where Francis will end his trip, became the first priest to be convicted on charges of concealing the crimes of accused priests.

This isn’t the first time Francis has waded into an issue that some have cited as a reason why they left the church. Francis embraced victims of sexual abuse and asked their forgiveness at a 2013 Mass “for the sins of omission on the part of church leaders who did not respond adequately to reports of abuse.” Then in June, he launched a Vatican tribunal to punish clergy who try to cover up instances of abuse. He has also created commission that recommends how best to help survivors.

Many activists were hopeful that Francis would add to that momentum during his first visit to the United States, though his official itinerary bore no mention of the topic. But now, some advocates say, Francis has tampered hopes that he’ll push for more accountability among the clergy and opened the church to fresh criticism that it’s more concerned with protecting its own than victims of abuse.

“It’s encouraging that he recognizes [the abuse], but it sounds like it is all aimed at the bishops themselves rather than the survivors,” said Bill Casey, who advocates for survivors with Voice of the Faithful. “If that’s all he says, I think that would be disappointing.”

But Barbara Dorris, victims outreach director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said she was more than disappointed. “I don’t have much of a temper, very little temper, and this makes me mad,” she said. “It’s a slap in the face to all the victims, that we’re going to worry about how the poor bishop feels? You’re the ones who created it, and now we’re going to feel sorry for what you created?”

Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, a psychologist who advises dioceses worldwide on child protection, said he was nonetheless “pleased” that Francis had mentioned instances of sexual abuse so early in his visit — and that he called them crimes.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
RTE News (Ireland)

Pope Francis has told US Catholic bishops that “crimes” of sexual abuse of minors by clergy should never be repeated.

“I know how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you, and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims … and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated,” he told the bishops on his first visit to the United States.

During his six days in the US, the pope may meet privately with victims of sexual abuse.

The Vatican has said an eventual meeting would be announced after it takes place in order to protect the privacy of the victims.

An estimated 6,400 Catholic clergy have been accused of abusing minors in the United States between 1950 and 1980.

In June, Francis sacked two US bishops accused of looking the other way: the archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, John Clayton Nienstedt, and his aide Lee Anthony Piche.

And earlier this month the Vatican replaced Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City, who resigned in April after failing to report a priest accused of pedophilia.

Earlier, cheering crowds greeted Pope Francis in the streets of Washington as he rode in his open pope mobile near the White House following talks with President Barack Obama.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call

By Dan Sheehan
Of The Morning Call

Allentown Bishop John O. Barres was among the hundreds of cardinals, bishops and other religious who crowded the Cathedral of St. Matthew in Washington to hear Pope Francis speak about the church’s mission, the clerical sex abuse crisis and the plight of immigrants.

The pontiff received long ovations during the prayer service in the church best known as the site of the funeral for the nation’s first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, in 1963.

In a statement, Barres said Francis “synthesized so many of his beautiful thoughts and themes with an emphasis on the good shepherd and a culture of encounter for the poor, all those in pain, all those in distress. (He was) calling all of us to be engaged in a culture of encounter with everyone in our global society.”

Francis opened the Thursday service by thanking Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, a former priest of the Diocese of Allentown who now serves as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Archbishop of Washington.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

CONTACT

–Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director (Milwaukee) – Attending SNAP events in NYC during the papal visit, 414.429.7259 (peterisely@yahoo.com)
–Megan Peterson, SNAP NYC Director, 218.684.0073 (survivor19@live.com)
–Letter from Dolan to the Vatican attached–

9/23/05 Letter to Pope Francis from Milwaukee victims, re: Cardinal Timothy Dolan

Dear Pope Francis,

I am one of 575 victims of childhood rape, sexual assault or abuse by clergy who have worked in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee who have filed cases seeking restitution from the church in US Federal Bankruptcy Court. I am writing to you on our behalf and on behalf of our families.

Every rape or sexual assault of a child is a double act of theft: first it steals the body and then it steals the voice.

