IRELAND
One in Four
THE Catholic archdiocese of Dublin is to begin recruiting up to 200 "representatives" to implement a new national child protection policy in every parish.
The policy has yet to be approved by the Vatican, but Church leaders are keen to implement the policy as soon as possible. Dublin and other dioceses want to ensure that it can be put in place as soon as approval is given.
Church leaders are known to be anxious that Rome approves the policy before publication of the report of the inquiry into clerical sex abuse in the diocese of Ferns, which is thought likely to be published some time in next month.
MIAMI (FL)
The Ledger
The Associated Press
MIAMI
A woman who claims she was molested by a priest after she turned to the Archdiocese of Miami for help while pregnant as a teenager has sued and is seeking more than $10 million over the incident that allegedly occurred more than three decades ago.
The suit, filed Friday in Miami-Dade circuit court, names the archdiocese and Catholic Charities as defendants. No priest is named in the suit.
The incident allegedly took place around 1970, when the woman was about 14; the suit did not specify exact times or ages. The suit alleges she went to a clinic operated by the archdiocese for a pregnancy test and was sexually abused by a priest.
After the alleged assault, she claims of contemplating suicide, and later terminated the pregnancy rather than having the baby and giving it up for adoption as she originally intended, according to the suit. Because the pregnancy was terminated in its fifth month - long after visiting the clinic - she was unable to bear children, the suit said.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer columnist discusses reactions to the priest abuse scandal.
John Grogan: Hi, John Grogan here.... Welcome. I'll be happy to take your questions in just a minute here.
John Grogan: Today, my column centers on the response of area Catholics to the clergy sex-abuse scandal. I was surprised at the depth of emotion in so many of the responses.
leatherj5: I'm now living in North Carolina. I'm also Catholic. I heard about the Grand Jury’s letter and saw the list of local priest being made public. What do you think will happen to the local diocese within the next 3-6 months if anything?
John Grogan: That's a good question. Realistically, I don't expect too much to happen in the next several months. Because of the statute of limitations there will be no criminal charges against any of these offenders, and the state Supreme Court just ruled out the possibility of more civil actions.
michele: Why are you surprised? I'm not!
John Grogan: Well, not really surprised at the level of outrage and anger. But in the past when I have written about the transgressions of the Church, I've always received a good dose of scolding from devout Catholics who accuse me of Catholic-bashing who say I'm looking for an excuse to damage the Church. This time I received some 250 responses and not ONE made that argument.
MISSOURI
Times Newspapers
by Don Corrigan
Kirkwood police are investigating allegations made by a former Vianney High School student body president, Bryan Bacon, that he was sexually abused by Brother William Mueller at the school in 1985.
Bacon, a Kirkwood resident, filed a lawsuit against Mueller, Vianney and the Marianist Order earlier this month. Bacon's lawsuit is one of several that have been filed across the country involving Mueller, who has taught students in Pueblo, Colo.; San Antonio, Tex.; and St. Mary's High School in St. Louis, where he served as the principal from 1981 to 1983.
Bacon's lawsuit accuses Marianist officials of knowing that Mueller had a history of abusing children, but that they failed to remove him. Mueller had spent several months in 1984 at a treatment center, the Servants of the Paraclete Center in New Mexico, before being assigned to Vianney.
MIAMI (FL)
Local 10
POSTED: 11:20 am EDT September 30, 2005
MIAMI -- Another lawsuit has been filed against the Archdiocese of Miami in connection with alleged sexual abuse of a child by a priest.
The suit alleges that in the early 1970s, a pregnant 14-year-old girl went to a church-run clinic for help in giving her unborn baby up for adoption. She says she was sent to a priest for counseling, and that while she was in his office at the now-closed clinic, he pulled down her pants and underwear and used his fingers to penetrate her vagina until a nurse walked into the room.
The woman says that she left the clinic severely traumatized, considered suicide, and concealed her pregnancy for several months. She said when she was five months pregnant, her mother forced her to go to New York to terminate the pregnancy. The procedure left her unable to have children, according to her lawyers.
The woman is being represented by Jeff Herman of Herman and Mermelstein in Miami.
The suit is seeking a jury trial and more than $10 million in damages.
FLORIDA
First Coast News
By JEFF BRUMLEY
The Florida Times-Union
JACKSONVILLE, FL -- The Catholic Diocese of Orlando and the Jacksonville-based Diocese of St. Augustine paid a combined $1.5 million in May to settle sexual abuse claims involving two priests who molested three altar boys "countless times" during the late 1960s and early 1970s, according to an attorney for the victims.
Diocesan officials deliberately ignored the actions of the Revs. Vernon F. Uhran and Hubert Reason while their abuses were occurring, said the victims' Miami-based lawyer, Adam Horowitz.
Reason is deceased and Uhran is living in the Orlando area but is no longer in active ministry, Horowitz said.
The settlement remained a secret on the First Coast until it was referred to in a Sept. 12 news release announcing the filing of two new sexual molestation lawsuits against the Orlando Diocese.
HUDSON (WI)
Pioneer Press
BY KEVIN HARTER
Pioneer Press
The Rev. Ryan Erickson likely would have been charged with killing two men in 2002 at a Hudson, Wis., funeral home as well as sexual abuse of a minor and possession of child pornography.
But Erickson hanged himself outside his Wisconsin church last December.
On Monday, prosecutors will lay out the case against Erickson in a private hearing in a St. Croix County courtroom.
District Attorney Eric Johnson and Hudson Police Chief Dick Trende declined to talk about the details Thursday, but they said a strong case will be presented placing Erickson at the funeral home at the time of the fatal shootings.
"I think the case is fairly compelling," Johnson said. "I don't know if it will solve it. If the testimony meets the probable cause standard, I think it will provide some closure."
Neither Johnson nor Trende would reveal specifics, but sources with knowledge of the investigation who spoke on the condition that their names not be used said Erickson engaged in sex with a boy younger than 15. The sources also said the priest gave alcohol to minors and possessed child pornography involving boys, some of which included bondage.
BOSTON (MA)
Boston.com
By Denise Lavoie, AP Legal Affairs Writer | September 30, 2005
BOSTON --A defrocked Catholic priest who already served three years in a New Hampshire prison for sexually abusing a child pleaded guilty Friday to sexually abusing five other boys, and was sentenced to eight to 11 years in prison.
Robert Burns, 56, was indicted in April on six counts of raping of a child under 16, and seven counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14. He pleaded guilty to all 13 counts.
During the hearing, Burns apologized to his victims -- who were all boys age 10 and under when the abuse began -- to the people in the two Boston parishes he served and his fellow priests.
"I can't undue the harm that I've done, but I am determined to live the rest of my life with integrity," he said. "I am deeply, profoundly sorry."
NEW YORK
The State
RACHEL ZOLL
Associated Press
NEW YORK - A top Jesuit official is raising objections about an upcoming Vatican document that's expected to reinforce Roman Catholic teaching that gays are not welcome in the priesthood, while some U.S. leaders of men's religious orders are considering a trip to Rome to express their opposition.
The Rev. Gerald Chojnacki, head of the New York Province of the Society of Jesus, said in a letter to his priests that he was asking bishops to tell Vatican officials who are drafting the policy "of the great harm this will cause many good priests and the Catholic faithful."
Chojnacki wrote in the letter, dated Monday, that he had participated in the funerals of several gay Jesuit clergy over the last few years.
"I find it insulting to demean their memory and their years of service by even hinting that they were unfit for priesthood because of their sexual orientation," he wrote.
Chojnacki said he would be working with the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, which represents leaders of religious orders in the United States including the Jesuits, Franciscans and others, and with bishops to fight "for the opportunity of a gay person to say yes to God's call in celibate service of priesthood and chaste religious life."
WILMINGTON (DE)
6 ABC
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) - Sept. 30, 2005 - Officials with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, have acknowledged that a priest convicted of indecent assault on two teenage boys in 1982 was reinstated to ministry the same year.
As recently as 2002, the Reverend Robert Hermley was serving at the Little Sisters of the Poor retirement complex in Ogletown.
Diocese officials say their policy since 1985 has been that no priest with credible allegations should be allowed to work in active ministry.
Officials said yesterday that they needed time to look into the facts surrounding Hermley's ministry.
WILMINGTON (DE)
6 ABC
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) - Sept. 30, 2005 - Officials with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, have acknowledged that a priest convicted of indecent assault on two teenage boys in 1982 was reinstated to ministry the same year.
As recently as 2002, the Reverend Robert Hermley was serving at the Little Sisters of the Poor retirement complex in Ogletown.
Diocese officials say their policy since 1985 has been that no priest with credible allegations should be allowed to work in active ministry.
Officials said yesterday that they needed time to look into the facts surrounding Hermley's ministry.
TOLEDO (OH)
Ohio News Network
Sep 30, 2005, 10:29 AM EDT
A new trial date has been set for a former Toledo priest accused of killing a nun 25 years ago.
A Lucas County judge scheduled the trial to begin next April 17th.
The Reverend Gerald Robinson is accused of strangling and stabbing Sister Margaret Ann Pahl in a 1980 Easter weekend killing that investigators have described as ritualistic. The priest and the nun had worked together at a hospital.
WORCESTER (MA)
Fitchburg Sentinel
By J.J. Huggins
WORCESTER -- The attorney representing the inmate charged with killing defrocked pedophile priest John Geoghan played a tape in court Thursday, showing prison guards pulling the murder suspect from the victim's cell after the beating death.
Joseph Druce is charged with murder in connection to the Aug. 23, 2003 killing.
The clips, taken from surveillance cameras inside the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, show the guards pull Druce on the ground from Geoghan's cell, face first.
On the tape, the guards strap Druce's hands behind his back, then four of them escort him to another area inside the prison.
Druce's attorney, John LaChance, played the tape at Worcester Superior Court Thursday.
BOSTON (MA)
Boston.com
By Denise Lavoie, AP Legal Affairs Writer | September 30, 2005
BOSTON --A defrocked Catholic priest who already served three years in a New Hampshire prison for sexually abusing a child was expected to plead guilty Friday to sexually abusing five other children.
Robert Burns was indicted in April on six counts of raping of a child under 16, and seven counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14.
The five victims were all boys who were under 10 when the abuse began, according to the Suffolk District Attorney's office. The abuse allegedly took place from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, while Burns was a priest at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston and at St. Mary's in the Charlestown neighborhood.
Burns' attorney, Timothy P. O'Neill, said Burns has intended to plead guilty since he was charged almost six months ago, although he pleaded innocent at his arraignment.
HUDSON (WI)
WCCO
(AP) Hudson, Wis. A prosecutor says he will present "strong circumstantial evidence" next week that a Catholic priest killed a funeral home director and an intern more than three years ago.
St. Croix County District Attorney Eric Johnson told The Associated Press the evidence, which he said will include a motive but no murder weapon, will be presented during a so-called John Doe hearing behind closed doors before Circuit Judge Eric Lundell.
Lundell will rule whether evidence gathered by police provides probable cause that the late Rev. Ryan Erickson killed the two victims at their funeral home and committed other crimes, Johnson said. He said the hearing is expected to last three days and involve 15 witnesses, both men and women and people of all ages.
"I think the case is fairly compelling," Johnson said. "I don't know if it will solve it. If the testimony meets the probable cause standard, I think it will provide some closure."
BROOMALL (PA)
News of Delaware County
By Amy A. Winnemore and Dan Russo, STAFF WRITERS 09/29/2005
BROOMALL - At St. Pius X Church in Broomall, Rev. Paul Castellani's homily Sunday, like many across the Philadelphia Archdiocese, addressed the recent grand jury report on sex abuse in the church.
Parishioners listened quietly, as the priest began by solemnly acknowledging that he, like all others humans, sins. He then spoke about the great tragedy of the sins committed by those exposed in the report and apologized to abuse victims. He closed by criticizing the institutional and societal conditions that perpetuate such wrongdoing.
Tess Colaiezzi, a member of St. Anastasia in Newtown Square, said she was surprised to hear that a former priest at her parish, Rev. John H. Mulholland, 66, was named in the report, and was cited for abusing a boy while assigned there.
"I think our kids were in CCD when he was in our parish," said Colaiezzi. "It just makes me mad," she says. "They should have been arrested."
PENNSYLVANIA
News of Delaware County
By Brigette ReDavid, MANAGING EDITOR 09/29/2005
As a Catholic, I am rocked to the core by the alleged abuses within my church released last week in a Grand Jury report.
Imagine my shock when I realized the priest who baptized my daughter stands accused of pedophilia?
Philadelphia District Attorney Lynn Abraham says she regrets that the statute of limitations ran out and these priests cannot be charged for the sexual assaults they allegedly committed.
It's understandable. That's what Abraham does. She goes after the bad guys and brings them to justice. After years of covering trials and hearings, I understand how dedicated many police officers and district attorneys are to that.
All of the alleged assaults are heinous acts. In churches throughout Delaware County on Sunday, priests apologized for the sins of their fathers. Cardinal Rigali's letter was welcomed by parishioners who don't want this shrugged off, no matter how hard it is to swallow.
For me, this is a bitter pill.
CANADA
Edmonton Sun
NEWMARKET -- A pastor who said he was doing "God's work" when he blindfolded and handcuffed a teenager, then sexually assaulted him on videotape was sent to jail yesterday.
Roscoe Lim, 27, a former youth pastor at the Markham Christian Community Church, was sentenced to 14 months plus three years' probation for sexual assault and luring over the Internet.
His name will also be entered into theAbuse Tracker Sex Offender's Registry. After he pleaded guilty to the charges, a third charge of production of child pornography was dropped.
"This was a shameful and profound breach of trust," said Justice Joseph Kenkel.
Court heard that Lim, who is diagnosed as a pedophile, met a 15-year-old boy at a church function. He developed a relationship with him over an Internet chat line where he "groomed" the boy under the guise of doing "God's work," often praying with him and offering to be his "brother in Christ," or his "beloved commander."
UNITED STATES
Houston Voice
Friday, September 30, 2005
Richard J. Rosendall
THE VATICAN’S RECENT decision to purge Catholic seminaries of gay men makes me think of Groucho Marx’s line, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.” In truth, the church’s authoritarianism drove me away years before I was ready to deal with my sexuality.
Leaving the church, however, can be easier than making it leave you. Family tradition, rituals instilled early, the music and images and stories — they can exert a lasting emotional pull long after you have rejected the core beliefs.
This personal awareness tempers my irreverence when I wonder with exasperation what it would take for diehard gay Catholics to get the message that they are not welcome. Belonging to a family or a church that doesn’t want you may be painful, but that doesn’t make it any easier to turn your back.
It is supremely ironic that a key hallmark of the life of Jesus of Nazareth was his affinity for and kindness toward outcasts: the tax collectors, the adulterous woman, the Good Samaritan. He admonished against judging others, decried as hypocrisy public displays of prayer, and declared that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
OREGON
News-Register
Published: September 29, 2005
By KATIE WILLSON
Of the News-Register
Judge Cal Tichenor sentenced a former school teacher and church pastor Tuesday to an additional 11 years in prison for repeatedly sexually abusing an adopted daughter over a two-year period when the family lived in Hopewell.
David Gilmore, 40, was sentenced to 19 years in prison by a Marion County judge in June for abusing the same daughter while the family lived in St. Paul.
Under an agreement negotiated with prosecutors, Gilmore pleaded guilty in Yamhill County to one count each of first-degree sexual penetration and first-degree sex abuse, both Measure 11 offenses carrying long mandatory minimums. In exchange, six other counts were dropped.
PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Friday, September 30, 2005
By Rebekah Scott, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Dozens of pending clergy sex-abuse lawsuits against Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania have passed into a legal limbo following a state Supreme Court ruling this week.
Advocates for both sides say many of the 100-plus lawsuits still outstanding statewide likely will be dismissed.
"This is a setback for public safety, a victory for child molesters and a relief for duplicitous bishops," said David Clohessy, national director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
The "setback" is a state Supreme Court decision announced Wednesday in Harrisburg in which the court refused to hear an appeal of a Superior Court decision made in March.
PENNSYLVANIA
The Review
By: Bernard J. Scally 09/29/2005
Released a week ago, the Philadelphia Grand Jury's report leaves almost no parish untouched by the 63 accused priests listed. Each generation of parishioners have probably come into contact with the accused; not only in their own parishes but in their high schools as well.
Some of those parishes include: St. John the Baptist, St. Josephat's, Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM), Roman Catholic High School, Kennedy-Kenrick and their predecessors Archbishop Kennedy and Bishop Kenrick, and Archbishop Carroll and it's formerly separated Boys and Girls Schools.
Some residents, while in shock, believe that the report is "Catholic bashing" overblown by the media. Others confront the report with a sense of realism.
"I am appalled and sickened, if it is true, about Cardinals Krol and Bevilacqua covering up the scandal," said one resident. The report, which has taken 3 years to complete, follows some priests careers back to the 1950s. Many of the accused in the community were long time residents of their parish, especially St. John the Baptist where two of the accused lived for almost 20 years.
Many in the community are not surprised at finding the name of Rev. James Dux on the list of the accused.
PENNSYLVANIA
The Daily Times
By TIMOTHY LOGUE, tlogue@delcotimes.com 09/29/2005
Cardinal Justin Rigali probably got what he expected when he invited priests to St. Charles Borromeo Seminary Tuesday to pray and sound off about the sexual abuse scandal that has rocked his archdiocese. "I was hoping for an honest exchange, and that definitely happened," said the Rev. J. Thomas Heron of St. Gabriel Church in Norwood. "To use Abraham Lincoln’s phrase, there was evidence of a house divided."
After prayer and remarks by the cardinal, those in attendance were invited to ask questions and offer opinions about a grand jury’s findings of sexual abuse by 63 priests and Rigali’s response to them.
"It wasn’t a debate, but I would say both sides were heard to some degree of satisfaction," said the Rev. Joseph J. Meehan of St. Eugene Church in the Primos section of Upper Darby. "To his credit, the cardinal set himself up to receive criticism, and he accepted it."
Of the 300-plus priests who attended the meeting, about a dozen stepped up to a podium set up in the middle of seminary pews to speak their piece. A few had less-than-flattering words for Rigali, who has criticized the grand jury findings while maintaining the archdiocese never made concerted efforts to cover up the abuse of hundreds of children by dozens of priests.
PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call
By Dan Sheehan
Of The Morning Call
Weariness and dismay were starkly evident in Juliann Bortz's voice Thursday as she reflected on this week's state Supreme Court ruling on clergy abuse, a decision that seems to have dashed the hopes of victims seeking to bring their attackers to account despite the passage of time.
The court refused to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling that denied a bid to expand the ability to sue dioceses. Plaintiffs in the case, which targeted the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, wanted to reset the clock on the state's statute of limitations, giving victims of old abuse cases a renewed chance to pursue lawsuits.
The decision protects Pennsylvania's dioceses and other organizations from what could have been financially crippling civil judgments. That includes 10 lawsuits against the Allentown Diocese being pursued in Lehigh County.
''They're too powerful,'' said Bortz, an abuse victims advocate from Lower Macungie Township, painting the Catholic Church hierarchy as the ultimate version of an unbeatable city hall: a bureaucracy without accountability, swatting away citizens seeking redress.
UNITED STATES
Arizona Daily Wildcat
By Ella Peterson
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Friday, September 30, 2005
Gays, liberals and proponents of equal rights are already railing against the imminent Vatican instructions banning gay men from entering seminaries. However, this ban has been well-received by certain conservative priests, some of whom claim that the restriction on gay seminarians is "for their own good."
Just as church authorities once banned epileptics from the priesthood, they assert that years of studying in the presence of only other men would be too much of a strain on the celibacy of a homosexual man.
Apparently, according to the esteemed clergy of the Roman Catholic Church, everyone knows that sexual orientation has a tremendous effect on the control of one's sexual impulses, and gay men cannot be expected to make such an intense commitment of faith as celibacy.
PHOENIXVILLE (PA)
Phoenixville News
By KARIN WILLIAMS, kwilliams@phoenixvillenews.com 09/30/2005
PHOENIXVILLE - Father John Newns held an open discussion session at St. Ann's Church Thursday for parishioners to express their thoughts and feelings on the recent release of the Grand Jury report on priest sexual abuse.
Because of the emotional nature of the topic, the names of parishioners who participated in the forum are being withheld.
Newns began the session by telling the crowd of about 45 people that he was there to listen.
"The first duty of love is to listen," he said.
Newns opened the floor, and a woman stood to speak.
She said she has been consumed with the events surrounding the release of the report, and has been left feeling physically ill.
"I feel that if I could just sit and cry, I would flood the earth, and all my rage would be gone," she said.
DELAWARE
The News Journal
BY BETH MILLER AND STEVEN CHURCH / The News Journal
09/30/2005A Catholic priest who pleaded guilty to indecent assault on two teenage boys in 1982, while on the staff at Padua Academy in Wilmington, was reinstated to ministry the same year and as recently as 2002 was serving at the Little Sisters of the Poor retirement complex in Ogletown, officials acknowledged Thursday.
Diocese of Wilmington officials say their policy since 1985 has been that no priest with credible allegations should be allowed to work in active ministry here. Thursday, they said they needed time to look into the facts surrounding the ministry of the Rev. Robert L. Hermley, 78, now of Childs, Md., who is a member of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, an autonomous religious order within the diocese.
Hermley was arrested in 1982 in Trevose, Pa., while watching X-rated movies at a local drive-in theater with two Philadelphia boys, ages 13 and 14. Nineteen pornographic magazines also were found in the car. Hermley, who at the time was director of college guidance at Padua, an all-girls high school, pleaded guilty to indecent assault. Charges of indecent exposure, corrupting minors and open lewdness were dropped. Hermley was given three years' probation by a Bucks County, Pa., judge and released into the custody of his religious order, which reinstated him into ministry and assigned him to duty in Vienna, Va.
UNITED STATES
New York Blade
By ELIZABETH WEILL-GREENBERG
Friday, September 30, 2005
Father James, a gay Catholic priest living in California, isn’t sure if the Vatican’s planned ban on gay men in seminaries will affect his position but the psychological effect, he says, is the same.
“It’s like having your family reject you,” he told the Blade in a telephone interview. “You feel a call to service as a priest, then you find a document that says anybody like you is unfit to do the work you’re called to do. It hurts.”
Father James asked that his identity be protected because some “self-appointed watchdogs” scour the Internet looking for gay priests to report to the bishop.
Anxiety among gay priests has intensified since reports emerged that the Vatican is planning to ban gay seminarians. The details on who would be excluded or how it could be enforced are still unknown. The announcement came shortly before church officials began visits to American seminaries to question students on a range of topics, including whether they know of any gays in their seminary. The move to remove gays amounts to scapegoating for the church’s sex abuse crisis, critics have argued.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Daily Times
The sex-abuse scandal currently engulfing the Archdiocese of Philadelphia smoldered for decades before erupting in the conflagration contained in the 400-plus pages of a scathing report issued by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office. It is not going to go away overnight.
That point now should be abundantly clear to the man who heads the archdiocese, and its 1.5-million member flock. Even if it was not at the time the bombshell report was released.
Some of the faithful are questioning their faith. They are stunned, disappointed and outraged at the scope of the scandal, the way the archdiocese handled it, and its response to the grand jury report.
They want answers.
Monday night they went looking for Cardinal Rigali. They found him at Villanova University, at a previously scheduled speech on Catholic higher education.
The cardinal spoke for 90 minutes, often touching on "human dignity." But some of those who attended had other lessons in mind. And they turned the cardinal’s own words against him.
One woman indicated the cardinal mentioning human dignity "put me over the edge" in the wake of the report that detailed hundreds of cases of child sexual abuse at the hands of priests, and overwhelming evidence that archdiocesan leaders covered up the situation, in some instances actually enabling it through a policy of removing problem priests and relocating them to other parishes.
NEWTON (MA)
Boston Globe
September 30, 2005
AFTER VANDALS smeared swastikas on the door of the Adams Street synagogue in 1997, the Rev. Walter Cuenin got 300 people out of the pews at Sunday Mass and marched them up the street to show his support for his Jewish neighbors. This was an early sign of the dynamic, innovative, and inclusive leadership he would demonstrate as he led Our Lady, Help of Christians parish in Newton through the turmoil of the sexual abuse scandal, the worst crisis in the history of the Catholic church in Boston.
Now he is gone, forced out by Archbishop Sean O'Malley on trivial accusations of financial impropriety. And my family, parishioners at Our Lady's for the last seven or eight years, feel bereft, empty, and deeply angered. We, and hundreds of others, have lost a leader who energized our spiritual lives and gave my spouse, children, and me a nurturing home in the Catholic faith.
Like many Catholics, we were looking for a church that was spiritually vibrant and accessible to the many Catholics who feel estranged from the faith, including gay people, the divorced, and the remarried. As a hymn sung often at Mass proclaimed, ''All are welcome in this place."
Cardinal Bernard Law appointed Cuenin to the pastorship in 1993 when Our Lady's grand 112-year-old church had fallen into disrepair. Cuenin led a $4 million campaign to restore the church to its earlier splendor. He assembled an 11-person staff to educate the children and guide the ministries that would meet after Mass or in the evenings. He made sure that strong, independent lay people were elected to the pastoral council and finance council to monitor and advise on parish operations.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Villanovan
By Jane Donahue
Published: Friday, September 30, 2005
Philadelphia Catholics faced 418 pages of a grisly report detailing five decades of alleged abuse of young parishioners by priests as the grand jury last week ended its investigation of the archdiocese's handling of abuse complaints.
The investigation, operated by the District Attorney of the City of Philadelphia, has been the longest running grand jury inquiry into clergy sexual abuse. The group has been at work since April 2002.
The 40-month effort investigated the cases of 63 priests in the archdiocese who, the grand jury report said, had inappropriate sexual contact with girls and boys. They said the 63 priests had assaulted multiple victims, one assaulting more than 20 boys.
The report blamed Cardinal John Krol and Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua, among others, for suppressing knowledge of acts committed by clergy in the Philadelphia area for years. The report accused church officials of relocating the priests rather than removing them from ministry, thus exposing them to larger numbers of children in the archdiocese.
"As an Augustinian priest I am saddened and dismayed by many of the things that have come to light," wrote the Rev. Thomas Martin, O.S.A., professor of theology and director of the Augustinian Institute at Villanova. "It seems to suggest a gross abdication of responsibility on the part of the bishops-they 'protected' their priests but they failed to protect their people!"
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Villanovan
By Ashley Augello
Justin Cardinal Rigali, archbishop of Philadelphia, spoke in the Connelly Center on Monday night about Catholic higher education and the Church in the world of the future. What was intended as a reflection on the 40th anniversary of Gaudium et Spes, which translates into "joy and hope," turned into an open forum on the recently released grand jury report about sexual abuse by priests and the alleged cover-up by the Philadelphia archdiocese. In the question-and-answer forum following the speech, Rigali faced heated questions about the sexual abuse scandal. The most contentious of the questions came from audience member Judy Gray, who noted that Rigali used the term "human dignity" 37 times in his speech and asked how it could be applied to his support of "criminal cardinals who have protected oral and anal rape.""I will have to leave that judgment up to God," Rigali said.
"I'm sure you will. I'm sure you will," she said. "You're a phony." A youth minister urged Rigali to meet with youths who are dealing with the problems caused by the report. "It's been a rough week," she said.
"It's been a rough three and a half years. We need to heal. Our youth needs to heal. You need to hear this youth. They're hurting and disillusioned." Rigali agreed that work had to be done, stating that the young people may be "struck down but not held down," and that "Christian hope is greater than dejection."
He did not specifically commit to meeting with any youth. The heated questions ceased when Father Dobbin asked that the remainder of the questions be focused on the "topic at hand."
LEXINGTON (KY)
Beacon Journal
Associated Press
LEXINGTON, Ky. - An Ohio man has pleaded guilty to killing a former Lexington priest who was convicted of sexual abuse.
Prosecutors said Jason Anthony Russell, 28, killed Joseph Pilger, 78, after he found the retired priest masturbating while looking at a photograph of Russell's 6-year-old son.
Russell, of Ironton, Ohio, pleaded guilty to murder, burglary and theft by unlawful taking on Thursday. Prosecutors recommended he serve life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Russell is scheduled to be sentenced by Fayette Circuit Judge Gary Payne next month.
HUDSON (WI)
Pioneer Press
BY KEVIN HARTER
Pioneer Press
The Rev. Ryan Erickson likely would have been charged with killing two men in 2002 at a Hudson, Wis., funeral home as well as sexual abuse of a minor and possession of child pornography.
But Erickson hanged himself outside his Wisconsin church last December.
On Monday, prosecutors will lay out the case against Erickson in a private hearing in a St. Croix County courtroom.
District Attorney Eric Johnson and Hudson Police Chief Dick Trende declined to talk about the details Thursday, but they said a strong case will be presented placing Erickson at the funeral home at the time of the slayings.
"I think the case is fairly compelling," Johnson said. "I don't know if it will solve it. If the testimony meets the probable cause standard, I think it will provide some closure."
UNITED STATES
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: September 30, 2005
Responding to reports that the Vatican may be close to releasing a directive to exclude most gay candidates from entering the priesthood, leaders of Roman Catholic men's religious orders in the United States are planning to travel to Rome to voice their objections in person.
The trip is one of the steps by leaders of Catholic religious orders to try to reassure priests and seminarians who have been rattled by news of a possible Vatican ban on the ordination of gay men.
Word of the trip, which has not been scheduled, was in an internal letter sent on Monday to leaders of religious orders from the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, the key American coordinating body for more than 250 leaders of Catholic religious orders, like the Franciscans, Dominicans and Jesuits. The letter was provided to The New York Times by a member of a religious order who said he was pleased by the superiors' actions.
In addition, at least two leaders of Jesuit provinces have written to their priests and seminarians reassuring them that their sexual orientation is not an issue as long as they remain celibate and chaste.
UNITED STATES
Renew America
Matt C. Abbott
September 29, 2005
Not surprisingly, there are still some priests and laypersons who assert that homosexuality was and is not a factor in the clergy sex abuse scandal.
I don't know whether to blame political correctness or just plain denial for this misguided notion.
In a recent news story, Father Charles Bouchard, president of Aquinas Institute of Theology, is quoted as saying:
Some people do feel homosexuality would disqualify a student. I hope we can provide evidence that should not be the case.
We don't want to make it look like it's just a question if someone is gay or straight. But whether they have the ability to live celibate and be effective ministers.
I think it might be relevant in as much as that it answers some people's question that possibly there is a link between homosexuality and pedophilea [sic]. I don't think that link exists, so I'm not afraid of that question.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Bernadette McKenzie Kutufaris
Like many Catholics in the Philadelphia area, I felt a stream of mixed emotions last week when Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham released the grand jury report detailing the sexual abuse of many children by priests from the archdiocese. I hastily found the documents online and read through them, afraid of what and whom I would find in the 400 pages. It was to my great dismay that I found a handful of priests listed that I did indeed know. I was even further dismayed when reading about the alleged actions of the retired cardinal.
Indeed, I was sickened. My faith was momentarily rocked off its axis. I found myself questioning all that I had been raised with and experienced in my short 28 years of life.
On Sunday, my family and I arrived at our church, St. Francis of Assisi in Springfield, Delaware County, and sat among the many parishioners who were looking for answers. The need felt in that church that morning was glaring. The priest celebrating Mass met our needs, feelings and questions head on. He addressed our concerns in the most passionate, heartfelt homily. I left that church with a renewed sense of faith and spirit. My concerns and the concerns of the congregation were addressed.
I come from a long line of Irish Catholics. I am one of five children of two devout Catholic parents. I received a Catholic education from preschool to college. In my lifetime, I was blessed with a miracle, one that led to the canonization of a saint. After I spent a few years battling a debilitating spinal-cord disease, the sisters (Oblate Sisters of St. Francis de Sales) in my parish initiated a novena - the recitation of prayers over nine days - to their foundress, Leonie Aviat. A few days into the novena, I experienced a reversal of pain and of the debilitating effects of the disease. I went on to live a normal and healthy life. Because of my upbringing and this experience, I have seen the goodness of God. I have come in contact with and spent time with many priests from a variety of orders who are wonderful holy men, among them, Pope John Paul II.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Catholic Standard & Times
Cardinal Justin Rigali
Over the past week, we Catholics have come face to face with evil. We saw that, in our own Church, troubled priests, to whom we looked as ministers of sacramental grace, as collaborators in ministry and indeed as friends, had committed despicable acts of evil upon our most innocent and precious members, our children.
This knowledge, and the depravity of the acts detailed in the Philadelphia Grand Jury Report, affects me deeply. I grieve for the pain and humiliation victims of clergy sexual abuse have suffered.
To them I say, once again, with a heavy heart: I apologize to you personally. Your suffering is borne by all Catholics. All believers stand with you for support and are united with you in prayer. These words are meant to be first steps of healing, which I pray you will receive through the grace of God.
The Archdiocese stands ready to assist you in humble service. I am willing to meet with you as I have met with others. Our Victims Assistance Coordinators offer both spiritual and mental health services. Any victim or those who wish to report an allegation of abuse — which will be communicated immediately to civil authorities — may contact an assistance coordinator at 215-587-3880 or PhilaVAC@adphila.org.
Many years ago I dedicated my life as a priest of Jesus, the High Priest, to serve Him and His Church, the people of God. Today I acknowledge the betrayal of abusive priests, as do so many dedicated priests here in the Archdiocese. These good and faithful servants of our Lord feel especially hurt. I know they have endured uncharitable comments or perhaps silent stares of condemnation from some members of the community. I extend my fraternal admiration for all the selfless service they render. They strive for personal holiness as they lead the people entrusted to their care to a deeper relationship of love with our Lord Jesus. To them I say with a full heart: thank you for all you do and are.
OREGON
The Register-Guard
By Jeff Wright
The Register-Guard
Published: Thursday, September 29, 2005
Seventy-nine-year-old Marvel Kunkle is going to court, and she's not happy about it.
Kunkle, a self-described "cradle Catholic," has attended St. Peter Catholic Church in west Eugene for 40 years. Because she's among the 390,000 Catholics who live in Western Oregon, she's also a defendant in the Archdiocese of Portland's bankruptcy case.
In a legal maneuver, the archdiocese in July listed all 390,000 parishioners as class-action defendants in the bankruptcy filing, made last year as the church struggled to respond to more than 200 claims of sexual abuse by priests.
Kunkle and every other local Catholic has until Monday to formally "opt out" of the class action. But few have, in part because of a Catch-22: Attorneys for alleged abuse victims have said they probably will name any parishioner who opts out as an individual defendant.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Pittsburgh Catholic
by: Pittsburgh Catholic Staff
PHILADELPHIA — In a 76-page response, Philadelphia archdiocesan attorneys described a grand jury report on local clergy sexual abuse of children as “a vile, mean-spirited diatribe against the church” and “a sensationalized, lurid and tabloid-like presentation of events that transpired years ago, which is neither fair nor accurate.”
After a three-year investigation, the grand jury issued a 423-page report Sept. 21 that said retired Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, former bishop of Pittsburgh, and his predecessor, the late Cardinal John Krol, along with their top aides, “all abdicated their duty to protect children. They concealed priests’ sexual abuses instead of exposing them. ... There is no doubt that these officials engaged in a continuous, concerted campaign of cover-up over the priests’ sexual offenses.”
The archdiocesan response, however, said the content of the grand jury report “is nothing more than an attempt to convict in the court of public opinion those whom it does not indict in a court of law.”
After its investigation, the grand jury announced that no criminal actions would be filed as too many years had passed and applicable statutes of limitations had expired.
LEXINGTON (KY)
Lex 18
The man accused of killing a retired priest who was also a convicted sex offender pleaded guilty to the crime in a Lexington courtroom Thursday.
Jason Anthony Russell, 26, admitted killing Joseph Pilger, 78, who was found dead in his Lexington home in December 2003. The Fayette County Coroner's office ruled Pilger died from multiple blunt force trauma injuries.
Russell, convicted in July 1997 of robbery and criminal conspiracy to commit robbery, had finished a prison sentence just two months before the killing, state Department of Corrections spokeswoman Lisa Lamb said.
Pilger pleaded guilty to sexual abuse in 1995 for abusing three brothers and their cousin in 1968 and 1969, when he was their pastor in Morganfield in western Kentucky. The victims were younger than 15 and serving as altar boys at the parish.
UNITED STATES
Myrtle Beach Sun
RACHEL ZOLL
Associated Press
On the recruitment poster, a young Roman Catholic priest in full cassock stands before a black backdrop gripping a cross in one hand and a rosary in the other. A halo of light surrounds him, but his expression is far from angelic. He stares grimly at the ground, his eyes obscured by dark sunglasses.
The poster is a takeoff on ads for the movie "The Matrix" and was developed by a youth minister in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis to send a message about enrolling in seminary: Priests, like the Keanu Reeves character in the film, fight for good in a tough world.
Yet, over the last three years of the clergy sex abuse crisis, priests have come to be identified by some in the public with the dark side of human behavior. U.S. bishops have responded by transforming their child protection policies and removing accused clergy from church work.
WORCESTER (MA)
WPRI
WORCESTER, Mass. A judge gets a look today at how prison guards handled the inmate charged with killing pedophile priest John Geoghan.
At a hearing in Worcester Superior Court today, a defense attorney for Joseph Druce played snippets of video recorded by cameras at the state prison in Shirley.
One scene shows about ten guards trying to open the door to the cell where Druce had allegedly strangled Goeghan. The door had been jammed with a book and nail clippers. When it is finally pried open, guards are seen dragging Druce from the cell and pinning him face down on the floor.
NEWTON (MA)
Newton Tab
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Why do bad things happen to good people?
It's one of the central questions we look to our religious leaders to for answers. It's also a question many are struggling to answer this week following Father Walter Cuenin's forced resignation from Newton's most vibrant parish.
