ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA
7 News

By Lindy Kerin, ABC
July 4, 2012

After initially backing three priests accused of covering up the sexual abuse of altar boys in New South Wales, the Catholic Church has now issued a statement saying it has begun fresh inquiries.

Two of the priests accused of turning a blind eye to the sexual abuse of children in Moree and Parramatta deny they ever heard the accused, known as Father F, admit his guilt.

But an internal document written at the time prepared by the third priest goes as far as listing the sex acts involved.

The Broken Rites support group for sex abuse victims has condemned all the priests for not notifying police, and has renewed its calls for a Royal Commission into the Church’s handling of sex abuse allegations.

On on Monday night, Australia’s most prominent Catholic, Sydney Archbishop Cardinal George Pell, defended the three senior priests: Father Brian Lucas, Father John Usher and Father Wayne Peters.

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NEDERLAND
Dagblad de Limburger

Heel
Door Paul Bots, Hans Goossen en Niki van der Naald

Dat er nu zoveel belangstelling voor Guus Verstraelen is- de voormalig instellingsarts van Huize Sint Joseph in Heel -, dat begrijpt zijn in Venray woonachtige broer wel. “Als ik lees wat zich toen blijkbaar heeft afgespeeld, is het wel heel opmerkelijk”, zegt de broer, die niet met voornaam genoemd wil worden.

Dokter Verstraelen heeft volgens justitie een dubieuze rol gespeeld door het niet verder onderzoeken van de opvallende piek van 37 overleden jongens in andehalf jaar tijd, begin jaren vijftig. De arts zou vandaag de dag als verdachte zijn aangemerkt. “Toen hij in Heel werkte zat ik zelf in Antwerpen. Als ik hem sprak hadden we het over koetjes en kalfjes. Over Sint Joseph hoorde ik hem nooit. Hád ie-maar iets laten weten.” Een oordeel over hoe Verstraelen destijds handelde wil zijn broer niet vellen.

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CONNECTICUT
The Day

By Izaskun E. Larrañeta and Karen Florin

Publication: theday.com
Published 07/03/2012

The Rev. Dennis Carey, the former pastor of St. Paul in Chains Church in Waterford, said he wants help for a child pornography addiction when he was arraigned today in New London Superior Court on a single count of first-degree possession of child pornography.

He is facing a five year mandatory prison sentence if convicted of the crime, which is a Class B felony.

Carey, 65, who gave an East Hartford address, resigned on Friday after the diocese had learned a day earlier that state police were investigating him.

Following his arraignment, he was released on a $100,000 bond and his attorney, Ronald F. Stevens, said he was taking him to a psychiatrist this afternoon to get help for his addiction. Stevens said Carey has never touched a child inappropriately.

Carey is staying in “another church location,” according to Stevens. The judge ordered him to have no contact with minors, not use computers and not possess pornographic materials.

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VATICAN CITY
GetReligion

So what’s up with the Associated Press, all of a sudden? It used to be rare to read an AP report that totally needed an “analysis” label, but now it seems that these stories pop up all of the time.

This time around, we’re talking about a report on Pope Benedict XVI’s unusual decision to dismiss one of his European bishops outright — just like that. No ifs, ands or buts. The bishop was simply shown the door.

Now, this is the kind of inside-baseball stuff that canon lawyers and church activists simply live to talk about. So what’s up with the top of this AP opinion essay? Note how quickly the piece moves from facts into straight out, connect-the-dots speculation — with no attribution clauses whatsoever.

As you read, keep asking yourself this simple, journalistic question: Who is talking?

VATICAN CITY — The pope fired a 52-year-old Slovak bishop on Monday for apparently mismanaging his diocese in a rare show of papal power over his bishops.

Usually when bishops run into trouble — either for alleged moral lapses or management problems — they are persuaded by the Vatican to resign. But Pope Benedict XVI has become increasingly willing to forcibly remove bishops who refuse to step down, sacking three others in the last year alone.

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CONNECTICUT
Patch

Update, 1:10 p.m., Tuesday:

Today, in his arraignment in a New London court, the Rev. Dennis Carey said “I want to get help” while posting a $100,000 bond on a charge of first-degree possession of child pornography.

Carey was the pastor of St. Paul in Chains Rectory in Waterford before resigning last week following a state police investigation into child pornography. That investigation turned into an arrest, with Carey turning himself in Monday.

During his arraignment, Carey’s lawyer Ronald Stevens stressed that there are no allegations of Carey doing anything inappropiate with children. He said Carey was allegedly just looking at child pornography, saying Carey has “been struggling with the issue for awhile.”

“I just think there is a huge difference,” said Stevens, referring to the difference between viewing child pornography and doing inappropriate things with children.

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CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles Times

July 3, 2012

A trial was set to begin Tuesday for an Orange County pastor accused of sexually assaulting five boys who were parishioners at his Laguna Hills church.

Oscar D. Perez, 69, is accused of assaulting the boys, who were 9 to 15 years old at the time, between 2007 and 2011, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s office.

Opening arguments are expected to begin Tuesday in a Santa Ana courtroom.

Perez reportedly was an Apostolic pastor at Iglesia Antigua, a church that rented space at St. George’s Episcopalian Church. He allegedly met the victims there and had them assist with church services.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

July 3, 2012 1:34 p.m.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee and its bankruptcy creditors, most of them known or alleged victims of sexual abuse, agreed Tuesday to enter mediation, a signal that one of the nation’s largest Catholic Church bankruptcies to date may be nearing a resolution.

At the request of the parties, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley ordered as mediator retired U.S. bankruptcy judge Randall Newsome of San Francisco. Newsome has served as chief judge of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Northern District of California.

The decision comes amid rising legal fees and after weeks of court-ordered settlement talks in a case described by one court official as a “scorched earth legal battle.”

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
SNAP Wisconsin

Statement by Peter Isely, SNAP Midwest Director (Milwaukee)
CONTACT 414.429.7259

After 16 months of spending in excess of 4 million dollars to throw out nearly 90 percent of the 570 victims who filed claims in federal bankruptcy court alleging rape, sexual assault or abuse by Milwaukee clergy, Judge Susan V. Kelley today has finally ordered the archdiocese into mediation. In appointing Judge Randall J. Newsome to conduct mediation, Kelley emphasized that she wants to see “compassion” used when dealing with the issues of Wisconsin law, such as the old statute of limitations on sex crimes, which have prevented many victims from receiving justice.

Judge Newsome will oversee the mediation discussions which are expected to begin on July 20th. At that time a stay of at least 60 days will be placed on all court proceedings to give the parties time to focus on reaching a settlement.

Indeed, no other diocese or religious order that has filed for bankruptcy in the US has contested legitimate victim claims, except the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, an unnecessary, unjust and expensive delay. Instead, current Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki has repeatedly refused to voluntarily mediate, so today, sadly, it has taken a court order for him to do it.

This kind of legal attack on victims, perhaps the most aggressive in the country, was part of the bankruptcy plan designed by former Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan, now Cardinal of New York. Dolan’s movement of tens of millions of dollars into off-the-books archdiocesan trusts was the original subject of today’s hearing but was changed by Kelley so that she could order the mediation.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE/CONNECTICUT
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on July 03, 2012

A Catholic priest who was a New Hampshire accountant has been arrested on child porn charges. Fr. Dennis Carey turned himself in to state troopers in Connecticut on Tuesday. Most recently, he’s been a priest in Waterford CT.

Presumably, during his time in NH, Carey attended Catholic churches. So we encourage New Hampshire Catholic officials, especially Bishop Libasci, to tell parishioners about the charges against Fr. Carey and urge anyone who may have seen, suspected or suffered his misdeeds to call police immediately. At a bare minimum, Bishop Libasci should publicly disclose which parish or parishes Carey attended in New Hampshire.

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on July 03, 2012

The Missouri Supreme Court today ruled in favor of against St. Louis-based Catholic officials and for a child sex abuse victim in a clergy sex abuse and cover up case involving the Marianists and one of the nation’s most notorious child molesting clerics, Brother William Mueller (who now lives, unsupervised, in Texas).

We’re grateful this brave victim will have a chance to expose the child sex crimes and cover ups by these Catholic officials in court. The Marianists are among the most reckless, callous and deceitful Catholic religious orders and Brother William Mueller is among the most prolific predators. Parents, parishioners, and the public deserve to know how top church officials ignored, concealed and enabled Mueller to hurt dozens of boys in at least three states by quietly transferring him from school to school to school after repeated, credible abuse reports surfaced. Thousands of alums of schools where Mueller worked – like Vianney and Chaminade and St. Mary’s – also deserve to know the truth about corruption by Catholic school and church officials.

At least seven other St. Louis Marianists have been publicly named as credibly accused pedophiles – Brother Louis Meinhardt, Brother John J. Woulfe, Fr. William Christensen, Fr. Robert R. Osborne, Fr. Charles Miller, Fr. Daniel A. Triulzi, and Brother Tony Pistone. (Child sex abuse suits against Triulzi, Osborne and Mueller has been settled. Miller works today in the Vatican.)

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on July 03, 2012

On one hand, we’re grateful that Rebecca Summers is being replaced. She’s been part of the deceit and cover up of clergy sex crimes in Kansas City for years. And she’s said some dreadfully hurtful things to victims over the years. (She told one man who was helping to expose predators that his recently-deceased mother would be ashamed of him).

On the other hand, shuffling staffers and titles is one way embattled bishops often try to blunt reform and mollify parishioners, by pretending they’re making real changes. We suspect this is what Bishop Finn is doing.

The pattern of hiding heinous crimes against kids is longstanding and deeply rooted in the Kansas City diocese. Reversing it won’t happen because a few employees are moved around and a few new titles are handed out. It will take continued pressure from secular authorities, continued courage from victims and continued skepticism and vigilance by parishioners and the public.

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NORWICH (CT)
New Haven Register

“We have just learned of the arrest of Father Dennis Carey, former pastor of St. Paul’s Church in

Waterford, on charges linked to child pornography. We, along with everyone else, will wait tosee how the legal process unfolds and to learn the details of the investigation.These allegations are extremely serious and run contrary to everything we believe as a Church.To exploit children in that fashion is absolutely reprehensible. We pray the allegations are nottrue.This is a sad moment for all of us. We always hope we will never again hear about anyinvestigations or allegations of misconduct by priests. For the parish community, for the priestsof the diocese, and for me personally, it is extremely difficult. We are all saddened and deeplyhurt.We are grateful to the State Police for their professionalism. They continue to have our full support and cooperation.”

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CONNECTICUT
New Haven Register

By The Associated Press

[With statement from the Rev. Michael R. Cote, Bishop of Norwich]

WATERFORD — The former pastor of a Roman Catholic church in Waterford has been arrested on a child pornography charge, state police said Tuesday.

