ABUSE TRACKER

Patheos blog

January 11, 2019

By Jane the Actuary

Oh, man, I started the day with the firm resolve to figure out the liability and asset reconciliations in the 2009 Chicago Municipal Employees’ pension report which were defeating me yesterday. (Yes, I spent December writing about multiemployer plans and am spending January with Chicago pension plans and wish there was profit somewhere in it but in the short term figure that as a silver lining I won’t be at risk of having my credibility questioned by being deemed a tool for some interest group or another.) But then I end up writing about the shut-down and immigration, and then came to the conclusions that I really will get back to the original project for the day as soon as I finish up this older draft article that feels newly relevant with the latest news, that is, that Cardinal Wuerl KNEW about McCarrick, or, rather, that his knowledge, that we all pretty much suspected to be the case, is now documented, as reported by the Catholic News Agency yesterday.

And it’s infuriating, as is much of the news about the topic, though I don’t want to recite it all right now; one certainly has the feeling that the upcoming February meeting that’s supposed to formulate a response will be more a matter of defensiveness and bishop/pope-protection and spin than genuine efforts at a solution.

But I’ve tried to slow myself down.

I still gripe about it, yes. I have also come to the conclusion that a meaningful next step I can take at the parish level is either finding a booklet on the existing policies and make efforts to promote it, or else put together such a booklet myself, as an equivalent to what the BSA does, because it seems to me that this should be the norm.

But as to the rest? This is where I hesitate.

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
WAMU Radio

January 11, 2019

By Natalie Delgadillo

The Archdiocese of Washington has confirmed that Cardinal Donald Wuerl was aware of allegations of abuse and improper conduct by his predecessor, former Washington Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, as early as 2004, despite Wuerl’s public denials that he knew about the accusations.

The Washington Post first reported on the discrepancy from Weurl’s past statements. Robert Ciolek, one of McCarrick’s alleged victims, told the Post that he has reviewed documents that showed Wuerl knew about his allegations of improper conduct and took them to the Vatican in 2004. But after the allegations came to light in 2018, Wuerl publicly said he “had not heard” about them during his years in Washington or “even before that.”

Wuerl was pressured over the summer to step down from his position as Archbishop of Washington after a Pennsylvania grand jury report revealed that he had sometimes worked to reassign alleged abusers in the clergy to different parishes during his time as Bishop of Pittsburgh. The Vatican accepted his resignation, but asked him to remain on the job until his successor is appointed.

The Vatican suspended McCarrick from his position as a cardinal last June after receiving a credible allegation that he had abused a 16-year-old altar boy in New York in 1971 and 1972. McCarrick was the archbishop of Washington—popular, well-respected, and well-liked in the region—from 2001 to 2006. Several new allegations arose against McCarrick in the weeks following, both from men who were minors and adult seminarians when the alleged abuse or harassment took place. One of those men was Ciolek, a former priest himself, who said McCarrick forced him and other young seminarians to sleep in the same bed with him and to exchange backrubs, according to the Post.

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

YORK (PA)
York Daily Record

January 11, 2019

By Candy Woodall

Harrisburg Bishop Ronald Gainer stood in front of an altar still decorated for Christmas and apologized to priest abuse survivors, and other parishioners, for the Catholic church’s sins of the past.

The abuses and cover-ups that have been publicly reported extend from about 1940 through last year, but the diocese’s safety plans raise questions about whether there are enough protections in place today to ensure children are never sexually abused again.

Gainer spoke Thursday night to about 250 people at Saint Catherine Laboure Parish in Swatara Township near Harrisburg, leading the first of nine listening sessions that will be held throughout the diocese. The final session is the only one that will be held in York County, and it will take place at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 26 at St. Rose of Lima Parish, 950 West Market Street.

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

BROOKVILLE (PA)
Associated Press

January 11, 2019

A Roman Catholic priest who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing two boys and making one of them say confession after the assaults is set to be sentenced in Pennsylvania court.

David Lee Poulson is one of two priests charged as a result of a damning Pennsylvania grand jury report that named almost 300 predator priests accused of abusing more than 1,000 victims in six of the state’s dioceses.

Court records show 65-year-old Poulson is scheduled to be sentenced at 1 p.m. Friday after pleading guilty in October to corruption of minors and child endangerment.

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

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Religion News Service

January 11, 2019

By Mark Silk

Jason Berry is sipping an Old Fashioned in La Petite Grocery, talking about City of a Million Dreams, the splendid soup-to-nuts history that he’s written to mark the 300th birthday of his beloved home town. The deep theme of the book, he says, is “spirit versus law,” and it’s a theme exemplified nowhere more than in the religion of the place.

Take Padre Antonio de Sedella, the Spanish Capuchin known as Père Antoine to the French speakers who dominated La Nouvelle-Orléans in its first century. He arrived as an agent of the Spanish Inquisition and ended up as the city’s leading advocate for the poor and enslaved. Kicked out of the city by the powers-that-be, he returned to the city in triumph, becoming rector of St. Louis Cathedral and running off any bishop who got in his way.

“He was a megalomanic who wanted to be loved by the people at the margins,” Berry says.

Then there was Mother Catherine Seal, a spiritualist healer whose beliefs harked back to the Great Mother cults of prehistory and whose followers came from every race and class. In the 1920s, she established a sprawling complex in the Lower Ninth Ward that took in unwed mothers, abused women.

And Sister Gertrude Morgan, a mystic who believed herself to be both bride of Christ and bride of God the Father. After World War II, she became one of the city’s celebrated folk artists.

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

[Ezzati and key bishops of the Chilean Episcopal Conference head to Rome to meet with Pope Francis]

CHILE
La Tercera

January 11, 2019

By Carla Pía Ruiz

Desde el Vaticano confirmaron a La Tercera PM el encuentro, que, según informó este viernes la CECh, se realizará este lunes 14.

Será una reunión en el Vaticano a un año exacto de que Francisco visitara tierra chilena. Un grupo de obispos clave de la Conferencia Episcopal chilena (CECh) se reunirá el lunes 14 de enero con el Papa en Roma.

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

[Chillán diocese extends investigation against priest accused of sexually abusing a minor]

CHILE
La Tercera

January 9, 2019

By Carlos Reyes

El religioso ya enfrentaba una indagatoria por presuntas “conductas impropias al sexto mandamiento”. La diócesis local determinó aplicar las medidas cautelares de “prohibición del ejercicio de todo ministerio público por parte del sacerdote, además de la fijación de domicilio. Asimismo, se le ha apartado de su rol de párroco de Cobquecura”. Además, la información fue remitida a la Fiscalía Nacional.

El obispado de Chillán informó que decidió ampliar la investigación previa que existe contra el sacerdote Jaime San Martín Solís a raíz de una denuncia por presunto abuso sexual contra una menor de edad.

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

[Exclusive: Vatican opens criminal process in Marists’ case]

CHILE
The Clinic

January 11, 2019

By Alejandra Carmona López

Una vez terminada la primera etapa de la investigación previa, que concluyó en septiembre, los “hermanos” debieron mandar la información al encargado provincial y después tomar una decisión frente a los numerosos testimonios recibidos sobre abusos sexuales cometidos por miembros de la congregación. Sin embargo, aun no hay sanciones. En una fuerte señal desde Roma, que fue notificada ayer a los Maristas, el Papa ordenó promover un proceso penal ante la Congregación para la Doctrina de la Fe.

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

[Marist Abel Pérez confesses to sexually touching 20 – 30 children in different schools]

CHILE
The Clinic

December 6, 2018

By Jonah Romero Sánchez

En su declaración ante la justicia canónica, el religioso Abel Pérez reveló que las más altas autoridades maristas sabían de su “problemática”, que por años recibió terapia sicológica y que nunca quiso ser religioso. The Clinic accedió al informe canónico –especie de “investigación previa”- que busca acreditar la verosimilitud de las denuncias en contra de éste, el primer religioso marista en ser denunciado en Chile. El informe -que recoge la voz de sobrevivientes, testigos, y la del propio acusado- entrega pistas sobre la formación de una de las redes de pederastía infantil más grandes en la historia del país.

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

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The Advocate

January 11, 2019

By Ramon Antonio Vargas

The Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux on Friday named six Catholic priests who admitted or were convicted of sexual misconduct with children as well as three others who faced civil litigation credibly accusing them of molesting minors.

Another five were credibly accused outside of a court setting of “serious and unacceptable conduct with minors, ranging from inappropriate physical contact … to molestation,” bringing the total number of names on Friday’s list to 14, officials said.

The Bishop of Houma-Thibodaux, Shelton Fabre, has sent parishioners a letter offering an apology “for the egregious sins that have taken place.”

“Let me be clear: the abuse of a child by anyone is sinful, abhorrent and evil, particularly when perpetrated by one vested with the sacred trust of God’s children,” Fabre’s letter read. “Furthermore, any attempt to cover up these sins is even more disturbing. I apologize to all who have been harmed. It is with deep respect and profound reverence that I humbly extend this apology.”

Priests Alexander Francisco and Carlos Melendez admitted to inappropriate physical contact with a minor, and Robert Melancon was convicted of raping a child, the diocese said.

Dale Guidry and Lawrence Cavell solicited children for sex, while Guidry was also accused of molesting a minor. Patrick Kujawa was convicted of child pornography possession.

Three other priests were sued over sexual abuse allegations that the church deemed credible: Etienne LeBlanc, Gerald Prinz and Bernard Schmaltz.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Gallup

January 11, 2019

By Megan Brenan

Amid turmoil in the Roman Catholic Church in the ongoing fallout from priest sex abuse scandals, a record-low 31% of U.S. Catholics rate the honesty and ethical standards of the clergy as “very high” or “high.” This marks an 18-percentage-point drop between 2017 and 2018, when more sexual abuse allegations against priests surfaced and questions arose about the Vatican’s response.

Gallup has measured the public’s views about the clergy’s ethical standards since 1977 as part of its broader “honesty and ethics of professions” poll. Initially high ratings of the clergy have been declining steadily among all adults since 2012.

The latest findings, from a Dec. 3-12 Gallup poll, come after a Pennsylvania Grand Jury report in August detailed accusations of sexual abuse involving more than 300 Catholic priests over 70 years. The report indicated that Catholic bishops and other high-ranking church leaders covered up these incidents.