Seeking justice as adults through our courts for the crimes that were committed against us as children is an effort by us to restore both body and voice. That is why we were cheered when, early in your pontificate, you directly and explicitly affirmed the rightness and importance for victims to seek justice and restitution through the civil justice system.

We filed our cases for restitution over four and a half years ago in US Bankruptcy Court because the new Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki publically assured us that by doing so he would use the bankruptcy court to bring just “compensation, healing and resolution” to victims.

The chief architect of the bankruptcy, however, was Listecki’s predecessor, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who repeatedly and directly spoke of his remorse for the crimes committed by Milwaukee clergy against children.

Imagine our sense of betrayal, then, when we learned that Archbishop Dolan before leaving for his new post as Archbishop of New York had acted directly to contravene the spirit of the very principle of civil justice for victims that your words celebrate and affirm.

In a letter obtained in federal court (also attached), Dolan wrote to Cardinal Claudio Hummes, Prefect of Congregation of the Clergy, for permission to transfer nearly $60 million dollars of assets into a new “Cemetery Perpetual Care Trust.” The archdiocese, of course, already had money set aside for the care of cemeteries. Why was Dolan seeking permission to make a new trust? Because the Wisconsin Supreme Court had just issued a unanimous ruling against the Milwaukee Archdiocese stating that there was sufficient evidence of its fraudulent concealment and transfer of clergy child sex offenders that the archdiocese could be brought to civil court by victims seeking restitution. Dolan, in the letter, clearly stated his intent in creating a new and unneeded trust.“By transferring these assets to the Trust, they [the monies]will be protected by any legal claim and liability.”

Additionally, the newly created cemetery trust was intended for only eight cemeteries, most of which also have a mausoleum in or near or near the City of Milwaukee. All the many remaining Catholic cemeteries in the archdiocese do not benefit from this trust. $60 million dollars is hardly required to serve the needs of only eight cemeteries.

Dolan’s transfer of tens of millions of dollars to prevent victims from just compensation is an act of civil and, in all likelihood, criminal fraud under US law.

Court documents also show that Dolan, after public denials to the contrary, devised and executed a secret policy of paying clerics who had abused children (a $20,000 dollar “signing bonus” added to their pension and other benefits) to leave the priesthood without the archdiocese notifying the unsuspecting communities in which they settled.

The new church you are urging us to build together requires you to hold Cardinal Dolan accountable for the planning, direction and, to a very significant degree, the current outcome of the bankruptcy, which has resulted in:

–The lowest settlements of any church bankruptcy in the United States by a factor of ten, with individual amounts to victims that do not even begin to address the severe and lasting harm done to them or provide anywhere near the resources required to begin a true recovery, with some clergy rape victims receiving as little as $2,000 dollars.

–Only 26 percent of the total bankruptcy settlement money will be allocated to help victims. 74 percent of the costs will pay lawyers’ fees, including $19.5 million to church and bankruptcy lawyers, $4 million in legal expenses to defend Dolan’s trust, and $7 million to victim attorneys; in other words, over twice as much money will be pocketed by church and other lawyers then will be given to help survivors.

–Most alarmingly, direct victim reports filed into court detail that at least 100 newly alleged clergy child sex offenders from the archdiocese have not been properly investigated or prosecuted, leaving countless children at risk in our church and community.

You have said that “the courage” victims show “by speaking up, by telling the truth” has been “in the service of love” to “shed light on a terrible darkness in the life of the Church.”

The church believes that God so ordered the universe that he placed at the center of creation the human heart and at the center of the human heart, the faculty of free consent. Love does not exist or enter the embodied soul without free consent. That is why the sexual violence by a priest against a child is a demonic parody of both creation and love, of the very miracle of creation through love.

It is an endless mystery that the shame the priest sex offender should logically and naturally feel within his own soul while violating the body of the child is rarely if ever felt by him. Instead, the shame of this crime, this awful and crushing weight, is poured into the body of the victim – our bodies. This is why it is we, not the offender, who feels the weight of this criminal shame, and why it is so difficult for most of us to come forward and bring our violation to speech.