The Rev. Dennis Carey was being held on $100,000 bond and was scheduled to appear Tuesday in New London Superior Court on a charge of possessing child pornography in the first degree.

Telephone messages left for Carey’s attorney and at the church were not immediately returned.

The arrest came after police in Los Angeles notified Connecticut authorities about a possible suspect. Connecticut investigators said they executed a search warrant at the St. Paul Parish rectory and seized evidence.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Jul. 03, 2012
By Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI has named Msgr. Jeffrey M. Monforton, rector-president of Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit for the past six years, as bishop of Steubenville, Ohio.

The appointment was announced Tuesday at the Vatican.

Monforton, 49, succeeds Bishop R. Daniel Conlon, 63, who was named in May 2011 as bishop of Joliet, Ill.

The new bishop also served from 1998 to 2005 as priest-secretary to now-retired Cardinal Adam J. Maida, who was then archbishop of Detroit, and had most recently been pastor of St. Andrew Parish in Rochester, the Detroit Archdiocese’s largest parish.

No date has been set for his episcopal ordination and installation as bishop of Steubenville.

“I am very grateful and deeply humbled for our Holy Father to entrust me with the faithful of the Steubenville Diocese,” Monforton said in a statement.

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STEUBENVILLE (OH)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David Clohessy on July 03, 2012

Though we know very little about Bishop Monforton, we are encouraged by this selection. We worry when chancery officials – bishops, auxiliary bishops, vicars general, and chancellors – are promoted, because many of them are involved or were involved in covering up child sex crimes. The chances are lower that priests or monsignors (who spent most of their careers outside the chancery) are guilty of this complicity and secrecy. So we’re hopeful when those who are not chancery employees are elevated.

We do worry that he does come from a particularly scandal-ridden archdiocese with 51 proven admitted or publicly accused child molesting clerics. (Twice In the last two months, we’ve had to urge Detroit Catholic officials to warn their flock about two sexually troubled priests who have returned to the Detroit area: Fr. Maurice G. McNeely and Fr. Thomas D. Williams.) Still, a quick on-line search shows no obvious connection between Monforton and any clergy sex abuse and cover up cases.

We hope Bishop Monforton will immediately be more honest about Fr. Gary Zalinski. It’s especially important that parishioners and the public are told where he is and the status of his defrocking. Because of the secrecy of Bishop Conlon and Msgr. Kemo, many don’t realize that the allegations against him have been deemed credible and that the Vatican is working to strip him of his priesthood. Catholics and citizens need and deserve to know the truth about Zalinski. Bishops have promised to be “open and transparent” in child sex cases involving clergy.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Houston Chronicle

A 65-year-old teacher was arrested after allegations surfaced that he abused an 8-year-old girl taking private music lessons from him, court records show.

The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston learned on Feb. 23 that Lawrence Patrick, who was a teacher at Saint Rose of Lima Catholic School, abused an 8-year-0ld girl on campus after school.

The principal immediately reported the allegation to Child Protective Services and the Houston Police Department, the archdiocese confirmed in a statement Tuesday.

Patrick was put on administrative leave, pending the outcome of the investigation. On July 2, he was charged with three counts of indecency with a child, according to court documents from the Harris County District Court.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Click2Houston

[with video]

Author: Ryan Korsgard

Published On: Jul 02 2012

HOUSTON –
An Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston teacher is accused of touching an 8-year-old girl during private music lessons.

Lawrence Patrick, 65, was charged with three counts of indecency with a child on Monday. Prosecutors said he is accused of touching the girl at least 30 times.

The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston released the following statement about the charges:

“On Feb. 23, 2012, the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston was notified of an allegation of abuse of a minor by Lawrence Patrick, who was then a teacher at St. Rose of Lima Catholic School. School officials were notified of a report by an 8-year-old-girl who was taking private music lessons from Mr. Patrick on campus after school. The principal immediately reported the allegation to CPS and HPD and placed Mr. Patrick on administrative leave, pending the outcome of the investigation. He has not been allowed to teach at the school since being relieved of his duties on Feb. 23.

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TEXAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by Barbara Dorris on July 03, 2012

We applaud the principal of St. Rose of Lima school for immediately informing the CPS and HPD. It is important for adults in positions of trust to listen to children when they report abuse, to show them adults will believe them and take action to protect them.

We hope Cardinal DiNardo actively searches for others who may have been hurt and will personally visit every parish where Lawrence Patrick worked, begging anyone – parishioners, employees and former employees – who saw, suffered or suspected Patrick’s misdeeds to call the police.

We urge parents to talk with their children about Patrick and abuse, whether they have taken music lessons or not.

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CALIFORNIA
Patch

By Sheila Sanchez

The high-profile case of a San Francisco man accused of beating a priest at the Los Gatos Sacred Heart Jesuit Center began June 20. Defense attorneys Pat Harris and Paul Mones and Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Vicki Gemettti presented closing arguments Monday. A jury now deliberates the fate of William Lynch, 44, behind closed doors and a verdict is forthcoming. Lynch has been charged with one count of felony assault with intent to cause great bodily injury and one count of elder abuse under circumstances likely to produce great bodily harm or death. He has pleaded not guilty to both charges. If found guilty, he faces up to four years in jail.

Wednesday, June 20: Jesuit priest Jerold Lindner, 67, takes the stand and denies raping and sodomizing William Lynch, the man accused of assaulting him on May 10, 2010. Defense attorneys Pat Harris and Paul Mones threaten to file perjury charges after prosecutor Vicki Gemetti in opening statements said Lindner had indeed molested him while on camping trips in the ’70s and would lie about it on the stand. Retired center receptionist Carol Santos also testifies.

Thursday, June 21: Lindner returns to court during the morning session to be cross-examined by Lynch’s defense attorneys, however, alleged sexual abuse victim Debbie Lukas confronts him as he was entering Department 34 of the San Jose Hall of Justice. Santa Clara County Judge David Cena, presiding over the case, abruptly stops the day’s proceedings and excuses the jury. Cena explains attorneys have to work out legal issues related to the case. Jury excused until Monday, June 25.

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BELGIEN
Radio Vatikan

Ein weiterer Schritt der belgischen Kirche gegen sexuellen Missbrauch von Kindern und Jugendlichen ist getan: Am vergangenen Sonntag haben die Bischöfe eine nationale Schutzkommission aus Kirchenleuten und Laien eingerichtet, die Präventionsarbeit leisten soll. Ein erstes Treffen der Kommission werde im September stattfinden, gibt der Sprecher der Kommission, Bischof Guy Harpigny von Tournai, im Interview mit Radio Vatikan an.

„Unsere Kommission ist als Anlaufstelle gedacht und zwar vor allem für jene Opfer, die nicht wissen, an wen sie sich wenden können. Die Mitglieder der Kommission werden sie dann sofort an die richtige Stelle weiterleiten. Auch möchten wir ein Ansprechpartner sein für all jene, die zwar keine Opfer sind, aber Situationen und Menschen kennen, die betroffen sein könnten.“

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VATIKAN
Brisant

Brisant | 03.07.2012

Kaum eine Institution birgt so viele Mysterien wie die katholische Kirche, kaum ein Gemeinwesen so viele Rätsel wie der Vatikanstaat. Eines davon ist das Verschwinden der 15-jährigen Emanuela Orlandi vor fast 30 Jahren.

Demonstration auf dem Petersplatz in Rom. Hunderte rufen den Namen Emanuela Orlandi. Sie fordern Aufklärung über das Schicksal der damals 15-Jährigen, die vor fast 30 Jahren entführt wurde. Die Menschen erwarten heiligen Beistand vom Papst persönlich. Denn der Vatikan ist möglicherweise tief in den Fall verstrickt. Das glaubt zumindest Emanuelas Bruder Pietro. “Wir wollen endlich wissen, was mit Emanuela passiert ist. Wir wollen, dass sie nicht vergessen wird”, sagt Pietro Orlandi. “Der Versuch, diese Geschichte zu vertuschen, hat nicht funktioniert. Das sieht man all den Leuten, die heute hier demonstrieren.”

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WATERFORD (CT)
Norwich Bulletin

The Associated Press

Posted Jul 03, 2012 @ 11:32 AM

WATERFORD, Conn. —

State police say the former pastor of a Roman Catholic church in Waterford has been arrested on a child pornography possession charge.

The Rev. Dennis Carey was charged with possessing child pornography in the first degree. State police say he was being held on $100,000 bond and is scheduled to appear Tuesday in New London Superior Court.

Telephone messages left for Carey’s attorney and at the church were not immediately returned.

The arrest came after police in Los Angeles notified police in Connecticut about a possible suspect. Authorities in Connecticut say they executed a search warrant at the St. Paul Parish rectory and seized evidence.

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MISSOURI
The Turner Report

A federal judge ordered Kanakuk Ministries and its CEO Joe White and a Texas family whose son was sexually abused by former Kanakuk camp director Pete Newman to hold mediation hearings sometime in the next 30 days.

In the order, which was filed today in U. S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Judge A. Joe Fish said the mediation was mandatory, but non-binding. If the two sides are unable to reach a settlement, the case will go to trial as scheduled in August 2013.

The father of the child says White,a nationally known Christan motivational speaker, encouraged him to send his son to Kanakuk Kamp in Branson following a speech at a Promise Keepers meeting in Irving, Texas.

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AKRON (OH)
Beacon Journal

By Rick Armon
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published: July 3, 2012

A federal appeals court has overturned the criminal sentence of the Rev. Samuel Ciccolini, the Roman Catholic priest from Akron who pleaded guilty two years ago to banking and tax fraud charges involving his personal finances.

Ciccolini, better known as Father Sam, must be resentenced because federal Judge James Gwin didn’t have the authority to order him to pay $3.5 million in restitution to the Interval Brotherhood Home Foundation, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati announced Tuesday.

Gwin also had sentenced Ciccolini to one day in custody and fined him $350,000. At the time, the judge said he thought it would be more painful for Ciccolini, who had admitted he likes hoarding money, to pay millions than spend time in prison.

The 70-year-old priest had a personal fortune of more than $5.5 million in cash, stocks and bonds at the time of his sentencing. Gwin had questioned how Ciccolini could have accumulated so much money without stealing it.

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CONNECTICUT
WTNH

WATERFORD, Conn. (WTNH) — A Waterford pastor has been arrested and charged with possession of child pornography.

Police searched the St. Paul Parish Rectory in Waterford on June 28 as part of an investigation into internet crimes against children. Officers seized various items of evidence and eventually arrested Pastor Dennis Carey, 65.

Carey was charged with the single count of first degree possession of child pornography.