Cuenin was - make that, still is - one of our most beloved religious leaders, a rare public figure who had few, if any, detractors in the city. It's hard to imagine a priest more perfectly suited for Newton: highly intelligent; welcoming to our diversity; able to rub elbows with the city's elite as well as its blue-collar residents; and willing to stand up for his beliefs - even when that meant challenging church leaders and rules which demean women and gays.
But as for why this happened to Cuenin, we may never receive any more satisfying answer the question than did Job in the Old Testament. The church is by no means a democracy, and is under no obligation to say more than it chooses.
So we are left to speculate. The official reasons given by the archdiocese seem patently absurd. That Cuenin was among the first to call for the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law was a likely factor. His differences with the church's stance on homosexuality, especially on the very weekend when the archdiocese was organizing a push to ban gay marriage, are suspect.
BOSTON (MA)
Boston Herald
By Marie Szaniszlo
Thursday, September 29, 2005
The Rev. Walter Cuenin, who was pressured to resign last week from his Newton parish, has one thing in common with 19 other Archdiocese of Boston clerics forced from their parishes in the past three years: He signed a letter calling for the resignation of Bernard Cardinal Law.
The popular, outspoken priest was among 58 clerics who called on Law to step down because he had transferred priests who were known child molesters from parish to parish instead of alerting parents and police.
Of the 40 clerics who did not belong to religious orders or have outside jobs such as chaplain or academic, at least 20 have been transferred to other parishes, saw their parishes closed by Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley, or retired or resigned in an effort to spare their parishes from being shuttered, according to the Council of Parishes, a group opposed to the closings.
``We believe there are even more cases of pressure and payback, but what is clear from what we already know is a pattern of intimidation by the hierarchy of this archdiocese, beginning with Archbishop Sean O'Malley and possibly going beyond, to Rome,'' where Law now heads one of the Vatican's four basilicas, said Peter Borre, a council spokesman.
O'Malley's spokesman has said the archbishop asked for Cuenin's resignation from Our Lady Help of Christians in Newton because the priest accepted a car and a stipend from his parish in excess of the amount allowed by the archdiocese.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Forward
By E.J. KESSLER
September 30, 2005
Philadelphia's "tough cookie" Jewish district attorney is feuding with the Catholic Church over a report her office issued last week alleging five decades of child sexual abuse by priests in the local archdiocese.
The district attorney, Lynne Abraham, released the 418-page grand jury report, the culmination of a 40-month investigation, at a September 21 press conference. The report did not charge any individual priests with crimes, noting that the statute of limitations had expired, but it described in graphic detail how at least 63 priests and perhaps many more abused "hundreds of child victims." It also charged that a "cover-up" by archdiocese officials at all levels led to abusive priests being "left quietly in place or 'recycled' to unsuspecting new parishes — vastly expanding the number of children who were abused," in addition to hindering prosecutions.
"[I]n its callous, calculating manner, the Archdiocese 'handling' of the abuse scandal was at least as immoral as the abuse itself," the report asserts.
The Philadelphia Archdiocese, at a press conference the same day, pushed back ferociously, with an attorney for the church, William Sasso, calling the report "incredibly biased and anti-Catholic."
The abuse report also is proving embarrassing for Pennsylvania's junior senator, Rick Santorum, a Republican. Santorum, a staunchly conservative Catholic, has spoken out strongly against priest pedophilia in liberal states such as Massachusetts.
DENVER (CO)
Rocky Mountain News
By Felix Doligosa Jr., Rocky Mountain News
September 29, 2005
Alleged victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests went to the Denver District Attorney's office Wednesday and sought a grand jury investigation into the Archdiocese of Denver.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and Robert Kinney Jr., who sued the church Wednesday over sexual abuse charges, held a rally at the Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building.
"Everything is backwards," said Barbara Blaine, president of SNAP. "Everyone went to the bishop to report sexual abuse, and not the police. The crimes should be investigated by law enforcement."
Ten civil lawsuits claiming sexual abuse have been filed against the Archdiocese of Denver involving the Rev. Harold Robert White. Lawsuits also have been been filed over molestation allegations against the Rev. Leonard A. Abercrombie and Brother William Mueller.
In the district attorney's office, Blaine dropped off two heavy black notebooks containing the Philadelphia grand jury report on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The 423-page report of the Philadelphia church was released last week and listed 63 cases of child sexual abuse by priests. Blaine also provided a letter and the names of four more priests in Denver she said are suspected of sexual abuse.
PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Thursday, September 29, 2005
The state Supreme Court Tuesday upheld a Superior Court ruling throwing out 17 child sexual abuse cases against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia on the grounds that they violate the statute of limitations.
"It's a temporary victory for child molesters," said Marie Whitehead, Philadelphia chapter director of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. "We want to eliminate statutes of limitations for criminal child assault."
UNITES STATES
Raw Story
By Nancy Goldstein | RAW STORY COLUMNIST
In a sign of the rich cultural interchange wrought by our global economy, this month’s Chutzpah Award goes to…the Catholic Church.
A report from the Philadelphia grand jury released earlier this month is just the latest of 11 investigations into dioceses in the last three years. Like those that have come before, it finds that leaders at the highest levels of the church concealed the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests for decades. Rather than expose themselves to expensive lawsuits or negative publicity, they kept abusive priests active, often moving them from parish to parish, and hid their crimes from the public, parishioners, and the police.
In addition to documenting assaults by more than 60 priests, the Philadelphia report alleges a cover-up by the late Cardinal John Krol, the former archbishop of Philadelphia, and his successor, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqu, who “retired” in 2003.
A series of technicalities makes it impossible for the perpetrators of these crimes or those who covered up for them liable. No charges can be brought against a diocese because it is “an unincorporated association rather than a corporation.” In other cases, statutes of limitations have lapsed.
DUBUQUE (IA)
Des Moines Register
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dubuque will turn over more than 200 documents about priests named in three sexual abuse lawsuits.
The priests are accused of sexually abusing young people from the 1940s through the 1970s.
Federal magistrate John Jarvey will review the documents to determine whether they can be used in the lawsuits, a court order issued last week said.
Waterloo attorneys Chad Swanson and Tom Staack asked the court to compel the diocese to turn over the documents. The diocese objected, citing protections under the First Amendment, the Iowa Constitution, victim privacy and third-party privileges.
MUNDELEIN (IL)
NBC 5
POSTED: 6:43 pm CDT September 28, 2005
UPDATED: 11:39 pm CDT September 28, 2005
MUNDELEIN, Ill. -- Some residents of north suburban Mundelein expressed concern about some Roman Catholic priests who have been permanently removed from public ministry.
NBC5's Mary Ann Ahern reported that while the church ruled the allegations of sex abuse against the priests are credible, they do not have to register as sex offenders since they never faced any criminal charges. In most cases, the allegations are more than 10 years old. The church refuses to kick the priests out, but they are monitored by the church.
Archdiocesan officials decline to say how many priests removed from ministry live at the Cardinal Stritch Retreat House, located at St. Mary On The Lake Seminary -- and what their restriction are.
While Mundelein police have contacted the archdiocese, the police said legally, the church doesn't have to tell them anything because there were no criminal charges.
Housing the priests at the retreat house was initially considered a temporary situation while the church investigated the allegations. This week, Cardinal Francis George has permanently removed 11 priests, some who will remain at Mundelein.
SEATTLE (WA)
KGW
09/29/2005
Associated Press
Nine men have filed a complaint against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle in King County Superior Court, saying they suffered sexual and physical abuse at an orphanage and high school overseen by the archdiocese.
The complaint, dated Wednesday, names a half-dozen priests who worked at Briscoe Memorial School in Kent and O'Dea High School in Seattle between 1950 and 1979.
"Abuses were systemic and pervasive," the complaint said. "Boys were constantly subjected to appalling acts of physical violence and sexual abuse."
Those acts included forced sex and being beaten with fishing rods in the shower, the complaint said.
TAMPA (FL)
St. Petersburg Times
By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN, Times Staff Writer
Published September 29, 2005
TAMPA - Two more lawsuits have been filed against Tampa's Mary Help of Christians School, accusing a priest and a music teacher of sexually abusing boys in their care.
Eight suits have been filed since 2002 accusing priests or teachers of child molestation. The latest two were filed Tuesday in Hillsborough Circuit Court.
One says the plaintiff, now a man, enrolled in the school in 1980 for the sixth grade. On 20 or more occasions starting in September 1982, a music teacher sexually abused him by fondling, kissing and having sex with him, the suit says.
At least once, another teacher caught the music teacher abusing the plaintiff and began to argue with him, the suit says. But the school never disciplined the music teacher.
NEWTON (MA)
Boston Globe
By Matt Viser, Globe Staff | September 29, 2005
In a rare decision to comment on the workings of the Roman Catholic Church, a group of non-Catholic clergy in Newton criticized Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley yesterday for the ouster of the Rev. Walter H. Cuenin.
Cuenin resigned as pastor last week from Our Lady Help of Christians Church amid allegations of financial improprieties. The decision drew strong negative reactions from the parish.
The Newton Clergy Interfaith Association, which represents more than 40 places of worship in the city, released a strongly worded statement supporting Cuenin, whom they called a ''beloved and trusted pastor."
''The grounds given by the Archdiocese of Boston for his dismissal are spurious at best," the statement said. ''While Bishop O'Malley has the power and the right to remove a priest from a parish, his moral authority to do so is clearly compromised by this punitive action."
NEWTON (MA)
Daily News Tribune
By Bernie Smith / Daily News Staff
Thursday, September 29, 2005
NEWTON -- Supporters of Rev. Walter Cuenin are expected to march Sunday at Archbishop Sean O'Malley's residence at the Boston Chancery in protest to the removal of the popular pastor and archdiocesan critic.
Cuenin, who had been the pastor of the Our Lady's Help of Christians Church since 1993, has been forced to resign his post amid accusations of financial mismanagement, a charge his supporters dispute.
The archdiocese has alleged Cuenin accepted monthly stipends in excess of what is permissible by its rules, and was improperly given use of a parish-leashed car. Cuenin has agreed to reimburse the parish between $75,000 and $85,000, even though the parish's own finance council approved his earnings and the archdiocese never objected in the past.
MAINE
Portland Press Herald
By From staff and news services,
An 80-year-old priest who was removed from the ministry because of accusations that he sexually abused minors in Maine has died in Lithuania, the Portland Diocese said Wednesday.
Raymond Lauzon died Monday following a brief illness. At Lauzon's request, his funeral and burial took place in Lithuania on Tuesday. Word of his death was sent to the Portland Diocese from the Franciscan Province of St. Casimir in Lithuania.
Lauzon's name surfaced publicly as the Portland Diocese and others around the country confronted a wave of sexual-abuse allegations spanning recent decades.
PENNSYLVANIA
Avon Grove Sun
By:Michael Crist 09/29/2005
The leaders of the Philadelphia Archdiocese - including two former archbishops - actively concealed sexual abuse by priests for decades, but no criminal charges can be brought against the church or its priests because of the constraints of state law, according to grand jury findings released last week.
Following the nation's longest-running grand jury probe into priest abuse, the scathing report documents assaults on minors by more than 60 priests since 1967, and alleges that former archbishops Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and Cardinal John Krol covered up the abuse.
PORTLAND (ME)
WMTW
POSTED: 5:47 am EDT September 29, 2005
UPDATED: 6:32 am EDT September 29, 2005
PORTLAND, Maine -- An 80-year-old former Portland priest who was removed from the ministry due to accusations of sexually abusing minors in Maine has died in Lithuania.
The Portland Diocese said Raymond Lauzon died Monday following a brief illness. Word of his death was sent to the diocese from the Franciscan Province of St. Casimir in Lithuania.
At Lauzon's request, his funeral and burial took place in Lithuania the following day.
During the 1990s, several civil suits were brought against Lauzon alleging he abused children in the 1970s and 1980s. Church leaders, hoping to protect the church from scandal, defended him fiercely and Lauzon himself denied the allegations.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Christian Wire Service
PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 28 /Christian Wire Service/ -- The release of the Grand Jury Report on the sexual abuse of minors by clergy in the Philadelphia Diocese highlights the danger of having homosexuals serving in the ministry, a pro-family group said today. The American Family Association of Pennsylvania (AFA of PA) reviewed the over 400-page report and found that of the 28 'Selected Case Studies" listed in the report the victims of 23 priests were males ranging in age from 11-18 and the victims of two priests were both male and female. This review also reveals the efforts by media to downplay the overall presence of male victims and concentrate on the three priests whose victims were strictly female and the two that victimized both male and female teens.
VIRGINIA
LifeSite
FRONT ROYAL, VA, September 28, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Human Life International President Fr. Thomas J. Euteneuer has released a strongly worded statement praising reports that Pope Benedict is about to release, through a Vatican Congregation, a document noting men with homosexual orientation are not to be admitted to the priesthood.
PORTLAND (ME)
Boston.com
September 28, 2005
PORTLAND, Maine --An 80-year-old former priest who was removed from the ministry due to accusations of sexually abusing minors in Maine has died in Lithuania, the Portland Diocese said Wednesday.
Raymond Lauzon died on Monday following a brief illness. At Lauzon's request, his funeral and burial took place in Lithuania the following day. Word of his death was sent to the Roman Catholic diocese from the Franciscan Province of St. Casimir in Lithuania.
Lauzon's name surfaced publicly as the Portland Diocese and others around the country confronted a wave of child sexual abuse allegations spanning recent decades.
For 15 years, Lauzon conducted a ministry in a thrift shop in Portland's waterfront district. He also was assigned to a number of other parishes throughout Maine, and in 1990 he joined a Franciscan monastery in Kennebunk.
During the 1990s, several civil suits were brought against Lauzon alleging he abused children in the 1970s and 1980s. Church leaders, hoping to protect the church from scandal, defended him fiercely and Lauzon denied the allegations.
CANADA
Catholic News Service
By Joseph Sinasac
Catholic News Service
CORNWALL, Ontario (CNS) -- A Canadian bishops' task force recommended banning priests and pastoral staffers convicted of sexual abuse from any public church ministry for the rest of their lives.
The long-anticipated report on how Canada's bishops are dealing with clergy sexual abuse called on all bishops to publicly and individually commit themselves to a strict method of dealing with the problem. It also called for public reporting on how the church is doing in its battle to eradicate abuse.
The bishops have been asked to forward their comments on the report to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops headquarters in Ottawa. Comments will be presented to the bishops' permanent council in March; a final protocol will be voted on by all bishops.
Archbishop James Weisgerber of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Bishop Eugene Tremblay of Amos, Quebec, co-chairmen the 10-member task force, presented their report Sept. 22 to the annual meeting of bishops in Cornwall. The task force was created in 2002 in the wake of the clergy sex abuse scandal that engulfed the Catholic Church in the United States.
SOUTH BEND (IN)
The Observer
By Maddie Hanna
Published: Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Speculation about the release of a Vatican document containing restrictions barring homosexuals from entering the priesthood has stirred debate and emotions both across the nation and at Notre Dame.
The restrictions, which would require Vatican representatives to investigate the 229 U.S. seminaries for "evidence of homosexuality," have been reported by news agencies but not been officially confirmed. But R. Scott Appleby, director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and an expert on the Catholic Church's recent sexual abuse scandals, called this possible move by the Vatican "sadly punitive."
"If a gay man feels called to the priesthood, [under the proposed new ruling] he must dissemble, or even lie, about his sexual orientation," Appleby said. "In a sense, the Church would be complicit in a lie."
This, Appleby said, would create an "unhealthy" and repressive climate like the one present in seminaries during the highly publicized scandals of recent years.
"We know how that's an unhealthy situation," Appleby said. "It can even backfire."
The reason for the Vatican's statement stemmed from "the concern that some seminaries in the U.S. are becoming a haven for homosexuals," Appleby said. "And the feeling on the part of some people that heterosexuals are intimidated from entering the seminary, or feel uncomfortable, because it's a gay climate."
Theology professor Father Richard McBrien agreed with the idea that a gay climate exists in seminaries. He said the Church's sexual abuse scandals were a major contributing factor to the proposed restrictions.
"The U.S. cardinals themselves asked for this investigation of seminaries in April 2002, at the height of the sexual abuse scandal," McBrien said. "At the time - and since - there were a number of charges, mainly from ultra-conservative Catholics, that homosexuals in the priesthood were responsible for the sexual abuse, 80 percent of whose victims were boys."
ROME
NPR
by Colin Fogarty
Morning Edition, September 28, 2005 · San Francisco Archbishop William Levada is in his first few weeks as the prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, a position last occupied by Pope Benedict. Levada is the highest-ranking American at the Vatican. Oregon Public Broadcasting's Colin Fogarty reports.
CENTERVILLE (OH)
Dayton Daily News
By Benjamin Kline
Dayton Daily News
CENTERVILLE | The Franciscan order of the Roman Catholic Church is investigating sexual misconduct allegations against the Rev. John Turnbull, 76, a former pastor of St. Francis of Assisi parish in Centerville.
Worshippers heard the news when the Rev. Tom Schmidt, the current pastor, read an official letter at Masses Sept. 10 and 11. A similar letter was read at Holy Family parish at Oldenburg, Ind., where Turnbull has been working the past three years. Toni Cashnelli, spokeswoman for the Franciscans' St. John the Baptist province, Cincinnati, said the accuser is a man who says he was abused while a parochial school student at Streator, Ill., during the late 1970s. The Diocese of Peoria has been informed of the allegation, she said.
No other abuse accusations have been brought but the order welcomes any information, the letter stated. Friar Jim Van Vurst (who can be reached at (513) 721-4700, Ext. 3214) is taking all reports.
Turnbull had pastor or associate pastor jobs at Lafayette, Ind.; Peoria, Fort Wayne and Batesville, Ind., Streator and Cincinnati before he was assigned to the Centerville parish in 1993-2002.
CHICAGO (IL)
Daily Herald
By Stacy St. Clair
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Wednesday, September 28, 2005
The Chicago Archdiocese has found a home in Mundelein for several newly defrocked priests accused of sexual misconduct with minors.
Catholic church officials declined to release exact numbers, but they confirm some of the punished clergymen have been staying on the University of St. Mary of the Lake seminary campus since allegations arose against them. The rest are living in private residences or nursing homes.
A victims advocacy group condemns the decision, saying the archdiocese has not warned residents that the men — who the church believes sexually harmed minors — have moved into the area. Cardinal Francis George also has refused to release the priests’ names, a move critics say could make it easier for them to prey upon children.
“He has a duty to reveal their names to unsuspecting people in the neighborhood,” said Barbara Blaine, president of the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests. “There’s no way these men are monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
DUNEDIN (FL)
St. Petersburg Times
By JACOB H. FRIES
Published September 22, 2005
DUNEDIN - A 50-year-old Dunedin man who supervised teens at a local Catholic church has been arrested on charges that he offered one boy $100 to perform a sex act, Pinellas County sheriff's officials said Wednesday.
The boy, who was doing court-ordered community service at the church, rebuffed the advances, but detectives are investigating whether William Forte had or tried to have inappropriate relations with other juveniles, said sheriff's spokesman Mac McMullen.
Forte was employed at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Dunedin as a facility manager, according to a spokeswoman with the Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg.
Sheriff's officials said Forte also supervised the community service program at the church where he worked.
This is not the first time Forte has been accused of illicit behavior with teens. In 1992, Polk County deputies accused him of showing teens pornography, providing them with alcohol and paying them for sex, records show. He ultimately pleaded guilty to two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and received six months' probation.
DUNEDIN (FL)
News4Jax.com
DUNEDIN, Fla. -- A church employee is accused of soliciting sex in Dunedin.
The Pinellas County Sheriff's office reports that detectives are investigating whether William Forte had or tried to have inappropriate relations with juveniles.
A teenage boy said Forte offered him money to perform a sex act.
A spokeswoman with the Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg said Forte worked at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. Sheriff's officials said Forte also supervised the community service program at the church where he worked.
Records show that Forte has pleaded guilty to two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and received six months' probation in 1992.
DUNEDIN (FL)
St. Petersburg Times
By JACOB H. FRIES
Published September 27, 2005
Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church hired a man now charged with making a lewd proposition to a teenager before seeing the results of his background check, diocesan officials said Monday.
Once received, the check showed William Forte of Dunedin had an arrest record. In 1992, he had been charged in Polk County with showing pornography to six teens, giving them alcohol and paying them for sex. He ultimately pleaded guilty to two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and received six months' probation.
That revelation did not doom Forte's hiring in 2003 as a facilities manager at the Dunedin church, said Vicki Well Bedard, a spokeswoman for the Diocese of St. Petersburg.
"(Forte) was able to assuage their concerns," Bedard said. "They felt his explanation was adequate, and the charges were more than 10 years old. ... They felt satisfied that the case was blown out of portion."
SCOTLAND
Scotsman
Church leaders have said they are to investigate a priest who admitted buying bondage items on the internet.
The Reverend Kenny Macaulay, of St Augustine's Episcopal church in Dumbarton, confessed he had already "raised a few eyebrows" in the community.
He told the Daily Record newspaper he had bought several items from the eBay website, including bondage gear.
A spokesman for the Scottish Episcopal Church said: "The Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway is presently on holiday, but he will obviously be fully briefed on his return and it will be for him to decide what action to take from there.
"Any kind of allegations are taken seriously and will be looked into."
UNITES STATES
International Herald Tribune
By Amy Welborn The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2005
FORT WAYNE, Indiana This week, teams of examiners, led by Edwin O'Brien, archbishop for the U.S. military, are beginning a visitation of all 229 Catholic seminaries in the United States. Judging by press accounts, the effort is all about uncovering and expelling homosexuals - a purge, simply put.
In truth, it's about far more than homosexuality. And it's badly needed.
When you read through the set of questions to be asked of all seminary administrators, faculty and students, you find that there is exactly one question on that issue: "Is there evidence of homosexuality?"
Along with the resurrection of warnings against "particular friendships," that makes two sentences in a document that is 11 pages long and covers a lot of territory: What are the seminary's standards for admission? Is the seminary's spiritual life vibrant and rooted in Catholic tradition? Are seminarians capable of intellectual dialogue with contemporary society?
FLORIDA
The Times-Union
By JEFF BRUMLEY, The Times-Union
The Catholic Diocese of Orlando and the Jacksonville-based Diocese of St. Augustine paid a combined $1.5 million in May to settle sexual abuse claims involving two priests who molested three altar boys "countless times" during the late 1960s and early 1970s, according to an attorney for the victims.
Diocesan officials deliberately ignored the actions of the Revs. Vernon F. Uhran and Hubert Reason while their abuses were occurring, said the victims' Miami-based lawyer, Adam Horowitz.
Reason is deceased and Uhran is living in the Orlando area but is no longer in active ministry, Horowitz said.
The settlement remained a secret on the First Coast until it was referred to in a Sept. 12 news release announcing the filing of two new sexual molestation lawsuits against the Orlando Diocese.
Those lawsuits seek a total of $10 million on behalf of two additional former child victims of Uhran.
DUNEDIN (FL)
St. Petersburg Times
A Times Editorial
Published September 28, 2005
What good is it to check the background of a potential employee if you hire the individual before getting the results of the checks?
Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Dunedin apparently thought it was important to do background checks on people who applied for jobs at the church. The process was in place to perform the checks.
But then the church turned the process into a useless exercise. In 2003, the church simply didn't wait for the results when filling the job of facilities manager. Now it is paying a heavy price.
Our Lady of Lourdes went ahead and offered the job of facilities manager to William Forte. That was the church's first mistake. Then it compounded the error when, after the background check revealed an arrest record, church officials trusted Forte's explanation that the charges amounted to nothing. We'll hazard a guess that a big percentage of people with arrest records would deny their guilt, especially to their employer. Forte did do something wrong, and what he did should have kept him from getting the job at Our Lady of Lourdes.
In 1992, Forte was charged with six counts of showing obscene materials to minors, six counts of soliciting for prostitution and seven counts of giving liquor to minors. The charges followed allegations by six teenagers and an investigation by the Polk County Sheriff's Office. The teens told authorities that over a two-year period, they visited Forte in his home, where he gave them drinks made from vodka and orange juice, showed them pornographic movies and paid them for sex acts.
ST. LOUIS (MO)
365Gay.com
Posted: September 27, 2005 9:00 pm ET
(St Louis, Missouri) "Are you, or have you ever been, a homosexual?" That is the question that Vatican investigators began asking this week at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis.
The seminary is the first in the country to face the scrutiny of inquisitors in their investigation of gays in American seminaries.
The president of Aquinas, Father Charles Bouchard, said he is opposed to the line of questioning but has no choice but to allow the investigators to probe students.
"Some people do feel homosexuality would disqualify a student. I hope we can provide evidence that should not be the case," he told a news conference.
DENVER (CO)
9 News
DENVER - The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, is calling on the Denver Archdiocese to publicly reveal the names of church leaders who have abused children.
SNAP members handed out flyers Tuesday, outside the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. The group is encouraging parishioners to call Archbishop Charles Chaput and urge him to post the names of known sexual predators on the church website.
"This is not about vengeance. This is not about a witch hunt. This is about protecting children and we believe that should be the priority of this Archdiocese" said SNAP President Barbara Blaine.
ST. JOSEPH (MO)
TheKansasCityChannel.com
ST. JOSEPH, Mo. -- The name of a priest who died in 2002 will be removed temporarily from the chapel at a Boy Scout camp, at the request of people who allege that the Rev. Sylvester Hoppe had sexually abused them years ago.
According to a news release issued by the Pony Express Council of the Boy Scouts of America, the board of directors voted Monday to make the change at Camp Geiger "pending further information regarding accusations of abuse" made against the priest.
Hoppe, ordained in 1946, served parishes throughout northwest Missouri and was active in Scouting for 75 years. The chapel at the camp in St. Joseph was named for him in 1999.
"Father Hoppe loved Scouting," council president Bill McMurray said in a statement. "It is our belief that if Father Hoppe were alive today, he would have been the first to request the removal of his name from the chapel because he never would have wanted this controversy to negatively impact Scouting or the youth in our council."
NEWTON (MA)
Newton Tab
By Bernie Smith/ Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of supporters of Rev. Walter Cuenin are expected to march this Sunday on Archbishop Sean O'Malley's residence at the Boston Chancery in protest to the removal of the popular pastor and archdiocesan critic.
Cuenin, who had been the pastor of the Our Lady's Help of Christians Church since 1993, has been forced to resign his post amid accusations of financial mismanagement, a charge his supporters dispute.
The archdiocese has alleged Cuenin accepted monthly stipends in excess of what is permissible by its rules, and was improperly given use of a parish-leashed car. Cuenin accepted the archdiocese's decision, and has called on his supporters to accept it as well.
PITTSBURGH (PA)
Post-Gazette
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Three advocates for victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests met with Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. yesterday, asking for a grand jury investigation into the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.
The meeting came on the heels of a Philadelphia grand jury report that castigated the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for past failure to remove such priests, though the cases were too old to prosecute.
The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, a national group, pointed out that Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, archbishop of Philadelphia from 1988 to 2003, was bishop of Pittsburgh from 1983 to 1988.
"Only the most naive would believe that abuse, deceit and cover-up in Pittsburgh's Catholic hierarchy suddenly and magically ended with Bevilacqua's departure," said a letter that activists presented to Zappala. They held a news conference outside the courthouse after earlier leafletting outside St. Paul Cathedral in Oakland, and Zappala invited them in.
PITTSBURGH (PA)
Tribune-Review
By Jason Cato
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
No evidence has turned up of former Bishop Anthony Bevilacqua hiding sexual abuses by priests in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County's top prosecutor said Tuesday, so there's no reason to launch an investigation like the one in Philadelphia that found Bevilacqua had concealed abuses in that archdiocese.
Should information surface otherwise, his office is prepared to investigate, said Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr.
Zappala met for more than an hour yesterday with members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests -- or SNAP -- at his Downtown office. Members urged him to conduct his own grand-jury investigation into any potential wrongdoing in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.
"We're convinced there are dozens and dozens of men and women who have been abused in this diocese who have not come forward," said David Clohessy, national director of SNAP, following his meeting with Zappala.
PITTSBURGH (PA)
WTAE
PITTSBURGH -- At two local events Tuesday, clergy molestation victims will urge the Allegheny County district attorney to convene a grand jury in the wake of last week's Philadelphia grand jury report on sex abuse (contains explicit material).
SNAP -- the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests -- wants local Catholics to read what they called a "scathing report."
The group will gather on Tuesday at 11:45 a.m. outside St. Paul's Cathedral, and at 2:15 p.m. outside the City-County building/Allegheny County District Attorney's Office.
As Catholics enter Mass, victims will hand out flyers urging parishioners to read the Philadelphia grand jury report, ask friends and family if they were hurt by abusive Pittsburgh area clergy, report any suspicions or information about sex crimes by priests and nuns to police, and call state lawmakers and insist on legislative reforms that would prevent future abuse. After a news conference, victims will try to hand-deliver a letter to prosecutors urging Allegheny County District Attorney to convene a similar grand jury investigation into the Pittsburgh diocese, and publicly call on victims and witnesses to come forward.
UNITED STATES
National
By WILLIAM V. D’ANTONIO
Our research teams have carried out four surveys of American Catholics. The first survey in the spring of 1987 was carried out in anticipation of Pope John Paul II’s second visit to the United States. Our fourth survey was carried out following his death just after this past Easter and coincident with the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the papacy as Benedict XVI. The four surveys were carried out by the Gallup Organization in six-year intervals, always in the weeks immediately following Easter. This 18-year time period has enabled us to track trends of change as well as areas of relative stability in the beliefs, practices and attitudes of American Catholics.
One of the major concerns we had as we awaited the results of this survey was the impact of the sexual abuse scandal first exposed in 2002, a scandal that continues to occupy church officials and laity alike around the country. We wondered how this scandal might affect the attitudes and commitments of Catholics. Several of the essays to follow will make clear that this scandal has had little measurable impact. The patterns of beliefs and commitments we reported in our story in NCR in October 1999 have been quite stable.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By John Grogan
Inquirer Columnist
Cardinal Justin Rigali doesn't see the value in everyone reading the grand jury report documenting decades of child sexual abuse perpetuated by priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
He really doesn't see the value in Catholic families reading it.
It would all be too painful. The 418-page report is just too "graphic" for Catholics to be exposed to. So many unpleasant details.
"I don't think it's of value to families," he told The Inquirer last week.
Not of value? He's kidding, right? He can't be serious.
After decades of church secrecy, cover-ups, deceit and stonewalling, the cardinal's response to this institutional mortal sin is... ?
Look away from the light, O faithful. Don thy blinders!
Unbelievable.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Centre Daily
How can they get away with it?
That's the natural, frustrated reaction to the scathing, Philadelphia grand jury report released last week on decades of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests.
Despite findings that dozens of clergy committed hundreds of sexual assaults against children - attacks that church leaders later covered up - the grand jury and Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham concluded that no one can be brought to justice.
Statute limits and gaps in state law preclude any charges against the clergy or their superiors, the grand jury said.
If only the abusive priests and Archdiocese of Philadelphia officials had parked illegally.
How's that?
Well, the Philadelphia Parking Authority is on a drive to collect more than $8 million in unpaid parking tickets.
SEATTLE (WA)
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STAFF
Nine men have filed a lawsuit alleging a long-standing pattern of sexual and physical abuse against emotionally vulnerable boys at a Roman Catholic orphanage and high school overseen by the Seattle Archdiocese.
Between 1950 and 1979, the suit says, priests at Briscoe Memorial School in Kent and O'Dea High School in Seattle beat and raped youngsters. A half-dozen priests are named.
"Abuses were systemic and pervasive," the suit says. "Boys were constantly subjected to appalling acts of physical violence and sexual abuse."
A spokesman for the archdiocese did not return calls seeking comment Tuesday. However, in response to previous allegations about Briscoe, the archdiocese has denied responsibility, pointing out that the New York-based teaching order Christian Brothers Institute had sole possession and management of the school, which closed in 1970.
BOSTON (MA)
Boston Operation Rescue
As previously reported, we wrote to Archbishop O'Malley about Father Walter Cuenin and his parish's "Gay Pride Parade" participation--for the third consecutive year! The archbishop was "very disturbed by the information," according to a letter from Bishop Lennon. Well, apparently action has been taken--it's about time!--and Father Cuenin has been removed from his pastorate.
Father Cuenin read a statement at yesterday's Mass. He said in the statement that he was removed for leasing a car in violation of archdiocesan policy(!). No comment from the archdiocese, but Bishop Lennon's letter implies what the real reason was. Hopefully, the Archdiocese will clarify this.
BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe
By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff | September 28, 2005
In an indication that a Newton pastor's position on gay rights may have played a role in his ouster, a conservative website has posted a letter from a top archdiocesan official saying that Roman Catholic Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley had been ''very disturbed" by an accusation that the pastor had invited parishioners to consider marching in a gay-rights parade in Boston last spring.
O'Malley's spokesman said last night he could not authenticate the letter, which is posted on the website of the antiabortion organization Operation Rescue Boston, but he insisted that the archbishop sought the resignation of the Rev. Walter H. Cuenin from his post as pastor of Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Newton solely because of financial improprieties, and not because of church politics.
''I can't vouch for this letter's authenticity, but it doesn't change the dynamics of what happened here, which is that Father Cuenin broke archdiocesan policy, and by virtue of his agreeing to reimburse us, he obviously concurs," said the spokesman, Terrence C. Donilon. ''Seventy-five thousand dollars is a lot of money, and we cannot ignore the financial piece of this. We cannot allow one pastor to operate under a separate set of guidelines or rules."
IOWA CITY (IA)
Press-Citizen
By The Associated Press
A former Roman Catholic Bishop accused of sexually abusing minors as a priest and principal in Iowa City wants the judge assigned to his case replaced.
Attorneys for former Bishop Lawrence Soens, who retired as Bishop in the Sioux City Diocese in 1998, is defending allegations in at least two lawsuits that he molested minors 40 years ago while serving as principal at Regina High School.
Through his lawyer, Soens has denied the allegations, which accuse him of ordering students to private meetings in his principal's office where he engaged in improper sexual conduct.
In motions filed recently in Scott County District Court, Soens seeks to have Judge C.H. Pelton disqualified and a new judge appointed to the cases.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Tom Ferrick Jr.
Inquirer Columnist
The archdiocese's campaign to discredit the Philadelphia grand jury's report on priests who sexually abused children has landed with a thud.
No one is buying it.
Not the public. Not most Roman Catholic clergy. More important, not the 1.4 million-plus Catholics in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
They do not believe the grand jury convened by District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham was a biased, vile, anti-Catholic Inquisition, to summarize the church's lawyers' line.
They do not believe Cardinal Justin Rigali's assertion that the church has reformed and has in place the procedures to assure this never happens again.
They are not placated by Rigali's mea culpa letter that was circulated or read in parishes over the weekend.
They are furious at the five dozen priest/abusers revealed in last week's grand jury report.
But they correctly see this as two tales intertwined: one about human frailty, the other about the institutional failings.
Which makes them even angrier at the diocesan hierarchy - including Cardinals John Krol and Anthony J. Bevilacqua - for their handling of the cases, also known as the cover-up.
As one Catholic I talked to aptly put it: "The cardinals didn't attack the kids, but they drove the getaway cars."
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By David O'Reilly and Jim Remsen
Inquirer Staff Writers
Three hundred priests of the Philadelphia Archdiocese met yesterday with Cardinal Justin Rigali, a 90-minute conclave at which some challenged his defense of the previous archbishops named in a grand jury report on clergy sex abuse.
Priests attending the meeting at the chapel of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood said afterward that Rigali told them that "mistakes were made" by the archdiocese in its handling of abusers and victims.
But, "nobody's perfect... . No one is without sin," Rigali reportedly added. His remarks, which echoed those he has made since the report was issued one week ago, reportedly irked some of the priests, who told him so.
One pastor took to the microphone to say he was "greatly disappointed in the archdiocese's weak and deplorable" defense of Cardinals John Krol and Anthony J. Bevilacqua.
The criticism was greeted with scattered applause, sources said.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News
By RAMONA SMITH
smithra@phillynews.com
Two of the priests singled out in last week's grand jury report on sex abuse of children by area clergy will no longer be saying Mass in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
Amid furor over the extent of the depravity and accusations that Catholic officials had looked the other way, Cardinal Justin Rigali has removed from their jobs the only two active clergy among those named in the grand jury probe.
Until Sunday, the Rev. Robert L. Brennan, alleged to have had "inappropriate contact" with more than 20 boys, and Rev. John H. Mulholland, subject of reports involving sado-masochism and human excrement, were assigned as chaplains at homes for the sick or elderly.
But in a statement yesterday, the archdiocese noted the two "have been the focus of extraordinary attention."
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News
By DANA DiFILIPPO
difilid@phillynews.com
When the Rev. Frank Giliberti won more than $1 million at an Atlantic City casino 17 years ago, the portly priest promised to give it all away.
He funded a pricey remodel of his Wynnefield church, set up a scholarship fund for poor high-schoolers and spread the wealth to other needy causes.
Now, it seems, he was just doing penance.
The retired cleric was one of 63 priests blasted in a report the district attorney released last week detailing decades of sexual abuse by priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
Giliberti, now 68 and living in a Darby nursing home for retired priests, is accused of running a so-called anti-masturbation "boot camp" at his Jersey shore house where he walked in on boys as they masturbated. He also allegedly abused at least two boys while he was still a seminarian and another two who were his students at Cardinal O'Hara High School, in Springfield, Delaware County.
WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette
By Kathleen A. Shaw TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
kshaw@telegram.com
WORCESTER— The Rev. Robert M. Hoatson, a priest of the Newark, N.J., Catholic diocese, plans to demonstrate at 6 tonight outside the upper gate of the College of the Holy Cross during a speech by the Rev. Daniel Berrigan S.J..
The college is celebrating its Jesuit heritage this week.
