ABUSE TRACKER

CHICAGO (IL)
Vivelo Hoy

Por Jaime Reyes en Chicago

CHICAGO – El arzobispo de Chicago, el cardenal Francis George, dedicó su más reciente homilía a las víctimas de abuso sexual a manos de sacerdotes.

Durante la misa en la iglesia Holy Family, en el barrio de Little Italy, George ofició una misa de “expiación y esperanza” y se refirió al abuso a jovencitos por parte de sacerdotes como “una terrible injusticia”, según el diario Chicago Tribune.

“Cuando la confianza en traicionada, entonces la esperanza también se va”, dijo George, quien agregó que por eso es importante orar por el perdón y seguir el trabajo en la Arquidiócesis y otros para reconstruir esa confianza y esperanza entre los abusados.

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VATICAN CITY
NPR

[with audio]

by SYLVIA POGGIOLI

Pope Francis has summoned bishops from all over the world to Rome to discuss issues concerning families – including hot-button issues like artificial contraception and gay civil unions.

The meeting, called a synod, opened on Sunday and is seen as a test of Francis’ vision of a more merciful Church.

Not since the landmark Second Vatican Council half a century ago has a church meeting raised so much hope among progressive Catholics — and so much apprehension among conservatives.

Pope Francis greets the crowd as he arrives for his general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican last month.

As with every big Vatican meeting, Catholic groups from all over the world have descended on Rome in the hopes of contributing to the discussion.

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IRELAND
Irish Examiner

by TP O’ Mahony

The Synod of Bishops must embrace reform. There is something skewed about asking male celibates to review the Church’s teaching on family life, according to TP O’Mahony

POPE Francis faces the first real test of his papacy following the opening of the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops — dealing with marriage, sexuality, and the family — in Rome yesterday .

Expectations of reform are high, though some senior churchmen have warned that these expectations may not be met.

The Extraordinary Synod, which will last for two weeks, has already been criticised on the grounds that it is anomalous to have a group of male celibates deliberating on matters such as sexual ethics and family planning.

Our former president, Mary McAleese, used much blunter language and said the whole notion was “completely bonkers”. She said there was “something profoundly wrong and skewed” about asking male celibates to review the Church’s teaching on family life.

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NEW YORK
Buffalo News

By Melanie Blow

Like most children’s advocates, I’m happy about the passage of Sen. Tim Kennedy’s bill to equip Child Protective Services workers with more information when they respond to new reports. This will keep endangered children safer.

But it breaks my heart that we accept the inevitability of child abuse. We can prevent so much of it. CPS helps abused children. That’s important. But preventing the abuse from starting is also important. The Adverse Childhood Experience study shows that when children are beaten, raped or neglected or witness the same happening to their mother, they live shorter, sicker lives. A 19-year-old who commits suicide or overdoses on heroin isn’t classed as a child abuse fatality, but statistically, those outcomes are much more likely to befall abused children than those who weren’t abused.

It’s easy to predict if a new mother is likely to abuse her child. By working with her, it’s easy to help her bond properly with her baby, raise the baby without abuse and give her the skills she needs to tackle her own life issues. Healthy Families NY does this in Erie County. Giving every new mother access to this program would slash the new cases of child abuse in the county.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

October 6, 2014

Rory Callinan
Investigative journalist

A Catholic priest who, as a religious brother, is alleged to have abused boys in the 1960s in Australia and has been allowed to continue ministering in Papua New Guinea has not had a valid visa for the country for four years, a senior church administrator says.

Father Roger Mount has also ignored official requests to leave his parish at Sogeri near the Kokoda Track about 45 kilometres north-east of Port Moresby since 2011.

However, Port Moresby officials have said Fr Mount will be removed from the parish by Thursday.

The order to leave the parish came after Fairfax contacted the Port Moresby diocese to reveal a second alleged Australian victim of Fr Mount had come forward to publicly express outrage over the church’s failure to launch any investigation into the allegations.

Over the past two decades the Catholic St John of God Order in Australia which employed Roger Mount as a brother when the alleged abuse occurred has paid more than $100,000 to his alleged victims and apologised.

Yet the then Brother Mount, who moved to Papua New Guinea in the 1980s and became a priest, has never faced any official inquiry over the allegations, which involved boys as young as 11 and 12 at homes run by the order.

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AUSTRALIA
The Examiner

Anglican Bishop of Tasmania John Harrower has publicly announced that the Anglican Diocese of Tasmania will fully co-operate with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

There will be a public hearing in Hobart on November 19.

“(The hearing will be) ‘in relation to the Hutchins School’s response to allegations of child sexual abuse and the role of the Anglican Church, Diocese of Tasmania in responding to those allegations’,” a statement said.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail (UK)

The famous preacher behind the Hillsong Church to give evidence at royal commission about how he responded to his own fathers admission of child sex abuse

By Amy Ziniak for Daily Mail Australia and Aap

High profile Hillsong senior pastor Brian Houston is expected to give evidence at an inquiry into how Pentecostal churches responded to child sex abuse allegations against his father Frank Houston and two other men.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual abuse sitting in Sydney on Tuesday will hear how Hillsong and the Pentecostal association, Assemblies of God, responded to abuse allegations against William Francis ‘Frank’ Houston – the famous preacher behind the movement which gave birth to the mega-church.

His son Brian Houston was national president of the Assemblies of God (AoG) in Australia from 1997 to 2009. More than 1000 Pentecostal churches are affiliated to the AoG which is now commonly known as Australian Christian Churches (ACC).

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Sunday 5 October 2014

High-profile Hillsong senior pastor Brian Houston is expected to give evidence at an inquiry into how Pentecostal churches responded to child sex abuse allegations against his father, Frank Houston, and two other men.

The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse sitting in Sydney on Tuesday will hear how Hillsong and the Pentecostal association, Assemblies of God, responded to abuse allegations against William Francis “Frank” Houston – the famous preacher behind the movement which gave birth to the mega-church.

His son Brian Houston was national president of the Assemblies of God (AoG) in Australia from 1997 to 2009. More than 1,000 Pentecostal churches are affiliated with the AoG which is now known as Australian Christian Churches (ACC).

Brian Houston was president in 2000 when his father admitted he sexually abused a boy in New Zealand 30 years earlier. Frank Houston was fired by his son from all church roles.

Hillsong in Sydney was created when separate churches run by father and son merged under the leadership of Brian Houston.

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AUSTRALIA
Christian Today

Carey Lodge

Senior pastor of Hillsong, Brian Houston, is expected to give evidence during a national inquiry into the way in which churches dealt with allegations of sex abuse against his father, Frank Houston, and two other leaders, the Guardian reports.

Australia’s sex abuse royal commission is to examine how the Australian Christian Churches (ACC) movement, formerly Assemblies of God, handled the allegations when they came to light in 2000.

Originally trained as a Salvation Army officer, Frank Houston later became a Pentecostal Christian pastor in the Assemblies of God church. He founded the Sydney Christian Life Centre, which was in 1999 merged with his son Brian’s church – Hills Christian Life Centre, now known as Hillsong.

He is therefore credited with building a movement that became one of the largest megachurches in the world.

Before his death in 2004, aged 82, Frank Houston confessed to sexually abusing a boy in New Zealand three decades earlier, and was immediately removed from ministry by Brian.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

ABC

Hutchins School abuse allegations: Tasmania’s Anglican diocese to front sexual assault royal commission

The Hutchins School and Anglican Diocese of Tasmania will appear before the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse over allegations of sexual assault at the school in the 1960s.

The allegations relate to former headmaster David Lawrence and former teacher Lyndon Hickman, both of whom are dead.

The school and diocese have said they will cooperate fully with the royal commission.

Tasmania is the only state or territory where the commission has not yet taken formal evidence in open sessions.

However, public hearings will be held in Hobart next month, after the royal commission secured money for an extra 30 public hearings and 3,000 private sessions.

Evidence of abuse at St Virgil’s school in Hobart in the 1950s was heard in private by the commission earlier this year.

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NEW ZEALAND
NZ Catholic

by ROWENA OREJANA

WELLINGTON — The responses of more than 2000 New Zealand Catholics provided to the survey for the Third Extraordinary Synod on Marriage and Family showed Catholics feel that the Church is “out of touch”, even “hypocritical”, in some of its teachings. …

■ Definition of Family
Many of the respondents considered the Church’s definition of the family as a father, a mother and their children as lacking in understanding “of the diverse nature of modern families”.

Other family groupings like single-parent families, grandparents bringing up grandchildren, families blended from previous marriages as well as culturally sanctioned adoptions feel “inferior” to the traditional families.

Many also felt the reports of sexual abuse by the clergy have “undermined their faith in priests and bishops as teachers in matters of sexual morality”.

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UNITED STATES
POPE FRANCIS the CON-Christ.

Paris Arrow

Vatican Bank closes thousand accounts/criminal transactions BURNT to leave no trail of crimes further/future investigations…drowned by loud Francis-maniacs at St. Peter’s Square http://popecrimes.blogspot.ca/2013/10/vatican-bank-closes-thousand.html

Pope Francis is a pathological liar par excellence as he uses Jesus Christ to cover-up his hidden heist in the Vatican Bank and he uses women to cover his misogynists’ all-male oligarchy in the Vatican. In his Message for 2015 World Day of Migrants and Refugees, he said, “The mission of the Church, herself a pilgrim in the world and the Mother of all, is thus to love Jesus Christ, to adore and love him, particularly in the poorest and most abandoned; among these are certainly migrants and refugees, who are trying to escape difficult living conditions and dangers of every kind.

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VATICAN CITY
Future Church – Synod Watch

Day 4 in Rome

As Catholics stream to the opening mass for the Synod, reformers ask for a vote and run into the police

As the crowds streamed into the Vatican Basilica for the opening mass for the Synod on the Family, members of Catholic Church Reform International policewere joined by International Movement of We Are Church, Women’s Ordination Worldwide and other international reform groups to protest the lack of real decision making power for families at the Synod. They unfurled a sign that read, “Families must have vote in family synods.”

The group was quickly surrounded by the police who challenged their right to be in the square.

Leader Rene Reid, showed the officers the permit she had obtained for the event, but that was not sufficient. With more than a dozen officers surrounding the group, the police snapped photos of the group’s signs, song sheets, and confiscated Reid’s passport. Given the circumstances, the group rolled up the signs and waited. The police later returned with Reid’s passport and agreed they could conduct their peaceful protest.

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VATICAN CITY
Omaha.com

POSTED: SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2014
Associated Press |

VATICAN CITY — From his living room overlooking St. Peter’s Square, Cardinal Walter Kasper doesn’t come off as a figure at the center of one of the greatest storms swirling in Catholicism in decades.

The German theologian said he fully expected the knives would come out when, at Pope Francis’ request, he made a suggestion that challenged a deep church taboo and has dominated debate ahead of the meeting on Catholic family life that opens today.

The issue is not abortion, contraception or same-sex marriage. It is the fate of Catholics who divorce, and the outcome will be a key test of Francis’ reform agenda.

Delivering a speech to a closed meeting of cardinals in February, Kasper suggested that Catholics who remarry without annulment — a church declaration that the first marriage was invalid and thus never existed — might receive Holy Communion after a period of penance.

Church teaching holds that without annulment these Catholics are living in sin and thus ineligible to receive the sacraments.

Based on the mudslinging the remarks set off between church liberals and conservatives, outside observers might have thought that Kasper had proposed that women be ordained as priests.

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CANADA
Ottawa Citizen

ANDREW DUFFY
Published on: October 5, 2014

Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast has been dispatched by the Vatican on an investigative mission to Kansas City to examine the leadership of that city’s embattled bishop.

Prendergast travelled to Missouri late last month to interview priests and other diocesan officials about Bishop Robert Finn and his suitability as head of the Kansas City diocese.

Finn has been under intense pressure to resign his position in the two years since his misdemeanour conviction for failing to report a suspected case of child abuse by a priest. He was sentenced to two years of probation in September 2012.

Court heard that Finn failed to tell authorities that Rev. Shawn Ratigan’s computer had been found with hundreds of lewd images of young girls, most of them photos taken by the priest in local school yards, playgrounds and at church events. The pictures focused on the girls’ genitals.

But it was six months before Ratigan’s disturbing behaviour was reported to police by church officials acting without Finn’s approval. …

Prendergast’s three-day visit to Kansas City represents the second time in the past three years that he has been tapped by the Vatican for a sensitive mission.

In early 2011, Prendergast was sent to the Irish archdiocese of Tuam as part of a high-profile delegation that assessed the church’s response to the horrific child sex-abuse scandal in that country.

The initiative followed a series of damning Irish government reports on widespread child abuse by clergy and others associated with the Catholic Church. In one Irish diocese, Cloyne, abuses were still being covered up as late as 2009 — 13 years after the church in Ireland issued guidelines to ensure that sexual abuse cases involving the clergy were reported to authorities.

Prendergast has spoken about the need for more transparency in the Catholic Church, and in 2011 he stood firm against a loud chorus of local Catholics who did not want him to refer the case of Rev. Joe LeClair to the police for investigation.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Times

Alexi Mostrous

The husband of a woman who formed a close relationship with a senior Roman Catholic bishop has spoken of his “devastation” for the first time.