The investigation began in Los Angeles, California and lead investigators to probe an AOL email account in Connecticut which was being used to email images of child pornography.

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CONNECTICUT
CBS Connecticut

State Police say a priest who resigned from a Waterford Church last week has been arrested in a child pornography investigation that streyched across the country. In May. Los Angeles Police asked for Connecticut State Police help with an investigation involving a possible suspect here.

Police say America OnLine provided information about suspected e-mailed child pornography using an AOL e-mail account, which led them to serve a search warrant at the St. Paul Parish on Rope Ferry Road in Waterford. where they seized various items.

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CONNECTICUT
Patch

By Elissa Bass

Connecticut State Police have arrested a priest from a Waterford Roman Catholic Church on child pornography charges.

Dennis Carey, (DOB 11/17/46), of 191 High Street, Apt A4, East Hartford, was charged with Possession of Child Pornography First Degree.

Carey resigned last week as priest at St. Paul in Chains Church in Waterford.

State police said in a press release issued this morning that “on 05/29/12, the Los Angeles, California, Police Department Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Taskforce contacted the Connecticut State Police Computer Crimes ICAC Taskforce and requested assistance with an investigation that originated in California but led to a possible suspect residing in the State of Connecticut.

“Troopers initiated a criminal investigation in Connecticut. Troopers obtained information from America Online (AOL) (which) submitted reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) concerning suspected child pornography that had been sent using an AOL email account.

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PORTLAND (OR)
ABC News

PORTLAND, Ore. July 3, 2012 (AP)

A man on parole for trying to infect children with HIV nearly 20 years ago pulled a boy into a Portland restaurant bathroom over the weekend, attempted to sexually assault him and then stabbed him several times, police said.

The 10-year-old’s injuries from the attack Sunday were severe enough to require surgery, and officers said he would have died without immediate care.

The suspect, Adam Lee Brown, pleaded not guilty Monday in Multnomah County Circuit Court to charges that included kidnapping, attempted murder and assault. He appeared in court surrounded by sheriff’s deputies and wearing a so-called “suicide smock,” a rip-resistant vest that prevents inmates from tearing off strips of clothing with which to hang themselves. …

Brown’s wife at the time, Nancy, told The Associated Press in 1993 that her husband had contracted the disease in Southern California while he was stationed there with the U.S. Marines. A lay preacher at Fair Oaks Community Church, Brown served nine years in the Marines as a computer technician before his discharge in the early 1990s.

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CONNECTICUT
NBC Connecticut

State police have arrested a Waterford priest accused of child pornography possession.

On May 29, the Police Department Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce in Los Angeles, California contacted the Connecticut State Police Computer Crimes ICAC Taskforce for help with an investigation into suspected child pornography sent using an AOL email account.

On June 28, state troopers and the Waterford Police Department executed a search warrant at the St. Paul Parish Rectory, at 170 Rope Ferry Road in Waterford, and seized various items and then applied for an arrest warrant for Father Dennis Carey, the 65-year-old pastor.

Carey, of East Hartford, resigned on June 29, according to the Norwich Diocese. He surrendered to state police on July 2 and was held on $100,000.

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CONNECTICUT
The Hartford Courant

By DAVID OWENS, dowens@courant.com
The Hartford Courant

10:03 a.m. EDT, July 3, 2012

WATERFORD—
A former priest at St. Paul Parish in Waterford has been charged by state police with first-degree possession of child pornography.

The Rev. Dennis Carey, 65, turned himself in to state troopers Tuesday and is to be arraigned in Superior Court in New London. His bail was $100,000.

Norwich Carey on Friday submitted his resignation as pastor of St. Paul to the Diocese of Norwich and it was immediately accepted.

State police said their investigation began after Los Angeles police contacted them about a child pornography investigation with a possible suspect in Connecticut. On June 28 state police seized computers and other evidence from the St. Paul parish rectory in Waterford. Review of those computers led to the warrant for Carey’s arrest.

America Online had submitted a report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about the possibility that child pornography had been transmitted via AOL linked to the rectory.

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STEUBENVILLE (OH)
WTOV

By NEWS9

Vatican Radio, the official broadcasting service of the Vatican, announced early Tuesday morning that a Michigan priest has been appointed as Bishop of Steubenville.

Pope Benedict XVI appointed Msgr. Jeffrey M. Monforton Bishop of Steubenville. According to Vatican Radio, Monforton was previously pastor of the Saint Andrew Parish in Rochester, Mich.

Monforton is originally from Detroit. The Diocese of Steubenville is expected to hold a press conference at 10am Tuesday.

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CONNECTICUT
The Day

By Izaskun E. Larrañeta
Publication: theday.com

Published 07/03/2012

Montville — State police in Montville have confirmed the Rev. Dennis Carey, the former pastor of St. Paul in Chains Church in Waterford, was arrested and charged yesterday with possession of child pornography.

Carey resigned on Friday after the diocese had learned a day earlier that state police were investigating him.

On Sunday the Rev. Joseph Whittel, of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Quaker Hill, led services at St. Paul, located on Rope Ferry Road. He read a letter from Bishop Michael R. Cote, who told parishioners that Carey resigned to “focus his energies on addressing any issues associated with the investigation.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

Tom Allard
July 4, 2012

THREE of Australia’s most senior Catholic clergy failed to tell authorities of evidence they received that a priest had repeatedly sexually abused boys as young as 10 in New South Wales. Two of the victims committed suicide.

The three priests are Brian Lucas, secretary-general of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference; John Usher, the former head of the Australian Catholic Social Welfare Commission; and Wayne Peters, the vicar-general of the Armidale diocese in NSW.

The priest, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told a court in 2004 he admitted to the three during a 1992 meeting that he had sexually molested boys.

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Vatican City, (VIS) – The Holy Father: …

– Appointed Msgr. Jeffrey Marc Monforton of the clergy of the archdiocese of Detroit, U.S.A., pastor of the parish of St. Andrew in Rochester, as bishop of Steubenville (area 15,309, population 538,000, Catholics 38,900, priests 118, permanent deacons 6, religious 100), U.S.A. The bishop-elect was born in Detroit in 1963 and ordained a priest in 1994. He has served in pastoral care in numerous parishes, and has worked as professor and later rector of the Sacred Heart Seminary.

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WORCESTER (MA)
Pokrov

Author: Karen Croci
Date Published: 7/2/2012
Publication: Pokrov.org

Related Document: Vision Document

What does an Orthodox parish do when their priest is convicted of assault and battery with a deadly weapon and is in jail for crimes committed against one of their own parishioners – an adult female? This is a special report for www.pokrov.org of a meeting between parishioners and clergy facing the division, pain, mistrust, and upheaval that comes with one priest’s conviction.

On May 25, 2012, the Very Rev. Michael Abdelahad, former Archpriest and Dean of St. George’s Antiochian Cathedral of Worcester, MA, was sentenced in Worcester, MA District Court to serve 90 days of a two-year prison sentence for a felony assault and battery with a deadly weapon: his shod foot. He was also given a three-year probation sentence for assault and battery: biting his victim. You can read about this priest and his trial on www.pokrov.org.

June 27, 2012

Worcester, MA – The bullet list from the June 26, 2012 meeting at Worcester’s St. George Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral missed its targets: Without straight shooting from the clergy and with key targets missing from the audience, the effort was doomed from the start.

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SOUTH AFRICA
Sowetan Live

Jul 3, 2012 | Tebogo Monama |

THE problems at St Alban’s Anglican Cathedral are far from having been resolved.

This time Bishop Johannes Seoka is accused of assaulting a priest-in-training in the middle of the night after accusing him of leaking confidential church documents.

Seoka allegedly assaulted Albert Wright on Friday at the church in central Pretoria.

Police spokeswoman Sergeant Anne Poortman confirmed that a case of common assault had been opened at Pretoria Central police station.

The bishop, who is also chairman of the South African Council of Churches, has been at loggerheads with church members for some time.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Central

By
CATHY HAYES,
IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Tuesday, July 3, 2012

The county Tyrone priest, Father Martin McVeigh, who showed 16 gay porn images to primary school children, received “rapturous applause” from the congregations of Pomeroy as he took leave of his duties.

In March, McVeigh was giving a PowerPoint presentation, from his USB stick, to a room of Holy Communion children and their parents, when gay porn images popped up on the overhead screen. The meeting was in preparation for the children at St. Mary’s School, in Pomeroy, receiving their First Holy Communion.

Although McVeigh has maintained his innocence, he has been criticized for his actions following the parent meeting. According to the Belfast Telegraph, the priest destroyed his USB stick, which stored the pornographic images in question. He said that these images were not his and he had destroyed the evidence in “anger and disgust”.

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STEUBENVILLE (OH)
The Herald-Star

July 3, 2012

By DAVE GOSSETT – Staff writer (dgossett@heraldstaronline.com) , The Herald-Star

STEUBENVILLE – A 49-year-old priest from Rochester, Mich., has been named the next bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Steubenville.

Vatican Radio reported early this morning Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Monsignor Marc Jeffrey Monforton to fill the vacancy created one year ago when Bishop R. Daniel Conlon was appointed bishop of the Joliet, Ill., diocese.

Monforton currently serves as pastor of the St. Andrew Catholic parish in Rochester.

The new bishop was ordained a priest for the Detroit Archdiocese in 1994 and has served as in various capacities for the archdiocese.

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RHODE ISLAND
BishopAccountability.org – Assignment Record

Summary of Case: Ordained in 1954, Louis E. Gelineau was a priest of the Burlington diocese for 27 years. He was named Bishop of Providence in December 1971, serving in that role until his 1997 retirement. Gelineau was accused in a 1997 lawsuit of having attempted to fondle and then drown a boy in the early 1950s at a Burlington orphanage. Gelineau was a seminarian at the time and worked at the orphanage during the summers. He denied the accusation in a 1997 deposition. In the same deposition Gelineau denied having had sexual contact with an altar boy in 1993.

Ordained: June 5, 1954
Ordained Bishop: Jan. 26, 1972
Retired: 1997

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MISSISSIPPI
WMCT

Submitted by Janice Broach, Reporter

Monday, July 2nd, 2012

DESOTO COUNTY, MS- (WMC-TV) – “We’ve always known our father to live a Godly life and he has been a great teacher and example to us,” said Edward Prince’s daughter, Rachel Witt.

Witt had that to say about her father last year when the Desoto County pastor was accused of child exploitation.

Investigators say Prince the pastor at Oak Grove Baptist Church in DeSoto County used a computer at the public library in Hernando to view and download child pornography.

He pleaded guilty last month.