Rev. Hoatson has vowed to demonstrate regularly at the college until the administration changes the name of its Millard Art Center, named after a priest whom Rev. Hoatson has called a “serial sexual predator.” A previous demonstration about the name was held Aug. 30.
Rev. Hoatson, president and founder of Rescue and Recovery International, an organization that gives services to survivors of clergy sexual abuse, recently wrote to Rev. Berrigan and asked him to cancel the speech. He also asked Rev. Barrigan not participate in Holy Cross events until the college changes the name of the art center. He said he did not expect Rev. Berrigan to agree.
Rev. Berrigan will speak at 7 in the Hogan Campus Center on “Poetry and Peacemaking in the Warmaking State.”
During his demonstration at the college, Rev. Hoatson will carry a sign and hand out fliers voicing his concern about the art center’s name. He said he wants to “conscientize the Holy Cross community and those who will be in attendance.”
Rev. Hoatson comes into the area regularly because he is supporting a group of alleged victims of Monsignor Fred Ryan in the Boston area. He also has been visiting with a survivor of clergy sexual abuse who is incarcerated at the federal prison at Devens and is helping a Northampton woman who is an alleged victim of clergy sexual abuse.
For the Holy Cross demonstrations, Rev. Hoatson is acting in support of Patricia A. Cahill of Lancaster, Pa.., who has consistently maintained she was sexually abused as a child by the priest for whom the building is named. The Rev. Daniel F.M. Millard, who died more than 30 years ago, was her uncle. Although she received compensation from the Camden, N.J., diocese for counseling related to this alleged abuse, other Millard family members have steadfastly denied any occurrence of abuse by this priest.
Rev. Berrigan himself is no stranger to demonstrations. He has been arrested as part of civil disobedience actions in his quest for peace and he is one of the Catonsville Nine demonstrators who were arrested in Maryland after burning draft records to protest the Vietnam war.
The Holy Cross administration has said that, although it takes allegations of sexual abuse seriously, after talking with Millard family members it will not change the name of the art center.
CLEVELAND (OH)
The Plain Dealer
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
David Briggs
Plain Dealer Religion Reporter
The Vatican may be on the verge of delivering a stunning setback to homosexuals in the Catholic Church, but a ban on celibate gay seminarians cannot stop the momentum for gay and lesbian rights among the nation's religious groups, advocates for change say.
Members of a national interfaith coalition on gay rights in religion concluded a two-day strategy meeting Tuesday in Cleveland, condemning a proposed Vatican document that they say links homosexuality with pedophilia.
However, leaders seeking change in faiths from Catholicism to Islam to mainline Protestantism said the decision of the Episcopal Church to stand behind its election of a gay bishop and the United Church of Christ's vote to endorse same-sex marriages is part of a "great awakening" on gay rights issues.
ST. LOUIS (MO)
Post-Dispatch
By Bill McClellan
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
09/28/2005
On the day that the Vatican's gay-hunters began their work here in St. Louis, I received a letter from a priest I admire.
"I am a Roman Catholic priest from the Archdiocese of St. Louis who happens to be gay," he wrote. "When it comes to my Church and her teachings on homosexuality, I cannot help but find myself both hurt and ashamed. I, like so many theologians, fellow priests, sisters, and Americans, find the Church's teaching regarding homosexuality inconsistent with the broader understanding of human dignity, respect and equality.
"The Church chooses in matters of sexuality to bring very literal interpretations to isolated passages of Scripture as a proof-text for a static, narrow interpretation of natural law. Any point of view that slightly differs or is critical of the current teaching on homosexuality is automatically excluded from discussion. Thus the teaching on homosexuality grows more and more insulated and isolated from the actual experience of human life and the moral reflections of other serious persons of faith and good will. Every day, the Church, which I love so much, appears in her words and actions more prejudiced, violent and evil toward gay persons. To add insult to injury, the Church masks its own violence against gay persons in the language of 'love,' maintaining that by boldly proclaiming timeless truth to a relativistic world, she is remaining faithful to the Gospel and showing true compassion to persons with homosexual tendencies.
IOWA CITY (IA)
Gazette
Published: 09/27/2005 2:00 PM
By: Associated Press - Associated Press
IOWA CITY, IA - A former Roman Catholic Bishop accused of sexually abusing minors as a priest and principal in eastern Iowa wants the judge assigned to his case replaced.
Attorneys for former Bishop Lawrence Soens, who retired as Bishop in the Sioux City Diocese in 1998, is defending allegations in at least two lawsuits that he molested minors 40 years ago while serving as principal at Regina High School, a Catholic school in Iowa City.
Through his lawyer, Soens has denied the allegations, which accuse him of ordering students to private meetings in his principal's office where he engaged in improper sexual conduct.
PITTSBURGH (PA)
Penn Live
9/27/2005, 6:47 p.m. ET
By SEAN D. HAMILL
The Associated Press
PITTSBURGH (AP) — During a private meeting Tuesday with three clergy sex abuse victims, Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr. did not rule out convening a grand jury similar to one that investigated the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
The impromptu, hour-long meeting with Zappala surprised and pleased members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, who had only hoped to leave a letter with the county's top prosecutor.
"It was a real honest exchange," said David Clohessy, SNAP's national director and himself a victim of abuse by a priest. "We just hope we see some real concrete follow up."
He said Zappala promised to read the 418-page report released by a grand jury last week that roundly criticized how the Philadelphia Archdiocese dealt with sexual abuse allegations.
"I hope he uses his bully pulpit and makes a public comment about it," Clohessy said.
In an interview after the meeting, Zappala said he wasn't sure a grand jury was warranted in Allegheny County, but he will ask his counterpart in Philadelphia "why it was warranted there."
PITTSBURGH (PA)
KDKA
Sep 27, 2005 5:37 pm US/Eastern
Pittsburgh (KDKA) A grand jury in Philadelphia issued a blistering report about child sexual abuse by Catholic priests in their diocese last week.
A former Pittsburgh bishop is being held accountable.
A group representing victims was lobbying prosecutors in Pittsburgh to convene a grand jury on similar cases.
The group calls itself "Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests," or "SNAP."
The Philadelphia grand jury's report was damning - particularly the actions of former Pittsburgh Bishop, now Cardinal, Anthony Bevilaqua. The investigation found that during Bevilaqua's time as leader of the archdiocese there he allegedly covered up dozens of cases of priests sexually abusing children.
SNAP members were passing out flyers in Oakland before noon mass at St. Paul Cathedral.
“Only a fool would believe that somehow Bevilaqua's behavior changed radically when he went to Philadelphia,” said SNAP director David Clohessy. “Of course, he was doing the same things here.”
Juliann Bortz of Allentown contends that she was molested at age 13 by a Catholic priest and that it still haunts her.
“He took his collar off and said, 'while we're here don't call me Father, call me Frank,” said Juliann Bortz, one of the alleged victims. “Oh it affected every part of my life.
MISSOURI
The Kansas City Star
MARY SANCHEZ
My favorite priest was gay.
I never knew that when he was alive.
Few did.
Father Thom Savage died of AIDS in 1999.
So this can be said about him now, without fear that new decrees from the Vatican will out him, somehow canceling his work for God.
The Vatican plans to send investigators to the 229 seminaries in the United States. Even gay men who remain celibate will not be allowed to become priests. How they will determine who is and who isn’t gay is not being disclosed.
The decree is not retroactive, so homosexuals already ordained can apparently remain priests.
I wonder how Father Savage would have fared under such policies.
CEDAR RAPIDS (IA)
Courier
By PAT KINNEY, Courier Business Editor
CEDAR RAPIDS --- The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dubuque has agreed to turn over to a federal magistrate judge more than 200 church documents pertaining to priests accused in three civil suits of sexually abusing young people in Waterloo and elsewhere from the early 1940s through the late 1970s, according to a court order issued late last week.
Federal magistrate John Jarvey will then review the documents in chambers to determine if any of them can be used in the civil suits, according to the order.
Waterloo attorneys Chad Swanson and Tom Staack had asked the court in September to compel the archdiocese to turn over documents pertaining to the three federal civil suits.
The archdiocese objected to the documents being used in court, citing protections under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Iowa Constitution and victim-privacy and third-party privileges. But the archdiocese agreed to the in-chambers inspection, according to Jarvey's order, issued Thursday.
IOWA
Des Moines Register
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 27, 2005
A former Roman Catholic Bishop accused of sexually abusing minors as a priest and principal in eastern Iowa wants the judge assigned to his case replaced.
Attorneys for former Bishop Lawrence Soens, who retired as Bishop in the Sioux City Diocese in 1998, is defending allegations in at least two lawsuits that he molested minors 40 years ago while serving as principal at Regina High School, a Catholic school in Iowa City.
Through his lawyer, Soens has denied the allegations, which accuse him of ordering students to private meetings in his principal’s office where he engaged in improper sexual conduct.
In motions filed recently in Scott County District Court, Soens seeks to have Judge C.H. Pelton disqualified and a new judge appointed to the cases.
Pelton was appointed last year to preside over the consolidation of more than 30 sexual abuse lawsuits involving priests from the Davenport Diocese, none of which named Soens.
Most of those cases were resolved before trial when the diocese agreed to pay $9 million to settle 37 lawsuits. Pelton also presided over a pair of jury trials involving two different priests. In both cases, the jury awarded monetary damages to the victims.
But Soens contends Pelton should be replaced claiming key rulings he made in those cases were wrong.
BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe
By Brian McGrory, Globe Columnist | September 27, 2005
Let's see if I have this right. The Catholic Church is facing a severe shortage of priests. Sunday Mass is so empty it's starting to look like a meeting of the Cambridge Republican Club. The contribution basket has been coming up nearly empty.
So what does Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley do? Here's exactly what he does: He fires the popular pastor at one of the most successful parishes in the entire state, a rare church constantly filled with communicants, bustling with weddings, brimming with christenings, welcoming to people of all types. A priest who should be held up as an example is cut down in shame.
But that's not all. Rather than be up front with parishioners, rather than explain that the Rev. Walter Cuenin is being relieved of his Newton post because his views on hot-button topics such as homosexuality and women differ markedly with those of Catholic leaders, rather than just admit that Cuenin was never a favorite among higher-ups because he was so critical of the church during the sex scandal, O'Malley chose a markedly different path. He chose to smear Cuenin for driving a parish-funded, parish-approved lease car.
That's right: After silently shuffling pedophiles from one town to another to prey on fresh batches of children, the archdiocese is finally cracking down on wayward priests -- for driving Hondas.
CHICAGO (IL)
Sun-Times
September 27, 2005
BY MAUREEN O'DONNELL Staff Reporter
The Vatican has affirmed Cardinal Francis George's decision to remove from public ministry 11 priests accused of sexual misconduct with minors, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago said Monday.
"We've notified the parishes where they served, so there is some finality to this," said Archdiocesan Chancellor Jimmy M. Lago. For the victims, "I suppose there's some positive sense that 'the archdiocese believes us.' ''
The 11 are living "in restricted, monitored settings," Lago said. Most are in a retreat house in Mundelein, while a few are in assisted living facilities, he said.
The Vatican's decision formalizes the men's removal from public ministry. They can't wear collars, won't be called "father" and are barred from performing masses, funerals, weddings or teaching, Lago said.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Bishop Accountability
You and I have witnessed so many terrible things during the Catholic crisis, that sometimes it feels like we've seen the worst. But the news from Philadelphia is in a totally new and horrible category - not because Philly is unique, but because a grand jury was uniquely determined and patient, and had unique access to a secret archive. And because courageous survivors described their abuse in unsparing detail.
BishopAccountability.org has posted an easy-to-use Web edition of this important document. Philadelphia Grand Jury Report: User-Friendly Edition.
ILLINOIS
Southwest News-Herald
Ray Hanania
Is the Catholic Archdiocese a “government within a government?”
That may be true in Italy, where the Vatican has its own laws and police, but is it true in America?
Is it true that if a pedophile is wearing Catholic vestments, he can be protected from the laws of this country?
Pedophilia is a serious crime. Sexual assault of adults AND children is a serious crime. All are prosecuted, unless, of course, you happen to be among the privileged few who work for the Catholic Archdiocese not just in Chicago but across the nation.
I can only image the charges that would be filed and the high profile announcements the Illinois Attorney General or the U.S. Attorney might make if the pedophiles were not Catholic Priests but religious leaders at an Islamic Mosque or a Rabbi at a Synagogue.
So why isn’t anyone exploring the possibility of filing charges against the priests who have been identified — reluctantly and belatedly by the Catholic Archdiocese — as having sexually abused children, mainly young boys?
NEW BEDFORD (MA)
Boston Globe
September 27, 2005
NEW BEDFORD, Mass. --A New Bedford priest has pleaded guilty to storing hundreds of images of child pornography on a computer and tricking a 16-year-old into filming himself performing a sex act.
The Rev. Stephen A. Fernandes, 55, entered the plea on charges of possession and distribution of child pornography and posing a child in a state of nudity during a hearing at New Bedford Superior Court on Monday. Judge Robert Kane said he needed to review the case further before sentencing Fernandes.
Prosecutors asked for a three-year prison sentence, but Kane said his sentence would be lighter than prosecutors requested.
Fernandes has been suspended as pastor of Our Lady of Fatima Church. Fernandes is still technically a priest, but is not allowed to act as a representative of the church, according to a spokesman for the diocese.
Assistant District Attorney Joan Fund said Fernandes had about 650 pictures and 114 videos of children engaging in sex acts. She also said that he used an instant messaging service to pretend he was a 19-year-old woman and coerced a 16-year-old boy to film himself performing a sex act.
MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Herald
By Boston Herald editorial staff
Monday, September 26, 2005 - Updated: 01:44 PM EST
Defrocked priest Paul Shanley, a child rapist, is sitting in a jail cell today. Most right-minded people would agree that's exactly where he should be.
But Shanley is behind bars in large measure because of luck, and that should trouble anyone concerned about justice for victims of child rape.
Thanks to a loophole in state law, when Shanley left the Bay State in 1990 for sunny California, the statute of limitations on his crimes stopped ticking. Had he stayed in Massachusetts all that time, he probably wouldn't have faced prosecution because his accuser took years to report the crime. Lawmakers have the opportunity to right that wrong, and they should take it.
For years, child advocates have been calling for elimination of the 15-year statute of limitations in cases of child rape and certain other sex crimes – a law that has kept dozens of accused priests and others from facing criminal prosecution, since their accusers typically didn't report the crimes until adulthood.
PENNSYLVANIA
The Reporter
JACOB FENTON, Staff Writer 09/27/2005
The Philadelphia Archdiocese on Sunday ended the assignment of a priest accused of molesting at least six seventh-grade boys at St. Mary Elementary School in Schwenksville between 1989 and 1990.
Robert L. Brennan‚ accused of molesting a total of more than 20 boys from four different parishes‚ was relieved of his assignment as chaplain at a retirement home for nuns‚ the archdiocese said in a brief statement Monday.
Citing the “extraordinary attention” Brennan and another priest had received‚ the archdiocese said the two would remain without assignments until “such time as a permanent‚ long-term plan can be determined.”
The other priest‚ John H. Mulholland‚ was described in the Philadelphia grand jury’s report released last week on the clergy sex scandal as “sick and dangerous” and accused of having “strung up” a young boy and “piercing him or at least jabbing him with some instrument all over his body.”
ALBANY (NY)
Albany Times Union
By MICHELE MORGAN BOLTON, Staff writer
First published: Tuesday, September 27, 2005
ALBANY -- As expected, a former Christian Brothers Academy teacher accused of having sex with a 16-year-old student took a plea deal on Monday, landing a 6-month jail term and 10 years' probation.
"Obviously, nobody's happy with the situation," said defense attorney Donald Kinsella. "I don't think confinement is the issue," he said. "Alcohol is the nature of her problem."
Based on time served and merit credit, Sandra Beth Geisel will be released about two weeks after her Nov. 21 sentencing.
The 42-year-old mother of four will be listed on the state Sex Offender Registry and receive treatment for alcohol and mental health issues.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News
By RAMONA SMITH
smithra@phillynews.com
Two of the priests singled out in last week's grand jury report on sex abuse of children by area clergy will no longer be saying Mass in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
Amid furor over the extent of the depravity and accusations that Catholic officials had looked the other way, Cardinal Justin Rigali has removed from their jobs the only two active clergy among those named in the grand jury probe.
Until Sunday, the Rev. Robert L. Brennan, alleged to have had "inappropriate contact" with more than 20 boys, and Rev. John H. Mulholland, subject of reports involving sado-masochism and human excrement, were assigned as chaplains at homes for the sick or elderly.
But in a statement yesterday, the archdiocese noted the two "have been the focus of extraordinary attention."
"After the two priests were consulted, Cardinal Rigali has relieved them of their assignments...," the archdiocese said. They were not, however, ousted from the priesthood. The archdiocese did not point, in its explanation, to any alleged misdeeds.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By David O'Reilly
Inquirer Staff Writer
In a turnaround, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia yesterday announced that it had removed two nursing-home chaplains who had sadomasochistic or otherwise inappropriate physical relationships with teen boys in years past.
Both men were identified Wednesday in a Philadelphia grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse in the archdiocese that blasted two previous archbishops for systematically concealing the crimes.
The lengthy report assails the archdiocese's reassigning abusive priests and failing to notify the communities where they were placed. The report questions why the Revs. John H. Mulholland, 66, and Robert L. Brennan, 67, were allowed to stay in ministry despite evidence of the two men's proclivities.
After the report was released last week, Donna Farrell, the archdiocese's spokeswoman, said a special review board had studied Brennan's and Mulholland's cases and concluded that their actions had not crossed the threshold of sexual abuse, allowing them to remain in ministry.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Frederick Cusick
Inquirer Staff Writer
Catholic laypeople, angered by last week's grand jury report alleging sexual abuse by priests and cover-ups by the Philadelphia Archdiocese, unloaded on Cardinal Justin Rigali last night as he gave a talk at Villanova University.
Rigali gave an hour-long talk on a 40-year-old Vatican social document named "Gaudium et Spes," which translates from Latin as "Joy and Hope." He found little of either during the beginning of the question-and-answer period that followed his speech, presented before about 200 people in the school's Connelly Center.
The first questioner, Judy Gray, noted that Rigali had mentioned "human dignity" 37 times in his speech. She wanted to know how that squared with his support of "criminal cardinals who have protected oral and anal rape."
Rigali defended his predecessors, Cardinals Anthony J. Bevilacqua and John Krol, against charges that they orchestrated cover-ups.
"I think I will have to leave this judgment to God," Rigali, who has apologized for the sexual transgressions, responded to Gray's question.
"I'm sure you will. I'm sure you will," Gray countered. "You're a phony!"
Asked later why she had attacked Rigali at a public meeting, Gray, from St. Philip Neri parish in Lafayette Hill, said: "Where else? I can't get to him. I've written him a million times."
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Monica Yant Kinney
Inquirer Columnist
Now that I know more than I ever wanted to about pedophile priests in Philadelphia, I realize how little we've learned about their criminal counterparts across the river.
Depravity knows no boundaries, but at least in Pennsylvania it has a name.
Make that 63 names.
A grand jury - giving new meaning to civic duty - spent two years digesting nauseating allegations of sexual abuse by clergy in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
In all, jurors heard complaints about 169 priests since 1967.
Writing about them all would have taken a decade.
Instead, the grand jury's blistering 418-page report focused on the 63 abusers whose cases best illustrated the depth of the scandal and breadth of the cover-up.
It made for a startling sight: three newspaper pages devoted to smiling men in collars and the trail of tears they left behind.
ALBANY (NY)
Troy Record
Ryan T. Fitzpatrick, The Record 09/27/2005
ALBANY - Sandra Beth Geisel accepted a plea bargain Monday morning, significantly reducing the amount of time she could have spent in jail.
The deal includes a six-month jail sentence followed by 10 years probation for one count of third-degree rape. She also pleaded guilty to an unrelated misdemeanor DWI charge.
A grand jury had indicted the 42-year-old former Christian Brothers Academy English teacher on three counts of third-degree rape and one count of engaging in a criminal sexual act for having sex with a 16-year-old student. She originally pleaded not guilty to the charges, which combined could have resulted in more than 12 years in prison.
Albany County District Attorney David Soares Monday said Geisel did not get off with an easy sentence. "It's absolutely not a light sentence," he said. "A person who has never spent a day in jail will have to spend the next six months in the Albany County Correctional Facility."
NEWTON (MA)
Daily News Tribune
By Jessica Fargen and Bernie Smith
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
As angry parishioners and politicians launched a vigil last night to protest the ouster of the Rev. Walter Cuenin from Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Newton, an Archdiocese of Boston insider was named to replace him.
The Rev. Christopher J. Coyne, who served as the archdiocese spokesman at the height of the clergy sexual abuse scandal, is Our Lady's new pastor as of today.
``I'm going to the parish very excited but also very apprehensive because I know that people are upset,'' Coyne said.
Cuenin was removed late last week. The archdiocese has stated that an audit turned up unauthorized stipends and car expenses paid to Cuenin by the parish totaling more than $75,000. Many church critics contend Cuenin's questioning of the church hierarchy and outspoken support for gay rights led to his ouster. ...
State Sen. Jarrett Barrios (D-Cambridge) said that when priests protested the handling of the sex-abuse crisis, ``The leader of those priests was your priest Walter Cuenin . . . while others did nothing, he stood up.''
MANCHESTER (NH)
The Union Leader
MANCHESTER — Sister Kathleen Haight will serve as coordinator of Safe Environment Programs for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester, the diocese announced yesterday.
Haight, a member of the Sisters of Mercy religious order, will assist Safe Environment Coordinators in parishes and schools statewide to implement the diocese’s child safety and sexual abuse policies.
She also will plan and coordinate training sessions for adults, teenagers in ministry with children, and other personal safety programs for children and their parents.
Haight most recently worked in parish ministry at St. Patrick-St. Joachim parish in Newport from 1998 to 2003 and was certified as a pastoral associate in the Manchester diocese.
ST. LOUIS (MO)
Post-Dispatch
By Michele Munz
POST-DISPATCH
09/26/2005
The 25 candidates studying to become priests at Aquinas Institute of Theology were described as "anxious" but not worried Monday as a Vatican team began evaluating how they are prepared intellectually, spiritually and sexually for priesthood.
"Whenever you are under the spotlight, it's difficult," the seminary's president, the Rev. Charles Bouchard, said at a press conference Monday. The students themselves were off limits to reporters, so it was Bouchard who was left to describe their mood.
The seminary on the campus of St. Louis University is in the spotlight because it's the first of 229 seminaries nationwide to be evaluated over the next nine months. The evaluations are in response to a sexual abuse scandal among clergy that began coming to light three years ago and revealed crimes and incidents that were covered up for decades.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Online Journal
By Mel Seesholtz, Ph.D.
Online Journal Contributing Writer
September 27, 2005—Dante reserved the lowest circle of hell—the circle of treachery—for those who violated trust. He placed quite a few priests, church leaders, and popes there. They’ll be getting lots of company . . .
The larger than usual headline of the Philadelphia Inquirer lastThursday read, “An ‘Immoral’ Cover-up.” A grand jury indicted the Philadelphia archdiocese in a 418-page report detailing rampant pedophilia and sexual abuse as well as decades of well planned, sinister cover-up orchestrated by two Philadelphia cardinals, (the late) John Krol and (recently retired) Anthony Bevilacqua. Krol was and Bevilacqua is an outspoken critic of homosexuality and civil rights for gay and lesbian Americans.
NEWTON (MA)
Boston Globe
By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff | September 27, 2005
The Archdiocese of Boston, just days after ousting an outspoken critic of the Catholic hierarchy from the pastorate of one of the most vibrant churches in the region, has appointed the Rev. Christopher J. Coyne, a chancery insider and former spokesman for Cardinal Bernard F. Law and Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley, to take his place.
Parishioners at Our Lady Help of Christians in Newton, already furious over the forced resignation of their longtime pastor, the Rev. Walter H. Cuenin, said they were troubled by the choice because Coyne had been the voice of the church administration during the clergy sexual abuse crisis and the start of the parish closings process.
Cuenin, who had served two consecutive six-year terms as pastor of Our Lady's, announced last weekend that he was resigning after the archdiocese accused him of financial improprieties. The archdiocese said yesterday that Cuenin must now reimburse the church $75,000 to $80,000 for improper financial practices.
But parish leaders, including members of the parish and finance councils, said the archdiocese was selectively enforcing little-known policies. They said those lay-led boards had repeatedly approved the payments, including a $500 monthly payment from the parish for the performance of baptisms, weddings, and funerals, and the parish-financed lease of a Honda Accord that was shared with visiting priests. They also said they believed the arrangements to be fully in compliance with archdiocesan regulations and similar to arrangements at other parishes.
Last night, about 300 parishioners angered over Cuenin's ouster gathered on the front lawn of Our Lady's in the pouring rain, with candles flickering beneath umbrellas and then filed into the church basement where they planned to hold a vigil overnight. When parishioner Margaret Roylance called for ''the immediate reinstatement of Father Walter Cuenin," other members of the parish responded with raucous applause, tears, and foot stomping.
Parish leaders said they believe that Cuenin was targeted for ouster because he was a prominent leader of local priests who helped organize a letter calling for Law to resign, who reached out to gays and lesbians, and who frequently suggested that the church should at least discuss the possibility of ordaining married men and giving greater roles to women. The archdiocese denied that Cuenin was targeted for any reason other than financial improprieties.
PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call
The nation's longest grand jury investigation into priest abuse resulted in a scathing report last week, with Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham underscoring its seriousness: ''When we say abuse, we don't just mean inappropriate touching. We mean child rape.''
The grand jury convened in 2002. Its report documents assaults on minors by more than 60 priests in the Philadelphia Archdiocese since 1945, including 12 who served in the Lehigh Valley region at some point. (The Allentown Diocese was part of the Philadelphia Archdiocese until 1961.) It also describes how two former archbishops, Cardinals Anthony Bevilacqua and John Krol, and now-Allentown Bishop Edward P. Cullen, then chief aide to Cardinal Bevilacqua, covered up the abuse.
Going forward, what matters most is timely state legislative action to better address sex crimes committed against children by clergy and others. State Rep. Jennifer Mann, D-Lehigh, had introduced a bill two months ago to reclassify sex crimes against minors, putting them in the same category as murder, for which a statute-of-limitations law doesn't apply.
Also, state Sen. Lisa Boscola, D-Northampton, should get support for her effort to revive a statute abolition bill that she had sought in 2002. Instead, the Legislature at that time decided to extend the statute of limitations for sexual abuse allegations to a victim's 30th birthday; victims previously only had five years after their 18th birthday to report abuse. There is no question that the crux of the problem for victims of sexual abuse is the state's current limitation on when criminal action can be taken.
UNITED STATES
Mobile Register
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
THE ROMAN Catholic Church is considering rules that would ban gay men from the priesthood -- a decision that, even if controversial, it has the right to make. It would be unfortunate, however, if the debate deflects the church's focus on solving its sex-abuse scandal.
With thousands of U.S. priests having been accused of molesting minors over the years, the church needs to continue to demonstrate that it is cleansing its ranks of pedophiles.
Homosexuality, on the other hand, can be seen as a lesser issue if only because Roman Catholic priests take a vow of celibacy regardless of their sexual orientation.
Some church insiders -- hoping to purge the priesthood of gays -- have tried to link homosexuality and pedophilia, despite research that indicates homosexuals are no more likely than heterosexuals to abuse children. Indeed, the upcoming "instruction" from the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education is part of an evaluation of American seminaries, ordered by the late Pope John Paul II in response to the sex abuse crisis.
SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
San Francisco Chronicle
Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
As the Roman Catholic Church investigates homosexuality among seminary students -- and believers await the Vatican's expected ban on gay priests -- lesbian and gay Catholics are maintaining their faith by focusing on the day-to-day experiences in their parishes.
The church as an institution is separate, they say.
Locally, Most Holy Redeemer Church, a half block from 18th Street, a main artery of the predominantly gay Castro neighborhood, affirms gay congregants. Sunday morning, church leaders greeted almost 400 worshipers -- mainly middle-aged and older men -- with hugs at the door.
During Mass at the bright and well-kept church, the Rev. Stephen Meriwether told parishioners that downtrodden and misunderstood members of the community have long been scorned by the "movers and shakers" in religious leadership, though he never specifically mentioned the Catholic Church, its leaders or recent events.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
phillyburbs.com
The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA - The Archdiocese of Philadelphia said it removed two nursing-home chaplains who had inappropriate physical relationships with teenage boys, a newspaper reported, and questioners after a college talk assailed Cardinal Justin Rigali over the church's handling of alleged sexual abuse by priests.
Rigali spoke Monday night at Villanova University on a Vatican document entitled "Gaudium et Spes" - Latin for "Joy and Hope" - but questioner Judy Gray demanded afterward to know how his talk squared with what she called "criminal cardinals" who protected abusers.
When Rigali said he would leave that judgment to God, Gray retorted, "I'm sure you will. I'm sure you will. You're a phony."
Another speaker in the question-and-answer period, Marian Moran, a former Catholic youth minister, said the cardinal should talk to youths at the parish level about dealing with the problems caused by disclosures in last week's grand jury report alleging sexual abuse by priests and cover-ups by the archdiocese.
"You need to hear this youth. You need to hear that they're hurting and they're very disillusioned," Moran said. Rigali's acknowledged that work needed to be done with young people, but Moran termed that a "poor" answer offering no concrete commitment.
CHICAGO (IL)
The Kansas City Star
BY MANYA A. BRACHEAR
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO - (KRT) - In the final resolution of cases that made headlines at the height of the Catholic church's sex abuse scandal, Cardinal Francis George has permanently removed 11 priests from public ministry because of sexual misconduct with children.
Fourteen Chicago cases had been forwarded to the Vatican for review since the American church's new rules on sex abuse allegations took effect in 2002.
Two others face canonical trials - a local proceeding in front of a panel of priests - because the Vatican determined that their cases required more deliberation. Neither is expected to return to ministry, the Cardinal has said. One priest who would have faced penalties imposed by the Cardinal has died.
The 11 priests had worked in parishes across Cook and Lake Counties in Illinois, and some had held high-ranking positions in the archdiocese. They had already been removed from ministry while their cases were pending. Now they will be expected to live out the remainder of their lives in prayer in a monitored and restricted setting.
NEWTON (MA)
Boston Globe
September 26, 2005
NEWTON, Mass. --A popular Catholic priest removed by the Boston Archdiocese as pastor of the nationally recognized parish he had led for 12 years is the victim of a "witch hunt" designed to weed out clergy critical of the church, a parishioner said on Monday.
The Rev. Walter Cuenin was asked to step down as pastor of Our Lady Help of Christians in Newton for accepting a stipend from the parish and for driving a car leased by the church, both in violation of archdiocesan rules and Canon law, the archdiocese said in a release.
He will be reassigned, according to the archdiocese.
The archdiocese has also asked Cuenin to reimburse the parish between $75,000 and $85,000, which he indicated in a statement he intends to do.
Members of the parish's finance council said they approved both expenditures and were unaware they were in violation of church rules. They also said the archdiocese has audited the church's finances several times -- but not in the past four years -- and never before objected to the stipend or car lease.
"Rev. Cuenin's resignation was requested in accordance with Archdiocesan policy, which is consistently applied throughout the archdiocese," church officials said in a statement.
Cuenin was an outspoken critic of former archbishop Cardinal Bernard Law's handling of the clergy sex abuse crisis.
In 2002, Cuenin was one of 58 Boston-area priests who signed a letter calling for Law's resignation. Cuenin also has publicly criticized policies restricting the roles of women and homosexuals in the church.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
WPVI
Philadelphia, PA Sept. 25, 2005 - Two more priests have been removed from their duties in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
Both were named in last week's Grand Jury report detailing allegations of sexual abuse of children.
Father Robert Brennan and Father John Mulholland were among 63 priests detailed in the report.
CANADA
LifeSite
OTTAWA, September 26, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - On Thursday, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops organization (CCCB) released its report by a task force appointed two years ago by a committee to review a 1992 report on the problem of sexual abuse by priests. The 1992 report, which was never adopted as formal policy, was the result of extensive research by an ad hoc committee appointed in 1989.
The latest report, clearly indicating that Canada’s bishops have badly dropped the ball on the abuse crisis, says the Church in Canada must get tougher on sexual predator priests and become more open, compassionate and accountable to abuse victims. In their Church publications Canadian Catholics have often been told since the 1992 report that the Church in Canada had the problem under control and that Canada’s bishops were well ahead of the Church in the US on the same issue.
The task force conducted interviews with victims of clergy abuse. Its report found "Their [victims'] perception is that the church's actions and the measures it implements are aimed more at preserving the financial and pastoral integrity of the institution, protecting priests, even known abusers, and the systematic challenging of victims, rather than their protection.” These victims, the report continues, “were especially critical of the legal relentlessness of some dioceses toward victims seeking reparation" and that “There was also a strong perception that the bishop is not accountable to anyone”.
ALBANY (NY)
WTEN
(posted: September 26th, 7:15pm) The former Christian Brothers Academy instructor charged with rape strikes a plea deal with prosecutors.
Beth Geisel plead guilty to one of the three counts of rape listed in an indictment against her. She also pled guilty to a DWI arrest from last month, while she was out on bail.
Geisel was facing up to 16 years in jail for the three counts of rape, but in a settlement deal reached Monday morning, her sentence was reduced. Starting this November, she will serve six months in county jail, with ten years probation. Geisel must also register as a sex offender.
ALBANY (NY)
North Country Gazette
A deal has been reached in the Albany County case which gained national attention in which a former English teacher at a Colonie Catholic prep school was charged with having sex with a 16-year-student.
Sandra "Beth"Geisel, 42, of Latham, appeared in Albany City Court Monday to plead guilty to a single charge of felony third degree rape in a deal reached between Albany County prosecutors and her attorney, Donald Kinsella.
She also pleaded guilty to an unrelated charge of driving while intoxicated.
ROTTERDAM (NY)
Fox 23
43 year-old Malcomb Kogut read off a five-page statement today. Kogut, the former music director at Saint Gabriel's Church in Rotterdam, began by saying he was wrong to have had oral sex with a choirboy.
"As the adult, I knew that this young man was under the age of 17...I should not have engaged in such an immoral and illegal act,” says Malcomb Kogut.
But Kogut emphasized it was a one-time thing and so should be given leniency.
"It was a blinded moment of temptation and weakness and I promise it will never happen again,” said Kogut
That wasn't good enough for the mother and father who call that single victim their son. They wanted no leniency shown.
"...A 40-year-old man should not be doing this to a minor...taking, you know, his childhood away from him,” says the victim's mother.
CHICAGO (IL)
Belleville News-Democrat
MEGAN REICHGOTT
Associated Press
CHICAGO - Eleven priests suspected of sexual misconduct with minors have been permanently removed from public ministries, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago said Monday.
The men are banned from presenting themselves as priests, engaging in a public ministry or acting as an agent of the archdiocese, although they have not been removed from the priesthood, said Chancellor Jimmy Lago, who declined to disclose specific allegations or the priests' names or parishes.
The 11 men were among a group of 14 priests whose alleged sexual misconduct was forwarded to Vatican officials two years ago by Cardinal Francis George, archdiocese officials said. One of the priests has died and two other cases will be decided by pending canonical trials.
The Vatican studied the cases last year and authorized George to conduct a review that included opinions from advocates for the priests and advisers, Lago said.
"Cardinal George has determined, based on the information presented, that sexual misconduct did occur," he said.
UTAH
KUTV
FARMINGTON A Syracuse man convicted of inappropriately touching young girls last year in his LDS Primary class will spend at least five years behind bars.
Thirty-three-year-old Aaron Marcos Montoya was sentenced to five years to life on four counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child. He will serve the terms concurrently.
Montoya was found guilty last month of sexually abusing three girls in his Syracuse Primary class for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2004.
CANADA
Anglican Journal
SOLANGE DE SANTIS
STAFF WRITER
The number of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) hearings concerning former students of the Indian residential school system is increasing and the Anglican Church of Canada’s national office is canvassing bishops about a particularly sticky issue that would involve releasing the church from only part of its potential liability.
“The ADR process has sped up in the past few months. They are holding more hearings and processing more claims. And we are being notified of more hearings and asked to send a representative,” said Ellie Johnson, the church’s acting general secretary, in an interview. (When a hearing involves a residential school that was operated by the Anglican church, the plaintiff has the right to request that a church representative be present.)
As of July 25, 2005, the total number of applications received in the ADR process were 1,992, according to the federal government. As of August 30, said Ms. Johnson, about 60 cases concerning Anglican-run schools have been settled, another 50 have ended the hearing process and are awaiting the adjudicator’s report and 35 more ADR hearings are scheduled. In addition, 200 cases that were originally filed in civil courts have been settled before they came to trial. As of the middle of this year, the church had paid out $5.6 million to successful claimants, both in
ARIZONA
Fox 11
10:13 AM MST on Monday, September 26, 2005
By Stephanie Innes / Arizona Daily Star
"Ma and pa management" in the Roman Catholic Church must end, Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of the Diocese of Tucson writes in the Sept. 26 issue of a national Catholic magazine.
"We have learned painfully the problems that can result from poor record-keeping and sloppy administration," Kicanas writes in the weekly publication America, in an article about the end of the local diocese's Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. "Parishes and dioceses need to report their financial status to the community clearly and comprehensively, yet sometimes they do not."
Kicanas describes the Diocese of Tucson, which officially emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week, as a church "purified and humbled, yet more resolved to carry on Christ's work." He says the bankruptcy taught him that the era of "Lone Ranger" ministry is gone and that ordained priests need to work together, pray together and hold each other accountable.
"While working in the seminary, I became acquainted with many diocesan presbyterates served by the seminary. I realized that priests do not easily get along or work well together," he writes. "Some priests bear grudges and harbor anger or resentment for things that have happened to them. Some priests are jealous of others' success. . . . The Chapter 11 experience has convinced me that greater attention needs to be given to priests."
