ABUSE TRACKER

SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
San Francisco Examiner

By Laura Dudnick @LauraDudnick

Parents at a Catholic elementary school in San Francisco renewed calls this week for the ouster of the parish’s controversial pastor after details emerged of a decade-old case in which he emotionally distressed a young girl at his former parish in Modesto.

The civil case, settled in San Joaquin County Superior Court in 2005, found that the Rev. Joseph Illo inflicted emotional distress on the 11-year-old girl while at St. Joseph’s Parish in Modesto. The incident occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, when the girl reported alleged sexual misconduct by another priest working under Illo.

Illo is now the parish administrator of Star of the Sea parish in The City.

The girl had gone to the rectory at St. Joseph’s to report the alleged sexual abuse of herself and her sister to Illo, the pastor of Father Francis Arakal, who was accused of the abuse. The lawsuit states that Illo in turn called the girl a liar and yelled at her, causing emotional distress. The girl was ultimately awarded $20,000 in damages.

Upon reading the plaintiffs’ settlement conference statement and judgment this week, parents at the K-8 school Star of the Sea Elementary School expressed further outrage over the latest clash between Illo and members of the school community. Previously, parents were upset about a new policy to no longer train girls as altar servers and the distribution of sexually explicit pamphlets to children before confession.

“If true, in my opinion, the parents of the school are owed an explanation and assurances as to the safety of their children,” Bob Regan, whose daughter attends Star of the Sea, said in response to the court documents.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

OREGON
The Oregonian

By Rick Bella | The Oregonian/OregonLive
on April 22, 2015

The mother of an alleged sex abuse victim told a Multnomah County jury Wednesday that her daughter never told her that Happy Valley Pastor Mike Sperou touched her inappropriately.

Her daughter, Jessica Watson, never complained – even when asked as a child – if she was uncomfortable around Sperou, said Karen Hartman, a teacher in Sperou’s North Clackamas Bible Community.

So an allegation brought to light later by her daughter, doesn’t ring true, she said. “The accusation doesn’t make sense to me,” Hartman said.

Hartman’s husband, Bill Hartman, an assistant pastor, also testified that Watson never told him of any abuse and that he doesn’t believe any occurred.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: Jerry Slevin on How “Finn Sacking . . . Points to Serious Trouble after the Chile Revolt for the Pope’s Upcoming Visit to Philly”

Jerry Slevin at Christian Catholicism on how the Finn sacking shows the tenacity of abuse survivor Marie Collins in holding the pope’s feet the fire regarding the abuse, the trouble he’s in following the revolt in Chile over his appointment of Juan Barros as bishop, and how all of this plays into the staging and messsaging of Pope Francis’s visit to the U.S. later in the year:

The Finn sacking shows that Marie Collins’ tenacity points to serious trouble after the Chile revolt for the pope’s upcoming visit to Philly, a key part of his evident and unfolding strategy to elect next year a “Vatican/US bishop friendly” right wing US president, with Jeb Bush the pope’s evident top choice.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

GEORGIA
WSAV

[with video]

SAVANNAH, GA – Abuse allegations have become all too common in connection with the Catholic Church.

One of those priests already convicted once served in our area.

Now one advocate group wants Savannah’s Bishop to step up and help his victims.

Wayland Brown was assigned to St James School back in 1987.

That’s when he’s accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting a 13 year old boy.

Brown has already served time in a Maryland prison, and settled two lawsuits for millions of dollars. Now a third, from Savannah, is pending.

One group took the fight for transparency, and for the victims, to the steps of the biggest church in Savannah.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CALIFORNIA
National Catholic Reporter

Monica Clark | Apr. 22, 2015 NCR Today

Msgr. Hien Minh Nguyen of the diocese of San Jose, Calif., was arrested April 18 in Florida on charges of tax evasion and bank fraud. He was on a personal leave of absence from ministry at the time of his arrest.

The 55-year-old priest appeared in a Fort Lauderdale court on Monday to face 14 charges of bank fraud and four counts of tax evasion. The San Jose Mercury News reported that the priest is expected to eventually face the charges in San Francisco federal court, where a grand jury indicted him earlier this month. If convicted, he could face up to 35 years in prison.

The indictment alleges that between 2005 and 2008, Nguyen deposited at least 14 checks, made out to the Vietnamese Catholic Center and totaling $19,000, directly into his personal account. He is also accused of failing to report $1.1 million of income to the IRS between 2008 and 2011.

San Jose Bishop Patrick McGrath said on Monday that this was the first time, to his knowledge, that an allegation of this nature has been made against a priest in the diocese, which was founded in 1981.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Editorial

Until 2005, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph was regarded as far more ecclesiastically moderate than the Archdiocese of St. Louis. That changed abruptly in 2005 when Robert W. Finn of St. Louis took over as bishop in Kansas City.

Bishop Finn, who grew up in Overland and was educated in archdiocesan seminaries, was a protege of then-St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke and a member of the ultra-conservative Catholic organization Opus Dei. He immediately began to make church practices in Kansas City more closely resemble those in St. Louis.

This was immensely satisfying to conservative Catholics in Kansas City, who were uncomfortable with the role of laymen and — especially nuns and laywomen — in diocesan affairs. Bishop Finn was old school, which was entirely his right. Up to a point.

In 2010, he took it upon himself to impose his episcopal prerogatives in a civil matter. In May that year, a parish school administrator reported teachers had become uncomfortable with Father Shawn Ratigan, the pastor of their parish. In December of that year, a computer technician found lewd photos of young girls on Father Ratigan’s computer.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Democrat

By David Hurst
dhurst@tribdem.com

Posted on Apr 22, 2015

A suspended Central City priest was arraigned Wednesday on his latest set of charges alleging he used mission trips to Honduras to have sex with street orphans there.

But the Rev Joseph Maurizio Jr’s defense attorney described the new indictment as old claims, ones the FBI investigated in 2009 and then dismissed.

“When (a prosecutor’s) original charge falls apart, their M-O is always to add more victims and more charges,” Attorney Stephen Passarello said of the new counts, which allege Maurizio abused two more Honduran boys and transferred mission trip money to the country to facilitate his crimes.

“I’m not seeing anything new here,” he said. “It’s still the same allegations the FBI (investigated) before their case was closed in 2010.”

A thinner, somewhat frail-looking Maurizio appeared for his brief arraignment at U.S. District Court in Johnstown to enter a “not guilty” plea.

Passarello said Maurizio will continue seeking a jury trial – and the attorney vowed he’ll do “everything I can” to keep the defendant’s scheduled September trial date from being delayed.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Hamilton and Griffin on Rights

Bishop Robert Finn of the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph MO finally has been fired by Pope Francis. The event culminates years of heroic effort by survivors, law enforcement, parishioners, and whistleblowers that saw:Screen Shot 2015-04-22 at 8.25.58 AM

• The conviction of Finn for waiting five months to report hundreds of child porn photos on his priest’s computer (Finn was sentenced to two years’ probation);
• A criminal conviction of the priest, Shawn Ratigan, for producing images of child sexual abuse;
• Successful lawsuits by dozens of Kansas City victims that forced the diocese to implement child safety measures and pay millions;
• A court ruling fining the diocese $1.1 million for multiple breaches of a 2008 child protection contract;
• A petition to the Vatican by 263,000 people;
• A petition to Pope Francis from a canon lawyer and a group of KC Catholics;
• Years of protests, editorials, social media campaigns, and billboards.

Given the enormous costs paid by survivors and others to achieve this week’s outcome, it’s small wonder that reaction seems muted. Relief is mingled with sadness and puzzlement that it took Pope Francis so long to do the obviously right thing. If the church had been following its own policies, Bishop Finn shouldn’t have been allowed to teach CCD, let alone run a diocese.

Adding to the subdued response is the Pope’s notable silence. His eloquence at pivotal moments on other issues of injustice has been transformative. But of this long delayed firing of a bishop who knowingly endangered children and deepened the trauma of survivors by hounding them ruthlessly in court, Francis has no comment. No denunciation of bishops who endanger children, no promise that other guilty bishops will be removed, no apology for the suffering he caused by stalling.

In fact, we can’t even be sure of why the Pope fired Bishop Finn. Because he failed to protect children? Or because he was causing scandal?

Is the Pope trying to squash a persistent PR problem? Or he is launching a new era of bishop accountability?

The only information this week came from the Vatican, in a one-sentence bulletin in Italian. It said that Finn’s resignation had been accepted in accordance with canon 401, paragraph 2. That church law states: “A diocesan bishop who has become less able to fulfill his office because of ill health or some other grave cause is earnestly requested to present his resignation from office.”

This is the same notice the Vatican has issued in the firing by previous popes of other complicit, scandal-causing bishops – such as Irish bishop Brendan Comiskey, removed by Pope John Paul II in 2002, and Irish bishop Seamus Hegarty, removed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2011.

[Click here to see BishopAccountability.org’s list of abuse-enabling bishops who have resigned.]

Indeed, the same cryptic announcement accompanied the December 2002 resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law. His departure ended a calamitous year in the Boston archdiocese. But that resignation quickly was revealed to be bogus accountability by the Vatican — it was a rescue, not a rebuke.

So while we can hope that Finn’s removal signals a shift in papal policy on complicit bishops, there’s reason to be skeptical – to suspect that this is the same damage control tactic used by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

How can Pope Francis prove he is different? He can start by publicly confirming that Finn was removed because he harbored a sexual abuser. Such a modest admission by a pope would be unprecedented, and it would send a bracing message to bishops and religious superiors worldwide that a new era has begun.

More importantly, the Pope must keep cleaning house, and without the same agonizing delay. Sadly, it’s not hard to identify other unfit bishops. Archbishop Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis should be at the top of the list. There’s documentary evidence that children in recent years have been sexually assaulted because of his wanton irresponsibility.

And just as quickly, Francis must reverse his strange and disastrous appointment of Chilean bishop Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid. Several victims have testified that Barros witnessed their sexual abuse by disgraced priest Fernando Karadima. Francis must ignore the pressure to retain Barros that he likely is receiving from his friend Cardinal Francisco Errázuriz, another enabler of Karadima. The pope instead should honor the pleas of the victims, his own Commission members, and of the priests and parishioners of the Osorno diocese.

In the meantime, we can celebrate the courage of the survivors in Kansas City, St. Paul, Chile and elsewhere who have exposed corruption in the Church. Thanks to them, accountability is happening, and it includes the Pope himself. Francis has pledged to discipline bishops who fail to protect children — and survivors and Catholics worldwide are determined to hold him to his promise.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

PENNSYLVANIA
NBC 10

A suspended Roman Catholic priest has pleaded not guilty before a federal magistrate in western Pennsylvania to additional charges that he traveled to Honduras to have sex with poor street children during missionary trips.

The Rev. Joseph Maurizio Jr. has been jailed since last fall when federal prosecutors in Johnstown accused him of molesting one boy, and possessing child pornography.

Wednesday’s court appearance in Johnstown stemmed from a new indictment adding two new alleged victims and charges the priest funneled $8,000 through a charity to facilitate the trips, which ended in 2009.

Maurizio’s attorney, Stephen Passarello, has said his investigative team in Honduras has lined up witnesses to challenge the allegations, which the 69-year-old priest denies.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas P. Doyle | Apr. 22, 2015

POTIPHAR’S WIFE: THE VATICAN’S SECRET AND CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE
By Kieran Tapsell
Published by ATF Press, $40

The legal system of the Roman Catholic church is probably the longest-running in history. Canon law, the commonly used name for this system, has been accorded near magical status by some of its practitioners, who are firmly convinced it has an answer to every problem facing the institutional church.

The true believers have claimed that the clergy sex abuse debacle could have been avoided had the church only used its own canonical system. Foremost among them has been Cardinal Raymond Burke, formerly head of the Apostolic Signatura, the church’s highest court. In 2012, he addressed a canon law convention in Kenya and said that the church has a “carefully articulated process by which to investigate accusations of sex abuse,” and that the ongoing problem of clergy sex abuse was because the discipline of canon law was not followed.

Burke’s assertion and those of others making similar claims are far removed from the reality of canon law’s role in the church’s abysmal failure to deal with the epidemic of sexual misbehavior.

On the other side of the reality divide, bishops who actually tried to deal with priest-perpetrators according to the church’s rules found themselves more times than not stymied and stonewalled by a confusing and contradictory array of canonical regulations.

I have been a canonist long enough to know that canon law never had a chance. My belief is based on the fact that canon law is a legal system in service to a monarchy. By its very nature, the primary goal is to protect the monarchs. There is no separation of powers in the Catholic church, hence no checks and balances.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

NEW YORK
National Catholic Reporter

Jamie Manson | Apr. 22, 2015

While many folks around the world marked April 22 as Earth Day, in Albany, N.Y., State Assemblywoman Margaret M. Markey used the occasion to host a Lobby Day to promote awareness of child sexual abuse.

Across the country, April is known as National Child Abuse Prevention Month. Markey and sixty other assemblymembers have called on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to extend the proclamation to New York state, which ranks among the worst for the way in which it deals with victims of child sexual abuse crimes, according to a survey by Professor Marci Hamilton of Cardozo Law School.

Unlike some states that have either no statute of limitation or an extended statute of limitation, in New York, victims must bring criminal or civil charges against their abusers within five years of their 18th birthday.

For years, Markey has sponsored the Child Victims Act, a bill that would “reform New York’s archaic criminal and civil statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse crimes,” according to a press release from Markey’s office.

“The Child Victims Act calls for the total elimination of the criminal and civil statute of limitations for child sexual abuse crimes in the future, with a complete one year suspension of the civil SOL to benefit older victims,” the release also states. More than one-third of the members of the State Assembly have joined Markey to co-sponsor the bill.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
BishopAccountability.org

Pope Francis’s removal of Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph is a good step but just a beginning. The pope must show that this decision represents a meaningful shift in papal practice – that it signals a new era in bishop accountability. This action alone is not unprecedented: both of Francis’s predecessors fired bishops whose handling of abusive priests caused scandal. (See BishopAccountability.org’s list of complicit bishops who resigned or were removed: http://www.bishop-accountability.org/bishops/removed/)

But what no pope has done to date is publicly confirm that he removed a culpable bishop because of his failure to make children’s safety his first priority. We urge Pope Francis to issue such a statement immediately. That would be unprecedented, and it would send a bracing message to bishops and religious superiors worldwide that a new era has begun.

It should be noted too that Pope Francis’s decision on Finn will add fuel to the fire in Chile; calls for the removal of Chilean bishop Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid will intensify. We hope Francis will honor the pleas of Karadima’s victims, of his own Commission members, and of the priests and parishioners of the Osorno diocese, and rescind this disastrous appointment immediately. If Francis means business, he must be consistent.

Background on canon 401, paragraph 2, and removal of complicit bishops:

Today’s terse Vatican press bulletin states only that Finn was removed in accordance with canon 401, paragraph 2, which states: “A diocesan bishop who has become less able to fulfill his office because of ill health or some other grave cause is earnestly requested to present his resignation from office.” This is the same notice the Vatican has issued in the firing of other complicit bishops who have caused scandal – such as Irish bishop Brendan Comiskey, removed by Pope John Paul II in 2002, and Irish bishop Seamus Hegarty, removed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2011.

About BishopAccountability.org

Founded in 2003 and based near Boston, Massachusetts, USA, BishopAccountability.org is a large online archive of documents, reports, and news articles documenting the global abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church. An independent non-profit, it is not a victims’ advocacy group and is not affiliated with any church, reform, or victims’ organization. In 2014, its website hosted 1.5 million unique visitors.

Contact for BishopAccountability.org

Anne Barrett Doyle, Co-Director, barrett.doyle@comcast.net, 781-439-5208 cell
Terence McKiernan, President and Co-Director, mckiernan1@comcast.net, 508-479-9304

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

PENNSYLVANIA
Patch

By JAMES BOYLE (Patch Staff)
April 22, 2015

The fallout from the 2013 arrest of a former Episcopal Academy teacher and administrator continues with the report by 11 former students that he sexually assaulted them, according to philly.com. Montgomery County prosecutors told reporters that the statute of limitations has run out on the crimes and charges are unlikely.

Richard Perkins Smith, 67, was taken into custody by Massachusetts State Police in April 2013 and indicted by a Barnstable County, Mass. grand jury for rape of a child, indecent assault and battery and five counts of indecent assault and battery upon a child under the age of 14.

Smith, who is a 1966 graduate of Episcopal Academy and taught at the school’s Devon campus from 1970 to 1990 and then worked in the development office until 1998, allegedly told investigators he also molested a fourth-grade Episcopal student around 1977 while they were in his car and admitted the incident to the head of the school. The student later reported the abuse, but the statute of limitations prevented any criminal charges regarding those allegations.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

CANADA
CBC News

Marilyn Bergstra asked fellow trustees Tuesday to support new curriculum that would educate staff and students from kindergarten to Grade 12 about ways to prevent child sexual abuse.

“If child sexual abuse were a disease, it would be one of the largest epidemics in our country,” Bergstra told fellow trustees on the Edmonton Catholic School Board. “And resources would be allocated to it.”

In her presentation to the board, Bergstra offered statistics from Edmonton’s Zebra Child Protection Centre, which works with children who have suffered abuse.

According to Zebra statistics, she said, “One in three girls in Edmonton will experience unwanted sexual acts performed on them. One in six boys in Edmonton.”

In 2010, Bergstra said, the Zebra centre supported 554 such cases. In 2013, that caseload had risen to 1,337. …

Trustee Larry Kowalczyk asked why Edmonton schools would consider adopting an American program when there are Alberta resources already in place.

“This program is not taught within the Catholic faith,” he said. “I think if we recommended this to Alberta School Boards Association, and then our bishop said, “Guess what? You can’t teach that program, because we just don’t take sex by itself.'”

Kowalczyk then quoted Cardinal Thomas Collins, former Archbishop of Edmonton and now Archbishop of Toronto.

“Catholic schools,” he said, quoting Collins, “will not implement any new teachings that aren’t consistent with the Catholic faith. Anything that undermines the catechism of the Catholic church will not be taught.”

After a lengthy debate, trustees voted down Bergstra’s motion.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

HAWAII
Hawaii News Now

[with video]

By Chelsea Davis

WAILUKU, MAUI (HawaiiNewsNow) –
A Maui minister is behind bars and charged with sexually assaulting a young child.

Dennis DeRego fainted in court Tuesday afternoon during a bail hearing while his attorney asked the judge to let him out of jail on supervised release. DeRego was rolled out on a wheelchair and loaded onto an ambulance.

DeRego was arrested on Friday after a Maui grand jury indicted him earlier in the week on ten different charges. The charges against him include eight counts of sexual assault of a minor, ranging from first degree to fourth degree, and two counts of promoting child abuse in the second degree.

Other ministers on Maui who know him are stunned.

“It was obviously shocking to have a man of his stature, and obviously touching the lives of many people, to have him arrested,” said Reverend Laki Kaahumanu.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

PENNSYLVANIA
WTRF

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) – A suspended Roman Catholic priest has pleaded not guilty before a federal magistrate in western Pennsylvania to additional charges that he traveled to Honduras to have sex with poor street children during missionary trips.

The Rev. Joseph Maurizio Jr. has been jailed since last fall when federal prosecutors in Johnstown accused him of molesting one boy, and possessing child pornography.

Wednesday’s court appearance in Johnstown stemmed from a new indictment adding two new alleged victims and charges the priest funneled $8,000 through a charity to facilitate the trips, which ended in 2009.

Maurizio’s attorney, Stephen Passarello, has said his investigative team in Honduras has lined up witnesses to challenge the allegations, which the 69-year-old priest denies.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adverary

Posted by Joelle Casteix on April 22, 2015

It’s the the papal version of the back-handed compliment:

In a one-sentence throw-away line in yesterday’s Vatican press bulletin, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Kansas City-St. Joseph Bishop Robert Finn.

The Holy Father Francis has accepted the resignation from the pastoral government of the diocese of St. Joseph-Kansas City, Mo. (U.S.A.) presented by His Excellency Msgr. Robert W. Finn.

In case you didn’t know: in 2012, Finn was convicted on one count of failure to report child sexual abuse. He covered up for Shawn Ratigan, a Missouri priest who was sentenced to 50 years in prison for producing child pornography.

From National Catholic Reporter:

Because of that incident, Finn served a two-year suspended sentence in Jackson County, Mo., and struck a deal later that year with a Clay County, Mo., judge to avoid a similar charge by entering a diversion compliance agreement that included regular meetings with the county prosecutor for five years.

As I have noted on this blog before, if Finn were to apply for a job at his own diocese, he would not pass the background check.

Removing Finn was low-hanging fruit for Pope Francis, who has called on churches to enforce “zero tolerance” (even though Francis recently appointed a Chilean bishop who is accused of covering up for child sex abuse crimes). It would have been easy for Francis to deliver a strong message and fire Finn. It would have been very easy for the Vatican to make a powerful announcement stating that Finn’s behavior was unacceptable and will not be tolerated in a pastoral Christian environment.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Finn’s Law: Pope Rules Police Must Handle Child Crimes! Must Pope, Ex-Pope, Et Al. Now Go For Breaking Finn’s Law, President Obama?

US President Barack Obama’s official international broadcast outlet has now weighed in on “Finn’s Law” as reported below. Pope Francis’ Vatican announced Bishop Robert Finn’s resignation April 21, indicating that the evidently forced resignation resulted from the Catholic Church’s papally dictated Code of Canon Law that applies to all Bishops, even to himself as the Bishop of Rome and to Cardinal Bishops. Canon Law says, “A diocesan bishop who has become less able to fulfill his office because of ill health or some other grave cause is earnestly requested to present his resignation from office.” (emphasis mine) The “grave cause” was Finn’s seemingly single failure to report a child pornographer priest to the police as promptly as required by local Missouri law. The long overdue legal precedent set by Pope Francis, “Finn’s Law”, is now finally fixed, Amen! Finn’s Law can now be stated simply:

Bishops who fail to report promptly to the police facts indicating possible priest sexual abuse of children are unfit as pastors and will be removed.

Of course, if applied with legal logic, few bishops, including the pope apparently, would remain in office. For example, the pope’s secretive mishandling of Archbishop Wesolowski’s alleged crimes seems clearly to violate Finn’s Law. The pope is obviously a “son of the Church {hierarchy}”, however, more than he is a logical and principled Jesuit. Please see below the links to the details of the earlier child protection failures of the pope and of his “sex abuse czar”, Cardinal Sean O’Malley. It seems clear, to me at least, that the pope in dumping Finn is merely responding to concerns of some of his key major US donors in a pre-US presidential election year. Will the pope at least now apply Finn’s Law to reported failures of Finn’s former St. Louis mentors, Cardinals Rigali, Dolan and Burke? Not likely, no? More likely, Finn will get a comfortable appointment after the media moves on, as happened with the extravagant Bishop of Bling recently. Meanwhile, US politicians will generally continue to look the other way as long as the pope’s poll numbers remain high, despite the continuing risk of sexual abuse to millions of US children.

The huge clout of wealthy US donors on the Catholic hierarchy is personified by Cardinal Dolan. See his recent conference with Goldman Sachs’ CEO and his earlier “the pope loves the rich” spiel on the CNBC international business network here,

[Goldman Sachs]

and here,

[CNBC]

Incidentally, Goldman Sachs is a major banker in oil and gas related investments. One of the pope’s top financial advisers is a top Goldman official and former longtime top official at BP. Time will tell how this papal relationship will impact the pope’s over-hyped and imminent encyclical on climate change, which could lead to increases in regulation of the oil and gas industry.

US President Barack Obama, and all other US national political leaders of both political parties, have generally and shamefully ducked the bishop unaccountability travesty despite the harm to hundreds of thousands of US citizens. Significantly, however, Obama’s official international broadcast outlet, Voice of America (VOA), reported on Finn’s ouster, while also gratuitously adding to its report references to the Chilean Bishop Barros’ scandal and to BishopAccountability’s criticism.

Obama’s VOA report significantly noted that the Vatican did not give a specific reason for Finn’s resignation. The brief report then reportedly added: “Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of BishopAccountability.org, an online abuse resource group, said in a statement that Finn’s resignation was ‘a good step but just a beginning,’ and called on the pontiff to publicly state that he removed Finn for failing to protect children. ‘The pope must show that this decision represents a meaningful shift in papal practice, that it shows a new era in bishop accountability,’ Barrett Doyle said. ‘That would be unprecedented, and it would send a bracing message to bishops and religious superiors worldwide that a new era has begun.’ “

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

ITALIA
Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno

POTENZA – Con l’accusa di aver adescato, attraverso un social network, minorenni, pagati per consumare rapporti sessuali, tre persone sono state poste agli arresti domiciliari nell’ambito di un’operazione dei Carabinieri della Compagnia di Policoro (Matera) coordinata dalla Procura della Repubblica di Potenza.

Il gip del capoluogo lucano ha inoltre emesso un provvedimento di obbligo di presentazione alla polizia giudiziaria per altre cinque persone. Le otto persone indagate sono “residenti – è spiegato in un comunicato diffuso dalla Procura di Potenza – in varie località del territorio nazionale”.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

ITALY
Gazzetta del Sud

Potenza, April 21 – Three people including a parish priest were arrested Tuesday on charges of soliciting minors for paid sex through a social network. Don Antonio Calderaro from the church of San Giuseppe in Rivello near Potenza in the southern Basilicata region was among the three suspects placed under house arrest in connection with the alleged child abuse. A further five suspects were ordered to present themselves to the judicial police. The suspects live in various parts of the country, prosecutors in Potenza said. Investigations began in 2013 after the sister of one of the victims reported concerns over appointments made by her younger brother with people met on Internet. Monsignor Francesco Nolè, bishop of the diocese of Tursi-Lagonegro, immediately banned Don Antonio from celebrating Mass and relieved him of all his priestly duties.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

WEST VIRGINIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Wednesday, April 22, 2014

For more information: David Clohessy of St. Louis, SNAP Director (314) 566-9790 cell, SNAPclohessy@aol.com

Court hearing today to be streamed live
It can be watched on-line, starting at 10 a.m.
Case is “virtually unprecedented,” group says
Mormons persuaded judge to give predator a lawyer
And half of his attorney fees are to be paid by abuse victims
National support group blasts that arrangement as “an outrage”

It’s begging those who “saw, suspected or suffered Mormon crimes” to “speak up”

An appeals court hearing today in Charleston involving a controversial child sex abuse and cover up case will be live-streamed on line at http://www.courtswv.gov/supreme-court/webcast.html.

It involves a twice-convicted, now-imprisoned Mormon child molester, Christopher Michael Jensen, who was convicted of assaulting youngsters in both Utah and West Virginia. A dozen children and their parents are suing Mormon officials for allegedly enabling and concealing Jensen’s abuses.

A support group for clergy sex abuse victims is criticizing Mormon church officials, accusing them of “callous, self-serving hardball legal tactics.”

“Mormon officials are trying to scare other victims into staying silent,” said David Clohessy of St. Louis, director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “And they’re rubbing even more salt into the already deep and still fresh wounds of these brave but suffering families who have been so severely hurt and betrayed.”

“It’s an outrage that the Mormon church hierarchy has persuaded a judge to make these courageous families pay half the fees for two private lawyers in this case, including one who is defending a proven criminal,” said Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, SNAP’s outreach director. “We in SNAP have never seen anything like this.”

The group hopes others who may have been assaulted by Jensen will speak up.

“We also beg anyone who may have seen, suspected or suffered crimes by Jensen or other Mormons to step forward and get help,” said Dorris. “That’s the best way to expose wrongdoers, protect kids and start healing.”

The case was brought in Berkeley County Circuit Court.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service

David Gibson | Apr 22, 2015

(RNS) This week’s funeral rites for Cardinal Francis George of Chicago marks the passing of a kind though straight-talking prelate who was recalled after his death from cancer as a great intellect and a “lion” of a churchman, especially by his many fans on the Catholic right.

But it also also feels like the end of an era, as a different style of bishop is slowly emerging in the Pope Francis era, one more in synch with the pontiff’s pastoral style — like Archbishop Blase Cupich, the man Francis chose last fall to succeed George, who was 78 when he died.

What may be just as significant, however, in terms of the influence of American Catholicism, is that Cupich does not yet have a “red hat,” so one of the major dioceses of the U.S. church would currently be without a vote if a conclave to elect a new pope were held.

Moreover, Cardinal Justin Rigali, another longtime U.S. churchman — and behind-the-scenes architect of the conservative Catholic renaissance in the U.S. — turned 80 this week, which means he loses his right to vote in a papal election.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Michael Sean Winters | Apr. 22, 2015 Distinctly Catholic

Yesterday, I wrote about the news that Bishop Robert Finn had resigned as the Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph. I mentioned that the accountability of bishops is especially important when it comes to the issue of clergy sex abuse, but that issue does not exhaust the issue: Bishops can fail in many ways, as can we all, but they are in positions of leadership, with enormous power over the people they are supposed to serve. How can and should the Church deal with bishops who are simply not working out?

There is not doubt that changes must be made. Today we live under what one friend calls the “reverse Caiaphas” policy. Caiaphas, the high priest, said that it was better for one man to die that the whole people might be saved. Today, when it comes to the accountability of bishops, the default position is that it is better for the people to die so that one man might be saved.

First, I should note that most bishops do just fine. Some may be more pro-active than others. In some dioceses, there is a sense of vibrancy and activity and in others not much is going on, but instances of actual failed leadership are few. Not to put too fine a point on it, but whatever one thinks of the leadership of San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone or St. Paul Archbishop John Nienstedt, they are the only two bishops in the country who have people taking out full page ads asking for their removal, or otherwise writing letters to the pope, the nuncio, and the Congregation for Bishops. There are 270 active bishops in the United States, so having two that have not managed to be a good fit for their dioceses is not such a high rate.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Catholics4Change

APRIL 22, 2015 BY SUSAN MATTHEWS

Click here to see Jim Gardner’s full interview with Archbishop Chaput, which aired on 6ABC in segments. Gardner asks the Archbishop of Philadelphia about the clergy sex abuse coverup at the 22:35 mark.

Editor’s note:

Archbishop Chaput continues to emphasize that clergy sex abuse occurred in the past. He does not acknowledge that the Church covered up these crimes intentionally to wait out the statutes of limitations. Because they can’t be charged now, priest perpetrators are out on the streets TODAY. They were removed from ministry – but not society. Children are still at risk. Abusers don’t retire. It’s a compulsion they take to the grave. Because these crimes fell outside the current statute of limitations, no one can press charges. What does the Church do to make amends and to protect children? The Catholic Conference continues to this day to fight statute of limitations reform in Harrisburg. Why should we believe children are being put first?

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VATICAN CITY/FRANCE
The Guardian (UK)

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome and Kim Willsher in Paris
Wednesday 22 April 2015

Pope Francis met France’s nominated ambassador to the Holy See, who is gay, and personally told him that the Vatican would not accept his appointment, a French newspaper has claimed.

In a meeting over the weekend, the pontiff allegedly cited his displeasure with a controversial 2013 gay marriage law in France as part of his reason for the decision, according to the report in Le Canard Enchâiné, a French satirical newspaper.

Pope Francis also allegedly said he did not appreciate the manner in which France had tried to put pressure on the Vatican by nominating a man – 55-year-old Laurent Stéfanini – who French officials knew would be controversial given the church’s views on homosexuality. The Vatican declined to comment to the Guardian about the veracity of the report or whether a meeting took place.

The church’s apparent objection to Stéfanini, a practising Catholic, has been known for weeks, ever since press reports first indicated that the Vatican was dragging its feet on the nomination because of his sexual orientation.

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VATICAN CITY
The Tablet

22 April 2015 by Christa Pongratz-Lippitt

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s personal secretary said he believes reform of the Vatican bureaucracy, which has become a key theme of Pope Francis’ papacy, is not necessary.

Archbishop Georg Gänswein, who is also Prefect of the Papal Household, said: “I personally can see no significant reason which would necessitate a reform of the Curia at the moment. One or two changes have been made but that is part of the normal run of things. To speak of ‘Curial reform’ is, if I may so, somewhat of an exaggeration.”

Gänswein, whose view of the status quo in the Vatican are probably supported by a not inconsiderable number of the hierarchy, according to insiders, was giving an interview to the German website katholisch.de.

He was asked whether the Vatican and the Church in general are polarised at the moment. “There is no polarisation as far as I can see and I haven’t experienced any. Certain measures here and there have been criticised and if the criticism is justified, that can surely benefit the general climate,” he said.

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LOUISIANA
The Advocate

BEN WALLACE| BWALLACE@THEADVOCATE.COM
April 22, 2015

Following an investigation sparked by a recent complaint from a Baton Rouge high school student’s mother, sheriff’s deputies on Tuesday arrested a Christian Life Academy teacher accused of having a sexual relationship with the student about two years ago.

Amber Leigh Anderson, 27, a math teacher, engaged in the relationship with the student mostly during summer 2013 when the boy was a 15-year-old freshman at the school, according to an East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office report.

In April 2013, another student gave the victim Anderson’s cellphone number. As time progressed, Anderson and the victim “became extremely close to one another,” the Sheriff’s Office report says.

Text messages between the two soon became sexually charged, and in July, Anderson began having sex with the student, the report says.

The relationship lasted a few more months until the boy’s mother found some of the text messages on her son’s cellphone that had been sent by Anderson. At that point, the mother confronted the teacher, told her to quit texting her son and “reported the matter to the school’s administration,” the report says, effectively bringing an end to the relationship between Anderson and the student.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Island Packet

The Kansas City Star
April 22, 2015

The departure of Robert W. Finn as bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, although overdue, is a step forward for the diocese and thousands of area Catholics.

Finn’s conduct in office made him a symbol of the Catholic Church’s failure to adequately address child sexual abuse by priests. He was the first Catholic bishop to be convicted of a crime related to that crisis.

Finn, 62, should have resigned after his 2012 conviction, if not sooner. He received two years of probation for failing to notify law enforcement authorities after pornographic images were found on the computer of a diocesan priest, Shawn Ratigan.

Finn’s decision to place secrecy above his moral and legal obligations enabled Ratigan to harm additional children. The former priest is serving a 50-year prison sentence for producing child pornography.

Finn remained in office despite the scandal, a circumstance that anguished and angered many Catholics. The news Tuesday that Pope Francis accepted Finn’s resignation is a triumph for the lay persons who wrote letters, collected more than 250,000 petition signatures and spoke up for Finn to leave.

Challenging the world’s most powerful church hierarchy isn’t easy or comfortable, and Finn has powerful allies, including Bill Donohue, the fiery head of the ultraconservative Catholic League. The persistence of lay Catholics is a testimony to how much they care about their church.

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CITTA’ DEL VATICANO
Bolletino

[On 21 April 2015, the Pope appointed Joseph F. Naumann, archbishop of Kansas City in Kansas to be apostolic administrator of the Kansas City diocese.]

In data 21 aprile 2015, il Papa ha nominato Amministratore Apostolico “sede vacante” della diocesi di Kansas City-Saint Joseph (U.S.A.) S.E. Mons. Joseph F. Naumann, Arcivescovo Metropolita di Kansas City in Kansas.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

MARI A. SCHAEFER, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
LAST UPDATED: Wednesday, April 22, 2015

At least 11 former Episcopal Academy students have come forward to say they were sexually abused decades ago by a teacher there, the school has disclosed, but the accusations are unlikely to be prosecuted.

The former fourth-grade teacher, Richard Perkins Smith, 67, of Media, taught at Episcopal’s Devon campus from 1970 to 1990 and later served in the school’s administration.

He is awaiting trial in Massachusetts on charges including child rape and indecent assault. Smith is accused of sexually assaulting four boys, ages 11 to 15, at a Cape Cod summer camp more than 30 years ago.

In a 2012 interview with Massachusetts investigators, Smith admitted he had once molested an Episcopal student and that he had confessed the incident at the time to the head of the school, according to court documents.

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UNITED STATES
Voice of America

The Vatican said Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of a U.S. bishop convicted for failing to report a priest who collected lewd photographs of minor children.

Bishop Robert Finn stepped down Tuesday as head of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri in the Midwestern U.S.

Finn is the highest-ranking Catholic official in the United States to be convicted in connection with a suspected case of child abuse involving a member of the clergy.

The Vatican did not give a specific reason for Finn’s resignation but said the pontiff accepted it under canon law. …

Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of BishopAccountability.org, an online abuse resource group, said in a statement that Finn’s resignation a “a good step but just a beginning,” and called on the pontiff to publicly state that he removed Finn for failing to protect children.

“The pope must show that this decision represents a meaningful shift in papal practice, that it shows a new era in bishop accountability,” Barrett Doyle said. “That would be unprecedented, and it would send a bracing message to bishops and religious superiors worldwide that a new era has begun.”

Francis is also under pressure to remove Bishop Juan Barros of Chile, who is accused of shielding the Reverend Fernando Karadima, a notorious pedophile priest.

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NEW JERSEY
Jewish Press

A New Jersey court convicted three Rabbis of conspiracy to commit kidnap, and two of the three were also convicted of attempted kidnapping.

Under Jewish law, for a divorce to be official, a husband must give his wife a divorce document called a “Get”. Without a Get, the woman is considered married under Jewish law and unable to remarry.

The three conspired to kidnap and beat Get-withholding husbands who refused to grant their spouses a Jewish divorce.

They Get-ring was uncovered by an undercover FBI agent posing as an Orthodox wife whose husband refused to grant her a Get.

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NEW JERSEY
JTA

(JTA) — Three rabbis were convicted in federal court of planning to kidnap Jewish men in order to force them to grant their wives a religious writ of divorce.

The three Orthodox rabbis were convicted late Tuesday in federal court in Trenton, N.J. of conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Two of the rabbis also were convicted of attempted kidnapping.

The jury debated for three days after a two-month trial on the case of Rabbi Mendel Epstein, 69, of Lakewood, N.J.; Rabbi Jay Goldstein, 60, of Brooklyn; and Rabbi Binyamin Stimler, 39, of Brooklyn, CBS New York reported.

They are part of a group of men, including at least one other rabbi, who operated a ring that kidnapped men and used violence, including beatings and stun guns, until they agreed to the religious divorce.

Under Orthodox Jewish law, a wife cannot divorce without obtaining the writ, known as a get, from her husband. She also can not remarry in a Jewish ceremony without the get.

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NEW JERSEY
The JC

By Rosa Doherty, April 22, 2015

Three Orthodox rabbis have been convicted for a Sopranos-style plot in which they planned the torture of Jewish men who refused to divorce their wives.

Rabbis Mendel Epstein, Jay Goldstein and Binyamin Stimler were found guilty on one count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping in a New Jersey federal court on Tuesday.

Rabbi Goldstein, 60, and Rabbi Stimler, 39, were also convicted on an additional charge of attempted kidnapping.

The rabbis were part of a gang accused of taking tens of thousands of dollars to torture men with electric cattle prods and screwdrivers for refusing to grant gets to their wives.

They were arrested in October 2013 after an undercover FBI operation in which an agent posed as an Orthodox woman.

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USA
NOS

De paus heeft het ontslag geaccepteerd van een Amerikaanse bisschop die een pedofiele priester beschermde. Het is voor zover bekend de eerste keer dat een paus in zo’n geval maatregelen neemt.

De 62-jarige bisschop Robert Finn uit Kansas City hield priester Shawn Ratigan maandenlang de hand boven het hoofd nadat op de computer van de laatste kinderporno was gevonden. Finn stuurde Ratigan naar een therapeut, gaf hem een nieuwe baan en beval hem uit de buurt van kinderen te blijven – wat de priester niet deed.

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USA
kath.net

Wegen Missbrauchs-Vertuschung verurteilter Bischof tritt zurück – Robert Finn wurde zu einem Symbol für das Versagen der US-Kirche im Umgang mit dem Missbrauch von Minderjährigen. Von Thomas Spang (KNA)

Kansas City (kath.net/KNA) Die Opfer sexueller Übergriffe von Priestern im Mittleren Westen der USA haben schon lange auf das Abdanken des umstrittenen Bischofs gewartet. Genauer gesagt vier Jahre, seit sie zusammen mit Katholiken des Bistums Kansas City-Saint Joseph in einer Petition öffentlich den Rücktritt von Robert Finn (Archivfoto) verlangten. Im Mai 2011 hatten die Behörden den Priester Shawn Ratigan festgenommen, auf dessen Computer sich Kinderpornografie fand, die dieser zum Teil selber produziert hatte.

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NEW YORK
TWC News

By Meg Rossman

AMHERST, N.Y. — Vanessa DeRosa and Tino Flores want change, and it’s something the two alleged victims of child sexual abuse believe will only come with a new state law.

“It’s very frustrating, and I’m sure not just for myself. I’m sure it’s frustrating for a lot of people,” said DeRosa. “There’s countless reasons why people don’t come forward in the time frame allowed by the law.”

“People are afraid, they don’t want to say anything,” explained Flores. “Especially kids, they think ‘who’s going to believe me?'”

Earlier this year, DeRosa and Flores shared their stories in the hopes of helping other victims. DeRosa said she was abused by a Catholic School teacher when she was 13. Flores said a priest started abusing him at age 10.

Under current laws, the statute of limitations ran out when they turned 23. On Wednesday, Flores will head to Albany in hopes of convincing state lawmakers to pass the Child Victims Act which would extend that window.

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AUSTRALIA
Radio Australia

Child sex abuse inquiry: Senior Catholic nun apologises to victims from Neerkol orphanage in Queensland

By William Rollo

A senior Catholic nun has apologised to victims of sexual abuse at St Joseph’s Orphanage at Neerkol, near Rockhampton, during her testimony at a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse hearing.

Hundreds of children were beaten, molested and raped at St Joseph’s over three decades up until the late 1970s.

Sisters of Mercy Australia leader Berneice Loch finished her testimony this morning at the inquiry, which is investigating systemic abuse at the orphanage.

Sister Loch was a senior member of the Sisters of Mercy when allegations of abuse at the orphanage first came to light in the 1990s.

She now leads the order’s Australian branch.

Under cross-examination this morning, Sister Loch apologised to the victims of abuse.

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

MICHAEL MADIGAN AND AAP THE COURIER-MAIL APRIL 22, 2015

NUNS accused of abusing children at a notorious Queensland orphanage refused to meet the victims as adults because they feared not remembering what happened, a national inquiry has heard.

Up to five of the Sister of Mercy nuns alleged to have abused children at Neerkol Orphanage were still alive in the 1990s, but many were “anxious and nervous” about meeting victims.

As the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse in Rockhampton nears the end of a two-week hearing, a former nun has recalled the reactions of the Sisters of Mercy alleged to have abused and humiliated children at St Joseph’s Orphanage at Neerkol, west of the city.

Di-Anne Rowan, a former teacher and religious education co-ordinator who left the order in 2003, told the hearing she believed between three and five of the nuns facing allegations of abuse were still alive when the accusations came into the public arena in the early 90s.

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AUSTRALIA
The Morning Bulletin

CATHOLIC Bishop of Rockhampton Michael McCarthy and Institute of Sisters of Mercy of Australia and Papua New Guinea leader Sister Berneice Loch have renewed their apology to child abuse victims at Neerkol.

The pair has issued a joint statement this afternoon following the completion of the Royal Commission into child abuse hearing in Rockhampton.

The hearing heard confronting evidence from former residents at the Neerkol orphanage who were victims of sexual and physical abuse.

Bishop McCarthy and Sister Loch’s statement said:

“Over the past two weeks we have listened to the women and men who were physically, emotionally and sexually abused by priests of the Diocese of Rockhampton and sisters and staff at St Joseph’s Orphanage, Neerkol.

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UNITED KINGDOM
Western Daily Press

A Saltford church worker and child abuser has walked from court a free man – despite having just been jailed for two and a half years for sexual offences.

A judge condemned Philip Barlow as a “hypocrite, liar and a paedophile” as he imposed the jail term.

But because the married 33-year-old has already served the equivalent time in prison, he is a free man today.

In December 2011, Barlow was jailed for four years after being found guilty of 14 offences of sexual abuse of two young girls. The convictions were later quashed on appeal and a retrial ordered.

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OREGON
The Oregonian

By Rick Bella | The Oregonian/OregonLive
on April 21, 2015

The defense in the child sex abuse case against Happy Valley Pastor Mike Sperou opened Tuesday by calling on a former prosecutor who rejected the allegations in 1997.

Multnomah County Circuit Judge Cheryl A. Albrecht limited what the jury could hear, ruling that former Deputy District Attorney Rodney Hopkinson’s testimony could be prejudicial if he went into detail about why he declined to prosecute Sperou back then.

Sperou, who leads the North Clackamas Bible Community, has been charged with three counts of first-degree sexual penetration. If convicted on all counts, he would face a mandatory minimum sentence of eight years, four months in prison.

Seven women allege that Sperou sexually abused them when they were young girls growing up in the church during the 1980s and 1990s. The Oregonian/OregonLive generally does not disclose the names of possible sexual abuse victims, but all seven women connected with the case have come forward, asking that their stories be told.

Prosecutor Chris Mascal called on all seven women to testify over five days before resting Monday. The women — including Shannon Clark, the alleged victim in this case – all told the jury that Sperou took advantage of his position as church leader and abused them.

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UNITED STATES
Renew America

By Matt C. Abbott

First, please pray for the repose of the soul of Cardinal Francis George. I always appreciated his politeness – he would address me by name at various Catholic events over the years – and he obviously was a prayerful and intelligent man. Requiescat in pace.
————————————–

Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-Saint Joseph, Missouri, is the latest casualty of the clergy sex abuse scandal, which has cost U.S. dioceses and religious orders close to $3 billion since 2004.

Esteemed Catholic journalist/commentator Phil Lawler once again hits the nail on the head. The following are excerpts from his latest commentary at Catholic World News (click here to read it in its entirety).

Bishop Finn had to go. When he was convicted on criminal charges, he became the poster boy for the American bishops’ mishandling of the sex abuse crisis. He was an irresistible target for critics of Catholicism: a walking, talking symbol of episcopal negligence….

For the many Catholics who admire Bishop Finn’s strong defense of Catholic teaching, including myself, his case is tragic. For others who opposed his pastoral initiatives – such as the National Catholic Reporter, which, Bishop Finn had confirmed, had lost the right to describe itself as a ‘Catholic’ publication – his departure has provided an occasion for unseemly delight. But the bishop’s staunch orthodoxy is not the issue here.

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CHILE
Catholic Culture

Father Pedro Kliegel, a parish priest in Osorno, Chile, is offering a “Mass of hope” on April 22 to express opposition to the recent appointment of Bishop Juan Barros, who has been accused of covering up sexual abuse.

According to Chilean media reports, a retired bishop, Bishop Juan Luis Ysern of San Carlos de Ancud, has suggested that the Vatican appoint an apostolic visitor to examine the situation.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

Dennis Coday | Apr. 21, 2015 NCR Today

Why did Bishop Finn reason? is a question I have been numerous times in the last 12 hours fielding questions from other media outlets and a few local Catholics. I can’t answer that question definitively, because of the secrecy that cloaks these proceedings. But I can say why NCR called for his resignation in 2012 immediately after his conviction for failing to report suspected child abuse.

The answer is two-fold: Finn violated civil law, as the Jackson County judge ruled, but also he violated the the Dallas Charter for the Protection of Children, the protocols the bishops wrote themselves to govern their actions in case of clergy sex abuse. Here’s what NCR said in September 2104:

If Bishop Robert W. Finn wanted today to volunteer at a parish in the Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., diocese to teach a religious education class or chaperone a parish youth group to World Youth Day, he couldn’t do it. Convicted of a misdemeanor charge of failure to report suspected child abuse, Finn wouldn’t pass the background check necessary to work with young people in the Catholic church.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Associated Press has withdrawn its story about Pope Francis accepting the resignation of a bishop who led the Diocese of Kansas City-St Joseph in Missouri for nearly 10 years. Bishop Robert Finn was convicted by a judge of failing to report suspected child abuse, but did not plead guilty as the story stated. A corrected version of the story will be sent.

The AP

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

Brian Roewe Soli Salgado | Apr. 21, 2015

KANSAS CITY, MO. Emotions ran high among Catholics in the Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., diocese as word spread that Bishop Robert Finn had resigned Tuesday morning. The reactions ranged from sadness and disappointment among Finn’s supporters to relief among his critics.

Nearly all who spoke to NCR talked of the pain of the last few years, and all expressed a need for the diocese to enter a time of healing.

Fr. Pat Rush, pastor at Visitation Parish, echoed the message of Kansas City, Kan., Archbishop Joseph Naumann, named administrator of the neighboring diocese, in hoping the new phase “will be a time of grace and healing for the diocese.”

“We all know the Vatican can work slowly, and I hope it does not work slowly because I think we have been adrift. And I think we’ll continue to be adrift until such a time as we have a bishop that we can kind of all feel that he has a goal of supporting and strengthening the communion of the church,” Rush told NCR.

Rush was one of about a dozen priests and parishioners — supporters, critics and neutral people — interviewed in September 2014 during an apostolic visitation into Finn’s leadership of the diocese. Those interviews led to a report to the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops.

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UNITED STATES
CNN

By Greg Botelho, CNN

(CNN)Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Bishop Robert Finn, who remained on the job for years after becoming the highest-ranking U.S. Catholic official convicted in connection with the church’s long-running sex abuse scandal, the Vatican announced Tuesday.

Finn, who led the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, was found guilty in 2012 of failure to report suspected child abuse.

The case was tried by a judge instead of by jury because prosecutors wanted to protect the young victims’ anonymity.

Finn was convicted of one count but not a misdemeanor charge he’d also faced. He was put on two years’ probation but was not forced to spend time in jail or pay a fine, according to the Jackson County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. Two charges against his diocese were dropped. …

Candida Moss — a professor at Notre Dame, a Catholic university in Indiana — said it “doesn’t look very urgent” that a decision came down only now, nearly three years after the conviction and five months after O’Malley’s comments. Several factors may have played a role in the delay, including views from lawyers or power players at the Vatican, who may be reluctant to cast blame at high-level officials who don’t report allegations quickly enough to government authorities.

But the timing of the announcement may make sense given that it comes weeks after Francis came under fire for the installation of a new bishop in Chile, Juan Barros, despite protesters’ claims he was complicit in sexual abuse cases there.

“It kind of shook Francis’ reputation,” said Moss. “Having this resignation and putting right one of the more visible injustices on this, especially in the U.S., I think this is a typical Francis way to reinstall confidence.” …

To that point, the co-director of BishopAccountability.org asked for more elaboration than the Vatican’s one-line announcement that Francis accepted the resignation “in accordance with … Canon Law.”

Anne Doyle, from the watchdog group that documents the Catholic church’s abuse crisis, called Finn’s removal “a good step but just the beginning.”

“The pope must show that this decision represents a meaningful shift in papal practice — that it signals a new era in bishop accountability,” Doyle said. “… What no pope has done to date is publicly confirm that he removed a culpable bishop because of his failure to make children’s safety his first priority. We urge Pope Francis to issue such a statement immediately.”

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NEW YORK
WIVB

[with video]

By George Richert, News 4 Reporter

AMHERST, N.Y. (WIVB) — A local victim of child abuse is on a lobby mission to Albany this week.

Tino Flores will accompany his attorney William Lorenz to the State Capitol Wednesday to lobby for passage of the Child Abuse Act which would end the statute of limitations for adult victims of child abuse who want to press charges against their abusers.

Under current State law people have five years after they turn eighteen to press charges against someone who sexually abused them. Flores says that’s not enough. He says he was molested by a priest and it took him thirty years to come to terms with it.

“We need change. we need people to listen. We need the adults and the children that are abused to open up and spill their guts,” said Flores.

The Child Abuse Act would also create a one year window in which child abuse victims could press charges against someone who abused them decades ago.

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NEW JERSAY
Failed Messiah

Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

Defense attorneys for the alleged “Prodfather,” Rabbi Mendel Epstein, and three of his associates asked a federal judge to grant a mistrial today.

The judge, US District Court Judge Freda L. Wolfson, denied the motion.

Instead, she told the jury to disregard an incorrect sentence in the indictment the jury was given last week when it began its deliberations in Epstein’s get (Jewish divorce) extortion and kidnapping trial. The jury was given a corrected indictment, as well.

According to the Asbury Park Press, the mistaken sentence reads as follows. “Defendant Mendel Epstein further stated…that Mendel Epstein’s son is one of the ‘tough guys’ who uses his karate skills on the husbands to facilitate the coerced divorces.”

But the government previously admitted Mendel Epstein did not make that comment about his son at the meeting from which the quote was taken.

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NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

By MaryAnn Spoto | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on April 21, 2015

TRENTON — A jury on Tuesday convicted Lakewood Rabbi Mendel Epstein and two of his three defendants of kidnapping conspiracy and attempted kidnapping charges for the beating of husbands to force them to agree to religious divorces.

At the same time, the jurors acquitted Epstein’s son, David “Ari” Epstein, of all charges.

Epstein, a prominent rabbi who specializes in divorce proceedings, was on trial along with his son and two other rabbis, Binyamin Stimler and Jay Goldstein, on conspiracy, kidnapping and attempted charges that grew out of a federal undercover sting.

After three full days of deliberations, jurors rejected all kidnapping charges against the men.

The father of nine, grandfather of 45 and great-grandfather of five, Epstein, 69, was found guilty of conspiracy to commit kidnapping but not guilty of an attempted kidnapping charge related to an undercover sting. In that sting, FBI agents secretly recorded conversations in which Epstein boastfully claimed that his “team” kidnaps and beats stubborn husbands until they agree to give their wives religious divorces, known as gets.

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NEW JERSEY
New York Daily News

BY REUVEN BLAU NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

A New Jersey jury found an Orthodox rabbi and two other men guilty of conspiring to kidnap Jewish husbands and violently force them to grant their wives religious divorces.

Prosecutors charged Mendel Epstein, 69, and nine other men who beat and tortured recalcitrant husbands who refused to give their wives a religious divorce called a get. The men used handcuffs, electric cattle prods, surgical blades, screwdrivers and hid their faces.

The maximum sentence for a conspiracy kidnapping charge is life in prison and a $250,000 fine. Sentencing is set for July 15.

During the eight week trial in U.S. District Court in Trenton, prosecutors played secretly recorded conversations between an undercover posing as a wife desperately seeking help to convince her stubborn husband to give her a get.

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NEW JERSEY
CBS New York

TRENTON, N.J. (CBSNewYork) — Three rabbis were convicted in federal court Tuesday of conspiring to kidnap Jewish men in order to force them to grant their wives divorces.

Rabbi Mendel Epstein, 69, of Lakewood, New Jersey; Rabbi Jay Goldstein, 60, of Brooklyn; and Rabbi Binyamin Stimler, 39, also of Brooklyn, were all convicted of conspiracy to commit kidnapping,
according to New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman. Goldstein and Stimler were also convicted of attempted kidnapping.

Epstein’s son, David, was acquitted at trial.

Jurors deliberated for three days after an eight-week trial before Trenton U.S. District Judge Freda L. Wolfson, prosecutors said.

Epstein and his colleagues were accused of employing a kidnap team to force unwilling Jewish husbands to grant a get, or a religious divorce, to their wives.

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NEW JERSEY
Haaretz

Reuters

Three Orthodox Jewish rabbis were convicted in New Jersey on Tuesday of conspiracy to commit kidnapping in a scheme to force men to grant divorces to their unhappy wives under Jewish law.

Two of the rabbis were convicted as well of attempted kidnapping in federal court in Trenton, New Jersey, according to the office of one of the defense attorneys.

The case before U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson hinged in part on the testimony of an undercover FBI agent who posed as an Orthodox Jewish wife seeking a divorce.

Orthodox Jewish women cannot get a divorce unless their husbands consent through a document known as a “get.”

Prosecutors said the rabbis operated a ring that kidnapped or tried to kidnap men and tortured them with beatings and stun guns until they agreed to divorce.

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NEW JERSEY
US News

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — An Orthodox rabbi accused of using brutal tactics to force unwilling Jewish men to divorce their wives was convicted on Tuesday of conspiracy to commit kidnapping.

But the federal jury in Rabbi Mendel Epstein’s case rendered a mixed verdict, acquitting him of attempted kidnapping.

Epstein’s son was acquitted of conspiracy and kidnapping counts. Two other rabbis were convicted of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and attempted kidnapping.

Prosecutors said the rabbi’s team used brutal methods and tools, including handcuffs and electric cattle prods, to torture the men into granting divorces, known as gets.

The defense acknowledged some crimes may have been committed but said Epstein was not part of a kidnapping conspiracy. A defense lawyer argued that Epstein was “puffing and exaggerating” when he talked to undercover FBI agents in a meeting that was recorded on video and shown during the trial.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
KSHB

[with video]

Brendaliss Gonzalez

KANSAS CITY – A handful of victims of sexual abuse from several churches around Kansas City met on Tuesday to express relief and hope after hearing about Bishop Robert Finn’s resignation .

However, some want more clarity to how and why Finn left.

“I want him to be asked to resign; I want full accountability,” said Theresa White, who was sexually abused by a priest when she was 17. “I don’t want partial accountability. I don’t want any more smoking mirrors with the church and to own up to the responsibilities to protect children. I want them to be held fully accountable, not partly accountable, and if he’s asked to resign because of this, I think the Pope needs to make it clear that that’s why he was asked to resign.”

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MISSOURI
Fox 4

APRIL 21, 2015, BY JOHN PEPITONE AND SHANNON O’BRIEN

BELTON, Mo. — Many Catholics say they were shocked to wake up to the news Tuesday that Bishop Robert Finn had resigned.

Nearly three years after becoming the highest ranking U.S. Catholic leader convicted in the church’s sex abuse scandal, Pope Francis accepted Finn’s resignation.

The embattled bishop has been under fire ever since he pleaded guilty to failing to report a priest suspected of child abuse, and many ordinary Catholics could not get past that conviction.

“There’s a lot of division that has occurred in the diocese as a result of some of these policies,” said Biagio Mazza of St. Sabina Catholic Church. “A lot of healing, a lot of reconciliation, forgiveness has to be done by people across the board on all sides.”

Catholics increasingly have demanded a crackdown on church leaders who cover up for pedophiles. But some say that’s just one of many actions by Finn that made his removal long overdue.

“I perceive there’s a fear of punishment,” said Donna Ryan of the Sisters of Mercy. “Sometimes he’s a little punitive, rather than listening to people. For years this community has been known because we know how to dialogue, how to accept one another. I feel that he hasn’t quite grown into that yet.”

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UNITED STATES
Whispers in the Loggia

Almost three years since his conviction for failing to report a priest’s trove of child pornography to civil authorities sparked wide calls for his removal from office, at Roman Noon the Pope accepted the resignation of Bishop Robert Finn from the helm of Northwest Missouri’s diocese of Kansas City-St Joseph.

Weeks after the embattled prelate’s 62nd birthday, the move comes eight months after an apostolic visitation was ordered by Rome to gauge the tensions in the diocese, which Finn had led since 2005. Intriguingly, the KC vacancy has occurred as Pope Francis faces fresh calls to act against another prelate mired in controversy over charges of negligence amid his ties to an abuse case: the Chilean Bishop Juan Barros, whose recent arrival in a new see has been dogged by astonishing levels of public protest, all while Barros has been made to travel with riot police and guard dogs.

Back to Finn, the outcry for the bishop’s departure dates to the fallout of the 2012 bench trial that saw him found guilty of negligence in the case of Fr Shawn Ratigan, a local cleric whose explicit photos of young girls in various states of undress were reported to the diocese on their discovery by a technician, but not forwarded to police for several months. While the priest was subsequently charged with several federal counts of producing child pornography and sentenced to 50 years in jail, a local grand jury indicted Finn and the diocese on a single misdemeanor count of failing to report, becoming the first bishop in the English-speaking world to face criminal accountability for his handling of an abuse case.

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MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation

04/21/2015

Jennifer Haselberger

Almost immediately following this morning’s announcement that Pope Francis had accepted the resignation of Bishop Robert Finn, the first Catholic bishop to be criminally charged as a result of his mishandling of sexual misconduct by a priest, I started to receive emails from people inquiring as to what I thought this means for us here in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis (a.k.a the Worst Diocese On Earth). Unfortunately, my thought was, and remains, that it means little if anything for the simple reason that the situation of Bishop Finn, until this morning the Bishop of Kansas City- St Joseph, differs from that of Archbishop John Nienstedt in several important ways.

First, if the Vatican announcement is to be believed, Bishop Finn tendered his resignation following a meeting with Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, on April 14 (a development originally reported by the National Catholic Reporter). Archbishop Nienstedt, on the other hand, has steadfastly insisted that he will not resign. Since at present there is no real way to remove a bishop from office if he is unwilling to fall on his sword, Nienstedt’s obstinate refusal to step aside remains a significant impediment to any resolution of the question of governance of the See of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.

Second, Bishop Finn’s removal followed his guilty plea to criminal charges stemming from his failure to report child abuse, in this case child pornography in the possession of Father Shawn Ratigan. To date, Archbishop Nienstedt has not been charged with any crime. The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office is continuing its investigation of the Archdiocese’s handling of sexual misconduct by clergy, and it is possible that charges against Nienstedt or other Archdiocesan employees/clergy might result. Until then, however, Nienstedt is technically free from the most emotionally-charged (and possibly inaccurate) argument made against Bishop Finn- that diocesan safe environment policies would prohibit him from teaching Sunday school in his own diocese because of his guilty plea.

Third, Bishop Finn’s resignation followed an Apostolic Visitation (again, a story originally reported by the National Catholic Reporter). To my knowledge, the only Visitation-related interviews that have taken place in this Archdiocese were regarding the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter. Although Nienstedt has been subject to an internally ordered investigation, and then apparently an investigation into the investigation, none of that has occurred under Vatican auspices or even, if I am not mistaken, with its consent. Many commentators have noted that Pope Francis likes to follow a process, in which case one would expect that an Apostolic Visitation would precede the removal of Archbishop Nienstedt and/or any of his auxiliaries.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
KSHB

Andres Gutierrez

KANSAS CITY, Mo – As the world learned of the news of Bishop Robert Finn’s resignation Tuesday, staff members at the National Catholic Reporter in Midtown were not surprised.

One of the paper’s reporters actually saw Finn at the Vatican last week.

During that visit, Finn met with the head of the congregation for bishops. He was asked to resign. In return, he offered his resignation.

The paper adds he came back to Kansas City to prepare the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph for the announcement.

Catholics learned of the news at noon Rome time – 5 a.m. CST.

Finn’s resignation sends a clear message to high-ranking members in the Catholic Church, National Catholic Reporter staff said

“The Vatican taking this action at this point is a signal to bishops that you have the rules, you have the regulations, you have the protocols – you must follow them,” Dennis Coday, editor of the National Catholic Reporter, said. “Here’s a clear violation here, and the Vatican has acted slowly here, but they have acted.”

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CHILE
The Reporter

By EVA VERGARA Associated Press
First Posted: April 21, 2015

SANTIAGO, Chile — Parishioners in a southern Chile diocese are gathering wherever their new bishop appears, but their presence is not the sort of assembly the Catholic Church would expect.

In the month since Bishop Juan Barros was installed in Osorno, the priest has had to sneak out of back exits, call on riot police to shepherd him from the city’s cathedral and coordinate movements with bodyguards and police canine units.

Such is the public routine of the bishop who is denounced by his opponents as having shielded Chile’s most notorious pedophile priest. For his part, Barros says relations are improving.

The appointment of Barros by Pope Francis has unleashed an unprecedented protest, with more than 1,300 church members, 30 diocesan priests and nearly half of Chile’s Parliament sending letters urging the pope to reconsider.

They may be emboldened after Francis on Tuesday accepted the resignation of a U.S. bishop, Robert Finn, who pleaded guilty to failing to report a suspected abuser, answering calls by victims to hold priests accountable and ensure children are protected.

At least three men say Barros was present when they were sexually molested in the 1980s and 1990s by the Rev. Fernando Karadima. Karadima was sanctioned by the Vatican in 2011 for sexually abusing minors, ordered to live out his life cloistered in a nun’s convent. Barros has said he knew nothing of Karadima’s abuses.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
KMBZ

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Five plaintiffs in child sex abuse case against Bishop Finn in the Kansas City – St Joseph Diocese commented on the case this afternoon.

Phil Pisciotta was molested by a priest when he was about 12 years old, but Finn’s departure gives him hope.

None of the five were involved in the Shawn Ratigan case. Attorney Rebecca Randles says she is doing a records search to determine if there are other victims.

Michael Sandridge was molested by a Kansas City priest when he was 13. He didn’t report it for years, and says when he did, there was a price to pay.

Sandridge is the only one of the five victims who is still a devout Catholic.

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CHILE
Bio Bio

[A Mass will be held tomorrow (Wednesday) in opposition to Osorno Bishop Juan Barros. This is the first official Mass held to oppose the prelate and will be led by priest Pedro Kliegel on behalf of the lay movement in Osorno. The Mass will be held at Sacred Heart Church in that city. It is a church that has become a sort of bastion of opposition to Barros. Also expected to attend are priests who signed a letter sent to the Vatican in opposition to Barros. Retired Bishop Juan Luis Ysem of Ancrud said they are not opposed to possibility of an apostolic visitor to analyze the climate of conflict between the faithful and Barros.]

Este miércoles se desarrollará una misa oficial contra el obispo de Osorno Juan Barros. Se trata de la primera eucaristía oficial en rechazo al prelado, la cual será dirigida por el sacerdote Pedro Kliegel, el principal opositor desde la curia osornina, tras petición del movimiento Laico de Osorno.

La actividad se desarrollará en la Iglesia Sagrado Corazón de la ciudad, la cual se ha convertido en una especie de bastión de los opositores a Barros, actividad donde también se espera que asistan los sacerdotes que firmaron la carta que antes que asumiera el obispo de Osorno fue enviada a El Vaticano por el sacerdote Pedro Kliegel, según explicó Mario Vargas, uno de los líderes del movimiento de Laicos y Laicas opositores.

Respecto a la sugerencia hecha por el obispo emérito de Ancud, Juan Luis Ysern, de exigir un visitador apostólico desde el propio Vaticano para analizar el clima de conflicto existente entre una parte de los fieles y Barros, Mario Vargas aseguró que están abiertos a tal posibilidad, la cual sería incluso analizada por algunos sacerdotes locales.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

By Phil Lawler | Apr 21, 2015

Bishop Finn had to go. When he was convicted on criminal charges, he became the poster boy for the American bishops’ mishandling of the sex-abuse crisis. He was an irresistible target for critics of Catholicism: a walking, talking symbol of episcopal negligence.

The bishop’s defenders have said that he was not properly informed about the Ratigan case. That’s true, but it’s not an adequate defense. They say that his subordinates and counselors gave him bad advice. Also true, but irrelevant. We’ve heard those arguments too many times. The fact remains that when he was alerted to the fact that a troubled priest had engaged in inappropriate activities with young children, Bishop Finn did not take prompt and decisive action. He let the problem fester—as so many other bishops have let so many other problems fester—with disastrous results for everyone involved.

In Bishop Finn’s case this failure was particularly inexcusable because the results of negligence were so very well known. He could not get away with mumbling inanities about a “learning curve,” about not recognizing the severity of pedophilia, as other bishops had done a decade earlier. By 2011, every American bishop should have known that if there was one failure he absolutely must avoid, it was the failure to curb sexual abuse.

The announcement of Bishop Finn’s resignation comes, appropriately, on the same day as the news that the US bishops spent nearly $3 billion in the past decade to settle sex-abuse lawsuits. That reckoning understates the financial cost of the sex-abuse scandal, since it does not include the millions of dollars quietly paid out before 2004. And the financial cost, in turn, does not adequately summarize the staggering damage done to the Church. How many young lives were damaged? How many thousands were alienated from the faith? How many opportunities for evangelization were lost forever?

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Seattle PI

By BILL DRAPER, Associated Press

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Bishop Robert Finn, who led the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph in Missouri for nearly 10 years, resigned Tuesday, almost three years after he was convicted of shielding an abusive priest.

Back in 2012, Finn admitted that he knew about photos of children on a priest’s laptop six months before the images were turned over to law enforcement. That made him the highest-ranking church official in the U.S. to be convicted of not taking action in response to abuse allegations. A look at key developments in the case against Finn:
___

Aug. 20, 2008 — Finn holds a news conference to apologize for abuse that occurred at the hands of current and former clergy members and vows to make sure such abuse never happens again. The diocese tentatively agrees to pay $10 million to settle 47 pending sexual abuse claims involving 12 priests. The abuse happened between 1951 and 1992.
___

May 19, 2010 — Julie Hess, a Catholic school principal, writes a memo reporting that several people had complained that priest Shawn Ratigan was taking compromising pictures of young children.
___

Dec. 16, 2010 — A computer technician working on Ratigan’s laptop finds multiple images of girls under 12 years old.
___

December 2010 — Ratigan fails to show up for Mass. Deacon goes to Ratigan’s house and finds priest unconscious in his closed garage with motorcycle running. Suicide note found in home says he is sorry for any harm he had caused to church.

Ratigan is hospitalized, then placed in psychiatric care. Finn sends him to Pennsylvania for a mental evaluation but does not inform state of possible child sexual abuse, as required by law.

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UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

“We all know there are other U.S. bishops wondering ‘who is the next?’ ” tweeted Catholic Church historian, Massimo Faggioli, after Pope Francis, likely under pressure from “low tax” US billionaire donors, “dumped” U.S. Bishop Robert Finn. Bishop Finn had became a symbol of the Vatican’s decades’ old stonewalling approach to addressing the priest child sexual abuse crisis. Paradoxically perhaps, frequent bishop defender, Bill Donohue, fairly listed today Finn’s sins, which while detestable, seem almost minor when compared to those reported reliably with respect to many other bishops in the USA and elsewhere. If Finn is sacked, how can the pope justify keeping so many others with “even dirtier hands”? What say you Pope Francis?

Yes, who is next? If the pope fails on curtailing child abuse, he becomes a US political liability, in next year’s US presidential election, for his “low tax-less regulation-least safety net” US billionaire supporters that appear to be depending on him considerably.

Finn was an easy case. Finn is the only U.S. bishop ever convicted in court of failing to report a suspected abuser he supervised, Fr. Shawn Ratigan, who was later sentenced to 50 years on federal child pornography charges. Ratigan had hundreds of lewd pictures of children from local parishes on his computer, and he attempted suicide when the diocese learned of them in 2010. But Finn waited six months to report Ratigan to authorities in violation of a local law. Finn pleaded guilty in 2012 for failing to report Ratigan timely, after a legal battle that cost his diocese over a million dollars. In short, Finn was low-hanging fruit.

The day before Finn’s resignation was announced, the Irish “Joan of Arc” and priest sex abuse survivor, Marie Collins, who is a member of the panel Francis established to address the abuse crisis, reportedly wondered “how anybody like that (Finn) could be left in charge of a diocese.” “Things are moving slowly, as I have said many times, but they are moving in the right direction!” as Marie Collins boldly tweeted Tuesday (April 21) after hearing news of Finn’s resignation. Also, Collins reportedly said this week a plan for hierarchical accountability is on Francis’ desk now. What in God’s name is the pope waiting for?

Francis will be making his first visit to the USA in September, a highly anticipated trip to a crucially powerful and wealthy Church where media mesmerized Catholics have welcomed his new style as much as anywhere. But it’s also a Church whose members have been traumatized by the abuse scandal, which they see as a priority for the pope to curtail, at least as much as the Catholic protesters in Chile appear to see it. Will US Catholics protest similarly in Philadelphia, New York City and/or Washington DC this summer? Who ever expected Chilean Catholics to protest so strongly against their Argentine neighbor, Francesco?

On Finn’s sacking, see also the National Catholic Reporter’s Joshua J. McElwee, Brian Roewe and Dennis Coday report and the informative comments thereto. See also my Electing Bishops & Jeb Bush Too , A Pope, A New US War, Jeb Bush Neocons & Big Oil and Hillary Clinton vs. Pope Francis in 2015 USA Politics .

Will Pope Francis now sack also the bankrupt Minneapolis Archdiocese’s Archbishop John Nienstedt, who is enmeshed in several obscene scandals involving alleged priest child abuse cover-ups and gay relationships with some of his priest subordinates. The child abuse cover ups allegedly also extensively involve Fr. Kevin McDonough, brother of US President Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough.

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee Brian Roewe Dennis Coday | Apr. 21, 2015

VATICAN CITY AND KANSAS CITY, MO. U.S. Bishop Robert Finn, the Catholic prelate in the U.S. heartland who became a symbol internationally of the church’s failures in addressing the sexual abuse crisis, has resigned. He was the first bishop criminally convicted of mishandling an abusive priest yet remained in office for another two and a half years.

The Vatican announced Finn’s resignation as head of the diocese of St. Joseph-Kansas City, Mo., in a note in its daily news bulletin Tuesday.

While the note did not provide any reason for the move, it is rare for bishops in the Catholic church to resign without cause before they reach the traditional retirement age of 75.

Finn, who is 62 and had led the diocese since 2005, was neither assigned a new diocese nor as yet given a new leadership role in the church.

Other than for reasons of health, only one other bishop among the some 200 U.S. Catholic dioceses and eparchies has resigned his role in such a manner in at least the past decade. …

In February 2014, Kansas City Catholics engaged a canon lawyer and made a formal request that the Vatican initiate a penal process to determine whether Finn violated church law in the case of Shawn Ratigan, a then-priest of the diocese convicted of child pornography charges, whom Finn failed to report to civil authorities.

In September 2014, Archbishop Terrence Prendergast of Ottawa, Ontario, came to Kansas City for a Vatican investigation known as an apostolic visitation to interview more than a dozen people as part of an investigation into Finn’s leadership.

Prendergast told those he interviewed from Sept. 22-26 that he was there on behalf of the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops.

Smith said in a brief interview Tuesday that Finn had met with Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, April 14 in Rome. The bishop, Smith said, then spoke with U.S. apostolic nuncio Archbishop Carlo Vigano on Monday, at which final details of the resignation were determined.

There “probably were conversations that went on all the way up to yesterday about when or how this transition would take place,” Smith said.

The overlap of Finn’s Rome visit with a meeting of the new Vatican commission on clergy sexual abuse on April 12 was a “kind of coincidence,” Smith said. …

Commission member Peter Saunders said in an interview Tuesday that the members discussed Finn’s case at the meeting.

“I believe that there was already some movement on the Finn case, from what Cardinal O’Malley said, so I think this was going to happen,” Saunders said. “But maybe we were in some small way instrumental in ensuring that it did.”

While the Vatican bulletin does not say Finn was removed from office (instead, it says the pope accepted his resignation), such moves are still rare in the church.

The last Catholic prelate to be removed from diocesan office was Paraguayan Bishop Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano, whom Francis removed in September mainly over accusations that he had not adequately managed his diocese and had caused strife with other prelates.

The last U.S. bishop who resigned at such an early age was former Scranton, Pa., Bishop Joseph Martino, who resigned in 2009 at age 63 mainly over concerns that he was mismanaging and was divisive in his diocese.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the former archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Scotland, who resigned in 2013 after admitting to sexual misconduct, on March 20 resigned “the rights and privileges of a cardinal.” Those include advising the pope, holding membership in Vatican congregations and councils, and electing a new pope.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
KMBC

By Micheal Mahoney

KANSAS CITY, Mo. —Some Kansas City area Catholics are split after learning of Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn’s resignation.

After a midday Mass at Redemptorist Church in Kansas City, some said Finn was driven from office.

“They’re not being fair. They’re putting it all on his back and he has people working under him,” said Virginia Vigliaturo.

“Well, it’s unfortunate that it had to come to that, but it was probably the wisest thing the Pope could do,” said Ed Stewart, who attended Mass.

Stewart said he liked Finn, but added he thought is resignation would solve a lot of political problems in the diocese.

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UNITED STATES
Crux

By Michael O’Loughlin
National reporter April 21, 2015

Bishop Robert Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph in Missouri, finds himself without a job Tuesday, as Pope Francis accepted the embattled prelate’s resignation three years after his conviction for failing to report suspected child abuse.

The Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests, SNAP, called the move “encouraging,” but said there is still more work to do, describing the resignation as “a very tiny drop of reform in an enormous bucket of horror.”

“Finn’s departure will, in the short term, make some adults happier. By itself, it won’t, in the long term, make many kids safer,” the statement read.

A group that monitors bishops agreed that Finn’s removal was a “good step,” but called on Pope Francis to elaborate on the reasons for Finn’s dismissal.

“But what no pope has done to date is publicly confirm that he removed a culpable bishop because of his failure to make children’s safety his first priority. We urge Pope Francis to issue such a statement immediately,” Anne Doyle, a spokesman for BishopAccountability.org, said in a statement. “That would be unprecedented, and it would send a bracing message to bishops and religious superiors worldwide that a new era has begun.” …

Pope Francis is currently considering a proposal from his commission on sex abuse dealing with bishop accountability. The commission has discussed Finn’s case, as well as that of the newly installed Bishop Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid of Osorno, Chile, who is tied to one of that country’s most notorious abusers.

A member of that commission, Marie Collins, told Crux in an interview published on Monday that it was time for Finn to go.

“I cannot understand how Bishop Finn is still in position, when anyone else with a conviction that he has could not run a Sunday school in a parish. He wouldn’t pass a background check,” she said. “I don’t know how anybody like that could be left in charge of a diocese.”

But some are standing by Finn.

“Bishop Finn, we love you, your pastoral heart,” a statement from a group called Justice for Bishop Finn read.

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UNITED STATES
Los Angeles Times

By CHRISTINE MAI-DUC contact the reporter

nsas City Bishop Robert W. Finn, the first U.S. Catholic bishop to be convicted for his role in the church’s sex abuse scandals, resigned on Tuesday. Here are the basics on why his departure is so significant:

Finn has faced pressure to step down for years

Finn was convicted in September 2012 of failing to report sexual abuse by one of his priests, Father Shawn Ratigan, whose laptop contained hundreds of images of child pornography. Finn later acknowledged that he and other diocesan officials had known about the photos for five months but did not report Ratigan to police.

A judge found Finn guilty of the misdemeanor charge and sentenced him to two years’ probation, which included extensive training for staff and clergy and creation of a fund for counseling abuse victims.

Ratigan was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

Finn faced pressure to resign following the conviction, including from within his own ranks. An online petition demanding his resignation had been signed by more than 260,000 people. …

A 2002 investigation by the Dallas Morning News identified 109 bishops accused of enabling sexual abuse within the U.S. church. According to 2010 data compiled by BishopAccountability.org, a site that has tracked the abuse scandal, 45 of those bishops named by the Dallas Morning News had retired, 15 were promoted, 12 resigned, and three died in office. One bishop’s role as administrator ended and a new bishop took over.

According to the site, 24 U.S. Catholic bishops have been publicly accused of sexually abusing minors. Of those, four are still working, 16 retired and four died in office. …

“Finn’s resignation will bring short-term relief to thousands of Catholics, and hundreds of victims in Kansas City, but there’s a vast difference between short-term relief and long-term reform,” said David Clohessy, of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Earlier this year, the Vatican commission appointed to advise the pope on clergy sexual abuse discussed creating consequences for Catholic bishops who don’t follow guidelines for preventing and reporting abuse, Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley told the National Catholic Reporter.

Asked in November why Finn had not resigned despite his conviction, O’Malley told “60 Minutes” it was a “question that the Holy See needs to address urgently.”

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UNITED STATES
Christian Science Monitor

[KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Associated Press has withdrawn its story about Pope Francis accepting the resignation of a bishop who led the Diocese of Kansas City-St Joseph in Missouri for nearly 10 years. Bishop Robert Finn was convicted by a judge of failing to report suspected child abuse, but did not plead guilty as the story stated. A corrected version of the story will be sent.

The AP]

By Nicole Winfield and Margaret Stafford, Associated Press APRIL 21, 2015

KANSAS CITY, MO. — Pope Francis accepted the resignation Tuesday of a U.S. bishop who pleaded guilty to failing to report a suspected child abuser, answering calls by victims to take action against bishops who cover up for pedophile priests.

Bishop Robert Finn, who led the Diocese of Kansas City-St Joseph in Missouri for nearly 10 years, resigned under canon law that allows bishops to resign early for illness or some “grave” reason that makes them unfit for office. But his resignation did not provide a specific reason.

Finn, 62, is 13 years shy of the normal retirement age of 75.

In 2012, Finn pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of failure to report suspected abuse and was sentenced to two years of probation, making him the highest-ranking church official in the U.S. to be convicted of not taking action in response to abuse allegations. …

The removal was praised by Marie Collins, a prominent member of Francis’ own sex abuse advisory board who had called for Finn to go and demanded that the Vatican hold bishops accountable when they fail to protect children.

“Things are moving slowly, as I have said many times, but they are moving in the right direction!” she tweeted. …

Rebecca Randles, the attorney who represented the plaintiffs in several abuse lawsuits that have cost the dioceses millions of dollars, said Finn’s resignation was an important step for abuse victims and the diocese.

“For survivors, there is a sense that as long as Finn was in charge, there would be no way they would have had closure on their own experience. He was a symbol bearer,” she said “And this kind of abuse ripples across all the Catholic faithful.” …

In a statement, Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the online abuse resource BishopAccountability.org, said Finn’sresignation was a welcome step but called on Francis to publicly state that he was removed for mismanaging the Ratigan case and failing to protect children.

She noted that bishops had been allowed to resign under the previous two popes, but that the Vatican has never publicly linked their resignations to mishandling abuse cases.

“We urge Pope Francis to issue such a statement immediately. That would be unprecedented,” she said. “And it would send a bracing message to bishops and religious superiors worldwide that a new era has begun.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Morning Bulletin

Austin King | 22nd Apr 2015

THE Sisters of Mercy leader admitted she was less than compassionate when sexual and physical abuse victims first started speaking out.

Not once when the allegations of abuse at Neerkol Orphanage first came to light, did Sister Berneice Loch attempt to contact victims, the Royal Commission panel heard yesterday.

That was the first port of call she should have made, she told the commission.

However, rather than contact the witnesses, who last week gave evidence of physical and sexual abuse at the orphanage which was run by the Sisters of Mercy, Sr Loch instead sought information from other Sisters, congregational personnel and sources.

Sr Loch decided to oversee the drafting of a media release to counteract those “sensationalistic” rumours.

That media release was never distributed; it was only drafted as a “measure” if the allegations got too “out of control”.

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UNITED STATES
Bloomberg

Melinda Henneberger
@MelindaDC

That sigh of relief you hear is the exhalation of all the Kansas City Catholics whose titular leader for the last decade, Bishop Robert Finn, became the first U.S. bishop to be convicted of failing to report a predatory priest to the police 2 ½ years ago. Today, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had accepted Finn’s resignation.

Since September of 2012, the Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri diocese had been supervised by someone who couldn’t have taught Sunday school, because he wouldn’t have passed the required background check. And as long as Finn held on to his job, the wider church had a tough time arguing that its tough new standards on protecting children meant bishops could no longer cover up for abusive priests.

Finn was convicted of a misdemeanor count of failing to report suspected child abuse in the case of the now-defrocked and incarcerated former Father Shawn Ratigan, who in August of 2012 pled guilty to producing child porn.

The National Catholic Reporter, the independent Kansas City-based paper that has been aggressively reporting on Finn, and calling his ouster, noted that the resignation resonates because “[t]he issue of holding bishops accountable has long been the largest and most provocative unresolved element in the church’s handling of sexual abuse cases. In diocese after diocese and country after country, abuse victims, parents and advocacy groups have asked why bishops who inappropriately handle dangerous priests are rarely, if ever, held accountable.”

They have, however, been held accountable by the small paper, which had been publishing Jason Berry’s groundbreaking stories about clerical sex abuse for a full 20 years before the Boston Globe won a Pulitzer in 2003 for the paper’s coverage of known priest abusers who’d repeatedly reassigned instead of reported to the police.

In this Pulitzer week, when we celebrate the best journalism in the country, including reporting on tax inversions by Bloomberg News reporter Zachary Mider, which on Monday won the 2015 prize for best explanatory reporting, the news of Finn’s ouster is a different kind of validation for NCR, where columnist Michael Sean Winters writes, “This is no time for popping champagne. Everything about the situation—Bishop Finn’s authoritarian manner, his conviction for failing to report child sex abuse, the years of inaction by the Holy See—is the stuff of tragedy.”

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MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio

Madeleine Baran Apr 21, 2015

Pope Francis on Tuesday accepted the resignation of Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn, who had failed to report a priest who had possessed child pornography. Finn pleaded guilty.

Is the clergy sex abuse scandal in Kansas City similar to the scandal here?

Yes, in general terms. Both Twin Cities Archbishop John Nienstedt and Bishop Robert Finn in Kansas City have been accused of covering up clergy sex abuse.

However, in Kansas City, the cover-up led to a criminal charge against Finn for failing to immediately tell police about a priest caught with child pornography. The case ended when Finn pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge. He was sentenced to two years’ probation in 2012, according to the Associated Press.

Nienstedt has not been criminally charged for his handling of clergy sex abuse. Nienstedt’s role in protecting accused priests was revealed in an investigative series by MPR News in 2013. The reports showed Nienstedt had authorized secret payments to priests accused of sexually abusing children and failed to warn parishioners of sexual misconduct by the Rev. Curtis Wehmeyer — a priest who went on to sexually abuse at least two children of a parish employee. Wehmeyer pleaded guilty and is now in prison. MPR News has also reported that Nienstedt gave several false statements in a sworn deposition taken in 2014 as part of a clergy sex abuse lawsuit.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on those who are rejoicing over the resignation of Bishop Robert Finn:
In 2002, Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland retired after it was disclosed that he paid $450,000—ripped off from the coffers that service the poor—to his boyfriend; Weakland was accused of raping him years earlier.

Weakland’s multiple offenses, all serious, have not deterred Catholic left-wing malcontents, particularly those at Commonweal, from showering him with praise. Even Weakland’s stunning revelation, made in 2009, that he did not know it was a crime to sexually molest a child, had no effect: his fans were nonplussed. That’s because he is a man of the Left. Bishop Finn, however, is entitled to no slack. That’s because he is an orthodox bishop.

Some of Bishop Finn’s critics have been fair, but many have not. Among the latter are the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), attorneys Jeffrey Anderson and Rebecca Randles, and Judy Thomas of the Kansas City Star. They make a good tag-team. Randles, by the way, subsequently sued me and the Catholic League over a bogus libel accusation. But she lost: it was dismissed by the courts on all counts.

In 2011, we submitted a proposed full-page ad to the Kansas City Star that I had written; the cost was $25,000. But once the editors read it, they turned it down. That’s because I had gotten too close to home, exposing their allies for who they are.

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UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Spiritual Politics

Mark Silk | Apr 21, 2015

“A tiny but belated step forward” is how David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, reacted to the Vatican’s announcement of the resignation of Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn. Yes, it was belated. But it’s a big step forward.

Three-and-a-half years ago Finn was found guilty of the misdemeanor crime of failing to report a priest suspected of child abuse to civil authorities. The way Catholic League President Bill Donohue tells it, Finn behaved correctly — but Donohue, as he has for years in this matter, is blowing smoke.

Finn did exactly what bishops used to do all the time: cover up a priest’s sexually abusive behavior and give the priest another job in the diocese. And he did it in contravention of the American bishops’ own rules. And none of them made a public peep about it.

Sure, it would have been good if the Vatican had gone ahead and given the reason for the resignation. Sure, there are others who deserve Finnistration, such Archbishop Nienstedt in the Twin Cities and the mistakenly ordained Bishop Juan Barros in Chile. And sure, it remains to be seen if, as promised, Rome promulgates tough disciplinary procedures for bishops charged with covering up abuse cases. But none of this should be allowed to minimize the significance of what happened today.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Bishop Robert W. Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, who was convicted in 2012 on one misdemeanor count of failing to report suspected child abuse.

The Vatican announced the bishop’s resignation April 21, specifying it was under the terms of the Code of Canon Law, which says, “A diocesan bishop who has become less able to fulfill his office because of ill health or some other grave cause is earnestly requested to present his resignation from office.”

The Vatican offered no further comment.

The pope’s acceptance of Bishop Finn’s resignation comes after members of the Pontifical Commission for Child Protection announced that one of their priorities was to ensure measures were in place to promote the accountability of bishops in protecting children and upholding the Vatican-approved norms for dealing with accusations of child abuse made against church workers.

In an interview published April 20, Marie Collins, a member of the commission and a survivor of abuse, told the news site Crux, “I cannot understand how Bishop Finn is still in position, when anyone else with a conviction that he has could not run a Sunday school in a parish. He wouldn’t pass a background check.”

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By David Gibson | Religion News Service April 21

When Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Missouri Bishop Robert Finn, who was convicted three years ago for failing to report a priest suspected of child abuse, the pontiff sent a powerful message to the Catholic Church.

Here are five takeaways from the news, which the Vatican announced on Tuesday (April 21).

1. This is a big deal

During the past decade, the most intense years of the Catholic Church’s long-running clergy sex abuse scandal, thousands of priests have been punished or defrocked for abusing children, and a few bishops found guilty of molestation have also quit.

But until Finn, no American bishop had ever been forced from office (despite the terse Vatican announcement that he “resigned”) for covering up for a predator priest.

That sets a precedent in an institution where many have regarded the hierarchy as a privileged caste that should not be held to the same standards as others in the church. Some feared that if a bishop were pushed out for failing to do his job, it would create a domino effect that could topple the entire superstructure.

“We all know there are other U.S. bishops wondering ‘who is the next?’” tweeted church historian Massimo Faggioli.

But Francis seems to be betting this sort of accountability at the top will strengthen the church, and even help restore the credibility of the bishops.

2. Finn was an easy case

Finn is the only U.S. bishop ever convicted in court of failing to report a suspected abuser, the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, who was later sentenced to 50 years on federal child pornography charges.

Ratigan had hundreds of lewd pictures of children from local parishes on his computer, and he attempted suicide when the diocese learned of them in 2010. But Finn waited six months to report Ratigan to authorities.

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VATICAN CITY
Wall Street Journal

By FRANCIS ROCCA
Updated April 21, 2015

ROME—A U.S. bishop convicted of failing to report a priest who had produced child pornography has resigned, amid calls that Pope Francis make church leaders more accountable for their handling of child abuse.

The pope accepted the resignation of Bishop Robert W. Finn of Kansas City, Mo., under a provision of church law calling for bishops to resign because of “ill health or some other grave cause,” the Vatican announced Tuesday.

Members of a Vatican panel on child abuse have been pressing Pope Francis to dismiss bishops who fail to protect children or punish those under their authority who abuse them. One member of the panel said he would resign if the pope fails to fire a Chilean bishop who has been accused of protecting an abusive priest.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, declined to comment further on the Finn case. A spokesman for the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph also declined to comment, referring to a diocesan statement that quoted Bishop Finn but didn’t address the cause of his resignation. …

Jack Smith, director of communications for the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, said Bishop Finn would have no comment beyond his words the diocesan statement. Asked why the bishop had resigned, Mr. Smith said: “You have to assume that this probably stems from the four-year-long struggle over the circumstances of the Father Ratigan case.” …

“He should have been sacked a long time ago, as soon as he was convicted,” said Peter Saunders, an advocate for sex abuse victims who sits on the Vatican advisory body. “He should have been dismissed.”

Mr. Saunders said Pope Francis should now act promptly in the case of Bishop Juan Barros, whom the pope appointed to lead the diocese of Osorno, Chile, in January. Critics have demanded Barros’s ouster over accusations that he had covered up for another priest, the Rev. Fernando Karadima, who was later punished by the church for sexual abuse. Bishop Barros has denied charges that he witnessed abuse by Father Karadima.

In March, the Vatican said in a statement that the Congregation for Bishops examined the Barros case before his transfer to Osorno and “did not find objective reasons to preclude the appointment.”

Earlier this month, Mr. Saunders and three other members of the child-protection commission traveled to Rome to meet with Cardinal O’Malley and express their concerns about Bishop Barros. The group said in a statement that Cardinal O’Malley had “agreed to present the concerns of the subcommittee to the Holy Father.”

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UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC) Statement on the Acceptance of Bishop Robert Finn’s Resignation by Pope Francis

For Immediate Release – April 21. 2015

Contact: Kristine Ward, Chair, National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC) Kristineward@hotmail. com, 937-272-0308

It’s about time.

The resignation of Bishop Finn as head of the Diocese of Kansas City- St. Joseph is not a moment for applause in the continuing crisis of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.

It is a moment to ask why it took so long.

It is a moment to ask when the others who protected and continue to protect abusers will be removed.

It is a moment to ask why there are continuing defenders of bishops and religious superiors for predator priests and religious men and women, and diocesan staffs.

May today’s announcement, terse as it was from the Vatican, give a measure of peace to the survivors.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph

Statement on the Resignation of Bishop Robert W. Finn from the Pastoral Care of the Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph

April 21, 2015

Today, the Holy Father Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Bishop Robert W. Finn from the pastoral care of the Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph. At the same time, the Holy Father appointed Kansas City in Kansas Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann as Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph.

As Apostolic Administrator, Archbishop Naumann serves as the episcopal leader of the Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph until such time as a permanent bishop is appointed. He retains his duties as Archbishop of Kansas City in Kansas.

“It has been an honor and joy for me to serve here among so many good people of faith,” Bishop Robert W. Finn said. “Please begin already to pray for whomever God may call to be the next Bishop of Kansas City – St. Joseph.”

In an open letter to the people of the Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph, Archbishop Naumann expressed his thanks to the Holy Father for his appointment.

“I have been part of the Kansas City Community for more than 11 years, so I have an awareness of the vitality and beauty of the Catholic community in Northwest Missouri,” Archbishop Naumann said. He prayed that the coming weeks and months will be “a time of grace and healing for the Diocese.”

Archbishop Naumann explained that his time as Administrator will “not be a time for innovation or change, but a time to sustain the ordinary and essential activities of the Church and where possible to advance the initiatives that already are under way.”

Archbishop Naumann prayed that when a new bishop is appointed for Kansas City – St. Joseph, he “will find a community united both in their love for Jesus and His Bride – the Church.”

Finally, he looked forward to the many ordinations to the priesthood to take place in the coming weeks on both sides of the state line, calling it “one of the great signs of the New Springtime in the Church.” Four men will be ordained for the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas and nine for the Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph.

Archbishop Naumann is scheduled to spend the day engaged with the Administrative Cabinet of the Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph and the staff at the Catholic Center.

The full text of Archbishop Naumann’s letter to the people of the Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph is below.

Letter to the People of the Diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph on the Occasion of my Appointment as Apostolic Administrator

By Archbishop Joseph F Naumann
April 21, 2015

I am grateful to the Holy Father for his Appointment to serve as Apostolic Administrator for the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, while continuing to serve as the Archbishop of Kansas City in Kansas.

I have been part of the Kansas City Community for more than 11 years, so I have an awareness of the vitality and beauty of the Catholic community in Northwest Missouri. Living in the same media market, I am also keenly conscious of some of challenges and difficulties this Diocese has suffered in recent years.

I pray that the coming weeks and months will be a time of grace and healing for the Diocese. All of us, who are privileged to serve in leadership for the Church, do so for only a season. It is not our Church, but Christ’s Church. We are mere stewards of His Church for a time.

By definition, the role of an Administrator is for a very short season. This will not be a time for innovation or change, but a time to sustain the ordinary and essential activities of the Church and where possible to advance the initiatives that already are under way.

It is my desire to do all that I can to prepare this Diocese to welcome well its new bishop. I pray that your new bishop, when he arrives, will find a community united both in their love for Jesus and His Bride – the Church – as well as eager to proclaim the truth and beauty of His Gospel to the world.

For this to happen, I will need the prayers and support of the Priests, Deacons, Religious, Diocesan and Parish lay staffs, and most importantly the people of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri. I want to be as available as I can, while still fulfilling my responsibilities as the Archbishop of Kansas City in Kansas. I am confident that I can count on the prayerful support of the Priests, Deacons, Religious and Laity of Northeast Kansas to assist me in fulfilling these dual roles to the best of my ability.

One of the great signs of the New Springtime in the Church that we give thanks for on both sides of State Line Road is the increase in recent years of priestly vocations. Both dioceses look forward with eager anticipation in a few weeks to the ordination of many new priests – nine for the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph and four for the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas.

One of the great treasures that the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph and the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas share in common is Mary as our primary Patron under her title, the Immaculate Conception.

We seek our Blessed Mother’s intercession that Her Son might bless abundantly the Catholic Community of Northwest Missouri during this time of transition.

Mary, Mother of the Church, place the people of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph under your protective mantle, drawing us closer to your Son, Jesus. Amen.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
USA Today

Aamer Madhani, USA TODAY April 21, 2015

Before he became one of the highest profile members of the clergy found complicit in the U.S. Catholic church’s child sex abuse scandal, Bishop Robert Finn had an impressive climb up the church’s hierarchy and established a reputation as one of the church’s most conservative voices.

On Tuesday, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had accepted Finn’s resignation, marking an end to one of the ugliest chapters in the church’s child sexual abuse scandal.

The Vatican did not explain the reason for allowing Finn to resign. He is nearly 13 years short of the normal retirement age for bishops. …

Ahead of his installation as Kansas City bishop, some priests, nuns and church members worried that he was too theologically conservative for the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese, according to news reports at the time.

Finn acknowledged that he was one of a handful of bishops in the country who belonged to the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, the organization for diocesan priest “associates” of Opus Dei, a conservative group that encourages Catholics to practice their Christian principles in their workplaces, according to the Kansas City Star.

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UNITED STATES
Legal Examiner

Posted by Joseph H. Saunders
April 21, 2015

The man who became a symbol of the Catholic Church’s failure to stem the sexual abuse crisis that has plagued it has resigned.

In a news bulletin the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had accepted the resignation of the bishop of Kansas City, Robert W. Finn. The Vatican provided no reason for the resignation, only that Finn was leaving under the code of canon law that allows bishops to resign early for illness or some “grave” reason that makes them unfit for office.

In 2012 Finn was found guilty of failing to report suspected child abuse, and became the first American bishop in the decades-long sexual abuse scandal to be convicted of shielding a pedophile priest. The counts each carried a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine, but Bishop Finn was sentenced to two years of court-supervised probation. In 2014 Roman Catholics based in Kansas City took the rare step of petitioning Pope Francis to discipline Bishop Finn and asked for his removal. The Vatican received the petition, signed by more than 113,000 people, with no public comments or actions.

The resignation of Finn is a positive step, but a small one. Let us not forget that for centuries the Catholic Church has institutionally worked to cover up sex abuse committed by priests with an agenda of denials and attacking the accusers. Finn knew priests who were abusing children yet chose to protect the abusers rather than their victims. It is a tragic scenario that has played itself out time and time again. How many other Bishops chose the same path of action? How many cases of sexual abuse have been covered up?

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VATIKAN
Deutsche Welle

Papst Franziskus habe den Amtsverzicht des amerikanischen Bischofs Robert Finn gebilligt, so die kurze Mitteilung des Vatikans. Genaue Gründe wurden in Rom nicht genannt. Der 62-jährige Geistliche habe um seinen Rücktritt gebeten unter den kirchlichen Regeln, die dies mit Hinweis auf eine Erkrankung oder “schwerwiegende Gründe” möglich machten. Finn, der die Diözese von Kansas City-St. Joseph in Missouri führt, hatte die Polizei erst nach sechs Monaten darüber informiert, dass einer seiner Priester Hunderte kinderpornografischer Fotos auf seinem Computer gespeichert hatte.

Die Hinweise waren von einem Techniker gekommen. Der Finn unterstellte pädophile Geistliche ist wegen Kinderpornografie zu 50 Jahren Haft verurteilt worden. Finn selbst erhielt 2012 eine Bewährungsstrafe von zwei Jahren, blieb aber zunächst im Amt. Er ist der einzige Bischof, der in den USA bisher gerichtlich für die Vertuschung von sexuellem Missbrauch zur Verantwortung gezogen wurde. …

Die Entscheidung des Papstes, Finn zu verabschieden, wurde von Kritikern begrüßt, aber als halbherzig gerügt. “Nur ein Anfang” und noch “keine bedeutsame Wende” in der päpstlichen Haltung, meinte etwa Anne Barrett Doyle von der Online-Plattform “BishopAccountability.org”, die Daten über sexuellen Missbrauch in der kathlischen Kirche sammelt. Franziskus lasse ein klares Urteil vermissen.

Selbst der Bostoner Kardinal Sean O’Malley, Vorsitzender des päpstlichen Komitees gegen Missbrauch, hatte im vergangenen Jahr öffentlich gefordert, der Vatikan müsse dringend erklären, warum Finn immer noch im Amt sei.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

BY PHILIP PULLELLA

Finn of Kansas City, who remained in office for three years after he was convicted in 2012 of shielding a priest who took pornographic pictures of girls, has resigned, the Vatican said on Tuesday.

Finn, 62, is the only U.S. Roman Catholic bishop to be convicted for not reporting suspicions of pedophilia. Groups representing victims of abuse by clerics had been urging the pope to dismiss Finn.

“Pope Francis’s removal of (Finn) is a good step but just a beginning,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a resource center for sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church.

“The pope must show that this decision represents a meaningful shift in papal practice, that it signals a new era in bishop accountability,” she told Reuters in an email. …

Barrett Doyle urged the pope to confirm that Finn was removed for failing to make children’s safety a top priority.

“That would be unprecedented, and it would send a bracing message to bishops and religious superiors worldwide that a new era has begun,” she said.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, head of a commission advising the pope on how to rid the Church of sexual abuse, told CBS television last year that the Vatican “needs to address urgently” the question of why Finn was still in office.

Francis has also come under pressure to remove Juan Barros as bishop of the Chilean city of Osorno. Parishioners, national legislators and abuse victims have accused Barros of having protected one of the nation’s most notorious pedophiles.

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UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave

Kevin O’Brien

This was a long time coming and is a welcome relief – The Pope has accepted the resignation of Bishop Finn of Kansas City.

I’ve decided to turn comments off on this post. I really don’t want to read indignant Catholics who think this was the result of a liberal conspiracy against poor, persecuted, “conservative” Finn. Read my two dozen or so posts about the situation, or go straight to the source and read the Graves Report, the independent investigation into how Finn covered up for and enabled the sexual abuse of children in his diocese. Step away from the right / left factional split for a while and simply look at the facts. Finn should have been removed long ago.

I suspect Bishop Barros in Chile will be asked to resign as well if the situation there continues to fester.

It is perhaps naive to hope that our bishops can be good, holy Christians. It is, however, incumbent upon us to demand that they be decent, trustworthy human beings.

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UNITED STATES
Waiting for Godot to Leave

Kevin O’Brien

This was my first post on Bishop Finn. It’s from October 23, 2011. Since this post, Fr. Ratigan was convicted and sentenced to fifty years in prison. Bishop Finn spent $1.4 million of diocesan money to defend himself, but was also convicted in criminal court of failure to report child abuse; he was placed on probation and fined. He has been serving as bishop of Kansas City ever since his conviction, though such a conviction would have prevented him from even being a crossing guard at a public school. He finally resigned today, under pressure from the Vatican.

The Catholic Defense League and Opus Dei and some of Finn’s fellow bishops shamed themselves by vigorously defending Bishop Finn, and in the case of the Catholic Defense League, spinning the story to a point where the facts of the case were utterly distorted.

My original post garnered 99 comments, some of them very angry at me for daring to attack a doctrinally orthodox bishop. It remains the third most read post in the history of this blog. It deserves reposting today, but I’m not allowing comments. My entire series of posts on Finn, written in the 3 1/2 years since the one below, can be read here.

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“Let’s step outside and settle this thing like men,” she said, and she was a lady. “You’re spewing anti-Catholic rhetoric!” he insisted. “How can you criticize a bishop when you’re an actor and everyone knows actors are perverts and nitwits,” she screamed. (That last gal had a point).

These are all reactions to my post last week about Rod Dreher’s article on Bishop Finn’s Indictment.

And above all, people are charging me with believing the biased media coverage of the scandal.

This, at least, is not true. In fact, everything I say in this post will be taken not from a media account of the scandal, but from the independent report on it as commissioned by the diocese, the Graves Report, which you can read on your own here.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

VATICAN CITY
Time

Elizabeth Dias @elizabethjdias

The Vatican’s announcement that Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City, Missouri, was just one line, released in Tuesday’s daily press bulletin. The only reason given was a provision of canon law that allows bishops to resign early due to illness or another grave cause. But everybody knew the real punch: this was the first time a pope took public action against a priest who covered up sexual abuse.

Today’s Francis fever and sky-high favorability ratings makes it easy to forget just how deeply the story of priestly sexual abuse has defined the Catholic Church in recent decades. The legacy of the scandals in the United States alone is beyond weighty — a 2004 USCCB report detailed the severity of the crisis nationwide — more than 4,000 priests faced more than 10,000 allegations of child sexual abuse from 1950-2002, with half the alleged victims between the ages of 11-14. Dioceses have shelled out millions, and in some cases hundreds of millions, of dollars to settle cases.

For many victims and Vatican watchers, Tuesday’s announcement was a long time in coming, especially since Francis made it clear from the beginning that his papacy would have a zero-tolerance policy. In February 2014, Catholics petitioned Pope Francis to take disciplinary action against Finn. Pope Francis launched an investigation into Finn in September, and in November, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who leads the Church sex abuse commission, said that the Vatican needed to “urgently” address Finn’s case. This past weekend, Irish abuse survivor and member of the sex abuse commission Marie Collins told the Catholic news site Crux, “I cannot understand how Bishop Finn is still in position, when anyone else with a conviction that he has could not run a Sunday school in a parish. He wouldn’t pass a background check.”

It is one thing for Francis to accept the resignation of a bishop who mishandled abuse allegations. It is another for him to appoint and defend one who has long been associated with similar scandal. Protests erupted in January when Francis announced he was appointing Bishop Juan Barros to lead a Chilean diocese. Barros has long been accused of covering up the sexual abuse committed by his mentor, Rev. Fernando Karadima, whom the Vatican found guilty of in 2011. Members of the sex abuse commission have been speaking out in concern in this case as well. “It goes completely against what he (Francis) has said in the past about those who protect abusers,” Collins told the AP last month. “The voice of the survivors is being ignored.”

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Kansas City Star

Reaction to the announcement that Pope Francis had accepted Bishop Robert W. Finn’s resignation ranged across a wide spectrum Tuesday.

“There are some groups that I know are elated and overjoyed and there are some groups that are saddened by it. I think he did what he felt best for the diocese under the circumstances. I wish him the best and I will continue to pray for him.”

| Mike Murtha, a Finn supporter who has attended St. John Francis Regis Catholic Church in south Kansas City.

“Pope Francis’s removal of Bishop Robert Finn … is a good step but just a beginning. The pope must show that this decision represents a meaningful shift in papal practice — that it signals a new era in bishop accountability. But what no pope has done to date is publicly confirm that he removed a culpable bishop because of his failure to make children’s safety his first priority. We urge Pope Francis to issue such a statement immediately. That … would send a bracing message to bishops and religious superiors worldwide that a new era has begun.”

| Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director, BishopAccountability.org, a group that tracks the abuse crisis in the Catholic church.

“I still admire him deeply. I am saddened about his resignation and I feel a great deal of sympathy for him.… In the end, he got caught up in the cross currents of Vatican II. He did things differently than what a lot of people wanted…. He wasn’t like a political bishop but he was a holy bishop and he made some mistakes I found not so easy to forgive at first but I realized that he didn’t do this intentionally, it was a mistake and I wish the community could have forgiven him.…I know from the very beginning that in his heart, he was very hurt by his mistakes and the mistakes of diocese in how they handled it. He is a really good man and I really feel for him.”

| Jim Dougherty, a former Kansas City resident who now serves as a church deacon in Hawaii.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
APRIL 21, 2015

Three years after Bishop Robert W. Finn became the first Roman Catholic prelate to be convicted of failing to report a pedophile priest, he resigned on Tuesday as head of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph in northern and western Missouri.

The move comes as Pope Francis is facing mounting pressure from the faithful and from members of his own sexual abuse commission to show that he is serious about keeping bishops accountable when they have shielded or mishandled child abusers.

Parishioners and priests in Bishop Finn’s diocese had been petitioning the Vatican since he was convicted of shielding a priest discovered with child pornography on his laptop, saying that the bishop no longer had the credibility to lead. In the last month, Catholics in Chile have been bitterly protesting Francis’ decision to install Bishop Juan Barros in the diocese of Osorno despite claims that he witnessed abuse years ago and did nothing.

Such a resignation is extremely rare when a bishop is not ill or close to the retirement age of 75. Bishop Finn is 62 and has served in his diocese just short of 10 years. …

Jeff Weis, a parishioner who helped to lead the petition campaign pushing for Bishop Finn’s removal, said in a statement, that with the resignation, “the prayers of this hurt community have been answered.” But he added: “The damage done is immeasurable. The time necessary to heal will be long.”

Christopher Bellitto, an associate professor of history at Kean University in New Jersey, said, “It’s two steps forward for credibility, but one step back because it took too long.”

The removal of Bishop Finn will put pressure on Pope Francis to act against Bishop Barros in Chile, said Anne Barrett Doyle, a director of BishopAccountability.org, an advocacy group that maintains an online database of sexual abuse cases. She said that, as with Bishop Finn, no pope has ever confirmed that the reason for a bishop’s removal was negligence in handling child abuse cases.

“We urge Pope Francis to issue such a statement immediately,” Ms. Doyle said. “That would be unprecedented, and it would send a bracing message to bishops and religious superiors worldwide that a new era has begun.”

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

And, of course, the big news in the Catholic church in the U.S. today: the convicted felon who was bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Robert Finn, has just resigned. As Laurie Goodstein reports for New York Times,

Such a resignation is extremely rare when a bishop is not ill or close to the retirement age of 75. Bishop Finn is 62 and has served in his diocese just short of 10 years.

The Vatican announced the resignation in a brief note in its daily news bulletin Tuesday, and did not give a reason. But the Vatican cited a provision in church law under which a bishop is “earnestly requested” to resign because of ill health or “some other grave cause.”

As she notes, Pope Francis (who will be visiting the U.S. this year, and would certainly have had to field serious questions about the fact that Finn had remained in his episcopal seat after having been convicted of placing children at risk by shielding a priest he knew to be a pedophile) has been under mounting pressure to show that he’s serious about addressing the abuse crisis. Goodstein quotes Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org, who notes that no pope has ever issued a statement indicating that the reason a bishop has been removed was his record in covering up child abuse.

Doyle states,

We urge Pope Francis to issue such a statement immediately. That would be unprecedented, and it would send a bracing message to bishops and religious superiors worldwide that a new era has begun.

David Clohessy of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) notes that, though Finn’s resignation is a step forward, it’s a small step, since the abuse crisis (and cover-up) in the Catholic church vastly transcends any single bishop. Clohessy writes,

After centuries of abuse and cover up done in secrecy, and decades of abuse and cover up done somewhat in public, one pope has finally seen fit to oust one bishop for complicity in clergy sex crimes. That’s encouraging. But it’s only a very tiny drop of reform in an enormous bucket of horror.
Finn’s departure will, in the short term, make some adults happier. By itself, it won’t, in the long term, make many kids safer.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic League

Bill Donohue comments on the resignation of Kansas City-St. Joseph Bishop Robert Finn:

In 2012, Bishop Finn was found guilty of a misdemeanor for failing to report Fr. Shawn Ratigan to the authorities once he learned of sexually explicit images of minors on his computer. The Catholic League defended him against his critics, some of whom were vicious, and it is worth repeating why.

* In 2010, a computer technician found disturbing crotch-shot photos of girls fully clothed on Ratigan’s computer; there was one naked photo of a non-sexual nature.

* Even though there was no complainant, a police officer and an attorney were contacted by diocesan officials. They both agreed that the single naked photo did not constitute pornography.

* After Ratigan attempted suicide, he was evaluated by a psychiatrist—at the request of Finn. Ratigan was diagnosed as depressed, but was not a pedophile.

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CIUDAD DEL VATICANO
KPMR

(ENTRAVISION).- El Papa Francisco aceptó la renuncia del exobispo Robert Finn, quien se declaró culpable de encubrir a un sacerdote que cometía abuso infantil.

Finn encabezaba la Diócesis de Kansas City, Missouri. Dejó pasar al menos seis meses antes de denunciar ante la Policía al reverendo Shawn Ratigan, quien tenía en su computadora cientos de fotografías lascivas de niñas.

Las imágenes fueron tomadas dentro y cerca de iglesias donde trabajó y por producir pornografía infantil Ratigan fue sentenciado a 50 años en prisión. Mientras que el obispo Finn recibió una condena condicional de 2 años en 2012.

El Vaticano declaró que se acepta la renuncia bajo el derecho canónico que permite a los obispos retirarse antes de los 75 años por enfermedad o por alguna razón grave que les impida seguir al frente de la comunidad.

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UNITED STATES
Deutsche Welle

An American bishop has resigned after he failed to report a priest who was found in possession of child pornography. However, child abuse victims see the Vatican’s lack of action as too little, too late.

Pope Francis on Tuesday accepted the resignation of an American bishop convicted of failing to report a priest who in 2012 was found possession of child pornography.

Bishop Robert Finn, who led the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph in Missouri, waited six months before reporting Shawn Ratigan, a former priest under Finn’s authority, to the police. Ratigan was sentenced to 50 years in prison after pleading guilty to child pornography charges while Finn received two years of probation.

Finn was the subject of an investigation launched by the Vatican in September as part of Francis’ crackdown on child abuse and pedophilia in the Roman Catholic Church.

A statement from the Vatican noted that the bishop resigned under the code of canon which allows bishops to resign early due to “grave” circumstances or illness. However, a reason was not provided for the resignation. Once appointed, bishops generally hold their office for life. …

In lieu of the Vatican’s inaction, more than half a million people signed an online petition demanding Finn’s removal from office. Abuse victims also called on the Vatican to hold bishops suspected of hiding abuse accountable along with perpetrators. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child slammed the Vatican’s child abuse record in a 2014 report, saying they were “gravely concerned.”

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UNITED STATES
dotCommonweal

Grant Gallicho April 21, 2015

In a one-sentence bulletin released this morning, the Vatican announced that Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, who was convicted of failing to report child abuse in 2012, has resigned. Pope Francis accepted Finn’s resignation “in conformity with canon 401, paragraph 2”–the statute that covers bishops who cannot fulfill their duties because of poor health or “other grave reasons.” News of the resignation follows months of speculation, which had intensified over the past week, that Pope Francis was poised to remove Finn. In September 2014, the National Catholic Reporter revealed that a Canadian bishop had been sent by the Holy See to Kansas City to investigate Finn’s leadership. Just last November, Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston, president of the pope’s new commission on child protection, told 60 Minutes that the Holy See had to “address urgently” the case of Robert Finn. Less than six months later, Pope Francis has done just that.

What might it mean?

1. Yes, Pope Francis is serious about accountability for bishops. Pope Francis’s early comments on the sexual-abuse scandal were hardly encouraging. But before long he sent a message to the world’s bishops asking them to get behind his new commission for the protection of minors. Over the past year, some members of that commission have suggested that they would walk if they didn’t see accountability for bishops who enabled abusers. They had seen the pope move against the so-called Bishop of Bling for financial mismanagement. They knew that he had ousted Bishop Livieres in Paraguay, but the Holy See’s statements about that decision curiously avoided acknowledging that it had anything to do with the fact that Livieres had promoted a priest long accused of sexual misconduct. More recently, two members of the pope’s child-protection commission openly criticized his decision to appoint Chilean Bishop Juan Barros to a new diocese, despite allegations that he had covered up–and witnessed–acts of abuse committed by his mentor. Just yesterday, one of those commission members, Marie Collins, told Crux that the pope was considering a proposal on bishop accountability. She even name-checked Finn: “I cannot understand how Bishop Finn is still in position, when anyone else with a conviction that he has could not run a Sunday school in a parish.” That won’t be a problem anymore.

2. In one sense, this call was a no-brainer. After all, Finn is the only bishop to be convicted of failing to report suspected child abuse–the crime that drove the scandal. If he were a regular Catholic offering to volunteer at a parish, as Collins has pointed out, he wouldn’t even pass the mandated background check. Finn broke trust with his people, which is why he lost so many of them. One Kansas City man, a Communion minister, told NPR that he refuses to pray for Finn during the Eucharistic prayer, “because he’s not my bishop, as far as I’m concerned.” Since Finn took over in 2005, his diocese has lost a quarter of its Catholics, according to Michael Sean Winters.

Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.

UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Pope Francis under international pressure “sacked” U.S. Bishop Robert Finn, who became a symbol of the Vatican’s stonewalling in addressing the priest sexual abuse crisis. Finn was the first bishop criminally convicted of mishandling an abusive priest. The child pornographer priest is serving a 50 year sentence in a US federal prison after an aggressive prosecution by President Obama’s Justice Department. Yet Finn remained in office for another three years — over two years under Pope Francis!

Francis has now been forced to set a precedent — criminally convicted bishops who protect predatory priests will be removed by the pope. So Francis must now try to make sure US Federal prosecutors avoid aggressively pursuing cases that may lead to bishops’ criminal actions and convictions as happened with Finn. Now Francis must continue his two predecessors’ efforts to maintain a protective alliance with right wing US Presidents (anyone but new grandmother, Hillary Clinton) as his predecessors withad done effectively with the Bush presidents. Still active Cardinal Angelo Sodano even confidently asked George W. Bush’s Secretary of State for help in stopping US proceedings involving the Vatican’s role in facilitating priest child abuse, after the ex-pope, Sodano and Cardinal Raymond Burke helped in 2004 re-elect GWB despite his disastrous Iraq War that led to over a million deaths and over $5 trillion in unnecessary expenditures so far.

First, Francis must, it appears, help get a right wing US president elected next year before the pope retires, as I expect he will do after the US elections. Francis is doing all he can evidently to draw out key right wing US voters with his appeals to fundamentalist US Latinos and evangelicals (e.g., crusades against gay marriage and contraception insurance coverage, adding Hispanic saints like Archbishop Romero and Junipero Serra, targeted references to Our Lady of Guadalupe and the devil, calling for another Middle East war to benefit Big Oil, etc.). Sacking Finn was therefore critical for Pope Francis’ election crusades, especially after his mishandling of the Bishop Barros’ appointment that led to the Chile revolt. Pope Francis has evidently carefully avoided the Barros subject publicly, even though he reportedly was involved in Barros’ appointment and likely knows him. Please see the superb and relevant analysis, “Vatican Defends the Chilean Appointment” here, BishopAccountability.org .

Francis acted barely a week after Marie Collins had her anti-climatic “non-meeting” with the pope. She wanted to discuss with Pope Francis his outrageous choice to make Juan Barros, who has been accused of helping shield a fellow priest abusing youths (including Juan Carlos Cruz), as the new bishop of Osorno, Chile. Barros’ bishop installation ceremony triggered unprecedented violent protests of thousands in majority Catholic Chile (see here, here, and here).

The Finn sacking shows that Marie Collins’ tenacity points to serious trouble after the Chile revolt for the pope’s upcoming visit to Philly, a key part of his evident and unfolding strategy to elect next year a “Vatican/US bishop friendly” right wing US president, with Jeb Bush the pope’s evident top choice. If the pope fails on curtailing child abuse, he becomes a US political liability. See my “Why Is Pope For A New US War That Aids Bush Neocons & Big Oil Mainly?” here, Christian Catholicism .

On cue, the US right wing media appear to have initiated attention to the anticipated 2016 USA national election alliance of the Vatican and Jeb Bush. This apparently will be a “reunion” for the Bush family and longtime Vatican power, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, and his clique. This seems evident in Jeb’s recent interview (with even a smiling Sodano-Jeb photo) by the National Review Online, “On the 20th Anniversary of His Conversion, Jeb Bush Talks Pope Francis and How to Win on Social Issues“, here, National Review.

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CANADA
Calgary Herald

REID SOUTHWICK, CALGARY HERALD

Published on: April 20, 2015

Child abuse investigators have charged a former pastor in connection with alleged sexual assaults dating back to 1994.

The charges came after a person contacted police to report a series of sexual assaults that allegedly occurred during counselling sessions with a pastor.

The person has reported 50 to 60 cases of assault, including sexual touching and molestation, Staff Sgt. Robert Rutledge said.

They occurred over a nearly two year period, beginning in 1994 when the alleged victim was 11 years old, Rutledge said.

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MINNESOTA
Reuters

BY JIM CHRISTIE

(Reuters) – A U.S. Bankruptcy judge has ruled victims of clergy sex abuse do not have to publicly disclose the value of their claims against a bankrupt Minnesota archdiocese in a defeat for a newspaper publisher.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Kressel approved on Friday a proof of claim form in the case of the Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis requiring individuals who want to make their claim of clergy sex abuse public to affirm that by checking a box.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

The Vatican on Tuesday accepted the resignation of a Missouri bishop who failed to report suspected child abuse and who became the highest-ranking American church official found guilty of a crime related to the church’s child sexual abuse scandal.

The Vatican said that Bishop Robert W. Finn, who leads the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph in northern and western Missouri, had offered his resignation under a provision in canon law that allowed bishops to resign early for an illness or if they are unfit to carry out their duties.

Bishop Finn was found guilty in September 2012 of waiting six months before notifying the police about a diocesan priest, the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, who had taken hundreds of pornographic pictures of young girls in and around churches where he worked. Father Ratigan was sentenced to 50 years in prison after pleading guilty to child pornography charges.

The bishop’s conviction was considered a watershed moment in the sexual abuse scandal that has tarnished the church since the 1980s. Bishops have been eager to turn the page on this era and have put in place extensive abuse prevention policies, which include reporting those suspected of abuse to law enforcement authorities.

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VATICAN CITY
CNN

By Greg Botelho, CNN

(CNN) Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Bishop Robert Finn, who led the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, and was convicted of failure to report suspected child abuse in 2012, the Vatican said in a statement Tuesday.

At the time of his conviction, Finn was the highest-ranking Catholic official to be convicted during the church’s long sexual abuse scandal.

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