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VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

Pope fires Slovak bishop in rare show of papal power; usually bishops are asked to resign

By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, July 3

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI fired a 52-year-old Slovak bishop for apparently mismanaging his diocese in a rare show of papal power over bishops that could have implications for U.S. sex abuse cases.

Usually when bishops run into trouble — either for alleged moral lapses or management problems — they are persuaded by the Vatican to resign. But Benedict has become increasingly willing to forcibly remove bishops who refuse to step down, sacking three others in the past year alone.

His willingness to do so raises questions about whether he would take the same measures against bishops who covered up for sexually abusive priests. So far he has not.

In the most notable case to date, Benedict fired Bishop William Morris of Toowoomba, Australia, last year after he called for the church to consider ordaining women and married men. He also removed a Congolese bishop for management problems in his diocese and an Italian one in May for similar reasons.

On Monday, the Vatican said Benedict had “relieved from pastoral care” Bishop Robert Bezak of Trnava, Slovakia. No reason was given, but Italian news reports suggested administrative problems were to blame, and Slovak news reports quoted Bezak as saying he thought his criticism of his predecessor may have had a role.

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VATICAN CITY
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

Editorial

These days at the Vatican are about like the last days of a US Supreme Court session, lots of things come tumbling out in rapid succession.

In the Vatican’s dash to head for the hills, literally, for cooler weather, the announcement was made of the new head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

He is Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller. He is German. He is the Bishop of Regensburg in Bavaria. He is the editor of the 16 volume work in progress “Complete Works of Joseph Ratzinger. He’s had, according to news reports, a long standing friendship with Gustavo Guttierez, the Peruvian Dominican who is the founder of the Liberation Theology movement.

But we think the most significant thing about him is that when he had the chance to protect children and deal directly and forthrightly with a parish and everyone else, he chose to reinstate a priest, Peter Kramer, in 2004 after Kramer’s conviction in 2000 for sexual abuse.

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LUXEMBURG
Tageblatt

von Robert Schneider – Anfang 2010 meldeten sich, nachdem Fälle von sexuellem Kindesmissbrauch durch Vertreter der katholischen Kirche in andern Ländern bekannt geworden waren, erste Opfer sexueller Gewalt bei Luxemburger Zeitungsredaktionen, so auch bei uns.

Vor allem Luxemburger Internatsschüler, die im belgischen Grenzgebiet Grund- und Sekundarschulen besuchten (besonders das katholische ISMA in Arlon tat sich durch die Häufung der Fälle hervor), berichteten von einer quasi systematisierten Kultur des Missbrauchs. Schnell wurde klar, dass der sexuelle Missbrauch nicht nur von den Patern, die sich als Pädagogen versuchten, mit unappetitlicher Regelmäßigkeit durchgeführt wurde, sondern auch Pfarrer in Luxemburg sich an ihren Schutzbefohlenen vergingen.

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UNITED STATES
Spiritual Politics

Mark Silk|Jul 3, 2012

The Fortnight for Freedom is almost over, praised be its patron saint Thomas More, whose devotion to religious freedom did not stop him as Chancellor of England from burning half a dozen Protestant heretics at the stake. Next up is the Obama Administration’s decision on its proposed rulemaking for exempting religious organizations from having to cover contraceptive services for their female members.

I’m pretty sure that nothing the Administration does will satisfy the Catholic bishops. In their response to the proposal, they say they want the exemption to apply not only to religious organizations but also to secular ones and individuals who object to contraception on conscientious grounds. Which means that the lawsuits challenging the mandate will go forward.

Chief advocate in those lawsuits is the Becket Fund, the conservative legal outfit whose eponymous patron is Thomas Becket, that other Chancellor of England who after becoming Archbishop of Canterbury was murdered in his cathedral by knights of King Henry II–for, as the Becket Fund puts it, “his own defense of religious freedom.”

At this juncture, it’s worth recalling the religious freedom issue that got Becket into trouble: the ancient power of bishops to police the criminal activity of those in holy orders–so-called “criminous clerks.” Henry felt he had the right to try them in his secular courts. Thomas insisted otherwise.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
CBS News

(AP) PHILADELPHIA – A former financial executive of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia has pleaded guilty to stealing more than $900,000 from the church.

Forty-two-year-old Anita Guzzardi of Haddon Heights, N.J. pleaded guilty Friday to charges of theft by deception, unlawful use of a computer and forgery.

Prosecutors say Guzzardi used hundreds of church checks to pay personal credit card bills from 2005 to 2011. The investigation began after American Express contacted authorities.

Guzzardi had worked for the Philadelphia Archdiocese since 1989 and had just been promoted to chief financial officer at the time of her arrest.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

July 02, 2012|Michael Hinkelman

The former CFO of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia admitted on Friday in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court to stealing more than $906,000 from the Archdiocese beginning in 2004 until the summer of 2011.

Anita Guzzardi, 43, of Barrington, Camden County, could face up to a maximum of 10 1/2 to 21 years in prison when she is sentenced Aug. 24, the District Attorney’s office said Monday.

The plea was not unexpected. Guzzardi had waived her right to a preliminary hearing in April and defense attorney Louis R. Busico said then she planned to admit her wrongdoing.

Busico said Guzzardi, who has no prior criminal history, is “genuinely remorseful” and has “worked hard to right” the situation. Guzzardi has already repaid more than $250,000 to the Archdiocese, the D.A.’s office said.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Terra

The former chief financial officer of the embattled Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia has pleaded guilty to stealing $906,000 from the church, the district attorney’s office said on Monday.

The archdiocese, facing a $17 million budget hole and still reeling from last month’s conviction of a monsignor in a child sex abuse scandal, was the target of a forgery and theft scheme run by former financial officer Anita Guzzardi.

The former CFO admitted on Friday that she stole the money from 2004 to 2011. Guzzardi, 43, was fired in July 2011.

“Guzzardi was terminated from her newly promoted chief financial officer position after she was confronted and initially denied any wrong doing in July of 2011,” the prosecutor’s office said.

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UNITED STATES/CANADA
Toronto Star

Wendy Gillis
Staff Reporter

Candace Conti says the abuse began when she was 9 years old, distributing Bibles door to door with a fellow churchgoer, a loud, hulking man named Jonathan Kendrick.

It was the mid-1990s in Fremont, Calif. Conti’s parents were having marital problems, her mother was sick and distracted. So the little girl found family in her tight-knit Jehovah’s Witness congregation — and Kendrick found a victim.

For two years, Conti says, Kendrick repeatedly molested her, most frequently when she went out with him to proselytize. When he hugged her, she was afraid of being crushed.

“I was very scared,” Conti, now 26, told the Star from California.

She later learned she was not Kendrick’s first victim, that he had been convicted in 1994 of child molesting. That led to her suing the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York Inc. — the corporation that oversees Jehovah’s Witnesses — on the grounds that the elders of her congregation knew of Kendrick’s record and did nothing to protect her.

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CONNECTICUT
The Day

Editorial

Under any circumstances news that a clergyman is under investigation in connection with child pornography having been found on a computer would be cause for concern. But given the past scandals involving child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, and the church hierarchy’s record of covering up such actions, word that the investigation focuses on a local Catholic pastor is particularly disturbing.

The Diocese of Norwich confirms that Rev. Dennis Carey has resigned as pastor of the St. Paul in Chains Church in Waterford as a State Police investigation into his conduct continues. We caution the public against any rush to judgment. As of Monday afternoon police had not filed any charges. Details are lacking as to what exactly State Police suspect, what evidence they may have and how they came about it.

It was good to hear a spokesman for the diocese, Michael Strammiello, say that diocesan officials were committed to cooperating with the investigation. In the wake of the past scandals, the Norwich diocese, covering much of eastern Connecticut, has pursued a program to keep children safe. It includes sensitivity training so that individuals working with children as part of church activities will recognize signs of abusive conduct. It encourages both clergy and laypeople to speak up if they suspect something is wrong and includes a commitment to share with law enforcement officials any evidence of criminal conduct.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

AAP
July 03, 2012

The Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney says it’s investigating a 1992 meeting between senior priests who removed a fellow priest from public ministry, following media reports that admissions of sexual abuse were made during that meeting but never referred to police.

A FORMER Catholic priest, identified only as Father F, was sacked by the church in 2005 after serious sexual abuse allegations but has since become a prominent citizen in the NSW town of Armidale, the ABC reported on Monday.

The ABC said Father F raped young boys in Moree in the 1980s before being transferred to a parish in Parramatta where he continued to sodomise altar boys.

Some of the youths he raped went on to lead tortured lives before committing suicide, the ABC reported.

The ABC said Father F made clear admissions of abuse to three senior priests during a meeting at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney in September 1992.

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AUSTRALIA
Radio Australia

The ABC’s Four Corners program has revealed the church failed to pass on abuse admissions by a priest to police.

Four Corners obtained documents showing a New South Wales priest, from the parishes of Moree and later Parramatta, who is accused of abusing young boys, made clear admissions during a meeting with three senior priests, but they never referred the matter to police.

The program also detailed several cases in which priests were merely moved on when the church was made aware of sexual abuse claims against them.

A professor of law from the University of Sydney says the allegations should have been referred to police immediately, and he suggests those members of the clergy who did not do that could have broken the law.

For legal reasons the accused priest is knows as Father F. He worked in Moree and later in Parramatta, where it is alleged he abused a number of altar boys in the 1980s.

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AUSTRALIA
The Armidale Express

JANENE CAREY

03 Jul, 2012

A DEFROCKED priest who occupies a prominent position in the Armidale community featured last night in a Four Corners expose of child sex abuse within the Catholic Church.

The man, who was called “Father F” throughout the program due to a court order from 1987 that prevents the media from revealing his name, was shown with his face pixelated.

Four Corners reported that two former altar boys, Daniel Powell and Damian Jurd, brought complaints of sexual abuse against Father F and eventually received monetary compensation from the Church.

However, the priest was never formally convicted, and by the age of 28, both young men had taken their own lives.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – The World Today

[Unholy Silence – Four Corners]

Emily Bourke reported this story on Tuesday, July 3, 2012

EMILY BOURKE: There are yet more questions about how the Catholic Church in Australia is dealing with sexual abuse involving its priests with fresh claims that the church leadership has a culture of covering up serious abuse complaints.

Last night the ABC’s Four Corners program revealed senior leaders in the church failed to pass on to police the details of child abuse that a New South Wales priest clearly admitted to.

Angela Ryan from the Church’s National Committee for Professional Standards has told The World Today, the church would prefer victims to go directly to police themselves.

ANGELA RYAN: I would say that if any people come forward with a criminal matter, we actively encourage them to go to the police. We offer to help them to go to the police, but if they won’t go to the police then we will not ignore it and that’s why we have the Towards Healing process.

