ABUSE TRACKER

GUAM
The Guam Daily Post

December 26, 2018

By Mindy Aguon

The death of a Catholic priest was the “happiest moment” of B.C.D.’s life after years of dealing with the pain of being repeatedly sexually abused when he was 9 years old, according to a lawsuit filed in the Superior Court of Guam against the Archdiocese of Agana.

B.C.D., who used initials to protect his identity, alleges he was sexually molested and abused by the late Monsignor Zoilo Camacho.

The plaintiff, now 55, alleges he was sexually abused once or twice a week for six months in the early 1970s while serving as an altar boy at San Vicente/San Roke Catholic Church in Barrigada, where Camacho served as parish priest.

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BOSCAWEN (NH)
The Associated Press

December 26, 2018

A New Hampshire prep school graduate convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old classmate reported to jail Wednesday to begin serving the remaining 10 months of his jail sentence.

Owen Labrie, 23, turned himself in to the Merrimack County jail Wednesday morning, more than a week after a judge refused to shorten his sentence. Reporters waiting outside the jail did not see him enter.

Labrie, of Tunbridge, Vermont, was acquitted in 2015 of raping a 15-year-old classmate Chessy Prout as part of ‘‘Senior Salute,’’ a game of sexual conquest, at St. Paul’s School. But a jury found him guilty of misdemeanor sexual assault charges and endangering the welfare of a child. He also was convicted of using a computer to lure an underage student for sex, requiring him to register as a sex offender.

Labrie had been free pending appeals, other than the two months he served for curfew violations in 2016.

Merrimack County jail Supt. Ross Cunningham said Labrie was undergoing a medical checkup and other assessments and would move to the general population when that is completed. He said there have been ‘‘no issues’’ so far with Labrie. ‘‘Over time, he will transition to general housing unless something comes up,’’ he said.

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SPOKANE (WA)
The Spokesman-Review

December 26, 2018

By Chad Sokol

Two Jesuit priests, the Revs. Frank Case and Pat Lee, have resigned as vice presidents of Gonzaga University amid questions about the handling of sexual abuse allegations against other clergy.

Gonzaga President Thayne McCulloh made the announcement Friday afternoon in a brief letter to students, faculty and staff.

A school spokesman declined to explain the reasons for the departures, saying he could not discuss the details of personnel matters. But a news report recently revealed that Case recommended a pedophile priest for a job at a Tacoma hospital three decades ago.

It was less clear what had prompted Lee’s resignation. He had served as Gonzaga’s vice president for mission from 2005 to 2008 before being appointed vice president of mission and ministry in 2016.

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ANCHORAGE (AK)
Anchorage Daily News

December 26, 2018

By Kyle Hopkins

The Rev. Rene Astruc died a hero. Awarded a humanitarian prize by the governor and lionized in portraits and biographies, the French-born priest spent a lifetime celebrated as an advocate for Yup’ik culture.

What Alaskans didn’t know at the time of his death in 2002 is that Astruc also sexually abused teenage girls over three decades, according to a newly published list of 33 Jesuit priests and volunteers who face “credible claims” of crimes committed in Alaska. Created by Jesuits West, the Dec. 7 report puts names, places and dates to generations of sexual abuse inflicted by ordained priests, church volunteers and employees in 35 villages and cities across the state.

Many, like Father Astruc, worked in remote Alaska Native schools and orphanages with unfettered access to children.

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GUAM
Pacific Daily News

December 27, 2018

By Haidee V. Eugenio

A boy confided in his own grandmother on several occasions that a priest at San Vicente and San Roque Church in Barrigada was sexually abusing him, only to be scolded, spanked and told to stop spreading lies about the clergy in the early 1970s, according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in local court.

The plaintiff, identified in court documents only as B.C.D. to protect his privacy, said Father Zoilo Camacho sexually abused him for about six months around 1972 to 1973.

The abuses and molestation included rape, and happened once or twice weekly, according to the $5 million lawsuit.

The boy was about 9 or 10 years old at the time, the complaint says.

B.C.D., represented by Attorney David Lujan, said on several occasions, he told his grandmother about Camacho’s sexual abuses.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Washington Post

December 25, 2018

By Julie Zauzmer

Two months ago, Cardinal Donald Wuerl stepped down early from his position as archbishop of Washington, faced with a Pennsylvania grand jury investigation that condemned him for his mixed record on handling abusive priests under his supervision.

On Christmas Day, Wuerl was robed in the majestic symbols of the Catholic Church regardless, sitting on a seat designed to resemble a throne with his ceremonial head-covering shaped like a crown.

Pope Francis praised Wuerl in October even as he accepted the cardinal’s early retirement over the abuse scandal and offered him a soft landing by keeping him on as administrator leading the Archdiocese of Washington until his successor is named, which has not happened yet.

On Christmas Day, Wuerl made his return, celebrating Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception as his first major public event after months of staying somewhat away from the limelight.

“We can truly have peace and goodwill and harmony in this world,” Wuerl preached in a homily that stuck to an optimistic message about the power of the Christian faith to heal all ills.

Many in the crowd at the basilica’s noon Mass, who filled every pew and spilled into the aisles, praised Wuerl’s message as well as the soaring orchestral works that filled the glittering shrine. “This is the best Mass I’ve ever been to in my whole 35 years of Catholicism,” Melissa Escobar gushed.

Others said they were bothered to see Wuerl leading the ornate Christmas service. The cardinal had skipped other major events since the Pennsylvania grand jury report was released in August, including the annual back-to-school Mass and the annual Red Mass for the Supreme Court. Both of those are events he would ordinarily have led; at both, protesters outside demanded that Wuerl resign.

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UNITED STATES
National Public Radio/Heard on Morning Edition

December 26, 2018

By Virginia Alvino Young

Length: 4:33

2018 has been an explosive year for the Catholic Church, with renewed revelations of clergy sexual abuse and cover up from one coast to the other. Dioceses across the country continue to deal with the fallout of a stunning grand jury report that detailed decades of abuse in Pennsylvania. For some parishioners and reform advocates, the church as a whole isn’t taking the crisis seriously enough.

At her brick home in a suburb outside of Pittsburgh, Stephanie Pennock spends weekdays entertaining her youngest son Bennott while her older two boys are at school.

Growing up in Erie, Pa., Pennock attended Catholic grade school, Catholic high school, and mass every week. “There was a series of priests that we went through very quickly,” she said. “There were rumors about what actually happened. Nothing ever much came to light about that.”

In August, the grand jury report was released, detailing decades worth of widespread childhood sexual abuse and cover ups in dioceses across Pennsylvania. When Pennock read through it, she saw some familiar names. One of her childhood pastors and a deacon who taught at her school both faced accusations of sexual misconduct.

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CHICAGO (IL)
WLS

December 25, 2018

During Midnight Mass Cardinal Cupich briefly addressed the clergy sex scandal rocking the Church.

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[Statement on today’s statement that in the proceedings against the ex-Jesuit Peter Riedel, a judgment of the Church Court of Berlin has been issue]

BERLIN (GERMANY)
Eckiger Tisch

December 21, 2018

By Kobayashi

Dies ist eine wichtige Nachricht für die vielen Opfer dieses Mannes: In Berlin, im Bistum Hildesheim, in Südamerika. Als Sprecher der Betroffeneninitiative ECKIGER TISCH, als Betroffener und als Kläger bin ich persönlich erleichtert, dass dieses Verfahren nach acht Jahren nun endlich abgeschlossen ist.

Bitter ist jedoch die Erkenntnis, dass es nicht zu einem weltlichen Urteil kommen wird. Das hätte ganz andere Auswirkungen gehabt. Auch wenn das Strafmaß noch nicht öffentlich bekannt ist, so ist dieses Ergebnis wohl das Beste, was im Rahmen eines kirchliches Verfahren überhaupt erreicht werden konnte. Insofern haben sich die enormen Anstrengungen der Betroffenen, die an dem Verfahren mitgewirkt haben, gelohnt. Zugleich sind wir traurig, weil nicht alle Opfer dieses Serientäters diesen Tag mehr erleben können.

Wütend sind wir aber darüber, dass der Vatikan nach monatelanger Beratung unser Anliegen abge­lehnt hat, als Nebenkläger Teil des Verfahrens zu sein und einen − wenn auch symbolischen − Schadenersatz vom Täter selbst einklagen zu kön­nen. Diese Genugtuung wird uns ausgerechnet mit Hinweis auf die kirchlichen Verjährungsfristen verweigert, nachdem die kirchlichen Vorgesetzten durch ihre Praxis des Verdeckens und Versetzens über Jahrzehnte hinweg dafür gesorgt haben, dass die Taten nach weltlichem wie nach kirchlichem Recht verjähren.

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[Canisius scandal: Church condemns the main culprit]

BERLIN (GERMANY)
Berliner Morgenpost

December 22, 2018

By Uta Keseling

Der einstige Lehrer und Priester Peter R. (77) wird aus dem Klerikerstand entlassen und verliert seine Pensionsberechtigung.

Neun Jahre nach Bekanntwerden des Missbrauchsskandals am Berliner Canisius-Kolleg hat die katholische Kirche in Berlin ein Urteil gegen einen der beiden Haupttäter verhängt. Der einstige Lehrer und Priester Peter R. (77) wird aus dem Klerikerstand entlassen und verliert seine Pensionsberechtigung. Dass ein Urteil in den vergangenen Tagen gefallen sei, bestätigt Stefan Förner, Sprecher des Erzbistums Berlin. Nach dem gängigen Verfahren muss der Vatikan in Rom das Urteil noch bestätigen. R. hat zwei Wochen Zeit, in Berufung zu gehen.

Es ist bereits das zweite Kirchen-Urteil gegen R., jedoch das erste, das sich auch auf die Taten am Canisius-Kolleg bezieht. Dort sollen R. und ein weiterer Lehrer in den 70er- und 80er-Jahren bis zu 100 Schüler sexuell missbraucht haben. Strafrechtlich wurde R. nie belangt, weil die Taten, als sie ans Licht kamen, bereits verjährt waren.

2009 hatten sich betroffene ehemalige Schüler des katholischen Gymnasiums dem damaligen Rektor der Schule offenbart. Jesuitenpater Klaus Mertes machte den Skandal öffentlich. In dessen Folge sowie weiterer Fälle in ganz Deutschland wurden 2013 die Verjährungsfristen für Missbrauchstaten an Minderjährigen verlängert.

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LAS CRUCES (NM)
NMPolitics.net

December 21, 2018

By Heath Haussamen

Warning: This column plainly discusses sexual assault and related issues.

COMMENTARY: I remember a Christian Brother who taught at my high school taking us outside to show off a mountain he identified as “Tetilla Peak.” He described, to a group of underage teens in the 1990s, how much he loved tetas — in English, breasts, or more crudely but accurately, tits.

He often told us how much he loved women’s bodies. If he wasn’t a Christian Brother he would have 10 wives and 10 children with each wife, he said.

I had many creepy experiences at St. Michael’s High School in Santa Fe. Another was the reverence with which basketball coaches spoke about the legendary coach Brother Abdon, with no mention of the rape allegations.

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[Pedophile priest must return to court]

GERMANY
Wochenblatt/ABC Color

December 22, 2018

Encarnación: Ein Berufungsgericht hob die Strafe von Pater Felix Miranda wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs eines Kindes teilweise auf. Es dürfte spannend werden, ob das neue Urteil härter ausfällt.

Die Haftstrafe war auf zwei Jahre zur Bewährung ausgesetzt worden und er musste fünf Millionen Gs. an das Krankenhaus von Encarnación bezahlen.

Das Berufungsgericht hob die im Distrikt Edelira (Itapúa) verhängte Strafe des sexuellen Missbrauchs von Kindern durch den Priester Félix Miranda teilweise auf und verwies auf die Bestimmung einer Aussetzung für die Vollstreckung der Strafe. Auf diese Weise wird die Staatsanwaltschaft in die Pflicht genommen, neue Beweise zu präsentieren, damit es zu einem weiteren Prozess in dem Fall kommt.

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SPRINGFIELD (IL)
Riverbender

December 26 2018

By Cory Davenport

During a Friday, Dec. 21, 2018, announcement, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) called a press conference to detail five priests with “substantiated” claims of abuse not previously named from the Springfield Diocese – one of whom served in Alton.

The Priests

SNAP named Thomas G. Meyer, who formerly served at the pastor for Sts. Peter and Paul Parish in Alton from 1990-1998, as one of the priests with what SNAP describes as “substantiated” abuse allegations stemming from his previous work at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Archdiocese. SNAP noted no such allegations arose from Meyer’s time as a priest in Illinois, but added the organization “fears he may have hurt Central Illinois children.”