TERRE HAUT (IN)
Tribune-Star
By Stephanie Salter/Tribune-Star
The former Rev. Harry Monroe hasn't served in St. Patrick's parish in Terre Haute since 1981, but members of a national advocacy group for the victims of abuse by priests went house-to-house in the neighborhood Friday in hopes of refreshing people's memory about the one-time youth minister.
Their primary aim is to gather as much information as possible about Monroe, who is a defendant in two lawsuits recently filed in Marion Superior Court in Indianapolis on behalf of two of his alleged victims.
The Archdiocese of Indianapolis is the other defendant.
According to an archdiocesean spokeswoman, Monroe's priestly faculties were revoked in 1984 because of sexual misconduct allegations, and he appears to have had no contact with its office since 1991.
"Since the first lawsuit was filed [Sept. 9], we've been trying to find him," said Susan Borcherts of the archdiocese communications office.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
Cardinal Justin Rigali is right about one thing.
The Philadelphia grand jury report accusing Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia leaders of shielding sexually abusive priests for decades - until as recently as several years ago - isn't G-rated reading.
The grand jury findings issued at mid-week by District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham do contain "explanations of the abuse" that are "very graphic," as the Philadelphia archbishop put it.
What else could be expected, though, from a harrowing account of 63 clergymen who preyed on hundreds of children?
Their crimes included rape and other vile forms of sexual abuse of children. Compounding the evil, their victims were denied justice in most cases, the grand jury found; assaults were overlooked or covered up by church officials whose first priority was avoiding scandal.
The grand jury report is no bedtime story, for sure.
But it's not really the place of the person who now leads the institution that tolerated these evils to offer an opinion on the merits of reading the grand jury report.
"I don't think it is of value to families," the spiritual leader of 1.3 million area Roman Catholics said in an interview Thursday.
A respectful dissent: Nothing could be of greater value to parents than knowledge that alerts them to dangers their children could face.
GEORGIA
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By DAVID SIMPSON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/24/05
Bishop Earl Paulk of the Chapel Hill Harvester megachurch and a former church employee are embroiled in a legal battle over her claims that Paulk coerced her to have sex with him and others by claiming it was God's will.
Paulk filed papers Thursday in DeKalb Superior Court answering a lawsuit filed Aug. 31 by Mona Brewer and her husband, Bobby Brewer. Paulk denied their allegations and countersued them for libel and slander, saying they lied about him in their lawsuit and in statements to others.
The only point not in dispute is that Paulk acted as Mona Brewer's spiritual adviser as well as her employer at the church in south DeKalb. Mona Brewer claims that Paulk began a "pattern of conduct" around 1989 that eventually led her "to believe that her only route to salvation was to engage in sexual acts at the request of Bishop Earl Paulk."
Brewer's lawsuit said Paulk required her to have sex with him, "other members of the church community ... [and] leaders of other churches as well as his family members, sometimes with other individuals observing the sexual acts."
The suit also seeks damages from the church, its related corporations and Paulk's brother, Don Paulk, who is affiliated with the church. The suit claims the Paulks and others covered up the sexual abuse.
GEORGIA
WSBT
POSTED: 7:02 p.m. EDT September 24, 2005
DECATUR -- A minister has been accused by one of his former employees of coercing her to have sex with him and others in the church, telling her it was "the will of God" and "her only route to salvation."
Bishop Earl Paulk of the Chapel Hill Harvester in Decatur has denied Mona and Bobby Brewer's allegations and is countersuing the couple for libel and slander.
In the lawsuit, Mona Brewer names Paulk as her former spiritual adviser and says her husband was a pastor in Paulk's church and looked up to him as a spiritual mentor. They have both since left the church.
Mona Brewer claims that Paulk began "a pattern of conduct" around 1989 that led to the relationship and that others in the church knew of Paulk's conduct and did nothing to prevent it. The Brewers are seeking damages from the church, its related corporations and Paulk's brother, Don Paulk, who is affiliated with the church.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News
By KITTY CAPARELLA
caparek@phillynews.com
IF THE aftermath of Boston's pedophile-priest scandal is any indication, this is what the area's 1.5 million Catholics could face here, according to research by a Temple University religion professor:
• A drop in donations from outraged Catholics, upset with the graphic details - from abortion, to sadomasochism to repeated rape - against 63 of the 169 accused priests described in the 418-page grand jury report, released by District Attorney Lynne Abraham last week.
• Numerous civil lawsuits filed against the priests, who allegedly engaged in the sexual abuse of children, the churches where the abuse took place and the archdiocesan officials, who allegedly covered it up - just as Boston faced.
• Closing of parishes, as churches and the archdiocese deal with the financial repercussions, such as the 80 parish churches that the Boston Archdiocese proposed to close.
Some Boston parishioners vow to stay in the churches around the clock to prevent their closing.
• Possible bankruptcy, such as three dioceses have filed. More than $1 billion has been paid out in U.S. settlements, and the figure is expected to rise to $3 billion.
CHESAPEAKE (VA)
The Virginian-Pilot
By JOHN HOPKINS, The Virginian-Pilot
CHESAPEAKE — A former Roman Catholic priest who now lives in Chesapeake has been accused of being one of the Philadelphia Archdiocese’s “most brutal abusers” of children, according to a grand jury report released last week.
Former Philadelphia-area priest James J. Brzyski, 54, has started a new life in South Norfolk. He was defrocked earlier this year.
In the late 1970s and early ’80s, Brzyski abused victims in two parishes of the Philadelphia Archdiocese, according to the grand jury report. The jury, convened in 2002 to investigate sex abuse in the archdiocese , called Brzyski a “serial mol-ester and child rapist. ”
He is one of 63 Philadelphia-area priests named in the report, which also accuses the archdiocese’s administrators of knowing about the abuse but failing to stop it or report it to law enforcement authorities.
The grand jury said Catholic Church officials first went public with Brzyski’s misconduct this year, far too late for consideration of criminal prosecution because of statutes of limitations. The same is true with the other priests named in the report, the jury said.
SPRINGFIELD (MA)
Republican
Monday, September 26, 2005
On Sept. 24, 2004, Thomas L. Dupre, leader of the 270,000 Roman Catholics in Western Massachusetts, became the first Roman Catholic bishop in the United States to be indicted on child rape charges.
Just hours after the indictments were unsealed, District Attorney William M. Bennett said that he could not prosecute the case because the charges were too old.
The Dupre case illuminates the need for legislation to lift the statute of limitations for sexual crimes against children so that victims can confront their abusers in court.
SPRINGFIELD (MA)
Republican
Monday, September 26, 2005
On Sept. 24, 2004, Thomas L. Dupre, leader of the 270,000 Roman Catholics in Western Massachusetts, became the first Roman Catholic bishop in the United States to be indicted on child rape charges.
Just hours after the indictments were unsealed, District Attorney William M. Bennett said that he could not prosecute the case because the charges were too old.
The Dupre case illuminates the need for legislation to lift the statute of limitations for sexual crimes against children so that victims can confront their abusers in court.
WESTTOWN (PA)
Daily Local
JOHN ROSSOMANDO, Staff Writer 09/26/2005
WESTTOWN -- Sunday’s Mass was unlike those of other Sundays for parishioners at St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic Church, as recent revelations about the Philadelphia Archdiocese’s failure to rein in priestly sexual abusers hung over their heads.
As in many parishes throughout the archdiocese this day, the priest devoted his sermon to the scandal.
"A word that I could use to describe the fraternity of the priesthood in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia today is ‘empty,’" said Parochial Vicar Fr. John Schiele.
An embarrassed Schiele related his dismay at reading newspaper accounts of the scandal, and the breaking report that preceded the accounts, only to learn a former seminary classmate was listed among them.
"I didn’t want to refer to the report, and I wouldn’t want to, either, read the paper and look at a picture of a (seminary) classmate who was recently laicized,’" he said in his sermon. "This was a guy who came in and did the entire eight-year program right out of high school, who I was together with the entire time I was in the seminary."
Schiele said he and this classmate, who he declined to name, were never close and that he had almost come to blows with him at times "because he was being a jerk," including on his day of ordination in May 1993.
TULLYTOWN (PA)
Bucks County Courier Times
TULLYTOWN - Parishioners for Saturday Mass at St. Michael the Archangel Church in Tullytown found copies of the Philadelphia Archdiocese letter on priest sexual abuse stacked beside novena cards to the church's namesake saint.
St. Michael's Pastor, Monsignor Richard Powers, said nothing about the letter or the Philadelphia grand jury's report on priest sexual abuse until he was about to dismiss the congregation.
"All I can say to anyone whose family member was abused - for my part, I say, I'm sorry," Powers said, his voice choking up. "As a church community, I ask that you continue praying for each other."
Three priests that the grand jury report identified as "sexually abusive" served at St. Michael:
The Rev. Joseph F. Sabadish from May 1957 to June 1962. Sabadish died in 1999.
The Rev. James Henry from June 1989 to June 1993.
The Rev. Francis Trauger from June 1993 to December 2003. Trauger was removed from the ministry after admitting to sexually abusing boys prior to his assignment at St. Michael's.
UNITED STATES
Des Moines Register
By SHIRLEY RAGSDALE
REGISTER RELIGION EDITOR
September 26, 2005
Vatican-appointed investigators begin this week reviewing 229 U.S. Catholic seminaries for evidence of a homosexual culture and faculty dissent from church teaching.
Advocates for gay priests and seminarians say the audit is a witch hunt. Church and seminary officials say the examination will reassure Catholics that potential child abusers are not being trained for the priesthood.
The "Apostolic Visitation" comes as Catholics await publication of a new Vatican policy barring gay men from ordination and after the Rev. Edwin O'Brien, the archbishop supervising the seminary review, has said that "anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity or has strong homosexual inclinations" should not consider the priesthood.
"The church hierarchy is attempting to scapegoat gay people for its own failure to address the sexual abuse of children and young people that it alone created and covered up," said Matt Foreman,Abuse Tracker Gay and Lesbian Task Force spokesman who grew up Catholic and has relatives in the priesthood. "The evil in this is that they are trying to equate being gay with sex abuse, which is appalling."
PENNSYLVANIA
Bucks County Courier Times
Kate Fratti
There are subjects my 70-year-old mother and I cannot discuss without offending one another. Religion is among them.
I admire Mom's sense of humor, her strength, her intelligence and her wizardry when it comes to eliminating tough laundry stains. There are few women I respect more when it comes to sense of family.
But sit across a table to talk religion or politics with this devout Catholic and staunch conservative? Not a chance. I've attempted it, and it always ends up badly.
I gave up trying to convert my mother years ago. She took longer to give up converting me. She stopped for good after the last presidential election. An exchange between us about what constitutes morality ruined a perfectly good shopping trip for both of us.
We used to argue about church. Not anymore. She's getting too old to get that mad. Now she just prays for me. Hard.
I have not and probably won't ever broach the subject of the results of the three-year grand jury investigation of the Philadelphia Archdiocese with her. Talk about a minefield.
Still, I know without asking that the report pains her deeply.
UNITED STATES
The Day
Published on 9/26/2005
The Holy See is reportedly about to announce a policy in which homosexuals will no longer be welcome at Catholic seminaries. The Church has long taught that homosexuality is a disordered state. Despite this, the Church has, until recently, seemingly ignored the fact that homosexuals make up a significant percentage of ordained priests and seminarians.
With this policy, and Vatican visits to American seminaries scheduled to begin, the Church's willful ignorance will soon end. Vatican officials plan to review all 229 Catholic seminaries in the United States. Among the questions that each institution will be required to answer is whether or not there is evidence of homosexuality in the seminary. At the same time, the Church will not remove already-ordained gay priests.
The Vatican became more concerned about homosexuality in the priesthood when it became apparent during the clergy sexual abuse scandal that most of the victims were young boys. But hounding gays out of seminaries is not the way to prevent pedophilia. Most sexual predators of children are heterosexual and not gay.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
JANICE PODSADA
Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA - Cardinal Justin Rigali acknowledged the "pain and suffering" of those who had been abused by priests, but also lashed out at a grand jury report that he said unjustly criticized his predecessors and other members of the diocese.
The two-page letter from Rigali was tucked inside every parish bulletin in every church in the Philadelphia archdiocese on Sunday.
Rigali was not the only one distributing letters related to the grand jury report, which documented 63 cases of child sexual abuse perpetrated by priests in the archdiocese.
Members of the Philadelphia chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and Other Clergy, known as SNAP, also distributed a letter to worshippers at several Philadelphia churches. That letter urged anyone who was sexually abused by a member of the clergy to call the district attorney's office or SNAP.
NEW YORK
National Review
September 16, 2005, 3:12 p.m.
William F. Buckley Jr.
In New York City, and the greater environs of the city, which reach to Rome going east and to Los Angeles going west, Catholic men and women are up against a wrenching problem. It has to do with Monsignor Eugene Clark. How to deal with him?
Monsignor Clark has had a big tabloid hour. The husband of the monsignor's secretary engaged a private eye to follow them around. The detective made a videotape that showed the monsignor and the secretary entering a motel on Long Island and leaving five hours later, wearing different clothes. The husband turned the tape over as supporting data in a lawsuit asking the court to end his marriage and to assign to him ownership of their house and custody over their two children.
It is lurid stuff, especially because Monsignor Eugene Clark is a singular figure. When in August the explosion came, he was doing duty as rector of St. Patrick's Cathedral, the single most exalted rectorship in America. Add to this, Clark's long career as intimate of three New York cardinals. And as a priest of great eloquence who has thoughtfully, in ways quiet and unquiet, sought to extend the faith and enhance the best ideals of his country.
His eloquence resulted in a regular television program. Attention has focused on a talk he gave in 1999 under the title, "Falling, Being, and Staying in Love." It was a tough statement striking out at the popular culture. "Hollywood is not a Christian place at all, at all, at all. Most of the writers, the creative people, are homosexually inclined or homosexually recruited." These folk are "the enemy of Christian marriage and Christian falling in love and all the tenderness that goes with that. They are saying 'Don't pay attention to that business of permanence and fidelity.'"
Such tongues as could be expected to wag under the circumstances lost no time in doing so. But what was the cardinal to do? In a matter of days, Monsignor Clark resigned his exalted post at St. Patrick's. And admitted his lapse?
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Natalie Pompilio and Joseph A. Slobodzian
Inquirer Staff Writers
They are among the Catholic Church's most devout: regular Mass-goers, generous givers, people who have made religion a centerpiece in their family lives.
And this week, they learned that some of the people who led Masses have admitted to molesting children, that their families may not have been safe within hallowed walls.
The 418-page grand jury report says the sexual abuse of hundreds of children was covered up by church leaders, including Cardinals John Krol and Anthony J. Bevilacqua. It details the acts of perversion allegedly executed by certain priests. Even a confessional was not a safe place for child, according to the report.
If an institution is only as strong as the people who support it, just how will the priest-abuse grand jury's findings of institutionalized misdeeds affect Catholicism in the Philadelphia Archdiocese?
Among the area's 1.5 million faithful, there was a range of emotions this week, including sorrow and anger, disgust, and a feeling of betrayal. Some say they are lost forever.
And that saddens people like Rita Ungaro-Schiavone.
Ungaro-Schiavone, 70, works with many churches and priests through her organization, Aid for Friends, which provides free meals and companionship to the housebound. A parishioner of St. Jerome's Roman Catholic Church, near her home in the city's Winchester Park section, she is personally acquainted with some of the priests accused of sex crimes. She has decided not to contact them to ask them about the allegations.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Tom Ferrick Jr.
Inquirer Columnist
The cardinal calls the report "very graphic" and, brother, is he right.
Parts of it are strictly X-rated, but you couldn't call it salacious.
Sickening is more like it, given that the perps were priests, the victims children, and the crime scenes were rectories and churches, even a confessional.
The grand jury report released Wednesday documented child sexual abuse cases by 63 Roman Catholic priests in the Philadelphia Archdiocese. Their victims numbered in the hundreds.
"We should begin by making one thing clear," the jury report says. "When we say abuse, we don't just mean 'inappropriate touching' (as the Archdiocese often chooses to refer to it). We mean rape. Boys who were raped orally, boys who were raped anally, girls who were raped vaginally."
Like the cardinal said, very graphic. Still, if you can stomach it, I recommend reading the complete report. Go to http://go.philly.com/priests for all the official documents.
You certainly will wince. You may even cry.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
phillyburbs.com
By JANICE PODSADA
The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA - Tucked inside every parish bulletin in every church in the Philadelphia archdiocese on Sunday was a two-page letter from Cardinal Justin Rigali.
In it, he acknowledged the "pain and suffering" of those who had been abused by priests, but he also lashed out at a grand jury report that he said unjustly criticized his predecessors - Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, Cardinal John Krol - and other members of the archdiocese.
Rigali wasn't the only one distributing a letter related to the grand jury report released Wednesday, which documented 63 cases of child sexual abuse perpetrated by priests in the archdiocese.
Members of the Philadelphia chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and Other Clergy, known as SNAP, also distributed a letter to worshippers at several Philadelphia churches. That letter urged anyone who was sexually abused by a member of the clergy to call the district attorney's office or SNAP.
BRITAIN
The Times
William Rees-Mogg
A Vatican ban on homosexuals would not prevent the abuse that has blighted the clergy
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC Church moves slowly, often too slowly. The Council of Trent, in the mid-16th century, reformed abuses that had been evident a hundred years before. The Second Vatican Council, in the early 1960s, corrected some of the doctrines of the Syllabus of Errors that had been published by Pope Pius IX in 1864. A century’s delay can be a steady trotting pace for a 2,000-year-old papacy.
When I was a child, in the England of the 1930s, or when my mother was a child in the New York of the 1890s, the Catholic clergy tended to be free of scandal. A few of them were too fond of a nip of whisky, but they did not make sexual advances to their choirboys or housekeepers. No doubt there were exceptions, but they must have been rare. The ritual of Confession, combined with the vow of chastity, helped to keep them in line. Otherwise there would have been gossip.
At some point, which may have arrived with the worldwide cult of sex in the late 1950s or early 1960s, these standards certainly ceased to be maintained. In the United States there have been allegations of sexual misconduct against about one priest in 50. Of the alleged victims of these assaults, about 10,000 were male, and about a thousand female. The cases occurred in a period going back to the early 1960s, but many of them were first reported in the 1980s or 1990s. There were similar cases in Britain, but probably on a smaller scale.
NEWTON (MA)
Boston Herald
By Marie Szaniszlo
Sunday, September 25, 2005
The popular and controversial Rev. Walter Cuenin bid Our Lady Help of Christians in Newton farewell yesterday, making the shocking charge from the pulpit that Boston Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley had forced his resignation - by alleging that the car the congregation leased for Cuenin's use and the monthly stipend they paid him for the last 12 years violate archdiocesan policy.
The charges so angered parishioners that, in a highly unusual move, their own finance council signed a statement saying that the council itself had recommended leasing the car, that the parish had paid priests a stipend before Cuenin even arrived in 1993 and the archdiocese's own audits had never questioned either practice.
``This is clearly such a pretextural reason for getting rid of him. It shows not only is (O'Malley) completely inept, but mean-spirited enough to try to impugn the integrity of Father Cuenin instead of telling the truth, which is that he's simply not in step with the archbishop's demands,'' said Andrew Gately, who has been a parishioner for five years.
Many others in the nearly standing-room-only congregation lashed out at O'Malley for pressuring another beloved, outspoken priest to resign in what they called a growing pattern of intimidation to quell dissent.
TOLEDO (OH)
Toledo Blade
Russ Lemmon
Six super-size Lemmon Drops:
The Oscar-nominated documentary Twist of Faith presents an "elephant in the room"-type situation for Toledo. That is, we know it's there — it's impossible to ignore — but we don't want to talk about it.
The film, which chronicles the life of Toledo firefighter Tony Comes around the time he went public with allegations of sexual abuse by a former priest, has gone international. It opened earlier this month in New Zealand. Next up is London, with dates in Stockholm, Vancouver, and Rio de Janeiro to follow.
"It's everywhere," said producer Eddie Schmidt, "except Toledo."
You know how some fans of losing football teams sit in the stands with bags over their heads? That's how I feel about Toledo and our continued suppression of Twist of Faith.
There is a glimmer of hope for those unwilling to look the other way, however.
Tom Byrne, northern Ohio regional coordinator for the Catholic group Voice of the Faithful, believes there's a "very, very good chance" that Twist of Faith will be shown in Toledo before the end of the year. He said people in Akron, Cleveland, Dayton, North Canton, Marietta, and Warren have expressed interest in showing it in their communities.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
"I never said people shouldn't read the grand jury report," the cardinal says. He warns it is not suitable for children.
By David O'Reilly
Inquirer Staff Writer
Cardinal Justin Rigali said yesterday that anyone wanting to read the explosive grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia should "make their own decision," but cautioned that parts are not suitable for youngsters.
"I never said people shouldn't read the grand jury report," Rigali said in a brief telephone interview.
A front-page headline in Friday's Inquirer that read "Don't Read Report, Rigali Says" was a "great blow to me," and the story incorrectly summarized his views, he said.
The story was based on a Thursday interview with Rigali, one day after Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham released a scathing grand jury report accusing two former archbishops of concealing the crimes of dozens of its priests.
During Thursday's interview, an Inquirer reporter asked the cardinal: "Do you think parishioners ought to read it? Would it be of any value for the people to be reading this?"
Rigali replied:
"KYW radio mentioned yesterday that it's very graphic in its description.
"We think that the report gives a slanted view. As I mentioned, it would have been so useful if what the archdiocese has done in order to face the future, the efforts of the archdiocese in regard to the education of teachers and in regard to the education of children, all of that could have been explained. What a contribution it could have been.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Angela Couloumbis
Inquirer Harrisburg Bureau
It took State Sen. Stewart J. Greenleaf (R., Montgomery) more than a decade to change a sliver of Pennsylvania law that dealt with sexual abuse of children.
Even so, the law that was passed in 2002 in the wake of the sexual-abuse scandal that shook the Roman Catholic Church is still weaker than those in other states. So are related laws that govern how the state deals with abusers, as prosecutors who pursued sexual-abuse allegations in the Philadelphia Archdiocese pointed out in a report last week.
The grand jury report found that dozens of priests sexually abused hundreds of children while Philadelphia archdiocese officials excused - and enabled - the abuse. The archdiocese has called the report slanted, biased and anti-Catholic.
But the grand jurors said they could not pursue criminal charges against priests or any of their superiors because of restrictions in Pennsylvania law.
State law "stands in the way of justice for victims of childhood sexual abuse," the grand jurors wrote, and emphasized the need for changes in the law. They cited handicaps in the statutes of limitations, reporting requirements, and definitions of sexual-abuse crimes.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Jim Remsen
Inquirer Faith Life Editor
In the wake of the grand jury report into clergy sex abuse, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia has publicly issued its list of 54 molester priests - the full tally from 50 years, it says - along with a brief account of their clerical status.
The church tally falls short of the Philadelphia grand jury's count of 63, and far below the 169 the jury said had been accused. The archdiocese maintained that it represented the total who had been under its direct control.
The public disclosure is an about-face for the archdiocese. For years, it had joined with most other U.S. dioceses in refusing to divulge a full list of identities despite demands from victims and church activists.
"It's a good first step," said Marie Whitehead, local director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests and Other Clergy. She called on archdiocese officials to give more information about the men, and to visit parishes where they had served to invite any other victims to come forward.
"The confidentiality imposed by the grand jury" had prevented the archdiocese from releasing its list until the secret proceeding was formally concluded on Wednesday, church spokeswoman Donna Farrell said yesterday.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Carrie Budoff, Kathleen Brady Shea and Benjamin Lowe
Inquirer Staff Writers
The grand jury report released last week on priest sexual abuse cases placed Msgr. William Lynn at the center of a church hierarchy that it said failed Philadelphia-area Catholics.
Now the pastor of St. Joseph Church in Downingtown, Lynn was tasked with casting light on dark allegations of misconduct as secretary of clergy for 12 years.
The report said Lynn played a key role under Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua in excusing misconduct, intimidating victims and shuffling questionable priests between parishes.
Last night, the monsignor addressed his congregation - many of whom said they had no inkling of his role in the abuse cases - and delivered an emotional homily punctuated by apologies, regret, sadness and disavowals.
Lynn, who has led St. Joseph for two years, told a standing-room-only crowd that he believed the 418-page report's depiction of him as "harsh to victims" was inaccurate.
"I would never put a child in harm's way," he said, offering to meet one on one with any parishioners who had concerns. "I'm going to leave that to your judgment."
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Nancy Phillips, Mark Fazlollah and Emilie Lounsberry
Inquirer Staff Writers
Victims wept. So did jurors, hearing story after story of childhoods lost to rape and molestation by trusted priests.
The grand jury investigation of sexual abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese became a grueling three years of outrage, anguish, frustration, legal sparring - and tears.
"To see a grown man cry, oh, it was very disturbing," said Rosalind Arrington, the grand jury forewoman.
The jurors and prosecutors, some of whom grew up in Catholic churches and parochial schools, were shaken as a disturbing picture emerged from church files: evidence that top church officials knew of the abuses, and covered them up.
"It's an experience that I think forever changes you," said Maureen McCartney, one of the prosecutors on the case, who is now a law professor at Temple University.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Kristen A. Graham and Natalie Pompilio
Inquirer Staff Writers
Days after learning that some of their spiritual leaders abused children and others covered it up, and that their families may not have been safe within the hallowed walls of the church, many of the area's 1.5 million Catholics returned to their pews yesterday.
In South Philadelphia, a priest said he was ashamed of his collar for the first time. In Northeast Philadelphia, a young woman said she did not want to believe a pastor she adored could have committed atrocities against children. In Southwest Philadelphia, women got up and walked out of church as a priest read a letter of apology from Cardinal Justin Rigali.
And in Downingtown, Msgr. William Lynn, pastor of St. Joseph Church, received a standing ovation from his congregation, despite drawing strong criticism from the grand jury for his role as head of the office that handled abuse complaints.
"The church should be ashamed. There is no atonement for this atrocity," said Dolores Crane, 63, a parishioner at St. Martin of Tours Church in New Hope. "But no man is going to keep me from my God."
The 418-page grand jury report released last week says the sexual abuse of hundreds of children was covered up by church leaders, including Cardinals John Krol and Anthony J. Bevilacqua. It details the acts of perversion allegedly executed by certain priests. Even a confessional was not a safe place for child, according to the report.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Craig R. McCoy
Inquirer Staff Writer
The details of the sex assaults were horrific. The access to the church's Secret Archive, extraordinary.
In hundreds of unrelenting pages, the report by a Philadelphia grand jury into sexual abuse by clergy in the archdiocese mounted a blistering denunciation of both the abusive priests and a hierarchy it said sheltered them.
The report identified 63 priests as abusers but took pains to say that there were more.
In all, the report said, victims and others had leveled complaints against 169 priests who have served in the archdiocese since 1967.
"These are not necessarily the worst offenders with the most victims," the report says of the 63. But it said that "their cases provide the most complete picture" available of the scandal within the diocese.
ARIZONA
Fox 11
07:26 PM MST on Saturday, September 24, 2005
By Stephanie Innes / ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Alonso Hernandez is clear about his goals: to learn automotive repair, rent his own apartment and permanently shed the devastating secret that haunted him through 10 years of childhood.
Now that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson's Chapter 11 bankruptcy case is officially over, Hernandez, 21, is about to get some help in moving forward - a $600,000 settlement from the diocese that he's scheduled to receive, minus legal fees, next month.
The settlement amount could increase to nearly $1 million, as more payments from the bankruptcy fund are expected to be disbursed over the next few years.
"I'm going to quit work and start at school right away," said Hernandez, a machinery maintenance worker. "I've already had a couple of months of therapy, so I'm ready now to move on. I won't have to worry about getting a call about going to court and retelling everything. There's no reason I have to think about it anymore."
PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call
By Hal Marcovitz
Of The Morning Call
A Bucks County priest told his parishioners at a Mass on Saturday that he tried to alert officials at the Philadelphia Archdiocese that a fellow priest was obsessed with child pornography, but despite his warnings the clergyman was simply transferred to other churches and permitted to remain active in the priesthood.
The Rev. Frederick J. Riegler made his comments three days after a Philadelphia grand jury report condemned Cardinals Anthony J. Bevilacqua and John Krol, the former archbishops of Philadelphia, for concealing reports of sexual misconduct by priests. Riegler, pastor of St. Isidore's Roman Catholic Church in Milford Township, said archdiocese officials were well aware of the Rev. Edward K. DePaoli's obsession with child pornography, yet during the 1990s Riegler encountered him on the clerical staff of a church in Philadelphia.
''How did he get here?'' Riegler recalled asking himself at the time. ''What were they thinking?''
Riegler and all other priests in the archdiocese were instructed by Cardinal Justin Rigali to address the findings of the grand jury report this weekend and distribute copies of a letter Rigali wrote to Catholics in the archdiocese condemning the abusers, but defending the responses by Krol and Bevilacqua to the scandal. The letter says the archdiocese responded properly when it learned of abusive priests.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Courier Post
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Despite evidence taken from diocese records in Philadelphia identifying possible sexual predators among the priests, it appears church officials still are not treating abuse allegations with proper seriousness.
Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham, who convened a grand jury to probe allegations of priests' abuses, claims former cardinals covered up for predators.
Cardinal Justin Rigali, the archbishop of Philadelphia appointed in 2003, apologized and acknowledged "the considerable suffering experienced by victims of abuse." Rigali previously said the Philadelphia archdiocese had addressed concerns raised by an audit team last year.
But diocese attorneys went on the defensive after Abraham released grand jury findings Wednesday, ranting that the three-year probe was mean-spirited and reminiscent of anti-Roman Catholic persecution during the 19th century.
Actions like that likely give comfort to the pedophiles the grand jury believes remain ensconced in the priesthood while leaving their alleged victims cold.
UNITED STATES
Chicago Sun-Times
September 25, 2005
More than 3-1/2 years ago, at the height of the pedophile priest scandal, Pope John Paul II's spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, scapegoated homosexuals. "People with these inclinations," he said, "cannot be in this field." This at a time when the Vatican was otherwise mum on a situation tearing at the fabric of Catholicism around the world.
Much has happened since then. Priests found guilty of molesting young boys have been sent to jail. Archdioceses in which sex abuse has been covered up have been held liable financially. The Vatican has expressed sympathy for the victims and vowed to attack the problem. But once again, with Pope Benedict XVI now at the helm, the gay clergy is being unfairly targeted. It is reported that Rome soon will issue a long-rumored "instruction" barring, or strongly discouraging, gays from entering the priesthood. And in early October, a series of "apostolic visitations" will be made to investigate, among other things, the extent of homosexuality in American seminaries. Gay priests fear a witch hunt to thin their ranks or get rid of them altogether, however committed to celibacy they are.
Clearly, the Vatican feels it needs to affirm its doctrine on homosexuality at a time when issues like gay marriage are creating deep divisions. Last year, in churches including Chicago's Holy Name Cathedral, gay activists who demonstrated their opposition to the doctrine by wearing red sashes were denied communion. Given that a large percentage of the pedophiles' victims have been young males, there is reason to be concerned about the role played by homosexuality in the abuses. But no link has been established between homosexuality and pedophilia -- which, in fact, is more often committed by heterosexuals, against boys. The requirement of celibacy may be a greater factor, as the newspaper of the Boston archdiocese recognized in asking its readers whether it should continue to be "a normative condition" for priests.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Bucks County Courier Times
J.D. Mullane
It was sad to see the hollow performance of Philadelphia Archbishop Justin Rigali as the predator priest scandal swept over him.
Accompanied by legal counsel and whispering aides, he appeared defensive and small at a press conference last week.
You only have to read the findings in a grand jury report released last week by Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham to know why.
It's stunning.
Using subpoenaed documents from the archdiocese's "Secret Archive" files, the report shows how some 60 priests sexually molested more than 100 minors and children over the last 50 years.
It shows how Rigali's predecessors, the late Cardinal John Krol and retired Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, engaged in a "cover-up," moving pedophiles and serial molesters from parish to parish, even when both knew that the priests were preying on kids.
NEWTON (MA)
Boston Globe
By Michael Levenson and Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff | September 25, 2005
NEWTON -- The Rev. Walter H. Cuenin, a Newton priest who had been an outspoken critic of Cardinal Bernard F. Law, abruptly resigned his pastorate yesterday, saying that the Archdiocese of Boston had accused him of financial improprieties.
Parishioners shook their heads and wept at Our Lady Help of Christians Church on Washington Street, as Cuenin, reading from the pulpit, said the archdiocese had asked him to resign for accepting a stipend that had been calculated improperly, and for driving a car his church had leased for him in violation of archdiocesan rules.
Terrence C. Donilon, spokesman for Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley, declined to comment on Cuenin's resignation yesterday.
''We don't speculate on personnel matters," Donilon said.
IRELAND
One in Four
The Christian Brothers may have much to be proud of, but we must not allow what happened at Artane to be obscured, writes Diarmaid Ferriter
Last Thursday, giving evidence before the Investigation Committee of the Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse, Brother Michael Reynolds, a senior leader of the Christian Brothers, defended the record of Artane Industrial School. He insisted that, in the main, it was a "positive institution" which had undeservedly received negative media coverage.
He challenged the idea that his community had engaged in cover-ups and suggested there was an inadequate understanding of sexual abuse in the 1930s and 1940s and ignorance about the long-term psychological damage caused by it.
His comments will have angered many who suffered in Artane and the industrial school system. Brother Reynolds said he did not understand a letter written to the provincial of the Christian Brothers in 1938, which maintained that the person who had abused a child "was more to be pitied than censured".
UNITED STATES
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
By Tim Townsend
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
09/24/2005
In April 2002, Wilton Gregory, then bishop of Belleville and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said something that startled American Catholics.
"There does exist within American seminaries a homosexual atmosphere or dynamic that makes heterosexuals think twice" about entering the priesthood, he said. "It is an ongoing struggle to make sure the Catholic priesthood is not dominated by homosexual men."
The idea that some priests are gay may not have surprised most Catholics, but that an important American bishop would be so forthcoming about such a sensitive reality surprised many. Gregory, who is now the archbishop of Atlanta, made his comments in Rome, where 12 American cardinals had been summoned by Pope John Paul II in the wake of the clergy sexual abuse crisis.
GEORGIA
Access North Georgia
The Associated Press - DECATUR, Ga.
A megachurch minister has been accused by one of his former employees of coercing her to have sex with him and others in the church, telling her it was "the will of God" and "her only route to salvation."
Bishop Earl Paulk of the Chapel Hill Harvester in Decatur has denied Mona and Bobby Brewer's allegations and is countersuing the couple for libel and slander.
WAGA-TV reported last week that the Brewers filed the lawsuit in DeKalb Superior Court. In the lawsuit, Mona Brewer also names Paulk as her former spiritual adviser and her husband, Bobby, was a pastor in Paulk's church and looked up to him as a spiritual mentor. They have both since left the church.
BRITAIN
Life Style Extra
LIFE STYLE EXTRA (UK) - A shamed senior Roman Catholic priest has been jailed for sexually abusing a young boy more than 40 years ago.
Monsignor John Coghlan, now aged 71, was locked up for 18 months after being convicted of five counts of indecency with a child in the 1960s.
Father Coghlan, the suspended parish priest of St Thomas More in Eastcote, Middlesex, abused his victim - now in his 50's - when he started his ministry in the Parish of the Sacred Heart in Ruislip, west London, as a curate soon after his ordination in 1961.
Jailing the priest at Isleworth Crown Court, Judge Andrew McDowall first considered the contents of more than 30 letters from friends and supporters of the disgraced clergyman.
The Judge said: "These offences are serious and I cannot see any alternative to a custodial sentence.
BRITAIN
This is London
By Court reporter
A Hindu priest convicted of twice raping a temple-goer has launched an appeal to clear his name.
Ramanathan Somanathan, 42, of Colvin Road, Thornton Heath, was jailed for 12 years at Croydon Crown Court in February after he was convicted of two counts of rape.
But lawyers on his behalf told Lord Justice Kennedy, sitting with Mr Justice Bell and Mrs Justice Dobbs at the Appeal Court in London on Tuesday, that Somanathan's convictions were "unsafe" and should be overturned.
It was the prosecution case that Somanathan, the aya at the Sivaskanthagiri Arulmigu Murugan Temple, in Thornton Road, Thornton Heath, had forced himself on his victim when he went to her home to say prayers in 2002.
WASHINGTON (DC)
Kentucky.com
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - An Army chaplain facing charges of forcible sodomy and assault is scheduled for court-martial proceedings Oct. 14.
The trial of Capt. Gregory Arflack, a Roman Catholic chaplain with the 279th Base Support Battalion, is scheduled to take place in Bamberg, Germany.
Arflack previously waived his right to an Article 32 hearing -- the military equivalent of a grand jury.
Arflack, 44, was charged in August with three counts each of forcible sodomy and indecent acts, two counts each of fraternization with enlisted service members and disobeying orders, and one count each of indecent assault and conduct unbecoming an officer.
LOS ANGELES (CA)
Monterey Herald
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Los Angeles Archdiocese cannot release summaries of files it kept on priests accused of sexually abusing children, a state appeals court ruled.
The court in its ruling Thursday sided with 26 priests who argued that the summaries should not be made public because they were prepared as part of a confidential mediation.
But the court said the church could open the actual files to the public.
''We recognize the significant public interest in the underlying subject matter of this litigation in general and of the archdiocese's knowledge of its priests' sexual conduct in particular,'' Justice Laurence D. Rubin wrote in the unanimous 2nd Appellate District Court decision. ''Our opinion should not be construed as prohibiting or restricting release of the underlying information used in the creation'' of the summaries.