EMILY BOURKE: Is there not a responsibility on the part of the priests to refer the matter to police if there’s a criminal case to be investigated?

ANGELA RYAN: The matter you’re talking about from last night – I don’t know the case so I can’t discuss that but we actively encourage people to go to the police.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Emer Connolly and Fiona Ferguson

Tuesday July 03 2012

A FORMER priest has been given an eight-year sentence after attempting to rape a young girl and for sexually assaulting her brother more than 30 years ago.

John Calnan (73) was moved to another parish after the girl told her mother about the abuse. The incident was first reported to gardai in May 2010.

The court heard that Calnan “admitted to paedophile tendencies” towards the girl and that there was “a grooming process”.

In her victim impact statement to the court, the girl said: “My mother complained to another priest but nothing was done. The man who abused me told me to keep it a secret and my mother also told me not to tell anyone.

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AUSTRALIA
International Business Times

[Unholy Silence – Four Corners]

By Vittorio Hernandez | July 3, 2012

There is another apparent cover-up in an investigation made by three senior Catholic clergy of a sexual abuse complaint at a priest in New South Wales. The priest was accused of sexual assault by five young altar boys in the 1980s.

The three-member panel that investigated the complaint was made up of Brian Lucas, the general-secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Wayne Peters, current vicar-general of Armidale and John Usher, a priest.

The TV programme Four Corners of ABC said at its airing Monday night that there are inconsistencies between the group’s internal report and a file note which was publicised. Fathers Lucas and Usher said the accused priest did not admit any wrongdoing when the panel met on Sept 3, 1992, while Fr Peters said the cleric admitted to instances of misconduct but would not incriminate the priest.

The file note said no admission was made by the accused, but the panel recommended that he should no longer be allowed to say mass due to lack of credibility. However, the panel report which ABC obtained from separate court proceedings, said the priest admitted to his sexual misconduct. His victims were then aged 10 and 11 at the time he was assistant priest at Moree. He allegedly admitted performing oral sex and fondling the genitals of two of the altar servers.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
KGO

Karina Rusk

SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) — In the South Bay, the jury now has the case of a man accused of beating a priest he says sexually abused him years ago. William Lynch is accused of assaulting Father Jerold Lindner in Los Gatos on May 10, 2010. The prosecution says the alleged sexual abuse of Lynch in 1975 doesn’t factor into the assault in 2010.

Prosecutors told the jury that the facts and the injuries to Lindner prove their felony case. The defense told the jury that the half-inch cut above the priest’s eye and the bruising to his face were a misdemeanor assault at best.

Deputy District Attorney Vicki Gemetti told the jury that two wrongs don’t make a right and that they must find Lynch guilty of assaulting Lindner. Prosecutors say the evidence proves felony assault capable of producing great bodily harm and a felony charge of elder abuse since the former priest was 65-years-old at the time of the confrontation.

Lynch’s defense attorney fought hard to tell the jury they were the last line of defense to stop what he called an overzealous prosecution. “He’s trying to tell the jury you can decide not guilty here. You can decide not guilty on all charges. You can decide not guilty on the greater charges and guilty on the lesser charges,” Lynch supporter Christina Smith said.

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UNITED STATES
The Post-Standard

Tuesday, July 03, 2012

By The Post-Standard Editorial Board

Guilty verdicts June 22 in two high-profile sex-abuse cases in Pennsylvania offer an important turning point for victims of similar crimes.

A jury convicted former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky of 45 counts of sexually abusing 10 boys. During the two-week trial, eight men graphically described repeated assaults by Sandusky at Penn State, in hotel rooms and in the basement of Sandusky’s home. Sandusky, 68, was arrested in November; he had been investigated by campus police for possible sexual crimes against children as far back as 1998. He’s likely to spend the rest of his life in prison.

The same day that Sandusky was led from a courtroom in handcuffs, a jury convicted Monsignor William J. Lynn of endangering children by shielding and reassigning priests accused of molesting children. As an aide to the late Philadelphia’s Catholic Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua, Lynn was in charge of recommending priest assignments and investigating complaints of abuse from 1992 to 2004.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
CBS San Francisco

SAN JOSE (KCBS/BCN)— Closing arguments were made Monday in the San Jose trial of a San Francisco man charged with beating a priest he claims molested him and his younger brother 37 years ago.

Prosecutor Vicki Gemetti started her argument with a quote from Alexander Hamilton, stating that the first duty of society is justice. She told the nine-man, three-woman jury that justice demands that they find William Lynch, 44, guilty of two felony counts of assault on retired Jesuit priest Jerold Lindner.

Gemetti told the panel that, while it’s natural to feel sympathy for a victim of molestation and that Lynch is obviously still in pain, that they can’t use their sympathy in reaching their verdict.

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IRELAND
The Irish Times

A PRIEST who attempted to rape a young girl and sexually assaulted her brother in west Cork more than 30 years ago has been given an eight-year sentence.

John Calnan (73), of The Presbytery, Paul Street, Cork, pleaded guilty to the attempted rape of the girl between January 1st, 1980, and April 30th, 1980, in west Cork.

The girl he assaulted was seven at the time.

Calnan also admitted three counts of sexually assaulting the girl between October 25th, 1976 and October 24th, 1979.

He further admitted one count of sexual assault of the girl’s brother between August 10th, 1975 and October 9th, 1979. The victim was aged between nine and 12 at the time.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
The Modesto Bee

By PAUL ELIAS
Associated Press

SAN JOSE — Retired Jesuit priest Jerold Lindner was last seen in court more than a week ago, scurrying down a back staircase as a woman demanded he look her in the eye while she accused him of sexual assault.

Still, the thought of Lindner loomed large Monday during closing arguments in the trial of William Lynch, who is accused of pummeling Lindner with his fists on May 10, 2010, at a home where the Catholic Church sends priests accused of abuse.

Prosecutor Vicki Gemetti called Lynch a “vigilante” and implored jurors to convict him of felony assault and elder abuse. She told jurors that Lynch’s testimony about his alleged sexual abuse by Lindner was no excuse for beating up the priest 37 years later.

She also stressed that Lynch acknowledged hitting the priest multiple times.

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HERNANDO (MS)
San Francisco Chronicle

HERNANDO, Miss. (AP) — A Hernando pastor who pleaded guilty to child exploitation will be sentenced Oct. 13 in Panola County.

The Rev. Edward Earl Prince was arrested in 2010 and charged with possession of child pornography for using a computer at the public library to view and download child pornography.

Prince was indicted by a DeSoto County on one count of exploitation of a child in 2011.

District Attorney John Champion says Prince pleaded guilty June 18.

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VATICAN CITY
NorthJersey.com

Monday July 2, 2012

ALESSANDRO SPECIALE
Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI has tapped a fellow German to lead the Vatican doctrinal office he headed for 24 years before being elected to the papacy.

The Vatican announced on Monday (July 2) that Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller will replace American Cardinal William J. Levada as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The congregation that was once known as the Inquisition still focuses on enforcing orthodoxy in the Catholic Church, and it remains one of the most influential departments in the papal bureaucracy.

The CDF, as it is called, launched the Vatican investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the main association for the various communities of American nuns. In recent years its mission has expanded to include dealing with reports of sexual abuse by priests all over the world.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a leading U.S.-based support group for victims of sexual abuse by clergy, criticized Mueller’s appointment because in 2004, while serving as bishop of Regensburg in Bavaria, Mueller had returned a local priest, the Rev. Peter Kramer, to pastoral work without alerting the parish to previous charges of sexual abuse against Kramer.

“Pope Benedict had hundreds of options here. Yet he deliberately elevated a bishop who knowingly put kids in harm’s way,” SNAP said in a statement. “This choice rubs salt into the already deep and still fresh wounds of thousands of suffering victims and millions of betrayed Catholics.”

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VATICAN CITY
The New York Times

By RACHEL DONADIO

Published: July 2, 2012

ROME — Pope Benedict XVI has appointed a fellow German theologian, Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, to lead the Vatican’s doctrinal office, which is responsible for enforcing orthodoxy, the Vatican said in a statement on Monday.

As the prefect of the office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Bishop Müller, 64, of Regensburg, Germany, will also oversee a continuing investigation of the social justice work of nuns in the United States as well as the handling of clerical sexual abuse cases. He was simultaneously promoted to archbishop.

He replaces Cardinal William J. Levada, 76, the highest-ranking American in the Vatican hierarchy, who is retiring after having served in that post since 2005. On his watch, the Congregation issued a scathing rebuke of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the central coordinating group of American nuns, and contended with a resurgence of accusations of clerical sexual abuse in 2010.

Vatican experts said that Archbishop Müller’s appointment showed that Benedict, 85, is seeking to forge a core of theologically like-minded and loyal advisers as he contends with a scandal over leaked documents that has revealed the dissent and disarray within the Vatican hierarchy. The pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested in May and charged with illegal possession of secret documents.

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UNITED STATES
Anti-Catholic League

By David Fortwengler

In his neverending quest to manufacture controversy where none exists, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League commented today on an incident that was reported over the weekend.

Actor Alec Baldwin felt he was being harassed by a photographer outside his New York City apartment. In his classic offensive style Baldwin blurted out, “I know you got raped by a priest or something.”

In Bill Donohue’s warped paranoid mind he concluded that hurtful statement shows “we are dealing with a man whose animus against Catholicism is so deep that virtually anything can set him off.” Any time the words priest and rape appear in the same sentence Donohue is hell-bent on identifying the reason as animus, bias, prejudice or anti-Catholicism.

Donohue’s willfull blindness doesn’t allow him to see the obvious, Baldwin libeled priest abuse victims, not the Catholic Church!

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L Allen Jr on Jun. 29, 2012 All Things Catholic

For those who can only see the world in terms of left vs. right, recent personnel moves in the Vatican undoubtedly look like the same old stuff on a different day. They include:

•The president of the Vatican Bank was dumped by a supervisory council led by the head of the Knights of Columbus, known for its fierce papal loyalty and its substantial financial contributions to the Vatican.
•A Fox News reporter and Opus Dei member was tapped as the Vatican’s new PR guru.
•The pope appointed a trusted aide to lead the Vatican’s relations with Catholic traditionalists — a further sign of how seriously Benedict wants them back.

Politically, all this may seem like just another string of victories for the conservatives. (Alternatively, some of it might be styled as struggles within the conservative camp, since the Vatican Bank president who got bounced was himself a member of Opus Dei.)