Outside of Alton and Minnesota, Meyer also worked in the Belleville Diocese at St. Henry’s Seminary (1971-1977 with a small gap between 1972-72), King’s House of Retreats (1982-1983) and St. Henry’s Oblate Residence (2007-2012). Meyer died in 2012.

In a release from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Archdiocese, Meyer was in fact named as one of 19 priests acknowledged to have “substantial abuse claims.” He was on the list from the Oblates and Diocese of Duluth as early as 2015 after the diocese was sued under the Child Victims Act in May and June of 2013 – just after Meyers’s death. The diocese filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections in 2015.

Also named in the Dec. 21 announcement from SNAP was Father Henry Willenborg who was accused of abuse stemming from his time at Our Lady of Angels Franciscan Seminary in Quincy. He is formerly accused of sexually abusing a high school girl and even impregnating an adult parishioner who allegedly came to him for counseling. He moved from Quincy to a treatment center for troubled priests.

Unlike Meyer, Willenborg is still alive, and SNAP believes him to still be a priest somewhere.

SNAP’s Pursuit of Accountability

“Both clerics, along with Fr. Downey, who is also missing from the list, belong to Catholic religious orders who were given permission to work in the Springfield Diocese by Springfield’s bishops,” the announcement stated. “For that reason, SNAP maintains that the current head of the diocese, Bishop Thomas Paprocki, can and must include religious order clerics on his list of accused wrongdoers, as several other bishops have done. These men may have hurt Central Illinois kids and may still work, visit or live in Central Illinois.”

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LANSDALE (PA)
Bucks Local News

December 24, 2018

By Anika Reed

Kevin Spacey is breaking his silence with a bizarre video, and he seemed to time its release to right when news broke that he will face a felony charge tied to a sexual assault allegation.

Spacey posted a video on YouTube Monday, titled “Let Me Be Frank,” which appeared to criticize the #MeToo movement in a “House of Cards”-inspired monologue as his former character Frank Underwood.

“Conclusions can be so deceiving,” he says in the video. “Miss me?”

Spacey will face a criminal charge for an alleged assault that took place in July 2016, District Attorney Michael O’Keefe’s office told USA TODAY in a statement. The actor will be arraigned Jan. 7 at Nantucket District Court.

According to The Boston Globe, which first reported the charge, the incident involved the teenage son of Heather Unruh, a former Boston TV news anchor. Unruh said in a press conference in November 2017 that the Oscar-winning actor was inappropriate with her son, who was 18 at the time, at a Nantucket bar in July 2016 .

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HOLLYWOOD (CA)
The Hollywood Reporter

December 24, 2018

By Ryan Parker

The actor — who posted a bizarre ‘House of Cards’-style video address Monday — will be arraigned in Massachusetts on Jan. 7.

The Cape and Islands, Mass., district attorney announced Monday that Kevin Spacey will face a charge of felony sexual assault, authorities told The Hollywood Reporter.

A public show-cause hearing was held for the case Dec. 20 where Clerk Magistrate Ryan Kearney issued a criminal complaint for the charge “against Kevin S. Fowler, also known as Kevin Spacey,” THR confirmed.

The actor will be arraigned on a charge of indecent assault and battery at Nantucket District Court on Jan. 7, 2019.

The alleged assault on a male victim took place at a Nantucket bar in July 2016.

Last year, former Boston TV news anchor Heather Unruh held a press conference to share her son’s allegation of sexual assault against Spacey. Her then 18-year-old son she said was sexually assaulted by Spacey inside the Club Car Restaurant on Nantucket. Unruh says her son, who was not of legal drinking age, told Spacey he was and that the actor “bought him drink after drink after drink.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Times

December 24, 2018

By Sopan Deb

Kevin Spacey will be charged with a felony following an accusation of sexual assault made public last year, the authorities in Nantucket said on Monday.

The charge, first reported by The Boston Globe, is in connection with an accusation of misconduct that was made by a former television anchor, Heather Unruh, who said that Mr. Spacey sexually assaulted her 18-year-old son in July 2016 at a bar in Nantucket.

Michael O’Keefe, the Cape and Islands district attorney in Massachusetts, said in a statement that Mr. Spacey would be arraigned on Jan. 7 for one charge of indecent assault and battery, the first criminal charge levied against him as a result of sexual misconduct allegations. The statement also said there was a public show cause hearing in Nantucket District Court last Thursday, after which Clerk Magistrate Brian Kearney issued the criminal complaint.

A representative for Mr. Spacey did not respond to a request for comment. But the actor has apologized for one incident and denied at least one other accusation of wrongdoing.

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[Former Archbishop Zollitsch comments on abuse scandal]

GERMANY
hpd

December 21, 2018

By Florian Meer

“Wir waren alle beteiligt”

In einem bisher unveröffentlichten, vor kurzem aufgenommenen Interview soll sich der ehemalige Freiburger Erzbischof und Vorsitzende der Bischofskonferenz zu Anschuldigungen geäußert haben, die ihm eine wesentliche Mitschuld an der Vertuschung des Missbrauchsskandals in Oberharmersbach vorwerfen.

Während seiner Amtszeit von 1968 bis 1991 missbrauchte der Pfarrer der Gemeinde Oberharmersbach in Baden-Württemberg dutzende Jugendliche und Kinder sexuell. Robert Zollitsch, zu der Zeit Pressereferent in der Region, machte den Fall weder publik, noch wandte er sich an die Staatsanwaltschaft, als er 1991 von den Missbrauchsfällen erfuhr. Stattdessen wurde der Pfarrer in den Ruhestand versetzt, ehe sich Opfer zu Wort meldeten und die Staatsanwaltschaft schließlich doch noch aktiv wurde. Der Pfarrer nahm sich daraufhin das Leben. Dieser Vorfall trug unter anderem dazu bei, dass die Deutsche Bischofskonferenz selbst eine Studie zu sexuellem Missbrauch in der katholischen Kirche initiierte.

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[Did Angela Merkel help cover up the abuse scandal?]

GERMANY
hpd

December 21, 2018

By Michael Schmidt-Salomon

“Wir waren alle beteiligt!”, sagte unlängst der ehemalige Vorsitzende der Katholischen Bischofskonferenz Zollitsch im Hinblick auf die Vertuschung des katholischen Missbrauchsskandals. Meinte er damit auch Kanzlerin Angela Merkel? Das Institut für Weltanschauungsrecht – ifw verlangt nun Aufklärung über die diesbezüglichen Gespräche zwischen der katholischen Kirche und dem Bundeskanzleramt.

Fakt ist: Am 23. Februar 2010 sprach Erzbischof Zollitsch in Sachen Missbrauchsskandal mit Angela Merkel. Über das Gespräch wurde “Stillschweigen” vereinbart. Die FAZ berichtete anschließend, die Bundeskanzlerin habe sich im Streit des DBK-Vorsitzenden Erzbischof Zollitsch mit der damaligen Bundesjustizministerin Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger um die staatlichen Ermittlungsbemühungen “hinter Bischof Zollitsch gestellt.”

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BOSTON (MA)
The Associated Press

December 25, 2018

Kevin Spacey is due in court on January 7 on the resort island of Nantucket to be arraigned on a charge of indecent assault and battery. Spacey could get up to five years in prison if convicted.

Kevin Spacey has been charged with groping the 18-year-old son of a Boston TV anchor in 2016 — the first criminal case brought against the Oscar-winning actor since his career collapsed amid a string of sexual misconduct allegations over a year ago.

Spacey, 59, is due in court on January 7 on the resort island of Nantucket to be arraigned on a charge of indecent assault and battery, Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe said in a statement Monday. Spacey could get up to five years in prison if convicted.

A criminal complaint was issued by a clerk magistrate at a hearing on Thursday, O’Keefe said.

Shortly after the charge became public, Spacey posted a video on YouTube titled “Let Me Be Frank,” breaking a public silence of more than a year.

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BOSTON (MA)
The Associated Press

December 24, 2018

By Mark Pratt and Andrew Dalton 

Kevin Spacey has been charged with groping the 18-year-old son of a Boston TV anchor in 2016 — the first criminal case brought against the Oscar-winning actor since his career collapsed amid a string of sexual misconduct allegations over a year ago.

Spacey, 59, is due in court Jan. 7 on the resort island of Nantucket to be arraigned on a charge of indecent assault and battery, Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe said in a statement Monday. Spacey could get up to five years in prison if convicted.

A criminal complaint was issued by a clerk magistrate at a hearing Thursday, O’Keefe said.

Shortly after the charge became public, Spacey posted a video on YouTube titled “Let Me Be Frank,” breaking a public silence of more than a year.

In a monologue delivered in the voice of Frank Underwood, his character on Netflix’s “House of Cards” who was killed off after the sexual misconduct allegations emerged, he said: “Of course some believed everything and have just been waiting with bated breath to hear me confess it all; they’re just dying to have me declare that everything they said is true and I got what I deserved. … I’m certainly not going to pay the price for the thing I didn’t do.”

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DALLAS (TX)
Dallas Morning News

December 26, 2018

By David Tarrant

This year brought heavy criticism of the Catholic Church over its handling of the clergy sexual abuse crisis.

And in 2019, the church faces a critical challenge as it seeks to restore faith in its future as it divulges the sins of its past.

In Texas, all 15 Catholic dioceses in the state announced plans to — by the end of January — release the names of clergy who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of children since 1950. The goal is to restore trust to 8.5 million Catholics in 1,320 parishes across the state.

Dallas Bishop Edward J. Burns said at a news conference in October that the lists will be updated as new information becomes available.

“My brother bishops and I recognize that this type of transparency and accountability is what the Catholic faithful want and need,” Burns said.

Burns, whose diocese alone counts 1.3 million Catholics in 74 parishes, said the church needs its Dallas congregants to help rebuild the church. “This can’t be left to the hierarchy of the church to handle alone,” he said in his October news conference.

For some Catholics, the transparency measure is too little, too late. “I’m probably jaded and cynical because there’s been so much of this,” said Lety Martinez Ramirez, a former parishioner at St. Ceclia Catholic Church in Oak Cliff, where the longtime pastor was credibly accused in August of molesting three teenage boys in the parish more than a decade ago.

Ramirez said she is “sickened by the repeated reports of thousands of children being sexually abused by hundreds of priests all over the world.”

“With all that we believe, why is it that when it comes to protecting children we can’t do the right thing?”

Ahead of the name-and-shame efforts, here are five things you should know about the clergy sex abuse crisis and how the Catholic Church is responding to it.

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RAPID CITY (SD)
Rapid City Journal

December 26, 2018

By Arielle Zionts

A former Rapid City priest who pleaded guilty to stealing hundreds of dollars of church donations has left a treatment program and the diocese, going against instructions from the bishop, according to the diocese’s December newsletter.

Marcin Garbacz was suspended from his ministry duties in May after church officials caught him stealing and sent to a six-month treatment program in St. Louis.

In July, he was charged with first-degree embezzlement of property received in trust and first-degree petty theft in the alternative, which means he could only be convicted on one of the counts. Garbacz pleaded guilty to the theft charge on Oct. 26.

He received a suspended imposition of sentence — which means his record will be sealed from the public, but not the courts or police — from Judge Bernard Schuchmann on Oct 31. Garbacz paid $334 in fines and costs, and $620 in restitution to the church, a clerk said.

While Garbacz appears to have complied with the court system, the diocese says he’s not following church orders.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Christian Post

December 25, 2018

By Stoyan Zaimov

Americans’ view of the honesty and ethics of clergy has fallen to an all-time low in a ranking of different professions released by Gallup.

The Gallup poll, conducted between Dec. 3-12 of 1,025 U.S. adults, found that only 37 percent of respondents had a “very high” or “high” opinion of the honesty and ethical standards of clergy. Forty-three percent of people gave them an average rating, while 15 percent said they had a “low” or “very low” opinion, according to the poll that was released on Dec. 21.

The margin of sampling error for the survey was identified as plus or minus 4 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.

Gallup noted that the 37 percent “very high” or “high” score for clergy is the lowest since it began asking the question in 1977. The historical high of 67 percent occurred back in 1985, and the score has been dropping below the overall average positive rating of 54 percent since 2009.

“The public’s views of the honesty and ethics of the clergy continue to decline after the Catholic Church was rocked again this year by more abuse scandals,” Gallup noted in its observations.

Sexual abuse claims, involving both children and adults, have rocked churches across the U.S., South America and Europe this year, affecting both Protestant and Catholic congregations.

One of the biggest scandals occurred in August when a Pennsylvania grand jury released a 1,300-page report, revealing that at least 301 priests had abused over 1,000 children in the past several decades. What is more, it was found that many of the perpetrators were protected by the church’s hierarchy and moved to other churches.

