PENNSYLVANIA
Church Militant
by Joseph Pelletier • ChurchMilitant.com • March 31, 2016
ALTOONA, Pa. (ChurchMilitant.com) – A hotline for reporting clerical sex abuse in a Pennsylvania diocese is receiving hundreds of phone calls.
According to the state attorney general’s office, the phone line, established amid a growing scandal involving the systematic protection of actively homosexual clerics, has taken more than 250 calls reporting past molestations by diocesan priests and others. The line was set up in early March following the release of a state grand jury report, sourcing secret diocesan records, incriminating two of the Altoona-Johnstown diocese’s former bishops for sheltering dozens of homosexual priests and religious for nearly four decades as the predators sexually assaulted and raped hundreds of children.
The diocesan records are part of a series of classified chancery documents obtained by authorities through a search warrant in August revealing Bp. James Hogan, who led the Altoona-Johnstown diocese from 1966 to 1987, was aware of dozens of actively homosexual priests within his jurisdiction who had been molesting or were continuing to molest minors — the vast majority being post-pubescent males.
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