Yet if I may make the bold suggestion that we set aside ideology for a moment, there’s another lens through which to view what’s going on. In effect, we’re witnessing the dawn of a new “American moment” in the Vatican.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

One of the consequences is the Opus Dei’s strengthened position in the Roman Curia

Giacomo Galeazzi
Vatican City

For centuries, when there were situations of ungovernability in the Curia or delicate internal inquiries to be carried out, clerics turned to the Jesuits or the Dominicans. But now, following the scandals linked to the Vatican’s finances and the leaked document case, the Holy See is relying on Opus Dei. The Vatican has entrusted the presidency of the cardinals’ investigative commission to the right hand man of Opus Dei’s founder and a numerary journalist as head of communications. The hunt for the poison pen letter writer has had the side effect of broadening the sphere of action and bolster the Opus Dei’s presence in the Apostolic Palace. The man in charge of leading the investigations into the Vatican scandals is Julian Herranz, the Pope’s trusted jurist and former president of the dicastery for legislative texts and the Roman Curia’s disciplinary commission. He is also the historic secretary of St. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer. The Opus Dei recently gained another exemplary figure of faith: Alvaro de Portillo (successor of St. Josemaría Escrivá as head of the Opus Dei) who will soon be beatified when Benedict XVI signs the decree certifying the heroism of his Christian virtues. All that is left is for a miracle of his to be recognised. The Pope received Herranz, De Giorgi and Tomko all together on Saturday 16 June, but the president of the commission, Herranz, had already had the chance to report to the Pope. For some time now, the president of the commission has been known for his proverbial confidentiality, as noted in Sandro Magister’s “Vatican Diary” (an online section of Italian news magazine L’Espresso).” This confidentiality did not hinder him from writing a book of memoirs some years ago, which despite not violating any secrets, contained a great deal of unknown and intriguing information.” The book in question is entitled “Nei dintorni di Gerico” (In Jericho’s environs). The 480 page long volume was published by Opus Dei publishing house Ares, in January 2006, two years after John Paul II had created Herranz as cardinal, allowing him to participate in the conclave which elected Benedict XVI.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

“Vatican Insider” interviews Professor Giovanni Maria Vian, director of Vatican daily broadsheet “L’Osservatore Romano” about the Vatileaks scandal and Benedict XVI’s commitment and actions to restore calm

Giacomo Galeazzi
Vatican City

Professor, you are director of L’Osservatore Romano and a historian of Christianity. Does the Vatileaks scandal prove that Joseph Ratzinger is under attack?

“Benedict XVI does not run away from problems; he faces them without fear. He is going through an uphill struggle at the moment. His image was distorted right from the start. The public presented him as a great German inquisitor, a panzerkardinal, a German shepherd. Then other hurdles sprang up along the way; for example, the misunderstanding of his lecture in Regensburg, the forgiveness he granted to Lefebvrian bishop Richard Williamson, the controversy over the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS and the “perfect storm” created by the sex abuse scandal. The Pope showed his way of doing things in his handling of the Williamson case. He wrote a letter resembling that written by Saint Paul to the Galatians and managed to turn the situation around. He did not allow everything he had done to bring the Catholic Church closer to Judaism be ruined. He lamented that he was represented in a way that was far from the truth.”

How did the Pope react to the confidential document leak?

“When the Vatileaks scandal broke out, Benedict XVI did not deny the problem but deduced that the scandal was used to describe an unreal situation in an unclear way, when in actual fact, the vast majority of Vatican officials are loyal and pay honest service to the Pope and to the Holy See. A burst of pride, explained further by Angelo Becciu, Substitute of the Secretary of State. The Holy See chose a distinguished jurist, Cardinal Julian Herranz and two other highly prudent cardinals, Tomko and De Giorgi, to shed light on the document leak case. So the Holy See is treading carefully, respecting judicial procedures completely. Three cardinals who are over 80 and cannot take part in the next conclave are in charge of the investigations. They are therefore completely free before God and their conscience. They only answer to the Pope.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider

Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith regains its German flavour

A portrait of the new Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Gerhard Ludwig Müller

Andrea Tornielli
Rome

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has regained the German feel it had for a whole twenty three years, from 1982 to 2005, during the then cardinal Ratzinger’s long service in the dicastery. The Pope has chosen the Bishop of Regensburg, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, to lead the Congregation, after he accepted U.S. cardinal William Levada’s resignation. The news was announced simultaneously in Regensburg and in the Congregation, where Müller was, at midday today.

The new Prefect who is being elevated to the dignity of archbishop and will receive the cardinal’s biretta at the next Consistory is 64 years old and comes from Magonza, in the Land of Rhineland-Palatinate. He was a priest for 30 years and a bishop for 54 and was also Professor of Dogmatics at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich for 16 years.

The supervisor for his PhD thesis and qualification was Karl Lehmann, today a cardinal, who had been president of the German Bishops’ Conference for a number of years. But it is not believed that the newly appointed Prefect shares Lehmann’s opinions.

Müller has lived in Bavaria since 1986, when he became Professor of Dogmatics. When he was selected as head of the Diocese of Regensburg ten years ago, in October 2002, he strengthened his ties with Ratzinger. Regensburg is home to the university where the Pope taught until 1977 and where his brother Georg Ratzinger still lives. For ten years Georg led the Domspatzen (the Cathedral’s little sparrows) choir. Müller accompanied the Pope during his visit to Bavaria in 2006. And during the crisis caused by the paedophilia scandal in 2010, the bishop apologised to victims of abuse committed in the past, following Benedict XVI’s example. At the same time, he reacted firmly against those who tried to implicate the Pope’s brother (who had nothing to do with the scandal) in the cases of sex abuse which took place in the college where the Domspatzen resided. A detailed reconstruction of events was published on the diocese’s website. This demonstrated that the abuse had taken place before Georg Ratzinger – who had never had any accusations made against him – came to direct the choir.

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SLOVAKIA
The Slovak Spectator

2 Jul 2012 Flash News

The archbishop of Trnava, Róbert Bezák, has been dismissed from his position by the Roman Catholic Church. He read out a letter he had received from the Vatican authorities informing him of their decision during a mass held in Trnava Cathedral on Sunday, July 1. He also read out a letter in which the papal nuncio to Slovakia – i.e. the Vatican ambassador – Archbishop Mario Giordana, asked him to resign from his position. Bezák was officially removed from his post as of 12:00 today (Monday, July 2), upon publication of the announcement in L’Osservatore Romano, the official daily newspaper of the Vatican, the Sme daily reported.

Bezák, aged 52, replaced controversial former archbishop Ján Sokol three years ago. The step was widely welcomed given Sokol’s repeated praise of President Jozef Tiso, a Catholic priest who led the Nazi-allied wartime Slovak state under which tens of thousands of Slovakia’s Jews were deported to Nazi death camps. Bezák won popular respect when he announced that Tiso, should have resigned as soon as the first transport with Jews left the country.

Bezák has said that he does not know why he is being dismissed. He added that the Vatican even told him not to talk to the media.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
Mercury News

By Tracey Kaplan
tkaplan@mercurynews.com
mercurynews.com

Posted: 07/02/2012

In a powerful closing argument, a prosecutor urged jurors to convict a San Francisco man accused of beating a priest, even though they may be sympathetic to his reasons. But the defense countered even more passionately, essentially saying the wrong man was on trial.

Jurors may soon begin deciding the fate of Will Lynch, who is accused of assaulting Rev. Jerold Lindner two years ago at the Sacred Heart retirement home in Los Gatos, where Lindner is listed as a child molester.

Lynch alleges Lindner sexually molested Lynch and his brother more than 35 years ago.

In her 45-minute closing argument, Vicki Gemetti acknowledged people are sympathetic to Lynch, but she reminded jurors of a basic principle from their youth.

“This case is as simple as what we learned as small children from our mom, ‘two wrongs don’t make a right,’ ” Gemetti said.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Updated July 03, 2012

[Unholy Silence – Four Corners]

The Roman Catholic Church is again embroiled in claims of a cover-up over its handling of child sexual assault allegations involving priests.

The ABC’s Four Corners program has revealed the church failed to pass on admissions by a priest to police.

The program detailed several cases in which priests were merely moved on when the church was made aware of sexual abuse claims against them.

Four Corners obtained documents showing a New South Wales priest, from the parishes of Moree and later Parramatta, who is accused of abusing young boys, made clear admissions during a meeting with three senior priests, but they never referred the matter to police.

Australia’s most senior Catholic cleric, Cardinal George Pell, has defended the church’s handling of sexual abuse cases.

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VATICAN CITY
The Garden Island

Associated Press | Posted: Monday, July 2, 2012

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The pope fired a 52-year-old Slovak bishop on Monday for apparently mismanaging his diocese in a rare show of papal power over his bishops.

Usually when bishops run into trouble — either for alleged moral lapses or management problems — they are persuaded by the Vatican to resign. But Pope Benedict XVI has become increasingly willing to forcibly remove bishops who refuse to step down, sacking three others in the last year alone.

His willingness to do so raises questions about whether he would take the same measures against bishops who covered up for sexually abusive priests. So far he has not. …

The exercise of the pope’s ability to fire a bishop has important implications, particularly concerning bishops who mishandle pedophile priests.

In the face of U.S. lawsuits seeking to hold the pope ultimately responsible for abusive priests, the Holy See has argued that bishops are largely masters of their dioceses and that the pope doesn’t really control them. The Vatican has thus sought to limit its own liability, arguing that the pope doesn’t exercise sufficient control over the bishops to be held responsible for their bungled response to priests who rape children.

The ability of the pope to actively fire bishops, and not just passively accept their resignations, would seem to undercut the Vatican’s argument of a hands-off pope.

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VATICAN CITY
Sky News Australia

The Pope has named Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller to head the Vatican’s all-important orthodoxy office, tapping a German theologian like himself to head the congregation he presided over for nearly a quarter-century enforcing Catholic doctrine.

The 64-year-old Regensburg bishop replaces American Cardinal William Levada, who turned 76 last month and is retiring after seven years at the helm of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the former Holy Office.

While Mueller is considered a staunchly orthodox, conservative theologian – he has penned some 400 academic articles and founded an institute to publish all the pope’s writings – some of his positions have raised eyebrows in Rome and abroad.

Chief among them is his friendship with the Reverend Gustavo Gutierrez, the Peruvian priest considered the founder of liberation theology, the Marxist-influenced theology advocating for the poor.

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SAN JOSE (CA)
Washington Post

Prosecutor: Alleged abuse of man by priest in 1975 is not factor in attack decades later

By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, July 2

SAN JOSE — The trial of a man accused of assaulting a priest he says sexually abused him decades ago is wrapping up, with prosecutors demanding jurors convict William Lynch of felony assault and elder abuse.

Santa Clara County deputy district attorney Vicki Gemetti told jurors Monday that Jerold Lindner’s alleged abuse of Lynch in 1975 doesn’t factor into the assault that took place on May 10, 2010.