The archdiocese wanted to publish the summaries on its Web site to speed the settlement of more than 500 clergy abuse claims filed against the church. Alleged victims supported releasing the summaries but believe only the full files will show that church leaders knew about the abuse and covered it up.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Daniel Rubin
Inquirer Staff Writer
Across the blogosphere yesterday, reactions to the grand jury report on the sex-abuse scandal ranged from skepticism to horror - with a lot more horror.
Capturing the outrage is Citizen Mom (http://quinnchannel.typepad.com/tfh/
2005/09/how_to_run_a_cr.html). For her, the morning paper hit like a punch in the gut, she writes:
"My high school is on the list, as are the parishes where all my friends went to school: St. Mary's, IHM, St. Matt's. So instead of mopping my kitchen floor, I'm tearing apart my office trying to find my high school yearbooks to match a face to a name... .
"Working-class families, people who could hardly spare what went into the Sunday envelopes, paid willingly for the privilege of sending their children to schools where they existed as captive prey for the abusers who would molest, rape and manipulate them."
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Thomas Fitzgerald
Inquirer Staff Writer
Confronted with the grand jury report finding an "immoral" cover-up of sexual abuse, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia has counterpunched with a classic damage-control strategy familiar in politics: two messages, one conciliatory, one tough.
While Cardinal Justin Rigali spoke of reconciliation and reform, the archdiocese's lawyer attacked the findings as a "vile diatribe" motivated by anti-Catholic bigotry.
In the 48 hours after that initial response Wednesday, the strategy has continued in news interviews with Rigali, full-page newspaper ads, and a pastoral letter from the cardinal in the archdiocesan newspaper.
Among the points: the archdiocese has instituted training to prevent abuse; it reports every accusation to law enforcement and has a "zero-tolerance" policy; the grand jury report unfairly made no mention of reforms; the archdiocese was misled because the grand jury was supposed to focus on other denominations, too.
These later communiques have stopped short of accusing District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham, whose office conducted the investigation, of Catholic-bashing, while stressing what the archdiocese sees as shortcomings in the probe.
JASPER (IN)
WAVE 3
Sep 24, 2005, 12:23 PM EDT
(JASPER, Ind.) -- A suspended Roman Catholic priest accused of molesting a mentally disabled 19-year-old man told police the contact was consensual, according to court records obtained before a judge issued a gag order in the case.
The Rev. Wilfred L. Englert, 52, an associate pastor at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Jasper, faces felony charges of deviant sexual conduct and two counts of sexual battery in Orange County and two sexual battery counts in Dubois County.
Dubois Circuit Court Judge William Weikert imposed a gag order Friday that prohibits attorneys, investigators and court employees form discussing or releasing records in the case.
The order was requested by Englert's attorney, John Goodridge, who also is seeking a change of venue in the case because of news coverage in the area. Goodridge also filed similar motions in Orange County, where a hearing is scheduled for Oct. 3.
CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles Times
By Jean Guccione, Times Staff Writer
Lawyers asked a judge Friday to order nine clergy-abuse cases against the Los Angeles Archdiocese to trial within the next nine months.
Attorneys for Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and for their opponents, who represent more than 560 people suing the archdiocese for allegedly failing to protect them from predatory priests, teamed in the request, saying efforts to settle the lawsuits had stalled.
The two sides, along with the archdiocese's insurers, have been at the negotiating table for nearly three years, trying to hammer out a global legal settlement that could approach $1 billion.
Both the archdiocese's and the plaintiffs' attorneys blame the impasse on the insurers, which have sued, demanding that the archdiocese hand over documents about the alleged sexual abuse by priests.
"We are not able to get anywhere near the levels of sincere participation from our carriers," said attorney J. Michael Hennigan, who represents Mahony.
UNITED STATES
The Journal News
Original publication: September 24, 2005)
It has been a busy year for the Roman Catholic Church, observing the passing of a beloved pontiff, celebrating the election of a new leader, and soon, if Vatican news leaks are to believed, commencing a round of scapegoating for the ages. The purported target is gay clergy or would-be members of the clergy. Even those who are celibate would face new scrutiny as part of the Vatican's continued reply to the sex-abuse scandal that has rocked the church's foundations.
The Vatican in coming weeks, with all the subtlety of an outstretched finger, will release a document detailing in no uncertain terms that gays are not welcome in Catholic seminaries and should not be ordained as priests even if they are celibate "because their condition suggests a serious personality disorder which detracts from their ability to serve as ministers," according to Associated Press reports, relying in part on reporting by Catholic World News.
In addition to reaffirming longstanding opposition to gays in the priesthood, the "instruction" by the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education will take the added step of confronting the open secret that homosexuals already wear the collar, with varying estimates putting the U.S. total at 25 percent to 50 percent. Already ordained priests, if they have homosexual tendencies, will be "strongly urged to renew their dedication to chastity and a manner of life appropriate to the priesthood."
TERRE HAUTE (IN)
WTWO
( Air Date: 9/23/2005 )
Members of a group fan out across Terre Haute searching for people who may have been abused by a Roman Catholic priest.
Father Harry Monroe, a former priest at St. Patricks in Terre Haute, is accused of sexually molesting a minor.
Members of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) were in town Friday passing out flyers looking for abuse victims.
Father Monroe stands accused of molesting at least two boys during his ministry in Indianapolis.
CANADA
Toronto Sun
By Brodie Fenlon
John Swales dismissed as "window dressing" a new report calling for national standards on how the Roman Catholic church in Canada handles sexual abuse by the clergy.
Swales, 46, and his siblings were repeatedly abused as children by a priest in London, Ont., from 1969-74.
The family won a $2.7-million judgment last year against retired priest Barry Glendinning and the London diocese.
"It's about public relations," said Swales of the report by a 10-member task force whose recommendations include a ban on priests from public ministry if they're convicted of the sexual abuse of minors.
"The church has been concerned with protecting its image and I'm concerned this is just a part of it," he said.
NEWTON (MA)
Boston Herald
By Marie Szaniszlo
Saturday, September 24, 2005 - Updated: 09:30 AM EST
The Rev. Walter Cuenin, the Newton clergyman who organized priests who questioned church policies and called for the resignation of Bernard Cardinal Law, is expected to announce today that he is relocating.
Cuenin did not return calls last night and a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Boston would not comment on his status at Our Lady Help of Christians. But a parish source yesterday said he is expected to announce that he is stepping down after a decade as pastor.
``He has been not only one of the most courageous pastors, but one of the few that has spoken out when it mattered most,'' said Peter Borre, a member of the Council of Parishes. ``He will be missed. One has to wonder whether this resignation is completely voluntary.''
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By David O'Reilly
Inquirer Staff Writer
Parish priests of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia will distribute a letter at Mass this weekend from Cardinal Justin Rigali condemning clergy sex abuse but defending the ways in which his predecessors handled abuse cases.
Rigali's letter comes in response to a blistering, 418-page grand jury report on sex abuse in the archdiocese that Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham released Wednesday.
The cardinal calls the report "painful to read" and asks for prayers for the hundreds of victims of abuse and dozens of priests who abused them.
"Once again, I acknowledge the considerable suffering experienced by victims of abuse and offer my sincere apologies," he writes.
But he goes on to say the report is "unjustifiably critical" of the two previous archbishops, Cardinals Anthony J. Bevilacqua and John Krol, whom the report accuses of concealing abusers and endangering children.
SAN ANTONIO (TX)
Express-News
Web Posted: 09/24/2005 12:00 AM CDT
J. Michael Parker
Express-News Staff Writer
Central Catholic High School officials are notifying 2,000 alumni about lawsuits in two states alleging sexual abuse by a former brother who was band director at the San Antonio school from 1971 to 1981.
Three suits were filed this week in Pueblo, Colo., and one in St. Louis against the U.S. Province of the Society of Mary, naming former Brother William Mueller, 67, who reportedly lives in San Antonio.
Attempts to reach Mueller were unsuccessful.
Two of the Pueblo suits claim he administered ether to students under the guise of psychology experiments, sodomizing one and asking the other explicit sexual questions. The third claims Mueller instructed a student to play his trombone in the nude. The St. Louis suit claims he pressed a knife to a student's throat, pressed his body against the student's and simulated sexual intercourse.
The Diocese of Pueblo and the Archdiocese of St. Louis are co-defendants in the suits, but Mueller, who left the religious order in 1986, is not.
SPRINGFIELD (MA)
Republican
Saturday, September 24, 2005
By BILL ZAJAC
wzajac@repub.com
SPRINGFIELD - A lawyer for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield argued in federal court yesterday for the dismissal of a civil suit against the diocese filed by two men who said they were abused by Bishop Thomas L. Dupre when they were minors.
After an hour and a half of arguments, diocesan lawyer Edward J. McDonough and the plaintiffs' lawyers agreed to try to settle the issue without the court making a decision. Both sides agreed to meet in court in a week to announce an agreement or ask the court to rule in the matter.
The plaintiffs Tuan Tran and Thomas Deshaies also have a pending suit against Dupre in Hampden Superior Court.
SAN ANTONIO (TX)
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Associated Press
SAN ANTONIO - Central Catholic High School officials are notifying alumni about lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by a former band director at the San Antonio school.
Three suits were filed this week in Pueblo, Colo., and one in St. Louis against the U.S. Province of the Society of Mary, naming former Brother William Mueller, 67, of San Antonio. Mueller worked at Central Catholic from 1971 to 1981.
"We are not aware of any complaints regarding his service here at Central Catholic," Father Joseph Tarrillion, president of the San Antonio school, said in a letter sent Thursday to all who attended Central Catholic between 1971 and 1984.
His one-page letter invites concerned alumni to notify authorities in San Antonio or St. Louis of any allegations of improper behavior by Mueller.
The latest suit was filed Wednesday in Pueblo, Colo., by a 52-year-old man who alleged Mueller masturbated and fondled him on several occasions when the man was a student at the former Roncalli High School. Mueller left Roncalli in 1971.
AUSTRALIA
ninemsn
Saturday Sep 24 12:17 AEST
A former Catholic priest convicted of sexually assaulting an altar boy in his NSW parish has lost an appeal against his conviction.
James Fletcher, 64, of Branxton, was found guilty of nine charges over the sexual abuse of the teenager between 1989 and 1991.
Fletcher was convicted in December last year of the offences, which occurred in his NSW Hunter Valley parish.
CANADA
Ottawa Sun
By JOHN STEINBACHS, Ottawa Sun
The Catholic Church must work to ensure all churches across the country adopt policies to protect parishioners from sexual abuse by clergy, says a new report to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The report, released yesterday at a plenary session of the bishops in Cornwall, calls for nationwide measures that protect children and provide for transparency in the way churches deal with abuse.
"Some places are not doing it and some places are doing it, so it's a question of making sure all places (are doing it)," said Winnipeg Archbishop James Weisgerber, one of the authors of the report.
BRITAIN
News & Star
Published on 24/09/2005
FORMER Workington priest Father Gregory Peter Carroll has been jailed for four years for sexually abusing boys in his care.
Carroll, a monk at Ampleforth Abbey in Yorkshire, spent 14 years at Our Lady and St Michael’s Church in Workington from 1987.
Carroll, now 66, committed the offences against boys at Ampleforth College or its Junior House between 1980 and 1987. He was suspended in 1987 and sent to work as a parish priest in Workington after admitting “enjoying sexual contact” with a boy to the headmaster.
BRITAIN
Irish Independent
Saturday September 24th 2005
A MONK who taught in Britain's leading Catholic boarding school was jailed yesterday, almost two decades after he first confessed to indecency with a pupil.
Instead of reporting that incident to the police, Ampleforth College suspended him and sent him to work in a parish on the other side of England.
When Gregory Carroll admitted 12 years later that he had also abused other students, the college authorities arranged for him to be seen by a psychologist.
She called in social services after the Abbott refused to hand over papers about the admissions of sexual abuse and a criminal investigation was launched.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Web India 123
PHILADELPHIA | September 24, 2005 8:14:00 AM IST
Cardinal Justin Rigali, head of the Philadelphia Archdiocese, says a grand jury report on sexual abuse is slanted.
In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, the cardinal said District Attorney Lynn Abraham does not give a fair picture of policy changes the archdiocese has made -- including educating children about safe relationships with adults and requiring that all allegations of sexual abuse be reported to law enforcement.
The grand jury report, released earlier this week, detailed years of coverup by diocesan officials and was harshly critical of Rigali's two predecessors, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and Cardinal John Krol.
UNITED STATES
Boston Globe
By Charles A. Radin and Anand Vaishnav, Globe Staff | September 24, 2005
With Pope Benedict XVI reportedly on the verge of decreeing that homosexuals may not enroll in Catholic seminaries, Catholics and scholars of Catholicism are deeply divided on whether men who are gay should be able to serve as priests.
Supporters of banning gays from seminaries say the step is needed because priests who are gay or accepting of gay lifestyles are unsuited to teach church doctrine that specifies lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual marriage as the only proper context for sexual activity.
Critics of the effort say it is an ill-conceived reaction to the child sexual-abuse scandal that in recent years has rocked the Catholic clergy, particularly in New England.
Church officials and clergy declined to comment on The New York Times report last week that the pope will soon issue a ban on gay men becoming priests, but some were willing to discuss the subject of gays' suitability for the priesthood.
''If a person has been sexually active or is espousing a homosexual lifestyle as acceptable, that person is not suitable to be a priest," said Monsignor Francis J. Maniscalco, spokesman for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, because such ideas ''are opposed to what the Catholic Church teaches about sexual activity being confined to a lifelong, heterosexual, monogamous marriage.
ARIZONA
Arizona Daily Star
By Stephanie Innes
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Alonso Hernandez is clear about his goals: to learn automotive repair, rent his own apartment and permanently shed the devastating secret that haunted him through 10 years of childhood.
Now that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson's Chapter 11 bankruptcy case is officially over, Hernandez, 21, is about to get some help in moving forward - a $600,000 settlement from the diocese that he's scheduled to receive, minus legal fees, next month.
The settlement amount could increase to nearly $1 million, as more payments from the bankruptcy fund are expected to be disbursed over the next few years.
"I'm going to quit work and start at school right away," said Hernandez, a machinery maintenance worker. "I've already had a couple of months of therapy, so I'm ready now to move on. I won't have to worry about getting a call about going to court and retelling everything. There's no reason I have to think about it anymore."
Hernandez, now living in Salinas, Calif., is one of five young men who were molested as children by a Yuma Catholic priest and will each receive an initial disbursement of $600,000. That's the largest initial payment anyone is getting from an estimated $22.3 million settlement pool the diocese set up as part of its Chapter 11 reorganization.
ARIZONA
The Arizona Republic
Michael Clancy
The Arizona Republic
Sept. 24, 2005 12:00 AM
The Catholic Church is close to banning gay priests as a partial remedy to the sex-abuse scandal that has rocked American dioceses from coast to coast.
But priests and parishioners wonder whether keeping gay men out of the priesthood is the answer.
"We are less interested in the orientation of priests and more interested in their psychological and spiritual maturity," said Paul Pfaffenberger of Mesa, a parishioner at St. Anne in Gilbert and head of the local Survivors' Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.
Other Catholics, like Tom Van Dyke of Phoenix, say that as long as a priest is celibate, it makes no difference if he is gay.
"It all goes back to celibacy," he said. "That is too big a burden to put on somebody."
The anticipated crackdown follows word from the Vatican that an upcoming review of 229 American seminaries, called an Apostolic Visitation, will include questions about gay behavior. The inspections were ordered as a result of the sex-abuse scandal that implicated dioceses nationwide, including Phoenix and Tucson.
PORTLAND (OR)
The Salt Lake Tribune
By Steve Woodward
Religion News Service
PORTLAND, Ore. - A week before he died, Larry Lynn Craven called his lawyer, as he often did, to say that he could no longer live with the demons of his childhood sexual abuse.
''He had called me, crying and depressed and saying that he wanted to commit suicide,'' Daniel Gatti recalls. ''I kept saying, 'God will get us through this.' ''
A week later, on July 21, Craven was dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, making him the third clergy sex-abuse plaintiff in Oregon to commit suicide or apparent suicide in the past nine months.
The deaths are a disturbing undercurrent in the crucial mediations now under way between 66 sex-abuse plaintiffs and the Archdiocese of Portland, and they have prompted Gatti to ask a federal judge for help in preventing more suicides.
''Over the past several months,'' Gatti wrote in an affidavit filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Portland, ''I have fielded several calls from clients who, with a drink in one hand and a gun in the other, have threatened to commit suicide, and, but for divine intervention and a great deal of talk, I believe that they would have, in fact, committed suicide.''
ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Express-Times
Saturday, September 24, 2005
By TOM QUIGLEY
The Express-Times
The leader of the Allentown Diocese on Friday said he cooperated fully with a grand jury investigating a cover-up of sexual abuse by priests and never told any of his assistants victims weren't to be believed.
Bishop Edward P. Cullen made his first public remarks about his grand jury testimony in Philadelphia in a letter posted on the diocese's Web site and to be read at Masses tonight and Sunday.
"I cooperated fully in giving information to the investigation," Cullen writes in the letter.
Cullen, bishop in Allentown since 1998, had been vicar general in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia -- a top aide to Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua.
A grand jury report released Wednesday accused Bevilacqua, the late Cardinal John Krol and top officials in the archdiocese of covering up repeated sexual abuse allegations against priests and transferring them to new assignments.
The report alleges Cullen instructed his assistant during his tenure in Philadelphia never to tell sexual abuse victims that he, the assistant, believed them.
BRITAIN
Yorkshire Post Today
Brian Dooks
A MONK at Ampleforth Abbey in North Yorkshire who brought shame on the Benedictine community by sexually abusing boys in his care was jailed yesterday for four years.
Gregory Carroll, now 66, committed the offences against boys at Ampleforth College or its Junior House between 1980 and 1987.
He was suspended in 1987 and sent to work as a parish priest in Workington after admitting to the headmaster "enjoying sexual contact" with a boy. York Crown Court heard there was no evidence of wrongdoing in Cumbria.
But 12 years later, after rev-ealing it had not been an isolated incident, he was made the subject of a risk assessment and later seen by psychologist Elizabeth Mann.
She did not complete her assessment because she was not allowed to see documents held by the abbey on Carroll's history of sexual abuse.
James Goss QC, prosecuting, said its relations with Dr Mann broke down and her commission was cancelled.
CANADA
National Post
Jenny Jackson
CanWest News Service
Saturday, September 24, 2005
CORNWALL, Ont. - The Catholic church must get tougher on sexual predator priests in Canada and become more open, compassionate and accountable to their victims, says a report released yesterday.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops asked for victims' input as they prepared the report and they clearly got it.
"The sexual abuse of minors is beyond any doubt one of the greatest tragedies brought to light over the past 25 years," said the report from a committee of bishops.
"In the course of the interviews with victims, as well as in a number of written communications, the suffering and often dramatic consequences of sexual abuse were obvious.
"Their [victims'] perception is that the church's actions and the measures it implements are aimed more at preserving the financial and pastoral integrity of the institution, protecting priests, even known abusers, and the systematic challenging of victims, rather than their protection.
PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call
By Dan Sheehan
Of The Morning Call
Legislators are eager to change a law that has allowed clergy members and others accused of sex crimes against children to escape prosecution.
The need to lengthen or abolish Pennsylvania's statute of limitations — the law that prohibits prosecution of crimes after a certain period of time — was one of the chief conclusions of a Philadelphia grand jury that investigated the handling of accused Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
The investigative panel, which released its report this week, said some priests alleged to have engaged in abuse can't be charged because too much time has gone by and they are protected by the statute.
Bishop Edward P. Cullen of the Allentown Diocese, who was the chief aide to retired Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua and is at the center of the archdiocese inquiry, Friday night denied actions attributed to him in parts of the grand jury's report.
In a letter to be read at Masses throughout the five-county diocese Sunday, Cullen says, ''At no time did I ever give instructions to any subordinate that victims of sexual abuse were not to be believed.''
CALIFORNIA
The Ledger
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES
Attorneys for both sides have asked a judge to order nine clergy sexual abuse cases against the Los Angeles Archdiocese to reach the trial stage within the next nine months.
Lawyers for Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and attorneys for more than 560 people suing the archdiocese said in their request that efforts to settle the lawsuits have stalled.
The two sides and the archdiocese's insurers have been trying for nearly three years to reach a global legal settlement that could approach $1 billion.
Lawyers for the archdiocese and the plaintiffs blame the impasse on the insurers, which have sued to gain documents about the alleged sexual abuse by priests.
"We are not able to get anywhere near the levels of sincere participation from our carriers," said archdiocese attorney J. Michael Hennigan.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholic League
Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham released a grand jury report today on cases of alleged sexual abuse by priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Commenting on the report is Catholic League president William Donohue:
“The incredible amount of time and money that Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham has wasted in her fanatical crusade against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia is just cause for her being thrown out of office. After all is said and done, she has come up empty: not a single priest will be prosecuted for any alleged crime. And she knew this from the get-go: the report says that ‘much of the abuse goes back several decades’ and that ‘many of the victims were unnamed, unavailable or unable to come forward.’
“In other words, Abraham wants us to believe that many years ago (decades ago?) there were priests who molested kids she can’t identify. Other alleged victims moved away and can’t be found (perhaps they’re hiding from her). Still others are apparently too old to meet with her.
UNITED STATES
Religion & Ethics Newsweekly
September 23, 2005 Episode no. 904
BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Several reports this week predict Pope Benedict XVI will approve a document being prepared that would bar all homosexuals from becoming Catholic priests -- this just before Vatican representatives begin long-planned visits, inspections, at every American Catholic seminary where, among other things, the visitors are expected to review each school's policy for screening out applicants who are gay or have even a homosexual orientation. There are about 4,500 seminarians.
Judy Valente has our story.
JUDY VALENTE: These candidates for the priesthood have just arrived at Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Maryland. The seminary is nearly 200 years old and one of the largest in the country. Like other seminaries and schools of theology, it will soon be visited for several days by one of the teams of American bishops and priests selected by the Vatican.
Monsignor STEVEN ROHLFS (Rector, Mount St. Mary's Seminary, Maryland): They've been asked to interview all of the seminarians. Every single one. They've been asked to interview all of our faculty, all of the administration. We had to provide all the course work that we teach -- all the outlines, all the bibliographies. They'll interview all of the professors.
VALENTE: The teams will also look for "evidence of homosexuality." Archbishop Edwin O'Brien is coordinator of the seminary review.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News
IF NOTHING else, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia is consistent - sickeningly so.
It still refuses to own up to its role in subjecting children to the sick whims of perverted priests.
This week, the archdiocese demeaned the pedophiles' victims and wasted its moral authority by denying its complicity in the sex scandal.
Stung by a blistering grand jury report that accused top church leaders of an "immoral" campaign to conceal sexual abuse in its ranks, the church sought refuge in a ridiculous defense: The report was motivated by anti-Catholic bias.
Unbelieveable.
The allegation of prejudice is a groundless and transparent attempt to deflect blame and defuse the most damning account of cold-blooded moral corruption I have ever read.
The grand jury report detailed a calculated policy by church leaders, up to and including former Cardinals Bevilacqua and Krol, to conceal the crimes of predator priests by transferring them from one place to another, sacrificing the safety of children to save the church from scandal.
Frankly, the only equivalency that comes to mind in terms of institutionalized inhumanity - as much as I usually avoid inflammatory Holocaust metaphors - is the Third Reich.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News
WHEN I was a kid, the rectory of Holy Martyrs Parish was where the Men of God lived.
And they were lovely men, patiently dealing with me and the many other teenagers who worked there after school and on weekends.
We spent hours at that rectory in tiny Oreland, Pa., answering the phone, filling out Mass cards, trying to keep our voices low - and rarely succeeding - when the Rosary group prayed in the first-floor meeting room.
For me, the rectory was as safe and familiar as my own home. But after Father Edward DePaoli was arrested in June 1985, I wondered if my memories were accurate.
That's what can happen when the priest sex-abuse scandal touches your childhood parish: You question the truth of everything, even things you know to be true.
Especially when no one in charge will acknowledge what's really so.
And the truth is, as it was unfolding, no one in charge would talk about the scandal that was rotting the Philadelphia Archdiocese from within.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
Clearing the Record
A front-page article and headline ("Don't Read Report, Rigali says")in today's Inquirer about Cardinal Justin Rigali's views of the grand jury report on sexual abuse by priests incorrectly summarized his statements. In response to a question, Cardinal Rigali said that the report was "graphic," "slanted" and of questionable value to families, but made no statement saying whether Catholics should read the report.
ROME
National
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Many readers undoubtedly have questions about reports concerning a new Vatican instruction on the admission of homosexuals to seminaries. I'll have analysis in the near future, though one note of caution is in order: we don't yet have the document, and as always with church texts, the devil is in the details.
That's particularly true with this instruction, since the Vatican has already twice published documents indicating that homosexuals should not be admitted to the priesthood (a document from the Congregation for Religious in 1961 and another from the Congregation for Divine Worship in May 2002). To what extent the new instruction will mark a change in policy, and what its practical impact may be, therefore remains to be seen.
UNITED STATES
National
By Cindy Wooden
Vatican City
Catholic News Service
The Vatican has been working since 2001 on an instruction against accepting homosexual candidates to the priesthood, but several officials said in late September that Pope Benedict XVI has not approved the document yet, so a date for its publication has not been set.
"Obviously, it will come out, but the question is when," one Vatican official told Catholic News Service Sept. 22.
A top official at one of the congregations working on the instruction insisted Sept. 22, "It has not been approved. There is nothing new" to report about the document's progress.
Since 2001 -- when the Congregation for Catholic Education, which is responsible for setting seminary policies, decided an instruction was needed and began working with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on a draft -- numerous reports have been published claiming it was about to be released.
BRITAIN
News and Star
Published on 23/09/2005
FORMER Workington priest Father Gregory Peter Carroll was due to be sentenced at court in York today after admitting 15 charges of indecent assault and five of gross indecency.
Fr Gregory, who spent 14 years at Workington’s Our Lady and St Michael’s Church from 1987, pleaded guilty to a string of offences committed when he was at Ampleforth College in Yorkshire between 1973 and 1983.
In an unconnected case, another former priest, who also served at Our Lady and St Michael’s Church, is to stand trial in Leeds next March. Father Piers Grant-Ferris denies 27 counts of indecent assault alleged to have occurred in the 60s and 70s before he moved to Workington.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News
By WILLIAM BUNCH & CATHERINE LUCEY
bunchw@phillynews.com
THEY'RE STILL very, very sorry, and they'll try to make sure it won't happen again.
But they still insist the grand jury report about child sexual abuse by Philadelphia priests was unfair. Meanwhile, they're going to try to make sure that no gays become priests.
On the Second Day of damage control, Roman Catholic leaders in Philadelphia and in Rome moved across those three broad fronts to quiet the uproar over priest sexual abuse - including the scathing, lurid report by a local grand jury.
The panel was convened by District Attorney Lynne Abraham and probed the Philadelphia Archdiocese for three years. It said on Wednesday that at least 63 local priests had abused hundreds of children over the last four decades or so - and that top church officials had covered it up.
Yesterday, archdiocesan officials and Abraham's office continued to trade volleys, while outside experts wondered what - if anything - the archdiocese could do to restore its reputation.
Although much information about Philadelphia-area abusive priests has dribbled out since 2002, the grand jury's report added some shocking details. They included reports of one priest who raped an 11-year-old girl and took her to get an abortion, and of another who molested a teenage car-crash victim while she was in traction.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
Full Text Documents | The Grand Jury Report
The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office released the following files as part of the Grand Jury report, all as PDFs. Note: For many of these PDFs, the contents begin on page 2. To search a PDF, click on the binoculars in the PDF toolbar.
The Grand Jury Report, 1.9 MB, 424 pages
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Natalie Pompilio
Inquirer Staff Writer
Local Catholics were angry yesterday, one day after the release of a scathing report that concluded the Philadelphia Archdiocese had long ignored or enabled the sexual abuse of children by its priests.
But not all were directing their ire at the church.
Some criticized the District Attorney's Office, which released the grand jury's 418-page report, the result of three years' investigation. Others took the media to task.
Some said they were so disgusted that they would never enter a Catholic church again. Others said their faith had been strengthened by the realization that all are fallible and need the support of prayer.
"It's just devastating," said Mario Vianello, 65, of Northeast Philadelphia, a lifelong Catholic with 12 years of Catholic-school education. He is so disgusted, he said, that he will leave the church as soon as his daughter finishes her senior year at a local Catholic high school.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Melissa Dribben
Inquirer Staff Writer
Wednesday morning, on the 10th floor of the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, an impassive man in a pin-striped suit stood in the center of the stuffy room crowded with reporters, prosecutors and TV cameras.
For an hour, while the findings of a grand jury report on decades of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia were presented, people in the crowd wept and hugged and muttered things like "incredible" and "sickening" under their breath.
But John Salveson, a local spokesman for Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests and Other Clergy, the activist group known as SNAP, showed little emotion.
When District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham spoke of the "impossibility" of prosecuting priests, even when their crimes were well-documented, Salveson cradled his chin in his hand. When she described a church hierarchy more concerned with "blaming the messenger" than protecting children, he stroked his blond mustache and shook his head. Only when she went into chilling detail about a boy who was raped throughout his adolescence by a trusted priest did Salveson's eyes redden.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Jim Remsen
Inquirer Faith Life Editor
In the Philadelphia grand jury's long catalog of priests accused of sexual abuse, two names stand out: the Revs. John H. Mulholland and Robert L. Brennan.
Unlike the many others - dead, defrocked, or suspended - Mulholland, 66, and Brennan, 67, remain in public ministry. Both are chaplains at retirement homes in the archdiocese, celebrating Masses and ministering to residents.
According to the report, released Wednesday, church officials were first told in 1968 about Mulholland's "sadomasochistic practices with boys" - which involved talk of bondage and eating human waste - and took no action.
Similarly, repeated complaints about Brennan's "inappropriate or suspicious behavior" with more than 20 boys dating to 1988 prompted a round of therapy - but he was then sent back to parish work with no warning to parishioners, the grand jury found.
Although the U.S. Catholic Church has vowed to remove any known abuser from active ministry as part of its 2002 child-protection charter, archdiocese officials maintain that these two priests are not clear-cut abusers under the special set of church laws known as the Essential Norms.
PHILADLEPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By David O'Reilly
Inquirer Staff Writer
Cardinal Justin Rigali said yesterday that Catholics should avoid reading the district attorney's grand jury report, which accuses past leaders of the Philadelphia Archdiocese of covering up years of sexual abuse by priests.
Its "prolonged explanations of the abuse" are "very graphic," the Roman Catholic archbishop said in an interview at his Center City office yesterday.
The 418-page report, released Wednesday by District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham, also "gives a very slanted view" of how the archdiocese now handles sex-abuse cases, he said.
"I don't think it's of value to families," Rigali said.
The report blasted former leaders of the archdiocese for allowing dozens of priests to abuse hundreds of children during the last 35 years.
It harshly rebuked Rigali's predecessors, Cardinals Anthony J. Bevilacqua and John Krol, for allegedly "burying" abuse reports, concealing crimes, and reassigning abuser priests to parishes where their sexual appetites were unknown. The report listed 63 known abusers who served in the archdiocese.
UNITED STATES
The Tablet
AN INVESTIGATION of all 229 seminaries in the United States begins next week in an effort, according to Vatican officials, to ensure that future priests remain celibate and obediently accept church teaching on all sexual matters. But the “Apostolic Visitation” – requested in 2002 in the wake of the American clergy’s sex abuse crisis – is already mired in controversy after it was discovered this week that investigators will be looking specifically for “evidence of homosexual-ity” in the seminaries.
The request for such evidence is part of a 13-page working paper, or “instrumentum laboris” (IL), that the Congregation for Education in Rome formulated to guide the visitations. It has fuelled speculation that the Vatican is set to issue an official ban on homosexuals entering seminaries, even if they have never engaged in sexual activity. An unconfirmed report on Monday from the United States-based Catholic World News agency said Pope Benedict had already approved the stricture in the form of an “instruction”, which would be published later this year by the Congregation for Education.
Several American commentators haveclaimed that the Vatican is orchestrating a gay witch-hunt, while several prominent Church leaders have expressed fears that homosexually oriented priests were being unfairly targeted as scapegoats for the sex abuse crisis. “The public discussions that have taken place so far have indicated a kind of discrimination, not against behaviour, but against identity,” said Fr Bob Silva, president of theAbuse Tracker Federation of Priests’ Councils in the United States.
PITTSBURGH (PA)
Post-Gazette
Friday, September 23, 2005
By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
In a lecture to 110 new bishops from around the world, Bishop Donald Wuerl of Pittsburgh this week urged them to practice accountability and openness in church administration, particularly in light of the clergy sexual abuse and financial scandals.
"The child sexual abuse scandal by a number of priests and the poor exercise of responsibility by some bishops" along with financial scandals, have led to demands for greater accountability from the faithful, Wuerl said.
"This, I believe, is an important issue of our day-- and not necessarily driven by the scandal alone. It is healthy for the whole body to know that members and leaders alike are accountable to Christ and his gospel," he said.
He spoke on church administration in Rome at the Vatican's annual school for new bishops. Pope Benedict XVI spoke on bishops as teachers.
UNITED STATES
The Tablet
Paul Michaels
The long-awaited Vatican document on homosexuality and the priesthood is expected to be released soon. The signs are that, while it may please a few in the Church, it could cause acute distress to many gay priests who are faithful to their vows of celibacy
IS THERE ANY purge coming in the Catholic Church? There are clues detected by the secular media that this may be the case. Last week the Associated Press flagged a story in the right-leaningAbuse Tracker Catholic Register, a weekly American newspaper published by the Legionaries of Christ, the ultra-conservative religious order. In a front-page report, dated 7 September, Archbishop Edwin O’Brien told the Register: “I think anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity, or has strong homosexual inclinations, would be best not to apply to a seminary and not to be accepted into a seminary.”
Archbishop O’Brien told the paper that even a man who had been celibate for 10 years or more should be barred from entering seminaries. As an aside, he noted: “The Holy See should be coming out with a document about this.” Later he told the Associated Press that he expected such a Vatican directive would appear before the end of the year. The archbishop should not be dismissed as just another opinionated cleric. He is coordinating the Vatican-ordered “Apostolic Visitation”, the year-long investigation of American seminaries and formation programmes for religious orders that is part of the Vatican’s response to the clerical sexual abuse crisis in the United States.
UNITED STATES
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: September 23, 2005
Word that the Vatican is likely to issue instructions soon that could bar most gay men from joining the priesthood has set off a wave of anger and sadness among some gay priests and seminarians who say they may soon have to decide whether to stay or leave, to remain silent or to speak out.
"I do think about leaving," said a 30-year old Franciscan seminary student. "It's hard to live a duplicitous life, and for me it's hard not to speak out against injustice. And that's what this is."
In telephone interviews on Thursday with gay priests and seminarians in different parts of the country, all were adamant that their names not be used because they feared repercussions from their bishops or church superiors.
"I find that I am becoming more and more angry," said a 40-year-old priest on the West Coast who said he had not decided whether to reveal his homosexuality publicly. "This is the church I've given my life to and I believe in. I look at every person I come in contact with as someone who's created in the image and likeness of God, and I expect that from the church that I'm a part of. But I always feel like I'm 'less than.' "
PITTSBURGH (PA)
Post-Gazette
Friday, September 23, 2005
By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
In 1985, over the objections of the priest who advised him on clergy appointments, former Pittsburgh bishop Anthony Bevilacqua accepted a convicted child molester from the diocese of Camden, N.J., and assigned him to Sewickley Valley Hospital.
The offending priest, the Rev. John P. Connor, was removed from his assignment here shortly after Bishop Donald Wuerl replaced Bevilacqua in 1988. Bevilacqua then gave Connor a parish assignment in the Philadelphia archdiocese.
The Connor case was detailed in a Philadelphia grand jury report of more than 400 pages released Wednesday. The report blasted Bevilacqua, the former Philadelphia archbishop, and others in the hierarchy for their response to complaints about priests who molested minors.
Wuerl was not responsible for transferring Connor to Philadelphia because Connor never formally belonged to the Pittsburgh diocese; only the bishop of Camden could reassign him, said the Rev. Ronald Lengwin, spokesman for the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
NEW YORK
The Villager
By Lincoln Anderson
A woman who said she turned to the former pastor of Our Lady of Pompei Church for spiritual guidance is claiming he met her need with what she at first believed to be “spiritual hugs” but that these embraces quickly went beyond the religious and became rape.
Leslie Fray is charging that Father Joseph Cogo, former pastor at the Carmine Street church, raped her at least three times. The incidents happened almost 30 years ago, when Fray, then a recent Yale graduate and convert to Catholicism, came to Greenwich Village. Fray, now 51, says she was beset by delayed-onset post-traumatic stress syndrome stemming from the alleged rapes and that it wrecked her life.
She says the recent media coverage of lawsuits against pedophile priests, her own growing awareness of what happened to her and wanting to inform others who may have had similar experiences are compelling her to tell her story now.
In June of 2004, Fray filed a complaint with the Manhattan district attorney and the Catholic Archdiocese of New York. The same week, she met with the superior of the Pious Society of the Missionaries of Saint Charles Borromeo, otherwise known as the Scalabrian order, with which Our Lady of Pompei is affiliated. The following month, Cogo was asked to step down as head pastor at the Village church. Three months later, he was transferred to Caracas, Venezuela, to head the Our Lady of Pompei Church there, also part of the Scalabrians’ order.
UNITED STATES
The Washington Times
By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 23, 2005
Pope Benedict XVI will move soon against homosexuality in the Catholic priesthood by issuing a Vatican "instruction" forbidding even celibate homosexuals from entering seminary.