Is it not a miracle that 575 of us in Milwaukee come forward, three generations of survivors, and together as brothers and sisters speak the unspeakable? Every time a survivor speaks, as you so rightly acknowledged, no matter how difficult to hear or unwanted the effect, it is an act of love for the church.

Victims in Milwaukee can still receive justice with your intervention and help. The money fraudulently transferred by Dolan which should have been used to compensate victims can still be put to that very purpose. Your time here in New York City will give you an opportunity to continue your pledge to hold Cardinal Dolan and other bishops accountable for the ongoing crisis of clerical sexual abuse and honor 575 acts of love and truth.

Sincerely,
Peter J. Isely
SNAP Midwest Director
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnewtork.org)

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UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

by Kristine Ward, September 23, 2015

Today in NSAC News we offer the images of Thomas Doyle, Richard Sipe, Patrick Wall, Robert Hoatson.

We place them here with our hope that these images will be a counterbalance and a safe place for survivors against the images that are nearly overtaking television screens and other forms of media.

Pope Francis is the man who could with stroke of a pen, or a word, a trademark off the cuff exhortation a walk into the right crowd, or with the right phone calls address and eliminate the behemoth that looms over the largest crisis in the Roman Catholic Church in 5000 years – the complicity in the rape and sodomy of the innocents by the aiding and abetting of predators by bishops, archbishops and cardinals, vicar generals, hatchet and yes men on chancellery staffs,, and in the Curia.

These four men were ordained to the priesthood.

All four of them became true priests. Their personal journeys brought them by varied road to the truth and to true priesthood. They found and remain on the right of the battle: justice for the survivors and leaders in the fight for the protection of children. Their routes took some of them off the official rolls of priesthood but not off real priesthood.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2015

Statement by Joelle Casteix, Southern California Director of SNAP,
Phone: 949-322-7434, Email: jcasteix@gmail.com

In a callous move that will rub even more pain into the already-deep and still fresh wounds of tens of thousands of caring Catholics and suffering victims, disgraced Cardinal Mahony is being allowed to be at papal events at the White House and Congress.

[CBS Los Angeles]

There are few members of the hierarchy who have a more well-deserved dishonorable reputation and well-documented record of wrongdoing as bad as Mahony. Secret sex abuse and cover-up documents and newspaper investigations exposed in 2013 showed Mahony’s career-long, hands-on role in covering up abuse. The documents were so shocking, in fact, that Mahony was temporarily relieved of public duty and more than 10,000 Catholics signed a petition demanding he step down.

His attendance at White House and Congress is a slap in the face to the more than 500 LA victims who sought justice for crimes committed against them. It’s a slap in the face to LA Catholics who are rightfully disgusted at Mahony’s enabling of abuse.

President Obama and Congress should be investigating clergy sex crimes and cover ups, not letting a virtual criminal frolic among them.

As a society, we beg victims of sexual violence to overcome their fear, pain and shame and report these crimes so perpetrators can be stopped and others can be spared. But when we honor men who enable sexual violence, we send precisely the opposite message to victims: your suffering doesn’t matter, the powerful will always prevail, and the bad guys usually win. Shame on every official – religious or secular – who is playing a role in this hurtful injustice.

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TEXAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2015

Statement by Amy Smith, Phone: 281-748-4050 watchkeepamy@gmail.com

A child sexual abuse lawsuit was filed this week by the parents of a now deceased victim against First Baptist Church of Rockwall, Texas and pastor Billy Bob Burge, now employed as a pastor at Grace Community Church in Greenville, Texas.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/baptist-pastors-sexual-abuse-of-a-child-leads-to-victims-suicide-as-an-adult-and-lawsuit-300147406.html