She called Lynch a vigilante who meted out his own brand of justice.

Lynch’s attorneys countered in their closing arguments that the alleged molestation is the reason Lynch punched Lindner at the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos.

Attorney Paul Mones called the alleged abuse torture and said the effects remain with Lynch.

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CALIFORNIA
Mercury News

By Tracey Kaplan
tkaplan@mercurynews.com
mercurynews.com

Posted: 07/02/2012

A prosecutor this morning urged jurors to convict a San Francisco man accused of beating a priest, even though Rev. Jerold Lindner may have sexually molested Will Lynch decades ago.

In her 45-minute closing argument, Vicki Gemetti acknowledged people are sympathetic to Lynch, but she reminded jurors of a basic principle from their youth.

“This case is as simple as what we learned as small children from our mom, ‘two wrongs don’t make a right,’ ” Gemetti said.

Lynch, now 44, is charged with two felonies for the March 10, 2010 assault on Lindner at the Sacred Heart retirement home in Los Gatos, where Lindner is listed as a child molester. Lynch faces a maximum of four years in prison.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

By James Mackenzie

ROME | Mon Jul 2, 2012

(Reuters) – Pope Benedict on Monday appointed German bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller to head the Vatican office in charge of Church doctrine, one of the central bodies responsible for enforcing Church discipline at a time of exceptional upheaval.

Mueller’s appointment to a powerful job the pontiff himself held for more than two decades – prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – comes at a time when the Vatican is beset by controversies including allegations of corruption and internal intrigues, as well as a lingering child abuse scandal.

Mueller will have the delicate task of overseeing issues ranging from overhauling Church practice in the wake of the scandal of child sexual abuse by priests to reconciling the position of dissident ultra traditionalist movements.

The 64-year-old bishop of the southern German city of Regensburg, where the pope himself taught theology in the 1960s, is a well respected conservative theologian and the author of some 400 publications.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Agency

Vatican City, Jul 2, 2012 / 10:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Muller of Regensburg, Germany as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and leader of three other important commissions.

Bishop Muller, whom the Pope elevated to archbishop, will also head the Pontifical Biblical Commission, the International Theological Commission and the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, which oversees Catholics who celebrate the traditional Latin Mass.

He will succeed the American Cardinal William Levada, who submitted his resignation upon reaching the age of 75.

Archbishop Muller was born in Mainz-Finthen on Dec. 31, 1947. He was ordained a priest in 1978 and served as a chaplain and as a religion education teacher in secondary schools, according to the Diocese of Regensburg.

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NEW YORK
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on an incident that was reported over the weekend:

Actor Alec Baldwin got into a spat that almost turned violent when he reacted with a vengeance against a photographer on a New York City street. Out of nowhere, Baldwin blurted, “I know you got raped by a priest or something.”

There was absolutely no context in which it would make any sense for Baldwin to react this way. What it suggests is that we are dealing with a man whose animus against Catholicism is so deep that virtually anything can set him off. That he got married in a Catholic church the day after his blow up makes this story even more bizarre.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Wir sind Kirche (We are Church, Germany)

[English]

[Francais]

Pressemitteilung München / Regensburg / Rom, 2. Juli 2012

Zur Ernennung von Bischof Prof. Dr. G. L. Müller als Präfekt der Glaubenskongregation

Dadurch dass Papst Benedikt XVI. den Regensburger Bischof Prof. Dr. Gerhard Ludwig Müller zum Präfekten der Glaubenskongregation ernennt, übernimmt dieser das Amt in einer äußerst schwierigen Phase der Kirchengeschichte, in der es um die Rezeption und Umsetzung des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils geht, das vor genau 50 Jahren eröffnet wurde. Es wird sich bald zeigen, ob mit Prof. Dr. Gerhard Ludwig Müller die Fenster des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils wieder weiter geöffnet werden, um als Kirche in der Welt zu wirken – oder ob nun auch noch die letzten Fensterläden geschlossen werden, um sich von der Welt abzuschotten.

Die KirchenVolksBewegung Wir sind Kirche wünscht dem künftigen Präfekten der Glaubenskongregation Gottes Segen für die höchst verantwortungsvolle Arbeit zum Wohle der Kirche.

Mit Prof. Dr. Gerhard Ludwig Müller kommt wieder ein Mann an die Spitze der Glaubenskongregation, der – wie sein Vorvorgänger Joseph Ratzinger – seine hohe wissenschaftliche Qualifikation an katholisch-theologischen Fakultäten in Deutschland erworben hat. Seine bisherigen Veröffentlichungen zeigen eine profunde Kenntnis der Dogmatik. Vor allem seine statische und traditionell ausgerichtete „Katholische Dogmatik“ aus dem Jahr 1995 mag für die Personalentscheidung des Papstes ausschlaggebend gewesen sein.

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VATICAN CITY
Spiegel

By Andreas Wassermann and Peter Wensierski

A new scandal threatens to engulf the Catholic Church and this time the focus is money. Senior Vatican officials are battling over the future of the Vatican bank. While some would like total transparency, dubious transactions from the past and present could harm the Church’s image.

The Vatican scandal over shady bank accounts and millions in suspect transfers began shortly before sunrise on June 5 on Via Giuseppe Verdi, a picturesque street in the old part of Piacenza, a town in northeastern Italy. An elderly gentleman in a tailor-made suit had just left his house with a leather briefcase dangling from his right hand. He was on his way to his car.

It was to be an important day for Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who had recently been fired as the head of the Vatican bank — even if it turned out differently than he’d expected. Tedeschi was planning to go to the Vatican on that morning, but he never got there. The 67-year-old banker missed the high-speed train to Rome, meaning he couldn’t, as he had planned, get into a taxi at the Italian capital’s central station for the short journey across the Tiber River to the Vatican. There, he had hoped to take the documents out of his briefcase and hand them over to a confidant of the pope.

Instead, Gotti Tedeschi found four men waiting for him in the street — not a hit squad as he feared at first, but investigators with the Carabinieri, Italy’s national military police force. Even before he reached his car, they presented him with a search warrant and escorted him back to his house. For several hours, they searched through his sparsely furnished, cloister-like home office. At the same time, other officers were searching through Gotti Tedeschi’s office in Milan. Among the objects they confiscated were two computers, two cabinets’ full of binders, a planner and his briefcase.

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CALIFORNIA
The Worthy Adversary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on July 2, 2012

On a lark, I looked up the Wikipedia entry for Orange County Bishop Tod Brown.

I was inspired after I saw that Bishop Accountability had just completed a newer edition of Brown’s assignment history. Bishop Accountability included details of the sex abuse allegation against Brown, as well as the fact that Brown had refused to disclose the allegation, calling it “very embarrassing and very painful.”

I admit that I am guilty of using Wikipedia for references on my own blog posts. But after reading Brown’s entry, I’m going to have to rethink that practice.

The Wikipedia entry – no doubt edited by Brown’s PR people – makes NO mention of the $100 million settlement with 97 victims of abuse in 2005. It makes NO mention of the 1997 allegation against Brown (which was front page news); NO mention of the 2007 settlements with four women who were sexually abused as children; NO mention of the fact that Brown was charged with contempt for allowing John Urell to flee the country in order to avoid a deposition; and NO mention of last month’s $2 million settlement with a victim of Michael Harris.

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CALIFORNIA
KGO

[with video]

SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) — In San Jose, closing arguments are expected today in the case of a man accused of beating a priest who he says molested him as a child.

William Lynch took the stand in his own defense on Friday, telling jurors that Father Jerold Lindner sexually assaulted him and his younger brother in 1974. Lynch says that in May 2010, he tried to force Linder to sign a piece of paper confessing to the molestation. Lynch admits he ended up beating Linder.

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CALIFORNIA
KTVU

KTVU And AP Wires

SAN JOSE, Calif. —

Emotions continued to simmer Monday at the trial of a man accused of beating a priest who he claims molested him as a child.

Attorneys were set to begin closing arguments before the jury considering the fate of William Lynch who is being tried on one count of assault and one count of elder abuse.

Lynch testified Friday that he punched the priest he accuses of molesting him after memories of the alleged sexual abuse came flooding back across the decades and were so vivid that he felt threatened.

While he is the defendant in Santa Clara County court, his lawyers are attempting to put the retired priest on trial in the court of public opinion. The attorneys are using the alleged abuse in 1975 as a defense for the pummeling of Jerold Lindner on May 10, 2010. Lynch testified Friday that memories of the alleged abuse triggered a violent reaction when he confronted the retired priest on that afternoon.

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CALIFORNIA
Marin Independent Journal

By Tracey Kaplan
tkaplan@mercurynews.com
mercurynews.com

Posted: 07/02/2012

Closing arguments are expected this morning in the trial of a man who allegedly beat a priest in Los Gatos two years ago.

Will Lynch is accused of assaulting the Rev. Jerold Lindner on March 10, 2010 at the Sacred Heart retirement home on College Avenue, where Lindner is listed as a child molester.

Lynch, now 44, is charged with two felonies that together carry a maximum sentence of four years — assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury and elder abuse under circumstances likely to produce great bodily harm or death.

Lynch alleges Lindner sexually molested Lynch and his brother in the 1970s during a camping trip.

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BELGIQUE
La Croix

Les évêques belges mettent en place une commission pour la protection des enfants et des jeunes

[Summary: The Belgian bishops effective July 1 have formed a commission for protection of children and young people.]

Les évêques de Belgique ont institué dimanche 1er juillet 2012 une Commission interdiocésaine pour la protection des enfants et des jeunes. Une de ses missions sera de rassembler les lignes de conduite déjà en usage en vue d’une prévention plus efficace des abus sexuels et des comportements transgressifs dans le cadre d’initiatives ou d’institutions liées à l’Église.

En janvier 2012, les évêques avaient publié une brochure intitulée Une souffrance cachée – Vers une approche globale des abus sexuels dans l’Église . Ils y annonçaient notamment la création de cette commission nationale pour le traitement de ce dossier douloureux. Les dix points de contacts pour les victimes, annoncés dans le document, sont depuis lors opérationnels.

La procédure d’arbitrage en cas de faits prescrits, selon la proposition de la Commission parlementaire, a entre-temps été mise en route et fonctionne. Les victimes d’abus peuvent soumettre leur demande de reconnaissance, de réparation ainsi que celle d’une intervention financière tant aux points de contact qu’au Centre d’arbitrage. Les faits non-prescrits sont transmis aux instances judiciaires.

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ST. PAUL (MN)
Patch

By Hannah Gruber

The St. Paul priest suspected of sexual assault against a minor also has a DWI record.