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NEW DELHI (INDIA)
News18.com

December 26, 2018

By Aishwarya Kumar

New Delhi: In June this year, a senior nun alleged rape by Bishop Franco Mulakkal, the head of the Latin diocese of Jalandhar. What followed was a vortex of the worst crisis that the church had encountered in recent times.

The nun alleged that she was sexually assaulted multiple times since May 2014 at the church’s guest house in Kuruvilangad. She further said that she had approached the church hierarchy but her repeated pleas were ignored, after which she decided to go the police.

As the country split its opinion on whether to believe the survivor, her fellow nuns took to the streets, staged protests, thus forming what was possibly the biggest rebellion that India’s church had seen from the inside. The nuns called out the male hegemony that existed in the church and demanded Mulakkal be stripped off his position and power. The protesting nuns said they knew of many other cases where women were exploited and yet the higher authorities decided to remain mum.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

December 26, 2018

By Inés San Martín

[Editors note: This is part two of Crux Rome Bureau Chief Inés San Martín’s look back at Pope Francis in 2018.]

When he was elected to the papacy in March 2013, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio knew he was chosen on a “reform” mandate. However, it’s been unclear what reform means for Pope Francis: revitalizing the public image of the Church, addressing the global clerical sexual abuse crisis, reforming the Vatican itself or leading Catholics around the world into a “pastoral conversion.”

Francis was forced to address reform on multiple fronts during the past 12 months, all testing him in different ways.

Sex abuse

Long gone are the days in which Pope Francis was elected person of the year by virtually every major news outlet in the world. In fact, for the first time since he was elected to the papacy in 2013, this year marked the first in which his name generated little to no buzz when the Nobel Peace Prize was approaching.

That’s at least partly because 2018 was a year in which the Church had many unfortunate headlines, most of which turned around the clerical sexual abuse crisis: the Pennsylvania report; the case of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, accused of sexually abusing at least three minors in addition to dozens of seminarians; Chile, where the May resignation of all the bishops was only the tip of the iceberg; and Australian Cardinal George Pell, a former member of the pope’s council of cardinal advisors, facing two trials over historical clerical sexual abuse.

All these scandals meant that this year, much of the pope’s political capital collected over the past four years was squandered. His calls for defense of migrants and protection of the environment, for instance, went largely unheeded.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

December 25, 2018

By Julie Zauzmer

Two months ago, Cardinal Donald Wuerl stepped down early from his position as archbishop of Washington, faced with a Pennsylvania grand jury investigation that condemned him for his mixed record on handling abusive priests under his supervision.

On Christmas Day, Wuerl was robed in the majestic symbols of the Catholic church regardless, sitting on a seat designed to resemble a throne with his ceremonial head-covering shaped like a crown.

Pope Francis praised Wuerl in October even as he accepted the cardinal’s early retirement due to the abuse scandal, and offered him a soft landing by keeping him on as administrator leading the Archdiocese of Washington until his successor is named, which has not happened yet.

On Christmas Day, Wuerl made his return, celebrating Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception as his first major public event after months of staying somewhat away from the limelight.

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ROME (ITALY)
National Public Radio

December 25, 2018

By Francesca Paris

Delivering his Christmas Day address to tens of thousands of people gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, Pope Francis appealed for fraternity and peace, especially in violent conflicts around the world.

The pope emerged on the balcony of the nearly 400-year-old St. Peter’s Basilica to cheers and trumpets.

“We are all brothers,” he said. “Our differences, then, are not a detriment or a danger; they are a source of richness.”

It was a message of compassion and unity, delivered at a time of rising nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment across Europe.

In his “Urbi et Orbi” (“To the City and to the World”) address, Francis urged the embrace of fraternity in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the wars in Syria and Yemen, the “clash of arms” in Africa and the conflicts in Korea and Ukraine.

The first Latin American pope in the history of the Roman Catholic Church also offered prayers for two Central and South American countries, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

He called on the international community to find a political solution in Syria, where hundreds of thousands of people have died during seven years of civil war — “so that the Syrian people, especially all those who were forced to leave their own lands and seek refuge elsewhere, can return to live in peace in their own country,” he said.

He also talked about Yemen, urging the international community again to “finally bring relief to all the children, and the peoples, exhausted from war and famine.”

Speaking to “dear” Nicaragua, where the United Nations has reported repression, torture and abuse of protesters by the government, Pope Francis prayed for “reconciliation” and unification toward the “construction of the future of the country.”

He also sent a message of hope for minority Christian communities living in “hostile environments.”

The address came as a moment of respite for a pope whose standing has fallen in recent years, in part because of his response to a widespread sex abuse crisis in the church. Three years ago, 7 out of 10 Americans had a favorable view of the pope. That number has dropped to just half of the U.S. public, according to a Pew Research Center study.

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SALT LAKE CITY (UT)
Intermountain Catholic, newspaper of the Diocese of Salt Lake City

December 21, 2018

[Note: The list, reported here to have been posted on 12/17/18, is dated 12/4/18, and the PDF was created 12/13/18.]

The Diocese of Salt Lake City seeks to shed some light on clergy abuse allegations within the Diocese with the hope that it may further the healing process for those betrayed by men they believed they could trust.

As of Dec. 17, the Diocese has posted on its website, www.dioslc.org, the complete list of all priests against whom credible allegations of sexual abuse involving minors have been reported since 1950.

Bishop Oscar A. Solis first authorized the planned release of the names in August. Before the names could be released, a review by legal counsel was required to ensure victims were not further harmed and to be sure all legal requirements were appropriately met. That review is now complete.

With the release of information, Bishop Solis stated, “The list of credible allegations is one step toward providing the transparency that will help repair at least some of the wounds left by the wrongful actions of priests who abused their sacred trust. We continue to pray for the victims and their families and ask their forgiveness for our failure to protect them.”

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VATICAN CITY
Vatican News

December 21, 2018

Greg Burke, the Director of the Holy See Press Office commented on Pope Francis’ Christmas message to the Roman Curia on Friday. He called it “a kind of preparation for the February meeting on the protection of minors”.

Burke said Pope Francis “did not mince words” in speaking to the Curia about sex abuse.

“The Pope said abuser priests are part of a web of corruption… vicious wolves who devour innocent souls.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

December 24, 2018

By Elizabeth Bruenig

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-catholic-church-scandal-casts-a-shadow-over-the-season-but-christmas-is-a-time-for-hope/2018/12/24/61bce5ce-0795-11e9-a3f0-71c95106d96a_story.html

Somehow it doesn’t come as a surprise that the allegations of sexual misconduct that finally brought down former cardinal and archbishop emeritus of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, happened at Christmastime. When he was removed from ministry in June, McCarrick stood accused of molesting a teenage boy while measuring him for a cassock for a special Christmas service in 1971, according to the victim, and then again in 1972, during preparations for that year’s Christmas service. Was there ever a faith for McCarrick other than opportunity?

Once the archdiocese of New York declared those allegations credible, other claims poured forth: The portrait that has emerged suggests McCarrick had been perpetrating sexual abuse against boys and young men for years, without a hitch in his rise through the ranks of the church. Shortly thereafter, McCarrick was moved to a friary on the lonely plains of Kansas.

It was around that time I started receiving emails from despondent Catholics in the D.C. area. McCarrick hadn’t been an anonymous priest, after all; he had been a major public figure, and the revelations about him were as shocking as they were plentiful. Some of the messages I received spoke of a loss of faith, despair, feelings of anger, confusion, emptiness. “There is little encouragement in the constant drama,” one wrote. “They have forgotten the quote, ‘What does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul?’ ” And another: “To say that my faith is being tested is an understatement. I’m trying my best now to just work and dedicate myself to truth.” And yet another: “The silence from the Vatican is deafening.” There were so many more. I printed a packet of them and took them along with me when I interviewed former close associates of McCarrick, so I could read some of them aloud. None of those conversations yielded anything, not even a hint of guilt.

The notes still come. (“It’s just so bad, and every time I think we’ve hit bottom, we break through and start falling again,” one said recently. “I just put my kids to bed and am just sitting in the dark weeping and furious and sad.”) I understand why. Since this summer’s Pennsylvania grand jury report and the unmasking of McCarrick, there have been more disturbing revelations. Within the past three months, a whistleblower came forward with evidence that the diocese of Buffalo’s list of clergy credibly accused of sexual abuse was woefully short, and that allegedly abusive priests had been allowed to remain in ministry for years; the Vatican commanded a convention of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops not to vote on resolutions intended to respond to the sex-abuse crisis; Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan accused the archdiocese of Chicago of failing to investigate or publicly name more than 500 priests accused of sexual abuse; and several Jesuit priests accused of sexual abuse were found to be housed on Gonzaga University’s campus, unbeknownst to the campus community.

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MONTPELIER (Vt)
VTDigger

December 24, 2018

By Kevin O’Connor

Vermont Catholic leaders had talked for hours about the rise in priest misconduct headlines and fall in parishioner attendance when a woman, listening to the recent strategy session to forge a better future, asked a question: Why weren’t they spending more time proclaiming the good news?

The 72 parishes of the statewide Roman Catholic Diocese support more than 170 nonprofit organizations that serve the hungry, poor, sick, homeless or imprisoned, a new survey reveals, with many churches also offering their own emergency aid, soup kitchens, food shelves and thrift shops.

Members of the state’s largest religious denomination, understanding yet weary of seemingly nonstop coverage of child-abuse claims against past personnel, fear the public is forgetting the church has a good side.

“The stories we’ve given the media have been bad ones,” Vermont Catholic Bishop Christopher Coyne says.

Just this past week, the church settled yet another lawsuit involving a former priest, bringing the total number of publicized cases to more than 40 over the past two decades.

In response, Coyne, who just stepped down as communications chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is stepping up his statewide public relations efforts. Visit a parish anywhere from Burlington to Brattleboro, for example, and you’ll find copies of the new quarterly Vermont Catholic Magazine, with 80 glossy pages spotlighting parishioners’ charitable efforts.

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DALLAS (TX)
WFAA

December 21, 2018

By Lauren Zakalik

An affidavit says one victim was just 13 when Darrell Yancey started abusing her and she conceived three children with him

Pastor Darrell Maurice Yancey, 59, was booked into the Arlington jail Thursday for sexual crimes against children that police say happened in the 1990s and 2000s.

The pastor has since been moved to the Tarrant County Jail.

Arlington Police have charged Yancey with seven counts of sexual assault of a child, three of which are aggravated because of the age of the victim.

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OAKLAND (CA)
KTVU Fox 2

December 21, 2018

By: Brooks Jarosz

A national massage chain sued for hundreds of alleged sexual assaults by therapists is now being accused of trying to cover things up and prevent cases from being made public.

Massage Envy is facing lawsuits in a handful of states, including California, where the number of women who claim to have been sexually assaulted tops 50 and the case continues to expand.

“This stuff is still happening within the company even though there are all these lawsuits against them,” attorney Bobby Thompson said.

There are fears new cases, or even existing ones, may never become public because buried in the terms and conditions is an arbitration clause that explains customers must agree to take up problems or concerns with a mediator. It’s a way to keep cases out of court and under wraps.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Rolling Stone

December 20, 2018

By Lilly Dancyger

A preliminary report from the state’s attorney general is part of a new wave of sexual-assault investigations by law enforcement into the Catholic Church

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan released a damning preliminary report Wednesday on her office’s findings that the Catholic dioceses in the state had withheld the names of over 500 priests accused of sexually abusing minors. The investigation is ongoing, though the report says “the Office has reviewed enough information to conclude that the Illinois Dioceses will not resolve the clergy sexual abuse crisis on their own.”

The report found that Illinois dioceses received reports of abuse by approximately 690 clergy, but only reported 185 as having been “credibly” accused, meaning that approximately 75 percent of all reports they received were not investigated. The dioceses often did not investigate if the accused priest was deceased or retired, or if only one victim had come forward, and often “sought to discredit a survivor’s allegations based upon the survivor’s personal life.”

“While the Illinois Dioceses have touted their ‘independent audits’ as evidence that they are adequately responding to clergy sexual abuse allegations,” the report concludes, “the audits are seemingly not designed to discover clergy abuse, but rather are perfunctory.”

“The preliminary stages of this investigation have already demonstrated that the Catholic Church cannot police itself,” Madigan said in a press release about her office’s report. “Allegations of sexual abuse of minors, even if they stem from conduct that occurred many years ago, cannot be treated as internal personnel matters.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

December 25, 2018

By Julie Zauzmer

Two months ago, Cardinal Donald Wuerl stepped down early from his position as archbishop of Washington, faced with a Pennsylvania grand jury investigation that condemned him for his mixed record on handling abusive priests under his supervision.

On Christmas Day, Wuerl was robed in the majestic symbols of the Catholic church regardless, sitting on a seat designed to resemble a throne with his ceremonial head-covering shaped like a crown.