DALLAS, Sept. 22, 2015 /PRNewswire/

Carla Sweet and Ed Gomez of Dallas, Texas, filed suit today in Dallas, Texas, state court against First Baptist Church of Rockwall: seeking justice for their son, John “Jeremy” Sweet-Gomez, who was repeatedly sexually abused by a Youth Pastor at First Baptist Church of Rockwall. The suit alleges that a Youth Pastor at First Baptist Church of Rockwall began sexually abusing Jeremy when he was approximately thirteen years old. The abuse included sodomy, oral sex, and inappropriate sexual touching. The suit states that the sexual abuses and assaults occurred “on church property and during church-sponsored religious trips.” Jeremy suffered repeated sexual abuse as a teenager; he later committed suicide. …

The lawsuit alleges that “Defendants entered into a civil conspiracy, accompanied by a meeting of the minds regarding concerted actions, the purposes of which were to conceal and minimize public knowledge of sexual misconduct and/or abuse by Pastor Burge. This conspiracy and concerted action was carried out by Defendants to conceal the fact that they individually and collectively committed acts of neglect, gross neglect, concealment, fraud, and breached fiduciary duties. Officials and agents or representatives of First Baptist Church of Rockwall, acting in concert, engaged in this conspiracy to avoid prosecution, to cover up sexual misconduct and abuse, and to conceal claims arising from crimes or conduct of their Youth Pastor.”

We urge officials at First Baptist Church of Rockwall to come clean with any information and to immediately report any known or suspected abuse by Billy Bob Burge to law enforcement. We hope that any other churches or places where Burge has had access to kids, including his current church employer Grace Community Church in Greenville, Texas, will aggressively reach out to anyone else that may have been harmed by Burge and urge them to call police.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
San Diego Union-Tribune

WASHINGTON (AP) — The latest developments in Pope Francis’ visit to the United States. All times local:

2 p.m.

Pope Francis is telling U.S. bishops there is no place for “harsh and divisive” rhetoric in their ministry, indicating he wants to see a change in tone after years of culture wars.

The pope is encouraging them to build relationships with anyone, no matter that person’s views on church teaching, and to do so with compassion.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Fox News

Associated Press

Pope Francis on Wednesday praised U.S. bishops for their response to the clergy sex abuse crisis.

Speaking before the bishops at a worship service in Washington, Francis lauded them for what he called their “generous commitment to bring healing to victims.” He praised them for having courage and acting, as he saw it, “without fear of self-criticism.”

The clergy sex abuse scandal erupted in the U.S. in 2002 and turned into the biggest crisis in the history of the American church.

Under enormous public pressure, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops pledged to oust any guilty clergy from church work and enact safeguards for children.

However, the scandal persists, and victims say the bishops still haven’t fully accounted for sheltering abusers. This year, three bishops resigned in crises over their failures to protect children.

Francis also encouraged the bishops in their ministry to immigrants, praising them for taking up the immigrants’ cause and urging the bishops to welcome even more foreigners coming across the border.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
National Catholic Reporter

Dennis Coday | Sep. 23, 2015 NCR Today

Let me make just one short observation, about an obviously heartfelt, multifaceted address by Pope Francis to the U.S. bishops. There are many things to compliment and tease out of this speech over coming days. There was, however, one glaring oversight that will draw criticism.

Francis made one (Vatican correspondent Josh McElwee called it “oblique”) reference to the clergy sexual abuse crisis. Here is the entire paragraph:

I am also conscious of the courage with which you have faced difficult moments in the recent history of the Church in this country without fear of self-criticism and at the cost of mortification and great sacrifice. Nor have you been afraid to divest whatever is unessential in order to regain the authority and trust which is demanded of ministers of Christ and rightly expected by the faithful. I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims – in the knowledge that in healing we too are healed – and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated.

This was followed by loud applause. Given the audience, I guess that’s not surprising, but it was sadly disappointing.

I have to wonder where is the forthrightness we have come to expect of Pope Francis. At the very least he could have used the words “clergy sexual abuse of minors.” This oblique reference will do nothing to assuage the fears of victims’ advocates who believe Francis is more public relations manager than crisis manager when it comes to sexual abuse.

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