The latest drop in Catholics’ positive views of the clergy’s ethics, from 49% to 31%, is the second double-digit drop since 2004. Both declines were clearly associated with scandals in the Catholic Church even though the question about clergy does not specify a denomination.

Between 2004 and 2014, a majority of Catholics rated the clergy’s ethics highly, but opinions fell sharply between 2014 and 2015. That 13-point drop from 57% to 44% followed the release of a study by the Catholic Church that found more than 4,000 priests had faced sexual abuse accusations in the prior 50 years.

Although Protestants’ ratings of the clergy have dropped since 2004, the decline has not been as sharp, and the latest 48% positive rating of the clergy is much higher than Catholics’. Still, it is the first reading that falls below the majority level among Protestants.

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HOUSTON (TX)
Houston Chronicle

January 10, 2019

By Nicole Hensley

The criminal probe into a Houston-area priest is on pace to go to trial, which could become the region’s highest-profile clergy sex abuse case in more than two decades.

The priest’s lawyer, Wendell Odom, made the prediction Thursday afternoon after his client, Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, was rushed out of the Montgomery County courthouse through a back door after a status hearing.

“This is such a high-publicity case, in all probability, I think this case is going to go to trial,” Odom said.

The clergy investigation, which expanded last fall with a fourth search warrant at the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston headquarters in downtown Houston, has produced a hefty load of evidence for authorities to examine. The three prior searches happened at the Shalom Center in Splendora, Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Conroe and La Rosa-Lopez’s most recent assignment at St. John Fisher Church in Richmond.

La Rosa-Lopez last appeared in court in October. He was arrested Sept. 11 on four counts of indecency with a child for claims that he molested a boy and a girl at the Conroe parish from 1998 to 2000.

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HARRISBURG (PA)
Patriot News

January 11, 2019

By Christine Vendel

About 250 people attended a town-hall style meeting at a Harrisburg Catholic parish night to hear what their church was doing differently after revelations that thousands of children were molested by priests over decades.

Parishioners asked tough questions at the 7 p.m. meeting at the Saint Catherine Laboure Parish at 4000 Derry Street. It was the first in a series of planned “listening sessions” by Bishop Ronald W. Gainer across the Harrisburg Diocese, which covers 89 parishes.

The Harrisburg Diocese last year was one of six at the center of a grand jury investigation led by Attorney General Josh Shapiro that unearthed widespread clergy sex abuse spanning seven decades, as bishops and church officials turned a blind eye to the crimes.

Some parishioners said they planned to withhold their financial offerings to the church until they felt more trust and saw more transparency from the diocese, said Carolyn Fortney, one of five sisters who were sexually abused as children by the same priest in Dauphin County. All five sisters attended the two-hour meeting.

Patty Fortney-Julius said she thought Gainer spoke from his heart at the meeting but that he remained “disconnected” and still “doesn’t get it.”

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
NBC Channel 4

January 10, 2019

By Gina Cook

According to new reports, Cardinal Donald Wuerl knew of sexual abuse allegations against ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick more than a decade ago — despite Wuerl’s statement last summer that he had no knowledge of the allegations.

The Washington Post reports Wuerl reported an allegation of misconduct by McCarrick to the Vatican in 2004.

Robert Ciolek, a former priest who reached a settlement with the church in 2005 for alleged abuse involving McCarrick and other clerics, told the Post the Pittsburgh Diocese has a file that shows Wuerl brought his complaint to a Vatican ambassador.

In a statement to NBC News, the Archdiocese of Washington confirmed that Ciolek “was allowed to review the file regarding his Pittsburgh complaint” and that the “Diocese of Pittsburgh and then-Bishop Wuerl acted appropriately in addressing his complaints.”

“Cardinal Wuerl has attempted to be accurate in addressing questions about Archbishop McCarrick. His statements previously referred to claims of sexual abuse of a minor by Archbishop McCarrick, as well as rumors of such behavior,” the archdiocese said. “The Cardinal stands by those statements, which were not intended to be imprecise.”

Wuerl resigned as archbishop in October amid a storm of criticism after a Pennsylvania grand jury report said he allowed priests accused of sexually abusing children to be reassigned or reinstated when he was the bishop of Pittsburgh.

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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

January 11, 2019

by Tom Roberts

Editor’s note: The text of the talks delivered by Capuchin Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the papal household, to the U.S. bishops during their Jan. 2-8 retreat at Mundelein Seminary, outside of Chicago, are available at this link.

Texts of the 11 talks delivered to the U.S. bishops who gathered for a week’s retreat at Mundelein Seminary outside of Chicago show a heavy emphasis on traditional themes, a robust defense of celibacy, a severe criticism of attachment to money and an endorsement of new lay movements as a replacement for declining numbers of clerics.

Franciscan Fr. Daniel P. Horan writes about politics, culture and theology in his new column, Faith Seeking Understanding.

NCR obtained the texts, 84 single-spaced pages, and they can be seen in their entirety here. They were delivered during the Jan. 2-8 retreat by Capuchin Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the papal household.

The talks contain only passing reference to the sex abuse scandal that was the reason behind the unusual retreat, suggested by Pope Francis, and the omission was intentional.

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DALLAS (TX)
Dallas Morning News

January 11, 2019

David Tarrant

Dallas police detective David Clark has spent eight years investigating the horrors of child exploitation — a job that still motivates him because he gets to catch abusers, even if it takes years.

“What really gets me is somebody is living their life and thinking they got away with something,” he said.

Now, Clark’s full-time focus at the Dallas Police Department is on investigating sex-abuse allegations — including many that are decades-old — by Catholic clergy members.

The Catholic Church worldwide has been rocked by the latest spate of sex-abuse scandals, prompting dioceses to take new transparency measures. Victims’ advocates, however, still don’t trust the church, and say outside law enforcement officers, like Clark, need to take the lead on the cases.

Clark — the son of a 41-year veteran Dallas officer and detective who retired in 2012 — joined the department in 1998 after graduating from the University of North Texas. His supervisor, Sgt. Rene Sigala, said Clark is “relentless,” and “will not stop until he solves the cases assigned to him.”

Clark said he’s driven to help adults who have survived child abuse.

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LYON (FRANCE)
Associated Press

January 10, 2019

A court trying a French cardinal on charges he covered up the sexual abuse of minors by one of his priests will render its verdict on March 7, the judge in the case said yesterday.

Lawyers representing nine adult plaintiffs — former boy scouts allegedly abused by Bernard Preynat, a 73-year-old priest — led the charge against the archbishop, since prosecutors declined to press charges because of the statute of limitations.

The abuse relates to acts committed before 1991.

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BALTIMORE (MD)
Associated Press

January 10, 2019

By David McFadden

Maryland’s top law enforcement official on Thursday announced a phone hotline for victims to report child sex abuse associated with a place of worship or school across the U.S. state, which is steeped in Catholicism like few others.

Attorney General Brian Frosh announced the creation of the hotline in Baltimore, home to the country’s first bishop, first cathedral, first diocese and first archdiocese. Unlike counterparts in other states that have formally announced probes into clergy sex abuse, Frosh’s office has only publicly called for victims of abusers linked to schools or places of worship to come forward.

But last year, Baltimore Archbishop William Lori wrote priests and deacons in the archdiocese advising them that Frosh’s office was delving into church records as part of an investigation into child sex abuse. He has pledged full cooperation throughout the process.

Zach Hiner, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, praised the launch of the hotline, saying it gives abuse victims a “new avenue to come forward” and name their abusers.

But he said Frosh and Maryland lawmakers needed to do more. Attorneys general have launched investigations in states including New Jersey, New York, Nebraska, Florida and Delaware, and in cities where local prosecutors are looking into individual priests. Frosh’s office does not confirm or deny the existence of any investigations.

“We hope that this hotline will not only lead to more survivors coming forward, but also provide an impetus for the attorney general to open a full investigation and for Maryland’s state legislature to begin reforming their statutes of limitations and opening civil windows for old cases to be brought forward,” Hiner said Thursday.

Liz McCloskey, part of a coalition of Catholics called the 5 Theses movement that has posted its proposals for reform on church doors in Baltimore and other cities, said “allowing the full scope of the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church to come to light in every diocese in every state will make room for a measure of healing for its survivors.”

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

WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

January. 10, 2019

By Carol Glatz

By summoning leaders of the world’s bishops’ conferences and top representatives of religious orders to the Vatican in February to address the abuse crisis and the protection of minors, Pope Francis is sending the message that the need for safeguarding is a global issue.

Even though media attention and public fallout for the Church’s failings have focused on a small group of nations, abuse experts and victims know that does not mean the rest of the world is immune from the scandal of abuse or can delay taking action to ensure the safety of all its members.

While Catholic leaders in some countries might not recognize it as a global issue, Vatican offices that receive abuse allegations have a “clear idea about what is the situation now because allegations come from all parts of the world,” said Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, president of the Center for the Protection of Minors at the Pontifical Gregorian University and a member of the organizing committee for the February meeting.

Because the Catholic Church mandates that all credible allegations of the sexual abuse of minors by clergy must be sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican, “we have one office that has to deal with all of this so, for the time being, we know what are the allegations that come from different parts of the world,” he said.

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DUNEDIN (NEW ZEALAND)
Otago Daily Times

January 10, 2019

By Chris Morris

The Catholic Bishop of Dunedin is still not ready to decide on a name change for Kavanagh College, but insists he is ‘‘working quite hard’’ on the issue.

Bishop Michael Dooley was commenting as ODT Insight yesterday asked him for updates on the issues of historic abuse being tackled within the Dunedin diocese and nationally.

Among those issues was a push by survivors, their supporters and a group of former Kavanagh College pupils to rename the Dunedin Catholic college.

Bishop Dooley had delayed a decision in November, despite months of revelations about historic abuse within the Dunedin diocese — much of it under then-Bishop John Kavanagh — a public meeting and a petition.

Instead, he would only say at the time he was ‘‘seriously’’ considering a name change, without giving a timeline.

He declined to give a time-line again yesterday, saying he was still listening to arguments on both sides.