Seen as a response to the sexual-abuse crisis, which has cost the Catholic Church in the United States more than $1 billion in lawsuits, the instruction will be released next month.
"Both the present Holy Father and many Catholic scholars and commentators have realized the sexual-abuse crisis was a sign of something much deeper and more widespread," said the Rev. Joseph Fessio, editor-in-chief of Ignatius Press in San Francisco, "such as the rejection of Catholic teaching, especially in the area of sexual ethics."
The document will be issued by the Congregation for Catholic Education, which oversees 113,000 seminarians worldwide, and reports of its imminent release already has caused a furor in Catholic circles.
AUSTRALIA
The Sunday Mail
By Sonya Neufeld
23sep05
A FORMER Catholic priest convicted of sexually assaulting an altar boy in his NSW parish has lost an appeal against his conviction.
James Fletcher, 64, of Branxton, was found guilty of nine charges over the sexual abuse of the teenager between 1989 and 1991.
Fletcher was convicted in December last year of the offences, which occurred in his NSW Hunter Valley parish.
In April he was sentenced to a maximum of 10 years jail with a non-parole period of seven and a half years.
His appeal against his conviction was dismissed in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal today in a majority decision by a three-judge panel.
COLORADO
Rocky Mountain News
By Felix Doligosa Jr., Rocky Mountain News
September 23, 2005
Andrew Burke, a former Catholic clergyman, would often spend hours planting flowers in the backyard garden of his Pueblo home. The garden was where his body was found Wednesday.
Burke, an ex-priest accused of sexually abusing a teen more than 30 years ago, committed suicide by a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his chest at his home Wednesday morning, according to Pueblo County Coroner James Kramer.
"I am shocked," said neighbor Rose Campos. "He seemed to be very nice."
Burke, 62, was under investigation for allegedly molesting a teenage boy in the early 1970s, The Associated Press reported.
He left the priesthood in 1973.
John Ercul, Pueblo deputy police chief, confirmed that Burke was a suspect in a sexual assault. Burke did not mention the allegations in his suicide note, Ercul said.
Police said Burke's wife, Nancy, told them he had been depressed for the past year since allegations of sexual abuse were made against him. She said her husband was depressed because he believed the investigation was not going favorably for him.
CHESTER (PA)
Daily Local
MICHA FRAZIER, Staff Writer 09/23/2005
Some Catholics in Chester County are uncomfortable when talking about an issue that has recently confronted them -- the systematic cover-up of sex abuse by priests from the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
But despite the revelation that priests participated in an alleged cover-up of abuses since 1967, Chester County’s faithful remained devoted with some displeased with the church’s actions.
On Wednesday, a Philadelphia grand jury, brought together under the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, released a report that criticized leaders of the Philadelphia Archdiocese, including two archbishops, for hiding alleged sexual abuse for decades.
Gaile Polhlaus is thenational secretary of Voice of the Faithful, an organization that seeks changes in church hierarchy and procedures for alleged sexual-abuse scandals. She said she was not surprised when she heard the news about the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
"I was waiting for the shoe to drop," she said.
INDIANAPOLIS (IN)
Indianapolis Star
By Kevin Corcoran
kevin.corcoran@indystar.com
A 43-year-old Indianapolis man filed a sexual abuse lawsuit Thursday in Marion Superior Court against the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, a defrocked Roman Catholic priest and his former parish.
The suit, in which the plaintiff is identified as "John Doe CT," alleges that then-Rev. Harry Monroe sexually abused him at St. Catherine Catholic Church in 1977.
Monroe was assigned to St. Catherine from 1976 to 1979. The church was merged with St. James in 1993 to form Good Shepherd Catholic Church.
This lawsuit comes after one filed Sept. 8 in which a 40-year-old man living out of state alleged Monroe had molested him repeatedly while he was a student at St. Andrew Catholic School in 1976.
Both lawsuits seek unspecified monetary damages from the archdiocese, which faces nine other sexual abuse lawsuits.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The News Journal
09/23/2005A Philadelphia grand jury jolted that city's Catholic hierarchy this week with scathing criticism of priestly abuse and ecclesiastical corruption. The grand jury has been meeting for three years, so the extent of the report was not surprising. It's intensity, however, was shocking.
No indictments were handed up because of the statute of limitations on the crimes involved. But the jurors did not temper their language in condemning the priests who abused children. Their harshest words were directed against the leaders of the Philadelphia church, the men who had the chance to stop the abuse but didn't.
Cardinals John Krol and Anthony Bevilacqua were excoriated for their criminal coverups. No amount of apologizing by current leaders will wipe away such betrayal of the church's own teachings.
If the grand jury's findings are correct, and we have no reason to doubt them, it is clear that there were more victims than just the boys and girls who were abused by a handful of priests. The victims include the faithful who believed in the leadership. Other priests especially were victimized by the leadership.
COLORADO
The Denver Post
By Kirk Mitchell
Denver Post Staff Writer
Facing accusations that he tied up and blindfolded an altar boy for sexual purposes in the early 1970s, a former Catholic priest in Pueblo committed suicide Wednesday.
Andrew A. Burke, 62, who had been the social-work director at the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo, shot himself in the chest in his backyard with a .38-caliber handgun that still had the price tag attached, said Deputy Chief John Ercul of the Pueblo Police Department.
Police found Burke's body about 8 a.m. in his backyard after his wife found a suicide note and called police, Ercul said.
Contacted by The Denver Post on Tuesday afternoon, Burke, who had been a priest in the early 1970s at St. Pius X in Pueblo, left a phone message with the newspaper hours before his death.
"I know I failed as a priest. I failed (the altar boy) and his family, and I certainly failed the church, and for that I am deeply sorry," Burke said in the message.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Observer-Reporter
PHILADELPHIA – Even if Pennsylvania lengthens its statute of limitations for child sex abuse lawsuits, as recommended by a grand jury in the Philadelphia archdiocese probe, advocates also urge that the statute be lifted entirely for at least a year to allow even older cases to move forward.
Passing a law to abolish the statute of limitations would "protect our grandkids from that day forward, but it doesn't address past abuse," David Clohessy, national director of the Survival Network of Those Abused by Priests and Other Clergy, said Thursday. "And abusive priests get a free pass and access to a current crop of victims."
Clohessy said that states should look at what California has done. The state lifted the statute of limitations for civil lawsuits in sex abuse cases for all of 2003.
The Philadelphia grand jury on Wednesday released a scathing report documenting assaults on minors by more than 60 priests since 1967 and alleged that church leaders covered up the abuse, a claim the archdiocese denied. Among its recommendations on combatting the molestation of children by priests, the grand jury recommended lengthening or abolishing the statute of limitations for sexual abuse.
NEW YORK
New York Newsday
BY CAROL EISENBERG
STAFF WRITER
September 23, 2005
A pending Vatican instruction barring homosexual men from the Roman Catholic priesthood even if they are celibate is provoking fury and fear among some priests in New York and Long Island, who worry that good men will be scapegoated and the ranks of priests decimated.
The instruction, which has not yet been published, is said to "grandfather" gay men who have been ordained. Nevertheless, some men who described themselves as chaste homosexual priests say they are considering speaking against the document, or even resigning.
"Do you want to work for an organization that barely tolerates your existence and says that people like you can no longer be accepted?" asked one New York priest who described himself as homosexual and chaste. "What kind of self-hatred is necessary to continue in a place like that?"
While the church has long recommended against ordaining men "affected by the perverse inclination to homosexuality or pederasty," many prelates acknowledge there is a higher percentage of gays in the priesthood in the United States than in the general population - anywhere from 30 percent to 50 percent, according to some estimates - despite the church's teaching that homosexuality is an "intrinsic evil."
DANBURY (CT)
The News-Times
By Fred Lucas
THE NEWS-TIMES
The Rev. Albert Audette feels reassured about the forthcoming statement from the Vatican regarding homosexual men in the priesthood.
"It's important we serve people on the level that is expected of us," said Audette, a priest at St. Peter Church in Danbury. "People should expect in every case that seminaries educate people for the priesthood, that we move people who aren't homosexuals, and move them to a holy life in the ministry."
A Vatican document expected to be released in coming weeks will prevent gays, even those who remain celibate, from being ordained as priests. The rule was first reported Thursday.
The church has traditionally held only the act of homosexuality is a sin. The new policy will take that a step farther, saying Roman Catholic seminaries should reject those with homosexual tendencies.
ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Morning Call
By Dan Sheehan, Matt Assad
and Joe McDermott Of The Morning Call
The portrayal of Allentown Bishop Edward P. Cullen in a Philadelphia grand jury's scathing report on the clergy sex abuse scandal details episodes of bureaucratic blindness and inexplicable leniency during his tenure as a top administrator in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
The Cullen of those days stands in sharp contrast to the efficient, zero-tolerance prelate who allowed unfettered scrutiny by the five district attorneys in the Allentown Diocese after the scandal erupted nationally in 2002.
In one section of the 423-page report, Cullen, who was the chief aide to retired Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, laments that abusive priests are able to escape prosecution because too much time has passed. ''I think it would be good for society if they had no statute of limitations,'' he told the grand jury, which spent three years examining the archdiocese's handling of abuse cases.
UNITED STATES
Concord Monitor
September 23. 2005 8:00AM
Given the pope's history of backward thinking on questions of human sexuality and open debate, word that the Catholic Church will try to root out gay students and dissident professors in its seminaries comes as no surprise. But that doesn't make the news any less troubling.
As part of a review prompted by the clerical sex abuse scandal, the Vatican will dispatch a team of investigators to search for "evidence of homosexuality" and identify faculty members who question church teachings in its 229 American seminaries, The New York Times recently reported.
As Catholics await a ruling on whether gays should be barred from the priesthood, a Vatican document obtained by the Timesand an interview with the archbishop overseeing the seminary review suggest that the church wants to eliminate gays from the dwindling ranks of priests. Edwin O'Brien, the archbishop for the U.S. military, said that "anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity or has strong homosexual inclinations" should not be admitted to the seminary. That prohibition should even apply to those who have not been sexually active for a decade or better, O'Brien told theAbuse Tracker Catholic Register.
The purge is a misguided reaction to a scandal in which it was revealed that priests had abused an alarming number of children, an estimated 80 percent of them boys. Rather than addressing the real problem - a church culture that denied healthy sexuality and then covered up the ugly consequences - the Vatican of Pope Benedict XVI took aim at a familiar target: sexual orientation.
PENNSYLVANIA
The PittsburghChannel.com
POSTED: 4:35 pm EDT September 22, 2005
UPDATED: 6:31 pm EDT September 22, 2005
ALLEGHENY COUNTY, Pa. -- The following report by Team 4 investigative reporter Paul van Osdol first aired Sept. 22, 2005, on Channel 4 Action News at 6 p.m.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Decades of sexual abuse by priests kept secret? Pittsburgh authorities are reviewing a report accusing the Philadelphia archdiocese of doing just that.
Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua spent five years as the Pittsburgh bishop before going to Philadelphia. Now, he is the focus of a grand jury investigation.
The grand jury said when Bevilacqua was bishop in Pittsburgh, he allowed the Rev. John P. Connor to transfer to Pittsburgh, even though he knew the priest had been arrested in New Jersey after being accused of molesting a young boy.
When Bevilacqua moved to Philadelphia, he found a parish for Connor there.
The grand jury report said Bevilacqua was doing a favor for a friend -- the bishop of Camden, N.J. -- when he allowed Connor to transfer to Pittsburgh.
But in a memo, Bevilacqua's assistant, the Rev. Nicholas Dattilo, warned about the transfer. "If the problem is homosexuality or pedophilia, we could be accepting a difficulty with which we have had no post-therapeutic experience," wrote Dattilo.
NORTH CAROLINA
Daily Times
By Alex Keown Daily Times Staff Writer
After a manhunt that spanned two states, Wilson County sheriff's detectives arrested a pastor of a Wilson church Wednesday night wanted on charges of 19 counts of statutory rape.
Sheriff's detectives along with members of the U.S. Marshal's Service's fugitive task force arrested Nathaniel Rasberry, of 9013 U.S. 301 S., Kenly, in connection with repeated sexual assaults on two women who are now 19 and 25 years old.
Reports of Rasberry's activities first came to the Sheriff's Office in August. After an investigation by Detective Denise Wilkins, which included an interview with Rasberry, warrants for his arrest were issued. When detectives went to serve the warrants, Rasberry was no where to be found, Farmer said.
Rasberry had been on the run since warrants were issued earlier this month, said Maj. J.H. Farmer of the Wilson County Sheriff's Office. Farmer said the investigation into Rasberry's activities indicates the assaults had been ongoing for several years, back to when the victims were minors.
PUEBLO (CO)
The Denver Post
By The Associated Press
Pueblo - The coroner has determined that an ex-priest accused of sexual abuse committed suicide by shooting himself in the heart.
Andrew Burke, 62, was under investigation for allegedly molesting a teen in the early 1970s.
An autopsy showed that Burke died Wednesday from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest, said Pueblo County Coroner James Kramer.
John Ercul, deputy police chief, said Burke was a suspect in a sexual assault. A suicide note left by Burke did not mention the allegations, Ercul said.
ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Morning Call
The portrait of Allentown Bishop Edward Cullen painted in a Philadelphia grand jury's scathing report on the priest abuse scandal is a mix of sympathetic utterances and episodes of bureaucratic blindness and ineptitude during his tenure as a top administrator in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
Cullen was a top aide to Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, who is accused of covering up repeated child abuse allegations by priests.
Cullen was named in a grand jury report released Wednesday as instructing an assistant never to tell abuse victims that he believed them. The claim was denied by Cullen's office, saying the reference was to a specific case.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Penn Live
9/22/2005, 5:43 p.m. ET
By JOANN LOVIGLIO
The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Even if Pennsylvania lengthens its statute of limitations for child sex abuse lawsuits, as recommended by a grand jury in the Philadelphia archdiocese probe, advocates also urge that the statute be lifted entirely for at least a year to allow even older cases to move forward.
Passing a law to abolish the statute of limitations would "protect our grandkids from that day forward, but it doesn't address past abuse," David Clohessy, national director of the Survival Network of Those Abused by Priests and Other Clergy, said Thursday. "And abusive priests get a free pass and access to a current crop of victims."
Clohessy said that states should look at what California has done. The state lifted the statute of limitations for civil lawsuits in sex abuse cases for all of 2003.
The Philadelphia grand jury on Wednesday released a scathing report documenting assaults on minors by more than 60 priests since 1967 and alleged that church leaders covered up the abuse, a claim the archdiocese denied. Among its recommendations on combatting the molestation of children by priests, the grand jury recommended lengthening or abolishing the statute of limitations for sexual abuse.
INDIANAPOLIS (IN)
ABC 7
September 22, 2005 (INDIANAPOLIS) - Advocates for sexual abuse victims say a Catholic priest hurt children in at least three parishes before being stripped of his ministry in 1984.
Advocate groups are urging Indianapolis Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein to help locate Harry Monroe and find other potential victims.
In a lawsuit filed today in Marion Superior Court, a man in his 40s claimed Monroe abused him in 1977 at St. Catherine's, a south side Indianapolis parish which has since been closed.
UNITED STATES
Renew America
Matt C. Abbott
September 22, 2005
Three Roman Catholic priests have been gracious enough to provide me with their observations (edited) on the recent report that Pope Benedict XVI "has given his approval to a new Vatican policy document indicating that men with homosexual tendencies should not be ordained as Catholic priests."
Father Burns Seeley of the Chicago-based Society of St. John Cantius:
"Note that the document (I have not seen it yet, obviously) seems not to be touching principally on priestly chastity. I think 'Even if they are celibate...,' should read, 'Even if they are chaste...' We are all called to be chaste, whether we are clergy, religious or laity. I certainly don't know if fallen homosexuals are more inclined to be unchaste than fallen heterosexuals.
"The key point seems to be that homosexuals possess 'a serious personality disorder which detracts from their ability to serve as ministers.' I take this to mean that they are incapable of perceiving human nature as God as created it, consisting of male and female persons meant for mutual attraction, complementarity, and, God-willing, marriage and children.
INDIANAPOLIS (IN)
Indianapolis Star
By Kevin Corcoran
kevin.corcoran@indystar.com
A 43-year-old Indianapolis man filed a sexual abuse lawsuit Thursday in Marion Superior Court against the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, a defrocked Roman Catholic priest and his former parish.
The suit, in which the plaintiff is identified as "John Doe CT," alleges that then-Rev. Harry Monroe sexually abused him at St. Catherine Catholic Church in 1977.
Monroe was assigned to St. Catherine, which later was merged with Good Shepherd Catholic Church, from 1976 to 1979.
UNITED STATES
Gay City News
By ANDY HUMM
Archbishop Edwin O’Brien, whose past responsibilities focused on ministering to young men in the military, will now run an inquisition aimed at gay men in Catholic seminaries; John McNeill, a gay priest, is a harsh critic of the policy, but believes it may be the straw that breaks the back of resistance to reform in the church.
The long anticipated witch-hunt of homosexual men in U.S. Catholic seminaries is underway under Pope Benedict XVI, with the only reaction from gay Catholics being statements of protest.
The church says the purge is a response to the sex abuse scandals and an act of compassion toward the men. Catholic dissidents call it everything from an outrage to a work of the Holy Spirit that will in time lead to reform.
Just this week, Catholic World News reported that the pope “has given his approval to a new Vatican policy document indicating that men with homosexual tendencies should not be ordained as Catholic priests.” That policy has not been published, but the guidelines for sweeping the seminaries have.
Edwin O’Brien, Archbishop for Military Services, has been appointed by Rome to lead the “visitation” of seminaries, looking into 56 areas of adherence to orthodoxy in the training of men to be priests. One of six mandatory questions asks if there is “evidence of homosexuality in the seminary.”
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholic News Service
PHILADELPHIA (CNS) -- Sharp criticism of Philadelphia archdiocesan leaders in a grand jury report on local clergy sexual abuse of children drew an equally sharp response from the archdiocese.
After a three-year investigation the grand jury issued a 423-page report Sept. 21 that said retired Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua, his predecessor, the late Cardinal John J. Krol, and their top aides "all abdicated their duty to protect children. They concealed priests' sexual abuses instead of exposing them. ... There is no doubt that these officials engaged in a continuous, concerted campaign of cover-up over the priests' sexual offenses."
In a 76-page response archdiocesan attorneys described the report as "a vile, mean-spirited diatribe against the church" and "a sensationalized, lurid and tabloidlike presentation of events that transpired years ago, which is neither fair nor accurate."
Philadelphia's current archbishop, Cardinal Justin Rigali, said at a news conference that the church has "deep regrets and sorrow" over the abuse of children by priests.
UNITED STATES
Washington Post
By RACHEL ZOLL
The Associated Press
Thursday, September 22, 2005; 4:15 PM
-- Word that a soon-to-be-released Vatican document will signal homosexuals are unwelcome in Roman Catholic seminaries even if they are celibate has devastated gay clergy _ and raised doubts among conservatives about whether an outright ban can be enforced.
A Vatican official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the document has not been released, said Thursday that the upcoming "instruction" from the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education will reaffirm the church's belief that homosexuals should not be ordained.
In recent decades, Vatican officials have stated several times that gays should not become priests because their sexual orientation is "intrinsically disordered" and makes them unsuitable for ministry.
The latest document is scheduled to be distributed within weeks, just as an evaluation of all 229 American seminaries gets under way under the direction of the same Vatican agency developing the seminary statement. The review, called an Apostolic Visitation, was ordered by Pope John Paul II in response to the U.S. clergy sex abuse crisis which erupted in 2002. Among the questions the evaluators will ask is whether "there is evidence of homosexuality in the seminary," according to the agency's guide for the inspections.
VATICAN CITY
Washington Post
By NICOLE WINFIELD
The Associated Press
Thursday, September 22, 2005; 7:01 AM
VATICAN CITY -- A Vatican document will be released in the coming weeks that reaffirms the Catholic Church's belief that homosexuals shouldn't be ordained priests, a Vatican official said Thursday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the document has not been released, said the "instruction" from the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education would contain "some new things and some old things" and would be released well before the end of the year.
That timeframe means the document will be released just as a Vatican-mandated evaluation of all U.S. seminaries, ordered in the wake of the U.S. clergy sex abuse scandal, gets under way.
Several Vatican documents and letters over the years have said gays or men with homosexual tendencies should not be ordained, regardless of whether they can remain celibate.
A Feb. 2, 1961, Vatican document, "Instruction on the Careful Selection and Training of Candidates for the States of Perfection and Sacred Orders," made clear homosexuals should be barred from the priesthood.
PUEBLO (CO)
TheDenverChannel.com
POSTED: 9:17 am MDT September 22, 2005
UPDATED: 11:40 am MDT September 22, 2005
PUEBLO, Colo. -- A former Catholic priest from Pueblo committed suicide Wednesday with a gunshot to the chest, the Pueblo County coroner has ruled.
Andrew Burke, 62, was found dead in his yard at about 8 a.m., with a newly-purchased revolver that still had the price tag on it, police said.
Burke's wife told police he had been depressed since allegations of sexual abuse were made against him a year ago.
The allegations were reported to Pueblo police by representatives of the Catholic Diocese of Pueblo. Monsignor Mark Plewka, chancellor of the diocese, and human resources Director Teresa Farley reported to Sgt. Troy Davenport that they had been contacted by a man who accused Burke of molesting his nephew in the early 1970s, when Burke was a priest assigned to St. Pius X.
Plewka was out of town, and Farley did not return a phone message on Wednesday.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
'A continuous, concerted campaign of cover-up'
Many of us are Catholic. We have the greatest respect for the faith, and for the good works of the Church. But the moral principles on which it is based, as well as the rules of civil law under which we operate, demanded the truth be told.
•
Some may be tempted to describe these events as tragic. Tragedies such as tidal waves, however, are outside human control. What we have found were not acts of God, but of men who acted in His name and defiled it.
•
Grand jurors heard evidence proving that Cardinals Bevilacqua and Krol, and their aides, were aware that priests in the diocese were perpetrating massive amount of child molestations and sexual assaults. The Archdiocese's own files reveal a steady stream of reports and allegations... . In many cases, the same priests were reported again and again.
•
fter reviewing thousands of documents from Archdiocese files and hearing... from over a hundred witnesses, we, the Grand Jurors, were taken aback by the extent of sexual exploitation within the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Craig R. McCoy
Inquirer Staff Writer
The grand jury report on sex crimes within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia yesterday painted unforgiving portraits of Cardinals John Krol and Anthony J. Bevilacqua - as architects of a decades-long cover-up that exalted damage control above the cries of children.
With an unremitting fury, the report dipped deep into the church's secret archive of internal documents to make the case that the two cardinals protected scores of child molesters with clerical collars - enabling many to attack again and again.
It said the pair sabotaged investigations, transferred priests to hide them, made a mockery of abusers' therapy, and punished whistle-blowers - all the while keeping police, victims, parents, parishioners and the public in the dark.
In one church memo, Bevilacqua's aides said the cardinal was open to reinstating an accused abuser as a pastor - after an intervening "distant" posting "so that the profile can be as low as possible and not attract the attention of the complainant."
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Daily Times
Confronted finally on Wednesday with the unspeakable results of a three-year-long grand jury investigation into the sexual exploitation of children, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia responded like anyone trapped in a corner: It came out swinging. While Cardinal Justin Rigali’s public statements in response to the grand jury’s 418-page report were measured, an 80-page document drafted by church lawyers was filled with wild evasions, feeble justifications and statements that are just flatly contradicted by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office.
D.A. Lynne Abraham empanelled the grand jury because of the archdiocese’s unwillingness to respond with candor to the burgeoning Catholic Church sexual-abuse scandal in the late 1990s.Its investigation found credible evidence that at least 63 priests despoiled children and minors in their charge since 1967 and detailed some nightmarish instances of abuse:
A priest raped an 11-year-old girl, who became pregnant. The priest made sure she got an abortion.
A 12-year-old boy, raped repeatedly by a priest, who told him that his mother approved of the abuse.
A fifth-grader molested in the confessional.
They’re tales of childhoods ruined and adult lives scarred, all aided and abetted by the conscious decision by the leadership of the archdiocese to cover up the offenses by doing whatever it took. Many times, the report states, it took transferring abusive priests out of their rectories and sending them to other parishes, where they were free to begin their abuse anew.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
Cardinal Justin Rigali
is archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia
As the archbishop of almost 1.5 million Catholics, I know that the issue of clergy sexual abuse has caused pain and confusion for some people and anger for others. I understand these feelings and am sorry that the actions of a very small minority of priests have caused hurt and mistrust. Once again, I offer my deep apologies to those who have suffered sexual abuse by a priest or employee of the church.
Our experience in the last several years has taught us a great deal about this issue of critical importance to society. Any incident of sexual abuse of a minor can cause serious mental and emotional harm to a victim. Understanding this, the archdiocese has for many years provided for psychological counseling and related treatment for victims of this sexual misconduct.
When the grand jury began its work almost three and a half years ago, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia was already moving forward, taking steps to protect young people. Much of what we have done was recommended by our own blue ribbon panel, chaired by Helen Alvare, a respected attorney. The Alvare Commission worked for 10 months during 2002 to evaluate archdiocesan policies and procedures. As a result:
All priests and deacons, as well as parish staff, teachers and volunteers who have regular contact with children must attend Safe Environment training. This provides a greater understanding of adults' role as protectors of children, models of appropriate behavior and advocates for those who are most vulnerable. To date, 40,000 individuals have participated in Safe Environment training. In addition, almost 110,000 young people have received grade-appropriate lessons concerning personal boundaries and healthy relationships.
The archdiocese established a Victims Assistance Coordinators Program. Our coordinators are licensed professionals who respond with appropriate care to those victimized by sexual abuse.
I have offered to meet with any victims, just as my predecessor, Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua did.
PHILDELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Nancy Phillips and David O'Reilly
Inquirer Staff Writers
A grand jury yesterday excoriated the Philadelphia Archdiocese and its former top leaders, saying they allowed hundreds of sexual assaults against children to go unpunished and protected the priests who committed the crimes.
In searing language, the panel accused former church officials - including Cardinals Anthony J. Bevilacqua and John Krol - of "burying" abuse reports, ignoring warnings about abusive priests, and shuttling offenders from parish to parish, where some found new victims.
"Sexually abusive priests were left quietly in place or 'recycled' to unsuspecting new parishes - vastly expanding the number of children who were abused," the grand jury concluded.
The hierarchy "excused and enabled the abuse" for decades, the grand jury said in a 418-page report, while demonstrating "utter indifference to the suffering of the victims."
The grand jurors, who spent three years investigating, concluded that Krol and Bevilacqua were more concerned with protecting the reputation and legal and financial interests of the archdiocese than the children entrusted to its care.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News
Staff report
THE CASES of the following men were detailed by the grand jury report on sexual abuse of minors by priests of the Philadelphia Archdiocese:
• Stanley Gana, ordained 1970, "sexually abused countless boys in a succession of Philadelphia Archdiocese parishes. He was known to kiss, fondle, anally sodomize and impose oral sex on his victims."
• Raymond O. Leneweaver, ordained 1962, allowed to continue as a teacher and priest at different parishes despite frequent confessions that he abused boys.
• Joseph Gausch, said to have sexually abused boys during most of his 54 years as a priest in the archdiocese, beginning in 1945. Gausch died in 1999.
• Nicholas V. Cudemo, ordained 1963, raped an 11-year-old girl, molested a fifth-grader in a confessional and maintained sexually abusive relationships simultaneously with several girls in different schools.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News
By KITTY CAPARELLA
caparek@phillynews.com
THE ARCHDIOCESE OF Philadelphia yesterday apologized to victims of sex abuse, then blasted a scathing 418-page grand jury report on pedophile Catholic priests.
Cardinal Justin Rigali, archbishop of Philadelphia, expressed "deep regrets and sincere apologies" to young victims who were "violated" and "humiliated."
"Horrible acts of abuse must not be tolerated," he added.
But his attorney, William Sasso, called the report "incredibly biased and anti-Catholic."
Rigali, who took over the archdiocese in 2003, said the grand jury, empaneled 40 months ago, was supposed to investigate other denominations and organizations, but "there is not a word about anyone else."
"Why just the Catholic Church when everyone knows it's a societal problem?" asked the cardinal.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Daily News
By WILLIAM BUNCH & DANA DiFILIPPO
bunchw@phillynews.com
The devil is in the details.
For example, there is the Philadelphia-area Roman Catholic priest who raped an 11-year-old girl, causing her to become pregnant, and then took her to have an abortion, and who also molested a 5th-grader inside the confessional booth.
There is also the case of the teenage girl who was immobilized in traction in a hospital bed and was molested by a priest.
And another priest is said to have been a sadomasochist who paid boys to place him in bondage - and then perform acts such as defecating so he could lick their excrement.
When the Roman Catholic clergy sex-abuse scandal exploded in 2002 in Boston, many wondered if Philadelphia - the 7th-largest archdiocese in the country with more than1.4 million parishioners - could have similar problems.
UNITED STATES
Pride Source
By D'Anne Witkowski
Originally printed 9/22/2005 (Issue 1338 - Between The Lines News)
The Vatican
The evangelical Christians and the Catholic Church may disagree on some pretty big things, but there's one thing they all agree on: When all else fails, blame the gays!
Such is the thinking behind the terrible child sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church - and cost it over a billion dollars in settlements - over the past few years. That's a big chunk of change for a church that had to shutter a slew of its schools recently due to lack of funds (but they still managed to dig between the couch cushions last year for a million bucks in Michigan to push the anti-gay marriage amendment. They've got to have priorities, after all).
The abuse scandal has been a devastating PR blow as evidence was uncovered that pedophile priests were routinely protected by the church and even moved from place to place when allegations of molestation arose.
Clearly the church had to do something - and blame someone - fast. Surely their focus would be to weed out abusers and pedophiles, right?
Um, no. That would imply culpability. Instead, the church is focusing on ousting gays, which would make sense if gays were the same thing as pedophiles. They are not, as every fully evolved human knows.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Emilie Lounsberry and Mark Fazlollah
Inquirer Staff Writers
They found horrors to fit all kinds of charges - rape, indecent assault, endangering the welfare of children. For church leaders, they mulled obstruction of justice.
But at every turn, prosecutors who investigated sexual abuse by priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia said they were stymied - and frustrated - by limitations in Pennsylvania law.
The three-year investigation yielded a fiercely critical report but no new charges, an outcome that District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham called a "travesty of justice."
"I am a servant of the law, and we do only what the law permits us," she said at a news conference.
"Had the law allowed us to arrest or charge or indict people, we would have done so."
The decision came after months and months of debate among prosecutors about how to proceed. Archdiocesan lawyers fought hard at every juncture of the grand jury inquiry - especially as Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua, then the archbishop of Philadelphia, was called to testify 10 times.
BOSTON (MA)
Lowell Sun
By ERIK ARVIDSON, Sun Statehouse Bureau
BOSTON -- Advocates for victims of child sexual abuse urged lawmakers yesterday to repeal the three-year statute of limitations on civil lawsuits against alleged abusers, saying the changes would help protect children.
Proponents of legislation that would lift the limitations statute, including an attorney representing people who alleged they were abused by priests, said the current law doesn't recognize that it can take decades for victims to come to terms with their abuse.
John Mackey, a Tewksburyt selectman and the town's retired police chief, said all alleged victims of child sexual abuse have the right to face the perpetrator in court, even if the alleged abuse occurred long ago.
“Many of these victims didn't have the opportunity to pursue their case criminally and are looking to do it civilly,” Mackey said at a hearing of the Legislature's Judiciary Committee, which is reviewing the bill. “They'll have the opportunity to stand up and confront the person that abused them, and that's a very major thing in a person's life who has gone through this type of abuse.”
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Jim Remsen
Inquirer Faith Life Editor
As District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham stood before the cameras yesterday denouncing the patterns of sexual abuse and cover-ups in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Marie Whitehead listened quietly nearby, wiping away tears.
When Abraham called for a series of legal reforms, Whitehead clenched her fist and uttered, "Amen."
In the back of the room, Sister Mary Lou Bishoff, a Philadelphia nun and activist, stared at the floor.
"It's horrendous, absolutely horrendous," she said of the grand jury's report that the archdiocese ignored warnings about abusive priests and moved repeat offenders from parish to parish.
Around the region, the grand jury's report left Catholic clergy and laity brooding about the state of their church. As the news reverberated around the five-county archdiocese, some people voiced dismay, others outright revulsion.
The priest-abuse scandal is a raw wound for Whitehead, who says she was abused as a girl for three years by a now-dead priest whom she won't name. Now 58, a nurse, and a Presbyterian, Whitehead is the local president of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.
PENNSYLVANIA
Bucks County Courier Times
By HARRY YANOSHAK
Bucks County Courier Times
BUCKS COUNTY - A Yardley resident and two other men claim in a lawsuit that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia "turned a blind eye'' to their claims that they were sexually abused as boys by the then-pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church in Lower Makefield.
Joseph E. Lehman Jr. 37, and the two others claim in the suit filed Tuesday in Philadelphia that the archdiocese allowed pedophile priests, including James J. Brzyski, who was recently defrocked for child abuse, to remain in their positions after allegations of sex abuse were made.
On Wednesday, Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham released a scathing grand jury report that documented child sexual abuse by "at least" 63 priests. Abraham's office, however, decided not to prosecute the individuals because statutes of limitations have expired.
The lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the three men said the statute of limitations hasn't run out because the archdiocese had covered up the abuse.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By L. Stuart Ditzen
Inquirer Staff Writer
In chilling detail, the report of the Philadelphia Investigating Grand Jury made public yesterday spells out "how dozens of priests sexually abused hundreds of children" and were "excused and enabled" by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and its leaders.
"Sexually abusive priests were either left quietly in place or 'recycled' to unsuspecting new parishes - vastly expanding the number of children who were abused," the report said.
The grand jury documented cases of child sexual abuse by 63 priests going back decades. Its report includes 28 case studies, with names of victims changed to protect their privacy, in which priests allegedly raped, sodomized, fondled and masturbated their child victims. Here, from summaries in the report, are details of some of those cases:
Father Gana. "Father Stanley Gana, ordained in 1970, sexually abused countless boys in a succession of Philadelphia Archdiocese parishes. He was known to kiss, fondle, anally sodomize and impose oral sex on his victims. He took advantage of altar boys, their trusting families, and vulnerable teenagers with emotional problems... .
"Archdiocese officials were aware of the priest's criminality. At least two victims came forward in the 1990s..
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Centre Daily
JUST HOW CORRUPT IS THIS ARCHDIOCESE?
WE NORMALLY don't give warnings about graphic language in editorials, especially those that deal with the Catholic Church. But if you're easily offended by sexual subjects, hypocrisy and evil - or by criticism directed at the leaders of a noble religion - turn away.
Yesterday a Philadelphia grand jury, under the direction of District Attorney Lynne Abraham, issued a 418-page report on scores of local priests who preyed on our children and how the Archdiocese of Philadelphia protected those priests. For years.
No horror novel could capture the depravity described in this report.
Here is one graphic example involving the Rev. Francis P. Rogers:
A young boy "described waking up intoxicated in the priest's bed, opening his eyes to see Father Rogers, three other priests, and a seminarian surrounding him. Two of the priests ejaculated on him while Father Rogers masturbated himself. Then Father Rogers sucked on the victim's penis, pinched his nipples, kissed him, and rubbed his stubbly beard all over him. The former altar boy, whom Father Rogers began abusing when he was about 12 years old, remains haunted by memories of the abuse more than 35 years later."
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Centre Daily
A Philadelphia grand jury yesterday drew back the confessional curtain, threw open the sacristy door, and looked inside the rectory. What it found inside these supposed sanctuaries of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia was sickening.
Sixty-three. That's how many priest predators the grand jury identified as it investigated the most unspeakable criminal acts of sexual abuse against hundreds of children. In doing so, it destroyed any notion that this region avoided the excesses of clergy abuse in the Catholic Church. It has not.
Worse, the grand jury concluded that, as these crimes and sins were committed, many church leaders looked the other way, up to and including the late Cardinal John Krol and the recently retired archbishop, Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua.
Zero. That is, sadly, how many criminal charges the grand jury lodged as a result of its efforts. Loopholes in state laws and statutes of limitation were the reason, not lack of evidence.
Church officials were quick to defend both cardinals against any claim of wrongdoing or a cover-up.
But the grand jury report documents how flimsy were the investigations of abuse claims by various church officials. It also cites instances where predators were reassigned, only to abuse other children.
PUEBLO (CO)
The Pueblo Chieftain
By PATRICK MALONE
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
A third lawsuit over allegations of sexual abuse by a former Catholic brother at Roncalli High School was filed in Pueblo district court on Wednesday.
The suit alleges the abuse was reported to the local diocese years before subsequent allegations surfaced, and nothing was done to keep the brother away from boys.
In a press conference outside the Pueblo Judicial Building, plaintiff Tom Monroe and his lawyer announced the suit. Monroe, of Pueblo, is the first of three former Roncalli students who've filed suit against the Catholic Diocese of Pueblo and the Society of Mary to go public with his identity.
The suits stem from allegations that Brother William Mueller used ether to subdue students at the school, then raped or fondled them while they were unconscious.
"What we're finding out about Roncalli is unfortunately what we're finding about dioceses around the country," said Jeffrey Herman, Monroe's lawyer from the Miami firm of Herman & Mermelstein. "The diocese was notified. They did nothing to protect the children after that. (Mueller) is a monster. He is one of the worst serial pedophiles I have ever seen."
The Philadelphia Grand Jury Report can be viewed on this site.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Tribune-Review
By Tony LaRussa
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, September 22, 2005
A grand jury report on sexually abusive priests in the Philadelphia Archdiocese saved some of its harshest criticism for Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, archbishop from 1988 to 2003 -- accusing him of engaging in a well-planned coverup.