Pope Francis praised Wuerl in October even as he accepted the cardinal’s early retirement due to the abuse scandal, and offered him a soft landing by keeping him on as administrator leading the Archdiocese of Washington until his successor is named, which has not happened yet.

On Christmas Day, Wuerl made his return, celebrating Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception as his first major public event after months of staying somewhat away from the limelight.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

December 21

By Michelle Boorstein ‘

Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther of Wittenberg circulated his 95 theses, critiquing the Catholic Church and launching the Protestant Reformation. Liz McCloskey of Falls Church has five.

Fed up with the way Catholic bishops have handled clergy sexual abuse of children, the 54-year-old academic’s group from Holy Trinity parish in the District has joined recently with groups from parishes in places such as Seattle and New York City on a project. They are affixing fliers with five demands to the doors of cathedrals and parish churches — meant to conjure a famous (if unconfirmed) tale about Luther nailing his demands to a German church door, an image that has come to embody grass-roots folks rising up for religious reform.

Among the details on the list of five: Stop qualifying their actions or lack thereof and just cooperate fully with civil prosecutors who are investigating abuse in the church. Stop wearing fancy royalty-like garb and dress and live simply. Give space in every edition of every church newspaper to abuse survivors.

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SPOKANE (WA)
Spokesman Review

December 23, 2018

A recent independent investigation shows that Jesuit officials repeatedly put Gonzaga students and staff in harm’s way by quietly moving known or suspected predator priests to the campus. Shame on them.

One high-ranking Jesuit claims the Jesuit building at Gonzaga was, according to the Associated Press, “the only facility” where offenders “could be contained effectively while also receiving necessary medical care.” Baloney. The church has dozens if not hundreds of such places, most of which aren’t on or near a school attended by thousands of potentially vulnerable teens and young adults.

The Jesuits knowingly, repeatedly and recklessly endangered others to protect themselves, their colleagues, their reputations and their money. I hope parents remember this when pondering where to send their kids for further education and Catholics will ponder this when Jesuits come asking for donations.

Mary Dispenza

Bellevue

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NEW YORK (NY)
CBS News

December 24, 2018

As more allegations of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests surfaced, most U.S. Catholics said the Pope and the Vatican were doing a poor job handling these reports, and about a quarter of Catholics said the reports made them question whether they should remain in the Church. Favorable views of Pope Francis dropped sharply in the wake of the scandal from 63 percent in 2016 to 48 percent in 2018.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

December 23, 2018

By E.J. Dionne Jr.

Christmas remains wondrous, but it arrives at a difficult moment for Christianity in the United States.

We still see Christmas trees strapped to the tops of cars, neighbors lighting up their homes and kids getting as excited as ever. And the churches will be unusually full.

This last point is revealing: A relative decline of religious observance has brought forth the “Chreasters,” Christians who attend services only on Christmas and Easter.

Regular worshipers can be disdainful of the Chreasters. They make it hard for the loyalists to find seats in the pews and are, in a sense, free riding on those who, week in and week out, keep the institutions going.

The Chreasters’ participation on special days is often written off as little more than a gush of sentiment inspired by warm childhood memories or an affection for the Christmas story and the songs and ceremonies we have developed around it.

But these twice-a-year visitors deserve our attention and, I’d argue, our respect.

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MANILA (PHILIPPINES)
Manila Bulletin

December 24, 2018

By Leslie Ann Aquino

The Year 2018 is indeed the “Year of the Clergy” in view of the different challenges that the Church and its leaders faced this year.

Among these challenges was the killing of a number of priests in the country. Father Mark Ventura was killed in Gattaran, Cagayan on April 29 only four months after Father Marcelito Paez was killed in Nueva Ecija. In June, Father Richmond Nilo was also killed by unknown gunmen in Cabanatuan.

On the same month, Father Rey Urmeneta of the St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Calamba, Laguna, was wounded after being shot by unidentified suspects.

Despite these, Catholic prelates rejected the idea of arming their priests.

The Church and bishops were also often the subject of President Duterte’s tirades.

At a public event, Duterte accused Kalookan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, a vocal critic of his ruthless campaign against illegal drugs, of stealing church donations to give it to his family.

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CRYSTAL LAKE (IL)
Northwest Herald

December 24, 2018

To The Editor:

I believe that the Catholic Church needs to stop investigating the childhood sexual abuse committed by some of their priests.

Please stop and just call it what it is!

These people are sexual predators who have chosen to willfully, and repeatedly, violate our precious children. They belong in jail along with other sexual predators.

The Catholic Church’s solution of foisting these criminals to other parts of the country or even out of the country (South America) is abhorrent!

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TRUMBULL (CT)
Courage

December 21, 2018

Dear Courage and EnCourage Family,

I last wrote to you in September to share information with you regarding priests who were associated with the Courage Apostolate who had been credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors; Father Harvey’s work with priests who had been so accused; and other connections between the apostolate and the sexual abuse crisis. At that time, I promised that I would keep you updated about new information that I received.

I am writing today about two articles that have appeared in recent weeks, one about long-time Courage chaplain Father Donald Timone, and the other about Father Harvey.

I want to begin by acknowledging that, whenever the topic of sexual abuse by clergy comes up, it can be a particularly painful experience for people who have survived such abuse, and for their loved ones. Some have described it as feeling like one has to endure the original trauma of the abuse over again. It is also a source of distress for members of the apostolate and of the Catholic faithful in general, as each new revelation threatens the trust that they have placed in the clergy who are called to serve as spiritual fathers and models. I deeply regret the pain that this letter may cause for you, but I believe that honest discussion of these issues is the best way to achieve healing, for the individual and for the Church.

Handling of Allegations of Sexual Abuse Against Father Donald Timone

On December 20, the New York Times ran an article by Sharon Otterman, under the headline, “The Church Settled Sexual Abuse Cases Against This Priest. Why Is He Still Saying Mass?” The article states that two allegations of sexual abuse were made against Father Donald Timone, a retired priest of the Archdiocese of New York, to the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program (IRCP) created by the Archdiocese of New York, in 2016, for which the IRCP authorized settlement payments. The article goes on to describe the distressing details of the alleged abuse, which it says took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The article notes that the allegations were brought to the attention of the Archdiocese of New York (and in one of the cases, to law enforcement) in 2002 and 2003, at which time Father Timone was suspended from ministry and an investigation was conducted by the Archdiocesan Review Board.

According to the spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York, quoted in the article, only one of those allegations was brought to the Review Board. As a result of its investigation, the Review Board determined that the allegation was not credible, and accordingly Father Timone was returned to ministry in 2003. He has continued to assist in a parish in the archdiocese to this day, even after his retirement from active ministry in 2009, when he reached the age of 75. The Archdiocese of New York recently began a new investigation of the allegations brought to the IRCP against Father Timone, which is ongoing. As of the time of my writing to you, the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, has not suspended Father Timone from ministry while the investigation is pending.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Fox News

December 23, 2018

Arch Bishop of New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan weighs in on the reforms the Catholic church is making.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

December 23, 2018

By Sharon Otterman

The Archdiocese of New York has suspended a priest who had continued his clerical duties despite two settlements paid for allegations of sexual abuse of teenage boys.

The Rev. Donald G. Timone, 84, is the subject of an internal investigation by the archdiocese, but had continued to celebrate Mass in New York and California, more than a year and a half after an archdiocesan compensation program paid settlements to the two men, as detailed last week by The New York Times.

A spokesman for the archdiocese, Joseph Zwilling, said on Friday that the archdiocese would no longer allow Father Timone to remain in ministry while it weighed permanently removing him.

One of the men who came forward with claims of abuse by Father Timone committed suicide in 2015 after what his widow said was a decades-long struggle to come to terms with the abuse.

Father Timone, who formally retired in 2009, is a priest in residence at St. Joseph’s Church in Middletown, N.Y., and had celebrated Mass there as recently as Dec. 2.

But Father Timone, Mr. Zwilling said in an email, has “been instructed that he is not to exercise his ministry at all until the review board has again examined his case and the matter has been resolved.”

The two settlements were awarded in the spring of 2017 by the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, founded by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York, to compensate victims of clergy abuse, provided they release the archdiocese from future legal claims.

Those settlements did not trigger Father Timone’s removal from the ministry despite the archdiocese’s “zero-tolerance” policy on child sexual abuse, Mr. Zwilling said, because the compensation program functioned separately from the archdiocese’s own internal process for substantiating abuse allegations.

Supporters of the two men who had received settlements said that they were relieved Father Timone was now being pulled from the pulpit, at least temporarily, but that did not excuse how the archdiocese had handled his case.

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TORNOTO (CANADA)
The Globe and Mail

December 21, 2018

By Michael W. Higgins

Every modern pope appears to have had an annus horribilis at some point in his pontificate. For Pope Francis, such times of tumult and catastrophe are not bound to a 12-month cycle with a longed-for terminus: They are the norm, not the exception.

For the current Pope, internal chaos, open rebellion by dissident clerics, dubious professions of loyalty by high-ranking prelates and a cascade of sex-abuse scandals and episcopal cover-ups all make for an unhealthy state of affairs.

It is irregular to have a former papal ambassador, Carlo Maria Viganò, complain publicly about his boss (they do so robustly, but in private), flinging allegations of misconduct against the Pope himself in the public arena and calling for his resignation because he, and his like-minded corruptors, promoted the now disgraced former cardinal of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, with the full knowledge that his behaviour fell well below accepted standards. Indeed, Viganò argues the Pope was remiss in not enforcing sanctions against the errant cleric – sanctions initially applied by Benedict XVI.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian

Decebmer 23, 2018

Pope Francis gives an annual Christmas speech to his civil service in the Vatican and he wastes none of it on praising them. From his very first condemnation of their gossip, pride, and “spiritual Alzheimer’s” in 2014 he has found faults to pick with parts of the Roman Catholic church. This year, it was the turn of sexual abuse, a subject on which he has himself been squarely in the wrong before. As if making up for lost time, he gave one of the most ferocious denunciations of his own church’s past, and promised concrete measures and a new start. He even praised the journalists who brought these scandals to light, in the teeth of ecclesiastical denial and obstruction. He demanded that any priests guilty of abuse hand themselves over to the civil authorities, and prepare to face the justice of God as well. This is all excellent stuff and only about 20 years late.

The great problem for the church this century has not been the exposure of contemporary abuse so much as the exposure of the cover-ups of past abusers. Francis himself has been accused by his enemies of protecting a notorious abuser, Theodore McCarrick, once a powerful figure in the US church, whom he sacked as a cardinal in the summer. In fact, Mr McCarrick was the beneficiary of a long-standing Vatican policy of promoting effective fundraisers, and owed most of his rise to the sainted John Paul II. But several US states have published lists of hundreds of men credibly suspected of historic offences, but protected by bishops in the past; Francis’s own order, the Jesuits, is to engage in a similar reckoning with its past.

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ROME (ITALY)
Crux

December 23, 2018

By John L. Allen Jr.

There hasn’t been a dull moment in the Catholic Church since Pope Francis was elected in March 2013, but even by his activist and high-octane standards, 2018 was a turbulent year.

The past 12 months have been full of drama, both great highs – the joy of the World Meeting of Families in Dublin in August, for instance – and tremendous lows, above all the stupefying spectacle of a former papal ambassador in America publicly accusing the pope himself of a sex abuse cover-up.

Herewith, the official Crux list of the Top Ten Vatican Stories of 2018, ranked in terms of their relative significance for the life of the Church. This is an entirely subjective enterprise, and others doubtless will assess the major events of the past year differently, but however one puts the pieces together, it’s definitely been a year worth a look back.

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WILKES-BARRE (PA)
Times Leader

December 23, 2018

A Roman Catholic priest on Friday became the first person sentenced to prison as a result of a Pennsylvania grand jury investigation that found hundreds of clergy had abused children over seven decades.

The Rev. John Thomas Sweeney, 76, received 11¢ months to five years in state prison and will have to register as a sex offender for 10 years.

He pleaded guilty in July to misdemeanor indecent assault on a minor after being accused of forcing a 10-year-old boy to perform oral sex on him while counseling the fourth-grader about misbehaving on a school bus.

“I want the public to know that he’s profoundly remorseful for any pain, anguish and discomfort that the victim has suffered as a result of his actions,” said Sweeney’s lawyer, Fran Murrman, after the sentencing in Westmoreland County.

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MONTPELIER (VT)
VTDigger

December 22 2018

By Kevin O’Connor

The Vermont Catholic Church suddenly and surprisingly has settled a priest misconduct lawsuit filed just this month that threatened to spur a jury trial and potential multimillion-dollar verdict.

