BishopAccountability.org
	Bishop Defends Decision on Monk San Antonio Express-News November 19, 2011 http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/religion/article/Religion-briefs-2277564.php The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church on Thursday defended her decision to allow a former Catholic monk to become an Episcopal priest even after he admitted to sexual misconduct with a minor. The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori has been under increasing pressure to answer charges that she did not properly investigate the Rev. Bede Parry's past when she was bishop of Nevada in 2004. Jefferts Schori said she knew of only one abuse incident when Parry, now 69, sought ordination as an Episcopal priest. She also said Parry passed a background check and a psychological evaluation before he was ordained. After ordination, she said, Parry was supervised by another priest and not permitted to work alone with children. “I made the decision to receive him,” Jefferts Schori said in a statement, “believing that he demonstrated repentance and amendment of life and that his current state did not represent a bar to his reception.” Catholics ready for Anglican converts A new Catholic structure for Anglican converts in the United States will be formally launched Jan. 1, Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington announced Tuesday. The structure, called an ordinariate, will function like a nongeographic diocese. Converting congregations will be allowed to retain certain Anglican liturgical and ecclesiastical traditions, such as married priests. Married priests can't become bishops, however. Two Anglican parishes — in Fort Worth and Bladensburg, Md. — already have converted in anticipation of the ordinariate, which Wuerl is guiding. Catholic expert Rocco Palmo, author of the blog Whispers in the Loggia, estimated the total number of U.S. converts will be 2,000 lay people and 100 clergy. Holocaust survivors seek right to sue A group of Holocaust survivors went to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to push Congress for the right to sue European insurance companies in U.S. courts for denying claims stemming from World War II. A bill sponsored by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., and backed by 52 others members of the House, would allow survivors to pursue such suits despite opposition from the U.S. State Department and prominent American Jewish groups. Opponents of the proposed Holocaust Insurance Accountability Act of 2011 say such lawsuits undermine agreements already reached between the U.S. and Germany to compensate the victims, and the executive branch's power to make foreign policy. But the elderly Holocaust survivors who testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Wednesday said they need access to the courts to gain what was stolen from survivors.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.