Simon Hodgkinson’s wife, Olivia, became close to Kieran Conry, the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, during a period when their marriage was breaking up, according to the Mail on Sunday.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Yahoo! News

Press Association

Good evening from Press Association Ireland. Here is our provisional schedule for tomorrow Monday October 6. …

Banbridge:
1000: The first witnesses in the Rubane House module of the Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry give evidence. Banbridge courthouse.

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MALTA
Times of Malta

Sunday, October 5, 2014
by Kim Dalli

Priests taking the decision to leave priesthood are faced with long and complex processes that are further exacerbated by the Church’s reluctance to let its members go, according to a Gozitan priest.

Fr Anthony Zammit has been a priest of the Conventual Franciscan order for 27 years and says that for a number of years he has tried different avenues to leave the order, to no avail.

“The Vatican and religious institutions can give a person who wishes to leave priesthood a hard time,” the 58-year-old told this newspaper.

He says he first wrote to his superior of his wish to leave the priesthood for a number of reasons several years ago.

However, the answers he received seemed to lead nowhere.

“I’ve since been to Rome four times – the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith have a thick report of me there, detailing my request to leave.

“A friend of mine once told me the Church authorities keep stalling as much as possible so that you grow old and it becomes even more difficult to leave. As you advance in age, it becomes harder to find a job and earn a living.”

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

October 6, 2014

Rory Callinan
Investigative journalist

When David McNamara first complained to the Catholic Church in the 1990s that he had been sexually abused in a church-run home, he believed his abuser would face justice.

And as the years passed and he received a settlement for the abuse at the Kendall Grange home for intellectually disabled boys in NSW, he thought that at the very least his alleged attacker would have left the church and been kept away from children.

But, in August, the 60-year-old realised that the former brother, who had allegedly repeatedly molested him when he was 12, was still working as a Catholic priest, now in Papua New Guinea, and potentially has contact with children.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” Mr McNamara, a former theatre-lighting director, told the Herald. “It goes to show how poorly the church has behaved. The church hasn’t acted on my disclosure. It looks like a cover-up. It disgusts me.”

Mr McNamara is the second person to publicly allege abuse by former St John of God brother and now Catholic priest Father Roger “Gabriel” Mount, and has called for the church to take action.

The other alleged victim is a Victorian man Steve Danas,who alleged abuse by the then Brother Mount at a St John of God-run home in Victoria in the 1960s. Both McNamara and Mr Danas received settlements from the church.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

The Royal Commission is holding a public hearing in Sydney from Tuesday 7 October 2014 commencing at 10:30am (local time). The public hearing will break between 11:30am-11:50am and 1pm-2pm daily.

The hearing will examine the responses by Australian Christian Churches (a Pentecostal movement in Australia) and two affiliated churches to allegations of child sexual abuse.

Live streaming times
The public hearing will be streamed live via this website between 10am and 4pm (local time), with the following breaks:

11:30 am – 11:50 am morning break
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm lunch break
Join us on Twitter and Facebook for regular updates.

Location
The hearing will be held at Level 17, Governor Macquarie Tower, 1 Farrer Place.

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

1. The response of the Sydney Christian Life Centre and Hills Christian Life Centre (now Hillsong Church) and Assemblies of God in Australia (now Australian Christian Churches) to allegations of child sexual abuse made against William Francis “Frank” Houston.

2. The response of the Northside Christian College and the Northside Christian Centre (now Encompass Church) in Bundoora, Victoria and Assemblies of God in Australia (now Australian Christian Churches) to allegations of child sexual abuse made against former teacher Kenneth Sandilands.

3. The response of Australian Christian Churches to allegations of child sexual abuse made against Jonathan Baldwin.

4. The systems, policies, practices and procedures for the reporting of and responding to allegations of child sexual abuse of:
a. Australian Christian Churches,
b. Hillsong Church, and
c. Northside Christian College and Encompass Church.

5. Any other related matters.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

The Royal Commission will hold a public hearing in Sydney commencing Tuesday 7 October 2014 at 10:30am.

The public hearing will inquire into the responses by Australian Christian Churches (a Pentecostal movement in Australia) and two affiliated churches to allegations of child sexual abuse.

For more information please go to the Case Study 18 webpage.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Matthew Taylor
The Guardian, Sunday 5 October 2014

A Roman Catholic bishop who resigned after claims of a love affair with a parishioner has admitted having had a sexual relationship but said he wanted to remain a priest.

Kieran Conry resigned as bishop of Arundel and Brighton last week after the estranged husband of one of the women with whom he was said to have had a relationship threatened to sue the church. The man had hired a private detective to follow his wife.

In an interview in the Sunday Times, Conry, 63, admitted to one previous sexual relationship. “I did wrong,” he said. “Celibacy may be a tradition rather than an article of faith but the vast majority of priests are faithful to their promise.”

Despite press reports of other affairs, Conry said he would do any job that came his way if he was allowed to remain in the church. “I’ve never regretted being a priest. I’ve never felt unhappy, I’ve enjoyed it and tried to do whatever was asked of me. I’ve always gone where I’ve been sent and I hope to do the same again,” he said.

Conry said his relationship with the woman whose husband threatened to sue was no more than a close friendship. The woman allegedly stayed at his house at least three times and they went shopping and visited the British Museum in London and a Henri Matisse exhibition together.

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UNITED STATES
dotCommonweal

Grant Gallicho October 5, 2014

During his homily for this morning’s opening Mass for the Synod on the Family, Pope Francis had some rather pointed words for the assembled.

In Jesus’ parable, he is addressing the chief priests and the elders of the people, in other words the “experts”, the managers. To them in a particular way God entrusted his “dream,” his people, for them to nurture, tend and protect from the animals of the field. This is the job of leaders: to nuture the vineyard with freedom, creativity and hard work.

But Jesus tells us that those farmers took over the vineyard. Out of greed and pride they want to do with it as they will, and so they prevent God from realizing his dream for the people he has chosen.

The temptation to greed is ever present. We encounter it also in the great prophecy of Ezekiel on the shepherds (cf. ch. 34), which Saint Augustine commented upon in one his celebrated sermons which we have just reread in the Liturgy of the Hours. Greed for money and power. And to satisfy this greed, evil pastors lay intolerable burdens on the shoulders of others, which they themselves do not lift a finger to move (cf. Mt 23:4).

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UNITED STATES
Newsmax

By Greg Richter

Franciscan Father Benedict Joseph Groeschel, longtime host on Eternal Word Television Network and founder of Community of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal died Friday at age 81 after an extended illness, National Catholic Register reports.

“We are deeply saddened by the death of Father Benedict. He was an example to us all,” Father John Paul Ouellette of the Friars of the Renewal, said in a prepared statement. “His fidelity and service to the Church and commitment to our Franciscan way of life will have a tremendous impact for generations to come.”

Groeschel was ordained as a priest in the Detroit Capuchin province in 1959. He was an author and retreat master and was a host and guest on various EWTN programs for a quarter of a century. …

He stopped hosting EWTN’s “Sunday Night Prime” in 2012 after making controversial statements in the National Catholic Register that the minor is “the seducer” in many sexual abuse cases and that some abusers should not be jailed on their first offense “because their intention was not committing a crime.”

He apologized for those comments, as did members of his religious community, the Register and EWTN, “who stressed that the priest’s physical health and mental clarity were both declining, noting that his comments did not reflect his life’s work,” the Register noted.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

By THOMAS BURROWS FOR MAILONLINE

An errant priest who resigned after admitting to having an affair with a parishioner has revealed he wants to stay in the church.

Kieran Conry, 63 resigned as the Catholic Bishop of Arundel and Brighton last weekend when the husband of the parishioner threatened to sue the church over the bishop’s relationship with the man’s estranged wife.

Despite that, the bishop said he has never thought about leaving the church.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Bishop Conry said: ‘I’ve never regretted being a priest.

I’ve never felt unhappy, I’ve enjoyed it and tried to do whatever was asked of me.

‘I’ve always gone where I’ve been sent and I hope to do the same again.’

The affair was exposed when Simon Hodgkinson hired a private detective to follow his wife, Olivia, when their marriage broke down.

A second love affair six years ago also came to light and yesterday there were claims of a third woman in his life.

The bishop decided to resign because it ‘was the easiest way to avoid further embarrassment, disappointment…and shame for the church.’

In his resignation statement he made a point of saying his actions ‘were not illegal and did not involve minors.’

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VATICAN CITY
Yahoo! News

By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis opened a global Roman Catholic assembly on Sunday showing his apparent irritation with Church leaders who have waged a sometimes bitter public battle between progressives and conservatives on family issues.

The synod is the first since Francis’s election 19 months ago with a mandate to turn around an institution hit by declining membership in many countries and scandals including the sexual abuse of children by priests and irregularities in Vatican finances.

It is seen as a test case for the pontiff’s vision of a Church he wants to be closer to the poor and suffering and not obsessed by issues such as homosexuality, abortion and contraception.

Francis, in the sermon of a solemn Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica formally opening the synod with nearly 200 bishops in attendance, alluded to in-fighting that preceded the gathering and made clear that it did not please him.

“Synod assemblies are not meant to discuss beautiful and clever ideas, or to see who is more intelligent,” he said. Comparing the Church to a vineyard, he said that all of it had to be nurtured with freedom, creativity and hard work.

Liberals in the Church say that conservatives are trying to dictate the outcome of the synod, particularly over the issue of whether the Church should modify teachings that deny communion to Catholics who have divorced and then remarried in civil services.

No immediate changes are expected to result from the synod, though it will prepare the way for a larger gathering of Catholic clerics next year, which will present the pope with suggestions that could lead to changes in issues related to the family and sexual morality.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Alison Healy

Sat, Oct 4, 2014

The draft terms of reference for the commission of inquiry into mother and baby homes have now been circulated among all the relevant departments, Minister for Children James Reilly has said.

The Government announced the establishment of a commission of inquiry in May, following revelations about the deaths of almost 800 children at Tuam mother and baby home. The commission of inquiry will be chaired by Ms Justice Yvonne Murphy.

Dr Reilly said he was now waiting for the input of officials from the departments which include the departments of Health, Justice, Foreign Affairs, Education, Social Protection, Environment and Taoiseach.

“They’ll come back to us and then we’ll go to the Attorney General with the final draft because this has to be done with particular care because of its impact on so many different people,” Dr Reilly said.

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ROME
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor October 4, 2014

ROME — In his latest expression of concern for Christians and other minority groups in the Middle East, Pope Francis this week summoned all his ambassadors in the region to a special meeting in Rome to discuss “initiatives and actions at all levels.”

The gathering builds on earlier gestures by Francis, including his May 24-26 trip to the Middle East and his June 8 peace prayer in the Vatican gardens with the Israeli and Palestinian presidents. It comes ahead of a projected late November trip to Turkey in which the pontiff hopes to travel near the Iraq border and to meet refugees from the self-declared ISIS caliphate.

Certainly the Christians of the Middle East could use the help. The recent trauma in Iraq and Syria involving ISIS is merely the latest instance of a slow-motion death spiral for Christianity across the region. …

Accountability for sexual abuse

News this week that Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, is facing a Vatican investigation has sparked speculation that Pope Francis might be on the brink of a step forward in accountability for the Church’s child sexual abuse scandals, by disciplining a prelate not for the crime of abuse, but for the cover-up.

Finn is the lone US bishop to be criminally convicted for failing to report a suspected abuser to police, making him a symbol of what critics see as a lack of accountability for making the Church’s official “zero tolerance” policy stick.

I wrote a Crux piece this week describing the Finn review as potentially the most important step Francis will ever take on the sexual abuse front, precisely because accountability is the central bone of contention for many victims and advocacy groups with the way the Church has responded to the abuse crisis.

Here I’ll offer three other observations.

First, if Finn is removed or otherwise sanctioned, critics likely will intensify their press for Pope Francis to tackle other cases.

Americans may want to see him impose retroactive discipline on Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned in Boston at the peak of the abuse scandals there in 2003, and was brought to Rome by Pope John Paul II and given a largely ceremonial Vatican post. Others may point to retired Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, who drew fire in 2013 when internal Church records released as part of a lawsuit suggested that Mahony and aides had tried to keep accusations against abuser priests quiet.

Still other Americans may raise the situation of Archbishop John Nienstedt in Minneapolis-St. Paul. In July, a 120-page affidavit was made public by Jennifer Haselberger, a former canon lawyer and victims advocate who claims she was ignored, marginalized, and bullied for trying to warn superiors in the archdiocese about abuser priests. In a deposition as part of a lawsuit, Nienstedt acknowledged withholding information on accused priests, saying he had done so on the advice of aides.

The Irish may wonder if Francis will do something about retired Cardinal Sean Brady, who came under fire for his role in the Brendan Smyth case. Smyth abused at least 20 children between 1945 and 1989, and it would later emerge that Brady and other Church officials conducted an investigation in 1975 in which they learned of the abuse but didn’t report it.

Belgians may cite a discrepancy in the fact that while Finn is facing investigation, retired Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Brussels is a special guest of the pope at this month’s synod. Some Belgians fault Danneels for his handling of a scandal surrounding retired Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, who in 2010 acknowledged having sexually abused two nephews over the course of a 15-year period while serving first as a priest and then as bishop.

As revelations surrounding the affair rolled out, a taped conversation came to light between Danneels and one of Vangheluwe’s victims in which the cardinal appears to pressure him to keep quiet about the abuse and to allow Vangheluwe to retire without incident. Two priests came forward to say they had tried to warn Danneels about Vangheluwe in the 1990s, but he had not taken action.

Italians undoubtedly will point to Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the former Secretary of State under Pope John Paul II and still the dean of the College of Cardinals. In 2010, another cardinal, Christoph Schönborn, publicly accused Sodano of blocking an investigation against the late Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionaries of Christ. The order eventually acknowledged that Maciel had been guilty of a wide range of sexual abuse and misconduct.

One could go on multiplying examples, but the point is that critics around the world will insist the accountability challenge doesn’t end with Finn.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas Reese | Oct. 5, 2014

In an address to the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy, Pope Francis warned bishops against accepting men for the priesthood who are not healthy or balanced.

The Congregation for the Clergy deals with priestly vocations and formation as well as the life of priests. The pope spoke during an October 3 plenary meeting of the congregation, which includes cardinals and bishops from all over the world.

“We need priests; vocations are missing,” said the pope in departing from his prepared remarks to the congregation. “The Lord is calling but it’s not enough.” But he warned bishops, “we have the temptation to take without discernment, the young men who present themselves. This is bad for the Church.”

The pope called on bishops to study carefully the vocations of the applicants. “Examine well if that (man) belongs to the Lord: if that man is healthy, if that man is balanced; if that man is capable of giving life, of evangelizing,” exhorted the pope. “If that man is capable of forming a family, and of renouncing this to follow Jesus.”

The pope acknowledged that serious problems arise if desperate bishops accept just anyone.

“We have many problems today and in many dioceses because of this chicanery [Italian: inganno] of some bishops to take those who come – sometimes expelled from seminaries or from religious houses – because ‘I need priests,'” complained Francis. “Please, think of the good of God’s people.”

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Oct. 5, 2014

VATICAN CITY Pope Francis opened a worldwide meeting of Catholic bishops Sunday — a possible landmark of his papacy — by warning against “bad shepherds” who unduly burden the faithful and who “thwart” God by not being guided by the Holy Spirit.

Francis was speaking in a homily during the opening Mass for the meeting, known as a Synod and focusing on modern struggles of family life, in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Referring to the Mass readings for the day and to the prophet Ezekiel’s warning about shepherds who care for themselves and not their sheep, the pontiff said some shepherds become tempted by “greed for money and power.”

“To satisfy this greed bad shepherds lay intolerable burdens on the shoulders of others, which they themselves do not lift a finger to move,” said Francis.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mirror

Oct 05, 2014 By Nina Massey

Kieran Conry resigned after he was tracked by a private detective and says he is willing to take any job

A Catholic bishop who was forced to resign after an alleged love affair with a parishioner has said he wants to remain a priest.

Kieran Conry, 63, the former bishop of Arundel and Brighton, has been linked to three women.

He quit last week after it was revealed the estranged husband of one woman he was linked to hired a private detective and threatened to sue the church.

In an interview today he says he is glad his secret is out, adding: “It’s liberating, though I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m glad to be out of office. I did wrong.”

Conry says he wants to remain in the church at any cost and will be happy to take any job that is offered.

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VATICAN CITY
The Daily Beast

Barbie Latza Nadeau

VATICAN CITY— When Pope Francis opened the Extraordinary General Assembly Synod of Bishops to discuss the role of the family in the Catholic context on Sunday, he opened the biggest can of worms in his still-young papacy.

It is expected to pit hard-core Catholic conservatives who prefer to hang on to the Church’s traditional doctrine on family matters against liberal Catholic clergy who would prefer to see a loosening of some of the rules, especially those that keep lapsed Catholics away in droves. The skirmishing here is expected to help define the battles in the even more important Ordinary Synod of Bishops scheduled for October 2015.

Of the 252 participants now gathered in Rome, 191 so-called Synod Fathers are eligible to vote on issues ranging from whether divorced and remarried Catholics should be allowed to take communion to whether annulments should be easier to obtain.

Yes, birth control will be up for debate. Yes, even same-sex marriage will be discussed. In that sense there are no taboos, although virtually no one in the know expects any really dramatic breakthroughs.

The non-voting participants will be invited to weigh in on the various topics — but their thoughts must be expressed in under four minutes. Details of the internal discussions during the two-week meeting will be a closely guarded secret, with daily press briefings expected to be nothing more than a decoy to masque the impassioned debates going on inside.

The synod executive secretary, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, said that no transcript of the discussions will be released, and that participants’ names and positions on various issues will be kept confidential to avoid “making suspects” out of the participants. The real news will come out of the sidelines, in the Vatican corridors and Rome restaurants where participants will be lobbying the key voters for support.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

By Patrick Sawer
05 Oct 2014

When priests in churches across the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton stood in front of their congregations on Saturday evening last weekend and delivered a message from their bishop, they were met with a stunned silence.

In an open letter to his flock, the Rt Rev Kieran Conry announced his resignation and confessed that for several years he had been “unfaithful to my promises as a Catholic priest”.

The shock felt by Roman Catholics across Sussex and elsewhere turned to bewilderment the next day, when details of the bishop’s private life were revealed.

Not only had he been indulging in an intimate friendship with a married woman 20 years his junior over the previous 12 months, he had an affair with another woman, six years previously.
It quickly became clear that 63-year-old Bishop Conry had fallen far short of both the vow of

Now the reverberations caused by the bishop’s conduct are to deepen, after the discovery that the most recent relationship was with a married mother of two who teaches at a prominent Catholic convent school.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

Frank Bruni

REPEATEDLY over the last year and a half, I’ve written about teachers in Catholic schools and leaders in Catholic parishes who were dismissed from their posts because they were in same-sex relationships and — in many cases — had decided to marry.

Every time, more than a few readers weighed in to tell me that these people had it coming. If you join a club, they argued, you play by its rules or you suffer the consequences.

Oh really?

The rules of this particular club prohibit divorce, yet the pews of many of the Catholic churches I’ve visited are populous with worshipers on their second and even third marriages. They walk merrily to the altar to receive communion, not a peep of protest from a soul around them. They participate fully in the rituals of the church, their membership in the club uncontested.

The rules prohibit artificial birth control, and yet most of the Catholic families I know have no more than three children, which is either a miracle of naturally capped fecundity or a sign that someone’s been at the pharmacy. I’m not aware of any church office that monitors such matters, poring over drugstore receipts. And I haven’t heard of any teachers fired or parishioners denied communion on the grounds of insufficiently brimming broods. …

When I discussed the issue with Lisa Sowle Cahill, a professor of theology at Boston College, she wondered aloud if Catholic superiors would dismiss someone or deny him or her communion for supporting the death penalty, which is against Catholic teaching. She and I alike marveled at how little we heard from American church leaders during all the news months ago about botched executions.

“The bishops have picked up gay marriage ever since the 2004 presidential election as a special cause that they are against,” Cahill noted. She said that they were “staking out a countercultural Catholic identity” that doesn’t focus on “social justice and economic issues.”

“It’s about sex and gender issues,” she said, adding that it might be connected to the disgrace that church leaders brought upon themselves with their disastrous handling of child sexual abuse by priests. Perhaps, she said, they’re determined to find some sexual terrain on which they can strike a position of stern rectitude.

“They’re trying to regain the moral high ground, no matter how sure it is to backfire,” she said. Having turned a blind eye to nonconsensual sex that ravaged young lives, they’re holding the line against consensual sex that wounds no one.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times

LeeAnn Shelton

Cardinal Francis George offered a message of healing Saturday to survivors of clergy sexual abuse at the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Mass of Atonement and Hope.

George praised the work of the archdiocese’s Office for the Protection of Children & Youth, as well as survivors, their families and victims’ advocates for their efforts to “bring good out of evil.”

He told the crowd of 60 people that the church’s mission to help survivors is not complete without earning back the trust of families and communities impacted by abuse.

George, who is undergoing treatment for cancer, is also suffering from a painful cellulitis infection in his right foot and used crutches at times to walk. He remained seated throughout his 7-minute homily at the Holy Family Catholic Church, 1080 W. Roosevelt Rd.

George did not speak about his health, but a prayer offered during the service asked “that the Lord’s healing spirit fill and comfort him in the days ahead.”

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VATICAN CITY
CBC News

The Associated Press Posted: Oct 05, 2014

Pope Francis on Sunday called for a more creative, humble approach to family issues in the Catholic faithful.

Francis made the announcement during a mass in St. Peter’s Basilica to open a two-week meeting of 200 cardinals and bishops from around the world.

The most contentious issues under debate include bans on contraception and on holy communion for divorced faithful who remarry.

Many of the 200 attending the synod know that much of their flock, while considering themselves Catholic, defy church teaching on family matters and have gone their own way on sexual and family issues like contraception, pre-marital sex and divorce.

Francis said the synod was intended “to better nurture and tend the Lord’s vineyard, to help realize his dream, his loving plan for his people. In this way the Lord is asking us to care for the family.”

Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, who has been organizing the synod, said many lay Catholics were consulted in the preparation of the working document.

The document itself, though, acknowledged that the church had a credibility problem.

“Responses from almost every part of the world frequently refer to the sexual scandals within the church (pedophilia in particular) and in general, to a negative experience with the clergy and other persons,” it said. “Sex scandals significantly weaken the church’s moral credibility.”

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KENTUCKY
WLKY

LOUISVILLE, Ky. —A Louisville Catholic priest has been placed on administrative leave following allegations of sexual abuse.

The move comes after police informed the Archdiocese of Louisville that an adult male reported he had been sexually abused by three people as a minor in the 1980s and listed one of the three accused as the Rev. Ronald Domhoff of St. Peter the Apostle Parish on Johnsontown Road, Archdiocese officials said.

Domhoff was put on administrative leave as a standard procedure in sexual abuse cases, officials said.

An internal investigation of the accusation will also take place.

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UNITED STATES
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

By Liz Zemba
Saturday, Oct. 4, 2014

It began one day in 2009 with a fight among a group of boys — orphans, all of them — from the toughest, poorest streets of Honduras.

They argued about a priest, a pudgy, bespectacled older man from America who showed up now and then with gifts — offerings of cash and candy that carried a hefty price, according to Department of Homeland Security records.

Sometimes they paid by having sex with the man, records show. Other times, they showered nude, urinated or performed sex acts while he watched or took photos, records indicate.

But on that day when the boys argued about acquiescing to the Rev. Joseph D. Maurizio Jr.’s demands, an orphanage worker overheard the conversation and reported it, court records show.

Not long after, officials from the foundation running the orphanage traveled to Western Pennsylvania to report the boys’ allegations to the priest’s superiors at the Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, the state Attorney General’s Office and the FBI, according to records.

But four years later, Maurizio was traveling to other orphanages, so a frustrated official sent an email about the allegations to a website, bishop-accountability.org, dedicated to tracking sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

The unprecedented ongoing crisis, of bishops and priests who sexually assault children with impunity, presents Pope Francis with a fundamental choice — Francis can either try to save the coercive top-down papacy and thereby risk losing the hierarchical Church to prosecutors from the USA, Australia and elsewhere, or he can try restore a consensual bottom-up Church like the one that Jesus’ original disciples, including some women, left behind. Only a Church with independent and effective lay oversight will ever convince prosecutors at this point that children are safe from clerical predators.

So far Pope Francis has mainly followed the top down script that ex-Pope Benedict and Cardinal Sodano apparently offered him last year as a pre-condition to his becoming Pope. This is evident from the ten goals described in detail below that Francis now appears to be pursuing vigorously.

Popes have of necessity had political strategies for almost two millennia. For the initial three centuries, as the small Christian movement spread widely, popularly selected popes usually tried quietly to peacefully coexist with political leaders . Constantine and his successors changed that in the 4th Century, increasingly influencing top-down imperial papal selections. Since then, popes’ main priority has often been to maintain a close working relationship with the most powerful political leaders.

Pius XI and XII sought this mistakenly with powerful fascists, Mussolini, Franco and Hitler, while Paul VI unsuccessfully sought peaceful co-existence with the Soviets and the West. In the American Century, the last three popes, including Francis, have sought to exchange (A) papal “pull” with key fundamentalist anti-abortion and anti-gay US voters for (B) potential subsidies and legal protection, from a favored relationship with powerful US right wing leaders, including Reagan, the Bushes and Romney.

Francis has in many ways already shown his hand on supporting the election in four weeks of a right wing US Senate (likely to preserve a US Supreme Court majority friendly to Francis’ “low tax” billionaire donors and legally vulnerable bishops).

Now before the Family Synod has even started, Francis has preemptively and autocratically indicated the Synod will end on Sunday, Oct. 19 with the beatification of Pope Paul VI, the third 20th century pope that Francis will elevate this year. Can the Synod now evaluate contraception honestly in the presence of their “cherry picked” natural family planning couple cheer leaders and challenge Paul VI’s best known mistake. In addition. Paul VI undercut episcopal collegiality and optional celibacy implementation. Of course, the Synod “Fathers Without Kids” cannot and will not now pursue the Synod’s hyped reconsideration of Paul VI’s Ban of the Pill — this appears to be just more “papal bull”. So much for the “Sense of the Faithful”!

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VATICAN CITY
Christian Science Monitor

By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Sunday opens a two-week meeting of bishops and cardinals from around the world aimed at making the church’s teaching on family life — marriage, sex, contraception, divorce, and homosexuality — relevant to today’s Catholic families. The pre-synod debate has been dominated by mudslinging between liberals and conservatives over divorce and remarriage, but there are many more issues up for discussion.

Here are five things to know about the synod.

What’s on the table?

Last year, Vatican officials sent out a 39-point questionnaire to bishops’ conferences across the globe asking for frank input from clergy and lay Catholics on a host of hot-button issues like pre-marital sex, contraception, and gay unions. They got it.

In a brutally honest compilation of the data released in June, the Vatican conceded that the vast majority of Catholics reject church teaching on sex and contraception as intrusive and irrelevant. It said the church had to do a better job ministering to gays in civil unions and legal marriages and to children being raised in such families.

It blamed pastors for failing to adequately preach church teaching and said a “new language” was necessary to convey the church’s message. The findings are to form the basis of the discussion.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Mail on Sunday

Wrath of husband cuckolded by bishop…who STILL denies affair: ‘Arrogant’ Catholic priest abused his power over my wife, rages City boss in his first interview since the story broke

By ADAM LUCK FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

Simon Hodgkinson still has a sinking feeling in his stomach when he recalls the moment he realised that his suspicions his wife Olivia was having a passionate relationship with a Roman Catholic bishop were true.

The couple had been having marital difficulties and 43-year-old Olivia had moved out of the family home. But last April, when Olivia failed to turn up for choir practice at their local church, Simon decided to visit the substantial home of Kieran Conry, the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton.

Speaking for the first time about the collapse of his marriage and his wife’s illicit relationship, Simon, a successful City executive, explains: ‘I thought it was odd when she didn’t arrive at choir practice because normally she would never miss one. I went to her house to drop some music through her letterbox but she wasn’t at home.

‘By then it was about 10pm and I thought it was really weird. I decided it was time to test my suspicion that she was having an affair.

‘I went up to the bishop’s residence and her car was there. I checked and it was there all night. I was devastated.’

So much so that he has waived his anonymity to tell a quite astonishing – and at times explosive – story that asks questions of the very top of the Catholic Church in Britain.

Bishop Conry, 63, last week resigned from his post after admitting he had been ‘unfaithful to my promises as a Catholic priest’ following an affair with a woman six years ago.

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PHILIPPINES
Mirror (UK)

By Lewis Panther, Simon Lennon

A paedo campaigner who was once ­branded the vilest man in Britain by the Sunday People is facing a string of child-sex ­charges in the Philippines.

Ex-navy chef Douglas Slade – who helped mastermind the sickening Paedophile Information Exchange – was arrested for allegedly abusing Filipino youngsters for as little as £2 a time.

Cops said they also found depraved images of boys on the 74-year-old’s laptop.

Police raided his home in the red-light district of Angeles City after a tip-off he was photographing children there.

Cops claim Slade – who has cooked for the Queen – lured poverty-stricken kids with offers of food or by ­paying them between £2 and £3.50 to pose for lurid pictures.

Three of the boys – all under 12 and one of them only nine – claim he also molested them, a crime carrying a jail ­sentence of up to 20 years.

Slade was first publicly shamed for his evil appetites in 1975 when we revealed he was one of three ringleaders of PIE, which campaigned to legalise child-sex. …

Last night Shay Cullen, a Catholic priest and child-welfare worker in the Asian archipelago, said many perverts escaped ­justice by paying hush-money to the children and their families.

He said: “Lots of British paedophiles are coming over here.

“They treat children as sex-toys for their ­gratification and buy them for the price of a hamburger. But they will be caught.

“We are doing all we can to see that justice is done and to prevent victims and their parents being paid off.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
CBS Chicago

Mike Parker

CHICAGO (CBS) – Cardinal Francis George led a mass of atonement on Saturday, as part of the ongoing healing process for victims of clergy sex abuse.

CBS 2’s Mike Parker reports it seemed a sign of the progress the Catholic Church has made in the wake of the clergy sex scandal.

The cardinal was at Holy Family Church on Saturday to celebrate mass for the healing of abuse survivors, their families, the church, and society.

“Each day, we ask God to forgive our sins, and we ask for forgiveness also for the sins of others, particularly those who as priests or deacons or other clerics in the church have abused children,” George said.

Among those at the service was a man who, as a child, was abused by a priest, then kept silent for more than three decades.

“I consider the mass to be a healthy balance between acknowledging and apologizing for past abuse in our church, but also acknowledging and saying thank you to all of the good people who are protecting children in the Catholic schools and parishes,” Michael Hoffman said.

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UNITED KINGDOM
The Sunday Times

Margarette Driscoll

A ROMAN CATHOLIC bishop who has been forced to resign after claims of a love affair with a parishioner says he wants to remain a priest, despite breaking his vows of celibacy.

Kieran Conry, the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, resigned last week after the estranged husband of one of the women with whom he was said to have had a relationship threatened to sue the church.

The man had hired a private detective to follow his wife.

Conry, 63, says that he has received hundreds of messages of support and only one angry response.

He has admitted one previous sexual relationship. “I did wrong.” he said.

“Celibacy may be a tradition rather than an article of faith but the vast majority of priests are faithful to their promise.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
Daily Herald

Daniel White

Cardinal Francis George celebrated a Mass of Atonement and Hope Saturday at Holy Family Church in Chicago to promote healing for child and youth sexual abuse survivors, their families and the Catholic Church.

“As a clergy-abuse survivor, I consider this Mass to be striking a healthy balance by apologizing and acknowledging for abuse that happened in the past, but also for being thankful for all the hard work going into protecting children now in our Catholic Schools and parishes,” said Mike Hoffman, one of the founders of a Healing Garden created in 2010 adjacent to the church. “This event is a very healthy way to do that.”

The Mass was attended by clergy, victims-survivors, family members of survivors, Catholic School leadership and others committed to the protection and safety of children.

“What I thought was powerful was the fact that the Mass was all about children and the survivors and there was no talk about the perpetrators,” said Tom McCarthy of Hanover Park. “It was all about praying for atonement and for the children.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
WLS

CHICAGO (WLS) — Chicago’s Francis Cardinal George was the main celebrant at a Mass of atonement and hope Saturday.

It is part of the healing process for sexual abuse survivors, their families and the church.

The service took place at Holy Family Catholic Church in Chicago.

There was also a service at a nearby Healing Garden, a place for survivors of clergy sex abuse to pray.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

By Michelle Manchir

Cardinal Francis George called for the continued healing of sexual abuse survivors and the rebuilding of trust with the Catholic church at a mass Saturday that included an address from a victim of abuse by a priest.

Referring to the sexual abuse of young people by clergy as a “terrible injustice,” George led a mass of “atonement and hope” for victims and their families at Holy Family Catholic Church in the Little Italy neighborhood.

“When trust is betrayed, then of course hope also leaves,” George said during a homily that lasted about six minutes.

George said it was important to pray for forgiveness and keep up with the work the archdiocese and others have done to rebuild trust and hope among the abused.

People at the mass said they were glad George chose to address the issue in the final weeks that he will head the archdiocese. Bishop Blase Cupich of Spokane, Wash. is set to take over Nov. 18.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

BY JUDY L. THOMAS
THE KANSAS CITY STAR
10/03/2014

Jon David Couzens faced Jackson County jurors on Friday and for more than three hours described the repeated acts of sexual abuse he said he endured three decades ago at the hands of a Catholic priest.

In graphic detail and at times sobbing, the former altar boy told jurors that the abuse began when he was 9 or 10 years old and a student at Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary school in Independence. Monsignor Thomas O’Brien, he said, molested him in the confessional as he sought forgiveness for his sins. In the sacristy while preparing for Mass. In the church basement after a Cub Scout Pinewood Derby event. And in the monsignor’s own bedroom in the church rectory.

“He raped me, he abused me, he molested me,” Couzens said. “All of those things.”

Jurors heard the fifth day of testimony in a civil trial involving Couzens, who filed a lawsuit against the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph saying O’Brien sexually abused him in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Couzens claims the diocese was told repeatedly that O’Brien was a danger to children but failed to prevent the abuse.

The diocese contends that no credible evidence exists to prove those allegations and argues that Couzens’ claims of repressed memory are invalid. O’Brien, who has been the subject of dozens of sexual abuse lawsuits, died last year at 87.

During his testimony, Couzens described growing up in a Catholic family where he was taught to revere priests.

“Priests were next to God himself,” he said. But when he was in the fourth or fifth grade, Couzens said, O’Brien began targeting him for abuse.

As Couzens testified, Pedro Irigonegaray, one of his attorneys, carried a small blue Royals jacket to the witness stand. Couzens said he wore the jacket when he was 10 years old — the time frame that he was being molested.

He said much of the abuse took place in the confessional. O’Brien would move him to the back of the line, he said, so he would be the last to confess. Once inside the confessional, he said, O’Brien abused him.

“This was during the time that he was forgiving you for your sins?” Irigonegaray asked.

“Yes,” Couzens said.

As Couzens described the sexual abuse, he looked at his mother, who sat in the packed courtroom with other family members, friends and former classmates of Couzens. “I’m sorry, Mom,” he said, sobbing.

Couzens also described incidents that he said occurred in the sacristy with three other altar boys. On multiple occasions, he said, O’Brien would line them up against the wall and make them perform sexual acts on him and on one another.

“Every time that he had his way, he would grab us by the face and he would tell us that if we told, we would die and go to hell, we would get kicked out of the Catholic Church and our parents would disown us,” he said.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

OCTOBER 01, 2014

Amos Aikman
Northern Correspondent
Darwin

FORMER residents of a Darwin missionary home where Stolen Generation and other children were allegedly viciously sexually abused will try for the third time to get justice by asking police to lay fresh charges against one of their accused tormentors, convicted pedophile Donald Henderson.

A small group, including people who recently gave evidence to Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, left hearings in Darwin this morning and marched to a nearby police station, where they asked officers to take statements reopen investigations.

The commission has heard graphic accounts from former residents who say they were beaten, chained and raped by some of the missionaries who ran the Retta Dixon Home inside Darwin’s Bagot Aboriginal reserve between 1946 and 1980.

Mr Henderson was twice prosecuted for allegedly sexually abusing children at the RDH, first in 1975 and then again in 2002. At one stage he faced more than 80 charges, but both cases collapsed before they got to trial. In 1984 he pleaded guilty to two counts of indecently assaulting young boys at a Darwin swimming pool.

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AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Wednesday 1 October 2014

Former residents of a home for Indigenous children that has been at the centre of recent hearings of the royal commission into child sexual abuse have marched on a Darwin police station to demand charges be laid against an alleged abuser.

The royal commission has wrapped up after almost two weeks of hearings in Darwin about the Retta Dixon home, which housed children from 1946 until 1980.

Nine former residents gave harrowing evidence of physical, emotional and sexual abuse suffered at the hands of carers.

This included being raped and molested, belted until they bled, force-fed until they vomited, and chained to their beds.

Former house parent Donald Henderson was twice committed to stand trial for sexual abuse, in 1976 and 2002, but both times prosecutors dropped the charges over a lack of evidence.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

OCTOBER 02, 2014

Amos Aikman
Northern Correspondent
Darwin

FORMER residents of a Darwin missionary home where Stolen Generations and other children were allegedly serially sexually abused have threatened demonstrations if the site is not given to them and turned into a community centre and a “sea of flowers”.

A group marched on a Darwin police station yesterday demanding action against convicted pedophile Donald Henderson, who a royal commission has heard molested children at the Retta Dixon Home in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse concluded yesterday after nearly two weeks of hearings into alleged abuse at the home operated by Australian Indigenous Ministries inside Darwin’s Bagot Aboriginal reserve.

The commission heard children were routinely beaten, chained up and subjected to shocking viol­ations, including being raped repeatedly, being rubbed with feces and forced to eat their own vomit.

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AUSTRALIA
7 News

ABC

BY SALLY BROOKS AND XAVIER LA CANNA
October 5, 2014

Indigenous children housed between 1946 and 1980 at a former Darwin institution now at the centre of child sex abuse allegations are pursuing legal action against those they say responsible for their suffering.

On Saturday, alleged victims from the Retta Dixon home met at the site where the facility once stood.

An Aboriginal smoking ceremony to cleanse the area was held and traditional dances were performed.

Retta Dixon was a home in Darwin that operated for more than three decades and housed mainly Aboriginal children, many of whom identify as being from the Stolen Generation.

Irene Pearson, a former resident of the home, said the gathering marked an important part in the healing process.

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VATICAN CITY
GlobalPost

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of a leading British Roman Catholic Bishop who acknowledged that he had broken his vows and who was believed to have had an affair with a married woman, the Vatican said on Saturday.

Bishop Kieran Conry of the diocese of Arundel and Brighton, one of Britain’s largest, disclosed in an announcement posted on the diocese’s website last week that for years he had been “unfaithful to my promises as a Roman Catholic priest” and had decided to offer his resignation.

He apologized for the “shame that I have brought on the diocese and the Church” but he said his actions were not illegal and did not involve minors.

Neither Conry’s statement nor the Vatican statement gave any details of how the 63-year-old bishop had broken his vows, but British media reported that he had had a long-running affair with a married woman some 20 years his junior.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Catholic Herald

By FR ALEXANDER LUCIE-SMITH on Friday, 3 October 2014

The print edition of the Catholic Herald makes very interesting reading today. On Monday, Bishop Kieran Conry, who had earlier spoken to the Daily Mail, spoke also to this paper. The Herald report also carried a quotation from a member of the diocese, a voice from the pew, if you like.

I am struck by the ‘disconnect’ between what he has to say and what the member of his flock has to say. What this boils down to is something that we have heard many times: there is a lack of accountability and transparency in the governance of the Catholic Church. In a way, the sad outcome of Bishop Conry’s career is not really what is important here: what is important is to consider how we arrived at this point in the first place. What is needed now is something very simple: an investigation into the way bishops rule their dioceses, and the checks and balances that are in place, and the way that bishops are chosen, and supervised and supported after they are chosen. This does not simply concern England: this seems to be a universal problem, given the way several bishops have been sacked of late.

Of course, we all know that canon law and the customs of the Church make provision for all of these matters. But this is the real point: canon law is not working. Bishop Conry’s appointment as bishop was made according to the processes laid down in canon law, but these processes, which should have brought to light several red lights, or at least amber ones, on his path to the episcopate, failed to work.

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UNITED STATES
Standing on My Head

October 3, 2014 by Fr. Dwight Longenecker

I wrote earlier in the week here about the resignation of Kieran Conry and was one of the few voices to say, “Hang on. Let’s not just brush this under the carpet with a sweet Christian, ‘Well we are all sinners, let’s forgive and forget and move on. Water under the bridge. Nothing more to see.’”

In fact there is more to see and some sources from the UK who are very much on the inside with this story have emailed me with information that justifies a bit more attention to this sad tale.

You can be sure the left leaning media will give it more attention. They’ll use it to push for an end to celibacy for priests, re-marriage of divorcees and then same sex marriage and the whole shootin’ match.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Independent Catholic News

Following the unexpected resignation of the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, Bishop Kieran Conry, Archbishop Peter Smith, who leads the Archdiocese of Southwark, and Cardinal Emeritus Cormac Murphy O’Connor, who served as Bishop of Arundel and Brighton for 24 years, before he came to Westminster, have sent letters of support to the Diocese which will be read out at all all Masses this weekend. The texts of both letters follows below.

Archbishop Smith writes:

My Dear brothers and sisters,

The announcement last weekend that Bishop Kieran had offered his resignation to the Holy Father came as a great shock and was very distressing. Working with him in the Bishops’ Conference since 2001, and more recently as a Bishop of the Province of Southwark, I am well aware of all his dedicated work in the Diocese and nationally in his work as Chairman of the Department of Evangelisation and Catechesis.

My heart goes out to you at this difficult time, and I just wanted to write and let you know that I have offered Mass for you and all those hurt or distressed by Bishop Kieran’s actions. I will be keeping you and all those involved in my prayers in the coming weeks and months as you continue your preparations to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the Diocese next year.

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VATIKAN
Zeit

Franziskus wird für sein hartes Durchgreifen beim Thema Missbrauch von den Medien gefeiert. Doch es bleiben Zweifel am Aufklärungswillen des Papstes. VON JULIUS MÜLLER-MEININGEN, ROM

Der Vatikan ist der kleinste Staat der Welt. Aber dass hier Gut und Böse so nahe beieinanderwohnen, ist doch eine Überraschung. Franziskus lebt im zweiten Stock des Gästehauses Santa Marta an der gleichnamigen Piazza im Schatten des Petersdoms. Seit Dienstag vor einer Woche hat hier auch Jozef Wesolowski sein vorübergehendes Zuhause. Der ehemalige Erzbischof und päpstliche Nuntius in der Dominikanischen Republik sitzt im unmittelbar an Santa Marta angrenzenden Gebäude des Vatikan-Tribunals im Hausarrest. Beide – der Papst und der bislang höchste wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs belangte Prälat – haben denselben Blick aus dem Fenster. Er geht auf eine Tankstelle.

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NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

By Mark Mueller | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on October 04, 2014

Calling the actions of one his priests “inexcusable,” Trenton Bishop David M. O’Connell on Friday publicly apologized to a South Jersey man who says he was sexually assaulted hundreds of times in the 1980s and 1990s by the diocese’s former youth leader.

In a four-paragraph statement placed prominently on the diocese’s website, O’Connell offered his prayers for the alleged victim, Chris Naples, and for “all those affected by the horrible scourge of sexual abuse of minors.”

O’Connell issued the statement hours after NJ Advance Media disclosed that Naples had reached a $610,000 settlement with the diocese in August. Naples filed suit against the diocese five months earlier, alleging church officials knew the Rev. Terence McAlinden was a danger to children and allowed him to remain in ministry anyway.

Naples said in a story published Friday that an apology was one of his key demands during the negotiations but that he had not yet received one.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register

by Edward Pentin Saturday, October 04, 2014

The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal have announced that Father Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R., has died at the age of 81.

The co-founder of the order passed away on October 3rd at 11 PM, the vigil of the feast of St. Francis.

The Cardinal Newman Society reported on their facebook page earlier this week that Father Groeschel had taken a fall and reinjured the same arm that was hurt in his accident ten years ago. One of his brother friars, Father Glenn Sudano, said that Father Groeschel was in much pain.

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VATICAN CITY
New Zealand Herald

Sunday Oct 5, 2014

VATICAN CITY (AP) Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of a British bishop who admitted last week that he had been “unfaithful” to his vows as a priest.

In a statement read across his Arundel and Brighton diocese, Bishop Kieran Conry didn’t say what he had done but said “my actions were not illegal and did not involve minors.”

British news reports have said the 63-year-old Conry had an inappropriate relationship with a married woman in his parish.

In a statement Saturday, the Vatican said Francis had accepted Conry’s resignation under the code of canon law that allows for bishops to resign early if they are sick or for another “grave” reason that makes them unfit for office.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
CBS 58

by Priscilla Luong

MILWAUKEE– Seven hundred people gathered at the Hyatt in Downtown Milwaukee Friday evening for the St. Francis of Sales Seminary Dinner.

“If it happens to fall on a day that we’re scheduled in court, it’s just a coincidence,” said Archbishop Jerome

Tickets for the event cost $150.00 per person. Organizers say the celebration is the largest fundraiser the seminary has ever had, with proceeds going to recruit and retain new priests, but it came just hours after the Milwaukee Archdioceses’ bankruptcy hearing.

“This is a time to express tremendous remorse,” said Peter Isely, Midwest Director for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

Isley says the annual fundraiser could not come at a worse time.

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NEW YORK
Time Warner Cable News

By: Antoinette DelBel
Updated 10/03/2014

CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. — Churches are seen as a safe haven for many, but behind the walls of Hedstrom Baptist Church in Cheektowaga, police said there were some troubling incidents involving a then-12-year-old girl and 26-year-old man.

“It was something that’s very disturbing,” said Cheektowaga Assistant Police Chief Jim Speyer.

During the summer of 2013, Speyer said Caleb Sexton, 27, had sexual contact with the apparent victim. Police said the abuse went on for about four months in a secluded part of the church.

The girl eventually confided in her mother, which led to Sexton’s arrest last Friday.

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NEW YORK
WGRZ

[with video]

Erica Brecher
October 3, 2014

CHEEKTOWAGA, NY — A Lancaster man faces child sex charges for his alleged sexual contact with a 12-year-old girl last year.

Caleb Sexton, 27, is charged by Cheektowaga Police with a criminal sexual act in the second degree, sexual abuse in the second degree, and child endangerment.

Police say this all took place at the Hedstrom Baptist church over a nine-month period last year.

That’s where the relationship started. Sexton and his then-12 year-old victim met at church. Then they became friends on Facebook, where Cheektowaga police say the two often chatted.

“It ended up turning into a relationship where he took advantage of her trust,” said assistant police chief Jim Speyer.

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NEW YORK
WIVB

By Elysia Rodriguez
Published: October 3, 2014

CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. (WIVB) – A Lancaster man allegedly had sexual contact with a 12-year-old girl over a period of time in 2013 at the Hedstrom Baptist Church in Cheektowaga, where his father is the pastor.

Police say 27-year-old Caleb Sexton met the girl at the church in January 2012. The victim befriended Sexton on Facebook a year later, where they regularly chatted.

That summer, police say Sexton would meet the victim in a secluded part of the church and had sexual contact with her on multiple occasions. The encounters lasted until September 2013.

“They gravitate towards these positions of trust and, unfortunately, they betray their trust,” said Cheektowaga Police Asst. Chief James Speyer. “They’re preying on the weakest members of our society: our children.”

When the girl’s mother learned about the incidents in late August, she contacted police. Sexton was arrested September 26 following an in-depth investigation and charged with second degree criminal sexual act, second degree sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child.

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WASHINGTON
Seattle PI

Posted on October 3, 2014 | By Joel Connelly

Churches are at their most private, even opaque, when called upon to investigate in-house charges of misconduct. The troubled Mars Hill Church is acting in that tradition while probing allegations brought by 21 former church elders against Senior Pastor Mark Driscoll.

Driscoll announced Aug. 25 that he was taking “a break for processing, healing and growth for a minimum of six weeks,” while a board of elders would investigate accounts of abusive, duplicitous conduct toward staff and pastors at the Seattle-based mega-church.

The redoubtable Warren Throckmorton, a Pennsylvania-based professor who writes for the Patheos website, has exposed a myriad of internal secrets at Mars Hill.

He has been on the Driscoll watch as one of two nationally watched investigations into clerical error. The other is a Vatican probe of whether Bishop Robert Finn is fit to continue leading the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese. Finn pleaded guilty to shielding a priest accused in a sexual misconduct case.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis seems, with his diversionary Family Synod strategy, to be pressing very hard to change the subject and distance himself from the escalating fallout from the priest child rape scandal. Francis has for over 18 months mainly avoided addressing this scandal directly, effectively and transparently, even though the scandal is the most serious Vatican crisis since 1789. The French Revolution then began the challenges to absolute monarchies like the Vatican, the world’s oldest continuous unaccountable monarchy. The revolutionary fever has now crossed the Tiber to Vatican Hill. Increasingly, Catholics are demanding accountability of its leaders, as had existed for centuries in the Church that the disciples of Jesus, including some women, left behind.

The latest major abuse scandal fallout may soon be emitted from Puerto Rico (PR), a territory of the USA, where the papal apostolic delegate to PR, Archibishop Wesolowski, had been the senior Vatican official for five years. He fled secretly last year to the Vatican’s purported legal immunity protection, as potential investigation targets Cardinals Law and Pell seemingly also have done. Indeed, Pell appears still to be in the cross hairs of the important commission that is investigating institutional child sexual abuse in Australia and that is also relentlessly moving in on the Vatican’s complicit role there, it appears.

Significantly, President Obama’s Federal prosecutors in PR recently have stepped up considerably priest child abuse and related criminal investigations. Given Wesolowski’s reported computer stash of 100,000+ child porn images, and his reported sexual obsession with young boys, US investigators may soon identify some Puerto Rican boys, all US citizens, as being among his many child victims. Obama’s Federal prosecutors are also involved in Minneapolis priest child porn investigations relating to allegations previously reviewed insufficiently by the Vatican and by local vicar general, Fr. Kevin McDonough, close brother of Denis McDonough, Obama’s Chief of Staff.

US Federal prosecutors treat child porn as a very serious criminal matter. Also, the US has an extradition treaty with Italy, but not with the Vatican. This may help explain Weslowski’s reportedly being moved to a Vatican apartment, since he had earlier been spotted walking freely in Rome in Italian territory.

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VATICAN CITY
RTE News

By Joe Little

During next Sunday’s Mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis will open an Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Catholic family and its future.

Already preparations for the gathering have made waves, with last year’s unprecedented circulation online of a Vatican questionnaire designed to gauge what Catholics think of Church teaching on issues like contraception, abortion, and homosexual unions.

But all continents will be represented and issues far from removed from the western mindset will also be discussed.

The fortnight-long Synod is shaping up to be the most open consultation of its kind since Pope Paul VI introduced such gatherings almost 50 years ago after the Second Vatican Council.

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LOUISIANA
Christian News Wire

Catholic Action Organization Rallies Support for Diocese of Baton Rouge’s Religious Liberty Appeal to U.S. Supreme Court

Contact: Thomas McKenna, Catholic Action for Faith and Family, 858-461-0777

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 3, 2014 /Christian Newswire/ — Catholic Action for Faith and Family (CatholicAction.org) has filed an Amicus Brief with the Supreme Court of the United States in support of the Diocese of Baton Rouge, which is appealing a ruling that a diocesan priest may be forced to break the Seal of Confession.

A state appeals court initially ruled that a confession, made by a minor allegedly regarding her sexual abuse at the hands of a parishioner, was “confidential” and that the priest did not have to testify in court as to its alleged contents or whether it even took place.

In May, however, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that the priest of the Baton Rouge Diocese could be forced to testify in court about the supposed confession.

In response, Catholic Action for Faith and Family contacted the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund (consciencedefense.org) to prepare a “Friend of the Court” Brief, which it did in less than a week. Working with nationally acclaimed attorney Charles LiMandri and his team of attorneys, Catholic Action for Faith and Family obtained the support of 17 other Catholic and Christian organizations that signed on to the Brief. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Catholic Answers, Catholics Come Home, The National Pro-Life Religious Council and Priests for Life were just a few of the organizations who joined the Brief.

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WISCONSIN
WTAQ

MILWAUKEE (WTAQ) – A judge took steps today to keep the Milwaukee Catholic Archdiocese bankruptcy case moving forward.

Federal Bankruptcy Judge Susan Kelley met with lawyers for the church, victims of sex abuse by priests, and other creditors. She outlined a plan for dealing with issues that were not resolved after a second round of mediation sessions in recent weeks.

The next court hearing in the case was set for October 22nd. Kelley’s agenda includes determining which abuse victims have valid claims.

That’s after 575 abuse victims sought compensation, and the Archdiocese proposed paying just 130 of them. Kelley also wants to resolve sticking points that deal with insurance matters, and the value of the archdiocese bank accounts.

The judge also told the church to give the creditors’ attorneys financial statements for 15 parishes.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
TribTown

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First Posted: October 03, 2014

PHILADELPHIA — In a story Oct. 2 about property sales by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, The Associated Press reported erroneously the amount and type of liabilities the sales are to help offset. The sales will help pay about $126 million in pension and trust and loan fund liabilities, not $287 million in pension and insurance liabilities.

A corrected version of the story is below:

Philadelphia Archdiocese sells properties for $56M

Philadelphia Archdiocese sells properties for $56 million to help shore up finances, pensions

By KATHY MATHESON

Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA — The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia is selling three parcels of land for more than $56 million in an effort to shore up its finances, church officials announced Thursday.

Most proceeds from the transactions, which involve about 700 acres in the Philadelphia suburbs and Lehigh Valley, will go toward a parish trust and loan fund. About $3.7 million will go to the priests’ pension fund, officials said.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Christian Order

January 2002

MICHAEL McGRADE

“Theology in crisis has become a crisis of faith in God. Private judgement has been substituted for Catholic belief. Faith in the divine foundation of the Church, in many places, has vanished.
Cardinal Ratzinger

“I am left with my back to the wall. God Himself will see to the saving of His Church.”
Pope Pius VII, 1809

As Father Paul Marx, OSB, the great pro-life apostle and founder of Human Life International put it to me a few years ago, “the Church is in total chaos.” I knew it was. But when that familiar fact is confirmed by someone of his stature who has observed the Catholic crisis first-hand in close to 100 countries, it gains new resonance. Thirty-six years after the Council the Body of Christ remains deeply sick, and from Capetown to Quebec, from Christchurch to Cork, with a mere handful of noble exceptions in between, there is no cure in sight. When scandal becomes scandalously routine – so much a part of the Catholic landscape that one is astonished if a priest gets through Holy Mass without improvisation, sacrilege or heresy, or one sighs with blessed relief when a cleric gets caught with a female rather than a male – when it comes to that, you know that “crisis” has become “chaos” has become “basket case.” …

Bishop Kieran Conry

Father Summersgill, of course, can afford a ‘sticks and stones…’ response to all this, because he is on track for the episcopal heights and controversies are not about to derail him. Should he ever strike trouble, however, he need only phone Bishop Kieran Conry for reassurance. Recently installed in Cardinal Murphy O’Connor’s former diocese of Arundel and Brighton (or what is left of it after his tenure), the former Mgr. Conry was earmarked for higher things by Cardinal Hume during his time as Director of the Catholic Media Office. Despite one priest’s assessment of his time there as being “by any objective standards a disaster,” Mgr Conry became one of the sponsored ‘untouchables’ – and acted accordingly. “For a period I saw quite a bit of Conry,” a deacon confided. “He seemed to live in a secular, corporate world rather than a priestly one. I never once saw him dressed as a priest. His point of view was unfailingly liberal.” In other words, he was left to do his own thing. And if that is considered par for the priestly course nowadays, I guess one could say the same about his ‘special friendship.’ “Kieran was often seen out and about with his female friend,” a London priest informed me. “Everyone knew about it in the same way that everyone, including the bishops, knew about the homosexual relationship between Martin Pendergast [ex-Carmelite priest] and Julian Filochowski [Director of CAFOD, the bishops’ overseas aid agency].”

Several years ago, around the time of the Roddy Wright scandal, I explored how British bishops turn a blind eye to the “occasion of sin” in which a priest “keeping company” places himself, tempting fate and grave scandal [“Six Bishops and a Funeral: Why The Common Good was Dead on Arrival,” CO, Jan. 1997]. At that time, in commenting on the routine breaking of vows of chastity acknowledged by the hierarchy in a message to the Pope, Mgr (now Bishop) Arthur Roche had assured The Times that “… the bishops of England and Wales are realists.” Just how “realistic” they are I indicated by relating, among other cases, the example of the London priest well known to be living with his Pastoral Assistant, who he took along to Deanery meetings at the Bishop’s house! In that context, Mgr Conry ‘merely’ keeping regular company in such public fashion is hardly surprising. Yet even if such increasingly common ‘relationships’ are purely platonic, the point is that scandal is given, above all to those of simple and delicate conscience who are offended by it and interpret it in a bad sense. St. Joseph Cafasso, a nineteenth century version of the Cure of Ars, called this kind of scandal “the scandal of the little ones.” A priest’s life is not his own, and so the Saint exhorts him to absolutely abstain from any behaviour which might give scandal, even if caused by appearance only and the result of the ignorance of others.

One assumes that this is the case with Mgr Conry. But regardless, does it not leave the gravest questions about ecclesiastical propriety? Not to say about his prudential judgement and ability to offer wise moral leadership and counsel to others? Especially when shortly before his episcopal consecration Mass he is seen in Italy strolling hand in hand and enjoying leisurely outings with his lady friend at Palazzola, the residence on Lake Albano belonging to the English College. Again, it was the appearance of scandal that upset those who viewed the liaison, including one priest who was sufficiently disgusted to make representations to a Vatican Congregation. Word quickly spread and it is said that Church authorities may have queried Mgr Conry about the matter. Whatever the case, it is a measure of the unqualified protection afforded to Modernist cronies that not only did Mgr Conry’s less than discreet romantic entanglement not disqualify him from consideration for a bishopric in the first place, but that the Palazzola coup de grace did not even delay his elevation by a single day. It is especially shocking in light of the numerous sexual scandals in recent years which have caused such harm to the Church in general and episcopate in particular, and which, one might have thought, would have seen Rome acting swiftly to snuff out the slightest possibility of further tabloid headlines. Not on your life. Ensconced in a plum see, Bishop Conry is now fulfilling the standard expectations of his liberal patrons: Protestantising and bureaucratizing his diocese behind a welter of Modernist buzz-words about “community,” “renewal” and “change.”

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UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail

How the Church covered up its Casanova bishop for 12 years: The Catholic Bishop of Brighton has resigned after two affairs with parishioners and now he’s linked to a THIRD

By BARBARA DAVIES FOR THE DAILY MAIL

By all accounts, the ordination of Kieran Conry was a suitably dignified and solemn affair. Hundreds of worshippers filled the vast neo-Gothic spaces of Arundel Cathedral in West Sussex to watch him be installed as their new Roman Catholic bishop in June 2001.

But even as the car mechanic’s son from Coventry lay prostrate on the Cathedral’s stone floor to show his humility before God in the historic ceremony, rumours were circulating about his suitability for the weighty role ahead of him.

This week, after more than 13 years as Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, 63-year-old Conry dramatically resigned after revelations of love affairs with two parishioners — one of them a 43-year-old married mother-of-two — admitting that he had been ‘unfaithful to his promises’ as a priest.

But his insistence that the Catholic Church knew nothing about his affairs has been met with a chorus of disbelief — and not just from the husband of one of the women.

The husband is now consulting lawyers after claiming to have proof that the Catholic authorities did know about Conry’s behaviour, and simply chose to turn a blind eye to it.

There are growing calls from leading Catholics for a Papal inquiry into who within the Church knew what, and when.

As Conry’s resignation threatens to plunge the Church into yet another scandal, Britain’s most senior Catholic cleric, Cardinal Archbishop Vincent Nichols, has refused to comment on accusations of yet another cover-up. …

The January 2002 edition of Christian Order, which is published in Britain, quoted an unnamed priest saying: ‘Kieran was often seen out and about with his female friend. Everyone knew about it.’

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

By Phil Lawler | Oct 03, 2014

Suppose you were arrested and told that you’d be facing criminal charges that could lead to a 12-year prison sentence. Would you say that the police were “sheltering” you? I doubt it.

Yet a Boston Globe editorial complains that the Vatican is sheltering Jozef Wesolowski, the defrocked archbishop and former papal nuncio who now faces criminal prosecution before a Vatican tribunal.

You can argue that the Vatican should have been tougher on abusive bishops in the past, and you’d be right. You could say that in this case, the Vatican should have locked up Wesolowski as soon as he was recalled from his diplomatic assignment in the Dominican Republic, and you’d have a strong case. But now that the Vatican is doing the right thing—now that the accused former prelate is under arrest and will face criminal prosecution, it’s a strange time to register these complaints. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

“Vatican trial for abuse suspect undercuts zero-tolerance goal,” reads the Globe’s headline for the editorial. That’s a confusing statement in itself: Is the editorial suggesting that a criminal trial is a show of tolerance? And the argument that follows confuses the reader still further by Wesolowski case with the trial of Paolo Gabriele, the papal butler, on theft charges. The cases actually have very little in common, aside from the fact that they were (or in Wesolowski’s case, will be) tried before a Vatican tribunal.

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KENTUCKY
Business Wire

LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Attorneys at the national law firm of Owen, Patterson and Owen are representing an individual who was a student/athlete at Trinity High School in Kentucky, from approximately 1985 through 1989. While at Trinity High School, our client alleges he was repeatedly sexually abused by his football coach, Phillip Dale Anderson, at Anderson’s home. Our client also alleges he was sexually abused by a priest at Trinity, Ron Domhoff, on the school premises and teacher, Donald Switzer, in Switzer’s classroom at Trinity. He also states that the abuse started when he was in Jr. High. Our client is willing to share details of his abuse with the press in order to encourage other victims to come forward.

“For 30 years I have seen how lives are shattered when a child is molested. These monsters must be found and punished. If not, they victimize again and again. These children will never be the same”

Our client has found the courage to come forward with his story and tell the truth after viewing the story of another man’s abuse at the hands of Anderson, which aired on August 17, 2014 on WHAS 11 (http://www.whas11.com/news/Fmr-St-Raphael-teacher-arrested-charged-with-sexual-abuse-271623131.html). Our client believes that other victims, who were students at St. Raphael School in Louisville, Kentucky (“St. Raphael”), St. Agnes School in Covington, Kentucky (“St. Agnes”), and Trinity High School in Louisville, Kentucky (“Trinity”), were also abused by Anderson, Domhoff and/or Switzer.

“I encourage all students and athletes who were sexually abused by any of these men to come forward. We have to stop them from hurting others. The world needs to know about this and about how many lives have been damaged by what they did to not only our client, but likely to many others,” states Gregory J. Owen, Esq., lead trial counsel at Owen, Patterson and Owen.

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KENTUCKY
WHAS

Posted on October 3, 2014

Louisville, Ky. (WHAS11) – The Archdiocese of Louisville has placed a priest on administrative leave.

That comes after the Archdiocese was imformed by police that an adult male made allegations he was sexually abused in the 1980s.

Father Ronald Domhoff was the pastor at St. Peter the Apostle Parish on Johnsontown Road.
Police notified the Archdiocese that a man had just recently come forward, saying he’d been abused by three people during the 1980’s.

One of the people he is accusing of abuse is Father Domhoff.
He has not been charged in this case.

When an accusation of sexual abuse involving clergy is received , a leave of absence is standard procedure.

The Archiodese is working with authorities and is conducting an internal investigation.
During the leave, Domhoff is prohibited from public ministry.
———————————
The Archdiocese of Louisville released this statement on the matter:

Last weekend, at the Saturday and Sunday Masses on September 27-28, the parishioners of St. Peter the Apostle Parish (5431 Johnsontown Road) were informed that their pastor, Father Ronald Domhoff, has been placed on an administrative leave of absence. Parishioners also were informed in a letter from Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz.

Recently, the Archdiocese received information from the police that an adult male reported that as a minor during in the 1980s, he had been sexually abused by three persons, and Fr. Domhoff was named on that list. The Archdiocese has no other information about this report.
When an accusation of sexual abuse involving clergy or Church employees is received, the Archdiocese takes the following actions in accordance with its sexual abuse policies:

• A leave of absence for the person who has been accused.
• Outreach, if possible, to the person making the accusation.
• A report to civil authorities if not already contacted.
• An internal investigation of the accusation.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel Oct. 3, 2014

Whether Catholic parishes that harbored sex abuser priests should be given blanket immunity from future lawsuits is among the issues that will be hammered out in the coming months as the Archdiocese of Milwaukee attempts to emerge from its nearly 4-year-old bankruptcy.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley on Friday voiced disappointment that the parties could not reach a settlement during two rounds of talks last month. And she issued a road map that will dictate how the case proceeds, saying she wants it “on a fast track.”

“If this case is not going to be settled amicably…it’s time to litigate the remaining issues,” Kelley told attorneys at a status hearing on Friday. “I want this case over.”

The hearing came as the archdiocese filed a new round of objections to claims filed by individuals who allege they were abused by non-diocesan priests, parish staff and others for whom the archdiocese maintains it is not liable.

Kelley on Friday issued a schedule for taking up a number of disputed issues. Among them:

■ Whether the archdiocese’s proposed reorganization plan — which sets aside less than $4 million for 128 victims of diocesan priests — is fair and equitable.

■ Whether a key provision of that plan — a $8 million payment from London Market Insurers in return for a release from any future parish lawsuits — is reasonable.

■ And whether certain other assets, including the Cousins Center headquarters building and thousands of dollars in 50 or more fixed-income accounts, should be part of the bankruptcy estate.

The question of parish immunity — and whether the archdiocese should have to turn over parish financial information — prompted the day’s most heated exchange.

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TEXAS
Associated Baptist Press

By Bob Allen

A Southern Baptist megachurch in Texas is being sued by parents of a teenage girl claiming careless hiring and supervision of a former youth minister in prison for sexual assault of a child.

A lawsuit filed Oct. 1 in Harris County Court accuses Second Baptist Church in Houston of negligent hiring, supervision and retention of Chad Foster, a former youth pastor sentenced last year to five years in prison after pleading guilty to raping a 16-year-old girl in 2011 and soliciting another teen online.

The parents, identified by pseudonyms so their daughter remains anonymous, seek actual damages including the cost of counseling, as well as punitive and “exemplary” damages for “breach of fiduciary duty” after entrusting their daughter to the church’s care and breach of fiduciary and “vicarious liability,” claiming Foster was “acting within the scope of his employment” when he committed his crimes.

The lawsuit describes “a simple yet effective marketing scheme,” where Second Baptist Church entices preteens and teens in public schools with lunches provided by places such as McDonald’s or Pizza Hut. Youth counselors befriend the children they speak with and invite them to church activities.

“What we have here is the proverbial pedophile with candy in his pocket,” the victim’s attorney, Cris Feldman, told Houston TV station KPRC Local 2. “Except this pedophile in question was sent into public schools with candy in his pocket provided by Second Baptist.”

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CANADA
VOCM

[with audio]

A well known local public figure is coming out about sexual abuse he suffered as a child. VOCM’s Linda Swain reports.

Sean McCann of Great Big Sea has announced that he was the victim of sexual assault at the hands of his former priest when he was 16-years-old. He says after denying the abuse to himself for over 30 years, and resorting to alcohol to numb his pain, he has decided to speak out.

McCann recently attended a Recovery Breakfast in London Ontario, where he heard from speaker and former abuse victim Paulie O’Byrne who inspired him to share his own truth. O’Byrne is a London-based hockey player who was abused by a former hockey mentor. He resorted to drugs, and overdosed three times before coming to terms with the abuse that almost ruined his life. He says since starting to acknowledge the abuse, and sharing his story, he’s come to terms with the embarrassment and shame that nearly destroyed him.

McCann shared his story online this week, saying that he is taking back what was stolen from him, his innocence, his confidence and his trust, and knows that he is not alone.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By Sarah Farnsworth
Updated 3 Oct 2014

A recent Victorian Court of Appeal ruling has sparked concerns a clamp down on the way child abuse cases are handled could thwart convictions.

In June, three Court of Appeal justices ruled only cases that are “remarkably” similar would go before the same jury, making it harder for groups of victims to band together.

For cases to be heard together, the court needs to allow what is known as tendency evidence – which is used to prove a person’s tendency to act in a certain way.

In the case of sexual abuse, it can be used to establish predatory behaviour.

It was used successfully in the Sydney trial of Hey Dad! star Robert Hughes and in the UK trial of Australian entertainer Rolf Harris.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Many of the problems in the church today come from accepting men who are unsuitable for the priesthood, Pope Francis told the Congregation for Clergy.

The vocations crisis and lack of priests have meant that “we bishops are tempted to take in, without discernment, the young men who present themselves. This is bad for the church,” he told those taking part in the congregation’s plenary assembly meeting at the Vatican.

“We have to think of the good of the people of God,” which means taking the time to screen and “study” those seeking a vocation, he said Oct. 3.

“Examine closely whether he belongs to the Lord, if that man is healthy, is balanced, if that man is capable of giving life, of evangelizing, if he is capable of forming a family and turning that down in order to follow Jesus,” he said in off-the-cuff remarks.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

EDITORIAL

Finn – Fit to be Leader? The National Catholic Reporter (NCR) broke a story this week that Archbishop Terrence Prendergast of Ottawa has conducted an apostolic visitation — at the behest of the Vatican — of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri. The Archbishop, it is reported, asked of supporters and defenders of Bishop Robert Finn: Do you think Bishop Finn is fit to be a leader? It is possible that given all of the mounds of heart breaking evidence that’s been produced through the courage of the survivors in this crisis – evidence that has been ignored, attempted to be explained away, and pushed under massive rugs – Oriental and otherwise — and vigorously assigned – but not staying put – as history, — that the Archbishop will answer his question in the affirmative and deliver the answer to the Vatican that Finn is a fit leader. But, while we still are in that place in these days where the decision is yet to be make – or, if made, not yet carried out – it may be possible to entertain the thought of what hell freezing over would sound like. A cautionary damper is placed on this though by the at first hopeful news and then disclaimered news that the reason Paraguayan Bishop Rogelio Livieres Plano was removed from office was his protection of Monsignor Carolos Urritigoity against whom a federal lawsuit charging abuse was filed in the United States. The suit was followed by a bishop to bishop warning from Diocese of Scranton Bishop James Timlin not to give Utttigoity faculties in Paraguay. Now in the case of Finn’s fitness, Archbishop Prendergast stands in the breach. We urge any one with information regarding Bishop Finn’s and his diocese’s conduct in regard to the Shawn Ratigan child pornography case and the Diocese’s protestation of payment of $1.1 million ordered by an arbitrator for violating the 2008 settlement conditions for victims of sexual abuse by priests in the diocese to raise their voice, their pen, their email, their faxes – and any other method of preferred communication. We mean everyone with information: attorneys, advocates, people in the pews, concerned citizens, chancery officials, priests, deacons, religious, and brother bishops. We urge them to answer Archbishop Prendergast’s question: is Finn fit to be a leader? Here is Archbishop Prendergast’s contact information through the Archdiocese of Ottawa: The Diocesan Centre 1247 Kilborn Place Ottawa, Ontario K1H 6K9 Telephone number: 613-738-5025 The voicemail system, the Archdiocese says, is available 24/7 Fax number: 613-738-0130 E-mail: reception@archottawa.ca Or send your information to us and we’ll forward it.

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TEXAS
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, October 3, 2014

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Executive Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, ( 314-566-9790, davidgclohessy@gmail.com )

Parents of a girl who was groomed by a former youth pastor are suing two Texas churches. We applaud the bravery of these parents for seeking justice and exposing wrongdoers.

According to the suit , officials at the two Houston churches – Second Baptist Church and Community of Faith Church- were negligent in their supervision of Chad Foster. Foster was part of a recruitment scheme that allowed him into schools to recruit children into the church. It is there that he met a young girl and began to sexually assault her.

Foster plead guilty to the charges and in 2013 was sentenced to five years behind bars.

We urge church officials at Second Baptist and Community of Faith to reach out to anyone else who may have been hurt by Foster. They should also make immediate changes to their child protection policies to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again.

We hope anyone who saw, suspects or suffered abuse will speak up, call secular officials, and start healing.

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IRELAND
The Guardian (UK)

John Boyne – author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas – grew up gay in Catholic Dublin. Now, after years of silence he is finally ready to write about sexual abuse within the church – and to talk about the effect it has had on his life

John Boyne
The Guardian, Friday 3 October 2014

Over the course of my writing life, I’ve often been asked why I don’t set my novels in Ireland. To this question, I had a stock reply: that I didn’t want to write about my own country until I had a story to tell. Now, having written a book that takes the subject of child abuse in the Irish Catholic church as its theme, I wonder if that answer was entirely honest.

I’ve spent the past two years recalling experiences from my childhood and teenage years that I would rather forget, reliving events that should never have taken place and recreating through fiction, moments that seemed small at the time but that I’ve come to realise caused me great damage. Which makes me think that the real reason I never wrote about Ireland until now is explained in the opening sentence of my novel:

“I did not become ashamed of being Irish until I was well into the middle years of my life.”

When I was growing up in Dublin in the 70s and 80s, the parish priest lived in the house to my left while eight nuns lived in the house to my right. I was an altar boy, went to a Catholic school and was brought to mass every Sunday. I knew there were Protestants in Dublin, and Methodists and Jews and Mormons, but I never laid eyes on any of them, and probably would have run a mile if I had. They were going to hell, after all, or so the priests told us. And as long as we learned our catechism by heart and lived good Catholic lives, we were not.

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AUSTRALIA
New South Wales Government – Police Integrity Commission

The Commission is to hold a public hearing on Monday 13 October 2014 at 10.00am at the Commission’s hearing room, Level 3, 111 Elizabeth Street, Sydney.

The general scope and purpose of that hearing will be to investigate:

1. Whether there was any police misconduct involved in the participation of any New South Wales Police Force (“NSWPF”) officer in the Catholic Church Professional Standards Resource Group between 1998 and 2005; and

2. Whether there was any police misconduct involved in the participation by the NSWPF in any agreement, protocol or Memorandum of Understanding (whether or not formally entered into) between the NSWPF and the Catholic Church concerning the handling of complaints of abuse committed by Catholic Church personnel or employees.

Media enquiries: Pru Sheaves 9321 6777 or 0425 317 535

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

October 3, 2014

Nick Ralston
Crime Editor

The police corruption watchdog will investigate whether there was any misconduct by the NSW Police Force in its dealings with the Catholic Church over the handling of complaints of abuse.

The Police Integrity Commission’s investigation, dubbed Operation Protea, will conduct a public hearing in Sydney on October 13.

A statement from the PIC, released on Friday, said that it would examine two main areas.

The first is whether there was any police misconduct by any NSW officer in the Catholic Church Professional Standards Resource Group between 1998 and 2005.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Rhymes with Religion

The sexual abuse of boys is a topic that is all too often overlooked inside and outside of the Church. I am so grateful for my dear friend, Mike Reagan, who is working to bring about a greater public dialogue on this issue. As a survivor of child sexual abuse, Mike understands the unique dynamics and devastating stigmas associated with the sexual abuse of boys. With the assistance of writer and sexual abuse survivor, Jerome Elam, Mike contributes a guest post this week that will prayerfully help begin to empower the public and the Church to understand the issues related to the epidemic of male trafficking. It is only then that we are able to take effective steps to bring this nightmare to an end. – Boz
_____________________________________________________________________________

The heavy door closed with a loud thump as the young boy left the hotel room. As he walked, a look of pain swept across his face as he struggled to forget the physical and emotional trauma he had just endured. At the bottom of the stairs a man waited and as the boy approached he grabbed him by the arm and shook him. The boy reaches into his pocket and hands the man a collection of crumpled bills. The man slaps the boy across his face adding to the rapidly growing collection of bruises on his young body. He turns the boy’s pockets inside out as a candy bar and a small toy fall to the ground. The man drags the boy towards a nearby van and opens the back door. Inside a collection of boys and girls sit dirty and hungry in the grip of the dark world known as human trafficking. When they are not being sold for sex, the children are forced to shoplift and steal wallets. Many are from abusive homes and no one has ever reported them missing. The only constant in their lives is the feeling of worthlessness and the fear of death threats from the human traffickers that have stolen their lives and broken their spirits.

America is being eroded at its very base and one of the most rapidly expanding parasites on our society is the crime of human trafficking. The Department of Justice estimates that between 100,000 and 300,000 children are at risk of being trafficked in this country right now. Human trafficking is a $9.5 billion a year business in the U.S. according to the United Nations. Within the first forty-eight hours of leaving home, a runaway child will be approached by a human trafficker and is at risk of being forced into sexual servitude. Human trafficking is second only to the drug trade as the largest criminal enterprise according to the Justice Department. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) reports that pimps can make from $150,000 to $200,000 per year for each child. The NCMEC also reports a pimp has an average of four children and the Polaris Project, an anti-trafficking non profit, reports the average victim of sex trafficking is forced to have sex 20-48 times a day. These numbers are shocking and part of a tragedy that is actively swallowing America’s children. The life of a child being trafficked is brutal. Drugs, alcohol, beatings and death threats are used as tools to keep innocent children as slaves to the depths of depravity. The Federal Bureau of Investigation reports the average life span of a child being trafficked is seven years. The drugs, alcohol and abusive lifestyle wither the fragile spirit of a child leaving them to die in the shadow of hope.

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TENNESSEE
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, October 03, 2014

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 566 9790, davidgclohessy@gmail.com )

A registered sex offender in Nashville has been charged with child sexual crimes involving alleged victims he met at an Oregon church.

We are glad that law enforcement are working to find more victims.

Joseph William Wehage is listed as a registered agent of Oregon Territorial Assembly Church. Since he allegedly met one of his victims at church it’s very possible that he assaulted others who attend or work at the church or their children.

Wehage had been living in Nashville and we are concerned that he may have abused children there.

We urge anyone who saw, suspects or suffered wrong doing by Wehage to immediately call secular law enforcement. We urge staff and members at any church where he attended to aggressively seek out others who may have seen, suspected or suffered his crimes and beg them to call law enforcement.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Oct. 3, 2014

ROME
An unmistakable air of expectation mixed with uncertainty pervaded the atmosphere here as Pope Francis prepared to open in early October his global meeting of Catholic bishops to discuss issues of contemporary family life.