Bevilacqua and his predecessor, the late Cardinal John Krol, knew that priests were involved in "massive amounts of child molestations and sexual assaults" but chose to conceal the abuse rather than notifying police or removing offenders, according to the report released Wednesday.
Prior to being named Archbishop of Philadelphia by the late Pope John Paul II, Bevilacqua served as bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh from December 1983 to February 1988 and was succeeded in Pittsburgh by Bishop Donald Wuerl, who has been known for taking a tough line on priest sex abuse cases.
Criminal charges cannot be brought against the Philadelphia diocese or its priests because of the constraints of state law, including legal time limits, according to the grand jury findings. The diocese also cannot be prosecuted because it is an unincorporated association rather than a corporation.
"The evidence is clear. This reaches the top -- the very top of our archdiocese," Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham said at a news conference. "Regrettably, the perpetrators of these crimes and the people that protected them will never face the penalties they deserve."
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Washington Post
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 22, 2005; Page A03
After a three-year investigation, a grand jury in Philadelphia reported yesterday that two leading figures in the U.S. Roman Catholic hierarchy, Cardinals John Krol and Anthony Bevilacqua, deliberately concealed the sexual abuse of hundreds of children by at least 63 priests in that city from 1967 to 2002.
The grand jury also found that the Philadelphia Archdiocese kept 10 accused child molesters in active ministry even after June 2002, when all the U.S. bishops promised in Dallas to remove any priest who had ever faced a credible allegation of abuse. Two accused priests are still in ministry in Philadelphia, prosecutors said.
The scathing, 418-page report vents the grand jury's frustration that it was unable to indict anybody. It says there is clear evidence in church files that Krol, who died in 1996, and Bevilacqua, who retired two years ago, "enabled and excused" abuse by transferring accused priests from parish to parish without warning parishioners or informing police.
Among the priests they protected, the grand jury said, was one who raped an 11-year-old girl and then took her in for an abortion, and another who groped a teenage girl while she lay immobilized in traction in a hospital bed after a car accident.
COLORADO
Rocky Mountain News
By Gwen Florio, Rocky Mountain News
September 22, 2005
A Littleton woman questioning a Catholic youth program at her church said Wednesday that Archbishop Charles Chaput and other church officials have agreed to discuss the matter with her.
But Francis Maier, chancellor for the archdiocese, refused to confirm that meeting, saying the issue is private.
Jo Wessels, a former counselor with Jefferson County Public Schools, said she's troubled by sexual-misconduct investigations into leaders at Life Teen Inc., an Arizona-based youth program that was launched Sunday at Light of the World parish in Littleton, where Wessels is a longtime member.
A letter distributed in Light of the World's church bulletin on Sunday explained that concerns had been raised about the program.
That letter, from Light of the World pastor Rev. Michael Pavlakovich, did not detail the nature of the allegations, stressing only that Life Teen founder Monsignor Dale Fushek and President Phil Baniewicz, are innocent until found otherwise.
Both Fushek and Baniewicz are based in Mesa, Ariz., where Life Teen has its headquarters.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
FindLaw
By MARCI HAMILTON
hamilton02@aol.com
----
Thursday, Sep. 22, 2005
After an investigation lasting more than three years, Philadelphia District Attorney, Lynne Abraham, has released her Office's grand jury report on clergy child sex abuse in the Philadelphia archdiocese.
I was asked by District Attorney Abraham to be the constitutional law advisor to the grand jury, and willingly assisted the Philadelphia investigation. Now that the report is public, I am free to comment on its contents.
Those in Philadelphia who would like to pretend clergy abuse is not a real problem, or an ancient problem, ought to sit down and read all 671 pages of the report.
It is sobering - recounting the stories of over 60 abusing priests and more victims, and establishing, to a virtual certainty, that there are many others victims about whom we don't even now.
Not all of the abuse is decades old. The abuse is often ritualistic, always sick, and destroys both girls and boys.
Yet the report's legal conclusion will be troubling to many: According to the D.A.'s Office, there is no possibility of bringing criminal charges against the newly discovered perpetrators or the Archdiocese. Nor is there a chance of bringing charges against Cardinals Bevilacqua and Krol, or Secretary for Clergy Monsignor William J. Lynn.
That conclusion does not stem from any finding that the institution, or these men, did not engage in indictable offenses. Rather, it is simply because the statute of limitations has expired on all of the criminal charges that might, earlier, have been lodged.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Daily Local
MICHAEL CRIST, Staff Writer 09/22/2005
PHILADELPHIA -- The leaders of the Philadelphia Archdiocese -- including two former archbishops -- actively concealed sexual abuse by priests for decades, but no criminal charges can be brought against the church or its priests because of the constraints of state law, according to grand jury findings released Wednesday.
Following the nation’s longest-running grand jury probe into priest abuse, the scathing report documents assaults on minors by more than 60 priests since 1967, and alleges that former archbishops Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and Cardinal John Krol covered up the abuse.
Two of those priests included in the inquiry, who had committed abuses, have ties to Chester County. Another former high-level archdiocese official with local ties was also documented as helping to keep abuses under the public radar.
"To protect themselves from negative publicity or expensive lawsuits -- while keeping abusive priests active -- the cardinals and their aides hid the priests’ crimes from parishioners, police and the general public," the report stated.
Cardinal Justin Rigali issued a response to the report Wednesday, saying the church will do all it can to protect minors.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Boston Globe
By David O'Reilly and Nancy Phillips, Knight Ridder | September 22, 2005
PHILADELPHIA --A grand jury issued a scathing critique yesterday of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, saying its former archbishops and other leaders concealed and facilitated clergy sex abuse of children for decades.
The grand jury, which investigated the archdiocese for more than three years, concluded that at least 63 priests -- and probably many more -- sexually abused hundreds of minors over the past several decades.
But even more disturbing, the jurors found, was the coverup by the two previous archbishops, Cardinals John Krol and Anthony J. Bevilacqua who, they concluded, ''excused and enabled the abuse" and put legal and financial interests and moral reputation of the archdiocese ahead of protecting the children entrusted to its care.
''Those choices went all the way to the top -- to Cardinal Bevilacqua and Cardinal Krol personally," the report states.
''The behavior of Archdiocese officials was perhaps not so lurid as that of the individual priest sex abusers. But in its callous, calculating manner, the Archdiocese's 'handling' of the abuse scandal was at least as immoral as the abuse itself."
FRANCE
Montreal Gazette
AP
Thursday, September 22, 2005
A Canadian priest was sentenced yesterday to 12 years in prison for raping a young member of his Normandy parish - the second conviction for the clergyman, who served time for similar crimes in Quebec.
The trial of Denis Vadeboncoeur rattled the community where he had served for more than a decade and sparked outrage over how he was hired and why his past conviction was kept secret.
Vadeboncoeur, 65, moved to France in January 1988 after serving part of a 20-month sentence in Quebec. He had pleaded guilty to two charges of sexual abuse and one of sodomy against four teenage boys here.
He confessed in testimony Monday to repeatedly sexually abusing a boy who was under 15. The abuse occurred from 1990 to 1993, while Vadeboncoeur was a priest in the village of Lieurey.
Vadeboncoeur's face tightened when the sentence was pronounced but he did not speak.
PUEBLO (CO)
The Pueblo Chieftain
By PATRICK MALONE
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
A former Catholic priest who was under investigation for molesting a teenage boy in the early 1970s committed suicide Wednesday by shooting himself in the heart.
An autopsy showed that Andrew Burke, 62, died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest, according to Pueblo County Coroner James Kramer.
Deputy Chief John Ercul of the Pueblo Police Department said Burke was a suspect in a sexual assault. A suicide note left by Burke did not mention the allegations, Ercul said.
According to a report by Pueblo police officer Mathieu Cantin, officers responded to Burke's residence in the 3500 block of Pecan Drive at 8 a.m. Wednesday and found him dead, lying on his back in a flower bed. Burke's chest was covered with a towel. Under the towel was a lone gunshot wound and a chrome .38 Special with a price tag still on it.
PENNSYLVANIA
The Express-Times
Thursday, September 22, 2005
By JIM DEEGAN
The Express-Times
The leader of the Allentown Diocese is named several times in a blistering grand jury report that accuses the Philadelphia Archdiocese of carefully concealing sexual abuse by priests for decades.
Bishop Edward P. Cullen was a top aide to Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, the retired prelate who was accused Wednesday in the grand jury report of covering up repeated abuse allegations against priests.
The grand jury report alleges Cullen instructed his assistant during his tenure in Philadelphia never to tell sexual abuse victims that he believed them.
ROME
Spartanburg Herald-Journal
By IAN FISHER and LAURIE GOODSTEIN
New York Times
Published September 22, 2005
ROME, Sept. 21 - Homosexuals, even those who are celibate, will be barred from becoming Roman Catholic priests, a church official said Wednesday, under stricter rules soon to be released on one of the most sensitive issues facing the church.
The official, said the question was not "if it will be published, but when," referring to the new ruling about homosexuality in Catholic seminaries, a topic that has stirred much recent rumor and worry in the church. The official, who has authoritative knowledge of the new rules, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the church's policy of not commenting on unpublished reports.
He said that while Pope Benedict XVI had not yet signed the document, it would probably be released in the next six weeks.
In addition to the new document, which will apply to the church worldwide, Vatican investigators have been instructed to visit each of the 229 seminaries in the United States.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Observer-Reporter
Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA – The leaders of the Philadelphia Archdiocese – including two former archbishops – actively concealed sexual abuse by priests for decades, but no criminal charges can be brought against the church or its priests because of the constraints of state law, according to grand jury findings released Wednesday.
Following the nation's longest-running grand jury probe into priest abuse, the scathing report documents assaults on minors by more than 60 priests since 1967, and alleges that former archbishops Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and Cardinal John Krol covered up the abuse.
"To protect themselves from negative publicity or expensive lawsuits – while keeping abusive priests active – the cardinals and their aides hid the priests' crimes from parishioners, police and the general public," the report stated.
State laws, including legal time limits, prevented prosecutors from filing charges, the report said. The grand jury also explored the possibility of charges against the archdiocese, but said the organization could not be prosecuted because it is an unincorporated association rather than a corporation.
PENNSYLVANIA
Phillyburbs.com
The Intelligencer
The Rev. Gerard W. Chambers
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church, Doylestown: May 1944 until Dec. 1945.
Allegations/outcome: Abused six boys - five of them altar servers - in the late 1950s while stationed at Seven Dolors in Springfield, Montgomery County, and at St. Gregory's Parish in Philadelphia. The Archdiocese was notified of one case in 1994 and paid that victim $6,890 for past therapy in exchanged for a signed release form. The other complaints were lodged in 2002 and 2004. Chambers died in 1974.
The Rev. James J. Coonan
Nativity of Our Lord, Warminster: June 1973 until Jan. 1975; Holy Redeemer Health System, Huntingdon Valley: June 1999 until Feb. 2001.
Allegations/outcome: Abused two boys - one 14 years old and the other 15 years old - in 1966 or 1967 while stationed at Queen of the Universe Parish in Levittown. The Archdiocese was notified in Jan. 2002, and his duties were restricted to private Mass. He retired in Feb. 2002 and in Oct. 2004 he agreed to the "removal of his priestly faculties."
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Monsters and Critics
Sep 21, 2005, 21:05 GMT
PHILADELPHIA, PA, United States (UPI) -- A Philadelphia grand jury, which accused 63 Roman Catholic priests of sexual abuse and church officials of a cover-up, called for changes in state law.
While the grand jury`s scathing 418-page report concluded at least 63 priests sexually abused children, they cannot be charged because the statute of limitations has expired, radio station KYW-AM and The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
The grand jury called for removing Pennsylvania`s statute of limitations in crimes against children.
Even more disturbing than widespread abuse by priests was a cover-up by former Philadelphia Archdiocese cardinals John Krol and Anthony Bevilacqua, who 'excused and enabled the abuse,' the grand jury report said.
In a 70-page response, the church called the grand jury report 'a vile, mean-spirited diatribe' and rejected virtually all of the accusations.
PUEBLO (CO)
TheDenverChannel.com
POSTED: 3:05 pm MDT September 21, 2005
UPDATED: 5:55 pm MDT September 21, 2005
PUEBLO, Colo. -- Another lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pueblo was announced Wednesday accusing a former Catholic high school teacher of sexually assaulting a former student in the 1960s, the plaintiff's lawyer said.
Attorney Jeffrey Herman announced the lawsuit in Pueblo a day after three other clients filed lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Denver. Those suits alleged two former priests sexually abused three men starting in the 1960s, and that the archdiocese continued allowing the priests to practice though it knew of abuse allegations.
The lawsuit announced Wednesday was by Tom Monroe, 52, of Pueblo, and listed allegations against William Mueller, former band director at the now-closed Roncalli High School. Mueller was not named as a defendant.
The suit said Mueller told Monroe, then a sophomore, during private tutoring sessions in the school band room that Monroe would play trombone better in the nude. The suit alleges Mueller masturbated and fondled Monroe on about five occasions.
Monroe complained to guidance counselor Jose Montoya in 1968, but Mueller was not disciplined, Herman said. Mueller left Roncalli in 1971. Herman said he was told Montoya is now deceased.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Penn Live
9/21/2005, 6:42 p.m. ET
By JANICE PODSADA
The Associated Press
(AP) — Some of the findings of a grand jury report issued Wednesday on sexual abuse by priests in the Philadelphia Archdiocese, and the church's response, as contained in documents released the same day by the archdiocese:
FINDING
The church's top leaders, including the two last archbishops, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and Cardinal John Krol, engaged in a systematic effort to cover up allegations of child molestation and abuse by priests.
CHURCH RESPONSE
The archdiocese did not engage in any cover-up. The grand jury focused on "lurid details" and events in the distant past and made "outlandish accusations" against the church, engaging in a "mean-spirited diatribe" against the church.
FINDING
Victims of sexual abuse by priests were greeted by disdain and derision by church authorities. Instead of viewing their allegations as credible, church authorities often questioned their motives. Victims were sometimes bullied, belittled and intimidated and subjected to ruthless investigation by church authorities.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
The Dallas Morning News
06:34 PM CDT on Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA – Leaders of the Philadelphia Archdiocese, including two cardinals, concealed sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests for four decades, a grand jury has found, but no criminal charges can be brought against the church or its clergy because of the limits of state law.
The grand jury, convened more than three years ago, issued a scathing report Wednesday that documents assaults by more than 60 priests.
It also alleges a cover-up by the late Cardinal John Krol, archbishop of Philadelphia from 1961 to 1988, and his successor, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, who retired in 2003.
"To protect themselves from negative publicity or expensive lawsuits – while keeping abusive priests active – the cardinals and their aides hid the priests' crimes from parishioners, police and the general public," the report said.
BOSTON (MA)
Boston.com
By Theo Emery, Associated Press Writer | September 21, 2005
BOSTON --When Robert Costello swam with his scout troop every Wednesday afternoon at a Jamaica Plain pool, he said, the priest who led the troop picked out boys among them to molest. Costello said he was sexually assaulted as he waded in the shallow end, and afterward raped in the locker room.
He buried the memories, and it wasn't until he was in his 30s that Costello, now 44, began to confront what happened to him as a child. By then, the statute of limitations for criminal charges and for civil claims had expired long before.
Costello and other adult victims of child sexual abuse pleaded with lawmakers on Wednesday to lift the state statute of limitations on civil claims for sexual crimes against children, saying it takes years, even decades, for children to confront their abuse and their abusers.
Though Costello sued and settled with the church, he said that the law must be changed so that abusers can be held accountable.
"Passing this bill will give children like me a fighting chance when they do determine what happened and how it affected their lives," he told the Judiciary Committee on Beacon Hill on Wednesday.
RIDGEFIELD (NJ)
NorthJersey.com
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
By JOHN CHADWICK
STAFF WRITER
A Catholic priest who served 13 years at St. Matthew's Church in Ridgefield is facing accusations of sexual abuse by two former parishioners.
The Rev. Peter Cheplic, who worked at the church from 1972 to 1985, stepped down from his position at a Bayonne church last month after the Newark Archdiocese received a complaint from Joe Capozzi, a 36-year-old Manhattan resident who said Cheplic molested him in the 1980s.
The second accuser, Raymond Capone, 40, of South Plainfield, filed a complaint with the archdiocese last week, alleging that Cheplic fondled him in the mid-1980s after getting him drunk.
Cheplic, 59, hasn't been charged with a crime. And, as in other church sexual abuse cases, it's unlikely law enforcement authorities will press charges because the allegations date back two decades.
Jim Goodness, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said Cheplic is prohibited from working as a priest until the accusations are investigated by a church review board. He also said the archdiocese is informing the county prosecutors about the allegations.
KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star
MARGARET STAFFORD
Associated Press
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A group of survivors of clergy sexual abuse on Wednesday urged the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph and a Boy Scout group to remove the name of a priest accused of sexual abuse from a chapel at a Boy Scout camp near St. Joseph.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests asked Bishop Robert Finn and a Boy Scout headquarters in St. Joseph to remove the name of the late Rev. Sylvester Hoppe from the chapel at Camp Geiger.
The Scouts named the chapel after Hoppe in 1999, in honor of his nearly 75 years of involvement with the organization.
In the last three years, three men have filed lawsuits against the diocese claiming that Hoppe sexually abused them in the 1950s. The diocese settled one lawsuit for $10,000; the other two are still pending. The men claim in the lawsuits that the diocese ignored and covered up reports of abuse by Hoppe, who died in 2002.
SNAP believes other lawsuits against Hoppe are likely, said David Clohessy, the group's national director.
ST. LOUIS (MO)
Columbia Daily Tribune
Published Wednesday, September 21, 2005
ST. LOUIS (AP) - A former Catholic high school administrator already sued for alleged sexual abuse of students in Colorado in the 1960s is now accused of sexually assaulting a St. Louis-area student at knife-point in 1985.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests yesterday announced a lawsuit against William Mueller during a news conference outside the national headquarters of the Marianists religious order. The Marianists operate Vianney High School in Kirkwood, where the abuse allegedly occurred. The suit seeks unspecified damages and also names Vianney and the Marianists.
The lawsuit was filed by Bryan Bacon, who is now a 35-year-old clerk for a federal bankruptcy judge. Bacon was a 15-year-old sophomore at Vianney at the time of the alleged abuse in October 1985.
Last Wednesday, two men who were students at a Catholic high school in Pueblo, Colo., in 1968 filed a lawsuit in Denver accusing Mueller of drugging them with ether and then sexually assaulting them. The men claimed Mueller told them he was conducting experiments on sleep.
ST. LOUIS (MO)
Columbia Daily Tribune
Published Wednesday, September 21, 2005
ST. LOUIS (AP) - A former Catholic high school administrator already sued for alleged sexual abuse of students in Colorado in the 1960s is now accused of sexually assaulting a St. Louis-area student at knife-point in 1985.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests yesterday announced a lawsuit against William Mueller during a news conference outside the national headquarters of the Marianists religious order. The Marianists operate Vianney High School in Kirkwood, where the abuse allegedly occurred. The suit seeks unspecified damages and also names Vianney and the Marianists.
The lawsuit was filed by Bryan Bacon, who is now a 35-year-old clerk for a federal bankruptcy judge. Bacon was a 15-year-old sophomore at Vianney at the time of the alleged abuse in October 1985.
Last Wednesday, two men who were students at a Catholic high school in Pueblo, Colo., in 1968 filed a lawsuit in Denver accusing Mueller of drugging them with ether and then sexually assaulting them. The men claimed Mueller told them he was conducting experiments on sleep.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By David O’Reilly and Nancy Phillips
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
A Philadelphia grand jury this morning issued a scathing critique of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, saying its former archbishops and other leaders concealed and facilitated clergy sex abuse of children for decades.
The grand jury, which investigated the archdiocese for more than three years, concluded that at least 63 priests - and probably many more - sexually abused hundreds of minors over the past several decades.
But even more disturbing, the jurors found, was the coverup by the two previous archbishops, Cardinals John Krol and Anthony J. Bevilacqua who, they concluded, "excused and enabled the abuse" and put the legal and financial interests and moral reputation of the archdiocese ahead of protecting the children entrusted to its care.
"Those choices went all the way to the top - to Cardinal Bevilacqua and Cardinal Krol personally," the report states.
HOUSTON (TX)
Houston Chronicle
By HARVEY RICE
A Houston lawyer plans to challenge the constitutionality of the U.S. diplomatic recognition of the Vatican as he pursues a lawsuit accusing Pope Benedict XVI of conspiring to cover up the molestation of three boys.
The challenge by attorney Daniel Shea is in response to a U.S. government filing recommending immunity for the pope, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as a head of state.
"It's patently unconstitutional," Shea, whose client is known only as John Doe I, said Tuesday. "Joseph Ratzinger is not head of state. He's head of a church."
The filing in Houston federal court Tuesday by Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler states that it is in the interest of U.S. foreign policy that the pope have immunity. The government asks U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal to find that the pope is immune from the lawsuit under international law.
"The purpose of the suggestion of immunity is to cause the court to dismiss the case against Pope Benedict XVI," said Jeffrey Lena, a Berkeley, Calif., attorney representing the pope.
Shea said that accepting the claim of immunity creates "a conundrum for the church" because the pope has claimed he is the head of a church in earlier filings but now claims he is a head of state.
HOUSTON (TX)
Monsters and Critics
Sep 21, 2005, 14:00 GMT
HOUSTON, TX, United States (UPI) -- A Texas lawyer with a suit pending against three Roman Catholic Church officials will challenge the constitutionality of granting the pope diplomatic immunity.
Houston attorney Daniel Shea said Pope Benedict XVI should be considered the head of a church, not the head of state.
Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler has filed in a Houston federal court to grant the pope immunity. He said the move is in the United States` best foreign policy interest.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the pope`s former name, is a defendant in a lawsuit that not only claims the church didn`t do enough to stop the abuse of children, but it assisted in it.
Shea`s clients are three unidentified males who claim they were abused 10 years ago.
The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza and Monsignor William Pickard are also named in the suit with Ratzinger.
DENVER (CO)
Denver Post
By Eric Gorski
Denver Post Staff Writer
The Denver Roman Catholic Archdiocese, already the target of numerous lawsuits for its handling of a priest accused of molesting children decades ago, was sued again Tuesday, this time by a 46-year-old law enforcement officer bringing accusations against another priest.
Roger Colburn of Strasburg alleges in a Denver District Court complaint that the late Rev. Leonard Abercrombie, a trusted family friend, got him drunk and molested him in 1969 or 1970 while camping in Granby when Colburn was 10 or 11.
The lawsuit, without offering details, alleges the abuse took place after the Denver Archdiocese had fielded other complaints against Abercrombie.
The complaint is thought to be the first in Colorado naming Abercrombie, who died in 1994 in Southern California, where he retired. Three men, including Colburn, told The Denver Post this month that Abercrombie had sexually abused them.
PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia Inquirer
By David O'Reilly
Inquirer Staff Writer
Three men who say they were sexually assaulted decades ago by a priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia filed lawsuits yesterday against the archdiocese, alleging its leaders concealed his crimes from authorities and parishes, allowing him to abuse other children.
Their attorney, Jay Abramowitch of Berks County, said there is such strong evidence of a cover-up in alleged incidents involving the former Rev. James J. Brzyski that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court might set aside the statute of limitations that typically bars such suits.
In briefs filed with Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, Abramowitch cited remarks by the Rev. James Gigliotti, a Franciscan priest who once served in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
Gigliotti, who now serves in Texas, told The Inquirer last month that in the early 1980s he warned an archdiocesan official that Brzyski appeared to be abusing altar boys in his parish. He said the official told him: "Keep your mouth shut."
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Mark Fazlollah
Inquirer staff writer
District Attorney Lynne Abraham announced that today she will release her grand jury's report on sex abuse by priests from the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
In a news release this morning, Abraham's office said the district attorney will release the report to the public after an 11 a.m. news conference.
The report, which has been three years in the making, is expected to detail how scores of priest attacked children across the region and how church leaders protected the abusers.
Dozens of lawsuits against the Philadelphia church have charged that its former leaders - Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua and Cardinal John Krol - shielded priests who raped, sodomized and performed other crimes on children from their parishes.
WAUKESHA (WI)
Duluth News Tribune
Associated Press
WAUKESHA, Wis. - The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has thrown out the child molestation conviction of a former Episcopalian priest, saying his attorney performed inadequately in not objecting to a prosecutor's closing arguments.
The prosecutor told jurors they should not be swayed by character witnesses for Russell Martin's defense because people like serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and Theodore Oswald, who was convicted of killing a police captain, robbing banks and kidnapping a woman, also had character witnesses at their trials.
The federal court said the Dahmer and Oswald references were inflammatory and improper.
Martin, now 47, was among a group of people accused of sexually assaulting children during the late 1980s at the Nashotah House, an Episcopalian seminary in Delafield, and he was convicted in 1995 in a case involving a 13-year-old boy.
WAUKESHA (WI)
GM Today
By JAMES KOGUTKIEWICZ - GM Today Staff
September 21, 2005
WAUKESHA - A former Episcopalian priest convicted of child molestation faces another trial for the same crime after a federal appeals court threw out his 1995 conviction.
Russell Martin, 47, already served the requirements of a four-year prison sentence and parole period, completing it in August, but no longer is considered a sex offender in Wisconsin following Thursday’s ruling by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The federal court found Martin’s lawyer performed inadequately in not objecting to a prosecutor’s closing arguments and two witnesses who testified at trial for the state. The prosecutor told the jury they should not be swayed by character witnesses for Martin’s defense because people like Jeffrey Dahmer and Theodore Oswald also had character witnesses at their trials.
TOLEDO (OH)
Toledo Blade
A Toledo Catholic priest and former high school teacher convicted of child pornography charges in 2003 has resigned as volunteer coordinator for the Maumee Valley Habitat for Humanity, Bishop Leonard Blair said yesterday.
Stephen G. Rogers, 57, who taught religion at Central Catholic High School from 1997 until his arrest, resigned Friday from Habitat after less than two months on the job. The resignation was ordered by Habitat for Humanity International, said Chuck Thayer, executive director of the Maumee Valley Habitat for Humanity.
Rogers began working full time at the local Habitat office July 18. Rogers, who served 18 months of a 21-month prison sentence, was barred from ministry and placed on leave of absence in December, 2002. Rogers, who remains a priest, is awaiting final disposition of his status from the Vatican, the diocese said yesterday.
He was on the diocesan payroll until hired by Habitat, and again will be paid by the diocese "in keeping with church law," receiving "some basic assistance now that he is unemployed, with the hope that he can find other work soon," the diocese said in a statement.
TUCSON (AZ)
Tucson Citizen
ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN
The Associated Press
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson officially emerged from bankruptcy Tuesday, exactly a year after sex abuse lawsuits drove it to seek Chapter 11 protection.
Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas and Susan Boswell, the diocese's lead lawyer in the bankruptcy proceedings, said the diocese has sent a check for $15.7 million to begin a settlement trust to be used to compensate victims abused by priests.
Kicanas apologized again to all victims "who have been harmed within the household of faith."
The money represents the initial portion of the roughly $22.3 million that the diocese will make available to more than 50 victims under a reorganization plan and settlement agreement approved earlier this summer by Judge James M. Marlar.
SANTA ANA (CA)
North County Times
By: North County Times wire services
SANTA ANA -- Less than a year after paying out $100 million to settle sex-abuse claims against priests, the Catholic Diocese of Orange has repaid most of what it borrowed and expects to be debt-free by July, it was reported Tuesday.
Unlike Catholic officials in Boston, Tucson and Portland, Ore., who sold church property or declared bankruptcy after abuse lawsuits, the Diocese of Orange avoided such drastic steps by liquidating part of its $200 million investment portfolio, the Los Angeles Times reported. Additionally, the diocese might sell its Marywood headquarters in Orange.
Church officials stressed that no parish or school funds were spent on the settlement, The Times reported.
"When a person drops their envelope in the collection basket, they don't want that money to be used to pay off a sex-abuse lawsuit," Father Art Holquin, who chaired the diocese's debt-reduction task force, told the newspaper. "They want it to be used in their parish."
SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
San Francisco California
By Jason Berry
Good Friday is a hallowed day in the Christian calendar, when churches the world over commemorate Jesus's death on the cross. This year it fell on March 25, which coincided with an unseemly spectacle for the Roman Catholic Church at the San Francisco County Courthouse. A civil jury returned a $437,000 verdict for Dennis Kavanaugh, who had been sexually abused by a priest, often, as an altar boy many years before. The priest was dead; the archdiocese and its insurance carriers would pay. At 5 p.m. the media, court watchers, and restless men and women from a group called SNAP—Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests—waited in the hallway for Kavanaugh and his lawyers to make public statements.
As he watched the trial, a 46-year-old Bay Area real estate developer named Dan McNevin rewound a mental film track to his own adolescence and a different priest who had traumatized him as an altar boy in Fremont. McNevin felt the old anger flooding back, the black stuff that years of therapy had taught him to stanch. There he sat, with a good property portfolio, watching Kavanaugh, who had sunk from a $90,000-a-year perch as an electronics salesman to a $16-an-hour job doing landscape work. Kavanaugh had given humiliating testimony on how his marriage had hit the skids, rage ate at him, and he had even threatened his wife with a gun. For that he spent a year in jail; his career tanked, as did his marriage. McNevin had gone to enough SNAP meetings to know how self-destructive some survivors can be.
As the courthouse news conference was about to begin, McNevin's cell phone rang. He stepped away from the din. "This is Archbishop Levada," came the voice at the other end.
"What?" blurted McNevin. For all of SNAP's in-your-face politics, the last caller McNevin expected was the man his group saw as the imperious face of a church that had betrayed them.
ST. LOUIS (MO)
Post-Dispatch
By Robert Patrick
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
09/20/2005
When Marianist province officials heard allegations that the principal of St. Mary's High School in St. Louis had drugged or hypnotized students as part of "bizarre" psychological experiments in 1983, they sent him to New Mexico for treatment, according to province officials.
About nine months later, province officials were told Brother William Mueller had been successfully treated. He got a new job, this time as assistant principal and religion teacher at St. John Vianney High School.
Fifteen months later, he was kicked out after the father of two boys accused Mueller of bizarre behavior, province officials said.
NEW YORK
New York Daily News
BY CORKY SIEMASZKO and ADAM LISBERG
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Msgr. Eugene Clark, who is accused of having an affair with his secretary, apparently didn't engage in any financial hanky- panky, a review of audits by the Archdiocese of New York has found.
The review was spurred when Clark, 79, resigned last month after a videotape revealed him checking into an Amagansett, L.I., motel room with his longtime secretary Laura DeFilippo, 46.
"Based on a review of those audits, all of the financial records of St. Patrick's Cathedral appear to be in order," archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling said. "We have found no information that would indicate misuse of parish funds. We continue to monitor the situation."
St. Pat's had annual audits performed by an outside firm until Clark took over in 2001, when he hired an in-house auditor, Zwilling said.
That arrangement didn't work, he said, so the cathedral hired accounting firm KPMG.
Clark, who has denied an affair, has dropped out of sight, no longer living at St. Pat's and performing no assignments or duties for the archdiocese.
CANADA
Montreal Gazette
FRANCOIS SHALOM
The Gazette
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Denis Vadeboncoeur, the pedophile priest convicted of sexual assault in Canada and facing sentencing for the same offence in France, may have committed similar crimes when he was posted in Brazil, a top church official in Quebec City said yesterday.
"It really wouldn't surprise me in the least if he had done some serious damage there, too," said Jean Pelletier, chancellor of the archdiocese of Quebec City, the Catholic Church's legal expert.
Alain Fiset, provincial superior for the church's St. Vincent de Paul Order, to which Vadeboncoeur once belonged, said from Quebec City that Vadeboncoeur was near Sao Paulo, Brazil, for several years in the early 1980s, prior to his 1985 arrest in Quebec City on charges of sexually assaulting minors. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 months in jail, but served only about five months.
He left Canada in January 1988 to take up a post in Evreux, a French town about an hour's drive west of Paris. He was arrested in December 2000 on charges of raping a minor, and again confessed to sexual assault.
The then-bishop of Evreux, Jacques Gaillot, was caught in a lie when he later claimed he hadn't been told of Vadeboncoeur's past.
IOWA
Des Moines Register
The Archdiocese of Dubuque filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a man who claims he was sexually abused by two priests more than 40 years ago.
The lawsuit was filed in 2004 by a former altar boy who claims he was abused by the Rev. John Peters and the Rev. William Roach during two incidents in the summer of 1962. The priests have since died.
Brendan Quann, an attorney for the archdiocese, said during a hearing Monday that the lawsuit was filed too late and that if the abuse occurred, it happened outside the priests' roles within the church.
WARSAW (IN)
Indianapolis Star
Warsaw -- The arrest of a Pentecostal pastor on charges that he sexually abused a boy has prompted complaints to police that others also may have been molested.
Mark Allen Johnson, 40, pastor at Pentecostal Church of Refuge in Warsaw, has been charged with one count of child molesting and two counts of sexual misconduct. He was released from the Kosciusko County Jail after posting $5,000 of a $50,000 bond Friday.
Investigators are trying to verify whether reports of other molestations are true, said Detective Scott Whitaker of the Warsaw Police Department. The reports identify a small number of potential victims, some of whom are older and have moved away from the Warsaw area, 40 miles southeast of South Bend.
WARSAW (IN)
Journal Gazette
Associated Press
WARSAW – The arrest of a pastor on charges that he sexually abused a boy has prompted complaints to police that others might also have been molested.
Mark Allen Johnson, 40, pastor at the Pentecostal Church of Refuge in Warsaw, has been charged with one count of child molesting and two counts of sexual misconduct. He was released from the Kosciusko County Jail after posting $5,000 of a $50,000 bond on Friday.
Investigators are trying to determine whether reports of other molestations are true, said Detective Scott Whitaker of the Warsaw Police Department. The reports identify a small number of potential victims, some of whom are older and have moved away from the Warsaw area.
“We have received some additional information leading to additional potential victims involving Mark Johnson as the alleged perpetrator,” Whitaker said.
HOUSTON (TX)
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 21, 2005
The Justice Department has told a Texas court that a lawsuit accusing Pope Benedict XVI of conspiring to cover up the sexual molestation of three boys by a seminarian should be dismissed because the pontiff enjoys immunity as head of state of the Holy See.
In a filing on Monday, Peter Keisler, an assistant United States attorney, said that allowing the lawsuit to proceed would be "incompatible with the United States' foreign policy interests."
There was no immediate ruling from Judge Lee Rosenthal of the Federal District Court in Houston. But American courts have been bound by such "suggestion of immunity" motions submitted by the government, Mr. Keisler's filing says.
A 1994 lawsuit against Pope John Paul II, also filed in Texas, was dismissed after the federal government filed a motion similar to the one filed by Mr. Keisler.
Mr. Keisler's motion had been expected, because the Vatican Embassy in Washington had asked the United States government to issue the immunity suggestion and do everything it could to have the case dismissed.
COLORADO
Rocky Mountain News
By Felix Doligosa Jr., Rocky Mountain News
September 21, 2005
Roger Colburn doesn't mind giving hugs to people. But, if someone hugs Colburn first, he freezes.
"My brain goes, 'Wait a minute - you don't want to be touched,' " said Colburn, 46. "He pinned me down on my shoulders."
Colburn blames his uneasiness with physical contact on a Catholic priest he says sexually assaulted him more than 30 years ago.
Colburn was one of three people to file sexual abuse lawsuits Tuesday against the Archdiocese of Denver, including the first allegations against the Rev. Leonard A. Abercrombie.
Chancellor Fran Maier of the Archdiocese of Denver declined to comment on the lawsuits. Attorney Jeffrey Herman said he plans to seek $10 million in each of the lawsuits.
PUEBLO (CO)
The Pueblo Chieftain
By PATRICK MALONE
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
A former Puebloan who is suing the local Catholic diocese over alleged sexual abuse said he doesn't want the church to genuflect at his feet. Rather, he is asking the church to stand up.
"They deny any culpability, but it’s time for any part of the Catholic Church - this diocese, the Marianists - to say, ‘We made a horrible mistake and we’re sorry,’ instead of lawyering up," said J.M., one of two men who filed suits in district court last week over the abuse allegations. "They need to be men about it and admit it."
J.M., who granted The Pueblo Chieftain an interview on condition of anonymity, is suing the Catholic Diocese of Pueblo and the Society of Mary Religious order for $10 million. The suit alleges that Brother William Mueller used ether to render J.M. unconscious, then sodomized him on two occasions in 1968, when J.M. was a 15-year-old sophomore at Roncalli High School.
J.M. carried the secret with him for years, until he reunited with a former Roncalli schoolmate through www.classmates.com.
CINCINNATI (OH)
Cincinnati Enquirer
Your voice: Timothy Leonard
For all its faults, the Catholic Church certainly has an uncanny facility for rising to the occasion. One such occasion was the funeral of the Rev. Stanley Doerger on Sept. 16.
Doerger had been accused of sexually abusing students at St. Rita School for the Deaf, where he was pastor from the early 1960s to the early '80s.
Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk, without benefit of what the rest of the world would call due process, felt constrained by the new policies of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops regarding priests who have been accused of sexual abuse to suspend Doerger from the ministry.
The funeral was a magnificent affirmation of how little we know for certain about the meaning of human life, yet how much we know about the need for love and forgiveness. St. Ignatius Church in Monfort Heights was overflowing with what appeared to be 1,000 people, many telling stories of how Doerger had laughed with them, cajoled them into working on projects, worked himself as an expert electrician, and inspired them.
BARABOO (WI)
Baraboo News Republic
By Scott De Laruelle
BARABOO - St. Joseph Catholic Church Priest Gerald Vosen is still on leave as his church hearing continues nearly two years after he was accused of sexual abuse.
"We're just kind of waiting," Vosen said.