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ST. PAUL (MN)
Pioneer Press

January 10, 2019

By Sarah Horner

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis continues to meet terms of the settlement agreement it reached with the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office over its handling of clergy sex-abuse, according to court findings.

Ramsey County District Judge Teresa Warner Thursday signed off on the findings of the second of three court-ordered independent audits to monitor the archdiocese’s adherence with the agreement.

The audit, conducted by Stonebridge Business Partners, found the archdiocese to be in “substantial compliance” with the terms of the deal, according to the report released Thursday.

The audit covered the archdiocese’s conduct between July of 2017 and June 30 of last year. The archdiocese was also found in substantial compliance in its first audit report, which was released early last year.

During a court hearing on the second report Thursday, Warner asked the archdiocese’s director of ministerial standards, Timothy O’Malley, if the archdiocese was pushing itself beyond the court’s orders and truly working toward a change in culture.

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CHARLOTTE (NC)
Charlotte Observer

January 10, 2019

By Tim Funk

Dozens of Catholic dioceses and religious orders across the country have, in recent months, released lists of priests who have been credibly accused of child sex abuse over the years.

In North Carolina, the 54-county Raleigh diocese published its list in October. But the Charlotte diocese, which includes the rest of the state, hasn’t yet.

The state’s attorney general, Josh Stein, says the Charlotte diocese should follow the lead of the others. “I believe that transparency is important,” Stein told the Observer, “not only for families that came into contact with the named priest, but to restore confidence in the institution itself.”

The Charlotte diocese remains undecided about whether to join that “stampede,” as its spokesman called the big increase in such lists since August. That’s when a Pennsylvania grand jury report shocked many Catholics by identifying nearly 300 “predator priests” in that state going back decades.

Why no list so far from Charlotte?

For starters, said David Hains, who speaks for Charlotte Bishop Peter Jugis, there’s concern that a list might further hurt victims.

“There is no empirical evidence that publishing a list brings comfort or aid to a victim,” he said. “(Some Catholic priests) have obviously done a lot to harm victims. We don’t want to pile on and do more.”

The diocese is also torn about what should and should not be on such a list. “There is no standardized approach,” said Hains.

Should the list include, for example, any deceased priest who was accused after he died? “There’s no way that he can defend himself,” Hains said.

But about 60 percent of the 1,000-plus priests named in lists released since August are dead, according to an examination by the Associated Press.

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TRENTON (NJ)
InsideNJ

January 7, 2019

By Tom Barrett

“The trouble is, you think you have time.” -Buddha

In a basketball game if you’re still holding the ball when the shot clock expires, the most jarring noise in the arena, the buzzer, sounds off loud and clear. Known as a turnover, the ball goes over to the other team.

The Catholic Church in New Jersey is losing their match with the faithful. They’ve had more than ample time, decades actually, to do what is right for victims of sexual abuse. Having failed to police itself, the Church must know their time on the shot clock is about to expire.

Otherwise, there is little recourse other than to send in the cops. The same can be said of the New Jersey Legislature.

The New Jersey Attorney General has formed a task force to investigate allegations of sexual abuse by clergy members as well as alleged efforts by church leaders to cover up. To aid their efforts, the abuse cases should be well documented both by the church and the local prosecutors.

The credit for the task force, however, belongs to the Governor, not the Legislature. Legislative leaders, like the Church hierarchy, have had more than ample time to do what’s right.

But, due to the glacial pace of bureaucracies, investigative agencies and legislative bodies the need for justice wears thin.

While it’s now known that New Jersey’s five Catholic dioceses have shelled out more than $50 million dollars in the last ten years to settle abuse cases, that figure doesn’t tell the whole story. That huge sum does not accurately reflect the large amount of money spent by the Church on lawyers and lobbyists to stall legislation and thwart remedies for the abused.

It bears repeating that for the Church it’s no longer about protecting children because that responsibility they clearly know can be ceded to the courts. As for protecting priests, they are now pointing fingers at each other.

The justifiable and high profile case of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is a classic example of directing attention to one case while ignoring hundreds of other circumstances of priests and Church leaders gone rogue.

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MINNEAPOLIS (MN)
The Catholic Spirit

January 9, 2019

By Maria Wiering

Frank Meuers and Tim O’Malley meet every month or so, often for breakfast, to talk about the Church and clergy sex abuse. Meuers is the southwest Minnesota chapter director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, aka SNAP, and O’Malley directs the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’ Office of Ministerial Standards and Safe Environment.

Since its founding, SNAP has often positioned itself as an adversary of the institutional Church, which is why these meetings — and the men’s resulting collegiality — is so extraordinary. Meuers said he knows of no other SNAP leader with a similar relationship to a Church official.

Meuers, 79, is one of more than a dozen clergy sexual abuse survivors in regular — sometimes daily — contact with O’Malley and his office. O’Malley looks to them for advice and insight into improving and expanding the archdiocese’s outreach to survivors, and he expects that collaboration will broaden and deepen now that the archdiocese’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case is complete.

During the bankruptcy proceedings, more than 450 survivors filed abuse claims against the archdiocese. While some of those claimants worked with O’Malley’s office during the four-year reorganization process, he had heard that others might be newly open to connecting with the archdiocese after the end of litigation.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

January 10, 2019

The highest ranking Catholic prelates in New York and Boston are in an apparent rift over clergy sex abuse and cover ups, according to a Catholic news source. We are encouraged by this dispute and hope other bishops will emulate the Boston Cardinal.

Boston Cardinal Seán O’Malley wrote the Vatican’s US nuncio to the US about a credibly accused abusive cleric who was kept on the job in New York for years despite a large settlement paid to one of his victims. In reality, Cardinal O’Malley was really pointing out the misconduct of New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

The accused cleric in question, Fr. Donald Timone, taught for years at John Paul the Great University in California. Officials there had never been told about the allegations against Fr. Timone in New York, but had been deceptively reassured by the Archdiocese of New York that the priest was “suitable” for ministry.

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PARIS
VOA News

January 7, 2019

By Lisa Bryant

Lyon’s archbishop, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin and five other figures are on trial on charges of failing to act against sexual abuse allegations targeting a priest in his diocese. This is the latest pedophilia scandal rocking the Roman Catholic Church before a key Vatican conference on sexual abuse.

The sexual abuse allegations date back to the 1980s and 1990s. They involve Father Bernard Preynat, a priest in France’s Lyon diocese, who has admitted to wrongdoing and is due to go on trial later this year.

But one of country’s most prominent clerics, Lyon’s archbishop Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, is accused of covering up the abuse. If found guilty, he faces up to three years in jail and a $54,000 fine.

Barbarin denies the charges. He says he took action as soon as he found out about the sexual abuse allegations — many years later.

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POLAND
Reuters Videos

January 6, 2019

Poland’s rural east is one of the most devoutly Catholic regions in Europe. When the Church’s global sexual abuse crisis struck clergy here, it divided towns into camps of denial, fury, and loathing. Marcin Goclowski reports.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
The Washington Post

December 26, 2018

By Michelle Boorstein

In response to recent Catholic Church clergy sex abuse scandals, lawmakers in the District and Virginia say they will soon propose legislation that adds clergy to the list of people mandated by law to report child abuse or neglect.

Both efforts hit at the hot-button intersection of child protection and religious liberty, but lawmakers are expected to give them an open reception at a time when recent sexual abuse scandals in churches and others involving athletes have prompted conversation about broadening legal responsibility to extend beyond positions such as teachers and doctors.

The ideas under consideration by D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine include not exempting confidential conversations for any mandatory reporters, possibly including those that occur in the Catholic Church’s confessional. Texas, West Virginia and a few other states do not exclude the confessional in mandatory reporting laws, but it has been a stumbling block in many other places.

Under D.C. law, anyone 18 or over who knows or has reason to believe that a child under 16 is a victim of sexual abuse is required to report it to civil officials. But the requirements of mandated reporters are more extensive, and Racine is considering taking them much further.

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FRANCE
La Croix International

January 8, 2019

By Gauthier Vaillant

Maverick priest Pierre Vignon strongly criticizes the Church hierarchy but praises the pope’s desire for reform

After years spent investigating sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, Father Pierre Vignon of Vercors in the Diocese of Valence made headlines across France last August by launching a petition calling for the resignation of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon.

Clearly, it was no accident that his new book, Plus jamais ça! (Never again!), co-authored by journalist François Jourdain, was published on Jan. 2, less than a week before the start of Cardinal Barbarin’s trial in Lyon on Jan. 7.

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ALBANY (NY)
Times Union

January 3, 2019

By Joseph Dalton

In April 2016, the management and board of the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra were unable to reach their music director, Nathan Madsen. The ensemble, which was renamed the Woodstock Symphony Orchestra last fall, plays just four concerts a year and its final appearance of the season was coming up in May at the Quimby Theater on the campus of SUNY Ulster in Stone Ridge.

When Madsen was hired for the part-time position in 2012, he was working as assistant conductor of the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra in Texas. In 2014 he relocated to Florida, where he was a visiting professor of music and doctoral candidate at the University of Tampa.

Soon enough the Woodstock orchestra leadership found out why they’d lost touch with Madsen. In March 2016 in Tampa, he was arrested on charges of child trafficking and child pornography.

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PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Weekly

January 10, 2019

By Andrea Cantor

Pope Francis chastised American Bishops in a complete mishandling of sex abuse by the clergy in a letter penned earlier this month.

“The Church’s credibility has been seriously undercut and diminished by these sins and crimes, but even more by the efforts made to deny or conceal them,” Francis wrote. “This has led to a growing sense of uncertainty, distrust and vulnerability among the faithful.”

Many outlets and critics were quick to note Pope Francis excluded any mention of punishment for those guilty of molestation, including the 301 members of the clergy in Pennsylvania an explosive court filing cited for more than 1,000 incidences of child abuse. Instead, the pope urged the church to internally strengthen and repair itself.

“Let us try to break the vicious circle of recrimination, undercutting and discrediting, by avoiding gossip and slander in the pursuit of a path of prayerful and contrite acceptance of our limitations and sins,” Francis wrote.

One of the people not buying into the words from the pope is Arthur Baselice Jr. He is a father who speaks on behalf of his son, Arthur III, silenced by a fatal heroin overdose in 2006 after years of mental anguish stemming from repeated clergy abuse.

In the mid-1990s, Arthur III was sexually abused by two Franciscan clergyman at Archbishop Ryan High School in Northeast Philadelphia. The perpetrators included the principal Rev. Charles Newman and Brother Regis Howitz, then a maintenance worker at the school.

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MONTEREY COUNTY (CA)
KION

January 2, 2019

By Brandon Castillo and Drew Andre

The Diocese of Monterey has released the names of 30 Clergymen who have been credibly accused of sexual misconduct with a child.

According to the Diocese, the assaults go back to the 1950’s.

There have been two allegations received since the Charter for Protection of Children and Young People was put into effect in 2002 and implemented in the Diocese of Monterey in 2003.

The Diocese hired an outside law firm, Paul Gaspari of Weintraub Tobin, to review allegations against church workers.

“The Monterey diocese wants to ensure their people, there is no priest actively administrating in the diocese against whom there is a credible allegation of child abuse,” lawyer Paul Gaspari said.

None of the Clergymen on the list are currently with the Diocese.

The Diocese of Monterey said there have been no credible sexual misconduct allegations raised against a Clergyman since 2009.

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MONTEREY (CA)
Salinas Californian

January 2, 2019

By Joe Szydlowski

The Catholic Diocese of Monterey has identified 30 priests and other church officials accused of sexual misconduct with children, including a dozen previously undisclosed names.

The diocese has listed the names of its “priests, deacons, religious men and candidates for ordination (seminarians)” accused since the 1950s in a report on its website to “promote transparency and trust.”

The report notes that the number of allegations fell from six in the 1990s to two in the 2000s. The most recent alleged abuse occurred 10 years ago, the report says.

It points to the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People — a new set of procedures implemented in 2003 to prevent abuse, improve the investigation process and help victims — for that drop.

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Get Religion

January 10, 2019

By Terry Mattingly

The tragic (viewed from the right) and spectacular (viewed from the left) fall of Father C. John McCloskey, a popular Catholic apologist, from Opus Dei, continues to get quite a bit of ink.

Let me stress: As it should.

Before I get to a fascinating update at The Washington Post, let me pause and make an observation, or two.

No. 1: Consider this question: Looking at the American Catholic church over the past two or three decades (and at Catholic life in Washington, D.C., in particular), who was the more powerful and significant player — Father McCloskey or former cardinal Theodore McCarrick?

That’s a bit of a slam dunk, isn’t it?

Now, in terms of doing basic journalism, it appears that it has been easier to crack into the heart of the McCloskey case than it has the McCarrick case. Why is that? Is it accurate to state that Catholic officials linked to the McCloskey case have been a bit more forthcoming than those in the powerful networks linked to the former cardinal? Hold that thought.

No. 2: Over and over, people ask me why clergy sexual abuse stories in Protestant settings — evangelical flocks, in particular — receive so much less mainstream ink than Catholic scandals. There are several reasons for this:

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LYON (FRANCE)
La Croix International

January 8, 2019

By Béatrice Bouniol and Céline Hoyeau

Victims of French priest’s sexual abuse accuse six defendants of failing to report him to authorities

On one side of the courtroom, the victims’ faces are lit up by the lights of the cameras. On the other side, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin and his entourage painfully await, shoulders bent, the start of a trial that has attracted the attention of the world’s media.

The confrontation with Diocese of Lyon officials had been long awaited by victims of Father Bernard Preynat, the former scout almoner of Sainte-Foy-Lès-Lyon (Rhône) accused of abusing at least 70 children in the 1970s and 1980s and kept on in his post until 2015. They made it happen through a rare procedure of private prosecution.

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VATICAN CITY
La Croix International

January 7, 2019

Prelate involved in managing Vatican property faces diocesan investigation

Allegations of sexual abuse against a bishop from Argentina involved in managing Vatican property and investments are to be handed over to a special commission if credible evidence is uncovered by a preliminary diocesan investigation.

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FRANCE
La Croix

January 7, 2019

By Béatrice Bouniol and Céline Hoyeau

Civil plaintiffs aim to prove that the archbishop and his entourage failed in their obligation to report a priest’s sexual abuse

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin and five others will appear before the criminal court of Lyon from Jan. 7.

Over and above the case against Cardinal Barbarin, the victims of Father Bernard Preynat, accused of having abused at least 70 boy scouts from 1970-80, are hoping to advance the debate on the reporting of the sexual abuse of minors.

Archbishop of Lyon since 20002, Cardinal Barbarin is the third bishop in France to answer to the charge of “failure to report the sexual abuse of minors” before a court. Found guilty of the same charges in 2001 and 2018, Cardinal Pierre Pican and Cardinal André Fort were given suspended prison sentences of three and eight months respectively.

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CHILE
Reuters

January 2, 2019

By Aislinn Laing

Two victims of sexual abuse by a Roman Catholic Church priest in Chile launched a fresh attack on the country’s bishops on Wednesday, accusing them of failing to reform or learn from the crisis.

Juan Carlos Cruz and Jose Andres Murillo, two prominent victims of the abuse who gave evidence of their ordeal to Pope Francis in Rome, said the pontiff had also acted to slowly in handling the crisis.

Cruz said the Chilean church’s leaders, several of whom face criminal investigation for their roles in allegedly covering up abuse, had failed to follow through on their promises to institute reform.

“What we have in Chile is a veritable band of criminal bishops,” he said. “After visiting the pope, after everything that’s happened, that is happening with civil justice, they have learned nothing.”

Church officials declined to comment.

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VATICAN CITY
Reuters

January 3, 2019

By Crispian Balmer

Pope Francis accused U.S. bishops on Thursday of failing to show unity in the face of a sexual abuse crisis, saying internal bickering had to end over a scandal that has shredded the Church’s credibility.

In a long and highly unusual letter sent to U.S. bishops as they embarked on a week-long retreat, Francis said the handling of the scandal showed the urgent need for a new approach to management and mindset within the Roman Catholic Church.

“God’s faithful people and the Church’s mission continue to suffer greatly as a result of abuses of power and conscience and sexual abuse, and the poor way that they were handled,” the pope wrote, adding that bishops had “concentrated more on pointing fingers than on seeking paths of reconciliation”.

Pope Francis has summoned the heads of some 110 national Catholic bishops’ conferences and dozens of experts and leaders of religious orders to the Vatican on Feb. 21-24 for an extraordinary gathering dedicated to the now global crisis.

Victims of clergy sexual abuse are hoping that the meeting will finally come up with a clear policy to make bishops themselves accountable for the mishandling of abuse cases.

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UNITED STATES
CBS NEWS

January 2, 2019

Catholic bishops from across the U.S. are gathering Wednesday for a weeklong retreat on the clergy sex abuse crisis at a seminary near Chicago. Organizers said the retreat, which was requested by Pope Francis, will focus on prayer and spiritual reflection and not policy-making.

The gathering comes as CBS News has also learned of several cases involving nuns accused of sexual misconduct. The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests – or SNAP – said it doesn’t keep count of sexual abuse allegations, but CBS News’ Nikki Battiste has spoken with several women who recently reported misconduct, ranging from forceful kissing to molestation, all carried out by nuns.

When Trish Cahill was 15 years old she said she confided in Sister Eileen Shaw at a convent in New Jersey. Cahill said she told Shaw things she’d never revealed to anyone about her now-deceased uncle – a priest – whom she claims sexually abused her, starting at age five.

“I would have done anything for her. I would have died for her,” Cahill said. “She gave me everything that was lacking that I didn’t even know I was lacking. I was so broken. She filled in all those pieces.”

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KURAVILANGAD (INDIA)
The Associated Press

January 2, 2019

By Tim Sullivan

The stories spill out in the sitting rooms of Catholic convents, where portraits of Jesus keep watch and fans spin quietly overhead. They spill out in church meeting halls bathed in fluorescent lights, and over cups of cheap instant coffee in convent kitchens. Always, the stories come haltingly, quietly. Sometimes, the nuns speak at little more than a whisper.

Across India, the nuns talk of priests who pushed into their bedrooms and of priests who pressured them to turn close friendships into sex. They talk about being groped and kissed, of hands pressed against them by men they were raised to believe were representatives of Jesus Christ.

“He was drunk,” said one nun, beginning her story. “You don’t know how to say no,” said another.

At its most grim, the nuns speak of repeated rapes, and of a Catholic hierarchy that did little to protect them.

The Vatican has long been aware of nuns sexually abused by priests and bishops in Asia, Europe, South America and Africa, but it has done very little to stop it, The Associated Press reported last year.

Now, the AP has investigated the situation in a single country — India — and uncovered a decades-long history of nuns enduring sexual abuse from within the church. Nuns described in detail the sexual pressure they endured from priests, and nearly two dozen other people — nuns, former nuns and priests, and others — said they had direct knowledge of such incidents.

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BRONX (NY)
New York Daily News

January 9, 2019

By Marco Poggio and Larry McShane

Two Bronx sisters accused a high-ranking Catholic Church official of sexually assaulting them across five years after he was welcomed into their neighborhood as a parish priest.

The allegations were made public Wednesday outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral by Robert Hoatson, president of Road to Recovery, a charity assisting abuse victims and their families.

The older girl was in her early teens and her kid sister just age 7 when the abuse by Msgr. Charles McDonagh began in their home in 1972, according to Hoatson.

McDonagh had just arrived at Our Lady of Refuge, a heavily Irish parish in the Bronx. The priest, who died in 1999, was later promoted to serve as secretary to Terence Cardinal Cooke and his successor John Cardinal O’Connor, spending about six years in the position.

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

January 10, 2019

Earlier this week we learned that Catholic officials in New York and Chicago quietly moved an abusive priest and let him keep working around unsuspecting and vulnerable parishioners, even after paying nearly a million dollars to one of his victims. Making matters worse, those same officials had promised the victim that her abuser, Father C. John McCloskey would be kept away from others.

Yet the Washington Post reports today that, according to the Archdiocese of Chicago, “McCloskey was in fact allowed to minister with no restrictions for years afterward.” In this way, church officials both lied to the victim who they promised to help and then put others in harms way.

For almost 15 years, virtually no one was warned about Fr. McCloskey and the Church lied to at least one of his victims. Apologies are not enough. If these cover ups are to be stopped, complicit clerics must be held accountable. That should start with Fr. Peter Armenio, the man who was responsible for vouching for Fr. McCloskey after settling his abuse claim.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Religion News Service

January 10, 2019

By Fr. Thomas Reese

“Grossly misleading, irresponsible, inaccurate, and unjust” is how former New York Times religion reporter Peter Steinfels describes last August’s Pennsylvania grand jury report in its sweeping accusation that Catholic bishops refused to protect children from sexual abuse.

The report from a grand jury impaneled by the Pennsylvania attorney general to investigate child sexual abuse in the state’s Catholic dioceses has revived the furor over the abuse scandal, causing the resignation of the archbishop of Washington, D.C., and inspiring similar investigations in other states.

Steinfels argues that it is an oversimplification to assert, as does the report, that “all” victims “were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to protect abusers and their institutions above all.”

Writing in the Catholic journal Commonweal, Steinfels acknowledges the horror of clerical abuse and the terrible damage done to children, but he complains that no distinctions have been made in the grand jury report from diocese to diocese, or from one bishop’s tenure to another. All are tarred with the same brush.

Steinfels’ article will be published in the magazine’s Jan. 25 issue and is currently available on its website.

A major fault with the report, according to Steinfels, is its failure to acknowledge the impact of the 2002 Dallas Charter, which changed dramatically how the church responded to abuse. The charter required reporting credible accusations to police, the establishment of lay review boards and the removal of any priest guilty of abuse.

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CONROE (TX)
KTRK TV

January 9, 2019

By Chauncy Glover

A Conroe priest who is accused of abusing two parishioners when they were teenagers is expected to appear in court Thursday.

Father Manuel La Rosa-Lopez was charged with four counts of indecency with a child.

La Rosa-Lopez turned himself in to authorities at the Montgomery County Jail in September 2018.

One of the alleged victims, who is only going by “Ann,” spoke exclusively to ABC13 in September about coming forward about the alleged abuse, which happened nearly two decades ago.

“I can’t believe it’s happening,” she said. “I’m kinda in shock right now and very numb.”

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ALLENTOWN (PA)
The Morning Call

January 10, 2019

By Daniel Patrick Sheehan

Continuing its response to the clerical sexual abuse crisis, the Catholic Diocese of Allentown has created a cabinet-level position to oversee child protection services and is bringing back a longtime employee to fill the post.

Pamela Russo, former director of Catholic Charities in the diocese, has been heading Catholic Charities of Tennessee in Nashville since 2016.

Russo, a licensed social worker, “will be responsible for overseeing and improving all aspects of abuse prevention and child safety,” the diocese said in a news release Thursday. That will include reviewing all current policies on child protection, safe environments and victim assistance to determine their effectiveness.

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LONDON (ENGLAND)
Catholic Herald

January 10, 2019

By Jordan Bloom

While many were enjoying the Christmas season at home with their families and away from a frantic news climate of daily revelations about pub­lic figures, both religious and secular, a rift seemed to open between two of America’s most prominent clergymen. Despite the best efforts of the US bishops’ conference convening in Illinois in the first week of January, the hierarchy is not presenting a united front.

Just before Christmas, Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston sent a letter to Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio to the United States, calling his attention to a New York Times report about a priest, Fr Donald Timone, in the Archdiocese of New York. Fr Timone had been allowed to remain in ministry despite several settlements with people who had accused him of sexual misconduct. Church-watchers quickly concluded that O’Malley was, in effect, reporting New York archbishop Cardinal Timothy Dolan to the nuncio.

The letter, from which names are redacted, makes reference to correspondence sent to O’Malley from someone in New York. O’Malley wrote: “I note the seriousness of the allegations [redacted] presents with regard to Rev Timone and that today the New York Times has published an extensive report concerning the allegations against Rev Timone.” It is not clear whether the person whose correspondence is being forwarded was one of the people discussed in the New York Times article.

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Patheos blog

January 10, 2019

By Barry Duke

This week saw the start of a high-profile trial in France of six people accused of covering up clerical sexual abuse. But a seventh – Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer – is not among the defendants because the Vatican last year played the diplomatic immunity card and refused to hand the cardinal a summons issued by a French court.

They argued that Ferrer had advised the Diocese of Lyon not to involve the French justice system in the case.

It’s quite understandable why Ferrer is being protected. He is a Vatican high muckety-muck. In 2017 he became Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) – formerly the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition – and 2018 Pope Francis made him a cardinal named him the Cardinal-Deacon of Sant’Ignazio Loyola in Campo Marzio.

In 2010 a British barrister Geoffrey Robertson QC argued that the Vatican isn’t deserving of diplomatic recognition, that its claims to statehood are risible, and that it uses its status as a state to take refuge from international law and to cover up clerical sex abuse crimes.
According to Catholic website Crux, the case was brought to court by nine people who said Preynat abused them in the 1970s and 1980s. The victims say top clergy were aware of Preynat’s actions for years, but allowed him to be in contact with children until his 2015 retirement.

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EL PASO (TX)
KLAQ Radio

January 9, 2019

By Veronica Gonzalez

Since the movie Spotlight was released a lot of El Pasoan’s were in store for a rude awakening. It was towards the end of the movie that we felt our stomachs turn after reading the credits. There were major abuse scandals that were reported from El Paso, Texas.
After discovering the ugly truth about El Paso being a part of the list put some fear into me. Before my son was old enough we had planned to put him in a Catholic private school. The movie Spotlight was released in 2016 which happened to be the first year my son attended a private school.

This kind of movie would raise all kinds of concern especially after El Paso was one of the cities named. El Paso was featured on the first list, second column, and right dab in the middle. It was Rev. David A. Holley that abused over 32 boys and was a part of the El Paso Catholic Diocese. If that ever happened to my son I can guarantee I would earn myself a front row seat in hell for harming a Priest.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

January 10, 2019

By Julie Zauzmer and Michelle Boorstein

When a woman who was groped by the priest she turned to for counseling reached a $977,000 settlement with the Catholic community Opus Dei in 2005, she was promised that the priest she claimed harassed her — the Rev. C. John McCloskey, a star in the Catholic world who converted prominent politicians to the faith — would be prevented from doing it again to someone else.

On Wednesday night, two days after Opus Dei publicly acknowledged the huge settlement for the first time, the Archdiocese of Chicago said that at least on paper, McCloskey was in fact allowed to minister with no restrictions for years afterward.

The archdiocese disputed some of the account provided by Opus Dei this week about how the conservative Catholic community handled McCloskey, and provided a 2005 letter from an Opus Dei leader that shows the leader vouched for McCloskey even though he knew about the settlement.

What emerges, from conflicting accounts, is a picture of Catholic leadership in both the archdiocese and Opus Dei who told the woman they would restrict McCloskey’s actions — and then left a paper trail describing him as having an unblemished record.

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NEW YORK (NY)
City & State NY

January 10, 2019

By Justin Sondel

For as long as Catholics have been filling the pews in Western New York, church leadership has exerted great power in the neighborhoods and in the halls of government. “Growing up, there was a clear deference to whatever the priests wanted,” said Burke, himself a practicing Catholic. “They sort of controlled everything that was part of that social life.”

As has been the case in so many Catholic communities, the Buffalo Diocese’s response to allegations of sexual abuse has shaken the church to its core. New documents, obtained from a whistleblower by investigative reporter Charlie Specht and reported throughout 2018, showed a pattern of accused priests returning to the ministry in Western New York that was previously unknown. That has contributed to a new political dynamic: Democrats from South Buffalo are engaging in public battles with the church rarely seen before the sex abuse scandals became public, and they are planning to vote with their party for the Child Victims Act, potentially clearing the bill’s path to passage.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Commonweal

January 9, 2019

By Peter Steinfels

August 15 is the Feast of the Assumption, a “holy day of obligation,” when Catholics are expected to attend Mass. This year millions of Catholics went to church sick at heart. I was among them.

The day before, the attorney general of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had released a grand-jury report declaring that hundreds of Catholic priests had sexually abused minors. The grand jury’s conclusions were summarized in reports that landed on the front pages of the New York Times and other newspapers around the world, as well as lead stories on all sorts of television news programs. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro spoke on The Today Show and nightly news broadcasts. No Catholics serious about their faith, indeed no one of any sensitivity, could have read about the report without feeling horror and shame. And anger. It was bad enough to read graphic accounts of anal and oral rape, sometimes combined with sacrilegious perversities; it was doubly appalling to be told that church leaders had systematically covered up these crimes and allowed abusers to go unchecked.

Within hours, the Pennsylvania grand-jury report was propelled to international status. The Vatican expressed “shame and sorrow.” Adjectives piled up from Catholic and secular sources: abominable, revolting, reprehensible, nauseating, diabolical. The New York Times editorialized on “The Catholic Church’s Unholy Stain.”

Months have passed but the report’s impact has not. At least a dozen states have announced they would follow Pennsylvania in conducting their own investigations (Illinois issued a preliminary report in December); the Justice Department has suggested that it, too, might get into the act. Pope Francis has called for bishops from around the world to address the sex-abuse scandal at the Vatican in February, where the Pennsylvania report will undoubtedly be a chief exhibit—as it currently is for Catholics both on the right and the left writing farewells to the church.

In fact, the report makes not one but two distinct charges. The first one concerns predator priests, their many victims, and their unspeakable acts. That charge is, as far as can be determined, dreadfully true. Appalling as is this first charge, it is in fact the second one that has had the greatest reverberations. “All” of these victims, the report declares, “were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and their institutions above all.” Or as the introduction to the report sums it up, “Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all.”

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KOCHI (INDIA)
Press Trust of India

January 10, 2019

Hit by controversies, including sexual abuse involving priests, the Kerala-based Syro-Malabar Catholic Church has decided to set up internal committees at the diocesan level to create a “safe environment” for all, including children and vulnerable adults.

The decision to implement the “Safe Environment Policy” was taken at the Synod of the Syro-Malabar Archiespicoal Church being held here.

