ABUSE TRACKER

PENNSYLVANIA
Daily American

In a mixed verdict, a jury has found the Rev. Joseph Maurizio Jr. guilty of possessing child pornography, money laundering and three counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with minors.

He was charged with a total of eight counts.

The jury returned to the federal courtroom in Johnstown with a verdict around 4 p.m. after deliberating for 13 hours. The victims were brought back into the courtroom to hear the jury’s decision.

The Central City priest was accused of abusing three boys, ages 14 to 16, during mission trips to Honduras.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

September 22, 2015

Torsten Ove/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A federal jury in Johnstown today found a Somerset County priest, the Rev. Joseph Maurizio, guilty of molesting Honduran orphans on mission trips.

After deliberating about 12 hours over two days in U.S. District Court, the jury found him guilty on three counts of molesting three boys, a count of possession of child pornography and a count of transferring money outside the country for the purposes of illegal sexual activity.

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THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
First Posted: September 22, 2015

JOHNSTOWN, Pennsylvania — A suspended Roman Catholic priest from western Pennsylvania accused of traveling to Honduras to molest poor street children during missionary trips has been convicted of five of eight counts.

A federal jury in Johnstown deliberated for more than 12 hours over two days before convicting the Rev. Joseph Maurizio Jr. on Tuesday of the charges, which include three of four counts related to sex abuse of boys during trips to a Honduran orphanage.

The 70-year-old priest has been suspended from Our Lady Queen of Angels Parish in Somerset County.

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PENNSYLVANIA
We Are Central PA

Johnstown, Cambria County, Pa.

A priest of the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was found guilty after an eight-day jury trial of offenses related to his sexual abuse of three minor boys during trips to Honduras over a five-year period, U.S. Attorney David J. Hickton announced today.

Joseph D. Maurizio Jr., 70, of Central City, Pennsylvania, was convicted of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places, possession of child pornography and international money laundering. He is scheduled to be sentenced on February 2, 2016, at 10 a.m.

U.S. Attorney Hickton stated, “The jury’s conviction affirms the courage of these victims, the tenacity of the investigators and the resolve of our prosecutors to ensure justice. We remain steadfast in our commitment to protect children from predators here and pursue those who travel beyond our borders to offend. We are especially vigilant where a person uses a position of trust to victimize the most vulnerable among us.”

“What Maurizio did to the children in Honduras while swindling unsuspecting Americans for money to support his pedophilia is atrocious,” said John Kelleghan, HSI Philadelphia Special Agent in Charge. “The jury’s verdict is testament that society will not tolerate this behavior, and HSI will continue to use its transnational investigative capabilities to bring American child predators to justice — no matter where they commit their crimes.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
WTAE

By Bob Hazen

A guilty verdict was handed down Tuesday for a Catholic priest accused of traveling to Honduras to molest children during missionary trips.

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TEXAS
PR Newswire

DALLAS, Sept. 22, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — Carla Sweet and Ed Gomez of Dallas, Texas, filed suit today in Dallas, Texas, state court against First Baptist Church of Rockwall: seeking justice for their son, John “Jeremy” Sweet-Gomez, who was repeatedly sexually abused by a Youth Pastor at First Baptist Church of Rockwall.

The suit alleges that a Youth Pastor at First Baptist Church of Rockwall began sexually abusing Jeremy when he was approximately thirteen years old. The abuse included sodomy, oral sex, and inappropriate sexual touching. The suit states that the sexual abuses and assaults occurred “on church property and during church-sponsored religious trips.” Jeremy suffered repeated sexual abuse as a teenager; he later committed suicide.

Windle Turley, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, said, “at the Turley Law Firm, we have a longstanding commitment to representing victims of institutional and religious sexual abuse. Many organizations and their employees, occupy positions of trust and confidence that make it possible to cause great harm under the guise of religion. When that occurs the wrongdoers, whether individuals or institutions, must be held accountable.”

The suit papers are available at http://www.wturley.com/Recent-Filings/. For more information, contact Windle Turley or Steven Schulte, Turley Law Firm, at 214-691-4025, or stevens@wturley.com.

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NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Victims to Pope: “Stop bishops’ lobbying”
SNAP: “Prelates fight secular child safety bills
Battles are now being waged in each place Francis visits
“Church uses flock’s donations to protect predators,” group says
It begs church-goers: “Donate elsewhere until real change happens”
SNAP: “As Francis ‘talks nice’ with lawmakers, bishops ‘quietly fight dirty’”

What:
Holding signs and childhood photos, while Francis meets with politicians in DC, clergy sex abuse victims will hand fliers to church-goers. They will also

–urge Francis to make bishops stop blocking secular child safety law reforms,
–urge lawmakers (federal and state) to ignore bishops’ “self-serving” lobbying efforts, and
–urge Catholics to donate elsewhere until their church officials push for, not against, better laws that protect kids, expose predators and punish enablers.

Such legislative struggles are pending in each place Francis will visit: New York, Pennsylvania and DC.

The victims will also urge all victims, witnesses and whistleblowers – in every institution that serves kids – to

–report everything they know, see or suspect to law enforcement,
–seek help from independent sources (not church, school, camp or coaching staff), and
–join the growing movement to end or extend archaic, predator-friendly statutes of limitations.

When:
Wednesday, Sept. 23 at noon – 1:00 p.m.

Where:
Outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral (5th Avenue entrance) in Manhattan

Who:
Seven-eight members of an international support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org), including 1) an Illinois woman and attorney who is the organization’s long time president and 2) a California woman who is a best-selling author on abuse prevention.

Why:
While clergy sex abuse and cover up lawsuits attract considerable media attention, most victims of pedophile priests can’t seek justice in court because bishops exploit archaic, predator-friendly deadlines called “statutes of limitations.” Worse, SNAP says, US bishops are spending “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on “high-priced lobbyists” to block moves to reform these rigid statutes that “give wrongdoers incentives to intimidate victims, threaten witnesses, discredit whistleblowers, destroy evidence and ‘run out the clock’ on child sex crimes and cover ups.”

SNAP wants Pope Francis to forbid such “reckless, callous expenditures” that “save bishops’ reputations but make abuse and cover up likely to continue.” The group also wants state lawmakers to pass civil “window” laws that “make it easier for struggling victims to protect others, expose predators, deter cover ups and seek justice.” And they want federal legislation and policies that reward states that work harder on abuse prevention.

(Four states have enacted civil “window” laws. As a result hundreds of adults who committed and concealed child sex crimes have been exposed, fired, demoted or otherwise punished and dozens of criminal prosecutions have taken place that likely would not have, SNAP maintains. The group says “windows” are “the single quickest, safest and cheapest way to expose predators, safeguard kids and end cover ups of child sexual assaults.”)

Because bishops exploit tight statues of limitations, very few victims are able to “out” their perpetrators in court. In the Milwaukee archdiocese, for example, over the last four years, 575 victims have come forward reporting abuse by clerics there. But the identities and whereabouts of roughly 100 of these clerics remain hidden because victims cannot file lawsuits against them. The same is true of dozens of clerics who ignored or hid these crimes.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By FRANCIS A. QUINN
SEPT. 18, 2015

Sacramento — I AM a Catholic, born in 1921 of Italian and Irish families and raised in California seminaries. After decades of work as a priest, I was astonished that Pope Paul VI appointed me a bishop in San Francisco. I love my church, and every night I pray that I might die in her warm, loving arms.

Yet I worry about my church’s future. Basic doctrines will not change. But the church may change policies and practices after doing serious study.

So, as we await Pope Francis’ visit to America, I offer a peaceful contribution to the controversies that convulse the church today.

American Catholics are divided, primarily, by three internal church conflicts.

The first is over priestly celibacy. Observers within and outside the church point to mandatory celibacy as a principal factor driving down the number of American priests.

A celibate life is admirable for a priest who personally chooses it. For 1,000 years, great good has been accomplished because priests could fully devote their lives to their ministry.

Nevertheless, in recent years married clergy of other Christian churches have been accepted into service in the Catholic Church. So far, the ministry of these married priests has appeared successful.

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UNITED STATES
America Magazine

Luke Hansen, S.J. | Sep 18 2015

A retired Catholic bishop in California is speaking publicly for the first time about his support for the ordination of women, saying he found “liberation” when Pope Francis encouraged bishops at the extraordinary synod last October to “speak boldly and listen humbly” about issues facing the church.

Bishop Emeritus Francis A. Quinn, who served as the bishop of Sacramento from 1980 to 1994 and gained a reputation for his pastoral nature, outreach to the poor and empowerment of lay leadership in the church, said in an interview with America on Sept. 16 that Pope Francis made it clear that bishops should not censor their opinions based on what they think the pope wants to hear.

“So I figured: Well, O.K.,” he explained.

On Saturday, just days before Pope Francis arrives in the United States for a three-city apostolic visit, Bishop Quinn said in an op-ed in the New York Times that the Catholic Church should consider optional celibacy for priests, the ordination of women, and allowing Catholics who are divorced and remarried (without an annulment) to receive Communion.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Newsworks

Arthur Baselice Jr.’s grief has pushed him into a self-imposed exile.

Almost 10 years after his son died from a drug overdose with links to his abuse by two Franciscan clergymen in Northeast Philadelphia, Baselice rarely leaves his house.

“I don’t want to go nowhere,” said Baselice.

Walking through the Baselice home in suburban South Jersey is like walking through a monument to their lost son, Arthur Baselice III. Pictures of him are everywhere. The urn with his ashes sits on a table at the entrance to the living room, where each night his father and mother light a candle in his honor.

Arthur’s bedroom, covered in sports memorabilia, is exactly the way he left it on the night that he died.

“Nothing’s changed,” said the father. “Same sheet, same bedspread. Everything is the same.”

Baselice Jr., 67, a retired Philadelphia detective who grew up a Catholic school kid in South Philadelphia, has a tattoo of his son’s face on his left forearm. Some of his son’s ashes rest in a bracelet on his right wrist.

All these years later, the pain hasn’t dulled. Baselice often wakes up in the middle of the night gasping for breath, tormented by what happened. Sometimes, as he jogs through his Gloucester County neighborhood – seemingly out of nowhere – he bursts into tears.

His wife, Elaine, and his daughter, Ashleigh, he says, are no better.

“Do I cry a lot?” said Baselice. “Yeah, most of the time.”

Baselice says he didn’t used to be an emotional person.

“Emotional?” he scoffs with the jaded laugh of a policeman. “Not at all. But this hit home.”

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NEW MEXICO
Gallup Independent

Published in the Gallup Independent, Gallup, N.M., Sept. 21, 2015

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Independent correspondent
religion@gallupindependent.com

ALBUQUERQUE — A California businessman hired by the Diocese of Gallup to promote and conduct property auctions as part of its bankruptcy case barred members of the media and public from observing an auction in Albuquerque Saturday.

Todd Good, the CEO and president of Accelerated Marketing Group, of Newport Beach, California, barred anyone from entering the auction who wasn’t a qualified bidder.

Good, along with George H. “Hank” Amos III, CEO and president of Tucson Realty & Trust Co., was hired by the Gallup Diocese to conduct auctions in Phoenix Sept. 12, and in Albuquerque Sept. 19.

At the Albuquerque auction, held at the Airport Sheraton Hotel, Good was asked why he closed the auction to the media and general public when court motions filed by diocesan attorneys never stated the auctions would be closed.

“I can’t answer that,” Good said. “I didn’t write the motions.”

In documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, attorneys for the diocese requested and received permission from Judge David T. Thuma to sell pieces of unwanted property in Arizona and New Mexico. However, none of those court documents indicated the auctions would be closed auctions, or closed to the media or the general public.

The Diocese of Gallup’s bankruptcy hearings are open to the public, as are documents in the case’s court file. The only exceptions to this are confidential documents related to clergy sex abuse survivors who have filed claims in the case.

Good’s response

“It doesn’t matter,” Good responded when asked about the wording of the court motions that outlined how the auctions would be conducted.

Good described himself as an “agent for the court” and said, “We have discretions how we conduct the sale. We see no advantage to let somebody in the sale that is not a bidder. In other words, it doesn’t benefit the debtors and it doesn’t benefit the creditors, and therefore we only let qualified bidders into the event.”

Good suggested anyone who disagreed with the closed auction should take it up with Thuma.

“They can go back into court on Monday, and they can talk to the judge about it,” Good said. “They can call me in front of the judge if they want to, and I can explain why I did it.”

Good was also asked about apparent errors in the report diocesan attorneys filed with the court Wednesday, regarding last week’s auction in Phoenix that reported only total gross sales of $58,960 for 12 properties. In the report, one piece of property was listed twice with different sales figures, another piece of property was not accounted for, and another listed an incorrect buyer’s premium.

Good started to review the report, and then asked, “What I want to understand is, how do you have this list?”

It was explained to Good that the report was a public document, filed by diocesan attorneys with U.S. Bankruptcy Court, and available to the public.

“I can’t discuss this,” Good said. “If you want to put your request into writing, send to attorneys for the debtors and we’ll respond.”

Attorney barred

Attorney Meredith Edelman was also barred from attending the Albuquerque auction.

Edelman, originally from Pinetop, Arizona, previously worked as a bankruptcy attorney for two international law firms. She is currently a doctorate scholar at the Australian National University, working on a research project examining Catholic clergy sex abuse through the lens of restorative justice principles. Edelman is back in the United States conducting interviews for the project and recently interviewed several representatives from the Diocese of Gallup.

According to Edelman, a man from the auction threatened to remove her from the hotel property after she also questioned why the auction was closed to the public when it had not been advertised that way in any of the court documents. In an interview afterward, Edelman said she did not get the man’s name but was disappointed by the incident.

From her own experience as a bankruptcy attorney, Edelman explained, she would have expected the court documents to clearly state whether the auction was only open to qualified bidders.

“I would make it clear what is and isn’t allowed,” she said.

Sales reports

Local residents Justin Winfield and his father Robert Winfield were admitted to Saturday’s auction as qualified bidders but left early without purchasing any property.

The Winfields said they attended the auction with the intention of possibly buying the diocese’s vacant lot in downtown Gallup, located on the corner of Aztec Avenue and Fourth Street. They didn’t want to see the property sell for a low price, they explained, so they were prepared to purchase it to ensure the Diocese of Gallup received a reasonable price. They said they were pleased, however, when someone else bought the lot for $50,000.

“We didn’t have a plan for the property,” Justin Winfield said, adding he and his father thought they might donate the lot back to the diocese.

Justin Winfield said they weren’t concerned about the property’s history of environmental damage, which was caused years ago by leaking underground gasoline storage tanks.

“It’s still a nice piece of property,” he said.

The Winfields said one of the properties that did sell before they left the auction was the Catholic Charities building in Farmington. That building was the subject of controversy earlier this month after Catholic Charities Director Debe Betts told a Farmington reporter that the Diocese of Gallup had listed the property for sale without her knowledge. According to a media report, Betts said she only learned about the sales plan after an auction notice was posted on her organization’s building.

Betts has not responded to further media requests for comment about her claims.

According to the Winfields, a buyer at the auction purchased the Catholic Charities building for $40,000 with the stated intention of donating it — presumably to Catholic Charities.

A report detailing the Albuquerque auction sales should be filed with U.S. Bankruptcy Court later this week and available for review by the public.

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UNITED STATES
Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA)

By David Briggs

Pope John Paul II defended the rights of migrants in California, warned about what advances in robotics could mean for the dignity of the worker in Detroit and repeatedly challenged the U.S. to consider the effect of its global footprint on the world’s poor during his 1987 visit across the nation.

Yet one of my memories is this loud lament of a reporter from a respected, prominent newspaper:

It would be great to write about these things, but all my editors want to know is what did he say about sex.

Pope Francis will be trending across all media platforms next week when he arrives in the U.S. for a six-day visit beginning Tuesday that will include stops in Washington, D.C., New York and Philadelphia. …

The sexual abuse scandal matters: The church’s multiple failures in addressing sexual abuse of minors, and its continued refusal to either discipline its own leaders or fully release information on offending clerics, have created a lasting legacy of distrust.

In one online survey of Catholics who left the church, 20 percent of respondents who said they were returning to the church listed anger at church leadership over the sexual abuse scandal as one reason for their departure. Among those who say they are not returning, 64 percent said anger over the scandal was a reason they left.

“The scars of the sexual abuse crisis run deep” among those not returning to the church, said researcher Michael Cieslak of the Catholic Diocese of Rockford, Ill

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Huffington Post

Arthur Delaney
Senior Reporter, The Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — John Wojnowski has been protesting sexual abuse by Catholic priests outside the Vatican embassy every day for the past 17 years — undaunted by rain, snow or a slate of health problems.

The Huffington Post asked Wojnowski Monday if he hopes Pope Francis sees his sign when the pontiff visits the embassy on Tuesday.

“I don’t care,” he said, confident his message is getting across regardless of whether the pope sees it. “At the embassy, they know.”

Wojnowksi, 72, says an Italian priest molested him when he was 15. Since 1998, he has held up signs outside the building proclaiming ” CATHOLICS COWARDS” or “VATICAN HIDES PEDOPHILES” or “MY LIFE WAS RUINED BY A CATHOLIC PEDOPHILE PRIEST. ”

“It’s a very terrible crime with lifetime damage,” Wojnowski said of the sexual abuse. “Many people [who are victims] become alcoholics, drug addicts, many people commit suicide.”

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UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter

Thomas C. Fox | Sep. 22, 2015

Two days after appearing at a women’s ordination conference in Philadelphia, Precious Blood Fr. Jack McClure said today he has been told he can no longer celebrate Mass at Most Holy Redeemer parish in San Francisco where he has been pastor and parochial vicar for the past 15 months.

According to McClure, he was informed by Precious Blood Fr. and Most Holy Redeemer pastor Matthew Link that the secretary for San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said McClure can no longer celebrate Mass at the beyond the end of this month.

McClure said his last Mass will be Sunday, Sept. 27.

“I feel bad about this. I feel bad for the parish. I feel bad about this silencing,” said McClure. “But I want to make it known I appreciate the generosity Archbishop Cordileone has shown me and my religious community for allowing us to serve in his archdiocese. However, in conscience I needed to break my silence.”

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IRELAND
Today FM

Letter to be delivered to Justice Minister today

Several groups representing survivors of the Magdalene Laundries will deliver a letter to the Minister for Justice today calling for justice for the forgotten families of the victims of institutional abuse.

They’re calling on the government to fast track the redress scheme for aging survivors, and to grant free legal aid to people taking a case to the Mother & Baby Homes Commission.

The letter has been written by Angela Collins, whose grandmother spent 27 years in a Magdalene laundry and was buried in a mass grave with 72 other women.

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IRELAND
Irish Independent

Mark O’Regan

PUBLISHED
22/09/2015

A survivor of one of Ireland’s industrial schools has claimed she was slapped, kicked, and “forced to sleep outside at night with pigs” if she snored too loudly.

Mary Collins also said her mother, Angela, was among those buried in a mass grave with 72 other women.

Her mother had been forced to spend 27 years in a Magdalene laundry.

Speaking outside the Dáil this morning, the 54-year-old claimed that at St Vincent’s home in Cork, her mother was forced to give up her youngest child for what was an illegal adoption.

She also alleged her mother was denied vital medical treatment – and this eventually led to her death.

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UNITED STATES
WBUR

Pope Francis lands in Washington D.C. Tuesday, where he will be greeted by President Obama and the First Lady. He will be the fourth pope to visit the U.S., and the first to address Congress.

This Pope is now well-known for speaking out on the moral implications of climate change and the dangers of capitalism. He has also taken steps to acknowledge the deep pain of the clergy sex abuse crisis that began here in Boston.

But, David O’Regan says he has to do more.

Guest

David O’Regan, New England director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. He tweets @BostonSNAP.

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NEW YORK
Frum Follies

Jonathan Rosenblatt, rabbi of the Riverdale Jewish Center, is the grandson of Yossele Rosenblatt. I am sitting here listening to Yossele’s magnificent cantorial singing on recordings made a hundred years ago. He had everything, vocal range, control, phrasing, musicality, originality, and above all, soul. His secular contemporary in the opera was Enrico Caruso.

According to an often repeated story, Caruso attended one of Rosenblatt’s New York recitals. After hearing Rosenblatt sing Eli, Eli, he went on stage and kissed him. That was an innocent kiss expressing one great artist’s admiration of another.

But other interactions devoid of physical contact can be downright creepy. Most women have had the unpleasant experience of being visually undressed by strangers. Even worse, most have experienced conversational partners talking to their chest instead of their face.

Men are used to using adjacent public urinals. Most such interactions are matter-of-fact. Whether or not one chances to notice the other, we are all socialized not to stare. To be caught staring is to cross a boundary. We know when it happens and we turn away or glare back.

As long as the inappropriate gaze comes from a stranger is it mostly an annoyance. But it gets much more unpleasant when it comes from someone with power over you like a parent, teacher, boss or mentor. Workplace sex harassment lawsuits arise from such situations.

Inappropriate gaze is not necessarily a crime, because the law is a crude instrument. It can become the crime of child endangerment when it involves nudity and minors in ways that accustom them to being groomed or sexualized.

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UNITED STATES
The Jewish Week

Tue, 09/22/2015

Rabbi Ari Hart

As we leave Rosh Hashanah and head into Yom Kippur, the sound of crying is echoing in my ears. The theme of crying appears throughout the liturgy we recite, it’s mirrored in the sounds of the shofar, and it pours forth from the souls of members of our community.

In recent years, we’ve heard more and more stories, more and more cries of sexual abuse in the Jewish community coming to light, across the globe and across denominations. What once perhaps felt shocking and unreal has become tragically commonplace as scandal after scandal unfolds. It is painful and tragic for our community.

The true tragedy, though, is not the embarrassment and shame we feel when abuse is exposed. The true tragedy is that innocent and vulnerable children have been harmed in ways that are permanently scarring – physically, emotionally and spiritually, and we as a Jewish community have many times failed in our responses.

On Rosh Hashanah, we read two Torah portions that share a common, powerful theme. They are both the stories of vulnerable youths saved from terrible harm at the last minute by a compassionate God. Sarah and Abraham cast Ishmael out to the desert. His mother Hagar was unable to bear his cries for water so she abandoned him by a bush to die. God stepped in and provided immediate healing and a path to a bright future for Ishmael. So too with Isaac. Abraham, acting on God’s command, nearly killed his own child until God’s angel stopped him at the last minute, calling out “do not lay a hand upon the child!”

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NEW YORK
Frum Follies

Dovid Weinberger recently moved back into West Lawrence some two years after his abrupt departure from his position as rabbi of Congregation Shaaray Tefila in Lawrence, NY.

He quit in the wake of revelations that he was sexually exploiting women who sought his help for various kinds of counseling including marital counseling.

According to local sources some of the same rabbis who forced him to agree to quit the rabbinate, and publicly denounced him, are now divided about whether to advise their communities publicly.

In December 2013 he promised to stay totally out of the rabbinate when he signed the following statement:

To whom it may concern, I Rabbi Dovid Weinberger, formerly the Rabbi of Cong. Shaarei Tefilla of Lawrence, NY, do hereby acknowledge that I will retire from the Rabbinate effective immediately, and will never again serve in the capacity of Rov or Rabbi of any congregation or community, nor will I ever again be involved as a mechanech [teacher] in any venue of Chinuch [education].

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AUSTRALIA
Frum Follies

I was reading the text of the court ruling* awarding more than a million dollars damages to the woman sexually assaulted by her Adass Israel School principal, Malka Leifer. This jumped out at me:

[In 2007] the plaintiff consulted Ms Chana Rabinowitz, a counsellor/social worker, concerning her symptoms. The plaintiff saw Ms Rabinowitz on five or six occasions and then ceased seeing her. The plaintiff said she stopped seeing Ms Rabinowitz because she did not appear to believe that she was sexually abused by Leifer. Eventually, the plaintiff resumed sessions with Ms Rabinowitz after she confirmed the plaintiff’s allegations with the plaintiff’s sister and a person at the School. (page 57, section 155)

It shocked me for several reasons.

It was proof that the Adass Israel School knew Malka Leifer molested her students and yet kept her on as principal until 2008 at which time they knew of a total of 8 victims.

Mrs. Chana Rabinowitz is a staff social worker at Darchei Binah Seminary (according to a blurb for Mrs. Debbie Fox’s book, Seminary Savvy, 2015). It raises the possibility that we are dealing with a therapist unwilling to believe a victim of sexual abuse without corroboration from other sources. This pattern makes it less likely victims get necessary support and contributes to the underestimation and under-reporting of sexual abuse.

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UNITED STATES
Wall Street Journal

By TOM CORRIGAN

As Catholic officials highlight Pope Francis’s inaugural U.S. visit as a time of spiritual renewal, the church here is seeking a different kind of renewal—in the courtroom.

Four dioceses are in active bankruptcy proceedings attempting to settle claims of sexual abuse by their clergy: Milwaukee, Wis.; Gallup, N.M.; Stockton, Calif.; and Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

Filing for bankruptcy temporarily freezes all litigation, giving a diocese breathing room to continue serving its flock while it negotiates a plan to compensate, and potentially reconcile with, abuse victims. (Pope Francis is expected to meet with victims during his visit, though it isn’t on his official itinerary.)

But chapter 11 doesn’t come cheaply. These cases, often filed on the eve of trial, can spark lengthy and hard-fought legal battles that not only take an emotional toll but also devour cash, cutting into funds available for both victims and churches’ charitable pursuits.

“The sin of sexual abuse affects more than just victims and their families,” said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor at large at the Catholic magazine America. “Think of all the things that a diocese that has spent millions of dollars on settlements and lawyers could have done in terms of keeping parishes open and schools and scholarships.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic League

On September 23, Bill Donohue, and vice president Bernadette Brady-Egan, will meet with Pope Francis following a prayer service at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C.

The invitation to meet the pope was extended by Donald Cardinal Wuerl. He also invited them to the canonization Mass at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. Timothy Cardinal Dolan invited Bill to the prayer service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, but he has elected to stay in D.C. to do TV interviews.

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.

WASHINGTON (DC)
NBC Washington

By John Lewis

A support group of sex abuse survivors will hold a vigil Tuesday outside St. Matthew’s Cathedral in D.C., just a few hours before Pope Francis is scheduled to arrive in the area.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) will bear signs and childhood photos of adults who committed suicide after being molested by priests as children. SNAP Outreach Director Barbara Dorris said she expects at least five or six survivors attend the vigil.

“Right now, this is a really tough week for survivors,” said Dorris. “The pope is being hailed as this hero, and yet for survivors he’s done pretty much nothing. He has’t done anything that makes children safer or discipline bishops that protect predators.”

The group will meet at 1 p.m. outside the church at 1725 Rhode Island Ave. NW to express their disapproval for the pope’s popularity “largely obscuring the ongoing sexual violence and cover-up crisis in the church,” SNAP said in a release.

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UNITED STATES
WBUR – Here & Now

Robert Costello, who survived sexual abuse by a Roman Catholic priest when he was a child, says he is not looking forward to Pope Francis’ visit to the U.S. this week. Costello is disturbed by all of the media coverage of the visit and doesn’t think this pope is doing enough to help survivors.

Earlier this year, he penned an open letter to the pope expressing his disapproval with how the scandal has been handled. He wishes Pope Francis would meet with survivors here in Boston, which Costello and other survivors call the ‘ground zero’ of the clergy sex abuse scandal.

He says though the problem is out of the spotlight, it isn’t going away.

Costello joins Here & Now‘s Robin Young to talk about his experience and the stress the upcoming papal visit has caused him.

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ROME
Chiesa

by Sandro Magister

ROME, September 22, 2015 – Landing in Washington after visiting Cuba, Pope Francis is setting foot in a country that was born Protestant but in which almost half the population today has a connection with Catholicism.

In fact, to the 20 percent of citizens of the United States who profess themselves to be full-fledged Catholics must be added 9 percent who call themselves Catholic by cultural affinity, another 9 percent who were raised in a Catholic environment but then left it, and 8 percent who have close relatives who are Catholic and go to Mass with them.

The result is that Catholicism overall has a grip on 45 percent of the citizens of the United States, and on fully 84 percent of “Latinos,” who are the fastest-growing segment of the population and will see Pope Francis canonize one of “their” saints, Junipero Serra, in a ceremony celebrated almost entirely in Spanish.

The Washington-based Pew Research Center has come out with a brand-new analysis of Catholicism in the United States, published on the brink of the pope’s arrival, that allows an in-depth exploration of some features of the “people of God” in this country:

> U.S Catholics Open to Non-Traditional Families

As can already be guessed from the title of the survey, American Catholics are also highly influenced by the dominant political-cultural trends in the West on questions concerning the family and the sexual sphere. Which are precisely the questions that originated this journey of Francis to the United States, primarily motivated by his desire to participate in the world meeting of families in Philadelphia, in the run-up to a synod also dedicated to the family.

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MISSOURI
The Kansas City Star – Obituaries

[MO–A kind, veteran SNAP leader passes away]

Michael passed away Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2015. He grew up in Westport and attended Guardian Angels Grade School, DeLaSalle High and UMKC. He served in the Army as an Artillery Surveyor. He is preceded in death by his parents Darrel and Stella Hunter, as well as his sister Mary Louise Page and his brother Kevin P. Hunter. He is survived by his beloved partner Joyce Meers. He is also survived by his son Matthew M. Hunter and wife Angie, granddaughter Simone and grandson Ian. As well as his son Adam P. Hunter and his partner Katie Wintering. He is survived by his sister Carolyn Sue Sullivan, brother Darrel E. Hunter and wife Julee, sister Patricia Darrah and husband Don, sister Marian Hunter and sister Kathy Donegan and husband Frank. His love of his family, art, music, nature, and his fellow man defined him. His physical heart may have failed him, but his large and passionate heart will never be forgotten by those who loved him. A Memorial Celebration will be held on October 11, 2015 at Shawnee Mission Park Shelter #8 from 12:00 noon until 4:00 PM. In lieu of flowers please make donations to S.N.A.P. at PO BOX 6416, Chicago, IL 60680.

Published in Kansas City Star on Sept. 20, 2015

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NEW MEXICO
Washington Times

GALLUP, N.M. (AP) – A California businessman hired by the Diocese of Gallup to conduct property auctions as part of its ongoing bankruptcy case kept members of the public from attending an auction in Albuquerque.

The Gallup Independent reports (http://bit.ly/1jl8YBA ) CEO of Accelerated Marketing Group, Todd Good, says there was no advantage to allowing someone that wasn’t a qualified bidder into the auction Sept. 19.

The diocese filed for bankruptcy in 2013 as lawsuits mounted over claims of clergy sex abuse.

Attorneys for the diocese were granted permission to sell pieces of unwanted property in Arizona and New Mexico, but court documents didn’t indicate that the auctions would be closed to the media or general public.

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CALIFORNIA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Tuesday, Sept. 22

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

A page one New York Times story today reports a priest shortage in the Fresno Diocese.

[New York Times]

That shortage is likely one reason that found guilty in a civil trial of molesting a boy but remains in a parish there.

[SNAP]

He’s Fr. Eric Swearingen. He heads four Catholic churches in Visalia, a town mentioned in the Times article.

http://tccov.org/our-leadership/

And he’s one of about a dozen proven, admitted or credibly accused US priests who are still on the job in the US now.

[Counter Punch]

A 2006 jury voted 9-3 that Fr. Eric abused Juan Rocha. But they deadlocked on the second question facing them: whether diocesan officials should have known about and prevented the abuse. So technically, it was a mistrial. But an impartial panel heard the evidence and decided, by a sufficient margin, legally speaking, that Fr. Eric had molested a boy.

Yet he’s still in parish work, despite thousands of “zero tolerance” abuse pledges by US bishops over decades.

Bishop Armando Ochoa is not only keeping Fr. Swearingen on the job around largely unsuspecting families. But last year, he promoted Fr. Swearingen. (Ochoa is the second Fresno bishop to keep Fr. Swearingen around kids. His predecessor, Bishop John Steinbock, did as well, even after the court decision.)

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UNITED STATES
National Survivor Advocates Coalition

Our thoughts are with the survivors and their families today as Pope Francis arrives in Washington to begin a six day visit in the United States.

We salute the courage of survivors in the face if a bombardment of images on television screens, newspapers, You Tube, your phone, and Facebook.

We know that the audio images will assault you anew also.

Please come and linger on the NSAC News pages and on our website www.nationalsurvivoradvocatescoalition.wordpress.com during these days.

We hope the images you see there will be an antidote that will bring you some comfort, a quiet haven, a connection so that you know that you are not alone in an agony that you bear each day but one that is intensified by a papal visit to the United States.

Today, we wanted to greet with the images of Barbara Blaine, the founder of the Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) David Clohessy SNAP’s executive director and Barbara Dorris, SNAP’s Outreach Director. We’ll provide more images in the days ahead that we hope you find comforting as this visit plays out in the media.

The people pictured here today are the first people who would say that it is the images of all the survivors who should be in NSAC News today and not their images.

But we believe these images will give you a starting place for reaching for the strength for today’s journey.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

By Catherine Ho September 22

In August, when President Obama took the podium in the East Room to announce his plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions, standing behind him was Sister Joan Marie Steadman, head of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the nation’s largest group of Catholic nun leaders.

Steadman didn’t speak, but got a shout-out from the president, who thanked her for helping “rally Catholic women across America to take on climate.”

He added: “And she’s got a pretty important guy on her side. As Pope Francis made clear in his encyclical this summer, taking a stand against climate change is a moral obligation. And Sister Steadman is living up to that obligation every single day.”

The show of solidarity for Obama’s aggressive climate change plan offers a window into the powerful role that Catholic groups, many of which have existed for hundreds of years, play in today’s Washington. Many Catholic advocacy leaders balk at the term “Catholic lobby,” preferring to identify as social justice advocates. But their influence is significant.

As Pope Francis arrives in the nation’s capital, Catholic lobbyists see themselves as pushing for more humane treatment of migrants and rallying against sex trafficking, for example, rather than as traditional Washington power players. But they also weigh in on the nation’s hottest political debates from the environment, to immigration, to health care and abortion rights. Catholics meet regularly with lawmakers and the administration, and their support is coveted — even as polls show Americans are becoming more secular.

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a lobby — none of us are making the big bucks bringing the word of Catholic social teachings to Congress,” said Shaina Aber, policy director for the Jesuit Conference, the largest Catholic male religious order. “But we do coordinate around various issues that are part of our faith tradition.”

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UNITED STATES
AlterNet

By Richard Kreitner / The Nation September 21, 2015

Earlier this summer, to great fanfare, Pope Francis apologized for the Catholic Church’s role in the colonial invasion of the Western Hemisphere and the violent subjugation of its indigenous inhabitants. “Many grave sins were committed against the Native people of America in the name of God,” he told a gathering in Bolivia. “I humbly ask forgiveness, not only for the offense of the church herself, but also for crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America.”

On the issues of climate change and economic inequality, and to a lesser extent on issues related to sexuality and social mores, the so-called “radical pope” has made immense progress in improving the tone of the Catholic Church’s communications with the rest of the world. He has brought a new relevance to the church by emphasizing the ongoing nature of the exploitation he admitted to and denounced in Bolivia, and by refocusing the notoriously Italocentric institution’s orientation to Latin America and the Global South.

Yet when he visits the United States next week, the pope will commit a grievous and historical error, one for which some super-“radical” pope of the future will have to apologize in turn. On Wednesday, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, Francis will canonize Father Junípero Serra, the founder and most famed symbol of the system of missions in the Spanish colony of Alta California.

Born in Spain, Serra arrived in Spanish-held Mexico in 1749 and quickly set about working for the Inquisition, citing by name several natives who refused to convert to Christianity; they were guilty, he wrote, of “the most detestable and horrible crimes of sorcery, witchcraft and devil worship.” Serra soon gained control of the missions of Baja California, but he found that the native population had already been nearly extinguished by contact with the Spanish. Looking for fresh converts, he led expeditions up the coast into the present-day state of California, where he settled at Monterey and set up ten new missions to spread the gospel through the new land.

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UNITED STATES
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor September 22, 2015

WASHINGTON – As Pope Francis arrives in the United States, three former US ambassadors to the Vatican, all Republicans who served under President George W. Bush, have endorsed Jeb Bush in the 2016 race for the White House.

The three are:

* James Nicholson, a former chair of the Republican National Committee during the 2000 elections, who went on to serve as secretary for Veterans Affairs after his posting in Rome;

* Francis Rooney, an Oklahoma businessman and major Republican donor;

* Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon, who has held several Vatican positions and currently serves on the board of the Vatican bank.

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MILWAUKEE (WI)
WUWM

[with audio]

A number of Milwaukeeans are heading to the cities where Pope Francis will spend the next week: Washington, DC; New York and Philadelphia. They have different reasons for making the trip. …

Peter Isely admits many people find Pope Francis to be engaging, but Isely says, “what’s important is changing the system,” so the church does more to protect children from sexually-abusive clergy. Isely is with the group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, and he has already traveled out east. He says the group will hold events throughout the pope’s high-profile visit.

“We have groups, of course, in all of those cities he’s going to be at, so we’ll be trying to get our message out in all those cities,” Isely says.

One of the pope’s stops will be at the United Nations. Isely’s group held a news conference there Monday. The group announced demands, including global zero tolerance for sexual abuse in the priesthood, and the creation of a global registry of sex offenders.

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UNITED STATES
Reuters

BOSTON | BY RICHARD VALDMANIS

Casting the fight against climate change as an urgent moral duty, Pope Francis in June urged the world to phase out highly-polluting fossil fuels.

Yet in the heart of U.S. oil country several dioceses and other Catholic institutions are leasing out drilling rights to oil and gas companies to bolster their finances, Reuters has found.

And in one archdiocese — Oklahoma City — Church officials have signed three new oil and gas leases since Francis’s missive on the environment, leasing documents show.

On Francis’ first visit to the United States this week, the business dealings suggest that some leaders of the U.S. Catholic Church are practicing a different approach to the environment than the pontiff is preaching.

Catholic institutions are not forbidden from dealing with or investing in the energy industry. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) guidelines on ethical investing warn Catholics and Catholic institutions against investing in companies related to abortion, contraception, pornography, tobacco, and war, but do not suggest avoiding energy stocks, and do not address the ownership of energy production interests.

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UNITED STATES
Religion Dispatches

BY PATRICIA MILLER SEPTEMBER 21, 2015

Nearly two and one-half times as many current Catholics think Francis is “more liberal” than they are on “the environment, immigration and distribution of wealth” than those who think he is more liberal on “birth control, abortion and divorce.” – From a New York Times/CBS News poll, release on September 20, 2015

The last time there was this much excitement about a pope’s inaugural visit to the United States, Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” topped the Billboard charts, Jimmy Carter was in the White House, and cell phones were the size of a brick.

But those aren’t the only differences between Pope John Paul II’s historic 1979 visit and Pope Francis’ virgin trip to the US this week. Pope Francis will find a church that is markedly different in a number of significant ways; so different, in fact, that it calls into question whether we can still refer to the Catholic Church in the US.

When JPII made his first visit US, he found a church that was in transition but largely intact. Some 40 percent of Catholics went to mass in any given week and there were nearly 60,000 Catholic priests and 135,000 nuns, with the nation’s 18,800 parishes boasting an average of two priests each. The sacraments were still a major part of most Catholics’ lives: there were nearly 1 million baptisms and 350,000 Catholic marriages.

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UNITED STATES
Road to Recovery

Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D.
Co-founder and President of Road to Recovery, Inc.
(a non-profit charity that assists victims of sexual abuse and their families)

Many Catholics and ordinary citizens for that matter may not fully be aware of the difficulties faced by victim/survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their families during the visit of Pope Francis to the United States. Simply stated, clergy sexual abuse victim/survivors and their families may be “triggered,” a term referring to the sudden return of many of the same feelings and memories of having been sexually abused by clergy members, not just because the Pope represents the Catholic Church and therefore reminds victim/survivors of the clergy or religious persons who abused them. The triggering actually brings them back to the horrific events of sexual abuse that they endured and survived until now.

Victim/survivors need to take care of themselves this week because the popularity of Pope Francis among the Catholic faithful and the general public and the unprecedented media coverage of Pope Francis could lead many to believe that the sexual abuse scandal has been resolved when victim/survivors know full well there is much to be done by the Catholic Church and the Pope himself to bring healing and justice to the victim/survivors. Road to Recovery, Inc. is one such outlet for victim/survivors during this week, and all victim/survivors who are finding the Papal visit difficult to deal with are urged to reach out to Road to Recovery and other advocacy and support agencies for help and a listening ear.

Road to Recovery was founded by two Catholic priests (at the time) in 2003, Kenneth E. Lasch, a retired priest of the Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey, who was pastor of a parish where many of his parishioners were sexually abused by a previous pastor. I was the other priest at that time, and I am a sexual abuse victim/survivor of several persons from the approximate ages of three to twenty-nine. I was forced to get out of the priesthood in 2011 after the Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, fired me from ministry and suspended me from performing priestly duties, virtually strangling me financially and pastorally.

Road to Recovery has helped over three thousand victim/survivors of sexual abuse since 2003, and we offer victim/survivors assistance and a listening ear throughout the visit of Pope Francis to the United States. Our phone number is public (862-368-2800), and we offer anyone who is finding it hard to cope with Pope Francis’ visit confidential help and assistance at any time of the day and night. We are here to help.

If any of the Catholic faithful or general public is aware of any victim/survivor who is need of help, give us a call and we will reach out to your family member, neighbor, or friend. Let us take care of each other during these joyful days for many and trying times for others.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

By Torsten Ove / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A federal jury deliberated more than five hours Monday in the case of a Somerset County priest accused of molesting Honduran orphans and will return today to try some more.

The Rev. Joseph Maurizio, 70, suspended pastor at Our Lady Queen of Angels, went on trial Sept. 10 in U.S. District Court in Johnstown. The Justice Department says he plied orphans with money and candy so he could fondle them, engage in other sex acts and take nude photos of them.

The parties made closing arguments Monday morning and the jury began deliberating at about 2:30 before quitting at about 8 p.m.

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PENNSYLVANIA
YouTube

Published on Sep 21, 2015

Pa. state Rep. Mark Rozzi says child sex abuse victims must be given more time to get justice against their abusers. His H.B. 661 would raise the age for an adult victim of child sex abuse to file a civil claim from 30 to 50 years old, among other things. Rozzi, a victim of child abuse himself, adds it takes some victims years, and even decades, to come forward with their stories of abuse, so there shouldn’t be an expiration date barring them from seeking action against perpetrators.

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LATIN AMERICA
GlobalPost

Will Carless on Sep 22, 2015

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Last week, a GlobalPost investigation detailed a disturbing new chapter in the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal: Priests accused of molesting children have been able to escape scrutiny by relocating to poor, remote parishes in South America.

Two-and-half years into Pope Francis’s papacy, these revelations raise questions over whether he has done enough to address the church’s plague of sex abuse. More than 6,000 priests face allegations, according to Bishop-Accountability.org, and many have never faced justice for their alleged crimes.

The sex abuse crisis is among the biggest challenges for this popular pope.

So far, there have been major announcements during this papacy. Last year, Pope Francis announced the creation of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, tasked with advising the church on how to deal with its sex abuse crisis. Then, this year, he sent a letter to every bishop instructing them to abide by “zero tolerance” for priests who sexually abuse children. He also pledged to create a special tribunal to judge bishops accused of covering up child sexual abuse scandals. And he has begged forgiveness from priests’ victims.

But are these actions just lip service? Or is the pope effecting real change across the Catholic world?

GlobalPost polled five experts on child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. We asked: Do you believe the pope’s actions constitute meaningful change? Do they go far enough to protect children at risk of sexual abuse by clergy? If not, what should the pope do to show that he’s serious about cleaning up this problem?

Below are the responses, edited by GlobalPost for clarity and length.

(We also contacted Vatican Spokesman Federico Lombardi, as well as Terrence Donilon, communications secretary for Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who heads the pontifical commission. They did not respond.)

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VIRGINIA
WTVR

[with video]

SEPTEMBER 21, 2015, BY SHELBY BROWN

CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. — A former church youth group leader was charged with new crimes after two more people came forward with claims he inappropriately touched them. Jeffrey D. Clark, 45, was first arrested September 8 and charged with two counts of aggravated sexual battery against a child. He met that child through his role at Immanuel Baptist Church in Colonial Heights, police said.

Since that arrest, two more people have contacted investigators with similar stories, police said. The incidents occurred during the past two years and also involved children Clark met through church, investigators added.

The first to come forward was a juvenile, the second was a juvenile at the time of the alleged incident but is now an adult, police said. As a result, Clark was recently charged with two counts of indecent liberties with a child while in a custodial role and simple sexual battery.

Additional charges were possible, police said.

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UNITED STATES
Religion Dispatches

BY KAYA OAKES SEPTEMBER 21, 2015

It doesn’t take more than a glance at the recent Reuters report to see that the American Catholic church doesn’t just have a crisis in the rising number of former Catholics.

Unsurprisingly, those same Catholics took their money when they walked. The resulting closures of multiple parishes and a drain on the retirement fund for priests have added to the $3 billion cost of the clergy sex abuse scandal, leaving the American church with a massive money problem and shrinking numbers of parishioners on the eve of Pope Francis’ arrival.

A recent study by Nicholas Bottan and Ricardo Perez-Trugila in the Journal of Public Economics revealed that, unsurprisingly, “a scandal causes a persistent decline in the local Catholic affiliation and church attendance.”

“Some Catholics join other religious denominations during the first three years after a scandal,” they write. “But these individuals later end up with no religious affiliation.” They end up, in other words, as Nones.

The economists involved in this study focused on the zip code where a clergy sex scandal had occurred. They found a “large and statistically significant effect” on charitable contributions in those zip codes after a scandal, and not only to Catholic-based charitable organizations. The researchers theorize that perhaps once a person stops attending church, the social pressure to be charitable declines.

Interestingly, however, these same individuals mirror the statistical notion that even though an increasing number of Americans consider themselves religiously unaffiliated, that doesn’t necessarily mean they do not believe in God. Botton and Perez-Trugila indicate that sex abuse scandals cost the church money and participation, but not necessarily faith.

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PENNSYLVANIA
We Are Central PA

Johnstown, Cambria County, Pa.

After six hours of deliberation in the trial of Father Joseph Maurizio, we are still waiting for a verdict.

The dozen jurors sat through closing arguments after two weeks of trial.

Monday the defense rehashed the inconsistencies in the prosecution’s argument, like the boys timeline of when and where the alleged sex acts could have happened as well as how. An alleged victim also came forward during the trial and said he lied in his forensic interview.

The prosecution said the innocent boys relied on folks like Maurizio to help them and that the jury simply has to look at the evidence, including the photos, allegedly taken by Maurizio. Some of the photos showed the boys exposed.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Washington Times

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) – Jurors were expected to resume deliberations in the trial of a suspended Roman Catholic priest from western Pennsylvania accused of traveling to Honduras to molest poor street children during missionary trips.

The jury heard closing arguments Monday in a federal courtroom in Johnstown, then deliberated for several hours without reaching a verdict in the trial of the Rev. Joseph Maurizio Jr.

The 70-year-old priest has been suspended from Our Lady Queen of Angels Parish in Somerset County. He’s charged with traveling abroad from 2004 to 2009 to have sex with three young boys – a charge known as sexual tourism – and illegally transferring $8,000 to a charity to help fund the trips.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

Book Notes: Joelle Casteix’s The Well-Armored Child: A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Sexual Abuse

I have a book to recommend to you — particularly those of you raising children, or with friends and relatives raising children. The book will also be useful and very instructive for those committed to addressing the problem of sexual abuse of young people, as I believe many readers of this blog are. It’s Joelle Casteix’s The Well-Armored Child: A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Sexual Abuse (Austin: River Grove, 2015).

Joelle’s book arises out of her own struggle to deal with having been sexually abused as a teenager by a teacher in her Catholic school. As she tells readers in the book’s introduction, “I realized that in order to heal, I needed to make an immediate difference” (xi). As a survivor of abuse, she has recognized, that is, that her commitment to healing others (and to preventing sexual abuse of minors) has been part and parcel of her own healing process.

The book also flows from her growing recognition that the abuse prevention movement has neglected its most important resource for prevention: parents. As Joelle also notes in the book’s introduction, in her years of lecturing about child abuse throughout the United States, the question she is asked more frequently than any other question is, What can I do to keep my child safe?

If those of us without children imagine that because this challenge applies exclusively to parents — if we imagine that the problem of child abuse in our society doesn’t affect all of us — we’re badly informed. As Joelle notes, child sexual abuse represents a huge burden affecting our entire society (15):

When you add up the costs to our communities — for mental health care, police services, jails, adoption and foster care, victim services, drug and alcohol rehab, food stamps, welfare, and other social services that many victims and their families require — the price tag is staggering (ibid.).

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.

AUSTRALIA
Sunraysia Daily

By Daniella White – dwhite@sunraysiadaily.com.au Sept. 22, 2015

WHEN the Royal Commission into Child Sex Abuse was announced in 2012, Mildura man Denis Ryan jumped for joy.

For him, it was forty years in the making. A detective based in Melbourne, Mr Ryan transferred to Mildura in 1962 because his doctor said a drier climate would help his son’s asthma.

Within ten years he had uncovered shocking claims of sexual abuse against possibly hundreds of children at the hands of Monsignor John Day.

But in what he describes as one of the greatest criminal conspiracies ever in Victoria, his attempts to bring him to justice were thwarted by the “Catholic Mafia” within the police force, a corrupt court clerk and the church.

“On my second day in Mildura I went to the CIB office and I met senior detective Jim Barritt,” he said.

“When I had applied for the position here … a mate of mine at the time Dinny Barritt, who was a detective sergeant, … said for God’s sake don’t go to Mildura, my brother Jim is there and there’s something wrong with him in the head.

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UNITED STATES
Huffington Post

Martha Burk

We’ll be inundated Pope, Pope, and more Pope 24-7 this week, as the pontiff makes his rounds in the nation’s capital. Francis plans a White House visit, an outdoor mass in Washington, and a speech before Congress. He’s also likely to join a rally on the National Mall that could draw a quarter-million people to highlight his stance on protecting the planet. He speaks to Congress on September 24, Sirius XM is featuring Pope Radio, and Time Warner cable is providing round-the-clock coverage of his visit.

No doubt this pope is kinder and gentler than his predecessors on some issues that affect women, like abortion and ending a marriage. In the past few weeks, he’s made getting an annulment easier, and announced that priests can grant absolution to women who have had abortions (at least during the Roman Catholic church’s upcoming Holy Year). Both are compassionate moves, 2014-04-01-yourvoicesmallest3.JPGsince a Catholic who remarries without an annulment is kicked out of the church, and statistics from the Guttmacher Institute show Catholic women have more abortions than protestant women. (Of course a great majority of these could be prevented if the Vatican would relent on contraception, which it shows no sign of doing.)

But on one huge issue of pressing importance — sex abuse by priests — Pope Francis is not as good as he looks. It’s true that the Vatican has put victims on an advisory panel reviewing the church response to some of the allegations, and it has announced that one child sex abuser, Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, will be tried by a church tribunal for sex abuse and possibly for possessing child pornography as well.

But there’s a catch. Moving the trial to the Vatican allowed the perp to flee from a criminal trial in the Dominican Republic, where he surely would have drawn prison time. The Vatican has no prison, so he’ll probably get off with a defrocking at worst. And according to a current article in Ms. Magazine, Wesolowski’s not the first sex-abusing member of the clergy to be given refuge in the Vatican.

Francis also ignored a public outcry and promoted priest Juan Barros to the rank of bishop, even though he was embroiled in a sex scandal in Chile. Over 3,000 protesters showed up at the mass when Barros was installed in his new office.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Yahoo!

Matt Bai
September 21, 2015

When Pope Francis arrives in Washington Tuesday night, he will set his suitcase down at the Apostolic Nunciature, informally known as the Vatican Embassy. It’s an unassuming mansion along a highly trafficked stretch of Massachusetts Avenue, directly across the street from the Naval Observatory and the vice president’s mansion.

When Francis looks out onto the locked-down avenue, however, closed to all but the southbound buses and a trickle of cars, he probably won’t see a 72-year-old, white-haired Polish immigrant named John Wojnowski, who has become as much a part of that sidewalk as the blistered concrete.

And that’s a travesty, because it means that Francis will not see his embassy in quite the same way that many Washingtonians have glimpsed it through the years. He will not understand the lonely sacrifice of one broken, belittled man, or the depth of despair that exists in some quarters of the American church.

Wojnowski’s story has no clear beginning or end; rather, it replays itself every day, in the same endless loop, and probably will for as long as he’s alive. So let’s just start it here:

One day in 1997, Wojnowski read an in item in the newspaper about a sexual abuse scandal roiling a Catholic diocese in Texas, where the victim had killed himself. An Army veteran and longtime ironworker, Wojnowsk­i had just taken early retirement because of failing knees. Separated from his wife and emotionally estranged from his two children, he was living alone with his regrets in the working-class suburb of Bladensburg, Md., getting by on Social Security and a small pension.

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MASSACHUSETTS
WBUR

By DAVID BOERI

Church officials say that Pope Francis is likely to meet with victims of sexual abuse by priests when he comes to America this week — a sign of continuing turmoil and mistrust among Catholic parishioners following a series of scandals. And when critics call for more transparency and accountability, it’s Cardinal Bernard Law they often point to.

Law was forced to resign as bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston after a series of stories by a team of investigative reporters at The Boston Globe found victims and uncovered documents showing that church authorities had protected pedophile priests from prosecution — a story that’s about to be revisited by the release next month of a new movie called “Spotlight.”

But despite the disgrace that befell Cardinal Law in Boston, he found a comfortable and influential second career at the Vatican.

‘Lied Through His Teeth’

The fall of Cardinal Bernard Law began with a press conference he called in mid-January 2002 — one week after a story published by The Boston Globe revealed that he had protected pedophile priests in the Boston Archdiocese.

The scene was Nixonian. A favorite of Pope John Paul II and a close friend of both Bush presidents, Cardinal Law was a red-hatted power broker in Washington and Rome — the two capitals that counted most. But he was under siege — and his assertions were bold.

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NEW YORK
Mid-Hudson News

BREWSTER – State Police arrested a Hopewell Junction man on felony counts of criminal sexual act and sexual abuse.

Joseph Faraone, 68, is a former pastor of St. James Church in Carmel and St. Denis Church in Hopewell Junction as well as churches in Mount Kisco and Yorktown Heights.

Faraone, an employee of a local non-for-profit human service organization, was arrested after an investigation by State Police and the Putnam County District Attorney’s Office found that he had sexual contact with a 50-year-old female patient who was unable to consent. He is in the Putnam County Jail in lieu of $50,000 cash bail or $100,000 bond.

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UNITED STATES
Lowell Sun

By Todd Feathers, tfeathers@lowellsun.com

Over the past three decades, papal visits to the United States have been colored by shrinking participation in the Roman Catholic Church, the priest sexual-abuse scandal, and social issues that have at times illuminated fault lines between many American Catholics and the Vatican.

As Pope Francis begins his first visit to the country in Washington, D.C., today, few of those divides have been definitively resolved. But theologians and local Catholics said a change in the atmosphere is palpable as they prepare for a visit that could be equal parts shocking, refreshing and reaffirming to the American Catholic system.

“We might be surprised by how pointed he is when he speaks to the joint session of Congress and the U.N.,” said Daniel J. Daly, chair of the Saint Anselm College Theology Department.

“People will be uncomfortable but it won’t be because he’ll be talking about abortion and physician-assisted suicide, but because he’ll be talking about suffering and mercy.”

In terms of his position on issues such as gay marriage, abortion, and contraception, Pope Francis shares the doctrinal views of his predecessors, Daly added. But in his teachings, the Argentinean has chosen to emphasize economic inequality, environmentalism, and other themes of shared humanity.

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UNITED STATES
The New York Times

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
SEPT. 21, 2015

MERCED, Calif. — More than 5,000 parishioners packed the pews, the choir loft and the vestibule on a recent weekend at Sacred Heart Church here in California’s Central Valley for five Masses — four of them in Spanish. Young Hispanic families spilled outside onto the steps, straining to hear the homily over the roar of an elevated freeway across the street.

Across the country in Philadelphia, there is only one weekend Mass now at Our Lady Help of Christians, a church built by and for German immigrants in 1898. The clock in its tower has stopped. The parochial school next door is closed. Only 53 worshipers, most of them with white hair, gathered for Mass on a recent Sunday in the soaring Gothic sanctuary.

The Roman Catholic Church that Pope Francis will encounter on his first visit to the United States is being buffeted by immense change, and it is struggling — with integrating a new generation of immigrants, with conflicts over buildings and resources, with recruiting priests and with retaining congregants. The denomination is still the largest in the United States, but its power base is shifting.

On the East Coast and in the Midwest, bishops are closing or merging parishes and shuttering parochial schools built on the dimes and sweat of generations of European immigrants. In many parishes, worshipers are sparse, funerals outnumber baptisms, and Sunday collections are not enough to maintain even beloved houses of worship.

In the West and the South, and in some other unexpected pockets all over the country, the church is bursting at the seams with immigrants, mostly from Mexico and Latin America, but also from Asia and Africa. Hispanic parents put their children on waiting lists for religious education classes and crowd into makeshift worship spaces, but avoid predominantly Anglo parishes because they do not always feel welcome there.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
ABC 27

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A former Roman Catholic archbishop of Philadelphia who retired amid a scandal over clergy sex abuse is returning to the city for the pope’s visit.

A spokesman for Cardinal Justin Rigali says he’ll join other U.S. bishops for several events related to Pope Francis’ U.S. trip. The trip starts Tuesday and will include the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.

Rigali retired to the Diocese of Knoxville, Tennessee, in 2011 months after a grand jury accused the archdiocese of sheltering more than three dozen credibly accused priests and lying about it to victims and others. Rigali pledged to review the priests’ cases and work with authorities.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

By Torsten Ove / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A federal jury today began deliberating in the case of a Somerset County priest accused of molesting orphans during mission trips in Honduras.

The Rev. Joseph Maurizio, 70, went on trial seven days ago in U.S. District Court in Johnstown.

The parties made their closing arguments this morning and the jury began deliberating at about 2:30.

Rev. Maurizio, the suspended pastor at Our Lady Queen of Angels in Central City, was arrested a year ago on charges of molesting three boys on trips to the ProNino orphanage between 2004 and 2009.

The Justice Department said the priest was known as the “money man” who used cash from a charity he created to fund trips to the orphanage and to pay boys for sex acts.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, Sept. 21

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

It’s an outrage that our military and our money are backing child rape in Afghanistan. In a very real way, there’s little difference between ignoring and enabling sexual violence.

[New York Times]

Our hearts go out to Dan Quinn and the grieving family of Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. These two brave men clearly did what was right.

Of course we must be sensitive to the religious beliefs and cultural practices of others. But under no circumstances can we ignore or aid those who sexually assault kids, not even in the name of fighting terrorism.

We don’t profess to be experts in military or diplomatic strategy. But we strongly believe that virtually nothing trumps children’s safety, not even seemingly crucial foreign policy or political considerations. And we’re convinced that “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Our military and civilian commanders can and must find a way to fight both the Taliban and child rapists.

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UNITED STATES
Fort Madison Daily Democrat

Posted: Monday, September 21, 2015

These days, no shortage of Americans want Uncle Sam to play a larger role in regulating financial institutions. Some folks would even like to see the nationalization of large banks.
In another corner, more than a few people like the idea of church and state no longer being quite so separate as the Constitution demands. Needless to mention, most of said people want some variant of Christianity to be the state religion.

No doubt that some especially — shall we say — ‘interesting’ characters yearn for a combination of the two.

While many a sage political scientist, economist, or philosopher can provide cautionary tale after cautionary tale as to why these are bad ideas, nothing explains like firsthand experience.
Enter the story of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, former chairman of the Institute for the Works of Religion (IWR), more well known as the ‘Vatican Bank’.

In March of 2012, our State Department placed the Vatican on an official list of countries where money laundering is a dire concern. Not long after, as — among U.S. news agencies — it seems only Reuters covered in detail, Tedeschi was unanimously ousted by the IWR’s board of directors. One should note that in 2010, the IWR had roughly $33 million of its assets frozen by Italian authorities due to suspected criminality.

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UNITED STATES
Los Angeles Times

By MOLLY HENNESSY-FISKE

Each morning when he wakes and walks to his shower, Mark Rozzi is reminded of a priest from his childhood, and the nightmare that unfolded in the rectory back in 1983.

He was a 13-year-old student and altar boy at Holy Guardian Angels Catholic Church and school in his hometown of Reading, about 65 miles north of Philadelphia, when he was raped in the shower by the Rev. Edward Graff.

Rozzi said he managed to get away and told his parents, who complained to the principal, but Graff was never prosecuted. Instead, like so many other priests accused of abuse, he was transferred to other churches, Rozzi said. Eventually, the priest was arrested in Texas and died while in custody before trial.

Rozzi later discovered that several of his friends had been abused by Graff as well; one struggled for years with mental illness and unemployment until he committed suicide this year, on Good Friday.

“I have seen my friends kill themselves, my friends become alcoholics and drug addicts, and then the church make a mockery of us,” he said.

For Rozzi and other clergy abuse victims, this week’s visit to the United States by Pope Francis presents an opportunity — to remind the world of the pain inflicted by pedophile priests and to hold the church more accountable for their crimes. …

Marci Hamilton, a professor at Cardozo Law School in New York who has assisted Philadelphia clergy abuse victims and served on the 2005 grand jury said, “There has been no formal outreach from the archdiocese in Philadelphia or the Vatican to any of the survivors I know of.”

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NEW YORK
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Abuse victims to discuss their pain
First-ever NYC “public support group meeting”
Event held in conjunction with survivors’ art show
SNAP has held thousands of such events in private
But this time, victims will share details in open setting

What:
On the day Pope Francis arrives in the US, while surrounded by an exhibit of abuse-inspired paintings created by a young woman who suffered clergy sexual crimes, a group of clergy sex abuse victims will hold an unusual public support group meeting. In frank and personal discussions, they’ll describe the pain they endured (and still endure) because of clerics who committed and concealed sexual violence against them.

The artist will also discuss her paintings and her long, difficult but ultimately successful work to get her perpetrator extradited from overseas to face justice, both civil and criminal.

And the victims will be available to do one-on-one interviews and share their views on what Francs and the Catholic hierarchy must do to “protect the vulnerable, heal the wounded and expose the truth.”

When:
Tuesday, Sept. 22
Survivor Art Exhibit – 3:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Public support group meeting – 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 pm.

Where:
Cameo Studios, 307 W 43rd Street in Manhattan

Who:
Six-eight members of an international support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org), including an Illinois woman who is the organization’s long time president, a New York City survivor/artist whose perpetrator fled overseas but was extradited and pled guilty, and a California woman who is a best-selling author on child protection

Why:
1. Though many know SNAP as an “activist” group, for more than 25 years, its largely volunteer leaders across the US (and increasingly, across the world) have held thousands of confidential, peer-led self-help groups that enable deeply wounded and still-struggling victims of predatory priests, nuns, bishops, ministers, seminarians and other church staff to begin to regain their power and start healing.

In a rare move, the group will open its doors for this one support group media to the media.

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CHILE
Infinita

[Witness testimony has begun in the civil suit against priest Fernando Karadima.]

A partir de las 15:30 horas, los testigos convocados por la defensa de las tres víctimas de abuso sexual por parte del sacerdote Fernando Karadima, comenzarán a prestar declaraciones ante la Justicia, por la demanda contra el Arzobispado de Santiago.

Las citaciones son con el ministro de fuero Juan Muñoz Pardo, quien instruye la demanda civil interpuesta en 2012 por el médico James Hamilton, el periodista Juan Carlos Cruz y el filósofo José Andrés Murillo.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Sunday, Sept. 20

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

We believe Francis will meet soon, likely in DC, with a handful of carefully-chosen victims in a tightly-choreographed setting. And we’re convinced that it will be essentially meaningless.

It will bring short term joy to some but real healing to few and protection to no one.

Almost every survivor cares most about prevention. That’s also what helps us heal best: knowing that our pain prompts action that might spare even one child a lifetime of devastation from sexual violence.

Francis and his colleagues, however, refuse to take that action. Brave and bold on other topics, here Francis plays it safe and timid. He and his underlings prefer to talk ‘healing.’ It’s safer, easier, less controversial and more comfortable than the hard work of prevention. (The more skeptical would also point out that it’s more self-serving to talk ‘healing’ than initiate reform.)

Kids are safer when we acknowledge that every day, several boys and girls are being sexually assaulted by Catholic clerics. Every day, thousands of Catholic officials selfishly sit on secrets about child molesting clerics that police and prosecutors could use to pursue and prosecute these criminals.

So we beg Francis to stop acting like the abuse and cover ups are over and that only healing is needed. That’s disingenuous and dangerous.

Many victims feel worse, not better, when we see papal photo ops and other symbolic moves that do more to help church officials’ reputations and church members’ morale than truly help vulnerable kids and wounded survivors.

Popes have met with victims before. These meetings breed complacency. Again, they do nothing for prevention. And the ‘healing’ they provide for a tiny handful of carefully-chosen victims is usually very short lived.

Boston survivor Bernie McDaid was among the few victims at the 2008 meeting with Pope Benedict. He now says such a meeting with Francis would serve no purpose, because it would be symbolic and not substantive, arguing that church officials continue to treat victims poorly.

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MINNESOTA
Jeff Anderson & Associates

9/21/2015

(New Ulm, MN) – Tomorrow at 3:00 PM in Brown County District Court, the Diocese of New Ulm will ask the Court to dismiss a lawsuit filed on behalf of a sexual abuse survivor, Doe 7, who was sexually abused as a young girl by Fr. David Roney at St. Mary’s Church in Willmar, MN.

The diocese continues to fight sexual abuse survivors and their advocates by keeping secret the full list of credibly accused clerics and the documents pertaining to the clerics and child sexual abuse by clergy. Until this information is released to the public, children remain at risk.

In March 2015, the Diocese of New Ulm quietly released the names of four clerics with allegations of sexual abuse of minors. These clerics included Fr. David Roney, Fr. John Murphy, Fr. Michael Skoblik, and Fr. Dennis Becker whose names was publicly released for the first time.

Doe 7’s lawsuit was filed in September 2013 under the Minnesota Child Victims Act which allows survivors of sexual abuse to sue their offenders and the institutions who protected the offenders. The deadline for sexual abuse survivors to file a lawsuit is May 25, 2016.

*Attorney Mike Finnegan will be available to answer questions tomorrow afternoon immediately following the hearing.

Brown County District Court
Judge Robert A. Docherty’s Courtroom
3:00PM Hearing

14 South State St.
New Ulm, MN 56073

Contact: Mike Finnegan: Office: 651.964.3473 Cell: 612.205.5531

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MINNESOTA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Monday, Sept. 21

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

On the very day that Pope Francis lands in the US, a Minnesota bishop will try to block a child sex abuse and cover up lawsuit involving a predator priest who is accused of sexually assaulting at least 26 girls.

[Jeff Anderson & Associates]

New Ulm Bishop John M. LeVoir should be ashamed of himself for seeking to exploit legal technicalities to protect clergy who commit and conceal child sex crimes. But he’s not ashamed. In his eyes, he’s doing what thousands of other Catholic officials do and have done: work shrewdly to keep clergy sex crimes and cover ups covered up. And he’s right.

Pope Francis refuses to change this decades-long immoral practice.

We long for the day when a bishop says “We’ll fight abuse victims on the merits, not on the legal technicalities” or “We’ll let the evidence surface in open court, rather than do all we can to keep a lid on it.”

And we long for the day when a top Vatican official, maybe even the pope himself, will say “We forbid bishops to spend parishioners’ donations to fight against their sexually abused children.”

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NEW YORK
Find A Grave

Birth: Jun. 28, 1918
Millstreet
County Cork, Ireland
Death: May 9, 1983
Buffalo
Erie County
New York, USA

Born Michael P. Hennessy.
He was a Franciscan Priest
Fr. Linus Hennessy.

He died at St. Joseph’s Hospital otherwise Sisters of Charity Hospital, Cheektowago, Buffalo, NY.

Probably buried in Buffalo, but commemorated on one of the headstones of the grave of his parents, brother and sister.

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UNITED STATES
FACSA

Three Perspectives on the Catholic Church & Pope Francis’ Visit to the US

WHYY Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane | September 2, 2015

Guests: Sister Simone Campbell, John Salveson, and Julie Chovanes

Listen HERE

Pope Francis’ visit to the United States is being celebrated by many Catholics and non-Catholics throughout the region and many have been encouraged by his humility and his willingness to engage with a variety of people. For some, his trip and the spotlight on the church have proved to be painful because of past experiences. Today we’ll hear three different takes on Pope Francis the Catholic Church, in light of his upcoming stopover in the states. Marty speaks with SISTER SIMONE CAMPBELL, the executive director of NETWORK, a national Catholic social justice lobby, and JOHN SALVESON, founder and president of the Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse. In 2012, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents 80,000 American nuns, was reprimanded in a Vatican report that the group has strayed from the church and had adopted “radical feminist” views. Her organization was also sanctioned in the report. Salveson was molested by a priest as a teenager and has campaigned for the World Meeting of Families, the event leading up to the pope’s visit to the Philadelphia, to host sessions on sexual abuse within the church. We’ll also be joined by local transgender Catholic JULIE CHOVANES to hear about her experiences with her faith and the church.

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MISSISSIPPI
The Clarion-Ledger

Bracey Harris, The Clarion-Ledger September 21, 2015

A former Jackson priest who admitted to molesting a teenage boy is serving in a Peruvian parish, despite several warnings of his past sexual abuse from the Diocese of Jackson.

Monday, the Diocese of Jackson responded to a report by GlobalPost about Father Paul Madden serving as a priest in Peru

Madden, who worked with the diocese from 1970 to 1994 and admitted to molesting a minor in an on-camera interview, has resurfaced in Chimpote, Peru, according to a GlobalPost report.

Maureen Smith, director of communications for the Diocese of Jackson, said Madden spent much of his time overseas as a missionary with the Society of St. James.

Prior to his assignment with the international organization, Madden molested a 13-year-old while on a mission trip in the 1970s.

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NEW YORK
WBFO

By EILEEN BUCKLEY • JAN 27, 2015

Two Western New Yorkers are calling on Pope Francis to investigate their cases of sexual abuse against the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo.

Vanessa DeRosa, 25, of Niagara Falls and Tino Flores, 50, of Buffalo, described their allegations during a Tuesday morning news conference in Amherst. They are being represented by the law firm Hogan Willig.

Flores says he was only ten years old in 1973 when the abuse occurred at the hands of Father Linus Hennessy. Flores offered a graphic description of the abuse.

“He started touching me, taking my hand and rubbing his leg, unzipping his pants [and] putting my hand in it,” described the Buffalo man.

Hennessy is now deceased. Flores says the Diocese offered him a $50,000 settlement, but he did not accept.

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ALABAMA
AL.com

By Jeremy Gray | jgray@al.com
on September 21, 2015

Jane said she lost her virginity to her pastor on her father’s grave when she was just 9 years old.

It was, she said, the culmination of two years of “grooming” at the hands of Mack Charles Andrews, pastor of the strictly conservative United Pentecostal Church in Thomasville. Jane is a pseudonym to protect the identity of the victim.

“He told me if I didn’t say anything, he would come back and put flowers on the grave,” Jane said. “If I did, he said demons would come and get me from my bed.”

Jane hopes 55-year-old Andrews, jailed for nearly two years on multiple sex offenses involving multiple minors, will spend the rest of his life in prison.

“My ex-pastor is my rapist,” she told AL.com.

Court records show Andrews is set for a settlement docket Tuesday at 9 a.m. At a settlement docket, judges typically ask whether a defendant wants to enter into a plea agreement.

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NEW YORK
Press Release Rocket

Leading Expert on Catholic Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis Available in New York During Papal Visit: Pope Francis, Clergy Abuse Crisis, UN Vatican Cityreport on Sex Abuse

New York, NY (PRWEB) September 21, 2015

During this week’s New York City Papal visit, a leading survivor advocate and expert on the global Catholic clergy sex abuse crisis will be available for in-person and in-studio interviews regarding Pope Francis’ statements about the clergy sex abuse and cover-up, recent news surrounding the scandal, proposed “reforms,” and victims’ reactions to the papal visit.

Joelle Casteix, bestselling author and 15-year leading national expert on Catholic clergy sex abuse and cover-up, was fifteen when she was victimized by her teacher at a Catholic school.

Now, The New York Times, Orange County Register and more than 200 other media outlets call her the “go-to expert” on the Catholic clergy sexual abuse crisis.

For the past 13 years, she has worked with more than 1,000 adult victims of Catholic clergy child sex crimes across the globe. Her expertise includes an in-depth understanding and recognition of patterns of clergy sexual abuse and cover-up in the Catholic Church, predatory behaviors, grooming, prevention, and institutional disregard.

Since 2003, Joelle has been the volunteer Western Regional Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and has traveled the world exposing abusers, helping victims get healing, justice and accountability, and researching predatory abuse patterns in institution

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The Guardian (UK)

Nicky Woolf and Angela Bruno in New York with Jonathan Watts in Havana and Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome …

Pope Francis may be speaking to adulatory crowds in Cuba, but in New York, groups representing children abused by Catholic priests are preparing for his visit.

Today, representatives from three organizations held a press conference at the United Nations, urging the Vatican to take concrete steps to address sexual assault and its cover-up in the Catholic Church.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said:

Francis often talks of mercy. He’s right to do so. But hundreds of thousands of innocent boys and girls have been raped by priests, nuns, bishops, and seminarians because of excessive mercy shown to criminal clerics by their complicit colleagues. Mercy won’t protect children from child-molesting clergy.”

BishopAccountability.org, an archival and research group that gathers documents and data about the global crisis of sexual abuse of children within the Roman Catholic Church, said in a statement:

The catastrophe of child sex abuse abuse in the Catholic church has not been resolved, and an especially alarming aspect of it has been revealed recently: Priests who have been kicked out of U.S. dioceses because of child sex abuse allegations are thriving today in church assignments in South America and the Philippines, according to our global research as well as a new investigation by GlobalPost.

We urge Pope Francis to mark his first visit to the United States by announcing an end to this terrible situation.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights is a legal and advocacy human rights organization that has represented SNAP at the International Criminal Court in The Hague and the United Nations in Geneva. They issued the following statement:

If Francis wants to truly bring change to the church, he must ensure the Vatican complies with the United Nations requests and recommendations, increase transparency when dealing with these crimes, and order all cases and reports turned over to local civil authorities for independent investigation.

A Guardian report from last week highlighted how the shadow of sexual abuse may loom over the Pope’s visit to the us.

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NEW YORK
The Center for Constitutional Rights

Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, BishopAccountability.org, and the Center for Constitutional Rights Address the United Nations Press Corps in Advance of the Arrival of Pope Francis

press@ccrjustice.org

New York, 21 September, 2015 – Today, representatives from three organizations held a press conference at the United Nations in advance of the Pope’s visit to urge the Vatican to take concrete steps to address the crisis of sexual assault and its cover-up in the Catholic Church.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is a volunteer self-help organization of survivors of sexual violence and their supporters. With members in 71 countries, SNAP works to protect the vulnerable and heal the wounded. They issued the following statement:

While making great strides in improving church finances, governance and morale, Pope Francis makes no strides toward improved children’s safety. He can do a little to stop climate change, political strife or the throngs of refugees traveling towards Europe. He can do lots, however, to stop clergy sexual violence and cover-ups. But only if he summons the strength to stop talking about clergy sex crimes and cover-ups and starts preventing them.

In some regards, Francis thinks nothing of abandoning centuries-old, hidebound church practices. But not in this crisis. In some regards, Francis shows bold thinking. But not in this crisis. In some regards, he takes decisive action. But not in this crisis. In this continuing crisis, the most serious one facing the church in modern history, he refuses to part from the past and present. He must overcome his timidity and show real leadership. Or else, like his predecessors, his papacy will also end up being marred by this scandal. And, worse, girls, boys, and vulnerable adults will keep on being scarred because of predatory Catholic clerics and corrupt church supervisors.

BishopAccountability.org is an archival and research group that gathers documents and data about the global crisis of sexual abuse of children within the Roman Catholic Church. They issued the following statement:

The catastrophe of child sex abuse abuse in the Catholic church has not been resolved, and an especially alarming aspect of it has been revealed recently: Priests who have been kicked out of U.S. dioceses because of child sex abuse allegations are thriving today in church assignments in South America and the Philippines, according to our global research as well as a new investigation by GlobalPost.

In the meantime, this otherwise forthright Pope should acknowledge the gap between his promise of “zero tolerance” and his policy. “There is absolutely no place in ministry for those who abuse minors,” he said this February. Until canon law is changed, this is not true.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is a legal and advocacy human rights organization that has represented SNAP at the International Criminal Court in The Hague and the United Nations in Geneva. They issued the following statement:

Pope Francis’s public statements about the Vatican’s concern for children and other survivors of sexual assault by priests are at odds with the Vatican’s actions under his leadership. This week, amidst discussions of climate change at the United Nations General Assembly and elsewhere, he should explain the Vatican’s formal submissions to the UN committees that called them to account last spring. To the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee Against Torture, they made the preposterous claim they were only responsible for what happens inside the .44 square kilometer of Vatican City and have no responsibility for what happens outside its walls. Worse, his representatives told the Committee Against Torture that rape and sexual assault by priests do not amount to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and refused to provide both committees with the information they had requested—once again minimizing the damage the church has caused and denying the severity of the physical and mental harm survivors live with every day. If Francis wants to truly bring change to the church, he must ensure the Vatican complies with the United Nations requests and recommendations, increase transparency when dealing with these crimes, and order all cases and reports turned over to local civil authorities for independent investigation.

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UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage

William D. Lindsey

As Pope Arrives: “Until Francis Gets the House in Order on the Matter of Sexual Abuse of Clergy, All the Other Pastoral and Charitable Efforts of Our Church Are Like Sandcastles”

Two simple (but are they simple?) reminders this morning about the abuse situation in the Catholic church, and the imperative need of Catholic pastoral leaders to address it — from the highest level of church governance:

Minneapolis-St. Paul archdiocese whistleblower Jennifer Haselberger at her Canonical Consultation blog:

Until Francis gets the house in order on the matter of sexual abuse of clergy, all the other pastoral and charitable efforts of our Church are like sandcastles, destined to be washed away by the next big tide.

Anne Barrett Doyle of Bishop Accountability in yesterday’s Boston Globe:

The Vatican’s continued laxness toward abusive priests is playing out tragically around the world today — especially in countries with weak reporting laws. That’s because another church law helps the priest’s identity stay secret: Church officials need not report child abuse unless local secular law requires it.

The result is that Catholic officials in many countries still give second chances to child molesters, with the Vatican’s permission.

As David Clohessy of SNAP notes in a media statement last week, a year-long investigation by Global Post finds a “dangerous and disingenuous pattern” on the part of Catholic officials in some areas of the world including the United States to permit abusive priests to be spirited away to Latin America, where they continue in ministry and continue having contact with children, while the parishes in which they minister have no knowledge of their past.

I particularly appreciate Jennifer Haselberger’s use of the gospel image about the folly of building a house on sand. Her blog posting builds a compelling case for her conclusion that, until Francis gets the house in order on the matter of sexual abuse of clergy, all other pastoral and charitable efforts of the church are like sandcastles facing the inevitable tide. As she notes, if Francis were, by chance brought to the archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis for an on-the-ground visit, he’d see all sorts of signs that the structures of that local church are seemingly built on an exceptionally unstable foundation:

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PENNSYLVANIA
CBS Pittsburgh

JOHNSTOWN (AP) – Closing arguments have begun in the trial of a suspended Roman Catholic priest from western Pennsylvania charged with traveling to Honduras to molest poor street children during missionary trips.

Defense attorneys rested their case in Cambria County Court on Friday afternoon without the Rev. Joseph Maurizio Jr. testifying.

The 70-year-old priest has been suspended from Our Lady Queen of Angels Parish in Somerset County. He’s charged with traveling abroad from 2004 to 2009 to have sex with three young boys – a charge known as sexual tourism – and illegally transferring $8,000 to a charity to help fund the trips.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

Pope must stop predators moving overseas
SNAP: “Take passports from accused clerics”
More alleged molesters flee abroad, group says
But church officials often claim to be powerless
One “outed” last month as having worked in MD, VA & NJ
He claims two fellow diocesan staffers told him “get on a plane”

What:
Holding signs and childhood photos at a sidewalk news conference, and citing three journalistic investigations, clergy sex abuse victims will call on

–US bishops to stop predator priests from evading justice by fleeing abroad and keep them from working in parishes, and
–Pope Francis to harshly punish bishops (including one in Newark and several in South America) who enable this “reckless practice” to continue.

They want all Catholic officials – in Rome and the US for starters- to insist that clerics accused or suspected of child sex crimes give their passports to their bishop, so they can’t escape abroad.

And they will discuss the recent case of an admitted predator priest who says two church colleagues told him to fly to South America when a victim reported his abuse. They will urge Catholic officials in DC, Maryland, Virginia and New Jersey (where the cleric worked) to

–contact former church members and staff about him seeking victims, witnesses and whistleblowers,
–publicly beg their church colleagues in Ecuador to keep him away from children, and
— aggressively seek out others who saw, suspected or suffered crimes by the priest (with pulpit announcements, church bulletins and parish websites).

When:
Monday, Sept. 21 at 1:30 p.m.

Where:
Outside the US Conference of Catholic Bishops headquarters, 3211 4th street, NE in Washington DC

Who:
3 to 4 members of an international support group called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org), including a Missouri woman who is the organization’s long time outreach director

Why:
A year-long investigation by Global Post made public last week reveals that at least five predator priests from the US and Europe were quietly moved to South America where they continued to work in ministry. This is a trend, SNAP says, that is increasing: child molesting clerics being sent abroad to evade justice. The group suspects there are hundreds of “proven, admitted, and credibly accused” abusive clergy working who’ve moved to other nations.

[GlobalPost]

The Post’s findings mirror similar investigations made in 2013 by the Chicago Tribune and an even more thorough one in 2004 by Dallas Morning News.

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UNITED STATES
Boston Globe

Dave O’Regan

Stop talking. Start doing. That’s my message to Pope Francis about the abuse crisis.

The pope is already being more inclusive, decisive, and innovative. “A real breath of fresh air,” he’s been repeatedly and justifiably called. He’s addressing church finances, governance, and morale.

But on the most devastating controversy that has roiled the US Catholic Church for decades — and that is beginning to roil the church in the developing world these days — he is woefully backward.

Francis has indeed taken concrete steps to change staid church practices in several respects. So many Catholics assume he’s also tackling the ongoing clergy sex abuse and coverup crisis. Sadly, they’re wrong.

Here’s a simple way to assess the pope’s performance regarding this scandal: Name one complicit church official anywhere who has been disciplined by the pope. Name one child-molesting cleric anywhere who has been exposed by the pope. Name one step taken by the pope to deter future coverups.

You can’t.

Francis has made masterful use of symbolic gestures. By paying his own hotel bill, carrying his own luggage, making impromptu cold calls, and washing the feet of Muslim women, Francis has won the hearts of millions.

But has he defrocked, demoted, disciplined, or even denounced one bishop who hid predators or concealed crimes or endangered kids? Nope. Not one.

“Didn’t an embattled Minnesota bishop who was accused of abusing seminarians resign?”

He did, but for decades, predatory prelates who’ve created sufficient scandal have resigned. So this isn’t new.

“But that Kansas City bishop who was convicted of withholding evidence of child sex crimes from police has stepped down, too, right?”

Yep. But stepping down is different from being fired. For centuries, bad bishops have resigned, giving no reason. So this, too, is nothing new.

“Wasn’t a bishop in Paraguay ousted for bringing an accused abuser priest from the United States to his diocese and promoting him.”

Nope. The bishop did in fact leave office. But when he did, Francis’ spokesman specifically denied that the move had anything to do with abuse or coverup.

What exactly, then, has Francis done about the ongoing, worldwide abuse and coverup crisis?

In many ways, he’s followed the symbolism-over-substance approach of Cardinal Sean O’Malley.

Several times, Francis has talked about abuse. He’s apologized for it. Once, he met briefly with a carefully selected small group of victims. He has set up a new church panel to make recommendations on abuse. He says at some point, he’ll set up a panel to look at bishops who conceal abuse.

But at best, the tangible, down-in-the-trenches impact of all this talk is negligible. At worst, the impact is hurtful. How? Because talk implies progress and often promotes complacency. And complacency endangers kids.

Time and time again, Francis has ignored or even promoted complicit bishops (including a highly controversial Chilean bishop who faces multiple accusations of witnessing abuse as it happened). Like other church officials, he sometimes mentions predator priests, but almost never their corrupt supervisors.

Like Benedict and even John Paul II, he carefully uses the past tense, subtly suggesting that most of this crisis has passed, when in fact it has not. Like Catholic officials have for ages, he talks of healing but ignores prevention, the area in which firm papal action could make an enormous difference.

The pope should stop focusing his fresh approach on subjects that involve adults (like marriage annulments and Vatican Bank reform) and instead put vulnerable kids first.

Specifically, he should make every bishop do what O’Malley belatedly and grudgingly did in Boston: Post predator priests’ names on church websites. Francis should force bishops to lobby in favor of, not against, better state and federal laws to expose and punish those who commit or conceal sexual violence. And he should forbid bishops from playing legal hardball against the few clergy abuse victims who summon the courage to seek justice in criminal and civil courts.

These are proven steps that would safeguard kids, not “feel good” gestures. They are what Francis’ predecessors should have done long ago. And they are what Francis could have done over the past two and a half years.

Without this kind of concrete action, the pope’s continued talk will ring increasingly hollow.

Dave O’Regan is the New England director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

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AUSTRALIA
Sunraysia Daily

By Daniella White – dwhite@sunraysiadaily.com.au Sept. 17, 2015

A MILDURA detective who led a thwarted investigation into pedophile priest John Day’s crimes in the 1970s said he hoped to give evidence to the Royal Commission into Child Sex Abuse during a public hearing in November.

Denis Ryan, who was a detective in Mildura in the 1960s and ’70s, was the first officer to investigate Day’s crimes but he was forced off the case by his superior offices.

He said there was an element within the police force, known colloquially as the Catholic Mafia, that would protect priests from facing criminal charges.

He wrote a book called Unholy Trinity in 2013 which details the extent of the cover-up – within elements of the police force, the courts and the church – and the potential scope of Day’s crimes.

Mr Ryan believes the number of children Day assaulted would count well into the hundreds, possibly thousands.

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MINNESOTA
National Catholic Reporter

Elizabeth A. Elliott | Sep. 21, 2015

As the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese prepares for a new leader, the Vatican-appointed interim administrator has met with a Catholic reform group that the former archbishop had warned his flock against joining.

Archbishop Bernard Hebda, appointed apostolic administrator following the resignation of Archbishop John C. Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Lee A. Piché in June, met Sept. 3 with members of the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform (CCCR) of Minnesota.

“I was pleased to meet with three members of the CCCR and was delighted to learn that they share my interest in engaging in a wide consultation of the faithful in assessing the needs of the archdiocese,” Hebda said in a statement to NCR. “I was also happy to share with them some of the preliminary plans for that consultation, and appreciated their input and offer of collaboration.”

Hebda met with Paula Ruddy, a member of the CCCR board, Michael Bailey and Art Stoeberl.

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NEW YORK
News 12

CARMEL – A former Westchester priest has been arrested for having sexual relations with a young child, according to police.

Cops say Joseph Faraone, 68, assaulted a child who may have had a mental disability. Faraone spent time at the Church of St. Patrick in Yorktown and St. Francis of Assisi in Mount Kisco.

Faraone is being held in Putnam County Jail.

Faraone won more $1.17 million in the New York Lottery in 1985 and left the priesthood around 2006. Officials say the charges do not appear to be associated with his time as a priest.

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UNITED STATES
Reuters

By Patrick Hornbeck September 21, 2015

When Pope Francis arrives in the United States Tuesday, he will encounter three broad groups of Catholics. There are those who feel energized about his papacy, those who harbor concern about his style and his agenda, and those who are disinterested and disaffected — many to the point of leaving the church.

The success of the pope’s trip will depend in large part on how he communicates with each of these groups. To those who celebrate the change in tone he has brought to the papacy, he will need to show that he has also heard their calls for changes in substance. To those for whom he represents a dangerous break with tradition, he will need to show that he is not about change for its own sake, but for the sake of God’s love and mercy. And to those who are disaffected, Francis will need to give a reason not just for respect and admiration but also for re-engagement. …

What can Pope Francis do to win back the hearts and minds of those who have walked away from the church? Two and a half years into his papacy, it is clear that Americans have warmer views toward the church than they did before his election. But the much-vaunted “Francis effect,” which some predicted would translate positive feelings into higher attendance at Sunday Mass, has mostly failed to materialize. Former Catholics have by and large not returned, but many still grieve their departure from the church, and not a few struggle to find a new religious home.

To connect with those who would consider returning, Francis will need to do at least two things. First, double down on his pastoral emphasis on the love and mercy of God, finding ways to convey a message of hope and break through the ideological clashes that are toxic to so many. And then second, address head-on the issues that led some to decide to leave. The pope will need to confront the heartbreak, betrayal, and anger that many still feel at the church’s handling of the abuse of children by its priests. He will need to show that he understands the pain that many church leaders have caused LGBT people, their friends and family members. And he will need to speak about women in a way that makes them feel heard and welcomed.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 21 September 2015 (VIS) – The Holy Father has appointed Bishop Ferenc Palanki, auxiliary of Eger, Hungary, as bishop of Debrecen-Nyiregyhaza, (area 11,300, population 1,137,000, Catholics 250,000, priests 93, religious 33), Hungary. He succeeds Bishop Nandor Bosak, whose resignation from the pastoral ministry of the same diocese upon reaching the age limit was accepted by the Holy Father.

On Saturday 19 September the Holy Father:

– accepted the resignation from the office of auxiliary of the diocese of Koszalin-Kolobrzeg, Poland, presented by Bishop Pawel Cieslik, upon reaching the age limit.

– appointed Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi, archbishop emeritus of Palermo, as his special envoy to the concluding celebration of the fifth centenary of the creation of the diocese of Lanciano (present-day archdiocese of Lanciano-Ortona), Italy, to be held on 22 November 2015.

On Friday 18 September the Holy Father appointed Fr. Guy Joseph Consolmagno, S.J., as director of the Vatican Observatory. Fr. Consolmagno is currently a member of the same scientific institution and president of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.

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UNITED STATES
Hamilton and Griffin on Rights

Sep 21, 2015

The Burden of the Gospel – Papal Homily in Philadelphia on September 27, 2015

It is an odd coincidence – I would call it a grace – that the gospel reading for this Saturday and Sunday, as the World Meeting of Families concludes in Philadelphia, is the passage we have just heard from the Gospel of Mark. Jesus says, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.”

I have written about the joy of the gospel, but today I will talk about the burden of this gospel, which is not to be explained away.

Christ and his disciples have been walking in Galilee and have come to the lake town of Capernaum, where Jesus had called the first apostles to join him. On this occasion, the apostles had been squabbling among themselves about “who was the greatest.” But “taking a child he placed it in their midst, and putting his arms around it he said to them, ‘Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me.’”

Let me be painfully specific about this Gospel reading and its importance.

Remembering and Healing

The millstone passage has often been quoted by survivors of sexual abuse committed by Catholic clergy and religious. The passage shows Christ’s condemnation of child abuse, and the episcopal arrogance and self-regard that have enabled abuse from that day to this. So powerful is this Gospel message that it is invoked at what I think of as a pilgrimage site, St. Joseph’s Church in Mendham, New Jersey, not one hundred miles from this spot.

The Mendham monument – a 400-pound basalt millstone – honors the survivors of abuse by priests and religious, especially survivors of Fr. James Hanley, who abused children at St. Joseph’s and other parishes in the Paterson diocese. The monument was proposed by Hanley survivor William Crane and supported by the pastor of St. Joseph’s, Msgr. Kenneth Lasch. They were motivated in part by the suicide of another Hanley victim, James Kelly.

I am a city boy, a porteño, as we say in Argentina, a native of the great port city of Buenos Aires. I have been very moved by my first visits to your great cities of Washington, New York, and Philadelphia – my Northeast Corridor tour. But I know the United States is a huge and various place, full of many other big cities and many other small towns like Mendham. And I am very sadly aware that in every city and town, here and in other countries, there are Catholic parishes and schools where priests and religious have sexually abused children, damaging and destroying their families.

As Catholics, we are obliged to love our neighbor and help the poor, including the poor in spirit. Our first responsibility in this regard is to love and help those who have been harmed by us, by the church itself. The World Meeting of Families should have taken as its first priority the tens of thousands of families that have been harmed and destroyed by abusive priests and vowed religious. They are our particular responsibility.

Instead, clergy abuse has been almost entirely neglected in planning the World Meeting of Families. Abuse is invisible in the keynote speeches and sessions, and in the breakout sessions.

I apologize for this grave mistake, which I could have corrected, and should have. A survivor of clergy abuse will give the keynote address at the next World Meeting of Families. Those sessions will focus on remedying the harm that we have done to families worldwide, and to working with civil authorities to make the church a safe place in the present and future.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Examiner

By DAVID CLOHESSY • 9/21/15

It’s ironic that Pope Francis will soon speak to the United States Congress, because the U.S. is one of the western democracies that was most hard-hit by the priest sexual abuse crisis and also lacked any federal response to it whatsoever. No federal legislation or regulations or even resolutions were proposed or adopted. There were no congressional hearings. There was no Justice Department investigation. Nothing.

Abroad, a number of national and regional governments have conducted investigations and issued reports about this continuing crisis, including Ireland, Australia, Canada and Belgium.

Non-profits, like the Child Rights International Network and Amnesty International, have done investigations. International bodies, like the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee Against Torture, have done investigations,

But since the first U.S. pedophile priest made national headlines 30 years ago (Father Gilbert Gauthe of Lafayette, La.), the federal government has done virtually nothing. There have been two statewide investigations launched by attorneys general in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. There have been 8-10 local jurisdictions that have done grand jury probes. But there’s been no action by federal officials at all.

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INDIANA
WBIW

Updated September 20, 2015

(VINCENNES) – A former Vincennes youth pastor is sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to child molesting charges.

Police arrested Duke Hampsch last year after a victim’s family told them the youth pastor engaged in sex acts with an underage victim in 2009 and again in 2010.

The six-year sentence received in Knox County will be served consecutive to a sentence handed down in Madison County, Indiana.

Court documents say the first sexual encounters occurred during church retreats in Vincennes and Anderson, Indiana prior to the victim’s 14th birthday.

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AUSTRALIA
Broken Rites

By a Broken Rites researcher (article updated 17 September 2015)

A Catholic former religious Brother, Edward Mamo, who has already spent time in jail, pleaded guilty again in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on 11 September 2015 after 15 more of his victims contacted Broken Rites and/or the Victoria Police. The guilty plea is for 28 additional indecent assaults, committed while Brother Mamo worked at Monivae College, a Catholic secondary school, at Hamilton, 290 kilometres west of Melbourne, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Mamo has also worked at Chevalier College in Bowral, New South Wales, but the Victorian court case is only for Victorian offences.

Mamo’s case will be transferred now to a higher court, the Melbourne County Court, where a judge is scheduled to begin pre-sentence procedures for Mamo in December 2015.

Monivae College was established by a religious order, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. This order is known by its Latin initials, MSC. Monivae College was originally for boys only, including boarders as well as day boys. It has since become co-educational.

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MINNESOTA
The Catholic Spirit

Maria Wiering | September 20, 2015

Archbishop Bernard Hebda is asking for Catholics’ input on the strengths and challenges of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and the qualities hoped for in its next archbishop, through a series of listening sessions to be held in October and November.

The sessions are “taking a page from Pope Francis’ playbook,” he said.

“It’s an opportunity for our local Church to be able to offer some input to Pope Francis and those with whom he’ll be collaborating in making a decision about the next archbishop,” he said. “I think it’s important that we see how consultative Pope Francis has been from the beginning of his pontificate. Consider, for example, his use of a committee of cardinals to advise him and the emphasis that he has placed on the Synod process. We’re hoping that we might be able to assist him — in all humility — along those lines by giving him some information from those who know the archdiocese best.”

Archbishop Hebda, the archdiocese’s apostolic administrator since the resignation of Archbishop John Nienstedt in June, acknowledged that the effort to obtain widespread feedback ahead of a new archbishop may be somewhat unusual, but suggested it could be something other dioceses adopt if it proves helpful.

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MINNESOTA
Star Tribune

By Susan Pavlak SEPTEMBER 20, 2015

The continuing story of sex abuse by Catholic clergy members has dominated news coverage and opinion pages this last year. Betrayal of the public trust, cover up and injustice on every level lead many to despair and hopelessness.

But Christians and compassionate persons have hope at their core. My father, a devout Catholic, told me that the only real sin was despair.

Gil Gustafson and I have been demonstrating hope since we first began to collaborate in 2012. I was a victim of sexual abuse by a trusted religion teacher in a Catholic high school. Gil is an ex-priest whose name surfaces regularly in the press in connection with the crimes of pedophilia to which he pleaded guilty in 1983. Together, we have piloted a project we call Uncommon Conversation, bringing together survivors, clinicians, clergy, grieving lay people and, yes, Gil, as a perpetrator willing to stand publicly and remorsefully in the presence of the justifiable anger of many.

With these stakeholders, we have sought to discern the way forward in our archdiocese as a community of faith.

The Gilead Project was founded in order to continue this work more publicly, by seeking to purchase the archdiocese’s chancery, across from the St. Paul Cathedral and currently for sale under bankruptcy proceedings. In that building, we will create a center for systemic transformation.

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UNITED STATES
CBS News – Sunday Morning

SEPTEMBER 20, 2015, 4:14 PM|Father Thomas Reese, a senior analyst for the National Catholic Reporter, talks with correspondent Martha Teichner about the “devastation” experienced by victims of child abuse on the part of the clergy.

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UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

By David Clohessy, director of SNAP (davidgclohessy@gmail.com, 314 566 9790 cell, 314 645 5915 home)

Francis has done more about the abuse crisis than his predecessors. Isn’t that encouraging?

First, we should judge church officials NOT by what their terrible predecessors did but by what responsible officials would do. It’s little comfort to a girl who’s been raped under Francis to say “Well, under Benedict, there might have been an even smaller chance of your predator being ousted.”

Neither Benedict nor Francis has exposed a single child molesting cleric or really punished a single complicit church official. They’ve made lots of reassuring talk but taken little meaningful action.

But several bishops have been forced out because of abuse. Isn’t that good news?

We don’t think this is true. A tiny handful of bishops (Finn in Kansas City, Nienstedt and Piche in St. Paul) have resigned. Were they forced out? Who knows. Continued Vatican secrecy means that no one can be sure whether they were forced and if so, what the real reason or reasons might have been.

There’s nothing new about bishops resigning, while keeping their titles and paychecks and honors. A pope firing bishops would be new. And it would deter wrongdoing. But it didn’t happen under Benedict and it isn’t happening under Francis.

What about the Paraguay bishop? Francis ousted him.

That’s true. But within hours, the official papal spokesman said that this move was NOT because the bishop mishandled abuse. (Bishop Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano had promoted Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity, who has been described by bishops from Switzerland to Pennsylvania as ‘dangerous,’ ‘abnormal,’ and ‘a serious threat to young people’ and against whom a $400,000 settlement was paid.)

The bishop was ousted because he alienated his brother bishops, called them gay in public, etc. (see: SNAP)

But three US bishops accused of concealing abuse have resigned just this year. Isn’t that progress?

Again, not a single one of the world’s 5,100 bishops found the courage to say “Finn enabled abuse” or “Neinstedt endangered kids.” That would have been progress.

Real progress will happen when 1) dozens of complicit bishops are openly defrocked, demoted or at least disciplined and denounced, and 2) Catholic officials say – clearly and publicly – that it’s because they enabled or concealed child sex crimes.

We’re glad these three aren’t in office any more. Their resignations have temporarily made some Catholics and victims feel better. Their resignations, however, are not signs of reform. They are signs that these prelates are so clearly discredited that the Vatican had no choice but to let them step down.

What about the new papal commission?

Pete Saunders and Marie Collins are wonderful people. But this panel is based on a deceptive premise: that Vatican officials must “learn more” about abuse and cover up. They don’t. They need courage, not information. They’ve dealt with this crisis for centuries in private and for decades in public. They know what to do.

This panel perpetuates the self-serving myth that Catholic officials need more information. What they need is courage. They usually refuse to do what’s right because they are monarchs and like their power and the status quo more than anything else.

Over the past 20 years, thousands of lay people, including dozens or hundreds of clergy sex abuse victims, have sat or still sit on church abuse panels but these panels have produced little if any real reform.

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UNITED STATES
Change.org

Pope Francis and President Obama must address clergy child abuse

John Harris Norwood, MA

Roman Catholic clergy abuse in the US has resulted in thousands of cases of abuse, millions of dollars in court costs, little accountability, and little to no justice. We request that President Obama bring concerns about this crisis to Pope Francis and develop sound, legal solutions to this issue.

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UNITED STATES
Boston Globe

By Anne Barrett Doyle
Globe Correspondent September 20, 2015

When he visits the United States this week, Pope Francis is likely to repeat his acclaimed vow of “zero tolerance” for clergy who sexually abuse minors.

For most Americans, this will have a reassuring ring. We assume we know what the pope means — that the global Catholic Church now adheres to the same “one strike and you’re out” policy that, at least in theory, has bound all US bishops since 2002.

That rule says that clergy guilty of “even a single act” of sexual abuse will be “removed permanently” from ministry.

But this isn’t what the pope is saying. The troubling fact is that zero tolerance still is not compulsory in the global Catholic Church. It exists in the United States only because of the public outrage that engulfed American bishops in 2002, following revelations that they had kept child molesters in ministry. They obtained special permission from the Vatican to adopt a tougher measure.

Outside the United States, however, bishops follow the church’s universal law, which gives them — and guilty clerics — plenty of wiggle room. Priests who molest minors are to receive “just penalties,” which can be as mild as a warning.

Permanent removal is reserved only for certain cases, which the Vatican described in a policy framework sent to the world’s bishops in 2011. A priest must be removed permanently if his ministry would be “a danger for minors or a cause of scandal.”

This guideline sounds like zero tolerance, but it’s not. It allows a bishop to retain a guilty priest if he or the Vatican decides that the priest has reformed and will not trigger negative publicity.

The Vatican’s continued laxness toward abusive priests is playing out tragically around the world today — especially in countries with weak reporting laws. That’s because another church law helps the priest’s identity stay secret: Church officials need not report child abuse unless local secular law requires it.

The result is that Catholic officials in many countries still give second chances to child molesters, with the Vatican’s permission.

In Argentina, Francis’ homeland, Catholic bishops are bound by neither zero tolerance nor, in most cases, mandatory reporting laws. In our recent research, we easily located several publicly accused priests still in ministry in Argentina, including a priest in the La Plata archdiocese who has been accused by more than 15 victims in the past two years.

Similarly, in researching the Philippine Catholic Church, we found several examples of Filipino bishops retaining priests who are barred from ministry by US bishops. One, a priest criminally convicted of sexual misconduct with a minor in Detroit, was recently a featured preacher at prayer gatherings that included young people. His bishop defended the priest’s ministry to an American reporter: “What obstacle can there be if he has already served his punishment or penalty?”

In a 2012 interview, Cardinal Antonio Luis Tagle, the popular Manila archbishop who is close to Pope Francis, admitted that zero tolerance was “still being debated” among his fellow bishops. “We’ve had cases in the past . . . in which some priests who had offended were given a second chance and turned out to be very good priests,” Tagle said.

Clearly, when an institution as powerful and ubiquitous as the Catholic Church has an official policy of retaining child molesters under certain circumstances, we must keep working for change.

At minimum, Pope Francis must enact real zero tolerance. His reform should correct the grave flaws of the US church’s version — weaknesses demonstrated by recent clergy abuse cases in Newark, Kansas City, Mo., and the Twin Cities. But even a weak version of zero tolerance makes children safer. The rule has “made it harder for bishops to find excuses to keep a wayward priest in ministry,” observed Nicholas Cafardi, a canon and civil lawyer who chaired the US bishops’ National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Youth.

We also should exhort Pope Francis’ most trusted adviser on the abuse crisis, Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, to advocate for a zero tolerance law. He heads the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which is charged with recommending best practices for responding to abuse.

In the meantime, this otherwise forthright pope should acknowledge the gap between his promise and his policy. “There is absolutely no place in ministry for those who abuse minors,” he said this February. Until church law is changed, this is not true.

Anne Barrett Doyle is codirector of BishopAccountability.org, which researches and documents the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
SunHerald

BY JULIA TERRUSO AND JEREMY ROEBUCK
Philadelphia Inquirer
September 20, 2015

PHILADELPHIA — Philip DiWilliams had mostly kept to himself what happened in a Roman Catholic High School counselor’s office in 1969. Years later, when he decided to seek therapy, he told his wife but did not want to upset his children.

Now, as Philadelphia prepares to welcome Pope Francis with all the celebration a papal visit garners, DiWilliams has decided to share his story.

“I don’t understand why the mind works like it does, why I can sit here years later and tell myself, ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ but it still bothers you,” says DiWilliams, 59, of Roxborough. “I think because you picture yourself then, a little kid, and it makes you angry still.”

For the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, slapped with scathing grand jury reports on clergy sex abuse in 2005 and 2011, followed by the unprecedented suspension of 30 parish priests, the papal visit is not only a celebration, it is in some ways a rebranding opportunity.

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NEW YORK
Syracuse.com

R.M. Douglas is a professor of history at Colgate University in Hamilton.

By R.M. Douglas

Bishop Robert Cunningham has been taking a great deal of heat in the past week for saying, in a case involving a 13-year-old who was orally raped by one of the Diocese of Syracuse’s priests: “The boy is culpable.” In the face of repeated incredulous questions by the victim’s attorney, His Excellency went on to explain that the child could be regarded “an accomplice to [the perpetrator] in a sexual sin” and that he “cooperated” in his own assault.

Confronted by the predictable firestorm of criticism, the Bishop is now in full damage-control mode, protesting that we should not be misled by the plain meaning of his words. But perhaps we ought not to be too hard on the poor man. After all, he said nothing on that day four years ago that many other high-profile Catholic clerics have not also said, in almost identical terms.

Six months after Bishop Cunningham’s deposition, for example, the famous TV priest Father Benedict Groeschel declared: “People have this picture in their minds of a person planning to [commit sexual abuse] — a psychopath. But that’s not the case….A lot of the cases, the youngster — 14, 16, 18 — is the seducer.”

Similarly, the Vicar-General of Dallas, Monsignor Robert Rehkemper, angered when his diocese came out in 1999 on the wrong side of a $119.4 million child rape lawsuit, pronounced: “They [the victims] knew what was right and what was wrong. Anybody who reaches the age of reason shares responsibility for what they do. So that makes all of us responsible after we reach the age of 6 or 7.”

The problem, then, is not that Bishop Cunningham carelessly shot from the lip. To the contrary, his testimony is solidly in the mainstream of Catholic hierarchical opinion, and has been advanced over and over again as part of its response to the clerical sexual assault scandal. Various calls are now being made for the Bishop to resign. That is unlikely to help. Cunninghams come and go. The distorted ideas with which his name is now indelibly associated, however, are solidly embedded in the structure of the church, both in the United States and internationally.

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IRELAND
Wexford People

Well known music teacher, choir master and church organist, Eanna McKenna of 37 College Green, Summerhill, Wexford appeared before Wexford District Court last Tuesday on child pornography charges.

The 38 year old musician stood accused of knowingly distributing child pornography for the purpose of distribution, publication, exportation, sale or show on a date or dates unknown between November 26 in 2010 and March 13 in 2011.

He was further charged with having 521 images of child pornography on a computer in his possession on June 12 last year, along with 167 movies of child pornography.

Formal evidence of arresting and charging McKenna on the morning of the court sitting was given by Garda Sergeant Stephen Ennis.

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UNITED STATES
Politico

By NAHAL TOOSI 09/20/15

Vice President Joe Biden calls him the “most popular man in the world.” But not everyone thinks Pope Francis is a saint.

The 78-year-old pontiff’s visit to the United States is so highly anticipated that Republicans and Democrats in Congress may even pretend to get along for a few hours. For some activists, however, it’s a chance to chide the Vatican on issues ranging from the clerical sex abuse scandal to the canonization of a controversial Franciscan friar.

As Francis prepares to meet with President Barack Obama and address Congress this week, the church’s detractors are preparing to stage news conferences, small protests and other shows of dissent. Along the way, they are finding that — unlike his less-beloved predecessor, Benedict XVI — it’s tough to take on Francis.

“Relative to Benedict, this pope is a public relations genius,” said David Clohessy, executive director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “The assumption is that he’s fixing the abuse crisis. And if people are open-minded and listen and eventually concur that, no, he’s not fixing it, the next line we hear from many Catholics is, ‘But by golly, he’s gonna!'”

Francis has taken several steps to address the sex abuse scandal that has so damaged the church. He has set up a commission to advise the Vatican and agreed to create a tribunal to prosecute bishops who fail to protect parishioners from abusers. He also has begged for forgiveness from abuse victims.

Clohessy and others say such as steps are window dressing at best, focusing more on the idea of healing than the need for prevention and accountability. The activists would like to see bishops being ousted over their roles in covering up abuse, as opposed to simply quietly resigning. They hope to argue their case to the public through support group meetings, news conferences and leafleting events ahead of and during Francis’ visit to D.C., New York and Philadelphia.

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CHILE
Prokerala

Archbishop of Santiago Ricardo Ezzati (C) speaks during the Ecumenical Tedeum at Cathedral of Santiago, Chile, 18 September 2015. Ezzati, involved in a polemic due to the cover up of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic Church, asked forgiveness. The event is held in the frame of the National Day of Chile.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By Michael S. Rosenwald, Michelle Boorstein and Scott Clement September 20

Pope Francis is adored by American Catholics and non-Catholics, who have embraced his optimism, humility and more inclusive tone. But as the 78-year-old pontiff arrives in the United States for his first visit, the public’s view of the Catholic Church is not nearly as favorable, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

That gap will be masked by the huge throngs of Catholics greeting Francis in Washington, New York and Philadelphia. Many of them see him as an agent of change, with a majority of Catholics saying that the church is in touch with them — a reversal from two years ago, when 6 in 10 said the church was out of sync.

“He’s calming, he’s relaxing and he’s reassuring,” said Mike Harvey, 53, a Catholic who lives in Wilmington, Del. “People separate the pope from the church. You look at this man trying to lead the movement for everyone, past and present.”

But in a country moving steadily away from organized religion and with the denomination still haunted by a clergy sexual-abuse scandal, there is no evidence that Francis’s likability has boosted Catholic identification, worship attendance or prayer.

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AUSTRALIA
Insights

The President of the Uniting Church in Australia Stuart McMillan has welcomed the Redress and Civil Litigation Report released by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

“We are pleased that the Royal Commission’s Report recommends that a process for redress must provide equal access and equal treatment for survivors,” said Mr McMillan.

“We strongly support the Report’s recommendation for a single national scheme to meet the needs of survivors.

“Equality of access and a single national scheme are elements we raised in our own submissions to the Royal Commission and we hope that Federal and State Governments take these recommendations on board in their consideration of the Report.”

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NEW JERSEY
The Record

BY ABBOTT KOLOFF AND JEFF GREEN
STAFF WRITERS | THE RECORD

Some want Pope Francis to reach out even further to estranged members of the faith, taking the church in a more liberal direction that mirrors their views on family issues and helping the poor.

Others, saying the pope has put church doctrine on a back burner, want him to forcefully reaffirm church teachings barring abortion and same-sex marriage.

In North Jersey as in the rest of the country, Catholics have wide-ranging expectations of this first pope from the New World as he makes his initial visit to the United States. …

Sex-abuse scandal

The pope has addressed clerical sex abuse by creating a tribunal to examine whether bishops should be punished for negligence in such cases, a move that is widely seen as unprecedented in the church, and by forming a papal commission on abuse that includes laypeople and victims. “This is the first time you’ve seen policy created from bottom up instead of top down,” Formicola said.

Yet some advocates for victims say they are waiting to see whether the tribunal actually issues any punishments to a bishop. “One thing that is really lacking: He has not removed a single bishop for sexual abuse,” said Mark Crawford, the New Jersey director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Formicola, who wrote a book about clerical sex abuse, said she would like the pope to address the issue this week “to show the world that the church is trying to reconcile with people who have been abused. People are still hurting.”

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