Vosen said the next step in his legal process will be a change of verdict hearing Oct. 5, stemming from his recent unsuccessful civil suit against one of his accusers.
Vosen, 71, said the church investigation is still ongoing, and said he could not speculate on how long it will take. He said he appreciates the continued support of friends, colleagues and parishioners.
"We did have a group of priests that sponsored a prayer service Aug. 30, and over 55 percent of the priests in the diocese showed up," Vosen said. "That was very nice."
SOUTH BEND (IN)
Journal Gazette
By Ken Kusmer
Associated Press
A Roman Catholic cardinal who once compared U.S. media coverage of the church’s sex abuse crisis to Stalin and Hitler is traveling to the University of Notre Dame to speak Thursday as part of events surrounding the inauguration of the school’s new president.
Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga, the archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, will speak at the Notre Dame Forum, which has been started by the Rev. John I. Jenkins as part of his inauguration as the university’s 17th president.
A prominent advocacy group for victims of sexual abuse planned to protest the cardinal’s appearance at the forum, one of two high-profile gatherings of religion leaders in the state Thursday.
Rodriguez and three other public figures, including former U.N. Ambassador John C. Danforth, will discuss pluralism, the increasing role of religion in society and faith-based perspectives on public issues. The forum is envisioned as an annual event.
UNITED STATES
RichardSipe.com
September 25, 2005
The Vatican is going to repeat an investigation of Catholic Seminaries that they conducted 25 years ago, but with a new focus and motivation. I knew some of the investigators on that first round. Much of that investigation ended up as window dressing to reassure the seminary system that they were doing a bang-up job. And that is the kind of report they got. There were little changes: reaffirmation that women and former priests should not be teaching theological students. That directive had some effect, but there have been silent holdouts in many of the better seminaries.
The Vatican this round—in an inquiry that supposedly aims to shore up the practice of celibacy—is looking in the wrong places and taking the wrong focus.
The investigators are going to look at priesthood candidates and their trainers to see if celibacy is adequately taught and observed. That is valid. And the answers are clear. Celibacy is neither taught adequately nor practiced well by students or teachers in Catholic seminaries. (I will not make many friends in high places by saying so, but there is plenty of evidence of sexual activity among the students and faculties of Catholic training centers.)
But the examination of sexual activity and non-celibate observance needs to start at the top—in the Vatican and in chancery offices, with bishops, cardinals, and their assistants.
NEW YORK
TheBostonChannel.com
POSTED: 8:43 am EDT September 20, 2005
NEW YORK -- Researchers have identified a pattern in the molestation crisis afflicting the Roman Catholic Church: most of the victims are older boys.
Noting this trend, some high-ranking Catholics have concluded that many abusive clergy are gay, and some church members have suggested purging the priesthood of homosexuals. But abuse experts say that's a simplistic approach that will not end the threat to children.
"What I'm afraid of is we're going into this witch hunt for gays," said the Rev. Stephen Rossetti, a psychologist and sex abuse consultant to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. "We need to be careful that we don't make anyone - whether it's priests or gays - scapegoats."
In the Vatican's first public comments about the scandal, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, chief spokesman for Pope John Paul II, told The New York Times the church needed to prevent gays from becoming priests.
Estimates of the number of gays among seminarians and the 47,000 Catholic clergy in the United States vary dramatically, from 10 percent to 50 percent. But no credible data exists on the number of abusive priests who are homosexual, said Dr. Fred Berlin, a sexual disorders expert at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
DENVER (CO)
CBS 4
(AP) DENVER Three more sexual abuse lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Denver were to be filed Tuesday, including one that is the first to list allegations naming the late Rev. Leonard A. Abercrombie, the plaintiffs' attorney said.
In all, nine lawsuits this summer, including two of the three being filed Tuesday, have been announced against Harold Robert White, a former priest whom the archdiocese removed from public ministry in 1993. He left the priesthood last year. The archdiocese has declined to publicly discuss the reasons.
The new lawsuits were filed on behalf of Pat Hergenreter and a 52-year-old man identified as John Doe, said lawyer Jeffrey Herman. Hergenreter alleged White abused him numbers of times when White was assigned to a church in Sterling.
"John Doe" alleged White assaulted him over a four-month period. White rented a room to him in the rectory while White was assigned to a church in Minturn.
The third new lawsuit, filed by Roger Colburn, accused Abercrombie of sexually assaulting Colburn on a camping trip when Colburn was age 10 or 11. Colburn is among three men who told The Denver Post that Abercrombie had sexually abused them, beginning in the 1950s.
WALTHAM (MA)
Bishop Accountability
Bishop Accountability.org has obtained a copy of the Vatican guide for the inspection of American seminaries and provides it in a special edition, with links to many of the documents cited by the Vatican.
TUCSON (AZ)
KVOA
TUCSON, Ariz. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson is expected to announce that it has officially emerged from bankruptcy today, a year to the day after filing for protection.
The diocese's reorganization plan and a settlement agreement approved this summer will make 22-point-2 (m) million dollars available for more than 50 victims of sexual abuse.
CANADA
CD98.9
Posted by Newsroom on 2005/9/20 6:06:40 (37 reads)
Two high profile local sexual assault cases will re-appear in court again today. The first, a former Port Dover Roman Catholic Priest, 55 year old Father Konnie Pryzybylski was charged with two counts of sexual assault, two counts of sexual exploitation, one count of sexual interference and one count of sexual touching. Complaints were made by two boys between the ages of 12 and 18. The alleged incidents occured between 1995 and 2000. In the second case, a 32 year old Grand Erie teacher who's facing more than a dozen sex related charges.
UNITED STATES
Newsday
BY CAROL EISENBERG
STAFF WRITER
September 20, 2005
Pope Benedict XVI is said to have approved a document saying that homosexual men should not be ordained as Roman Catholic priests, a conservative Catholic Web site reported yesterday.
The long-anticipated document, prepared at the request of the late Pope John Paul II, reportedly calls on bishops to bar even chaste homosexuals from seminaries because their orientation is rooted in a personality disorder that may undermine their capacity to minister, according to Catholic World News.
The report, posted yesterday on www.cwnews.com, an independent news service with links to the pope's American publisher, could not be independently corroborated, but several Vatican sources confirmed that such a document has been on his desk awaiting his decision.
"If this is true, it's a disaster," said a gay priest who asked not to be named. "I know many celibate gay priests who feel they could not live with any integrity in a church that treats gay men like this. And I know many gay seminarians who have been living celibate lives with ease, who would simply leave."
ROME
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press
ROME - The U.S. government has told a Texas court that Pope Benedict XVI should be given immunity from a lawsuit accusing him of conspiring to cover up the sexual molestation of three boys by a seminarian, court documents show.
Assistant U.S. Attorney General Peter Keisler said in Monday's filing that, as pope, Benedict enjoys immunity as the head of a state - the Vatican. He said that allowing the lawsuit to proceed would be "incompatible with the United States' foreign policy interests."
There was no immediate ruling from Judge Lee Rosenthal of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston, who has been presiding over the case. However, the Supreme Court has held that U.S. courts are bound by such "suggestion of immunity" motions submitted by the government, Keisler's filing says.
In fact, a 1994 lawsuit against Pope John Paul II, also filed in Texas, was dismissed after the U.S. government filed a similar motion.
The Vatican Embassy in Washington had asked the U.S. government to issue the immunity suggestion and do everything it could to get the case dismissed. As a result, Keisler's motion was not unexpected.
CALIFORNIA
The Orange County Register
By CHRIS KNAP
The Orange County Register
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange liquidated investments totaling $35 million to retire most of the debt it incurred in settling with 90 victims of sexual abuse, the church said Monday.
After the $100 million total settlement was made public last December, Catholics fretted that the church would have to sell its treasured Marywood pastoral center. That has not proved necessary.
The initial payment to the victims was funded half by the diocese's insurance companies and half by a short-term loan from Bank of America.
On Aug. 15 the diocese paid back $35 million of that $50 million loan. Rob Fitzgerald, a lay adviser to the bishop's task force on debt reduction, said the diocese hopes to pay an additional $5 million to $10 million on the loan in February and to retire the balance by June 2006.
PALM SPRINGS (CA)
The Press-Enterprise
11:58 PM PDT on Monday, September 19, 2005
By MICHAEL FISHER / The Press-Enterprise
A national self-help group for victims of clergy sexual abuse urged Bishop Gerald R. Barnes on Monday to alert Catholic parishioners in Palm Springs about a retired priest, who was accused in a lawsuit of sexual misconduct in Orange County.
The Rev. James M. Ford recently relocated to Palm Springs from San Roque Catholic Church in Santa Barbara, said Mary Grant, Western regional director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. Ford is accused of sexually abusing an Orange County youth in the late 1960s.
Ford, who could not be located for comment, has previously denied the accusation, telling the Los Angeles Times in February 2004 that he was "deeply hurt by this allegation of 35 years ago. It's completely and absolutely false."
Ford retired from San Roque in June, a church receptionist said. Ford left his forwarding address as a post office box in Palm Springs, she said.
CEDAR RAPIDS (IA)
WQAD
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa The Archdiocese of Dubuque is asking a judge to dismiss sexual abuse charges against two priests because it says they were not filed soon enough.
The suit was filed last year by a former altar boy who alleges sexual abuse in 1962. Both priests -- John Peters and William Roach -- have since died.
In a federal court hearing in Cedar Rapids yesterday, an attorney for the archdiocese told a judge that the former alter boy should have filed the charges earlier and that the Church should not be responsible for the priests' actions.
The man's attorney says the suit was filed after the 2002 Boston archdiocese abuse scandal when people realized the church was covering up for priests.
FRANCE
Montreal Gazette
AP
September 20, 2005
A Canadian clergyman with a criminal record for sexually abusing minors confessed yesterday to charges of raping a young member of his parish in Normandy, where he moved after serving a prison term in Quebec.
"I take responsibility for what has happened," Denis Vadeboncoeur, a priest in the Evreux diocese, told a court at the opening of his trial.
"Now, I must accept and assume the consequence of my acts."
Vadeboncoeur, 65, faces a 20-year sentence if convicted on charges of having abused his position of authority and raping a boy identified only as having been under 15.
The assaults occurred from February 1990 to August 1993 while Vadeboncoeur was a priest at a church in the Normandy village of Lieurey.
The victim, now 30, came forward in 2000, first informing the bishop of Evreux, Jacques David, who alerted authorities.
Vadeboncoeur moved to France in January 1988 to resume his life as a priest after having served a 20-month sentence in a Canadian prison. He had pleaded guilty to two charges of sexual abuse and one of sodomy against four teenage boys there.
UNITED STATES
Daily Targum
Published: 9/20/2005
The Vatican has issued a document outlining a nation wide plan to review the 229 Roman Catholic seminaries throughout the United States for faculty members who stray from church teachings - highlighted by the search for "evidence of homosexuality."
The American archbishop in charge of the seminary review said that "anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity or has strong homosexual inclinations," will not be allowed into a seminary. According to Edwin O'Brien, the archbishop for the United States military, even those who have not been sexually active for 10 or more years will be included in the project.
This review comes as a response to the sexual abuse scandals that greatly affected the Catholic Church and priesthood three years ago. It seems that if the Catholic Church wants to remedy the problem of sexual abuse by priests that investigation into the homosexuality of priests is not the right path. The right path to ending sexual abuse of children may be better found in seeking out pedophiles and child molesters, not gay men.
NORTH GREENBUSH (NY)
North County Times
Albany attorney John Artetakis, at the center of clergy sexual abuse claims against the Roman Catholic Diocese, has been arrested for allegedly stealing the briefcase of a process server working for the diocese.
State Supreme Court Judge Thomas J. Spargo had granted the diocese a temporary restraining order against Aretakis on Sept. 6, , saying that he was harassing parishioners and neighbors of Holy Cross Church and School by his weekly protests at the church during Sunday Masses.
Diocese attorney Michael Costello hired Robert Wells, a process server, to serve the restraining order on Aretakis. When attempting to do so, the attorney allegedly reached through the back window of Well’s car and took his briefcase which Wells said contained confidential material from other attorneys. According to North Greenbush Police Chief Rocco Fragomeni, Aretakis held the briefcase for two days before returning it.
Wells’ wife was a passenger in the car and called 911 when Aretakis and her husband became embroiled in the argument. North Greenbush police responded and took a report.
PALM SPRINGS (CA)
The Desert Sun
Kakie Urch
The Desert Sun
September 20, 2005
The leading national organization of people who have been abused by priests hand-delivered letters Monday to the Palm Springs Police Department and Palm Springs Unified School District warning the agencies about a priest they say has recently moved to Palm Springs.
Joelle Casteix of Newport Beach, southwestern regional director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, delivered the letters Monday, according to Mary Grant of Long Beach, the group's western regional director.
In addition, SNAP wrote to Diocese of San Bernardino Bishop Gerald Barnes, urging him to inform all Catholics about the priest, and to personally go to every parish in Palm Springs and to publicly urge victims who know of or suspect abuse to contact criminal authorities.
PORTLAND (OR)
The Oregonian
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
STEVE WOODWARD
Two months after the most recent suicide of a priest sexual-abuse plaintiff, a federal bankruptcy judge said Monday that she will allow the Archdiocese of Portland to resume paying counseling expenses for some remaining plaintiffs.
The church had paid for counseling for certain sex-abuse claimants before July 2004, when the archdiocese declared bankruptcy.
Two suicides and one apparent suicide among plaintiffs since December prompted lawyer Daniel J. Gatti, who represents more than two dozen men alleging clergy abuse, to ask the court to permit the archdiocese to resume the payments.
NORTH GREENBUSH (NY)
Capital News 9
9/19/2005 7:50 PM
By: Capital News 9 web staff
A local attorney and the North Greenbush police are facing a lawsuit from a man who served legal papers.
Robert Wells said he was attacked and robbed by Attorney John Aretakis earlier this month when he tried to serve a restraining order from the Holy Cross Church.
Mr. Aretakis and SNAP, an anti-clergy sex abuse group, have been picketing outside of Holy Cross for several months. North Greenbush police arrested Aretakis and charged him with petty larceny and harassment, but Mr. Wells' attorney believes Aretakis got off easy because of his status.
ROME
LifeSite
ROME, September 19, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Homosexual men may not be admitted to the Catholic priesthood, according to a soon-to-be released document that has been approved by Pope Benedict XVI. The document has been anticipated since before the death of Pope John Paul II and speculation has raged that it would retreat for political reasons from declaring a ban on ordaining declared homosexual men.
In a media update today, Catholic World News says that the text was approved by Pope Benedict at the end of August. The document, to be classed as an “Instruction” comes from the Congregation for Catholic Education and says that homosexual men should not be admitted to seminaries even if they are celibate. It says that homosexuality, understood by the Catholic Church as a moral and psychological disorder, seriously “detracts from their ability to serve as ministers.”
The document is expected to be released to the public after the international Bishops synod in Rome in October.
In 2002, the same year the scandal of widespread abuse of minors by homosexual predators in the priesthood, Catholic journalist and author, Michael Rose, released his best-selling exposé of what he identified as a homosexual underground in the seminary system that reached all the way into chanceries. Rose implicated bishops and seminary rectors as well as priests in enormous network whose objective was to make the Catholic priesthood a “gay profession.” The presence of the “lavender mafia” in US seminaries, said Rose in his book, has led to a clerical culture in which the teaching of the Catholic Church on other doctrinal issues, especially on abortion, contraception and marriage, is undermined or ignored.
VATICAN
Catholic World News
Vatican, Sep. 19 (CWNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) has given his approval to a new Vatican policy document indicating that men with homosexual tendencies should not be ordained as Catholic priests.
The new document-- which was prepared by the Congregation for Catholic Education, in response to a request made by the late Pope John Paul II (bio - news) in 1994-- will be published soon. It will take the form of an "Instruction," signed by the prefect and secretary of the Congregation: Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski and Archbishop Michael Miller.
IRELAND
One in Four
THE Christian Brothers have said that while they accept incidents of physical and sexual abuse did take place at Artane industrial school, they reject as "incorrect" any suggestion that it was an "abusive" system as such.
They also insist that there was no cover-up of sex abuse and that the school succeeded in providing an education to disadvantaged youths despite underfunding.
The Christian Brothers made the claims at a public hearing yesterday of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse and in a statement.
Bro Michael Reynolds asked that a sense of perspective be brought to people's understanding of what happened at Artane and that "the sins of the few" should not be used to "demonise" everyone who worked there.
IRELAND
One in Four
A senior leader of the Christian Brothers has said that the congregation accepted there were instances of physical and sexual abuse carried out by individuals at the industrial school in Artane in Dublin.
However, Brother Michael Reynolds, deputy leader of St Mary's Province, said the idea that Artane was an abusive institution was incorrect.
Giving evidence before the Investigation Committee of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse yesterday, Brother Reynolds said that, in the round, Artane was "a positive institution".
He said there was archival documentation verifying six cases of sexual abuse at Artane. There was also documentary evidence of 11 cases of excessive physical punishment and 14 cases of neglect.
NORTH GREENBUSH (NY)
Albany Times Union
By CAROL DeMARE, Staff writer
First published: Sunday, September 18, 2005
NORTH GREENBUSH -- Attorney John Aretakis was arrested Friday night on charges he stole a process server's briefcase after an altercation earlier this month.
Robert Wells was serving Aretakis a temporary restraining order obtained by Holy Cross Church in Albany when the incident occurred.
"An argument ensued, and Mr. Aretakis reached through the back window of the (process server's) car and removed his briefcase and held it for a couple of days before he would return it," North Greenbush Police Chief Rocco Fragomeni said Saturday.
At an arraignment before North Greenbush Town Justice Andrew Ceresia, Aretakis pleaded not guilty to harassment, a violation, and petit larceny, a misdemeanor. He was released on recognizance pending further court appearances.
Aretakis did not return a call Saturday seeking comment.
FRANCE
Montreal Gazette
Associated Press
September 19, 2005
EVREUX, France -- A Canadian clergyman with a prior criminal record for sexually abusing minors confessed Monday to charges of raping a young member of his parish in Normandy, where he moved after serving a prison term in Quebec.
"I take responsibility for what has happened,'' Rev. Denis Vadeboncoeur, a priest in the Evreux diocese, told a court at the opening of his trial. "Now, I must accept and assume the consequence of my acts.''
Vadeboncoeur faces a 20-year sentence if convicted on charges of having abused his position of authority and raping a boy identified only as having been under 15. The assaults occurred from February 1990 to August 1993 while he was a priest at a church in the Normandy village of Lieurey.
The victim, now 30, came forward in 2000, first informing the bishop of Evreux, Jacques David, who alerted authorities.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Craig R. McCoy, Nancy Phillips and Mark Fazlollah
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
The sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church surfaced in 2002 with revelations of rampant victimization in Boston and quickly enveloped the church nationwide.
Since then, the Philadelphia Archdiocese has said that at least 44 diocesan priests had been credibly accused of abusing minors over the previous half-century.
Several other priests from religious orders who either served in the archdiocese or lived there have also been accused of abuses.
The church has declined to publicly name all of the accused.
A grand jury that has spent three years investigating abuse within the Philadelphia Archdiocese has identified more than 50 abusers and is expected to release a comprehensive report soon.
AUSTRALIA
The Sunday Mail
By Michael McKenna
19sep05
ONE of the scandals that forced the resignation of Peter Hollingworth as governor-general is back in court, with new details of child abuse at a prestigious Brisbane private school.
Former students of Brisbane Grammar School, who rejected out-of-court settlements in 2003, have revived their damages claims, with new evidence that administrators had been warned about a pedophile on staff before they were allegedly abused.
Dr Hollingworth resigned as governor-general in May 2003 after criticism of his handling of sex abuse allegations at church-run schools and Queensland parishes while he was Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane.
Brisbane Grammar was not part of the Anglican Diocese of Brisbane, but a former counsellor at the school, Kevin Lynch, is alleged to have abused students there in the 1980s before transferring to the church-run St Paul's School, where he molested more pupils.
BAYONNE (NJ)
The Jersey Journal
By JASON DEL REY
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
A month after a 36-year-old man's allegations of past sexual abuse led to the resignation of a Bayonne monsignor, a second man has come forward with similar charges, The Jersey Journal has learned.
Raymond Capone, 40, of South Plainfield, contacted the Archdiocese of Newark last week to allege an incident of molestation dating back to the early- to mid-1980s, Capone and an archdiocesan spokesman said.
Monsignor Peter Cheplic, who voluntarily left his post at St. Henry's Church in Bayonne last month, was previously accused by Joe Capozzi of Manhattan of molestation in the 1980s.
St. Henry's parishioners learned about the situation on Aug. 28 when a priest read a statement issued by the archdiocese.
In an interview with The Jersey Journal, Capone said he visited the priest at Holy Spirit/Our Lady Help of Christians in East Orange between 1982 and 1985.
PENNSYLVANIA
Observer-Reporter
Associated Press
PITTSBURGH – Three Western Pennsylvania seminaries will be evaluated over the next several months in a Vatican study prompted by the Roman Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandals.
The study will examine the psychological, spiritual, intellectual and sexual factors that shape priests at Ss. Cyril & Methodius Byzantine Catholic Seminary in Pittsburgh, St. Vincent Seminary in Latrobe and St. Paul Seminary in East Carnegie.
U.S. bishops requested the study, which has 55 questions.
LITTLETON (CO)
Rocky Mountain News
By Gwen Florio, Rocky Mountain News
September 19, 2005
A Roman Catholic church in Littleton launched a youth program Sunday over objections from a parishioner concerned about accusations against the program's founder.
Monsignor Dale Fushek, the Arizona priest who founded the Life Teen Inc. program, is the subject of a probe into sexual misconduct. Fushek has denied the allegation.
Last week, Jo Wessels sent letters and e-mails to about 60 fellow parishioners at Light of the World Catholic Church, noting that the Catholic Church in the United States has paid an estimated $1 billion to settle sexual abuse cases.
"Why is Light of the World giving even one penny to a private corporation that is supporting a program and a priest currently being investigated on a multitude of fronts?" she wrote.
Life Teen is a private organization that runs Catholic youth programs. Its Web site says more than 120,000 teens attend weekly Life Teen Masses in 19 countries.
TUCSON (AZ)
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
TUCSON, Ariz. -- A year ago Tuesday, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson was driven to bankruptcy by claims of clergy sex abuse, but the anniversary of the filing could also be the day the diocese emerges - a quick resolution to a difficult case, bankruptcy experts say.
United States Bankruptcy Judge James M. Marlar approved the diocese's Chapter 11 reorganization plan in July, which will make $22.2 million available to settle court-approved claims by 31 victims of sex abuse by priests. A few more victims may be added, and future claims, including on behalf of minor children, are possible but not highly likely.
Susan Boswell, the diocese's lead bankruptcy lawyer, said she hoped the settlement trust would be funded Tuesday, officially freeing the diocese from bankruptcy. The trust will provide initial payouts of up to $600,000 to the victims, who are likely to receive more money later from a fund set aside for possible future claimants.
Bankruptcy specialists consider resolving such a case so quickly extraordinary. Contentious bankruptcy reorganizations involving the Portland, Ore., and Spokane, Wash., dioceses, filed before and after Tucson's filing last year, remain far from resolution.
PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Craig R. McCoy
Inquirer Staff Writer
With its term expiring yesterday, the Philadelphia grand jury investigation into clergy sexual abuse - the nation's longest-running such probe - is expected soon to issue an exhaustive report.
The inquiry is expected to add extensive new information about the extent of the problem and how the church's leadership responded to reports of abuse.
While the Philadelphia Archdiocese says it has identified at least 44 priests who have sexually abused minors, it has refused to name them.
The Inquirer, through interviews and court records, has identified several dozen.
The archdiocese has said that disclosing the names of all accused priests "would be like a second strike" on victims, perhaps causing their identities, in turn, to be made public.
WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram & Gazette
Dianne Williamson
dwilliamson@telegram.com
T&G STAFF
He left the priesthood despite a successful ministry because he felt “emasculated” and “like a kid living in my parent’s house,” he said. Now, he wonders how gay priests — his friends and former colleagues — will manage to survive in a church that may be poised to purge their ranks and blame them for the sins of others.
“How do you give your life to an organization that’s bashing you?” wondered this former local priest, now living as an openly gay man. “It’s almost evil at work. They’re using gay men as scapegoats, and I find it sinful.”
It should come as no surprise, really, because gays get blamed for everything — terrorist attacks, hurricanes, even the re-election of George W. Bush. So why shouldn’t gay priests take the heat for the child sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church? Do we really expect an institution as intractable as the Vatican to engage in a painful and honest review of the policies that contributed to such a corrosive atmosphere?
Instead, according to a document obtained by The New York Times, investigators appointed by the Vatican have been instructed to review more than 220 Roman Catholic seminaries in the United States for “evidence of homosexuality” and for faculty dissent from church teachings. The document surfaces as the Vatican prepares to rule on whether gay men should be barred from the priesthood. The reviews were ordered by Rome in April 2002, at the height of the clergy sexual-abuse crisis.
One can’t help but wonder what sort of “evidence” these investigators will search for. A cacophony of show tunes blaring from seminary dorm rooms? Old ticket stubs to Cher concerts? Eye-catching interior design in the common rooms? Televisions tuned to the LOGO channel?
The irony, of course, is that an institution that claims to promote equality and denounce bigotry is now judging men not on what they do, but solely on who they are. Archbishop Edwin O’Brien, who is spearheading the seminary review, recently said that “anyone who has strong homosexual inclinations” should not be admitted to a seminary. And he also told TheAbuse Tracker Catholic Register that the restriction should apply even to those who have been celibate for more than a decade.
This is because the church is conveniently equating homosexual orientation with pedophilia, even though most experts in human sexuality agree there’s no link between homosexuality and child sexual abuse. Rather, different theories abound that the scandal could have been caused by mandatory celibacy, by the fact that priests have more access to male targets, or because of a dysfunctional system that attracts and produces psychologically immature men.
Now, though, the Vatican has muddled its own celibacy requirement and maintained that it’s no longer enough — that only men who want to have sex with women and don’t act on it are worthy of the priesthood. And it’s threatening the church’s very existence, because a large number of Catholic priests happen to be gay. Estimates vary widely, but I’d guess that many people who grew up Catholic would place the number, anecdotally, as high as 40 or even 50 percent.
Rather than deal openly with the issue, however, this latest inquisition will serve only to silence gay priests and drive them deeper underground. This will leave them helpless to counter the negative stereotypes of gay priests, and will insure that positive examples continue to remain hidden.
“This whole thing is scary,” said the former local priest, of the review he dubbed a witch hunt. “It wasn’t gay priests who caused the scandal. It was the neglect of bishops who chose to ignore what was going on, and who gave guys like John Geoghan the license to run rampant. There have always been gays in the priesthood, and my closet gay priest friends are celibate and embrace their calling as a priest.”
He left the priesthood after seven years, at the brink of a scandal that has led to more than 11,000 abuse claims in the past five decades. And he acknowledged that maintaining celibacy is a struggle for gay priests — just as it is for straight priests.
“Do people mess up? Yeah, sometimes,” he said. “But a lot of these guys have had wonderful careers. They’ve been very successful in their ministry and have brought no shame or embarrassment to the church. Now the church is turning on its own. Rome eats its young.”
The church doesn’t see it that way, of course, and implies that gay men can’t be expected to be celibate regardless of their record, and that all are potential molesters of children. This, from a church that fights injustice and claims to welcome everyone to God’s table; this, from an institution that has flourished for centuries with the help of countless devout and dedicated priests who happen to be gay.
“If there have been past failings, the church really must stay on the safe side,” Archbishop O’Brien said recently. “The same-sex attractions have gotten us into some legal problems.”
Legal problems? Please, please tell me that the archbishop isn’t referring to the systemic abuse of innocent young children as a legal problem. Because if that’s the case, it’s just another sad indication that a church now seeking a scapegoat instead of self-examination has failed to learn a thing from its past mistakes.
Contact Dianne Williamson by e-mail at dwilliamson@telegram.com.
WISCONSIN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
By MARIE ROHDE
mrohde@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Sept. 17, 2005
A former Episcopal priest who has already served a four-year sentence and parole term for sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy may be retried on the same charges after a federal appeals court essentially overturned the original conviction, according to Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision found that the priest, Russell Martin, had inadequate legal representation at trial.
"The effect is that he's no longer considered a convicted sex offender," Bucher said. "Of course we want to retry him, but it's a question of whether we can try him. The question is whether the evidence is still available. In this case, it's the victim."
The conviction was part of a notorious case involving Nashotah House, an Episcopal seminary in Delafield, that got national attention.
Russell Martin was one of five men charged in 1994 after a Texas man accused them of abusing him at Nashotah House in the late 1980s when he was 13. Two of the five pleaded no contest to the assault charges. Two other seminarians were acquitted by juries.
MISSISSIPPI
The Clarion-Ledger
By Jack Elliott Jr.
The Associated Press
The Mississippi Supreme Court has blocked a Hinds County judge's release of United Methodist Church documents to a woman who had filed a $10 million lawsuit against a minister who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting her.
The court ruled Thursday that Circuit Judge Tomie Green did not perform a required document-by-document review to determine if they were protected by the church's claim of priest-penitent privilege, which includes information learned through confession and all forms of counseling.
Presiding Justice Bill Waller Jr., writing Thursday for the court, said Green must review each document and give reasons why each document is protected or not.
"Here, the circuit court violated that protective responsibility by allowing one party premature inspection of documents before the ruling as to privilege could be appealed," Waller wrote.
MARYLAND
Columbia Flier
09/15/05
By Luke Broadwater
A man who conducted sports camps and previously taught at St. Louis Catholic School in Clarksville and several other Catholic schools in the Baltimore region died last month amid allegations that he had sexually abused a female student, according to officials of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
The man also conducted summer sports camps at the private Norbel School in Elkridge, officials said.
Steve Brotzman, 37, died Aug. 31. The cause of his death is pending further study, according to the state medical examiner.
The archdiocese revealed the accusations against Brotzman in a Sept. 6 press release. Brotzman also taught at two Catholic schools in Baltimore County and one in Baltimore.
Days before Brotzman's death, a female student at one of the schools at which Brotzman had taught accused him of sending her inappropriate e-mails, archdiocese officials said. A day after his death, a second girl accused Brotzman of sexual abuse, Sean Caine, the spokesman for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, said.
CANADA
Anglican Journal
Toronto, September 16,2005 -- Since May when the federal government appointed retired Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci to work on Indian residential schools issues, intensive negotiations have been underway involving representatives of government, plaintiffs’ counsel, the Assembly of First Nations and the churches.
Mr. Justice Iacobucci’s mandate is to negotiate a resolution of all the outstanding issues around residential schools, and to make a final report by March 2006.
These negotiations were established following a political agreement signed by the federal government and the AFN which included the possibility of a lump sum payment to all former IRS students, along with continuation of the present alternative dispute resolution process for those former students who have claims of major sexual abuse.
The Anglican Church of Canada has been represented in these negotiations by lawyers John Page and Brian Daly. A second working group on the non-legal issues such as truth-telling, commemoration and healing, includes the Reverend Andrew Wesley and Archdeacon Jim Boyles.
Although the issues are numerous and complex, talks are proceeding. It is expected that Mr. Justice Iacobucci will meet his deadline.
PENNSYLVANIA
Renew America
Matt C. Abbott
September 17, 2005
From Dr. Jeffrey M. Bond, president of the College of St. Justin Martyr (slightly edited):
"Deacon Joseph Levine, former Superior General of the suppressed Society of St. John, has recently been assigned to a parish. Monsignor John T. Conway of the Mother of Divine Mercy Parish in King-of-Prussia, Pennsylvania, made this announcement in his August 21, 2005 bulletin (http://www.mdpparish.com/parishlife/news.htm):
"'I am pleased to tell you that Rev. Mr. Joseph Levine has been assigned to Mother of Divine Providence Parish for his Sunday Diaconate Placement during the 2005-06 Academic Year. Deacon Levine's home diocese is Scranton. He is studying for the diocesan priesthood at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary. Deacon Levine will preach at Sunday Masses and assist with the administration of the Sacraments. His assignment will begin on the weekend of September 3rd and 4th. We warmly welcome him to our staff.'
"The parishioners of this parish must be warned about Deacon Levine. As Those familiar with the Society of St. John scandal already know, Deacon Levine became the Superior General of the SSJ after Carlos Urrutigoity, the former Superior General and founder of the SSJ, was exposed as a homosexual predator priest. While I have no evidence that Deacon Levine was personally involved in the homosexual molestation of boys or young men, Deacon Levine actively sought to protect those in the SSJ who engaged in these perverse deeds.
"In fact, upon his election to the office of Superior General, Deacon Levine publicly praised Urrutigoity in the SSJ's May 2002 Epistle. Deacon Levine gave this public endorsement of his predecessor despite his having been informed, as early as August 19, 2001, that Urrutigoity had a habit of sleeping with students from St. Gregory's Academy in Elmhurst, Pennsylvania.
"On that day Mr. Alan Hicks, the founder and headmaster of St. Gregory's Academy, personally informed both Deacon Levine and me that Urrutigoity was the object of a possible lawsuit for his 'sleeping sickness.' Moreover, Deacon Levine was fully aware by May 2002 that there was abundant and weighty evidence, including affidavits, establishing Urrutigoity's habit of sleeping in the same bed with boys and young men. (See www.SaintJustinMartyr.org/news/notices.html.)
PAKISTAN
Houston Chronicle
By BRIAN MURPHY
Associated Press
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - The accounts are disturbing: beatings, forced sex and imprisonment with shackles and leg irons. Abuse accusations from hundreds of children sent to study at Islamic schools are increasing the calls from parents and rights groups for a full-scale investigation.
But officials have moved slowly and cautiously in probing the charges of mistreatment in Quranic schools, or madrassas — pointing to a paradox across much of the Muslim world. It's often easier to tackle Islamic militants than to confront the cultural taboo on publicly airing alleged sex crimes and challenging influential clerics.
Still, if Islamic institutions ever face a reckoning over sexual abuse — as the Roman Catholic Church has in recent years — it could begin in Pakistan where institutions are under unprecedented scrutiny by anti-terrorism agents.
"We are forcing people to look this problem in the eye," said Zia Ahmed Awan, whose group Madadgaar, or Helper, compiles reports of sexual abuse of children in Pakistan. "It is not anti-Muslim. It is not anti-cleric. We are looking out for the most vulnerable in society."
Last year, a Pakistani official stunned his nation by officially disclosing more than 500 complaints of sexual assaults against young boys in madrassas.
ARIZONA
The Arizona Republic
Mark Shaffer
Republic Flagstaff Bureau
Sept. 18, 2005 12:00 AM
The former town marshal of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, never notified Utah child-welfare authorities of sexual abuse cases he was investigating in the polygamist communities and acknowledged cohabiting with a wife and two "companions," with whom he has had 21 children, according to documents released Friday.
Samuel N. Roundy, 50, Colorado City's town marshal for 10 years before resigning this year, made those admissions during an interview in October with an investigator for the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board.
Transcripts of the interview were released in conjunction with decertification hearings Thursday and Friday in Phoenix for Roundy and another polygamist Colorado City police officer, Vance Barlow. Neither officer attended the hearings. advertisement
Diana Stabler, an Arizona assistant attorney general, said Roundy and Barlow likely would be stripped of certification as Arizona police officers during the board's next meeting on Oct. 19.
Utah revoked the police certifications of the two in March, citing violation of state bigamy statutes. Roundy said he was never a sworn police officer in Utah.
The anticipated decertification would be the latest in a series of moves to tighten the noose around the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the largest multiple-marriage sect in the country.
SEWARD (NE)
Lincoln Journal Star
BY Art Hovey / Lincoln Journal Star
SEWARD — There wasn’t much room to question their credentials.
Panelists at a Hope and Healing Seminar at St. John Lutheran Church on Saturday included Barb Rebentisch, who remembered curling up under her bed at Concordia University before telling a college friend she had been the victim of incest as a child.
They included Len Rotherham, who stumbled drunk into his darkened bedroom late one night to tell his wife he had been a victim of child sexual abuse 20 years earlier at school.
And they included Cathie Van Domelen, wife of Saturday’s featured speaker, Bob Van Domelen, who had to explain to their three school-age children 20 years ago that their father had been arrested for sexually abusing teenage boys.
Cathie Van Domelen recalled how she stood with her back to the kitchen sink. “And I told them their father had done some very bad things, and he would have to pay for it … but I made sure that they understood that we were blameless.”
Saturday’s seminar was part of the latest effort by Seward’s largest church to come to grips with its past.
In 2001, School Principal David Mannigel committed suicide after he was confronted with allegations that he had sexually abused students.
In 2002, St. John teacher Arlen Meyer was similarly accused.
Although neither was criminally prosecuted, a church investigation found “a consistent pattern of sexual misconduct” by Mannigel involving at least six students.
Meyer was excommunicated but then reinstated earlier this year as the church leadership and a congregation of about 2,800 struggled to resolve his membership standing.
PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Sunday, September 18, 2005
By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Three Western Pennsylvania seminaries will be evaluated during the next five months in a Vatican study prompted by the Catholic sexual abuse scandals that erupted in 2002.
U.S. bishops requested the study, which will examine the psychological, spiritual, intellectual and sexual factors that shape priests.
One of the study's 55 questions -- and one of only six mandatory ones -- concerns whether there is "evidence of homosexuality in the seminary." This has drawn fire from those who fear that the evaluation is a witch hunt to purge gay seminarians.
"The Vatican continues to be obsessed about homosexuality," said Debbie Weill, executive director of DignityUSA, a group for gay Catholics.
CITRUS HEIGHTS (CA)
Sacramento Bee
By David Richie -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Friday, September 16, 2005
Uncertainty, fear and anger prevailed Thursday as the 1,000 senior residents of the Lakeview Village Mobile Home Park in Citrus Heights learned that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacrame