ABUSE TRACKER

AUSTRALIA/ROME
news.com.au

WHEN the Ballarat survivor group arrive at Melbourne Airport, there is one person they want to see waiting for them.

“In all honesty I would like to see Malcolm Turnbull waiting for us at the airport,” said David Ridsdale, who has led the group tirelessly throughout the week of Royal Commission hearings in Rome.

“I’m sorry, too long we’ve been fighting and it shouldn’t be us fixing this. It is an Australia-wide problem. It is everywhere and everybody knew.”

The Australian group have become the focus of international media throughout their time in the country and are hoping to use the attention to secure real changes at home.

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AUSTRALIA/ROME
9 News

AAP

Cardinal George Pell was just a “bloke from Ballarat” when he sat down with child sex abuse survivors in a Rome hotel to discuss their concerns, survivors spokesman David Ridsdale says.

And he says the cardinal is starting to deliver a little action rather than just words to help survivors, with an offer on Friday of the resources of the Australian Catholic University.

But Mr Ridsdale, whose pedophile priest uncle Gerald Ridsdale abused him as a boy in the Ballarat diocese in Victoria, says there’s a long way to go before survivors will be prepared to stand united with the cardinal.

The survivors’ group flew to Rome to see Australia’s senior Catholic cleric give evidence by videolink to the child abuse royal commission sitting in Sydney.

The group wants to see change in the church to improve redress for survivors of clergy abuse and implement systems to ensure such abuse can’t happen again.

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VATICAN CITY
The Age

March 5, 2016

Goya Dmytryshchak

The Vatican has issued a statement praising Cardinal George Pell for his testimony at the royal commission and rejecting claims the Catholic Church had done nothing, or very little, to respond to child sex abuse.

The statement comes after Australian child sex abuse survivors who flew to Rome to watch Cardinal Pell give evidence, said they were unimpressed he told the inquiry he had no knowledge of offending by paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale in Ballarat in the 1970s and 1980s.

It also comes as survivors were informed on Friday that their request to meet Pope Francis was never received.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi​ said Cardinal Pell’s appearance at the live inquiry and the presentation of a Best Picture Oscar to Spotlight – a film about The Boston Globe’s investigation into Catholic Church sex abuse cover up there – had brought a new wave of attention from the media and public to the issue of child sex abuse by clergy.

“The sensationalist presentation of these two events has ensured that, for a significant part of the public, especially those who are least informed or have a short memory, it is thought that the Church has done nothing, or very little, to respond to these terrible problems, and that it is necessary to start anew,” Father Lombardi wrote.

“Objective consideration shows that this is not the case.”

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AUSTRALIA
The Advertiser

March 5, 2016

David PenberthySunday Mail (SA)

When the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground in 2012, captain Francesco Schettino became a pin-up for the modern art of evading responsibility.

Not only had he been distracted by big-noting himself in the cabin with a couple of good sorts when the ship hit the rocks, the cowardly captain was one of the first to don a lifejacket and leap into a dinghy. Rather than going down with the ship, the bloke couldn’t get off quickly enough.

The blunt exchange between Schettino and the coast guard — “Just do your job!” – was such an emblem for the times that the Italians even printed it as a slogan on T-shirts.

I was reminded of Captain Schottino during the week while watching another slow-moving catastrophe in Italy — the four gruelling days of evidence by Cardinal George Pell, via video link to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse.

A couple of qualifiers at the start. I agree with conservatives such as John Howard that there has been a “Get Pell” aspect to the discussion of the Cardinal’s role in this affair.

There are some who hate Pell for reasons of politics and ideology. The contribution from the comedian Tim Minchin was juvenile in the extreme. Also, there are some survivors of child abuse who abhor Pell — in their case understandably — because they have succumbed to the human tendency towards focusing their anger on the one convenient hate figure.

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UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

Posted on March 5, 2016 by Betty Clermont

In accepting the Academy Award for Best Picture, producer Michael Sugar told the world: “This film gave a voice to survivors, and this Oscar amplifies that voice, which we hope will become a choir that will resonate all the way to the Vatican. Pope Francis, it’s time to protect the children and restore the faith.”

Earlier that day, Spotlight’s Mark Ruffalo, nominated for Best Supporting Actor, as well as Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, who together won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, attended a protest outside the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels in downtown Los Angeles. They were there to support members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

‘What better way to start the day?’” said McCarthy who called up Ruffalo and Singer that morning to join him. Singer added: “We’re trying to put a little more pressure on the Church to hold bishops accountable, have a little more transparency and do a better job protecting kids.”
Later on the red carpet, Ruffalo told Reuters they were “protesting the continued lack of transparency of the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican and most of the archdioceses here in the United States on sexual abuse. There are 2,800 priests who they know are absolute sexual predators whose names have still not been released here in the United States. [There are] thousands more throughout the United States and the Vatican today is still dragging its feet on making any real reforms. So we were there today to try to bring justice closer to the hands of these poor people, this horrible thing that’s happened to these people.

Pope Francis has provided only lip-service, a promise of a still-non-existent tribunal, and a commission to solve problems someday in the future which have already been addressed and remedied by the survivors, their advocates and civil authorities. The only action taken so far by the commission has been to boot out survivor Peter Saunders for being too vocal.

“On child abuse, there is no sincerity on Francis’ side,” Saunders said later.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Star-Beacon

The Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse case launched an outcry for changes to Pennsylvania’s law to remove the statute of limitations for victims to come forward.

The state’s laws remain unchanged. And this week’s news from our eastern neighbor was a good reminder why that momentum has, and needs, to return across the country.

Tuesday, in releasing a gut-wrenching report of abuse across the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown reported on extensively by our sister paper the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane revived the call for a change in the law.

We urge lawmakers not just in Pennsylvania but in Ohio and across the nation to seize the moment and eliminate any statute of limitations on sexual assault and abuse — particularly when it involves a minor. In Ohio, that statute of limitations is just 25 years for all sexual assault cases, whether the victim is a minor or adult.

In Pennsylvania, victims of sexual assault who are younger than 18 and were born before Aug. 27, 2002, have 12 years after their 18th birthdays to file charges. Victims younger than 18 and born after that date have 32 years after their 18th birthdays to file against their abusers.

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AUSTRALIA
The AIM Network

Written by: John Lord

1 Cardinal Pell in giving evidence to the Royal Commission into the abuse of children uttered two of the most debauched sentences ever spoken by an Australian cleric.

“I didn’t know whether it was common knowledge or whether it wasn’t,” he said. “It’s a sad story and it wasn’t of much interest to me.” “The suffering, of course, was real and I very much regret that but I had no reason to turn my mind to the extent of the evil that Ridsdale had perpetrated.”

The audible grasp from those listening summed up the pent-up vacuum of abhorrence the victims feel for this man.

He evoked the ‘I didn’t know, I wasn’t told’ defence that sounded as hollow as a burnt out log in hell. It beggars belief that he didn’t know what was going on.

The good and faithful of the church must be greatly offended by the leadership that represents them.

It seems the words compassion, contrition and empathy have been lost on this priest who purports to represent the word of God.

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VATICAN CITY
Herald Sun

THE Vatican has praised Cardinal George Pell for his testimony at the royal commission into child sexual abuse, and rejected claims the Catholic Church has done little to help survivors.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the Cardinal “must be accorded the appropriate acknowledgment for his dignified and coherent personal testimony (twenty hours of dialogue with the Royal Commission), from which yet again there emerges an objective and lucid picture of the errors committed in many ecclesial environments (this time in Australia) during the past decades”.

The statement comes after Australian child sex abuse survivors who flew to Rome to watch the Cardinal give evidence, said they were disappointed he told the inquiry he had no knowledge of offending by paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale in Ballarat in the 1970s and 1980s.

Fr Lombardi said the inquiry and the Oscar award winning movie Spotlight — a film about The Boston Globe’s investigation into Catholic Church sex abuse — had been “accompanied by a new wave of attention” into the sexual abuse of minors, especially by members of the clergy.

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NEW JERSEY
NJ.com

By Andy Polhamus | For NJ.com

WOODBURY — Prosecutors have dropped charges against a Franklin Township pastor who was accused of sexually assaulting a teenager.

James E. Simmons, Jr., pastor of New Life In Christ Ministries, was 64 when he was accused last April of sexually assaulting a teenage girl. The alleged victim was 21 at the time of Simmons’ arrest, and told Franklin police that the abuse had begun when she was 17.

Simmons turned himself in, and was charged with multiple counts of second-degree sex assault, criminal sexual contact and endangering the welfare of a child. He was released upon posting $150,000 bail.

Last month, however, the accuser recanted her statement, said Bernie Weisenfeld of the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office. Authorities dropped the charges shortly afterward.

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NEBRASKA
Omaha World-Herald

World-Herald News Service

SIDNEY — A Fremont County jury has found the former pastor of Sidney’s Cowboy Church guilty of sexual abuse and lascivious acts.

The verdict against Roger Craig Kissel, 67, came after a four-day trial that included testimony from a girl who was 5 when she told her mother about the sexual contact.

Defense Attorney Michael Murphy said Kissel had been set up for a sexual abuse charge. He told the jury that the mother claims the girl told her of sexual contact in July 2013, but she allowed Kissel to continue to have contact with the girl and did not report abuse to authorities until September.

In her closing statement, Assistant Attorney General Denise Timmons told the jury that if there are conflicts in evidence, it came from the adults.

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NEBRASKA
KWBE

SIDNEY – A Fremont County jury has found the former pastor of Sidney’s Cowboy Church guilty of sexual abuse and lascivious acts.

The verdict against Roger Craig Kissel, 67, comes after a four-day trial that included testimony of
Defense Attorney Michael Murphy said Kissel had been set up for a sexual abuse charge. He told the jury the girl told her mother in July of 2013, but the mother did not report it to police until late in September.

Those testifying included Kissel and his wife and the girl’s mother.

In her closing statement, Assistant Attorney General Denise Timmons told the jury that if there are conflicts in evidence, it comes from the adults. “The most credible person is that girl,” she said. “ She was a five-year-old girl who wanted the abuse to stop.”

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Editorial

It has been a good week for survivors of clerical child sex abuse in the Catholic Church. The success of the film Spotlight in winning the Oscar for best picture set a tone. About the 2001 Boston Globe investigation into the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations in that city’s archdiocese, it was welcomed by Archbishop of Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley. A member of Pope Francis’s Council of Cardinals and president of the Vatican’s Commission for the Protection of Minors, he described it as “an important film for all impacted by the tragedy of clergy sexual abuse”.

On Monday one of the most powerful figures at the Vatican began giving evidence about his handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations in Australia. Cardinal George Pell was questioned until Thursday by Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse via video link, as he couldn’t travel for health reasons. That a civil institution could hold him to account – and in Rome – says a lot about progress on this fraught issue.

Lest there be complacency, there was also Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. His response to Spotlight was familiar. Few priests had been proven guilty of abusing minors, he said, while he had problems with the phrase “hush up” being used “far too lightly” with reference to bishops and such cases. He told German daily Kölner Stadt Anzeiger “for me hushing something up means deliberately preventing a recognised criminal offence from being punished or not preventing a further offence from occurring”. Quite. And he resorted to the well worn “learning curve” argument, despite the fact that it has always been a crime to rape a child.

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NEW YORK
Church Militant

[with video]

High-level source inside New York archdiocese exposes corrupt, powerful homosexual network

TRANSCRIPT

Michael Voris: OK, there’s really two sort of major areas. One is the money, and the other is the sexual. They have a sort of overlap, but let’s speak of each one individually at first. So first the money. Tell us what you know and how you know it about the accusation embezzlement of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Bob: The embezzlement aspect of the scandal that has taken place in the archdiocese of New York comes from both parishes, and the reason I know this is because I’ve been privy to be at meetings where this scandal has been discussed. This is not the first time that this priest has been accused of stealing money. In fact, there have been numerous occasions where people have reported him for stealing money and for misappropriating funds from different parishes, in particular both parishes, the one in Manhattan and the one in the Bronx. The information that is being portrayed by the archdiocese as far as they don’t know or have any direct evidence is because this is a cash business. The church is a cash business, and the times that he has been reported for stealing money has all involved cash. He is also someone who is being coached by officials within the archdiocese of New York, someone who is very high up in the archdiocese, who is very high up and who, in fact, is very experienced in the field of economy. He’s an economist himself, also an attorney, and that person is Msgr. Gregory Mustaciuolo.

Michael: Now, you know this how?

Bob: I know this because I’ve overheard conversations that both Peter Miqueli and Gregory Mustaciuolo have had in the past. I was present at conversations that they had. I was also present at meetings where Gregory Mustaciuolo handpicked information and gave different bits and pieces of information to the cardinal of the archdiocese regarding the issues that were taking place with Peter Miqueli, particularly when it all began at the parish in Manhattan, St. Frances Cabrini.

Michael: Is there a cover-up going on here?

Bob: There is a cover-up with respect to what’s happening. I think that the archdiocese needs to come forward with all of the truth. I think the truth will set everyone free. The cover-up — it’s not a problem that Cdl. Dolan, I believe, should be held directly accountable for everything that has taken place. I think it’s a problem that he has inherited from his predecessors.

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PENNSYLVANIA
The Express

March 5, 2016

By PAUL GARRETT
For The Express

With stories of hundreds of children being sexually abused by priests in the news this week, one man from our area contacted The Express to tell his story of what happened to him over 40 years ago at the hands of a Renovo priest, Fr. Joseph Bender, who was named as one of the sexual offenders in the grand jury report.

His main reason for doing so is to applaud state Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s effort to change the statute of limitation law regarding sexual predators of children.

The man, now in his 50s, married and with children, would like to remain anonymous, so in keeping with his wishes, he will be referred to as John.

“It all started because we went to St. Joe’s Church school in Renovo. We were all altar boys and members of a choir group called St. Joe’s Little Singers. Fr. Bender was the leader of the choir,” explained John.

John said Fr. Bender had a cabin up on Hyner Mountain, where he would take a select group of boys ages 7 to 13 for weekend trips in the winter and longer week-long trips in the summer.

“He had everything a kid would want back in the 60s … snowmobiles, trampolines, quads, everything that would attract a little kid. He knew what he was doing,” said John.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

March 5, 2016

John Elder

Pope Francis has talked about the Church as a field hospital for the wounded. It’s a message with conflicting and complex resonance, not only in this time of reckoning in the paedophilia scandals – during which the clerical collar and lighted candle has become a staple of TV parody – but for an institution that has suffered through many a dark history.

Throughout that history, there have been the good priests, and the people who love them. The idea of the field hospital, says Father Michael Casey, 72, is a fitting way to describe parish life. “We have to expect the unexpected; the doorbell, the phone call, it can come at any time,” he says.

Father Michael has been the parish priest at St Ambrose in Brunswick since 1997. He was ordained at 25. Years ago, to maintain a personal prayer life among the demands of running outreach programs, saying mass, attending to all manner of crises, baptisms, marriages and funerals – plus endless book work – he decided to start each day 5.45am, just to fit it all in. Three years away from official retirement age – although the option to keep going may be afforded him – Casey finds that 9.30pm is when his energy runs out, when he hopes to knock off if possible.

And yet he’s busier than ever. There’s the food bank, the soup kitchen, the Iranian asylum seekers with whom he shares his home, and the female asylum seekers living in a parish home. And never too far away, somebody in acute pain. Just this week, two victims of child sexual abuse came to talk. And last Sunday, well aware that his parishioners are suffering with the shame and sadness of so many children being abused by so many priests, Casey spoke at Mass. “I talked about having to face our wounded past and hopefully we will grow through the pain that we are all feeling.”

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AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

PATRICK CARLYON
Sunday Herald Sun

CARDINAL George Pell last week blamed Bishop Ronald Mulkearns for the paedophile priest scandals in Ballarat. Archbishop Frank Little was at fault in Melboune. Errant individuals in a system, went the argument.

Pell cast himself as a bystander. Passive, perhaps, but unwitting. He may have been blinded by ambition. Here, by his own reckoning, sat the most hopelessly incurious scholar in Oxford history. Legalistic. Cold.

Pell sounded at times like an ageing accountant being quizzed on tax reform. An observer coined a new word — “apellogy”. Those seeking evidence of the enduring blind spot in the Catholic patriarchy once again had their Exhibit A: the absence of understanding of the bond between parent and child.

After an hour last Monday, sex abuse victims started trailling out of the Verdi Room of Rome’s Hotel Quirinale, in search of a bathroom or a smoke. They had seen this show before. If the stakes had risen, so had their roles. They were barbarians buzzing at the papal gates, laden with messages that international news outlets, such as the BBC and the New York Times, itched to receive.

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FRANCE
RFI

By RFI

A French judge has opened a preliminary investigation into “failure to report a crime” after the alleged victims of a paedophile priest said top Catholic officials covered up for him, according to the Ministry of Justice.

The victims alleged that senior figures in the diocese of Lyon, in eastern France, including Archbishop Philippe Barbarin failed to report the priest, who has been charged with sexually abusing minors between 1986 and 1991, to police.

A formal investigation was opened on January 27 after Bernard Preynat, the priest, admitted he sexually abused young Scouts over 25 years ago.

His lawyer, Federic Doyez, said Preynat told the judge that “the facts had been known by the church authorities since 1991”, when he was expelled from the independent Scouts group he had led for nearly 20 years.

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MARYLAND
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

At 1:00 p.m. Tuesday, March 8th, the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee will hear testimony about proposed legislation to extend the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse. Senator Robert Young, supported by victim advocacy organizations, such as SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and Pastors, SNAPnetwork.org) is working again to relax the civil statute of limitations (SOL).

Currently, in most Maryland cases, the civil SOLs are three years after a victim turns 18. As a mother of a sexual abuse victim, I know that is not enough time for survivors to expose predators, protect kids and receive justice. The primary force lobbying AGAINST this sorely needed reform is the Catholic church hierarchy. (Wonder why?? Watch the 2016 Academy Award’s Best Picture “Spotlight.”)

Victims are often not able come forward about their trauma into their adulthood – as seen in the recent criminal conviction of Nate Morales, the former worship and youth leader of CLC formerly of SGM (now SGC) His victims did not come forward until their late 30s and early 40s. If they had not been able to receive a criminal conviction in this case, they would not have been able to sue in a civil court either given Maryland’s current predator-friendly statutes.

Criminal and civil laws are like the two bookends that hold up our judicial system to enable justice for victims and protect the society. Come join me in testifying for the extending of Maryland’s civil SOLs on child sexual abuse.

Thank you.

Pam Palmer, palmerp@live.com

Text of proposed bill, MD-SB69: https://legiscan.com/MD/bill/SB69/2016

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

Olivia Lambert
news.com.au

THE church was the one place where children should have been protected.

But behind cold, stone walls in Mortlake, there were shocking secrets and the most wicked crimes lurked in the shadows. Even today, a heavy energy exists over the town decades after some of the worst sexual crimes imaginable upon its residents.

It’s unclear just how many children were abused behind doors at the Mortlake parish but there were dozens who were violated by a paedophile priest. So deep was his obsession with young boys that no one was safe, an entire community and almost every family touched by his disturbing behaviour.
Mortlake is about a 2.5-hour drive from Melbourne, roughly 50km northeast of coastal town Warrnambool.

It’s population is just a touch more than 1000 and it continues to grow slowly, despite the horrors of its church in the 80s.

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PENNSYLVANIA
CBS Pittsburgh

By Andy Sheehan

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Outraged over the sex abuse scandal in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, state lawmakers are calling for justice for the alleged victims.

The alleged crimes against children are as sickening as they are hard to hear, but in announcing the grand jury findings this week, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane made a point to list them.

“Children reported having their genitals fondled, being forced to participate, watch or permit masturbation, being force to perform or receive oral sex from/or for priests and being anally raped,” Kane said.

The grand jury found that over a 40-year period, 50 diocesan priests and religious leaders sexually abused hundreds of child victims.

In the report, late Bishop James Hogan and retired Bishop Joseph Adamec are alleged to have warded off law enforcement while they shuffled predatory priests around the diocese.

But since the statute of limitations has run out, neither Adamec nor any priests still living can be criminally charged or prosecuted. The victims also cannot seek civil compensation.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC

Wednesday 2 March 2016

If the media coverage – from left and right – is any sign, Cardinal George Pell angered many people with his evidence this week to the royal commission into institutional child sexual abuse.

Cardinal Pell has been testifying via video link from Rome into what he knew about paedophile priests in the Ballarat diocese in the 1970s and 1980s, when he was a young clergyman.

When asked about serial offender Gerard Ridsdale, with whom he shared a house for a while, the cardinal said he wasn’t interested at the time in stories of his crimes.

This obviously raises questions about the culture that encourages such attitudes. But are there also church laws that encourage the culture of denial or avoidance?

Kieran Tapsell is a lawyer and former acting judge in New South Wales. He’s also the author of Potiphar’s Wife: The Vatican’s Secret and Child Sexual Abuse. .

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AUSTRALIA
ABC

Wednesday 2 March 2016

What happens when people who’ve loved and trusted a church stop listening?

John Haldane is one of the world’s leading moral philosophers. He’s the author of many books including The Church and the World. He also served on the UK Victim Support Working Party on Compensation.

He’s a professor at St Andrew’s University in Scotland and Baylor University in Texas. He’s in Australia to deliver several public lectures beginning this month at the University of Notre Dame. What does John Haldane think has happened to the church’s moral authority?

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ROME
Huffington Post

Mauro Bazzucchi
HuffPost Italy

ROME — U.S. bishops living in Italy enjoy luxurious new renovations to their living quarters, despite Pope Francis’ edict that church officials ought to live more humbly.

Upon his election in 2013, Pope Francis said that he wanted a church “that is poor and is for the poor.” He arrived with a plan to reform the priorities of the Catholic church, left embattled after Benedict XVI’s often luxurious reign. In particular, Francis sought to put an end to the Vatican’s lavish spending, even on a personal level. Francis broke with century-old tradition when he refused to move into the Apostolic Palace and opted for a two-bedroom apartment in a communal residence in the Vatican.

Despite the pontiff’s efforts, controversy has continued to unfold. Two books released last year have described gross mismanagement of Vatican finances. Allegations against senior Vatican leaders have appeared in the media; one report claimed last year that the Vatican’s former secretary of state used funds earmarked for charity to renovate his home.

The latest refurbishment of Villa Stritch, the Vatican’s living quarters for U.S. priests, is yet another example of Vatican spending. As HuffPost Italy uncovered, approximately three years ago, Villa Stritch’s manager, Nebraskan Rev. Monsignor Thomas Fucinaro, undersecretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, launched a renovation project worth an estimated 650,000 euros (about $715,000 at current exchange rates).

The complex, located a few miles south of the Vatican, is owned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and acts as a home to priests from the U.S. living in Rome. The complex includes two buildings and more than 20 apartments.

Fucinaro spent roughly $300,000 on the villa’s relatively small reception hall alone, documents obtained by HuffPost Italy reveal.

Villa Stritch now has approximately $10,000 worth of professional-level draft beer equipment, complete with five draft taps, according to the invoices. A fireplace that supports both wood and electric fires was built at a cost of approximately $30,000. Another $30,000 was used to tile the reception hall floor with Sicilian marble, a hefty sum magnified by the stone’s treatment and care. It required a special application of resin (to make the duller-than-expected marble shine) that ran an additional $18,000. Throw in a grand, custom-built iron gate costing more than $8,000 and an additional $2,000 for the reception hall’s new light switch and wall plates.

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ALASKA
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Friday, March 4, 2016

Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 503 0003 cell, bdorris@SNAPnetwork.org)

An Alaska bishop is posturing on children’s safety instead of preserving children’s safety We urge him to stop making promises and start making progress toward exposing and punishing Catholic clerics who commit and conceal child sex crimes.

http://www.usccb.org/news/2016/16-026.cfm

Juneau Bishop Edward Burns claims it’s “shocking to hear of the (Altoona) grand jury report about more than 50 priests assaulting hundreds of kids in central Pennsylvania. That’s baloney.

More than two dozen similar reports and governmental inquiries across the globe (at least eight here in the US) have documented the very same patterns: across continents and decades: many priests abusing many kids, many church supervisors and colleagues ignoring and concealing those crimes, many priests eventually getting exposed as predators through civil suits and criminal probes, and many bishops promising to “do better” but refusing to do anything more than promulgate more meaningless and rarely enforced internal church policies.

If Burns has paid any attention to this crisis, he can’t be “shocked” by what has happened and is happening in Altoona. If he’s “shocked” by Altoona, let’s see him act to remedy it. He’s the head of the US bishops sex abuse committee. He has an enormous bully pulpit. He can use it to exhort church staff to act responsibly. Instead, he postures.

And he controls his own diocese. But he’s done nothing more than the bare minimum that’s required of him regarding abuse.

About 30 US bishops have posted predators’ names on their website. Burns refuses to do so.

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AUSTRALIA
Courier

By MELISSA CUNNINGHAM
March 4, 2016

Ballarat’s deputy mayor Belinda Coates’s understanding of the complexities of child sexual abuse is more intricate than many would know.

For years, before she embarked on a career change into local government Cr Coates was a senior counsellor at the Centre Against Sexual Assault in Ballarat.

She said many people who had been sexually abused suffered post trauma responses often mirroring the symptoms of somebody who had experienced the horror of a war.

“When it is a physical trauma you can see it, but when it’s an emotional or psychological trauma it’s hidden away and very invisible,” she said. “A lot of people in the community wouldn’t realise that and how common of a response that is and the devastating impact it can have on peoples’ lives.”

Cr Coates said representing the City of Ballarat and supporting survivors on their trip to Rome to bear witness to Cardinal George Pells evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse had been an extraordinarily humble feat.

“What has been incredible is all the support from home that has been flowing in for me to pass onto the survivors,” Cr Coates said. “The survivors are incredibly courageous but it has certainly been so hard for them. They have felt the weight of it all on their shoulders and they have felt all the bigger issues, like protecting children of the present and future.That’s a big responsibility for anyone.”

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Historical Insitutional Abuse Inquiry

Updated: 4th March 2016

Commencing on Monday 7th March 2016, the Inquiry will devote the next 2 sitting weeks to the investigation of institutions, which provided residential accommodation for children, run by the Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd (the “Good Shepherd Sisters”). These institutions were based in Belfast, Derry/Londonderry and Newry.

A provisional hearing schedule for this module is provided below. This schedule may be subject to change so you are advised to check the Inquiry’s website on a regular basis. A link to the detailed timetable, witness statements, documents and transcripts has been provided.

Please note that there will be no admission for either the public or the media if and when the Inquiry is sitting in Closed Session.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

A long-running child abuse public inquiry will focus on alleged wrongdoing at institutions run by the Good Shepherd Sisters when it reconvenes next week.

Former residents of facilities in Belfast, Londonderry and Newry are expected to give evidence during the next two weeks of public hearings at Banbridge Courthouse in Co Down.

Proceedings will begin on Monday with a short opening from inquiry chairman Sir Athony Hart, a retired High Court judge.

Barrister and counsel to the inquiry Joseph Aiken will then provide an overview of matters relating to the institutions run by the Good Shepherd Sisters.

The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry was set up by the Northern Ireland Executive in 2013 to examine harrowing allegations of physical, emotional and sexual abuse at state and church run residential institutions between 1922 and 1995.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Tribune-Review

BY BRAD BUMSTED | Friday, March 4, 2016

Attorney General Kathleen Kane was told about sexual abuse allegedly committed by a Johnstown-area priest shortly after she took office in January 2013 – about 14 months before her office began a grand jury investigation of abuse in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, a top aide confirmed Friday.

But the case was a dead end because “one victim didn’t cooperate and the statute of limitations already expired,” said Executive Deputy Attorney General Lawrence Cherba. “It was one case. It didn’t lead us any place.”

The case Kane knew about in 2013 concerned George Koharchik, who was later called a “child predator” in the grand jury report released Tuesday. He would grope children in the car after playing Bill Cosby tapes in which the word “penis” was discussed to de-sensitize boys to sexual language, his victims alleged. He admitted to sleeping, showering, wrestling and having kids sit on his lap, the report said.

He denied “predatory” activity, but admitted obtaining sexual gratification from some touching of victims’ “intimate parts,” the grand jury said. He’s listed as suspended from active ministry.

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ISRAEL
YNet News

Itay Blumenthal, Tova Tzimuki
Published: 03.04.16

A Dutch Jewish teacher suspected of sexually abusing children has been arrested in Tel Aviv earlier this week, two years after the Netherlands asked for his extradition, the Dutch Telegraaf

The teacher, 28, has been in Israel for three years. He was arrested on Monday and was brought to a remand extension hearing at the Jerusalem District Court the next day.

According to reports in the Netherlands, the suspect was born to a Reformist family in Amsterdam and became more observant a few years ago. He attended a yeshiva in Jerusalem, while teaching at a private school of languages in central Israel. In 2010, the suspect returned to the Netherlands, where he started working at the Cheider School in Amsterdam – a prestigious ultra-Orthodox institution that includes a kindergarten, a primary school and a high school.

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FRANCE
Yahoo! News

Lyon (AFP) – A French judge has opened a preliminary investigation into “failure to report a crime” after the alleged victims of a paedophile priest said top Catholic officials covered up for him, judicial sources said Friday.

The victims alleged that senior figures in the diocese of Lyon, in eastern France, including Archbishop Philippe Barbarin failed to report the priest, who has been charged with sexually abusing minors between 1986 and 1991, to police.

A formal investigation was opened on January 27 after Bernard Preynat, the priest, admitted he sexually abused young Scouts over 25 years ago.

His lawyer, Federic Doyez, said Preynat told the judge that “the facts had been known by the church authorities since 1991”, when he was expelled from the independent Scouts group he had led for nearly 20 years.

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OHIO
10TV

A former central Ohio teacher who admitted to sexually assaulting a 15-year-old student has pleaded guilty to one count of producing child pornography.

According to a federal criminal complaint released in October, former Bishop Watterson music teacher Brian Sze admitted to having sexual contact with a 15-year-old student on approximately 15 occasions.

Investigators say a search of electronics seized from Sze’s home also turned up a video of a minor engaged in a sex act with him.

The complaint says Sze admitted giving the teen his phone with instructions “to record him (in a sex act) at Sze’s residence in Lewis Center.”

It says “Sze also admitted to engaging in inappropriate sexually-oriented electronic communications with other students.”

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PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive

By Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams was hailed five years ago for bringing criminal charges against a Roman Catholic Church official whom, a grand jury report stated, had ignored credible warning signs about a priest who later sexually assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy.

That official, Msgr. William Lynn, was convicted in 2012 of one count of child endangerment for his actions in permitting that priest to live in a parish rectory where he could continue to prey on kids.

Lynn’s conviction was overturned once, reinstated by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and then overturned a second time for evidentiary issues that are still being fought in state appellate courts.

There are some striking similarities between Lynn’s role and that of officials who supervised rogue priests in the Altoona-Johnstown Roman Catholic Diocese that were highlighted in a state grand jury report released this week.

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UNITED STATES
Crux

By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor March 4, 2016

After a bruising week of testimony by Cardinal George Pell before an Australian Royal Commission examining his record on child sexual abuse cases, the 74-year-old prelate may have given Pope Francis enough reason to justify keeping him around in the Vatican, both because of the lack of any new “smoking gun” revelation and also by pledging his support for anti-abuse efforts.

If so, the urgent question will be whether Pell’s past will trump his present — meaning whether he’ll still have the papal backing he needs to finish the work of bringing transparency, accountability, and integrity to Vatican finances, which is the central reason Francis brought him to Rome two years ago.

Pell, the Vatican’s top financial officer, was giving testimony about his response to abuse cases in the city of Ballarat, where his priestly career began and which has been an epicenter of Australia’s abuse scandals, and also about his time as archbishop of Melbourne from 1996 to 2001. He appeared via a video link from Rome, after a heart condition made the long flight home inadvisable.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive

By Christian Alexandersen | calexandersen@pennlive.com

Communities are still reeling after a report detailed the rape of hundreds of children by more than 50 priests from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

State Attorney General Kathleen Kane announced this week that a statewide grand jury had found sexual abuse taking place within the diocese for the last 40 years. The report included graphic descriptions of children being abused by priests and religious leaders.

The grand jury, which had been investigating the issue for two years, gathered evidence that revealed a history of diocesan officials taking action to conceal child abuse as part of an effort to protect the institution’s image. Through its investigation, more than 115,000 documents were uncovered.

Also uncovered was the existence of a “secret archive,” with documents showing that Diocese bishops James Hogan and Joseph Adamec were at the forefront of a child-abuse cover-up.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

By Phil Lawler Mar 04, 2016

In four days of hostile questioning, an Australian investigating commission produced no evidence that Cardinal George Pell had covered up sexual abuse. Could he have been more diligent in following up on complaints? Absolutely; he admitted that himself. But among the many bishops who mishandled the sex-abuse problem, Cardinal Pell barely merits a mention. He may have been negligent, but he was not complicit.

Cardinal Pell did not knowingly transfer a abusive priest to new parish assignments, to keep him out of trouble. He did not lie to parents of molested children, telling them that their complaint was ludicrous. Sad to say, dozens of bishops have been demonstrably guilty of these greater offenses.

Yet in Australia, and now in Rome, there is a chorus of calls for Cardinal Pell’s resignation. Why? Isn’t it obvious to a dispassionate observer that liberal media mavens, who have despised Pell for years because of his rock-ribbed defense of Catholic orthodoxy, are pouncing on an opportunity to bring him down? The wisps of evidence of negligence on the part of Cardinal Pell are insignificant in comparison with the thick dossier of evidence against Cardinal Godfried Danneels. But there were few howls of outrage when that Belgian cardinal came out of retirement to play an active role in last year’s Synod of Bishops. Why not? Because Cardinal Danneels has long been a darling of the liberal press? Is there any other plausible explanation?

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ROME
Reuters

ROME | BY PHILIP PULLELLA

Australian victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests said on Friday they were disappointed they could not talk to Pope Francis and contested the Vatican’s assertion that they did not go through the proper channels for a meeting.

The group of about 15 were in Rome for a week to watch Cardinal George Pell give evidence via video link to an Australian government commission about sexual abuse in Australia when he was a priest and bishop there in the 1970s and 1980s. He is now the Vatican’s treasurer.

“We would have wanted to talk to him (the pope) about our story,” said David Ridsdale, who as a boy was abused by his uncle, a priest at the time.

“We would have wanted to know how the pope could have assisted us by vocalizing his support and acknowledging the mistakes of the past.”

On Monday the victims announced they had sent a fax asking for a meeting to the pontifical household, the office that organizes the pope’s schedule, to a number they said was provided by Pell’s office.

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AUSTRALIA
Coffs Coast Advocate

Sherele Moody | 5th Mar 2016

ANTHONY Foster was there when victims of clergy child sex abuse met Cardinal George Pell for an hour in Rome yesterday.

Two of Mr Foster’s three daughters, Emma and Katie, were both assaulted by a Melbourne priest.

Emma later took her own life.

The group of survivors and victims’ relatives said they were happy with their emotional and exhaustive session of sharing personal stories of loss and betrayal with Cardinal Pell.

Afterwards, the Cardinal said he would look into setting up a research centre in Ballarat to be “an effective centre for the example of practical help for all those wounded by the scourge of sexual abuse”.

He would also work to better protect children and young people.

Cardinal Pell copped widespread criticism this week for consistently denying before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that he knew children were being abused while he worked in the Ballarat Diocese.

NATIONAL 24/7 CRISIS SERVICES

Lifeline: 13 11 14
Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467
MensLine Australia: 1300 78 99 78
beyondblue: 1300 22 46 36
Kids Helpline: 1800 55 1800

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UNITED STATES
Frum Follies

The Catholic Church is none too happy about the bad publicity it is getting from the Academy-Award-Winning movie, Spotlight, and from the Australian Royal Commission’s Grilling of Cardinal George Pell. Now the #3 in the Vatican, he presided over horrendous cover-ups when he was in Australia. So they issued a long winded press release.

I often say that Haredi and Catholic sex abuse coveru-ps have a great deal in common even though some are done in Yiddish and others in Latin. Granted, Catholics have it fully centralized and leave paper trails. Granted Haredim go further in protecting almost every last molester, not just priests, monks and nuns. Nevertheless the mentality and the spin have a lot in common.

Read and laugh or weep, as is your bent. But also share your thoughts about how this could be turned into frum-speak. Choice comments will be moved up into the body of this post or perhaps be turned into new posts.

Declaration by the Director of the Holy See Press Office:
Protecting minors

Vatican City, 4 March 2016 – The director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., today issued the following note regarding the protection of minors from sexual abuse:
“The depositions of Cardinal Pell before the Royal Commission as part of its inquiry carried out by live connection between Australia and Rome, and the contemporary presentation of the Oscar award for best film to ‘Spotlight’, on the role of the Boston Globe in denouncing the cover-up of crimes by numerous paedophile priests in Boston (especially during the years 1960 to 1980) have been accompanied by a new wave of attention from the media and public opinion on the dramatic issue of sexual abuse of minors, especially by members of the clergy.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Catholics4Change

MARCH 4, 2016 BY SUSAN MATTHEWS

Those who have followed Catholics4Change over the past few years are aware of my efforts concerning child safety and the St John Vianney Treatment Center located in Downingtown, Pa. In December 2012, I sat in my car in the Bishop Shanahan parking lot while school was in session, waiting for my then 13-year-old daughter to exit the building. I noticed a man come from the side of the school building, walk near the front doors of the school and then make his way past my car. His presence alarmed me and I followed him and watched him cross the street and return to Vianney. A patient from the treatment center found on the property of a school.

Some of the most notorious abusers from the Philadelphia Archdiocese and throughout the U.S., have cycled through this treatment center. A quick Google search in 2012 and I found that a priest who was awaiting a criminal trial for 338 counts of child porn possession had recently stayed at the facility. I had phone conversations and meetings with staff from the facility and was assured that Vianney no longer accepted patients as they did in the past who were danger to children. I was told that the facility treats addiction, mental health, dual diagnosis, porn addictions as well as other programs such as weight loss…but long gone were the days of child predators staying at the facility. To me, a patient charged with child porn is a predator, but in this case it was referencing patients who had assaulted children.

Fast forward to this past week when the Pa Attorney General’s Office released the Grand Jury report of the clergy abuse in the Altoona/Johnstown Diocese. The document identifies St John Vianney as one of the treatment facilities that abusive priests were sent to through the years, no surprise there. What was a shock though was seeing a priest listed as having stayed at Vianney in September/October 2012 who has harmed children? Father George Koharchick is described in the report by the FBI as a preferential child sex offendor who was able to use trust and authority of the priesthood to secretly engage in molestation, digital penetration, and anal sex with children. Maybe there was some confusion in the questions I asked the staff because this certainly does not match up with what I was told back in 2012. Who knows maybe Koharchick was at Vianney to try out their new weight loss program and the Altoona Diocese forgot to disclose the child rape problem? Maybe I was lied to?

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IRELAND
Herald

These images show some of the remaining items from a Dubin 4 Magdalene laundry, including baskets destined for Aras an Uachtarain.

Religious statues, old machinery and trunks used to transport fresh laundry are all still stored at the facility, which also operated as a commercial laundry from 1992 to 2006.

Mr Flynn has called for the items to be protected as “important reminders” of Ireland’s industrial heritage.

He said he does not want to see a museum documenting the history of the laundries, but said history must be preserved all the same.

“These items need to be stored by people who understand them,” said Mr Flynn (below).

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IRELAND
Limerick Leader

Nick Rabbitts

4 Mar 2016

A CEREMONY will take place in Mount St Lawrence Cemetery this Sunday to commemorate women who lived and died in the Magadalene laundries.

From 3pm this Mother’s day, Sunday, March 6, at the Mulgrave Street graveyard, the names of Magdalene laundries women buried in the cemetery will be read out and remembered.

The event is being organised by Justice for Magdalenes Research, who are calling on members of the public to visit graves and lay a flower to honour these women.

There are two grave sites in Limerick designed for Magdalene women in Limerick: one in Mount St Lawrence, the other in Mount St Oliver.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

Members of the public are invited to visit graves of Magdalene women around Ireland on Sunday.
March 6th will mark the the fifth annual Flowers for Magdalenes event in all cities and towns where there were Magdalene laundries. The Justice for Magdalenes Research (JFMR) has called on people to visit Magdalene graves on the day and to place flower to honour the women who lived and died behind convent walls.

It is estimated that at least 1,663 former Magdalene women are buried in cemeteries across Ireland, many of them in unmarked graves. Flowers for Magdalenes is a family event and children are welcome.

The event will be marked in Dublin at Glasnevin Cemetery, beginning at 11.30am; at 11.30am in St Joseph’s graveyard, Tory Top Road in Cork; at 3pm in Bohermore cemetery in Galway; at 3pm in Mount St Lawrence cemetery in Limerick; at 2pm in St Stephen’s cemetery in New Ross; and at 2pm in Ballygunner cemetery in Waterford.

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CANADA
Hamilton Spectator

By Carmela Fragomeni

A priest connected to a private refugee sponsorship program overseen by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hamilton has been suspended amid allegations of financial misappropriation of funds.

The priest, Father Amer Saka, is a Chaldean Catholic and was most recently the parish priest at St. Joseph Chaldean Church in London, Ont. The Chaldean church represents Catholics from Iraq and neighbouring countries.

Saka’s connection to the Hamilton Roman Catholic diocese is through its refugee sponsorship program, where he privately sponsored Iraqi refugees, said spokesperson Monsignor Murray Kroetsch.

Efforts to reach Saka were unsuccessful.

London police spokesperson Const. Ken Steeves said the Hamilton diocese has contacted his service and they are awaiting more information.

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TEXAS
HoustonPress

BY MEAGAN FLYNN
FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 2016

Spring-based developer Robert Pinard had thought he was being charitable when he agreed to purchase some land from Northwoods Catholic School.

The school claimed it was struggling financially and needed to unload some assets to get out of the hole, says Pinard’s attorney, Cris Feldman. Pinard’s daughter attended the school, and he had made donations to the school in the past. So when a priest who was an administrator at the school approached him about buying 1.4 acres of their land, Pinard agreed to buy it for $2.5 million, according to Feldman; he planned to build a strip mall that included a medical supplies facility.

But nothing was ever built, even though Pinard had already begun clearing the land and surveying it. And now, he’s suing Northwoods Educational Foundation and the priest he had been negotiating with all along, Father Daniel Massick, claiming that, on top of never paying him for the work he did, Massick tried to extort him out of $94,000 by threatening his daughter.

According to the lawsuit, just as they were finalizing paperwork for the sale, Massick dropped Pinard entirely after Pinard refused to fork over an additional $94,000 donation to the school. In a text message, Massick said he couldn’t finalize the paperwork until Pinard paid up, but Pinard objected, saying it was never part of the deal. In a phone call that followed, according to the lawsuit, Massick told him, “I hope nothing happens to your daughter.”

“My client attempted to help the church, and instead, he was subject to a shakedown,” Feldman said.

But according to the counter claims the Catholic school filed against Pinard, they were the victims in this—and Pinard was nothing but a savvy real estate developer who is trying to dupe the church into falling for a “land-grab scheme.” In fact, lawyers for the school allege, Pinard was the one making threats.

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UNITED STATES
Business Ethics

by Gael O’Brien

Founder CEOs of brands that become iconic often think so far outside the box, they create new paradigms — think Richard Branson (Virgin ), Anita Roddick (Body Shop) and John H. Johnson (Johnson Publishing) to name a few. Unconventional thinkers, they earn recognition as visionary risk takers in pursuit of a dream. John Mackey is in this club as co-founder of Whole Foods Market (WFM) and the Conscious Capitalism movement he’s described as creating a new paradigm for business.

However, recent negative publicity about the ethical behavior of one of Mackey’s thought partners raises a question about whether aligning with him will undermine credibility in the evolving work Mackey and others are undertaking.

Marc Gafni, a former rabbi, self-describes as a visionary thinker, philosopher, wisdom teacher and provocateur. Longstanding accusations of plagiarism and sexual misconduct (including sexually exploiting two minors and affairs with women followers) were chronicled — and made far more public — in a recent New York Times column, “A Spiritual Leader Gains Stature, Trailed by a Troubled Past.” Mackey came into the story through his role as executive board chairman of Gafni’s think tank, The Center for Integral Wisdom, and a seven-part video series of conversations between Mackey and Gafni posted on the WFM website.

Although stories about Gafni’s past (and denied by him) appeared over the years in Jewish publications, the Times column galvanized critics into action. The WFM board received a letter petition now signed by 100 rabbis calling for “those who support Marc Gafni to cut all financial and institutional ties.” The petition has over 3,400 signatures so far. Mackey put a statement on the WFM website: “My involvement with Marc Gafni and the Center for Integral Wisdom is conducted strictly in my personal life and does not represent an endorsement or support for either Mr. Gafni or the Center for Integral Wisdom by Whole Foods Market.” In keeping with that position, Mackey said, the videos (discussing what it means to be a “unique company” and a “unique self” within the WFM environment) were removed from the WFM site and are available only on the think tank’s site.

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PENNSYLVANIA
National Catholic Reporter

Brian Roewe | Mar. 3, 2016

Following the release of a scathing grand jury report Tuesday, the bishop of Altoona-Johnstown, Pa., pledged to publish a list of credibly accused priests as part of “a significant commitment to transparency, past and future.”

Bishop Mark Bartchak made the announcement Thursday afternoon at a press conference, where he began by offering “my heartfelt and sincere apology” to victims of clergy sexual abuse, in addition to their families, the people and priests of the diocese, and the public.

The press conference was prompted by a statewide grand jury report released Tuesday by Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane. The report found hundreds of children were sexually abused by at least 50 priests and religious leaders in the south-central Pennsylvania diocese over decades, with the earliest referenced incident occurring in 1940.

Despite the litany of allegations, Kane said the cases could not face charges because many of the accused are dead, some of the alleged victims are reluctant to testify and statutes of limitations have expired. She stressed the investigation, which began in April 2014, is ongoing. The grand jury recommended the state statute of limitations for sexual offenses against minors be dropped, as well as a window opened for the filing of civil charges. It also recommended victims report accusations directly to law enforcement.

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PENNSYLVANIA
National Catholic Reporter

Brian Roewe | Mar. 4, 2016

One of the Altoona-Johnstown, Pa., bishops singled out by a grand jury report for his “abysmal” record on sexually abusive priests responded in turn hours after its release, defending his handling of allegations as adhering to a strict review process and following advice of psychiatric experts.

In a 10-page statement filed with the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas in Pittsburgh, Bishop Joseph Adamec argued the grand jury wasn’t given “a full and balanced set of facts” as it related to his tenure as head of the diocese (1987-2011), and as a result, the criticism raised against him in the stinging report is “unfounded.”

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane presented the 147-page grand jury report, developed from an investigation of nearly two years and built from thousands of pages of transcribed witness testimony and more than 115,000 documents seized from the diocese’s secret archives as part of a search warrant in August 2015.

The report presented an image of the diocese as “rampant with child molestation for decades” — all told, hundreds of children abused by at least 50 priests and religious leaders — while bishops, including Adamec and his predecessor Bishop James Hogan, enabled and concealed the problem, at times with lax law enforcement aware of allegations.

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IRELAND
Irish Times

Former priest and serial child abuser has been granted an extension of time to file an appeal against his latest conviction.

Tony Walsh, who was known as the “Singing Priest” for his role in a travelling all-priest vocal group before he was defrocked, was sentenced at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in January to two years imprisonment with the final year suspended for indecent assault.

Walsh (61), formerly of North Circular Road, Dublin had pleaded not guilty to indecently assaulting the young girl at St Luke’s, Kilbarron Park, Kilmore, Dublin on an unknown date between April 17th, 1973 and September 9th, 1976.

The victim was aged between seven and 10 at the time when Walsh locked her into a room and abused her.

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VATICAN CITY
ANSA

(ANSA) – Vatican City, March 4 – Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi on Friday hailed movies such as Spotlight and mobilization by pedophilia victims’ right organizations in what he called “the long march in the fight against abuses against minors in the universal Catholic Church”.

“May they be welcome… if they contribute to sustain and intensify” the fight against child sexual abuse by priests, Lombardi said in a statement to Vatican Radio. The spokesman said “abuse cases have become very rare and…the majority of those being talked about today and that keep coming to light belong to a relatively distant past”.

“Much remains to be done in other countries due to very different cultural situations… but the path that needs to be taken has become clearer,” Lombardi said. Victims’ groups have been calling for the resignation of the head of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy, Australian Archbishop George Pell, who has testified this week before an Australian commission investigating child sexual abuse by predator priests.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Srvice

Vatican City, 4 March 2016 – The director of the Holy See Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., today issued the following note regarding the protection of minors from sexual abuse:

“The depositions of Cardinal Pell before the Royal Commission as part of its inquiry carried out by live connection between Australia and Rome, and the contemporary presentation of the Oscar award for best film to ‘Spotlight’, on the role of the Boston Globe in denouncing the cover-up of crimes by numerous paedophile priests in Boston (especially during the years 1960 to 1980) have been accompanied by a new wave of attention from the media and public opinion on the dramatic issue of sexual abuse of minors, especially by members of the clergy.

The sensationalist presentation of these two events has ensured that, for a significant part of the public, especially those who are least informed or have a short memory, it is thought that the Church has done nothing, or very little, to respond to these terrible problems, and that it is necessary to start anew. Objective consideration shows that this is not the case. The previous archbishop of Boston resigned in 2002 following the events considered in “Spotlight” (and after a famous meeting of American cardinals convoked in Rome by Pope John Paul II in April 2002), and since 2003 (that is, for 13 years) the archdiocese has been governed by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, universally known for his rigour and wisdom in confronting the issue of sexual abuse, to the extent of being appointed by the Pope as one of his advisers and as president of the Commission instituted by the Holy Father for the protection of minors.

The tragic events of sexual abuse in Australia, too, have been the subject of inquiries and legal and canonical procedures for many years. When Pope Benedict XVI visited Sydney for World Youth Day in 2008 (eight years ago), he met with a small group of victims at the seat of the archdiocese governed by Cardinal Pell, since the issue was also of great importance at the time and the archbishop considered a meeting of this type to be very timely.

Merely to offer an idea of the attention with which these problems have been followed, the section of the Vatican website dedicated to ‘Abuse of minors: the Church’s response’, established around ten years ago, contains over 60 documents and interventions.

The courageous commitment of the Popes to facing the crises that subsequently emerged in various situations and countries – such as the United States, Ireland, Germany, Belgium and Holland, and in the Legionaries of Christ – has been neither limited nor indifferent. The universal procedures and canonical norms have been renewed; guidelines have been required and drawn up by the Episcopal Conferences, not only to respond to abuses committed but also to ensure adequate prevention measures; apostolic visitations have taken place to intervene in the most serious situations; and the Congregation of the Legionaries has been radically reformed. These are all actions intended to respond fully and with far-sightedness to a wound that has manifested itself with surprising and devastating gravity, especially in certain regions and certain periods. Benedict XVI’s Letter to the Irish faithful in March 2010 probably remains the most eloquent document of reference, relevant beyond Ireland, for understanding the attitude and the legal, pastoral and spiritual response of the Popes to these upheavals in the Church in our time; recognition of the grave errors committed and a request for forgiveness, priority action and justice for victims, conversion and purification, commitment to prevention and renewed human and spiritual formation.

The encounters held by Benedict XVI and Francis with groups of victims have accompanied this by now long road with the example of listening, the request for forgiveness, consolation and the direct involvement of the Popes.

In many countries the results of this commitment to renewal are comforting; cases of abuse have become very rare and therefore the majority of those considered nowadays and which continue to come to light belong to a relatively distant past of several decades ago. In other countries, usually due to very different cultural contexts that are still characterised by silence, much remains to be done and there is no lack of resistance and difficulties, but the road to follow has become clearer.

The constitution of the Commission for the protection of minors announced by Pope Francis in December 2013, made up of members from every continent, indicates how the path of the Catholic Church has matured. After establishing and developing internally a decisive response to the problems of sexual abuse of minors (by priests or other ecclesial workers), it is necessary to face systematically the problem of how to respond not only to the problem in every part of the Church, but also more broadly how to help the society in which the Church lives to face the problems of abuse of minors, given that – as we should all be aware, even though there is still a significant reluctance to admit this – in every part of the world the overwhelming majority of cases of abuse take place not in ecclesiastical contexts, but rather outside them (in Asia, for instance, tens of millions of minors are abused, certainly not in a Catholic context).

In summary, the Church, wounded and humiliated by the wound of abuse, intends to react not only to heal herself, but also to make her difficult experience in this field available to others, to enrich her educational and pastoral service to society as a whole, which generally still has a long path to take to realise the seriousness of these problems and to deal with them.

From this perspective the events in Rome of the last few days may be interpreted in a positive light. Cardinal Pell must be accorded the appropriate acknowledgement for his dignified and coherent personal testimony (twenty hours of dialogue with the Royal Commission), from which yet again there emerges an objective and lucid picture of the errors committed in many ecclesial environments (this time in Australia) during the past decades. This is certainly useful with a view to a common ‘purification of memory’.

Recognition is also due to many members of the group of victims who came from Australia for demonstrating their willingness to establish constructive dialogue with Cardinal Pell and with the representative of the Commission for the protection of minors, Fr. Hans Zollner S.J., of the Pontifical Gregorian University, with whom they further developed prospects for effective commitment to the prevention of abuse.

If the appeals subsequent to ‘Spotlight’ and the mobilisation of victims and organisations on the occasion of the depositions of Cardinal Pell are able to contribute to supporting and intensifying the long march in the battle against abuse of minors in the universal Catholic Church and in today’s world (where the dimensions of these tragedies are endless), then they are welcome.

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 4 March 2016 – The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors today issued the following press statement:

“Over the past two days, Fr. Hans Zollner SJ, a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, met in two occasions with David Ridsdale, Andrew Collins and Peter Blenkiron, victims/survivors of clergy sexual abuse from Ballarat, Australia, who have come to Rome for Cardinal George Pell’s hearing by the Royal Commission. Cardinal Pell had asked to arrange this meeting after these gentlemen requested to meet with a member of the Pontifical Commission. These gentlemen explained the reason for wanting to meet with a member of the Pontifical Commission is that, ‘We would like to discuss ideas we have had about healing and the future to protect children from institutional abuse. We know this problem had been wider than the Catholic Church but our experiences have been in this environment. We are keen to develop links with your group as it is a world-wide issue’.

The victims/survivors spoke of models of educating children, parents and teachers so as to effect structural change within the Church and society concerning the effective safeguarding of children and adolescents. This discussion comes at a time when the Pontifical Commission decided at their 2016 February Plenary Assembly to have one strategic focus on safeguarding of minors in Catholic schools at their September 2016 Assembly.

Fr. Hans appreciated very much the victims’/survivors’ concerns and their proposals for preventive measures, and he will report back to the other members of the Pontifical Commission, so that all can learn from the victims’/survivors’ experience to improve the Commission’s work in healing in the present, and better understand how to prevent sexual abuse by those in service to the Church from happening again in the future.

During the meeting, Fr. Hans explained to the victims/survivors the purpose of the Commission and also talked, in particular, about his work and initiatives in prevention from abuse within and outside the Church as President of the ‘Centre for Child Protection’ of the Institute of Psychology of the Pontifical Gregorian University. The Ballarat survivors met also with some of the students of the Diploma-programme in Safeguarding of Minors, offered at the Gregorian University.

The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors was created by Pope Francis in March of 2014. The Chirograph of His Holiness Pope Francis states specifically, ‘The Commission’s specific task is to propose to me the most opportune initiatives for protecting minors and vulnerable adults, in order that we may do everything possible to ensure that crimes such as those which have occurred are no longer repeated in the Church. The Commission is to promote local responsibility in the particular Churches, uniting their efforts to those of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, for the protection of all children and vulnerable adults'”.

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VATICAN CITY
The Local

The Vatican on Friday defended the Catholic Church’s action on paedophile priests, saying popes Francis and Benedict XVI had “courageously” tackled the issue but admitted there was still much to be done in many countries.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said “sensationalism” surrounding the Oscar-winning film “Spotlight” and hearings into an alleged cover-up of abuse by Cardinal George Pell in Rome had given the public the wrong impression.

The media furore surrounding both events “meant that most people, particularly those less well informed or with a short memory, think the Church has done nothing or very little to answer to these horrible tragedies”.

“An objective consideration shows it is not true,” he said in a statement, listing steps taken by the Church to meet with victims, draw up guidelines for bishops and update canonical procedures and laws.

Both Francis and his predecessor Benedict have shown a “courageous commitment… to tackling the crisis in several countries, such as the United States, Ireland, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands,” he said in a statement.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Tagesspiegel

[The Hildesheim diocese has announced appointment if an independent assessor to investigate sexual abuse in the diocese.]

Das Bistum Hildesheim will jetzt auch die Missbrauchsvorwürfe gegen den verstorbenen Hildesheimer Bischof Heinrich Maria Janssen (1907-1988) von einem unabhängigen Gutachter aufarbeiten lassen. Das erklärte das Bistum am Donnerstag auf Anfrage der Katholischen Nachrichten-Agentur (KNA). Ende Januar hatte das Bistum bereits erklärt, den Missbrauch durch den ehemaligen Pfarrer und verurteilten Missbrauchstäter Peter R. von einem unabhängigen Gutachter untersuchen zu lassen. Nach Bistumsangaben steht noch nicht fest, wer die Aufklärungsarbeit übernehmen wird.

Der Missbrauchsbeauftragte der Bundesregierung, Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig, hatte dem Bistum empfohlen, einen unabhängigen Ermittler zur Aufklärung von Fällen sexuellen Missbrauchs einzusetzen. Opfer meldeten sich nur, wenn sie „Vertrauen in die Institution haben“. Dieses Vertrauen habe das Bistum bisher offenbar nicht aufbauen können.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Regensburg Digital

Eine Podiumsdiskussion zu den Regensburger Domspatzen zeigt: Es fehlt weiter an der Fähigkeit oder am Willen, Fehler und Verantwortliche klar zu benennen – auch im Regensburger Presseclub.

„Und der Meier war eine…ich sag das jetzt nicht“, erklärt Ludwig Faust vom Podium aus. Aber bevor er zu Ende sprechen kann, wird aus dem Publikum bereits mehrfach das Wort „Drecksau“ ergänzt. Gerade wird über Johann Meier gesprochen, den exzessiven Gewalttäter, der bis 1992 die Domspatzen-Vorschule in Etterzhausen und Pielenhofen leitete und von dem sich die Domspatzen erst kürzlich distanziert und ihm die Ehrenmitgliedschaft aberkannt haben. Der international bekannte Chor kämpft um sein Image, Gymnasium und Internat mit stetig sinkenden Schülerzahlen. Und am Donnerstag sitzt man nun zusammen im Regensburger Presseclub, um, wie es in der Einladung heißt, Antworten auf die Frage zu finden, „warum die Ereignisse von damals die Gegenwart so massiv überlagern“.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Katholisch

[Six years have passed since the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church came to light in Germany. Six years in which the Church has also endeavored to clarify the abuses of the past and to prevent new ones. This is not always successful as has been recently shown in cases at the Regensburger Domspatzen and the diocese of Hildesheim.]

Köln – 03.03.2016

Sechs Jahre sind vergangen, seitdem der Missbrauchsskandal in der katholischen Kirche in Deutschland ans Licht kam. Sechs Jahre, in denen sich die Kirche aber auch darum bemüht hat, die Missbräuche der Vergangenheit aufzuklären und neue zu verhindern. Das gelingt nicht immer lücken- und problemlos, wie kürzlich Fälle bei den Regensburger Domspatzen und im Bistum Hildesheim gezeigt haben.

Aber die Kirche ist auf einem guten Weg. Sie hat ihre Leitlinien zum Vorgehen bei sexuellem Missbrauch Minderjähriger innerhalb der Kirche überarbeitet und die Rahmenordnung zur Prävention mehrfach aktualisiert. Es gibt Beratungs- und Hilfsangebote sowie einheitliche Antragsformulare für materielle Entschädigungen. Zahlreiche Präventionsprojekte in Pfarreien, Schulen oder Kinderheimen sollen direkt an der Basis helfen, das Risiko von Missbrauchsfällen künftig zu minimieren. Die Deutsche Bischofskonferenz hat außerdem eine neue Missbrauchsstudie in Auftrag gegeben.

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DEUTSCHLAND
Domradio

Bischof Ackermann über die Aufarbeitung des Missbrauchsskandals

Vor sechs Jahren begann die Aufdeckung des Missbrauchsskandals in der katholischen Kirche. Über den Stand der Aufarbeitung, den Dialog mit den Opfern und den Film “Spotlight” spricht Bischof Stephan Ackermann im Interview.

KNA: Bischof Ackermann, wo steht die katholische Kirche bei der Aufarbeitung des Missbrauchsskandals?

Bischof Stephan Ackermann (Missbrauchsbeauftragter der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz): Ich glaube, dass wir an einem Punkt sind, an dem es eine gewisse Zäsur gibt. Wir haben in den letzten Jahren sehr stark an der Aufklärung konkreter Fälle gearbeitet und an der Aufarbeitung insgesamt. Diese Jahre waren zunächst stark vom Blick zurück geprägt – was auch weiter wichtig bleibt! Es gibt Betroffene, die nun erst den Mut fassen, darüber zu sprechen und sich an beauftragte Personen innerhalb der Kirche zu wenden. Wir haben Ordnungen überarbeitet oder neu erstellt, wie zum Beispiel die Präventionsrahmenordnung. Es war klar: Wir geben den Startschuss, systematisch an der Verhinderung sexueller Gewalt zu arbeiten.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) — A Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse of hundreds of children over several decades and an Oscar win for “Spotlight,” about the Boston abuse scandal, “brought painful, but important, reminders that we must remain vigilant in our efforts to protect children from the scourge of abuse,” said Bishop Edward J. Burns of Juneau, Alaska.

The bishop made the comments in a March 3 statement as chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on the Protection of Children and Young People.

“We must never lose sight of the fact that every victim/survivor has personally experienced profound injury, suffering and betrayal,” Bishop Burns said.

He referred to the report released March 1 by Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane, which says that at least 50 priests or religious leaders in the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, Pennsylvania, were involved in the abuse and diocesan leaders systematically concealed the abuse to protect the church’s image.

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MARYLAND
Daily Record

Lauren Kirkwood Daily Record Legal Affairs Writer March 4, 2016

A former school librarian’s lawsuit alleging a Baltimore Catholic high school fired her because she reported allegations of a teacher’s sexual abuse of a student can move forward, a federal judge has ruled.

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PENNSYLVANIA
Washington Post

By Michelle Boorstein and Julie Zauzmer March 3

A Catholic diocese in Pennsylvania announced Thursday that it will post the names online of priests credibly accused of sexually abusing children, a decision that came two days after a dramatic grand jury report alleged a decades-long cover-up.

Advocates hope that the grand jury report, which was announced just two days after the movie “Spotlight” focused national attention on child sexual abuse by winning the Oscar for Best Picture, will lead to new legislation permitting more prosecutions of abusive priests and those who supervised them.

The report relied on a secret archive at the Altoona-Johnstown diocese, which dates back to the 1950s and was opened up this summer when authorities obtained a search warrant. The grand jury interviewed surviving priests and their alleged victims, and compiled a 147-page account detailing accusations against more than 50 religious leaders including priests and teachers.

“These findings are both staggering and sobering. Over many years hundreds of children have fallen victim to child predators wrapped in the authority and integrity of an honorable faith,” the grand jury wrote.

As dramatic as the report’s allegations are, however, it does not recommend criminal charges, mainly because the statute of limitations has expired. The same is true for potential civil cases.

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ROME
Sydney Morning Herald

March 4, 2016

Nick Miller
Europe Correspondent

Rome: A controversial figure at the centre of Rome’s “Vatileaks 2.0” scandal claims Cardinal George Pell influenced and hurried the work of a Vatican reform commission to secure himself a job in the Holy See, far from the royal commission dogging the church in Australia.

However the cardinal has denied that he sought the job in order to insulate himself from fallout of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

A spokesperson said Cardinal Pell’s “strong record of tackling incompetence, corruption and cover-up in Church life in Australia is precisely the reason he was asked to come to Rome to implement the Holy Father’s reforms”.

Francesca Chaouqui​, who currently faces trial over the leaking of secret documents revealing mismanagement, waste and power struggles at the Vatican, spoke exclusively to Fairfax Media this week, while the cardinal faced royal commission questioning over the protection of paedophile Catholic priests in Victoria.

Ms Chaouqui – dubbed “the Pope’s lobbyist” and attacked as “the sexy bombshell that embarrasses the Vatican” in the Italian press – was a member of the Vatican reform commission COSEA, established by Pope Francis in mid-2013.

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ROME/AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

March 4, 2016

Andrew Bolt
Herald Sun

CARDINAL George Pell’s startling revelations of huge corruption in the Vatican is another blow to the reputation of his church.

Pell’s critics will say he made his claims just to distract attention from his much-criticised appearance in the witness box this week at the royal commission into child sex abuse.

But Pell’s revelations in his interview with me tonight are a direct challenge to one of the deadliest accusations against him — that he is a company man who covers up corruption.

Pell denies he was part of the scandalous cover-up of paedophile priests in Ballarat and then in Melbourne.

He argues that he actually cleaned up the church, creating a compensation fund and making sure paedophiles would never again be protected.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

March 5, 2016

Barney Zwartz

The pressure is now on Pope Francis to do more to rid the Catholic church of the stain of child sex abuse.

The penitential prayer with which Catholics begin their Mass, and which Cardinal George Pell would have recited thousands of times, asks God’s forgiveness for what they have done and for what they have failed to do.

Few people could have failed to do what they should have done more devastatingly than the cardinal. That is perhaps the most shocking, and damaging, revelation of his four days of testimony to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, given by video link from Rome this week.

The royal commission revealed to the wider world the man many Catholics already knew: an ambitious, determined and politically astute cleric with many strengths, a champion of the institutional church – but one who made sure never to know too much.

Time and time again he said it wasn’t his job, it was someone else’s, or he might have done something but no explicit request was made so he did nothing.

Watching Pell give evidence, I wondered whether he was handicapped by his unfortunate demeanour: his slow, heavy delivery and unemotional expression can seem pompous, overbearing and unfeeling.

But the longer it went on, the more watchers would have been convinced this was the real Pell being slowly revealed. It wasn’t just the style, it was the content: a pattern of denial, evasion, defensiveness, then blaming others – especially the dead and the demented.

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ROME
Sydney Morning Herald

March 5, 2016

Nick Miller
Europe Correspondent

“Did you meet with the Pope today? What did the Pope say?” asked a TV journalist, as Cardinal George Pell brushed past him with a little wave to the cameras, stepping into Rome’s Hotel Quirinale.

“I’ve got the full backing of the Pope,” Pell replied.

It was an odd reply: not quite an answer to the question posed. Of all the things the Pope may have said about an inquiry into historical abuse by Catholic priests in Australia, or the finances of the Vatican, this comment came first to the cardinal’s mind.

It spoke volumes.

And it was the first sign that on this, the second of four gruelling night-owl sessions of examination over video by Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Pell would be playing some bad defence. …

Following Pell’s at times excruciating testimony, along with millions of other Catholics, was a young woman in Rome, Francesca Chaouqui.

Chaouqui, a controversial Vatican insider, had worked closely with Pell on reforming the Vatican’s opaque finances and she was appalled at what she was now seeing.

The only time the cardinal seemed comfortable was when the counsel assisting the commissioner was drawn into a philosophical discussion on the nature of group responsibility.

His prickly, hair-splitting, eyes-front demeanour relaxed, and there was a hint of the younger George Pell – an ambitious, whip-smart, academically minded and athletically talented Ballarat priest being groomed for the highest levels of Catholic power – while around him, to his claimed complete incomprehension, young boys were being groomed for abuse by a succession of evil clerics.

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VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter

Joshua J. McElwee | Mar. 4, 2016

VATICAN CITY
Pope Francis has not received a formal request for a meeting with Australian survivors of clergy sexual abuse while they are in Rome for a series of extraordinary government hearings with Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican’s chief spokesman said Friday.

Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi told reporters in a short briefing that both the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and one of the pope’s secretaries had told him they had not received any sort of request from Australian survivors.

About 15 survivors of clergy sexual abuse came to Rome from Australia this week to witness Pell, an Australian who serves as the head of the Vatican’s treasury, testify via video link Sunday-Wednesday to their country’s Royal Commission Into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse.

Several of the survivors told reporters that they had made a request for a meeting with the pope on Monday, asking that any encounter be held before Friday, when they were flying home. The survivors provided a copy of a handwritten note they said they had faxed to the Vatican’s Prefecture of the Papal Household.

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VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Agency

Analysis by Andrea Gagliarducci

Vatican City, Mar 4, 2016 / 06:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The movie Spotlight’s Best Picture win at the Academy Awards has brought renewed attention to the Catholic sex abuse scandals that broke in 2002. But while the Church’s failures are well-known, it is also true that the Catholic Church has made more progress than any other body on this issue.

There are several marks of progress: the removal and canonical punishment of clergy who commit sex abuse, especially high-level churchmen and leaders of religious movements; papal meetings with victims; reform of church law; and the creation of new church structures.

The Church has always been concerned about what canon law calls “the most serious crimes.” Under the 1917 Code of Canon Law and a 1922 instruction from the Vatican, sexual abuse of minors was treated as “the worst crime,” a “crimen pessimum,” which was to be reported to the Holy Office – later known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

After the Second Vatican Council, the Church moved to decentralize the judgment of these cases and to value the authority and judgment of local bishops.

In some cases, the canon law process was dismissed as anachronistic in favor of a so-called “pastoral approach.” This meant from 1962 to 2001 only a few cases of abuse – those in which the priest abused the Sacrament of Penance – would go to the Holy Office.

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AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

4 March, 2016

The Royal Commission has released three papers on the criminal justice system ahead of a national two week public hearing commencing on 15 March.

The papers, relating to tendency, coincidence and joint trials in the Australian context as well as admissibility and use in foreign jurisdictions, are among a suite of papers the Royal Commission has released today as part of its larger program of work in the criminal justice area.

Royal Commission CEO Phillip Reed says the papers, comprising primary research, internal background papers, legal advice and literature reviews, will inform the Royal Commission’s ongoing criminal justice work.

“These papers into criminal justice issues will assist relevant stakeholders, be they prosecution, defence, police or survivors, to understand and navigate the complexities involved when considering child sexual abuse in institutional contexts,” Mr Reed said.

“In particular, the advice provided by Tim Game SC, the research provided by Associate Professor David Hamer and the background paper prepared by Royal Commission staff on similar fact and propensity evidence and joint trials, will be of immediate interest to those attending the forthcoming public hearing.”

The Royal Commission has released the following papers as part of its criminal justice program of work:

* “The admissibility, and use of tendency, coincidence and relationship evidence in child sexual assault prosecutions in a selection of foreign jurisdictions”, by Associate Professor David Hamer

* “Tendency, coincidence and joint trials”, Advice prepared for the Royal Commission by Tim Game SC, Julia Roy and Georgia Huxley

* “Specialist Prosecution Units and Courts: A review of the literature”, by Patrick Parkinson

* “A systematic review of the efficacy of specialist police investigative units in responding to child sexual abuse”, by Nina Westera

* “The use and effectiveness of restorative justice in criminal justice systems following child sexual abuse or comparable harms”, by Dr Jane Bolitho

* “Brief review of contemporary sexual offence and child sexual abuse legislation in Australia: 2015 update”, by Hayley Boxal and Georgina Fuller of the Australian Institute of Criminology

* “A statistical analysis of sentencing for child sexual abuse in institutional contexts”, by Dr Karen Gelb

* “Internal Background Paper- Similar Fact and Propensity Evidence and Joint Trials in Australian Jurisdictions” prepared by Royal Commission staff.

The public hearing into criminal justice issues will be held over two weeks from 15 March – 24 March.

The first week of the public hearing will inquire into the experiences of survivors of child sexual abuse in the criminal justice system where the accused was the subject of allegations by more than one complainant.

The second week will examine how victims with communication difficulties, such as very young children and people with disability, can be assisted in the criminal justice system.

Recent cases involving child sexual abuse in institutions will also be examined during the hearing.

The research reports can be found here.

The Advice and the Background Paper can be found here.

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UNITED STATES
Loudoun Times-Mirror

There’s a vision of heroism in the movie “Spotlight” that brings a knowing nod to those in the profession of journalism. It’s about showing up every day and doing the job.

“Spotlight” is the riveting story of a Boston Globe investigation that would rock Boston and cause a crisis in one of the world’s oldest and most trusted institutions. When the newspaper’s tenacious ‘Spotlight’ team of reporters delves into allegations of abuse in the Catholic Church, their year-long investigation uncovers a decades-long cover-up at the highest levels of the city’s religious, legal and government establishment, touching off a wave of revelations around the world.

It’s a movie about speaking truth to power. In a key scene, Cardinal Bernard Law instructs Marty Baron, the newly arrived editor of The Globe (and current editor of The Washington Post), on how Boston works. “The city flourishes when its great institutions work together,” says the cardinal. The conversation sets up the film’s central conflict: the way power operates in the absence of accountability. Challenging power or respected authority can be very intimidating.

Recent events close to home remind us why we show up every day and do the job.

Our story last week about Mehdi Pahlavani, an Ashburn man who’s seeking simple notification from the state about when VDOT plans to bulldoze his property, was picked up by news outlets and citizens throughout Virginia. Next to exposing abuse by the Catholic church, Pahlavani’s story may pale by comparison. But in a small way, the disclosure of his plight holds accountable public officials in Loudoun and Virginia for actions that harm citizens and violate their rights.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC News

By David Marchese

A court has heard Adelaide’s Catholic Archbishop Philip Wilson is launching another bid to have a charge of concealing child sexual abuse thrown out.

Wilson is the most senior Catholic clergyman in the world charged with covering up child sexual abuse.

He has pleaded not guilty to concealing the serious indictable offence of another person.

The charge relates to when Wilson was an assistant parish priest in East Maitland in the Hunter Valley in the 1970s, and worked with the now-dead paedophile priest James Fletcher.

In March 2015, Wilson issued a statement denying the allegation.

“The suggestion appears to be that I failed to bring to the attention of police a conversation I am alleged to have had in 1976, when I was a junior priest, that a now-deceased priest had abused a child,” Wilson said.

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PENNSYLVANIA
We Are Central PA

[with video]

Newry, Blair County, Pa.

There are a total of 27 schools that are part of the Altoona Johnstown Diocese.

Parents at Saint Patrick’s School in Newry were shocked to hear the allegations of sex abuse in the Altoona Johnstown Diocese.

Maureen Smith spent her school days at Saint Patrick’s which is where she now sends her grandsons Kealan and Kenny.

When she was in school, there were rumors of sex abuse and inappropriate activities.

“I kind of had suspicions about the one when I was in school because I heard some other children talking about it, but no one would believe them because he was the monsignor, the pastor of the parish,” remembered Maureen.

One of the fifty church officials, Monsignor Little, worked at Saint Patrick’s School but was removed in 2013 after he was accused of sexually abusing a young boy.

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AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Editorial

March 4, 2016

The Cardinal’s testimony has left it open for the royal commission to reject his denials and to find his explanations for ignorance of disgusting events implausible.

Cardinal George Pell showed a little more compassion this week for the survivors of abuse by Catholic priests and teachers. We welcome, too, his meeting with some of the victims in Rome.

We need to be grateful for such small mercies because the Cardinal’s testimony to the royal commission into child sexual abuse was littered with denials that beggared belief.

It was filled with the blaming of others; with qualified regret often in hindsight, rather than any admission that mistakes were made in the 1970s, 80s and 90s; and with words that betrayed a calculated attempt to avoid any concession that he did, indeed, fall short of what the community than and now would regard as caring for the wellbeing of children.

The Herald believes Cardinal Pell’s testimony has left it open for the royal commission to reject his denials of knowledge about the abuses in his midst. It is also open to the commission to find him an unreliable witness and that his explanations for ignorance of disgusting events and criminal actions are implausible. The commissioners, we believe, are without doubt entitled to find that even if he did not know he should have known and done more to protect children.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Premier

Thu 03 Mar 2016
By Alex Williams

Approximately 50 victims of historical abuse in Northern Ireland have died in the eight years since a campaign for truth and remedy started, an advocate has claimed.

Margaret McGuckin from the Survivors and Victims of Institutional Abuse (Savia) charity has criticised the Northern Ireland government for failing to provide interim compensation to victims before an ongoing inquiry had finished.

The Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry, being led by retired judge Sir Anthony Hart, is the UK’s largest inquiry into physical, emotional and sex abuse suffered by children at church, voluntary organisation and state-run children’s homes.

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NORTHERN IRELAND
Londonderry Sentinel

The former Good Shepherd ‘Magdalene laundry’ in the Waterside will come under the spotlight at the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry at Banbridge on Monday, March 7.

Module 12 will consider evidence in respect of a number of institutions run by the Good Shepherd Sisters.

The institutions were located in Belfast, Londonderry and Newry.

The proceedings will commence with a brief opening address from the Inquiry’s Chairman, Sir Anthony Hart. Counsel to the Inquiry, Joseph Aiken, will provide an overview of matters relating to those institutions run by the Good Shepherd Sisters. The module is expected to last two weeks.

The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry was formally established in January 2013 by the Northern Ireland Executive. It has a remit to investigate child abuse that occurred in residential institutions in Northern Ireland over a 73-year period from 1922 to 1995.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC – The Drum

OPINION
By Noel Debien

Understanding the terminology used by the church, how its factions work, and the processes they have in place will help you make sense of Cardinal George Pell’s testimony to the child abuse royal commission this week, writes Noel Debien.

Watching the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse can be frustrating.

Over the last week, establishing when Cardinal George Pell actually knew about paedophile offences committed by Gerald Ridsdale involves going back to the mentality and the language of the 1980s. In particular to the language and mentality of the Catholic church. And it helps to understand the factionalism of the Church and how the so-called anti-Catholic “culture wars” further complicated the issue.

The terminology

Though the Cardinal testified it was 1972 when he first heard about clergy sex abuse in the Mildura parish, he firmly denied he knew about it (as a consultor) in regard to Gerald Ridsdale at the time.

Cardinal Pell testified “paedophilia” was not discussed with him in regard to Ridsdale. At least, not by anyone in time to prevent the damage.

Paedophilia would have been an odd word to be throwing around in the 1970s and ’80s. It wasn’t used in ordinary conversation, and certainly not in Catholic households. Ballarat ex-Bishop Mulkearns’ testimony concerning the criminal Paul David Ryan showed he was having Ryan treated for “homosexuality”. Mulkearns admitted he knew Ryan was offending against boys.

“Interfering with kids” has been another term used in testimony. I do not for a moment wish to confuse same-sex attraction with paedophilia, but I do want to point out there is a serious disconnect that arises from this differing language.

Church v state

Royal Commission hearings expose a very real confusion between the places and roles of religion, psychiatry and law, sexual orientation, gender, sin, crime, virtue, prayer, canon law and the police during the 1980s. And all this went into the Ballarat 1980s mixmaster.

The Australian church of the 1980s was wary of the state. Its seminaries and schools reminded Catholic students of historic state persecution, and British anti-Catholic penal laws that operated in early Australia.

And after the 1970s, the so-called Catholic “culture wars” added further complication.

There were (and are) progressive and conservative factions among Australia’s bishops, priests and people.

Cardinal Pell has testified his fellow clergy, like Bishop Mulkearns and Archbishop Frank Little, deceived him or lied to him over many sexual abuse matters.

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AUSTRALIA
The Age

Konrad Marshall
Senior writer

The messages arrived quickly, mere moments after the first news stories went up this week about Cardinal George Pell.

Were do i get help mate, wrote the anonymous man.
i was abused by all of them
aĺl the brothers
im 47 and i have been silent.

For this one survivor among many, the royal commission hearings this week were too much. The denials. The foggy memories. The feeling of helplessness took him back to that time when he was tied to a chair, sexually abused and belted with canes.

The man was referred to the Centre Against Sexual Assault, the peak organisation for sexual assault counselling in Victoria.

Carolyn Worth, spokesperson for the CASA Forum, said the demand for help of this kind has spiked dramatically since Cardinal Pell took the stand, with serious inquiries jumping almost 15 per cent in one week.

Ms Worth spoke to one front line operator who could not recall a worst shift on the job than Monday’s.

“She did 13 intakes, perhaps 30 minutes each, talking to desperate people who wanted to make an appointment for counselling,” Ms Worth said. “We used to think one month was an unreasonable wait time. But now in a number of locations around the state we have wait times of two and three months, and others with wait times of five months. It just doesn’t stop.”

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AUSTRALIA/ROME
Daily Mail

By AAP and HARRY PEARL FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

Australia’s most notorious pedophile priest was a tense and unusual man but not someone Cardinal George Pell came to know well despite sharing a house with him.

‘I didn’t warm to him but we never clashed,’ Cardinal Pell told Sky News on Friday, speaking of the 10 months he lived with Gerald Ridsdale at the Ballarat East presbytery where Ridsdale molested an 11-year-old girl in the 1970s.

The country’s now most-senior Catholic said Ridsdale in essence was ‘a mystery man’.

Cardinal Pell said Ridsdale was undoubtedly a capable man and was not someone people complained about to him at the time, even though they might have about other priests.

‘I once celebrated mass after him and I remember his vestments were there and they were sopping wet from some tension or something like that, and I remember noticing that at the time, and I thought him a very tense man,’ he said.

‘But that’s the only particular characteristic [of Ridsdale’s] that I can remember.’

Cardinal Pell also revealed during a lengthy interview with Sky that he later learned a psychiatrist treating Ridsdale in 1975 was contacted by police who said they had held concerns about him but were pleased something was finally being done about him.

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ITALY
The Local

[with maps]

An Italian organization seeking to bring paedophile Catholic priests in Italy to justice has developed a detailed map showing all reported cases from the last 10 years.

The map of Italy below paints a highly disturbing picture.

In the last decade alone, there have been 120 definitive convictions, marked on the map by red pins, against child abusers among the clergy.

Yellow pins mark instances of abuse that have been confirmed by a court, but the perpetrator has not been sentenced, most commonly due to court cases expiring under the statute of limitations.

Black pins mark cases in which foreign priests in Italy, who are under investigation abroad, are being protected by the Vatican.

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ROME
SBS

Cardinal George Pell has made his final appearance before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse via video link from Rome.

Survivors of child sexual abuse who were in Rome to watch him testify will soon get the chance to ask questions of their own.

Cardinal Pell has scheduled a meeting with them for tomorrow morning.

It is the key question that remains unanswered in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse:

How could so many paedophile priests come to be working in the same town at the same time?

On his last day of giving evidence to the commission, Cardinal Pell has been asked for an explanation.

(Lawyer:) “Cardinal, what in your view were the reasons behind so many child sexual abusers aggregating in Ballarat East in the 1970s?”

(Pell:) “I think that was a disastrous coincidence.”

(Lawyer:) “At the time, there were approximately four or five persons with very similar predilections, specifically a sexual attraction to boys of a similar age, in the same suburb. You believe that’s a coincidence?”

(Pell:) “Um, yes, I do.”

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OHIO
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests

For immediate release: Thursday, March 3, 2016

Statement by Judy Jones, Associate Midwest Director of SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (636-433-2511, SNAPJudy@gmail.com)

At least one of the 50+ wrongdoers just exposed by Pennsylvania authorities attended a Columbus Catholic seminary (the same one recently-arrested seminarian Joel Wright attended). We urge Bishop Frederick Campbell to tell his flock about the predator and actively seek out and help anyone he may have hurt in Ohio.

The child molesting cleric is Msgr. Harold J. Burkhardt of the Altoona PA diocese. He worked at the Pontifical College of Josephinum in Columbus for almost a quarter century (between 1947 and 1971).

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane released a scathing 147 page grand jury report that detailed decades of abuse involving hundreds of children by Catholic officials. It exposed Msgr. Burkhardt as a predator for the first time. (Catholic officials knew of or suspected his crime long ago, however.)

That report says Msgr. Burkhardt “perpetrated sexual child abuse on a 9 year old boy.” The victim also recalled “being fondled through his clothes and being forced to suck Burkhardt’s penis.” Also, “Burkhardt would pull down the victim’s pants and insert a finger into his anus.”

The victim reported to the diocese in 2005. The diocese responded by hiring detectives to investigate the victim and did not take the matter to police.

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UNITED STATES
Complex

BY CLAIRE LANDSBAUM

As anyone who’s seen Spotlight is well aware, the Catholic church doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to child abuse. Over the years hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse have been leveled at priests, pastors, and even Cardinals as ever more survivors have come forward. However, as an in-depth investigation published in Newsweek today reveals, the problem isn’t limited to organized Catholicism. It also exists—and to an equally severe degree—in the Hasidic Jewish community, and ultra-orthodox sect of Judaism whose members are raised in a rigidly traditional setting.

That setting is in part to blame for the rampancy of abuse, writes Newsweek editor Elijah Wolfson. Boys and girls are separated from a young age, and all talk of sexuality, and even of their own bodies, is taboo. Thus they don’t know when an interaction with an older mentor crosses the line between casual and sexually charged. Wolfson spoke to Ozer Simon, who was abused by his Rabbi; Manny Vogel, who was abused by an older classmate; Chaim Levin, who was abused by an older cousin; and Schneur Borenstein, who was molested by a Rabbi. He also interviewed Mendy Raymond, who was physically abused by a teacher.

In all of these cases, the abusers were protected. Even when victims, who were anywhere from grade school students to pre-teens at the time, told their parents or a trusted friend what had happened, their abusers were swept under the rug until the drama blew over. No abuse — either sexual or physical — was ever reported to the police. The silence is mostly due to outdated customs in the Hasidic community. As Wolfson writes:

There’s widespread belief that reporting abuse to secular authorities constitutes heresy. Traditional religious law prohibits mesirah, or “handing over”—a Jew may not snitch on another Jew to a secular government. Mesirah arose in the Middle Ages, when a European Jew charged with a crime would not get a fair trial—it was a prohibition designed, essentially, to protect against institutionalized anti-Semitism.

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AUSTRALIA
The Australian

Jared Owens
Reporter
Canberra

Anthony Albanese has urged the Catholic Church to “show a lot more humility” about its handling of child sexual abuse, after his former school principal this week pleaded guilty to abusing 18 children.

The opposition frontbencher’s comments came after Bill Shorten this week shared “very personal” feelings about child abuse, noting his childhood priest allegedly abused 56 youngsters and was in jail.

Mr Albanese told the Nine Network: “It’s very obvious that for so many years, senior people in the Church put what they saw as the institutional interests of the Church before the actual parishioners and when you are talking about young kids it is very disturbing.

“The Catholic Church needs to come out and just say sorry, and make recompense and show a lot more humility than we have seen up to this point.”

Mr Albanese said his former principal at St Mary’s Cathedral College in Sydney, Brother David Standen, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to routinely sexually abusing boys in his care under the guise of tuition or discipline.

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AUSTRALIA
Geelong Advertiser

March 3, 2016

Fr Kevin Dillon
Geelong Advertiser

LAST Monday, events in three cities, thousands of kilometres apart, shared a common link.

In Sydney, members of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse assembled to hear evidence from Cardinal George Pell. The focus was his time in Ballarat as a member of the Bishop’s senior Advisory Committee, the diocesan “Consultors”.

In the Hotel Quirinale in Rome, Cardinal Pell faced cameras and microphones that took his evidence to the royal commission, and to innumerable internet viewers and listeners around the world.

In the same room were around 20 Catholic Church-related sexual abuse victims. Most were from Ballarat. They had travelled there, along with families and supporters, intent on providing an “authentic” backdrop to the cardinal’s interview.

And in Los Angeles, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gathered for the Oscars.

In recent years, movies based on true events have featured strongly in the Best Picture category, either winning or being one of the nominees. Argo, Bridge of Spies, Captain Phillips, Selma, The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game all originate from true-life stories, and most are reasonably accurate re-creations of the original events they depict.

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UNITED STATES
Washington Square News

Patrick Seaman, Staff Writer
March 4, 2016

It’s a wacky world we live in. Donald Trump is the Republican frontrunner in the 2016 presidential election, Leonardo DiCaprio won an Oscar for the first time in his career and Cuba and the U.S. have finally buried the hatchet. However, in light of Cardinal George Pell, one of Pope Francis’ top advisers, testifying on Monday that the Catholic Church made a massive error in allowing the abuse and molestation of children within the Church to continue for centuries, there’s a clear winner in this year’s Crazy Olympics.

One might think that the most insane part is that the Catholic Church, an organization known for sticking to its guns even when astronomical evidence has been compiled to prove it wrong, admitted its mistakes, but that’s not it. The real craziness, to me at least, is that the apology is coming so late. As a former Catholic, for whom the revelations of child abuse within the Church was the breaking point, I’m frankly appalled at the weakness of the statement released by Cardinal Pell.

The Church does not have a good track record when it comes to their handling of child abuse cases throughout history, and it seems as though the Vatican, under the direction of Pope Francis, is unwilling to rectify the egregious errors they have made in their dealings with sexual abuse scandal. The Holy See has ultimate authority over the Catholic Church, and as the leader of the Church, Pope Francis needs to personally apologize and address the issue of child abuse within the Church. The lack of transparency in the Vatican’s investigations into those responsible for child abuse, as well as the apparent failure to prevent further abuse cases, is a blemish on the Church’s already precarious reputation.

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SCOTLAND
Daily Record

There are times when saying sorry is completely, utterly and entirely inadequate.

The “profound apology” for the many instances of clerical abuse of children and vulnerable persons from the Catholic Church is one of them.

It’s been a remarkable week of sympathy for sexual abuse sufferers following widespread publicity surrounding the publication of former Dumbarton social work chief executive Alexis Jay’s report on the scandal in Rotherham.

That report has led to the jailing of six people, including three brothers and their uncle, who have been convicted of the “systematic” sexual abuse of teenage girls.

There is more to come.

One can only hope that the Catholic Church is listening and that this news has sent shivers down the spine of the hierarchy.

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ROME/AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

[with video]

March 4, 2016

Marika Dobbin
Reporter for The Age

Cardinal George Pell has welled up in a live interview from Rome when talking about a victim of sexual abuse by a paedophile priest, but said he would not resign over the issue.

In the first display of raw emotion from Australia’s most powerful Catholic, Pell choked up and stopped talking momentarily when speaking about a meeting with victims that followed his testimony to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Pell responded during the TV interview with News Corp Australia columnist Andrew Bolt to claims that he appears unmoved or unsympathetic to victims.

“The fact that somebody seems a bit wooden doesn’t mean they aren’t feeling anything inside,” he said. “I found the meeting emotional, but I am a bit buttoned up. That was how I was trained.”

Pell spoke about his “deeply moving” reconciliation with David Ridsdale, the nephew of notorious paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale, who has accused Pell of bribing him not to go to police.

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AUSTRALIA/ROME
The Guardian

Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Friday 4 March 2016

Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, has said he will not resign from his position as the chief financial controller of the Vatican, because to do so would be “an admission of guilt” that he failed to respond to child sexual abuse.

He also said he has reconciled with one of the most vocal critics of the church and abuse survivor, David Ridsdale, describing their meeting on Thursday as “deeply moving”.

In an exclusive interview with conservative media commentator Andrew Bolt for Sky News, Pell was questioned for an hour about his past four days of evidence before Australia’s child sex abuse royal commission.

Pell’s answers to Bolt were similar to those he gave to the commission, but were more relaxed and in a few moments, less dispassionate and, according to Bolt, less “wooden”.

“Cardinal George Pell is the most hated man in Australia, if you believe the media,” opened Bolt in the interview that aired live at 9am Rome time Friday.

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UNITED STATES
Vanity Fair

“We continue to seek the forgiveness of all who have been harmed by the tragedy of clergy sexual abuse.”

BY JULIE MILLER

Upon winning best picture at the Oscars on Sunday, Spotlight producer Michael Sugar used the stage to send a message to the Vatican. Speaking about the drama, which chronicles The Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize–winning investigation into the Catholic Church’s sex-abuse cover-up, Sugar said, “This film gave a voice to survivors and this Oscar amplifies that voice, which we hope will become a choir that will resonate all the way to the Vatican.” Appealing to the church’s leader, he added, “Pope Francis, it’s time to protect the children and restore the faith.”

Spotlight specifically addresses the archdiocese of Boston’s elaborate cover-up of sexual abuse. And in the hours after the film’s best-picture win, Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley, Boston’s current archbishop, released a lengthy statement acknowledging the film’s importance, crediting it for helping the Church confront its failings, and describing how the archdiocese has implemented policies and procedures to prevent those tragedies from happening again.

The complete statement ahead, per The Pilot:

Spotlight is an important film for all impacted by the tragedy of clergy sexual abuse. By providing in-depth reporting on the history of the clergy sexual abuse crisis, the media led the Church to acknowledge the crimes and sins of its personnel and to begin to address its failings, the harm done to victims and their families and the needs of survivors. In a democracy such as ours, journalism is essential to our way of life. The media’s role in revealing the sexual abuse crisis opened a door through which the Church has walked in responding to the needs of survivors.

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MASSACHUSETTS
East Boston Times-Free Press

By John Lynds

Michael Rezendes, who Mark Ruffalo plays in the Oscar Award winning drama about the Boston Globe’s investigative reports into the widespread Archdiocese clergy sexual abuse scandal during the early 2000s, shared a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the subject.

Spotlight, which won Best Picture Sunday night at the 88th Annual Academy Awards, has resuscitated the importance of investigative journalism in the U.S. and Rezendes has emerged as a national figure in that endeavor. Ruffalo got a Best Supporting Actor nod from the Academy for playing Rezendes.

However, some here might not know the award winning journalist got his start in Eastie first writing and later as editor of the former East Boston Community News. There is even one scene in Spotlight were Rezendes (Ruffalo) and Ben Bradlee Jr. (John Slattery) share a box of Santarpio Pizza–one of the real life Rezendes favorite haunts. Story is Rezendes brought Spotlight writers Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer to ‘Tarp’s and they loved it so much they snuck the pizza into the movie for a little more Boston authenticity.

Rezendes attended Sunday’s Academy Awards, was shown on television several times throughout the evening and even got a shout out from host Chris Rock.

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UNITED STATES
America

Kevin Clarke | Mar 3 2016

It has been a grim couple of days reading about and listening to testimony related to past abuse of children by Catholic priests, revelations from reports and documents that have been moldering in diocesan archives for decades. On March 1, as Cardinal Pell began his extraordinary testimony in Rome regarding acts of sexual assault over decades in Australia that led to scores of suicides, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane, who had forced open the files of the Diocese of Altoona-Johnston, released yet another grand jury report on clerical abuse.

Though elements of the story of abuse in Altoona-Johnston were already known because of press reports, this grand jury report marked the first, detailed and gruesome accounting of decades of criminal acts by at least 50 priests or religious leaders and attempts to obscure those crimes and hide away those offenders by diocesan officials.

Today, Altoona-Johnston’s current leader Bishop Mark Bartchak, acknowledging the report and its indictment of past episcopal leadership in the diocese, made a renewed commitment to respond to past clerical abuse of children and to efforts to prevent such acts in the present.

After extending his “heartfelt and sincere apology… to the victims, to their families, to the faithful people of our diocese, to the good priests of our Diocese, and to the public,” Bartchak pledged “to do more” to protect the children of Altoona-Johnston. “Let me start with a significant commitment to transparency, past and future.”

A list of “all priests who have been the subject of credible allegations, along with each priest’s current status” will be posted to the diocesan website, he said.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WTAE

By Jackie Cain

Brian Gergely says he has vivid memories of the sexual abuse he says he endured as a young boy inside Holy Name Catholic Church in Ebensburg.

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ROME
News Weekly

I accuse! A travesty of justice

by Peter Westmore

ROME: Over four long nights, I have sat through many hours of accusations by counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse, Gail Furness SC, that Cardinal George Pell was complicit in or covered up the disgusting sexual abuse of children in Ballarat where he served for many years as a priest, then in Melbourne as an auxiliary to Archbishop Frank Little from 1987.

Cardinal Pell was directly and repeatedly accused of lying to the commission, of covering up evidence of sexual abuse of children, and of blame-shifting to exonerate himself.

These allegations were broadcast live on television and online to Australia, were featured in press, radio and TV coverage, and formed the basis of the most damaging allegations of criminal activity and impropriety against a religious leader that I have heard in my life.

Cardinal Pell’s repeated denials were mocked and ridiculed. He was subject to vicious character assassination arising from these allegations in the Australian media, particularly social media.

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INDIA
The News Minute

Chintha Mary Anil| Friday, March 4, 2016

In one of his interviews, Pope Francis is heard joking about how egocentric Argentians are: “Do you know how an Argentinian kills himself? By climbing over his own ego and jumping!”

And that aptly captures the Roman Catholic Church’s megalomaniac obsession with its existential worldly grandeur thereby plunging itself into a downward spiritual spiral of its own making.

Christians believe that Christ came into the world to reconcile humans with their Creator by shedding His Blood on the Cross. Yet the Catholic Church seems hell-bent in converting itself into a white-washed tomb –the exact phrase Christ used to describe the self-righteous moralists of his day.

The expediency with which the Roman Catholic Church has sought to sustain the church’s divine status in the eyes of her believers at the expense of a massive cover-up of sexual abuse by its clergy is mind-boggling.

Right from the 1980s when the first case of sexual abuse was reported till recently, the Church purposely chose to look the other way whenever any such case was reported.

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AUSTRALIA/ROME
Sky News

[with video]

Sky News contributor Andrew Bolt sat down with Cardinal George Pell , the only one on one interview given by Australia’s most senior Catholic.

Cardinal Pell has just finished giving four days of testimony to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Pell gave the evidence via video link from the Vatican in Rome where he is now stationed.

He was unable to travel to Australia on the grounds of ill health.

Pell’s testimony covered what he was told about a number of peadophile priests operating in dioceses throughout Victoria.

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AUSTRALIA
ABC Radio

audio presentation

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AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

A SYDNEY priest of 30 years has slammed Cardinal George Pell’s “appalling” performance while facing the royal commission in to child sex abuse in a damning radio interview.

Father Michael Kelly, a well-known Jesuit priest, took to the ABC airwaves to say what he really thought about the Australian cardinal who he has known for more than 30 years.

“He’s one of the best developed narcissists I’ve ever met in my life,” he told interviewer Wendy Harmer.

“He’s astonishing at the way in which he can deploy his insensitivity; he seems just impervious to human experience.”

The Catholic priest, who conceded at one point he was sacked by Pell, was very critical of Pell’s four days on the stand at the commission, where he gave evidence and was interrogated over his knowledge of systemic sex abuse within the church. But Father Kelly said he wasn’t surprised.

“I think I share the dismay and disgust of a great many people, Catholic and others, with the Cardinal’s display, and the interesting thing about it of course is it’s just made plain to the world who he is and what he’s like. This is something of international reach, but I must say I’m not surprised,” he said.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive

By Christian Alexandersen | calexandersen@pennlive.com

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg does not plan to discuss a grand jury report at mass this weekend that found hundreds of children were raped by priests at another diocese.

The report uncovered evidence that more than 50 religious leaders with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown had sexually abused children over 40 years. Altoona-Johnstown Diocese spokesman Tony DeGol said Bishop Joseph Adamec has asked all the priests to read a message regarding the report at this weekend’s masses.

In Harrisburg, however, no message will be read.

The reason, according to Harrisburg Diocese spokesman Joseph Aponick, is because the diocese religious leaders read a message in January that covered the issue of sexual abuse at the hands of priests.

The message was that the Harrisburg Diocese was in compliance with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ charter to protect children. It’s an area the diocese is audited on every year.

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PENNSYLVANIA
WJAC

BY LAUREN HENSLEY THURSDAY, MARCH 3RD 2016

ALTOONA, Pa.– The bishop of the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic Diocese broke his silence Thursday. Two days after a grand jury report into the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic Diocese was made public, Bishop Mark Bartchak, who spoke with the medi, broke his silence with an apology.

“I apologize to the victims, to their families, to the faithful people of our diocese to the good priest of our diocese and to the public,” Bartchak said.

During Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s press conference Tuesday, she said the grand jury commended Bartchak for removing accused priests during his five years as bishop and called his action positive steps to help protect children.

But the grand jury report condemned deceased Bishop James Hogan and retried Bishop Joseph Adamec. The report said the two covered up the sex abuse allegations. Adamec remains a fixture in the Blair County community, but that is changing.

“He said that he would not be celebrating mass at this time and anything that would happen further would not be for me to say because Bishops are subject to disciple from our superior who is the Pope,” Bartchak said.

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PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive

By Ivey DeJesus | idejesus@pennlive.com

The volume of calls to the hotline set up to field calls regarding the investigation into child sexual abuse by priests and religious leaders in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona‑Johnstown has been so high, authorities have set up another line.

State Attorney General Kathleen Kane on Thursday said the hotline had, within 24 hours of being established, received approximately 80 calls, and that the call volume was increasing so rapidly, another dedicated line was opened.

“The information is coming in as we expected it to,” Kane said on Thursday.

The hotline – 888-538-8541 – was established amid the release of a grand jury report documenting the rape of hundreds of children by diocese leaders over 40 years. The report, released Monday, found that more than 50 priests and leaders from the eight-county diocese had for decades molested children, the youngest of them six years old. The report found that, in some cases, law enforcement authorities had given the diocese on pass and opted not to investigate further.

The investigation is ongoing, and officials from Kane’s office have indicated that one phone call could change everything. The statute of limitation has expired for all the cases detailed in the grand jury report, Kane said. Richard Serbin, an Altoona attorney who has handled hundreds of cases involving victims of sexual abuse from the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese told PennLive on Wednesday that he knows of scores of cases involving priests who are not named in the grand jury report and for whom, the law could still be applicable.

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AUSTRALIA
Daily Mail

By DANIEL PIOTROWSKI FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

A priest who has known Cardinal George Pell for 30 years has launched a scathing attack on the Catholic leader, describing him as a ‘bully’ and ‘the best developed narcissist’ he knows.

Father Michael Kelly, a Jesuit priest and journalist, told ABC Radio he has been dismayed and disgusted with Pell’s appearance at the child abuse Royal Commission this week.

‘It’s now made plain to the world just who he is and what he’s like… But I must say I’m not surprised,’ he said.

‘I’ve known Cardinal Pell for over 30 years. And I really think he’s one of the best developed narcissists I’ve ever met in my life,’ he continued.

‘He’s astonishing at the way in which he can deploy his insensitivity.

‘He seems just impervious to human experience’.

Fr Kelly – who claimed Pell had ‘got me the sack’ from a publishing organisation once before – said of the embattled Vatican number 3: ‘He’s a bully, he’s just a bully.’

‘He gets exactly what he wants by standing over people.

‘As one priest in Melbourne said to me recently, he’s lived by the sword, he’s gonna die by the sword’.

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AUSTRALIA
Business Insider

SIMON THOMSEN

It was 1993 when Gerard Ridsdale, Australia’s most notorious paedophile priest, was first convicted of child sexual abuse, the beginning of an avalanche of charges over the next 20 years involving more than 50 children, including his nephew, David. As the Ballarat priest headed to court dressed in civilian clothes, wearing dark glasses, he was accompanied by a colleague, George Pell, in the black robes of a priest. The two men once shared a house together in the diocese during the 1970s.

Just three months earlier, David Ridsdale attempted to alert Pell about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his uncle. Pell denies knowing anything about father Ridsdale’s abuse until that point. The cardinal also disputes David Ridsdale’s recollection of their discussions.

Gerard Ridsdale’s first 18-year imprisonment occurred the same year Forrest Gump was released. With apologies to the creators of the much-loved movie, we have learned in recent days that Pell is, a lot like the central character in Forrest Gump: his life is strewn with inflection points of historical and moral import; times that reasonable observers look back on now and see, at many points, opportunities to intervene.

But the man at the centre of it all had no idea what was happening around him.

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UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture

By Phil Lawler

Mar 03, 2016

For nearly 15 years, I have been waiting for a Catholic bishop to say, for the record, that another bishop’s handling of the sex-abuse scandal had been negligent. This week it finally happened.

Think about that. Heaven knows there has been plenty of evidence of negligence. Some bishops have resigned; others have cut deals with prosecutors. Scores of bishops have acknowledged that the crisis has been handled badly, and in many cases one could read between the lines and recognize implicit criticism of an individual. But I cannot recall a single instance in which Bishop A said that Bishop B had proven himself unfit for his post.

There was a time, back in 2002, when the leaders of the American bishops’ conference were summoned to Rome to discuss the crisis, and one prelate—speaking under condition of anonymity—suggested to reporters that Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law should resign. But anonymous quotes and implicit criticisms are not the same as forthright statements.

The issue is, and always has been, accountability. Priests should be held responsible for their conduct. Bishops should be held responsible for their handling of priests under their charge. If a bishop is clearly negligent, then he should be held responsible by his brother bishops.

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