This policy is being implemented to ensure safety and security for all, especially children and vulnerable adults, a Church official said.

Claiming that the safety and security for all have already been ensured in parishes, diocese, religious congregations and institutions of the Syro-Malabar church, the official said that the implementation of new “Safe Environment Policy” would further strengthen it.

According to the policy, representation of the laity should be ensured in the committees being set up in the diocesan level to solve the complaints.

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ST. ALBANS (VT)
WCAX TV

January 10, 2019

By Connor Cyrus

Aseries of public meetings with Bishop Christopher Coyne seek to improve communication and transparency within Vermont’s Catholic Church.

Catholic Church leaders say they are ready and listening.

Thursday marks the first of six town hall meetings across the state where Bishop Christopher Coyne will be listening to what people have to say. It’s part of an effort to improve communication and transparency within Vermont’s Catholic Church. The Church says The Diocese of Burlington is seeing the fruits of its effort to be more transparent and to improve communication.

Bishop Coyne says the clergy has met to discuss the future of the Catholic Church. They looked at things like, who they are as a church, how they are living their lives and what they are doing in terms of their mission in Burlington and around the state.

One of the big topics and the inspiration for the meetings is communication. Bishop Coyne says he feels that communication needs to be two ways and the meetings are a way to make sure people are heard.

He says the Catholic Church has changed in many ways over the years, most notably the way it retains its parishioners.

“Now in many ways we are a missionary church, we have to go out and encourage people to come. We can’t just open our doors and expect people to come. It used to be you’d open your doors and the church would be full, you open your doors now people leave,” Bishop Coyne said.

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SPRINGFIELD (IL)
Journal Register

January 9, 2019

By Crystal Thomas

A former City Water, Light and Power employee, who was fired by the city after his name appeared on a list of ex-priests credibly accused of sexually abusing minors, is appealing his termination.

Joseph D. Cernich, 62, was fired as a technical support specialist in CWLP’s information systems division Dec. 28 after the city’s Office of Human Resources conducted an investigation into his employment and hiring.

The review began after his name appeared on a list put out by the Diocese of Springfield in November of all of its priests that have had substantiated claims of child sexual abuse, as determined by a diocesan review board mostly made up of lay people with expertise in law enforcement, psychology and education.

Cernich informed the city Tuesday he will appeal the termination through arbitration. As part of a newly certified bargaining unit organized by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 193, the union will be representing Cernich through the appeal.

Chad Vacek, assistant business manager of IBEW Local 193, said Cernich was told why he was fired. Vacek would not comment on the cause, nor would the city.

Vacek said both sides agreed to skip the grievance process and go straight to arbitration. Once a panel of seven arbitrators provided by the American Arbitration Association is culled to one, a hearing will be held where both sides can present the arguments. The arbitrator’s decision would be final.

Vacek said Cernich’s arbitration case would be “unique.”

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CAMDEN (NJ)
WHYY Radio

January 9, 2019

By Kyrie Greenberg

A South Jersey priest announced his retirement over the holidays, following renewed allegations of child abuse.

In 2002, a man filed a claim with church officials and police alleging Reverend John D. Bohrer abused him as a child at Saint Pius X in Cherry Hill in the 1980s. After a suspension, Bohrer was reinstated by the Vatican and most recently served as an administrator at St. Teresa of Calcutta Parish in Collingswood, New Jersey.

Mark Crawford is the director of the New Jersey branch of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests or SNAP. He says the diocese knew about Bohrer and did nothing. “These are well-educated men,” said Crawford. “These are not mistakes, they are not accidents, they are not ‘oops’ a file got lost. This is somebody who is accused of molesting a child, so it cannot be wiped away or forgotten about.”

In a statement, the Diocese of Camden said the allegation came to light once again after a recent independent review of personnel files by a law firm. Crawford said Bohrer’s case shows the weakness of the Catholic Church’s zero-tolerance policy, which has been on the books since 2002. “The man was accused. They know it. They kept him in the ministry all these years. And they claimed that they had cleared him, but now they are revisiting it?” he said.

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DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Catholic

January 10, 2019

Cardinal pushes Church change as Germans debate priest celibacy Cardinal Reinhard Marx
German Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising has called for change in long-standing Church tradition as the German bishops’ conference prepares for a workshop debate to “review” the issue of celibacy for priests.

In his homily at New Year’s Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady in Munich, Cardinal Marx said the Church must, “in light of the failure” surrounding the clergy sex abuse crisis, modify tradition in response to changing modern times.

“I believe the hour has come to deeply commit ourselves to open the way of the Church to renewal and reform,” Cardinal Marx said, according to a text of the homily posted on the archdiocesan website. “Evolution in society and historical demands have made tasks and urgent need for renewal clear to see.”

The cardinal, who is president of the German bishops’ conference, said that current measures to address sex abuse are not enough without adapting Church teachings.

“Yes, matters are about development and improvement and prevention and independent reviews – but more is also demanded,” he said. “I am certain that the great renewal impulse of the Second Vatican Council is not being truly led forward and understood in its depth. We must further work on that,” he said. “Further adaptations of Church teachings are required.”

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SWATARA TOWNSHIP (PA)
ABC 27 News

January 10, 2019

By Christine McLarty

Anyone with questions can get answers regarding the Harrisburg Catholic Diocese clergy sex abuse.

Thursday bishop gainer will host the first of nine seminars, addressing and answering questions about the grand jury report.

The nine sessions will be held in nine different counties over the next two months. Those counties include Cumberland, Lebanon, Lancaster, and York.

During each meeting, Bishop Ronald Gainer will offer opening remarks and then the floor will be open and to ask him questions about clergy sex abuse.

The grand jury report released in August uncovered sexual misconduct allegations against more than 300 priests.

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CHICAGO (IL)
National Catholic Reporter

January 10, 2019

by Heidi Schlumpf

While the U.S. bishops were on retreat at Mundelein Seminary north of Chicago, a group of Catholic historians were gathering in the city’s downtown for their annual academic conference. In both places, the sex abuse crisis was on people’s minds.

Franciscan Fr. Daniel P. Horan writes about politics, culture and theology in his new column, Faith Seeking Understanding.

Although the American Catholic Historical Association (ACHA) meeting included presentations on various things like the great Chicago Fire of 1871 and Pope Pius IX, the attendees — who by definition are usually focused on the past — were very much thinking and talking about the present crisis and what the future might bring for the church.

“I think it dominates many Catholic historians’ minds these days,” said Brian Clites, associate director of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where he also teaches religious studies.

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LYON, FRANCE)
Associated Press

January 10, 2019

By Nicolas Vaux-Montagny

France’s most important church sex abuse trial to date is likely to end in acquittal for a cardinal and other senior Catholic officials accused of protecting a pedophile priest, despite years of efforts by his victims to seek justice.

The Rev. Bernard Preynat confessed to abusing Boy Scouts, and his victims say church hierarchy covered up for him for years, allowing him to work with children right up until his 2015 retirement.

But by the time the cover-up trial reached court in Lyon this week, the statute of limitations had expired on some charges. And even the prosecutor argued Wednesday against convicting Cardinal Philippe Barbarin and other church officials, saying there were no grounds to prove legal wrongdoing.

Victims’ lawyers seemed to have little hope for a conviction, despite an emotional trial in which grown men recounted their childhood fear and shame after alleged abuse by a respected priest.

“That was no surprise,” lawyer Yves Sauvayre said after the prosecutor’s unusual request.

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SANTIAGO (CHILE)
Prensa Latina

Jan 8, 2019

Today, the number of sexual abuse cases handled by the Chilean Public Prosecutor”s Office involving the Catholic Church has risen to 148, with eight bishops on target, according to the latest report from the Public Prosecutor”s Office.

In a balance sheet submitted by the national prosecutor, Jorge Abbott, on these processes, it is realized that in total there are 255 victims of sexual crimes committed by members of the clergy, 10 more than in a previous report presented in the second half of 2018.

The scandals of that court that shook the Chilean Church last year removed the social fabric of the country and, according to different polls, were decisive in a notable reduction in the number of faithful of the Catholic Church.

The crisis reached such a point that the Pope had to intervene in the matter by sending to Chile the special investigator Charles Scicluna, who interviewed many of the victims, and to summon to the Vatican the Chilean ecclesiastical leadership in full, to which he asked for the resignation.

However, according to Abott, the Vatican has only given the Chilean Prosecutor’s Office partial information and not all the information requested to carry out the processes, as promised by Scicluna.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Reuters

January 9, 2019

By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss

Assets managed by U.S. Catholic foundations have more than doubled over the last three years, propelled by increased donations and stable market performance, according to a study by wealth advisory firm Wilmington Trust.

The study showed U.S. Catholic foundations, set up by archdioceses and dioceses across the country, managed $9.5 billion as of the end of 2018, up 106 percent from $4.6 billion in 2016 when Wilmington Trust released its first report on the sector.

The Catholic Church has come under intense scrutiny following settlements on sexual abuse scandals that have plagued it for years. Due to the enormous costs of settling sexual abuse claims, many dioceses have been in dire financial straits resulting in 19 Catholic Church bankruptcies in the last 14 years, according to watchdog group bishopsaccountability.org.

However, Catholic foundations are flourishing as they sought to separate themselves from the shadow of the embattled churches that created them.

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NOIDA (INDIA)
Indian Express

January 9, 2019

By Arun Lakshman

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI), the top body of the congregation of bishops, has not acted on a directive from the Vatican to meet sex abuse victims abused by the clergy before attending a summit in Rome on clerical sex abuse and child protection between February 21 and 24.

The directive released by the Vatican on December 18 states, “The first step must be to acknowledge what has happened and we urge each episcopal conference president to reach out and visit victim survivors of clergy sex abuse in your respective countries prior to the meeting in Rome to learn first-hand what they have endured.”

Interestingly, one of the four signatories of the letter is Oswald Gracious, Bishop of Mumbai and the current president of the CBCI.There are more than 25 clergy-related sex abuse cases in Kerala which have come out in the open over the past 10 to 15 years.

There are several high-profile cases involving priests in the state; some of the accused faced trial and are behind bars, some are out on bail and some are based abroad in cases involving the rape of minors, young women and nuns.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Daily News

January 9, 2019

By Marco Poggio and Larry McShane

Two Bronx sisters accused a high-ranking Catholic Church official of sexually assaulting them across five years after he was welcomed into their neighborhood as a parish priest.

The allegations were made public Wednesday outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral by Robert Hoatson, president of Road to Recovery, a charity assisting abuse victims and their families.

The older girl was in her early teens and her kid sister just age 7 when the abuse by Monsignor Charles McDonagh began inside their home back in 1972, according to Hoatson.

McDonagh had just arrived at Our Lady of Refuge, a heavily Irish parish in the Bronx. The priest was later promoted to serve as secretary to Terence Cardinal Cooke and his successor John Cardinal O’Connor, spending about six years in the position.

The two targeted siblings “worshiped their parish priest,” charged Hoatson. “And, as a result of that, Monsignor Charles McDonagh inserted himself into their family and abused two of the girls in that family.”

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NEW YORK (NY)
America Magazine

January 9, 2019

By Massimo Faggioli

This essay by Professor Massimo Faggioli on the problems and possibilities of electing bishops in the Catholic Church is part of a conversation with Professor Daniel E. Burns, whose response can be read here.

The systemic failure of leadership shown by the bishops in the clerical sexual abuse crisis has revived the centuries-old debate on the procedures for the recommendation and appointment of bishops in the Catholic Church.

Remembering a few historical realities can help us frame the issue. The first is that the power of the pope alone to appoint bishops is a quite recent development in church history. The appointment of bishops has been for most of the history of the church in the hands of no one person only but of a quite diverse typology of actors (local clergy and laity, brothers in the episcopate from the same province, canons of the cathedral, Catholic emperors and kings, and local aristocracy). These players in the institutional life of the church took part in the selection of bishops in different forms that were often unwritten and shaped by customs—and distinct from what we mean by “democratic election.”

The most important element in the appointment of a bishop was not the prelate being chosen by the pope but being in communion with the pope. This is why the recent agreement between the Vatican and the People’s Republic of China about the process of bishops’ appointments there has many precedents in history.

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ROME (ITALY)
Catholic News Agency

January 8, 2019

By Ed Condon

While recent media reports suggest that a trial of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick is underway, Vatican sources have told CNA that his case is not being handled by a full judicial process.

Sources at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith have confirmed that allegations against McCarrick are being considered through an abbreviated approach called an “administrative penal process.”

That decision gives insight into the strength of evidence against McCarrick, and suggests that resolving sexual abuse allegations against the archbishop is a top priority for Pope Francis and other senior Vatican officials.

Canon law outlines specific processes for handling allegations of sexual abuse by clerics. All of these are reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome. When the charges involve a bishop, the CDF requires specially delegated authority from the pope to handle the case.

A full canonical trial is a lengthy affair. Depositions of witnesses and alleged victims are taken by the court at which a prosecutor, called the “promoter of justice” in canon law, and lawyers for the defense are present. Written argumentation is exchanged through a panel of judges, with precise timelines, manners of proceeding, and legal minutiae that must be observed at each step of the way, in order to ensure that the rights of the accused are protected.

In previous sexual abuse cases against bishops, full and formal trials have taken years, and include the possibility of appeals by both the prosecution and defense. But this is not happening with McCarrick.

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BOSTON (MA)
Catholic Culture

January 9, 2019

By Phil Lawler

Yesterday was “one of those days”—a day that found me hating my work, wishing I had some other sort of job.

The first blow, and by far the worst, came with the news, released by the Washington Post Monday evening, that an old friend, Father C. J. McCloskey, had been disciplined for sexual misconduct involving a married woman, and that Opus Dei, of which I was once a member, had (not to put too fine a point on it) botched the handling of his case.

Father McCloskey has done great things for the Catholic Church, drawing many converts to the faith and encouraging many cradle Catholics like myself to deepen their spiritual lives. The charges against him, however, reinforce my fear that every “celebrity priest” is vulnerable to special temptations, and just one misstep away from scandal.

It’s painful to see a friend exposed to public obloquoy. It’s painful, too, to watch the Washington Post—which has shown only a tepid interest in the charges raised by Archbishop Vigano—in headlong pursuit of a priest who never wielded a fraction of McCarrick’s influence. But long ago I resolved that I want to hear all the truth, good and bad. It will be a painful process, exposing all the rot within our Church. But it’s the only way to begin the necessary process of reform.

Then I happened across several more news stories about the two US Senators (Senators Kamala Harris of California and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii) who cross-examined a judicial nominee about his membership in the Knights of Columbus.

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NEW SOUTH WALES (AUSTRALIA)
The Australian

January 10, 2019

By Rachel Baxendale

It was in 1995 that Chrissie Foster first learnt that two of her three daughters had been abused by a priest at their Catholic primary school in Melbourne’s southeastern suburbs.

Twenty-three years and three family tragedies later, Ms Foster’s story moved Scott Morrison to tears as he gave a national apology to child-sex abuse victims.

Side by side with her late husband Anthony, the 63-year-old has been a fierce advocate for child-sex abuse victims, playing an instrumental role in the establishment of the Victorian parliamentary inquiry and national royal commission into the issue.

It is for this tireless work in the face of unfathomable adversity that Ms Foster has been nominated for The Australian’s Australian of the Year award.

In 1999, the Fosters’ daughter, Emma, was hit by a drunk driver, leaving her physically and mentally disabled and requiring constant care.

Struggling to deal with the abuse she and her sister Katie had suffered at the hands of pedophile priest Kevin O’Donnell as children, Emma had become a binge drinker.

Less than a decade later, in 2008, Katie took her own life.

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NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times

January 9, 2019

By Jack Healy

When Larry Antonsen decided to report a priest who sexually abused him during high school, he believed the Archdiocese of Chicago was the right place to go.

Mr. Antonsen and his wife were lifelong churchgoers who sent their children to Sunday school and counted themselves as members of a parish in the archdiocese. The priest Mr. Antonsen was accusing had spent 14 years working at Chicago-area Catholic high schools.

But Mr. Antonsen, who is now 72, said reporting the allegations dropped him into a maze of church bureaucracy, in which his accusations were passed from one office to another before being quietly set aside.

The reason: The priest in question happened to be an Augustinian — one of dozens of religious orders that are overseen not by bishops, but by religious superiors in regions around the country and in Rome. Mr. Antonsen said archdiocesan officials told him to take his complaint to the Augustinians.

“They said because it was a religious order, they didn’t handle it,” Mr. Antonsen said.

Jesuits, Franciscans, Benedictines, Augustinians: the names are iconic, their founders immortalized by sainthood, their members often bound together by vows of poverty and obedience.

But when a priest or brother in a religious order is accused of abuse, victims and advocacy groups say their accusations are often mishandled because they are caught between separate institutions within the church: the dioceses that say it is not their responsibility to investigate, and religious orders that then fail to handle the claims.

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SANTA ROSA (CA)
Press Democrat

January 9, 2019

By Mary Callahan

Santa Rosa Bishop Robert F. Vasa has chosen this weekend to release the names of Catholic priests credibly accused of child sexual abuse during the local diocese’s 57-year history in hopes of turning a corner on a scourge that has wounded the faithful, drained church coffers and deeply injured survivors whose innocence was exploited by men they trusted.

But how far the move will go in making up for sins of the past remains in question amid a resurgent global crisis in the Roman Catholic Church, whose leadership is often viewed as having turned a blind eye to clergy abuse and even enabling it by quietly reassigning many accused priests rather than discharging them.

Recent attempts by U.S. bishops at transparency have been greeted with some skepticism among critics and survivors whose ingrained distrust may not easily be tempered, particularly given explosive revelations contained in a Pennsylvania grand jury report last year that renewed the drumbeat for greater scrutiny of church leadership.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service

January 9, 2019

By Dennis Sadowski

Opus Dei, a well-known international Catholic organization, paid $977,000 to settle a sexual misconduct claim in 2005 against a one-time high-profile priest in the nation’s capital.

The payment was made to an adult woman who said Father C. John McCloskey groped her several times while she was undergoing pastoral counseling because of a troubled marriage and serious depression, The Washington Post reported.

The incidents were described as occurring in meetings between Father McCloskey and the unnamed woman at the Catholic Information Center in downtown Washington.

The newspaper said it does not name the victims of sexual assault without their consent.

Msgr. Thomas Bohlin, U.S. vicar of Opus Dei, said in a Jan. 7 statement that the settlement was reached in 2005. He described the priest’s actions as “deeply painful for the woman and we are very sorry for all she suffered.”

Opus Dei learned of the sexual misconduct from the woman in November 2002, according to the statement. Father McCloskey was removed from his role at the center 13 months later after the complaint was found to be credible, Msgr. Bohlin said.

The woman, who is now in her mid-50s and was 40 when she met with Father McCloskey, has remained involved in Opus Dei spiritual activities since.

She told The Washington Post that she was pleased by how Opus Dei handled her case.

Msgr. Bohlin said Father McCloskey’s “priestly activities with women have been very limited” since his reassignment from the Catholic Information Center and the restrictions placed upon him. The priest “had very few assignments in our activities for women” and that “his contact with individual women was limited to the confessional,” where priest and penitent are physically separated,” the vicar said.

The organization has separate activities for men and women.

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MINNEAPOLIS (MN)
The Catholic Spirit

January 8, 2019

By Joe Ruff

A desire to help sexual abuse survivors fuels the work of a Minneapolis-based attorney representing two men who have accused former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of sexual abuse.
The men Patrick Noaker of Noaker Law Firm is representing found his firm through referrals from other attorneys, he said. One of the men is a former altar boy whose credible abuse accusation resulted in Archbishop McCarrick’s removal from public ministry last year; the other is James Grein of Virginia, who testified Dec. 27 to Church officials in New York.

A former public defender who has practiced law for 28 years and dealt with the gamut of criminal cases, including the death penalty, Noaker said victims of sexual abuse who are not heard and who don’t get help can suffer from depression, turn to alcohol or drugs to numb the pain, or themselves become perpetrators of sexual abuse or other crimes.

“The whole system is checkered with people who have been abused as kids,” Noaker said. “They try to numb the pain. Then things spiral on them.”