Lawyer Jerome O’Neill submitted civil papers Dec. 7 in U.S. District Court in Burlington on behalf of a former Vermont man now living in Texas who alleges he was sexually abused as a child by Alfred Willis, a former priest for the statewide Roman Catholic Diocese from 1975 until his dismissal in 1985.

The accuser, who asked not to be named, was an altar boy at Milton’s St. Ann parish when the claims took place four decades ago. But the Vermonter, who went on to move out of state, didn’t learn until last year that the diocese had tried to cover up its role and therefore could be legally liable.

The state’s largest religious denomination had hoped to have heard the last of such lawsuits in 2013 after paying more than $30 million in settlements to cap a near-bankrupting 11-year string of 40 headline-grabbing cases.

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WINONA (MN)
Winona Daily News

December 22, 2018

By David Girod

Good column Jerome! (“Can this debt ever be repaid? Perhaps,” Winona Daily News, Nov. 21). I suppose the Christian thing to do is show compassion. Maybe Christ will upon each individual’s demise. Priests, and bishops. Except when he warned those who “make a young child stumble,” you’d be “better off to have a weight around your neck and fall into the ocean.”

In a perfect world, every case that has occurred, if brought to the attention of civil authorities (not church officials, obviously), it would have been investigated. And, if credible, prosecuted, hopefully with prison time. No cover-ups or shuffling priests around. How ever high up you must go to catch all guilty priests.

As Jerome’s column said, they may be able to pay off any monetary damages. But they must address the “moral bankruptcy” and find the root cause of the priests’ behavior.

And, no, I don’t believe that those priests are pedophiles. In all this, I was surprised to read that Pope Francis is considering changing the rules to allow priests to marry due to the shortage of priests and also the years of abuse of children by priests. That, my friends, is a wise man. It’s what I’ve said all along. And I assume, he being the head of the church, with a pen, could make that happen. That rule of celibacy for priests is not a rule for any of the world’s other religions. What an archaic rule.

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NEWPORT (RI)
Newport Daily News

December 22, 2018

By Brian Amaral

An announcement Friday that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence would release the names of priests credibly accused of sexual abuse was met with questions and some skepticism from victims, advocates and lawyers who have battled the church.

“How do we know whether they’re giving us names that aren’t already known to the public and police?” said Carl DeLuca, a Rhode Island lawyer who represented children abused by Providence diocese priests. “It’s kind of a question of faith. The history is not such that they’re really entitled to that kind of faith.”

On Friday, Bishop Thomas J. Tobin said in a WPRI Newsmakers interview that the diocese would release the names of credibly accused priests sometime in the next year, following in the steps of other dioceses in the country.

He told WPRI’s Tim White and Ted Nesi in the interview released Friday that he did not expect many people would be surprised at the priests on the list, because most of them will have already been publicized. Tobin defined “credible” as allegations where “it seems like it could have happened and probably did happen,” but did not say how far back in the files the church would go.

“The first focus has to be on the victims themselves,” Tobin said.

The diocese did not respond to The Providence Journal’s request for an interview on Saturday. Tobin said he has removed five priests over credible allegations in his 13 years as bishop.

Timothy Conlon, a lawyer who represented people abused by Providence diocese priests when they were children, said he’d need to see the names released before knowing whether the diocese was breaking with what he sees as its history of hiding the truth.

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NORWICH (CT)
The Day

December 22. 2018

It appears the Diocese of Norwich, after decades of refusing to be fully transparent and frank, is ready to come to grips with the scandal of predatory sexual abuse of minors by clergy.

Or maybe not.

Last week the diocese issued a brief statement that it plans to release the names of priests and deacons who were credibly accused of sexual abuse. This will occur sometime near the end of January, according to the release.

Only by coming clean about who was involved and how these cases were dealt with can the diocese specifically and the greater church generally begin slowly and painstakingly to rebuild confidence among parishioners and the public.

The Catholic Church has made corrections since the outrageous behavior by some priests − the cover-ups, the lack of any help for victims, and the transferring of predatory priests from one parish to the next − was uncovered by the press about two decades ago. Since then training requirements have been put in place for clergy, laypersons and volunteers who work with children about recognizing the signs of abuse. Under those rules, suspicion of misconduct is to be reported to police.

But victims of past predatory behaviors should not have to live with the knowledge that their assailants and those who enabled them remain protected by the church. People have a right to know who in the hierarchy of the church made decisions that allowed the conduct to continue and whether those persons still hold positions of authority.

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SANTA FE (NM)
New Mexican

December 21, 2018

By Dan Thibault and Robert Fontana

We were at the 10 a.m. Mass for the second Sunday of Advent at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. The music, readings, rituals with the incensing of the altar and the scriptures, and the homily by Archbishop John Wester were at the same time both beautiful and painful to experience.

We could not help but think, as Wester led us in worship, of the great crisis that our church faces because of clergy who have raped minors and vulnerable adults and of bishops who concealed these crimes. We grieve for the victims in their pain and suffering; it is church leadership’s cover-up of these crimes that we find most offensive.

And now, through the revelations of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick’s sexual misbehavior with seminarians and priests, we have a window into why cover-up has been so pervasive within the Catholic Church.

What was being protected was not simply a few isolated instances of abuse, but an entire subculture of sexually active priests, most who are gay but some not, who live a public life of pious prayer and ministry while privately betraying their vows of celibacy and service. As we all know, the scandal has encompassed the entire church, including in New Mexico. Yet Wester made no mention of the sex abuse crisis in his homily, prayers of the faithful or announcements at the end of Mass.

These omissions came in the very week the diocese declared bankruptcy to protect its assets as it tries to pay abuse claims and the Santa Fe New Mexican editorial condemned the moral failure of the Santa Fe Catholic leadership in response to the crisis (“Catholic Church has work ahead to rebuild trust,” Our View, Dec. 9). (Editor’s note: Wester did preach on the crisis on the Third Sunday of Advent. His comments can be viewed at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi’s Facebook page.)

As we struggled through the Mass, our eyes were drawn to the San Damiano crucifix that hangs above the altar. It was from such a cross that the future St. Francis, a layman, heard Jesus speak to him the words, “Go and rebuild my church for as you see it is in ruins.”

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Post Dispatch

December 23, 2018

An investigation by the Illinois attorney general into child sexual assault in the Catholic Church echoes what’s been found in other states: a widespread, decades-long pattern of abuse and coverup involving hundreds of priests.

Missouri’s own investigation continues, with victims’ advocates complaining that outgoing Attorney General Josh Hawley hasn’t been aggressive enough. With Hawley heading to the U.S. Senate, his replacement, Eric Schmitt, has an opportunity to start on the right foot by making the investigation a top priority.

America was stunned this year when an investigation in Pennsylvania determined that some 300 priests had abused roughly 1,000 children over a 70-year period, as the church actively covered the abusers’ tracks. Those findings spawned similar investigations in other states, including Missouri and Illinois.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced her office’s findings last week, and it was, again, stunning. As the Post-Dispatch’s Nassim Benchaabane reported, Madigan’s investigators uncovered allegations of sexual abuse against at least 500 clergy that the church knew about but never made public.

In many cases, they found, the church declined to even investigate allegations. Some abuse survivors weren’t told that others had been victimized by the same clergy members. There were also instances in which church officials used details of the victims’ personal lives to discredit them.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

December 22, 2018

Pope Francis had grim tidings for predatory priests, in this life and the next.

“Hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice,” the pope said in a Christmas address at the Vatican, making clear that the church will no longer protect them, “hush up or not take seriously any case.”

The warning came after the release of the latest catalog of church horrors, a scathing report by the Illinois attorney general, Lisa Madigan, finding that nearly 700 priests had been accused of abusing children over the years, while the names of only 185 were made public. It’s terrible, and terribly familiar. Earlier this year, a grand jury report in Pennsylvania accused bishops of covering up seven decades of widespread clerical abuse of children, and at least 16 state attorneys general have opened similar investigations.

The words of the pope and the authorities — about justice, divine and human — should be of deep concern at two major gatherings that the Catholic Church hopes will initiate genuine change in an institution almost brought to ruin by cascading revelations of clerics’ sexual abuse of minors, and systematic cover-ups by their bishops.

Action at the meetings — first a gathering of all American bishops outside Chicago in early January, then a summit meeting of the heads of all the national bishops’ conferences in the Vatican in late February — will be crucial if the church is to overcome broad skepticism after years of denial, obstruction of justice and callousness toward victims of predatory priests.

The depth of the problem was revealed nearly 17 years ago when The Boston Globe published its pioneering report on abuse in the Boston diocese.

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ROME (ITALY)
Associated Press

December 22, 2018

The Anglican Church’s representative to the Holy See has resigned following an allegation of sexual misconduct.

A statement from the Anglican Centre in Rome, an ecumenical study center and headquarters for the Archbishop of Canterbury’s envoy to the Holy See, announced the resignation Friday.

Archbishop Bernard Ntahoturi, former Anglican primate of Burundi, was appointed in 2017. He didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Details of the alleged misconduct weren’t released. A brief statement issued by the center said Ntahoturi was suspended last week and that the governors of the center had accepted his resignation.

Anglicans split from Catholicism in 1534, after England’s King Henry VIII was denied a marriage annulment. The two churches have forged closer ties in the last few decades.

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Vice
|
December 21 2018

By Alex Norcia

The latest horrific revelations of sexual abuse unpunished show, yet again, that the Church’s first tactic is to make excuses and hide.

On Thursday, the New York Times published yet another damning report about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, the latest in an endless series of horror stories about a broken institution that has long provided predators with access to children. In this case, Reverend Donald G. Timone, a priest repeatedly accused of sexual abuse, was revealed to have administered mass in New York as recently as earlier this month. This despite the Archdiocese of New York, the second-largest in the United States, being under immense pressure to hold abusers to account, with the Church at large embroiled in a global scandal that shows no signs of relenting. To that end, in September, Cardinal Timothy Dolan announced a sex-abuse review board, headed by a former federal judge, to look into how crimes and other wrongdoing have been dealt with in the past, and how investigations might be improved on going forward.

According to the Times, Timone was already involved with another entity, the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, a Church-sponsored panel created by Cardinal Dolan that sounds like something Winston Smith might stumble upon in 1984. That body paid settlements in cases involving at least two Timone accusers last year, one of whom committed suicide in 2015. The logical follow-up to would seem to be the priest’s defrocking, but no, actually: The archdiocese, which previously suspended Timone in 2002, never made a definitive ruling on his “fitness”—though it has since reopened his case—which left him free to operate in an official capacity around vulnerable members of the faith.

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FT. WORTH (TX)
Star Telegram

December 19, 2018

By Nichole Manna

A Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary graduate who resigned over the summer from the South Carolina Baptist Convention has been indicted on a charge of sexually assaulting a teenager in Arlington more than two decades ago.

Mark Edwin Aderholt, 47, was originally arrested on July 3 in South Carolina on a warrant issued in the Tarrant County case. Court records in Tarrant County show an indictment was handed up in the case on Tuesday for sexual assault of a child under the age of 17.

Aderholt has been out on bond since his arrest.

The indictments — four of them in total — brought relief to Aderholt’s accuser, Anne Marie Miller.

She was 16 when the alleged assault happened in 1997.

“I’m glad that truth is being heard and justice is being served and it is my hope that Mr. Aderholt will see this as another opportunity to confess and admit what he did,” she said Wednesday.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
Kansas City Star

By Judy L. Thomas

December 20, 2018

A former California youth pastor now on leave from the International House of Prayer in Kansas City has been dropped as a defendant in a sexual abuse claim against his former church.

Jennifer Roach says Brad Tebbutt, who in recent years had been running a ministry at IHOP for people in their 50s, is cooperating in her lawsuit against CrossPoint Community Church, formerly First Baptist Church of Modesto, Calif. Tebbutt was youth pastor at First Baptist in the 1980s when the abuse occurred, the lawsuit alleges.

Roach, now 47, filed the lawsuit in May against CrossPoint, First Baptist and Tebbutt, alleging that Tebbutt sexually abused her for 2½ years in the 1980s, starting when she was 15.

Roach, an ordained Anglican minister and therapist in Washington state whose clients include sexual abuse victims, also alleged in the lawsuit that church officials at First Baptist Church of Modesto covered up the abuse.

“I always knew First Baptist/CrossPoint mishandled my situation,” Roach told The Star on Thursday. “What I didn’t know was how many other adult men were also preying on teenagers at that church. They knew about the situation, did nothing, and sent those men off to do the same thing at other churches.

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SPOKANE (WA)
Catholic News Agency

December 21, 2018

The Diocese of Spokane said Thursday it was unacceptable that Jesuit priests credibly accused of sexual abuse were unsupervised on the campus of Gonzaga University. While Spokane’s current bishop had no knowledge the priests had been living at the university, the diocese said its prior bishop was informed of their presence in 2011.