Curtis Carl Wehmeyer, 47, was arrested in Oakdale on June 22 after a juvenile male came forward to authorities about sexual abuse that occurred during a two-year period.

Wehmeyer was the pastor of the Parish of the Blessed Sacrament in St. Paul, but once accusations of sexual abuse emerged the Archdioceses of St. Paul and Minneapolis dismissed him from his position.

Wehymeyer has not been formally charged. Police are investigating the case as a sexual assault.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register

by Edward Pentin Monday, July 02, 2012

Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller of Regensburg as the new prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican announced today.

Bishop Müller replaces Long Beach, Ca.-born Cardinal William J. Levada, 76, who is stepping down on grounds of age. Bishop Müller also takes over Cardinal Levada’s other responsibilities as president of the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei”, the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and the International Theological Commission.

The new CDF prefect has been elevated to archbishop and will probably be made a cardinal at the next consistory.

The appointment of the 64 year-old bishop has been speculated for some time, with the German press reporting it as almost certain over the past few days.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

Monday, July 02, 2012

A former priest who attempted to rape a young girl and sexually assaulted her brother in west Cork more than 30 years ago has been given an eight-year sentence.

John Calnan (aged 73), of The Presbytery, 35 Paul Street, Cork, pleaded guilty to the attempted rape of the girl between January 1, 1980 and April 30, 1980 in west Cork. She was aged seven at the time.

Calnan also admitted three counts of sexually assaulting the girl between October 25, 1976 and October 24, 1979.

He further admitted one count of sexual assault on the girl’s brother between August 10, 1975 and October 9, 1979. The victim was aged between nine and 12 at the time.

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VATICAN CITY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Posted by David d’Bonnabel on July 02, 2012

The Pope talks of “binding up the wounds of abuse.” Yet he promotes bishops who ignore, conceal and enable abuse. Today’s CDF appointment is more of the same.

Before he was raised to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Cardinal William Levada helped cover up abuse in California Oregon. But as best we can tell, at least he never knowingly put a convicted child molester back into ministry without warning the parishioners and the public.

That’s precisely what Levada’s replacement, Archbishop Ludwig Mueller, did just eight years ago.

In August 2007, Fr. Peter Kramer was arrested on suspicion of sexual abuse (this was eight years following his indictment for child sex crimes in 1999). Although Kramer had a demonstrated history of abuse, it was revealed after the trial that following his arrest in 2000, then-Regensburg Bishop Mueller reinstated Fr. Kramer in 2004.

Pope Benedict had hundreds of options here. Yet he deliberately elevated a bishop who knowingly put kids in harm’s way. This choice rubs salt into the already deep and still fresh wounds of thousands of suffering victims and millions of betrayed Catholics. It’s more proof that the ongoing child sex abuse and cover up crisis in the church is no crisis at all to Pope Benedict. It’s apparently a minor annoyance to be dealt with only by soothing words and symbolic every few months, when public outrage reached a fever pitch in this country or that country.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – Four Corners

[with video]

By Geoff Thompson and Mary Ann Jolley

Updated July 2, 2012

The Catholic Church says its response to cases of child sex abuse should be compassionate, that abusers should be brought to justice and that concealing the truth is unjust to victims.

But does it follow those principles?

Coming up, Four Corners reporter Geoff Thompson investigates a shocking case of abuse involving many children, committed over several years. The abuse in itself is horrifying, the impact on the victims devastating, but perhaps the most alarming revelation is the fact that the Church turned a blind eye to the priest’s crimes. Four Corners asks why, despite clear evidence of abuse, the Church allowed him to move from parish to parish, apparently without alerting the police. The program reveals that even now the Church will not admit the full extent of what it knew about the priest’s activities.

The program also tells the story of the young men and their families, whose lives were devastated by the abuse. And details how the crimes committed led to the early death of several victims.

“It would have been no different if he had taken a gun and shot him, it just took longer.” Relative of an abused child

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Jared Owens
From:The Australian
July 03, 2012

[Unholy Silence – ABC Four Corners]

THREE senior Catholic clerics who investigated alleged sexual abuse may have covered up a priest’s confessions that he assaulted five young altar boys in the 1980s, some of whom later committed suicide.

The church’s investigative panel was convened in 1992 to assess allegations of abuse levelled against a single priest over his time at Moree, in northern NSW, and at Sydney’s Parramatta diocese.

ABC-TV’s Four Corners last night revealed stark inconsistencies between the panel’s internal report, and a file note created at the time and referred to in public.

The panel comprised current Australian Catholic Bishops Conference general-secretary Brian Lucas, current Armidale vicar-general Wayne Peters and another priest, John Usher.

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GERMANY
UPI

Published: July 2, 2012

VATICAN CITY, July 2 (UPI) — Pope Benedict XVI Monday named Regensburg, Germany, Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller to oversee the Catholic church’s sex abuse cases.

Mueller, 65, replaces U.S. Cardinal William Joseph Levada as prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, ANSA reported Monday.

The post has come under fire recently for the way it has handled the worldwide sexual abuse scandal, the news service said.

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VATICAN CITY
Toledo Blade

ASSOCIATED PRESS

VATICAN CITY — The pope has fired a 52-year-old Slovak bishop for apparently mismanaging his diocese in a rare show of papal power.

Usually when bishops run into trouble — either for alleged moral lapses or management problems — they are persuaded by the Vatican to resign, but Pope Benedict XVI has become increasingly willing to forcibly remove bishops who refuse to step down.

Benedict sacked Bishop William Morris of Toowoomba, Australia last year after he called for the church to consider ordaining women and married men.

On Monday, the Vatican said Benedict had “relieved from pastoral care” Bishop Robert Bezak of Trnava, Slovakia. No reason was given, but Italian news reports said administrative problems in the diocese were to blame.

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IRELAND
The Association of Catholic Priests

On 23rd June 2012 the website of the ACP published a reflection by Kevin, a survivor of clerical sexual abuse. Now entitled “Abuse by priests causes spiritual wounds” it begins with the following question:

” Is it possible to get some kind of dispensation from the need for priests in the spiritual life of a Roman Catholic?”

Kevin then explained that as there seems to be a Catholic canonical requirement that the observant Catholic must regularly interface with clergy for the reception of the Catholic sacraments, this poses serious problems for survivors of clerical abuse – because such meetings can be unpredictable ‘triggers’ that recall traumatically abusive past events.

To date this question has received no response that could be said to fully answer it, from someone qualified and authorised to speak on behalf of the Irish Catholic church.

This raises for me the following questions:

1. Does the Irish Catholic church have any agency that has the specific and qualified responsibility of reaching out pastorally to people in Kevin’s situation? (The website of ‘Towards Healing’ strongly suggests that Kevin’s specific concerns lie well outside that agency’s remit.)

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VATICAN CITY
Washington Post

Pope taps German theologian to head orthodoxy office; Mueller a friend of liberation theology

By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, July 2

VATICAN CITY — The pope named Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller to head the Vatican’s all-important orthodoxy office Monday, tapping a German theologian like himself to head the congregation he presided over for nearly a quarter-century enforcing Catholic doctrine.

The 64-year-old Regensburg bishop replaces American Cardinal William Levada, who turned 76 last month and is retiring after seven years at the helm of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the former Holy Office.

While Mueller is considered a staunchly orthodox, conservative theologian — he has penned some 400 academic articles and founded an institute to publish all the pope’s writings — some of his positions have raised eyebrows in Rome and abroad.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

by John L Allen Jr on Jul. 02, 2012 NCR Today

In a widely expected yet still critically important move, Pope Benedict XVI has tapped Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller of Regensburg, Germany, to succeed American Cardinal William Levada as Prefect of the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Among other things, the appointment means that Müller, 64, will be the key Vatican player in the overhaul of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious demanded by the doctrinal congregation in April.

Some observers believe the fact that the exchange with LCWR will now be led by a non-American may affect the intensity of the congregation’s interest, if not the substance of its positions.

Levada, who turned 76 in June, had led the congregation since May 2005.

The pope’s new doctrinal czar has a profile in Germany as a staunch defender of Catholic orthodoxy, yet not an ideologue. Among other things, Müller has a strong friendship with Peruvian liberation theologian Gustavo Guttierez.

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VATICAN CITY
Asia One

AFP
Monday, Jul 02, 2012

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI on Monday appointed German archbishop Ludwig Muller to head up the Vatican’s orthodoxy watchdog, replacing American Cardinal William Levada who is retiring from the post.

The Archbishop of Regensburg in southern Germany, Muller has a reputation as a defender of Catholic Orthodoxy and has been criticised by German groups clamouring for change, such as “Die Kirche von unten” (The Church from below).

A personal friend of the German-born pope, who charged him with publishing his writings, Muller is however also known for his long-standing support for Gustavo Guttierez, founder of the socialist Liberation theology movement.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier Mail

AAP
July 02, 2012

A Catholic priest sacked by the church after serious sexual abuse allegations is living in Armidale in NSW where he has become a prominent citizen, according to ABC TV’s Four Corners program.

THE program aired reports that the priest, identified only as Father F, raped young boys in Moree in the 1980s before being transferred to a parish in Parramatta where he continued to sodomise altar boys.

Some of the youths he raped went on to lead tortured lives before committing suicide, it’s alleged.

In one case, Four Corners said Father F performed oral sex on 11-year-old altar boy Daniel Powell and then lay on top of him, kissing him and holding him.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, (VIS) – The Holy Father:

– Appointed Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Muller of Regensburg, Germany, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and as president of the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei”, of the Pontifical Biblical Commission and of the International Theological Commission, at the same time elevating him to the dignity of archbishop. He succeeds Cardinal William Joseph Levada, whose resignation from the same offices the Holy Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit.

– Removed Archbishop Robert Bezak C.SS.R., from the pastoral care of the archdiocese of Trnava, Slovakia.

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CONNECTICUT
The Day

By Jeffrey A. Johnson

Publication: The Day
Published 07/02/2012

Waterford pastor resigned on Friday

Waterford – A spokesman for the Diocese of Norwich said Sunday that the diocese has yet to learn the details of a criminal investigation of the Rev. Dennis Carey, the pastor of St. Paul in Chains Church.

Michael Strammiello said Carey resigned on Friday after the diocese had learned a day earlier that state police were investigating him. Earlier in his career, Carey had been assigned to St. Joseph in New London and St. John the Evangelist Parish in Old Saybrook.

Strammiello said he could not confirm an earlier report by WFSB-TV that police had seized computers from the church rectory and were investigating possible child pornography.

“We don’t have enough information yet,” Strammiello said. “We work with the limited information that we have. We want to be careful because we don’t want to interfere with the legal process here. My sense is we’ll learn more soon enough.”

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