As of now, nearly every aspect of how the event will unfold is unclear — from how delicate questions like divorce and remarriage will be handled, to how much discussion will be allowed, to even if it will be known who is speaking each day inside the closed-door Oct. 5-19 Synod of Bishops.

But the one prelate who is chiefly responsible for shepherding the process said Wednesday that at least one thing is clear: The coming days would see an “opportunity to deal with existential issues,” both for individual families and for the Catholic church at large.

The theme is “the pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelization,” and synod members will be called upon to find ways to improve the pastoral application of church teachings, ways to explain it, and ways to help Catholics live it.

During their discussions, the bishops are going to attempt “to respond to the new challenges of the family, starting from the family as the main cell of society and the domestic church for Christians,” said Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri.

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, October 03, 2014

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

At the risk of seeming simplistic, children are safer when predators are imprisoned. So we are grateful that a Twin Cities pastor has been sentenced to 24 years behind bars for raping two girls.

It’s pathetic, and hurtful, to hear the manipulative claims Jacoby Kindred Sr. made to exploit the innocence of these girls. And it’s sad to see no remorse from him.

We suspect Kindred assaulted other children. Let’s hope each one of them feels validated and safer today. And let’s hope each one of them steps forward and starts healing.

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OREGON
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, October 03, 2014

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 566 9790, davidgclohessy@gmail.com )

A pastor from Oregon has been arrested for allegedly sexually abusing a child from Utah. We are grateful to the brave victim and her parents for alerting law enforcement.

According to police reports Leonel Rocha-Pereda was working on setting up a new church in Salt Lake City and had been staying with the victim’s family during the time of the abuse.

We are deeply disappointed that a man entrusted by this family and the community abused his position and allegedly touched and sent sexual text messages to a child.

We urge anyone who saw, suspects or suffered wrong doing by Rocha-Pereda, in Oregon or Utah, to immediately call secular law enforcement.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Catholic Herald

By FR MARK DREW on Friday, 3 October 2014

There is a story that when Giacomo della Chiesa was elected pope in September 1914, Cardinal Raphael Merry del Val turned to his neighbour in the Sistine Chapel and exclaimed: “This is a disaster!” His interlocutor wryly answered: “For Your Eminence, yes it is.”

Merry del Val had enjoyed untrammelled authority as secretary of state to Pius X, and della Chiesa, who took the name Benedict XV, was the candidate of a rival faction. Merry del Val had vigorously opposed his election and feared the end of his career. In the end, his fears were only partly fulfilled. Benedict was known to detest the Anglo-Spanish cardinal cordially, but he did not feel able to banish his influence completely. Although he was indeed replaced as secretary of state, Merry del Val lived out the remainder of his life as secretary of the Holy Office, a post only marginally less powerful.

Almost exactly a century later, many are sensing a settling of scores of a comparable, but more radical nature at work in the curial nominations being made by Pope Francis. So many heads have rolled, or are said to be about to roll, that one prominent Vaticanologist has written of a process of “de-Ratzingerisation” at work in the Curia.

It does seem at first sight as if several of those closest to Benedict XVI have fallen victim to the change of climate in Rome. First to feel the heat – at least publically – was the genial Italian Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, whose move a year ago from the post of prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy to the post of prefect of the Apostolic Penitentiary is hard to interpret as anything but a demotion. Another high profile change was the removal of the Spaniard Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera from the prefecture of the Congregation for Divine Worship – a congregation whose remit is at the heart of the Ratzingerian project – to become archbishop of his native Valencia. Since Cañizares was known as the “little Ratzinger” – as much on account of his appearance as because of his theology – many were quick to see his departure from Rome as evidence of a purge.

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MISSOURI
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, Oct. 3

For more info: Barbara Dorris ( 314 503 0003, SNAPdorris@gmail.com ), David Clohessy ( 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com , davidgclohessy@gmail.com )

Victims appeal to new SLU president
SNAP “Tell students & staff about abusive clerics”
SNAP: University has “long, sad history” of hiding predators
An ex-SLU head sexually exploited a 20 year old college student
Another admitted child molesting cleric works & lives across the street
A third was criminally charged in 2004 for sodomizing a St. Louis boy

A support group for clergy sex abuse victims is urging the new president of St. Louis University to disclose that several abusive priests have worked at the school and that an admitted child molesting cleric priest lives and works and lives on the edge of the campus.

One is a fugitive and another is a former SLU president, the group notes

Today, Dr. Fred P. Pestello will installed as the head of SLU. The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) wants him to “come clean” about “proven, admitted and credibly accused” current and former university staffers who have faced child sex or sexual misconduct allegations.

SNAP is most concerned about Fr. Vincent W. Bryce who, according to a Chicago newspaper and internet searches, works at the Aquinas Institute and lives in a Jesuit building at the corner of Grand and Lindell, both directly across from the SLU campus) despite the fact that he told his Catholic supervisor that he had molested at least one child.

[BishopAccountability.org]

The group is also concerned about Fr. Daniel O’Connell who is believed to still be living in St. Louis. According to the New York Times, he “was accused of sexually assaulting a 20-year-old college student in 1983. His Jesuit supervisors “found the accusation credible,” paid her a $181,000 settlement. and agreed to remove O’Connell “from a teaching post at another Jesuit institution” and bar him “from public ministry.”

[The New York Times]

Besides Fr. Bryce and Fr. O’Connell, the others proven, admitted or credibly accused abusive clerics to be or have been at SLU are Fr. Franklyn W. Becker, Fr. Juan Carlos Duran, Fr. Charles H. Miller, Fr. Gerhardt B. Lehmkuhl, Fr. Eugene Maio, Fr. John Slowey, Fr. John J. “Jack” Campbell, Fr. Edward F. Beutner, Fr. Chester E. Gaiter, and Fr. Thomas J. Naughton.

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NEW JERSEY
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, October 3, 2014

Statement by Mark Crawford of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 732-632-7687, mecrawf@comcast.net )

A lawsuit against a suspended priest with multiple allegations of child sexual abuse has been settled. We are grateful to the brave victims who fought for justice and accountability and hope he finds healing from this ruling.

Terence McAlinden was first placed on leave in 2007 after the diocese of Trenton learned about an investigation of child sexual abuse. This was allegedly the first time the diocese learned about allegations against Fr. McAlinden. However in 2011 another man came forward and said that he told the diocese about McAlinden in 1989 and settled with the diocese in 1992. And now they have settled with another victim.

The Diocese of Trenton knew McAlinden was a danger, but chose to ignore the warnings. It was nothing more than a savvy business move. Instead of doing the right thing church officials chose to avoid embarrassment and protect a predator. This settlement is damage control pure and simple.

If this settlement were any real sign of change, why hasn’t the bishop come out and apologized to each of all the other victims which have recently come forward in his diocese? Why hasn’t he posted the names and whereabouts of all the credibly accused on the diocesan website, so other families can be protected?

We hope others who may have seen, suspect, or suffered child sex crimes in the diocese of Trenton, by McAlinden or any other church official, will find the courage to speak up, expose predators and those who cover it up, and start healing.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article posted 3 October 2014)

New South Wales detectives have charged Marist Brother Peter Pemble (aged 66) with child-sex offences allegedly committed when he worked at a Catholic boys’ school early in his career, more than 40 years ago. The detectives allege that the incidents occurred at Maitland (in the Hunter region, north of Sydney) in 1971-1972, when Brother Pemble was in his twenties. Later in his career, Brother Peter Pemble became the principal of several Catholic schools in New South Wales before retiring in 2009.

In recent decades, Brother Pemble’s appointments as a principal have included:

* St Patrick’s Marist college Dundas, western Sydney;
* Marist College in North Sydney:
* Trinity Catholic College Lismore, northern NSW; and
*St Gregory’s College Campbelltown, south-western Sydney.

After retiring from teaching in 2009, Brother Peter Pemble began doing some study in Australia and overseas.

In mid-2014, while Brother Pemble was studying in Belgium, he made a visit to Australia. Detectives contacted him in Australia and interviewed him on 22 July 2014 at a Sydney police station about a complaint from a male who was a boy at Maitland in 1971-72.

Brother Pemble was then charged with three incidents of indecent assault of a male and was granted bail pending the court proceedings.

Detectives filed the charges at a hearing in the Newcastle Local Court on 14 August 2014. This was a brief administrative procedure. The court has scheduled the case to come up for further mention in the same court on a future date, for the next steps in the prosecution process.

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NEW YORK
Staten Island Advance

By Diane C. Lore | lore@siadvance.com
on October 03, 2014

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Roman Catholics on Staten Island are being asked to dig deeper into their wallets to increase their financial support of their local parish churches, as well as to help support the Catholic school system.

Pastors say the borough’s Catholic churches are struggling to pay a hefty regional “schools tax” assessed to each parish by the New York Archdiocese, at the same time many parishes are struggling to make ends meet and pay off debts to the Archdiocese.

For some parishes it could mean cutting back services to parishioners, such as reducing the number of Sunday masses, or parish youth and sports programs, in order to pay the school tax, balance their books, and pay off debts to the Archdiocese.

Some Island pastors say they have no recourse but to ask mass-goers to increase their giving. Some parishes are even accepting online donations.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
LaCrosse Tribune

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Attorneys for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, sexual abuse victims and others owed money in the church bankruptcy case are due back in court Friday after mediation failed to yield a deal.

The archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in 2011, saying it wouldn’t have the money to pay if it lost lawsuits filed by victims of clergy sexual abuse. Hundreds of victims then filed bankruptcy claims.

The archdiocese has proposed a bankruptcy reorganization plan that would set aside $4 million for roughly 130 people who were abused by priests who worked directly for the archdiocese, but nothing for hundreds of others abused by religious order priests or laypeople. Victims say that’s not enough.

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VATICAN CITY
InterAksyon

By: Philip Pullella, Reuters
October 3, 2014

VATICAN CITY — A global assembly of Roman Catholic bishops is shaping up as the first major showdown of Pope Francis’ papacy, with conservative and progressive cardinals trading insults ahead of its start on Sunday.

The two-week synod on the theme of the family will be attended by more than 250 people — nearly all of them bishops of the 1.2 billion-member Church and also 13 married couples.

The session will prepare the way for a larger gathering of Catholic clerics next year and could become a milestone in the clash between conservatives and liberals over the future direction of a Church that the pope has insisted must become less bureaucratic and theologically esoteric.

The synod, the first since Francis’ election in March 2013, is seen as a test case for him and his vision of a Church he wants to be closer to the poor and suffering and not “obsessed” by issues such as homosexuality, abortion and contraception.

The run-up to the meeting has been dominated by a rare public feud between cardinals centered on whether the Church should modify teachings that ban Catholics who have divorced and then remarried in civil services from receiving communion.

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BOSTON (MA)
Religion News Service

The October 8 event, which coincides with Extraordinary Synod of Bishops in Vatican City, will feature Cardinal George Pell and Cardinal Timothy Dolan

BOSTON (October 2, 2014) – Crux, a news website covering all things Catholic, has announced its first international event will take place on October 8 in Rome and feature leading voices within the Catholic Church. “Francis: A Pope For the 21st Century” will also live-stream at Cruxnow.com.

His Eminence George Cardinal Pell, Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, and His Eminence Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, will contribute to a discussion, led by Crux associate editor John L. Allen Jr., one of the premiere Vatican reporters in the world; Crux Vatican correspondent Inés San Martín; and national reporter Michael O’Loughlin.

Monsignor James Checchio of North American College and Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory will make opening remarks.

As a champion of openness, inclusiveness and social justice, Pope Francis has not shied away from voicing his views on global issues such as outreach to people on the margins, the role of women in both the church and society, immigrant rights and war and peace.

“People around the world are interested in what Pope Francis has to say,” said Brian McGrory, editor of the Boston Globe. “This discussion will focus on the pope’s role as a transformative religious figure for modern times. We also look forward to extending the conversation to other national and global locations with future events.”

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VATICAN CITY
IOL

October 3 2014

By Jean-Louis De La Vaissiere
Reuters

Vatican City – Pope Francis looks set to have his mettle tested by his first mutiny in the ranks this weekend at a Catholic meeting on the contentious issue of traditional marriage.

The Church has long refused to relax rules for “sinners”, but amid a flurry of countries legalising same-sex marriage and a rise in divorce levels, reform-minded Francis has suggested there may be wiggle-room on doctrine, sparking panic among conservatives.

Hundreds of bishops will attend the October 5-19 synod at the Vatican and tensions are running high after weeks of heated sparring.

“On the one side there are those who fear openness will result in the Catholic doctrine crumbling away, and on the other there are those who are waiting for big news and may be disappointed,” Iacopo Scaramuzzi, Vatican expert for TMNews, told AFP TV.

Francis said last year that it was time to “re-examine… rules or precepts” and “certain customs” in the Church, calling for generosity towards wayward believer

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MICHIGAN
TribTown

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First Posted: October 03, 2014

DETROIT — An investigator says a Detroit-area Catholic priest on trial in the theft of money from a fund set up to help poor people admitted to embezzlement following his arrest.

Detective Cory Williams, an investigator for the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, read from the statement by the Rev. Timothy Kane on Thursday in Circuit Court. In the statement, Kane says he had a sexual relationship with a prison inmate and embezzled money for the man and his family.

Afterward the testimony, Kane and his lawyer, Steven Scharg, declined comment. The Detroit Free Press reports (http://on.freep.com/1E8bCFb ) the trial resumes next week.

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