“The Diocese of Spokane shares the concern of those who are angry and saddened to learn that the Oregon Province of Jesuits — now part of the Jesuits West Province — placed Jesuits credibly accused of sexual abuse at the Cardinal Bea House on Gonzaga University’s campus without informing the Gonzaga community,” a Dec. 20 statement from the diocese read.

In June 2011, “the Jesuit provincial, Father Patrick Lee, informed then-Bishop Blase Cupich that seven priests with safety plans in place were living at Bea House,” the diocesan statement added.

“Bishop Thomas Daly — who was installed in 2015 — was not informed by the Jesuits or Gonzaga University that these men were living at Cardinal Bea House.”

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Chicago (IL)
CBS TV

December 22, 2018

A recent investigation by the Illinois attorney general finds the Catholic Church failed to publicly identify the names of more than 500 priests accused of sexual abuse.

However, the Archdiocese of Chicago says this report will not be talked about when bishops from around the United States gather in the north suburbs next month.

Cardinal Blase Cupich is hosting 300 bishops at a spiritual retreat at Mundelein Seminary Jan. 2-8.

An archdiocese spokeswoman says during this time, clergy sex abuse will not be discussed.

The gathering is strictly for prayer, fasting and spiritual lectures.

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Lisa Madigan calls it absurd not to discuss the findings.

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NOME (AK)
KNOM Radio

December 21, 2018

Several stories have entered the media recently concerning the offenses of KNOM founder Fr. James Poole, SJ.

First, former KNOM volunteer Helene Stapinski wrote a column for Commonweal magazine as part of its “Why We Came. Why We Left. Why We Stayed” series, documenting different reactions to the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. Poole was no longer working at the radio station in the early 1990s when Stapinski was on staff, but insofar as his name was still affixed to KNOM correspondence at that time, and recordings of his voice occasionally sent over the airwaves, she indicates that she came to feel like an unwitting accomplice to Poole’s abuse and deception.

Then, a lengthy story by the Center for Investigative Reporting highlights Poole in a broader effort to show how clergy sex abuse in the former Oregon province of the Jesuit order was ignored or covered up by Jesuit superiors. This was packaged as a print story and picked up by the Associated Press, and also presented as an audio documentary, reported by former KNOM employee Emily Schwing. She served as KNOM News Director for three months in early 2016. Additional stories about Poole’s crimes have since appeared.

This is not the first time that Poole’s numerous acts of sexual abuse against minors have been documented publicly. The PBS investigative series Frontline told Poole’s story in 2011 as part of a program on clergy sex abuse in rural Alaska, and numerous TV, radio, and print stories covered the allegations against Poole as they became public in 2004 and 2005.

First and foremost, it is crucial to reiterate that Poole’s actions are indefensible and inexcusable. He brought pain and humiliation to his victims, and shame even to those of us who never knew him, but are forced to deal with his reprehensible legacy. The lawsuits against Poole and other priests and religious sent the Diocese of Fairbanks into bankruptcy in 2008, and nearly ended KNOM. But the station emerged in 2010 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, remaining faithfully Catholic in its identity, and with a volunteer board of directors serving as owner in place of the diocese.

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KNOXVILLE (TN)
Knoxville News

December 22, 2018

By Terry Mattingly

It was in 1983 that parents told leaders of the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, west of New Orleans, that Father Gilbert Gauthe had molested their sons.

Dominoes started falling. The bishop offered secret settlements to nine families — but one refused to remain silent.

The rest is a long, long story. Scandals about priests abusing children — the vast majority of cases involve teenage males — have been making news ever since, including the firestorm unleashed by The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” series that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003.

This old, tragic story flared up again in 2018, and Religion News Association members selected the release of a sweeping Pennsylvania grand jury report — with 301 Catholic priests, in six dioceses, accused of abusing at least 1,000 minors over seven decades — as the year’s top religion story.

“The allegations contained in this report are horrific, and there are important lessons to take away from it,” said Michael Plachy, a partner at Lewis, Roca, Rothgerber, Christie, a national law firm that emphasizes religious liberty cases. However, “to be candid, much of what’s in this report has been known for years. … It’s important, but it’s mostly old news.”

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia — a diocese not included in the grand jury report — requested an analysis of the 884-page document focusing on the impact of the church’s 2002 Charter for the Protection Children and Young People. Among the law firm’s findings: Of 680 victims whose claims mentioned specific years, 23 cited abuse after the charter — 3 percent of claims in the grand jury report. The average year of each alleged incident was 1979.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Christian Post

December 21, 2018

By John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera

Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims. That’s certainly true “out there” in the world. But it’s just as true “in here” in the church.

Last week, the Fort Worth Star Telegram released a series of articles reminiscent of the Pennsylvania grand jury report from earlier this year. You remember—the report that outlined rampant sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. I say “reminiscent” because of the similar details: clergy who used their position to harm the vulnerable, decades of intentional coverup of the crimes by those in authority, reassigning perpetrators to other churches and allowing them to harm more victims, and the emotional manipulation and even shaming of victims to protect the institution.

Even so, the Fort Worth report differed from the Pennsylvania report in one significant detail: The churches and clergy being exposed this time were on the opposite end of the ecclesiastical spectrum. One hundred sixty-eight leaders of independent fundamental Baptist churches, known as the IFBC, have been accused of a litany of crimes, including rape, kidnapping, and sexual assault. The victims included young children and teens, and stories included some of the most prominent IFBC leaders and churches in America.

This Fort Worth report hit me hard, maybe because I grew up on the outskirts of the IFBC movement. What I mean by “outskirts” is that my church followed Jerry Falwell out of the IFBC when he founded the Moral Majority and built a large university. Still, we had a bus ministry run by a group of really good men and women, who would get up extra early on Sunday mornings and pick up hundreds of mostly women and children who did not have a ride to church.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
Tribune Review

December 22, 2018

By Deb Erdley

When it snowed, Betty Nemchik always knew the sidewalks outside St. James Roman Catholic Church would be shoveled in time for morning Mass.

The now-retired church secretary said her boss, Monsignor Lawrence Persico, personally cleared a path to the New Alexandria church, where he served from 1998 to 2012.

Those who remember him recall a self-effacing cleric whose serious, gaunt demeanor masked a dry sense of humor that came to the surface when he joined congregants for coffee after morning Mass.

Jeffrey Rouse, an internationally-known art conservator, attended morning services just down the road from his studio. He came to call Persico a friend.

“We just loved him. We had so much fun,” Rouse said.

But Persico, who would become bishop of the Erie Diocese, also played another role in the church — serving as vicar general of the Greensburg Diocese. Responsibilities of that position included investigating claims of horrific clergy sexual abuse.

A searing statewide grand jury report, released in August, detailed rampant claims of Catholic clergy sexual abuse across Pennsylvania. The 900-page document included several cases Persico was a assigned to investigate.

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Patheos blog

December 21, 2018

By Hemant Mehta

In a speech made this morning to Vatican administrators, Pope Francis urged priests to do what the Catholic Church has proved incompetent at doing: Weed out the abusers in their midst. He told predatory priests to “convert and hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice.”

That might be great advice if anyone actually took the threat seriously. But if the priests didn’t follow the “Don’t rape kids” rule, it’s hard to imagine they’re going to fall in line with the whole “Turn yourselves in” approach.

It didn’t help that the pope also used his speech to go after critics of the Church who called out the abuse beyond merely reporting on it.

The pontiff also suggested that some critics of the Church are taking advantage of the scandals to inflict additional damage on it.

“Others, out of fear, personal interest or other aims, have sought to attack [the Church] and aggravate her wounds,” he said. “Others do not conceal their glee at seeing her hard hit.”

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ONTARIO (CANADA)
East Gwillimbury Express

December 21, 2018

By Lisa Queen

Once located in Aurora and now in Holland Landing, the Catholic Church’s Southdown Institute, which treats clergy with addictions and mental health struggles, has operated behind a shroud of secrecy since its 1966 founding.

But an explosive Pennsylvania grand jury report released in mid-August shone a light on how the church sent priests who sexually abused children to the facility before reassigning them to unsuspecting parishes.

Tim Lennon, president of the board of directors of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), called church treatment centres like Southdown a “dumping ground” for abusive priests.

Seven predatory priests from Pennsylvania alone were sent to Southdown, the grand jury report said.

That included Father John S. Hoehl, who sodomized two teenaged boys who agreed to change places with a girl the priest intended to rape.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Catholic News Agency

December 21, 2018

By Ed Condon

The Archdiocese of New York is facing questions about the sequence of events which led to the recent removal from ministry of one of its retired priests, Fr. Donald Timone. Fr. Timone is accused of sexually abusing two teenage boys during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In a story published by the New York Times on Dec. 20, it was reported that Timone was allowed to continue to publicly minister as a priest despite allegations first being made against him in 2003 and an independent commission paying compensation to two of Timone’s alleged victims last year.

The awards were made by the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program (IRCP), a body established by Cardinal Timothy Dolan in 2016 to compensate victims of clerical sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of New York.

Timone, 84, retired from full-time ministry in 2009 but has continued to say Mass in parishes and a Catholic university.

Initial media coverage of the case suggested that the handling of the allegations against Timone showed a failure in archdiocesan procedures. But a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York told CNA that the Timone case was “an example of the effectiveness of the Church’s procedures” and that the archdiocese had removed Fr. Timone from ministry in 2003 when the first allegation against him was received, and again this month following new complaints and more information becoming available.

“Sixteen years ago, after conducting their own investigation, the Dutchess County District Attorney referred to the Archdiocese of New York an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor made against Fr. Timone,” Joseph Zwilling told CNA.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WKBW TV

December 21, 2018

By Charlie Specht

Kathy Wagner and Debbie Pirog have been parishioners at St. John the Baptist Church in Alden for decades.

But never have they seen a controversy like the one that’s been brewing for months in their country parish.

In February, Bishop Richard J. Malone appointed Deborah Brown as the first lay woman parish administrator. St. John’s has functioned this year without a priest and has been a test case for a new model to deal with a shortage of men in the clergy.

“I assure you, you will be very well shepherded,” Malone told parishioners at the time.

But Brown now faces multiple allegations of sexual harassment. The allegations — while not as serious as those leveled against abusive priests — have caused controversy in the parish and have called into question how the diocese deals with complaints.

‘It was a very sexual kiss’

“I went out of Mass at 4 o’clock, and she hugged me real tight, and kissed me on the mouth,” said Wagner, adding that Brown held her body uncomfortably tight during the kiss.

The 87-year-old grandmother said Brown did it again weeks later, and then a third time. Wagner wrote a letter to Bishop Malone in October saying Brown “hugged me closely and kissed me firmly on the mouth.”

“Another woman wouldn’t kiss me like that, even my own sisters,” Wagner said. “My children would never kiss me like that. It was a very sexual kiss.”

Pirog had a similar experience, except she said Brown came up to her in the parish rectory, approached her from behind and “put her body against mine and her head on my shoulder,” according to an August letter she wrote to Bishop Malone.

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SCRANTON (PA)
Citizens Voice

December 22, 2018

BY David Singleton

The Diocese of Scranton has added a nun from Exeter who taught school for many years in Dunmore and 10 other people to its still-evolving list of individuals accused of sexually abusing children.

The additions bring to 81 the number of names on the list of “credibly accused individuals” the diocese originally disclosed Aug. 14 to coincide with the release of a statewide investigating grand jury report exposing decades of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy and steps taken by the church to cover it up in six Pennsylvania dioceses, including Scranton.

Of the 11 new individuals on the list the diocese maintains on its website, six have already been named by The Citizens’ Voice — three Jesuit priests whose identities were disclosed Monday by the religious order’s Maryland Province and three diocesan lay employees the newspaper determined in August were omitted from the diocese’s original list.

The other five include two diocesan priests who were not on the list released in August and three previously unidentified members of religious orders not directly associated with the diocese.

According to the diocese, the priests, religious and lay people on its credibly accused list have either served or resided in the Diocese of Scranton.

“This list is updated as the diocese is made aware of substantiated allegations,” diocesan spokesman William Genello said in an emailed response to questions about the fluidity of the online list and the process for adding names.

On its website, the diocese says allegations against the individuals were corroborated “by secular legal proceedings, canon law proceedings, self-admission by the individual, and/or other evidence.”

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SPOKANE (WA)
Reveal

December 21, 2018

By Emily Schwing, Michael Corey and Aaron Sankin

Two priests in high-level positions at Gonzaga University resigned today. Both previously held leadership roles in the Jesuits’ Oregon Province while it sent Jesuits accused of sexual abuse to live in a home on campus.

President Thayne McCulloh announced the resignations of Father Frank Case, university vice president and men’s basketball chaplain, and Father Pat Lee, vice president for mission and ministry, in a brief statement emailed to the Gonzaga community. Both men served on the University President’s cabinet.

Case was named in an investigation by the Northwest News Network and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting about sexually abusive Jesuits whose victims were predominantly Native girls, boys and women in Alaska and the Northwest. A Jesuit home on Gonzaga’s campus, Cardinal Bea House, became a retirement repository for at least 20 Jesuit priests accused of such sexual misconduct dating back as far as 1986.

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SPRINGFIELD (IL)
NPR Illinois

December 22, 2018

By Sam Dunklau

In the wake of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s Catholic Church investigation, a victim’s advocacy group is accusing the Catholic Diocese of Springfield of intentionally leaving the names of two predator priests off its public list. They say those names are part of the group of 500 Madigan uncovered.

Members of SNAP, or the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, stood across the street from Springfield’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. They held up signs that had names like Father Henry Willenborg and Father Thomas Meyer on them. Both were priests in the Springfield diocese, both have well-documented abuse allegations against them.

John Freml was one of the demonstrators. He says he’s disappointed with how Bishop Thomas Paprocki has handled the scandal.

“I think the Bishop has just lost all moral credibility in this Diocese, given how he has postured himself in relation to this issue.”

SNAP representative David Clohessy demonstrated alongside Freml on Friday. He says the Church can’t be trusted to handle the matter.

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ALTON (IL)
Alton Telegraph

December 22, 2018

By Nathan Woodside

A deceased former Alton priest named in a continued wave of sex abuse allegations within the Catholic Church unfortunately shares very-nearly the same name as a current priest in Jacksonville. The two are in no way related.

During a press event held Friday in Springfield, David Clohessy, a spokesman and former national director of the St. Louis-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) invoked Fr. Thomas G. Meyer, who served as a pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul Paul Parish in Alton from 1990 to 1998.

Last year, Meyer was included in a list of “substantiated” accusations of sexual abuse toward minors issued by the Minneapolis-St. Paul archdiocese.

SNAP resurfaced Meyer’s name, along with several others, as it was revealed the former Catholic cleric had also served in the Springfield diocese and had “attracted no discernible public attention before.”

Earlier Friday, Pope Francis ordered priests who’d committed sexual misconduct toward children to confess, and asked victims to come forward.

Clohessy said Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki had done the “bare minimum” in the wake of Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s investigation of Illinois dioceses’ handling of abuse allegations.

Later Friday, SNAP issued the following statement importantly clarifying that the accused, now deceased, Fr. Thomas G. Meyer is not the current Fr. Thomas C. Meyer serving in Jacksonville:

“This is a clarification regarding the SNAP press event held in Springfield, IL on December 21. It is important to note that there have been two priests in the Springfield Diocese with the same name.

“Fr. Thomas G. Meyer is a now deceased publicly accused abusive cleric and was a religious order cleric who worked in Alton.

“Fr. Thomas C. Meyer is alive, is NOT accused of abuse, is a diocesan cleric who now works in Jacksonville IL.

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BOISE (ID)
Idaho Statesman

December 20, 2018

BY Katy Moeller and Ruth Brown

The Rev. W. Thomas Faucher, a longtime priest in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise who pleaded guilty to five felony crimes, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison without parole and will be required to register as a sex offender.

Faucher, 73, was accused of amassing thousands of child porn images and videos on his home computer — and pleaded guilty in September to sharing some of those images online. He apologized in the courtroom ahead of his sentencing at the Ada County Courthouse in Boise on Thursday.

“This is the crime that has the potential for both immediate and long-lasting consequences,” 4th District Court Judge Jason Scott said. “… I think there is a legitimate risk to the community.”

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ORANGE COUNTY (CA)
Orange County Register

December 20, 2018

By Scott Schwebkeand Deepa Bharath

Pope Francis’ decision to accept the resignation of an auxiliary Los Angeles bishop amid accusations of misconduct with a minor does little to erase decades of cover-up by the Vatican, some Southern California victims of sex abuse by Catholic priests said Wednesday.

One victim, Lee Bashforth, said Monsignor Alexander Salazar’s resignation, many years after his alleged offense, is “disappointing and upsetting” for survivors.

“This is a problem the Catholic Church had an opportunity to fix,” he said. “They shoveled it under the rug. And 16 years later, we’re still having the curtain pulled back to reveal they are doing the same stuff they’ve been doing for centuries — covering up for pedophile priests.”

Appallingly, sexual assaults by priests most often have not been treated as crimes, said Bashforth, who was abused as a boy by Michael Wempe, a priest with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles at the time.

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PROVIDENCE (RI)
WPRI TV

December 21, 2018

By Tim White

The leader of the Catholic church in Rhode Island announced Friday that they will publicly name all priests who have been “credibly accused” of sexual assault.

Bishop Thomas Tobin said the church has “started the process of putting the list together of those who have been credibly accused both living and deceased.”

“I think my expectation that after the first of the year, sometime after the new year, we will be publicizing that list as many other dioceses have done,” Tobin said during a taping of WPRI 12’s Newsmakers. “I think about half the dioceses in the country have released that list.”

Tobin said he didn’t think any of the names on the list would surprise the public because most of the names have been publicized already in news reports or when a priest is removed from service.

“In my 13 years here I have publicly removed from office five priests who were credibly accused,” he said.

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SPRINGFIELD (IL)
WJBC Radio

December 21, 2018

By Dave Dahl

John Freml of Springfield is still part of the Catholic church, even though he’s a supporter of SNAP – Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

“I still identify as a Catholic; it’s a very contentious relationship, obviously,” Freml said during a news conference and protest outside Springfield’s downtown Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. “The church is not just the hierarchy; it’s the people of God, it’s the people in the pews, it’s the laity. The church can be and is so much better than this. I stay to help reform the church.”

He does say church leadership, including Springfield Bishop Thomas John Paprocki has lost all moral credibility in the priest sex abuse scandal, which exploded again this week with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s contention that the Illinois Catholic leadership underreported the number of priests facing credible accusations by 500.

David Clohessy, one of the early organizers of SNAP, said Madigan should be out front on this, holding news conferences all over the state. And he wants the state to drop the statute of limitations in cases of priest sex abuse.

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SANTA FE (NM)
NMPolitics.net

December 21, 2018

By Heath Haussamen

I remember a Christian Brother who taught at my high school taking us outside to show off a mountain he identified as “Tetilla Peak.” He described, to a group of underage teens in the 1990s, how much he loved tetas — in English, breasts, or more crudely but accurately, tits.

He often told us how much he loved women’s bodies. If he wasn’t a Christian Brother he would have 10 wives and 10 children with each wife, he said.

I had many creepy experiences at St. Michael’s High School in Santa Fe. Another was the reverence with which basketball coaches spoke about the legendary coach Brother Abdon, with no mention of the rape allegations.

More than two decades later, I’m processing all we’ve learned in 2018 from a grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania, our attorney general’s probe in New Mexico, and investigative journalism about how the Roman Catholic Church has systematically enabled and intentionally covered up the sexual assault of countless children and adults worldwide by its clergy, then shielded its assets from victims to protect its land and money.

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HUNTSVILLE (AL)
WHNT TV

December 21, 2018

By Patrick Ary

A Catholic priest who had north Alabama ties is on the Diocese of Birmingham’s list of clergy that were accused of committing acts of child abuse while working in the diocese.

Charles V. Cross, who died in 2010, is one of six clergy members the diocese identified. He began his clergy career as an assistant at Holy Spirit Church in Huntsville in 1967, according to the Diocese of Birmingham. Cross was at Holy Spirit for a little over a year before becoming a chaplain at St. Margaret Hospital in Montgomery.

Cross’s other work during his time with the diocese included:

Sept. 15, 1970 – Director of Catholic Charities, resident at St. Peter the Apostle
April 2, 1973 – Temporary administrator of St. Mark Church
July 1, 1975 – Associate pastor, St. Paul’s Cathedral
Oct. 15, 1976 – Pastor, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church, Gardendale
Dec. 1976-1988 – Served in the Diocesan Tribunal office

Cross was removed from ministry in parishes in 1985 and was forced to retire without privileges in 2002. Other details about allegations made against him were not disclosed by the diocese.

Three of the five other priests listed by the diocese also are dead. The two that are still alive, Kevin Cooke and John J. “Jack” Ventura, are not in service in any diocese, officials said. Cooke was removed from ministry in 2002, and Ventura was removed after allegations were made in 1985.

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SPRINGFIELD (IL)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

This is a clarification regarding the SNAP press event held in Springfield, MO on December 21. It is important to note that there have been two priests in the Springfield Diocese with the same name.

Fr. Thomas G. Meyer is a now deceased publicly accused abusive cleric and was a religious order cleric who worked in Alton.

Fr. Thomas C. Meyer is alive, is NOT accused of abuse, is a diocesan cleric who now works in Jacksonville IL.

We urge the public and the news media to make this distinction clear and apologize for any potential confusion.

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PITTSBURGH (PA)
KDKA-TV:

A priest who recently served as a pastor in Lawrence County has been placed on administrative leave after being accused of sexually abusing a minor.

Bishop David Zubik says the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh learned of allegations made against 74-year-old Father James Downs on Thursday.

Downs is accused of sexually abusing a minor in the early ’90s when he served as the chaplain to the former Youth Development Center in New Castle. The allegation has been reported to law enforcement and according to the Diocese, no prior victim has ever come forward against Downs.

The Diocese says Downs denies the allegation.

Downs served as pastor of Christ the King Parish in Bessemer/Hillsville and Saint James the Apostle Parish in Pulaski until he retired in July 2018.

Priests on administrative leave may not engage in public ministry, dress as priests or otherwise present themselves as priests in good standing.

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[Here is how the defense of accused priests is financed]

CHILE
La Tercera

December 21, 2018

By M.J. Navarrete and L. Zapata

La mayoría de los abogados que representan a los presbíteros vinculados a abusos sexuales en la Iglesia no cobra honorarios.

Según el último catastro del Ministerio Público, actualmente hay 124 investigaciones vigentes relacionadas con abusos sexuales en la Iglesia Católica. En estas causas se investiga a 178 personas, de las cuales 105 son sacerdotes y ocho obispos. Todos ellos se encuentran en calidad de imputados.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Washington Post

December 21, 2018

By Julie Zauzmer and Michelle Boorstein

Pope Francis used one of his major annual Christmas speeches to offer some of his strongest words about this year’s heightened sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic church, telling guilty priests the church will not protect them and they should turn themselves in.

“To those who abuse minors I would say this: convert and hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice,” Francis said in a speech at the Vatican on Friday.

Speaking to the Roman Curia — the central governing leadership of the Vatican — Francis described at length the sinfulness of priests who prey on children. “Often behind their boundless amiability, impeccable activity and angelic faces, they shamelessly conceal a vicious wolf ready to devour innocent souls,” he said, in remarks that drew often on the example of the sinful biblical King David. “Let it be clear that before these abominations the Church will spare no effort to do all that is necessary to bring to justice whosoever has committed such crimes. The church will never seek to hush up or not take seriously any case.”

Survivor advocates slammed Francis for focusing on priest-abusers rather than the leaders and system that protect them, while other Vatican observers praised his comments as a dramatic acknowledgment of the scope of the problem.

Francis’s call for abusers to turn themselves in “is silly. To command psychologically sick people to do the right thing? It’s also deceptive,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of Bishop Accountability, which documents abuse. “This speech represents a regression to the defense we heard from John Paul II, that the problem was with the perpetrators. We now know the more fundamental problem is with the complicit and deceptive hierarchy.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
The Independent

December 20, 2018

By Michelle Boorstein

Top Illinois official argues investigators found hundreds more accusations to those deemed credible

Illinois’ attorney general’s office on Wednesday accused the Catholic Church of dramatically low-balling the scope of allegations of clergy sex abuse, saying her investigators found at least 500 additional accusations against priests and clergy – compared with the 185 cases the church has found credible.

Lisa Madigan’s office acknowledged on Wednesday that a charge that has been found credible is not the same thing as a simple accusation. However, she alleged in a statement that a probe her office opened into the Church in August is finding Catholic leaders are failing to dig deep into the guilt of their clerics. The probe “has revealed that allegations frequently have not been adequately investigated by the dioceses or not investigated at all,” the statement said.

Some state Catholic leaders, under siege during a year of global scandal over bishops’ handling of abuse cases, pushed back. The crux of Ms Madigan’s announcement was unfair and “false”, said William Kunkel, counsel for the Chicago archdiocese.

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ATLANTA (GA)
The Associated Press

December 20, 2018

By Kate Brumback

Catholic church officials suppressed reports of abuse by a priest in northwest Georgia and failed to inform the community of the danger he posed, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.

The lawsuit, filed by a man identified under a pseudonym, Phillip Doe, says he was an altar boy at Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church in Dalton from age 12 to 15 and that he was sexually molested by priest John Douglas Edwards from 1976 to 1978.

The lawsuit filed in Cobb County Superior Court says the failure by the Archdiocese of Atlanta to report the alleged sexual abuse is a public nuisance because it endangered the public. It was filed against the archdiocese, Saint Joseph’s and Archbishop of Atlanta Wilton Gregory, who has presided over the archdiocese since 2005.

The archdiocese had not received the lawsuit Thursday and, therefore, could not comment, spokeswoman Paula Grant said in an email. She added that the archdiocese abhors every instance of abuse and offers support to survivors.

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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The New Orleans Advocate

December 20, 2018

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

The allegations date back to the 1980s

Catholic Church officials in New Orleans have settled a lawsuit accusing a priest and a deacon of sexually abusing a boy at a Treme parish in the 1980s.

The priest, Kenneth Hamilton of the Society of the Divine Word religious order, and the now-retired deacon, Lloyd Glapion, both have denied wrongdoing, the Archdiocese of New Orleans said in a statement Thursday.

Nonetheless, the archdiocese said it reached a settlement with the plaintiff for undisclosed terms on Wednesday and announced it to the public “in a spirit of transparency.”

“Our prayers are with all those who have been harmed by church leaders,” the archdiocese said.

The case, filed in 2015, centered on allegations of abuse at St. Augustine Catholic Church, 1210 Gov. Nicholls Street. The church is a separate institution from the high school of the same name in the 7th Ward.

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ALBUQUERQUE (NM)
The Associated Press

December 20, 2018

By Susan Montoya Bryan

Another lawsuit has been filed against the Catholic Church, alleging sexual abuse of a child by a now-deceased priest who once served at Our Lady of Health Parish in Las Cruces.

It’s the latest in a string of legal actions stemming from allegations of clergy sex abuse that span decades and have rocked parishes across the United States.

New Mexico’s largest diocese – the Archdiocese of Santa Fe – has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent months on lawyers to fight claims of abuse and to prepare for a potentially lengthy battle in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. In neighboring Texas, church officials are preparing next month to release the names of priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of a child.

Attorneys for a victim identified only as Jane Doe N filed a lawsuit Monday, naming the parish and the Diocese of El Paso, Texas, which used to oversee parts of southern New Mexico before the Diocese of Las Cruces was created.

The lawsuit says the victim had been left in the care of the parish pastor, Father Joaquin Resma, and that she was raped on multiple occasions. The girl was about 10 at the time and the abuse was intermittent for about a year during the late 1970s, according to the lawsuit.

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NEW YORK (NY)
CNN

December 20, 2018

By Eric Levenson and Elizabeth Joseph

Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie mogul whose downfall helped launch the #MeToo movement, is due back in New York court on March 7 after a judge Thursday morning ordered a pretrial hearing in the rape case.

The proceedings lasted just 10 minutes, a remarkably quick resolution to a highly anticipated and pivotal appearance that the defense had hoped would end with the charges against Weinstein getting dropped.

“We are obviously disappointed that the court did not dismiss the indictment, but Judge (James) Burke has ruled, and we intend to continue to vigorously defend this case to the best of our ability,” Weinstein’s attorney, Ben Brafman, said outside the Manhattan courthouse.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Gothamist

December 19, 2018

By JB Nicholas

In the seven months since Harvey Weinstein was led into Manhattan Criminal Court in handcuffs, his defense attorney Benjamin Brafman has been chipping away at the charges against the disgraced Hollywood mogul.

But Brafman’s court filings convey more than dry legal arguments to a judge. He’s configured them to broadcast sex-charged allegations attacking the credibility or character of Weinstein’s accusers—fully exploiting the mass-media megaphone Weinstein’s celebrity arms him with.

In the latest attack, for example, Brafman alleged that an unnamed third-party thought Weinstein and one of his accusers had been “hooking up.” This was breathlessly reported by The Hollywood Reporter to be a fatal blow to the criminal case against Weinstein, while The New York Times called it part of a greater “unraveling.”

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STATEN ISLAND (NY)
silive.com

December 21, 2018

By Maura Grunlund

The Rev. Thomas Kreiser, who briefly served on Staten Island, is accused of groping a girl at a Roman Catholic elementary school in Westchester County, according to information provided by a district attorney and the Archdiocese of New York.

Westchester County District Attorney Anthony A. Scarpino announced that Father Kreiser, 53, of Riverdale in the Bronx, was arraigned Tuesday on a charge of felony sexual abuse in the alleged incident.

Father Kreiser has a prior conviction for gambling, according to Catholic New York.

Father Kreiser was a parochial vicar for just under a year in 2010-2011 at St. Ann’s R.C. Church, Dongan Hills, according to Joseph Zwilling, director of communications for the Archdiocese of New York.

The Rev. Joy Mampilly, pastor of St. Ann’s, referred the Advance to Zwilling for comment.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

December 21, 2018

By Elyssa Cherney

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan made clear Wednesday that her decision to release a report identifying hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic priests was supposed to send a message to a contingent of U.S. bishops gathering in the state next month.

But the Archdiocese of Chicago fired back Thursday, saying bishops will not discuss the report or its findings at a historic seven-day spiritual retreat at Mundelein Seminary in suburban Chicago in January.

The retreat “will strictly be time for prayer, fasting and spiritual lectures,” Anne Maselli, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Chicago, said in an email. “No one other than bishops are included in the retreat. … It will not be open to the public.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune (TNS)

December 21, 2018

Sixteen years into the scandal of clergy sex abuse within the Roman Catholic Church, the horrors of these crimes still shock and disgust Americans. The exploitation of children, adolescents and adults by authority figures they had been taught to trust is reprehensible. We’ve written often of the lax, arguably criminal behavior of some local bishops and other church officials who shrouded grave misconduct in secrecy and didn’t share reports of abuses with civil authorities.

In August a report from Pennsylvania’s attorney general cataloged 70 years of such cases in that state. Attorney General Lisa Madigan responded with a comparable effort in Illinois, and on Wednesday her office issued nine pages of preliminary findings about cases in this state’s six dioceses.

The report is a step toward the transparency that’s been uneven in Illinois. The dioceses have had years to disclose credible allegations of abuse in some standardized way that’s easy to comprehend, and accept. For any church officials who haven’t done so, that’s the urgent Job One.

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VATICAN CITY
Huffington Post

December 21, 2018

By Carol Kuruvilla

Pope Francis has urged priests who have raped and molested children to turn themselves in and prepare for “divine justice,” in his strongest condemnations yet of the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis.

The pope pledged that the church would “never again” cover up or dismiss sexual abuse cases.

“To those who abuse minors I would say this: convert and hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice,” Francis said during his Christmas address to the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration, Reuters reported.

The pope admitted that the church had failed to act on this issue in the past, acknowledging that leaders refused to believe victims.

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UNITED STATES
Fatherly

December 20, 2018

By Patrick A. Coleman

The Catholic community, in America and abroad, is grappling with the horrific details put forth in a new report from the Illinois Attorney General claiming that church officials covered up for over 500 priests accused of abuse, releasing a public document with 185 names on it after compiling a list of 690 priests. The Illinois report followed on the heals of a Pennsylvania grand jury report claiming over 1,000 victims of rape and sexual predation were ignored or actively silenced by church leaders, many of whom sheltered the perpetrators of awful crimes. Though both reports are devastating in their details, neither is shocking. Catholic clergy have a history of raping kids and the church has a history of covering it up.

The practical question the report forces Catholic parents of young children to answer is one parents in the church have faced before: Does my family’s participation in church life jeopardize the safety of my kids? Given that the reports out of Illinois and Pittsburgh follow revelations of a similar nature in Boston, Ireland, Kenya, the Philippines, and Croatia, we must entertain the notion that the answer is “yes.”

As such, many Catholic parents like myself are reconsidering how they engage with churches and religious institutions. Some will walk away. I will not. Instead, I will double down on my involvement in church matters because I’m aware that the presence of a father tremendously diminishes the likelihood of harm befalling a children. Pedophiles disproportionately targeted children with absent fathers. This seems to be particularly true of priests. As such, I see my consistent presence as a prerequisite for my children’s involvement in church life.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Esquire

December 20, 2018

By Charles P. Pierce

This story is not going to end.

Let us be plain. The institutional Roman Catholic Church as it currently exists is a prima facie international criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice. Absent the scent of incense, this would be the easiest RICO case any prosecutor ever brought. Consider what we’ve learned just in the last week.

1) Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan announced that her investigation had discovered that the identities of more than 500 priests against whom charges of sexual abuse had been lodged were still being kept secret by the institutional church in that state. From the Chicago Tribune:

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CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune

December 20, 2018

By Morgan Greene

18 priests with ties to Chicago area included, with instances dating as far back as 1955

Eighteen Jesuit priests with ties to Chicago-area institutions were named on a list released Monday alleging instances of sexual abuse dating back more than six decades, including one defrocked priest who was convicted of sex crimes in federal court.

The Midwest Province Jesuits, part of a Catholic religious order known for its focus on education, released a list of dozens of priests with credible allegations of sexual abuse to their names since 1955.

In a Monday evening phone interview, the Rev. Brian Paulson, provincial of the Midwest Province, said the list was a response to the scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church for the past two decades — from the 2002 abuse crisis exposed by The Boston Globe to the more than 300 Pennsylvania priests who were found to have sexually abused children, according to an August grand jury report.

“I think in the past, church leaders tried to avoid scandal,” Paulson said. “But I think now we realize the greater scandal is keeping this information in our drawer.”

Larry Antonsen, a Chicago leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said putting the names out there is a start. “I think it’s good that they’re putting out these lists, I really do,” he said. “Whether it’s complete or not, I don’t know. And it’s really hard to trust anybody in the Catholic Church because they’ve been hiding and lying for such a long time.”

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BRONXVILLE (NY)
Rockland/Westchester Journal News

December 18, 2018

By Michael P. McKinney

A former Bronxville priest was arraigned Tuesday on a felony charge of first-degree sexual abuse charge that prosecutors said involved touching a 10-year-old girl.

The Rev. Thomas Kreiser of Riverdale surrendered to authorities Tuesday afternoon and was arraigned in Bronxville Village Court, the Westchester County District Attorney’s office said.

Bail was set at $10,000. Kreiser is scheduled to be back in court on Jan. 16.

On Sept. 20, the district attorney alleges, Kreiser engaged in touching a child on an intimate part of her body in Bronxville during the school day.

Kreiser was stationed at St. Joseph’s Parish, which includes a church and elementary school.

His duties included visiting the school at the time of the alleged abuse. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York has removed Kreiser from the parish, the prosecutor’s office said.

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VATICAN CITY
The Telegraph/Reuters

December 21, 2018

Pope Francis has urged predator priests who have sexually abused minors to turn themselves in, making one of his strongest comments ever on the crisis sweeping the Roman Catholic Church.

While it was not immediately clear if Francis was referring to the Church judicial system, civil justice, or both, Vatican sources believed it was the first time the pope had made such a direct appeal.

“To those who abuse minors I would say this: convert and hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice,” Francis said in his traditional Christmas address to the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration.

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BRONXVILLE (NY)
WABC

December 18, 2018

A Bronxville priest is under arrest and accused of inappropriately touching a 10-year-old child at school earlier this year.

Thomas Kreiser was arraigned on a charge of sexual abuse after surrendering to authorities on Tuesday.

Officials say Kreiser touched a child on an intimate part of her body while in a school building on Sept. 20.

At the time of the alleged incident, Kreiser was employed as a Roman Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of New York and was stationed at St. Joseph’s Parish. As part of his duties, he was visiting the school at the time of the incident.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Archdiocese of New York

December 18, 2018

By Joseph Zwilling

Statement of Joseph Zwilling, on behalf of the Archdiocese of New York

As is our practice and our promise, the Archdiocese of New York first reported the allegation from the parents concerning Father Thomas Kreiser to the Westchester District Attorney’s office in September when it came to our attention. Both the archdiocese and the Parish of Saint Joseph, where Father Kreiser was assigned at the time, have been fully cooperating with the DA, and will continue to do so. While we will wait for the justice system to complete its work, due to the serious nature of the allegation, Father Kreiser has not been permitted to exercise his priestly ministry or present himself as a priest since the allegation arose.

We once again encourage anyone who has experienced abuse, no matter the source, to report it to the District Attorney. If anyone has suffered abuse by a priest or deacon of the archdiocese, we ask again that you contact our Victim’s Assistance Coordinator, Sister Eileen Clifford, at 646-794-2949, so that we might offer our assistance as well.

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