Noaker said he wanted to catch people at the “top of the cliff” to help them seek justice and encourage them to get therapy and counseling, rather than at the “bottom of the cliff” facing criminal charges of their own. So he joined the law firm of Jeff Anderson & Associates of St. Paul about 18 years ago, and he formed his own firm about six years ago. Both firms specialize in representing survivors of sexual abuse and assault.

“If you get help to them early, everyone is better off,” Noaker said. “The person is better off, and there are no other victims.”

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[Public Ministry tallies 255 victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests]

CHILE
BioBioChile

January 8, 2019

By Ariela Muñoz and Nicole Martínez

Un total de 148 casos de abusos sexual en la Iglesia Católica, con 8 obispos involucrados, investiga el Ministerio Público, según el último reporte entregado por el fiscal nacional, Jorge Abbott. Las víctimas valoraron el aumento de las denuncias. Son 255 las víctimas de delitos sexuales por parte de integrantes del clero las que tiene en carpeta el Ministerio Público, 10 más que el balance anterior.

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[Chile’s prosecutor Abbott says Vatican has given only “partial” responses]

CHILE
La Tercera

January 8, 2019

By María José Navarrete

En la cuenta pública de la Fiscalía Regional de O’Higgins, el persecutor Emiliano Arias señaló que “de aquí a marzo” presentarán nuevas acusaciones.

“Hemos tenido respuestas parciales, no las que hubiéramos querido y tampoco con toda la información que hemos querido, pero estamos insistiendo ante el Vaticano, cuyas autoridades han comprometido el apoyo a nuestra investigación”. Así lo reveló el fiscal nacional, Jorge Abbott, al participar en la cuenta pública de la Fiscalía Regional de O’Higgins, y en relación a los requerimientos de información que el Ministerio Público ha hecho a Roma, en el marco de las investigaciones a sacerdotes por abusos sexuales en la Iglesia Católica chilena.

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DENVER (CO)
Denver Catholic

January 9, 2019

By George Weigel

The Vatican is a hotbed of rumor, gossip, and speculation at the best of times — and these times are not those times. The Roman atmosphere at the beginning of 2019 is typically fetid and sometimes poisonous, with a lot of misinformation and disinformation floating around. That smog of fallacy and fiction could damage February’s global gathering of bishops, called by the Pope to address the abuse crisis that is impeding the Church’s evangelical mission virtually everywhere.

Great expectations surround that meeting; those expectations should be lowered. In four days, the presidents of over 100 bishops conferences and the leaders of a dysfunctional Roman Curia are not going to devise a universal template for the reform of the priesthood and the episcopate. What the February meeting can do is set a broad agenda for reform, beginning with a ringing affirmation of the Church’s perennial teaching on chastity as the integrity of love. In a diverse world Church, that teaching applies in every ecclesial situation. And it is the baseline of any authentically Catholic response to the abuse crisis.

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BUFFALO (NY)
WRGZ TV

January 8, 2019

By Ron Plants

A new year means a new legislative session starting in Albany on Wednesday morning. And with Democrats taking control for the first time in 70 years, there are a lot of proposals that might have more of a chance to become reality here in New York.

One of the primary measures right of out the gate could be legalization of recreational marijuana. And with State Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples Stokes as majority leader we have an idea of how they might proceed to set it up just like some other states. She says, “I think the model they use in Massachusetts and some other places across the country would be the one most favorable, and that’s a combination of state taxation, state liquor authority, and state health department that would come up with the regulations and actual implementation.”

The Child Victims Act has been effectively blocked in the past but it may have even more momentum now in the legislature following the explosive revelations. and the increasing list of Catholic priests cited for alleged abuse.

The measure would extend the statute of limitation regarding child sex abuise crimes so that any victim up to age 50 could file a lawsuit against the abuser and any institution which enabled them. That raises the current age limit of 23 and a a one-year lookback window. Governor Cuomo has told us he is on board “If you were abused by a member of the clergy, or someone else, you deserve to have that acknowledged. And that’s what the child victims act is all about.”

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GOA (INDIA)
Goa Chronicle

January 9, 2019

KERALA campaign spearheaded by Indianexpose.com against predator priests and religious leaders across religions who use their influences to sexually dominate women including nuns has found resonance in the highest levels of international media.

The Associated Press in a major story has included the case of Bishop Mulakkal accused of raping a nun in Kerala, in its list of incidents of sexual violence committed by priests. This was a campaign initiated, researched and followed by Indianexpose.com. IndianExpose.com relatively new website dedicated to unearthing truth through investigative reportage, has hashtagged its campaign #ArrestBIshopFranco – the campaign on the newsportal and on social media, especially twitter, finally led to the Bishops arrest.

The Associated Press, in a story by Tim Sullivan, was published in the world’s leading news papers. The Washington Post headlined “AP Exclusive: For decades, nuns in India have faced abuse” and published from Kuravilangad, began the piece as follows:

“The stories spill out in the sitting rooms of Catholic convents, where portraits of Jesus keep watch and fans spin quietly overhead. They spill out in church meeting halls bathed in fluorescent lights, and over cups of cheap instant coffee in convent kitchens. Always, the stories come haltingly, quietly. Sometimes, the nuns speak at little more than a whisper.
Across India, the nuns talk of priests who pushed into their bedrooms and of priests who pressured them to turn close friendships into sex. They talk about being groped and kissed, of hands pressed against them by men they were raised to believe were representatives of Jesus Christ.“He was drunk,” said one nun, beginning her story. “You don’t know how to say no,” said another.At its most grim, the nuns speak of repeated rapes, and of a Catholic hierarchy that did little to protect them.

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BENGALURU (INDIA)
Swarajya

January 9, 2019

In what is seen as a highly vindictive move, Sister Lucy Kalapura, the nun from the Syro Malabar Church, who spearheaded the protests against rape-accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal, has been slapped with a notice by the Church in Kerala.

Sister Lucy has been asked by her Mother Superior, Ann Joseph FCC, Superior General of the Franciscan Clarist Congregation (FCC), to explain her activities in relation to the protest against Bishop. Sister Lucy and a few other nuns had staged a hunger strike near the High Court premises in Kochi for weeks last year demanding the immediate arrest of Mulakkal.

The notice claimed that Sister Lucy’s action amounted to a serious breach of discipline and damaged the reputation of the congregation. This is not the first time that Church authorities have acted against Sister Lucy. The Mananthavady diocese expelled her from the parish duties after she became vociferous in her protest against the Bishop.

However, the church had to backtrack the disciplinary actions following a huge backlash and number of common citizens expressing solidarity with the nun for outing the predatory priest.

The Catholic Church warned Sister Lucy for her media articles, penning articles in non-Christian publications and resorting to making false accusations against the Catholic leadership to tarnish their image.

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LYON (FRANCE)
Associated Press

January 7, 2019

By Nicholas Vaux-Montangy

A Catholic cardinal and five other people went on trial Monday accused of covering up for a pedophile priest who abused Boy Scouts — France’s most important church sex abuse case to date.

The case poses a new challenge to the Vatican, amid growing demands in overwhelmingly Catholic France for a reckoning with decades of sexual abuse by the clergy.

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, 68, appeared in a Lyon court Monday along with other senior church officials accused of failing to protect children from alleged abuse by the Rev. Bernard Preynat. The top Vatican official in charge of sex abuse cases, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, is among the accused — but won’t appear in court because the Vatican invoked his diplomatic immunity.

Nine people who said the priest abused them in the 1970s and 1980s brought the case to court, and hope it marks a turning point in efforts to hold the French church hierarchy accountable for hushing up abuse. The victims say top clergy were aware of Preynat’s actions for years, but allowed him to be in contact with children until his 2015 retirement.

Despite nationwide attention on the case, it may fall apart for legal reasons. Prosecutors initially threw out it out for insufficient evidence. Barbarin’s lawyer says his client never obstructed justice because the statute of limitations had passed on the acts in question by the time Barbarin was informed.

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QUINCY (IL)
The Associated Press

January 8, 2019

The city of Springfield has fired a City Water, Light and Power employee whose name appeared on a list of Catholic priests credibly accused of child sex abuse.

The State Journal-Register reports 62-year-old Joseph D. Cernich was stripped of his priestly title in June 2003 and began working for the city five months later.

The Diocese of Springfield has refused to say which parishes Cernich had been assigned to as a priest or what he was accused of doing.

Human Resources Director Jim Kuizin says Cernich was dismissed in December after an investigation into his hiring and employment. Kuizin declined to reveal the reasons for Cernich’s firing. The State Journal-Register reports there is no record of complaints or disciplinary action.

A request for comment from Cernich wasn’t answered. He can appeal the city’s decision to dismiss him through the Springfield Civil Service Commission or arbitration.

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Patheos blog

January 8, 2019

By Mark Shea

…to the sexual abuse crisis.

For a brief moment this past summer things began to come into focus for us concerning sexual abuse in the Church. When the PA report came out, the focus was where it should be: on victims. It didn’t matter whether the victim was male or female, or whether the abuser was gay or straight or his protecter and enabler conservative or liberal. What mattered was the victim and getting justice for the victim.

Then, never letting a crisis go to waste when it could be exploited, the Right Wing Lie Machine moved in with a huge ginned up panic from Abp. Vigano and the focus was ripped away from victims, never to return. It all became a Culture War narrative in which propaganda organs like EWTN, the Register, Lifesite News, One Peter Five and others locked in rigid ideological combat with a “liberal” pope they have hated and sought to destroy for years promoted the lie that the one man–Francis–who actually did something about sexual abuser McCarrick was guilty of lifting non-existent “sanctions” asserted to exist by the one man on US soil who could have acted against McCarrick from 2011-2016 and did who did nothing. In a massive and coordinated shock and awe assault that cared nothing for victims or the good of the Church only for power, that media screamed for Francis to “RESIGN!!!!!!”

When that power grab and palace coup fell to pieces and Vigano was shown to be sucking up to and feting McCarrick during the time he was supposedly enforcing “sanctions” again McCarrick…

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CHICAGO (IL)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

January 8, 2019

A prominent Opus Dei priest was sent to Chicago following a sexual abuse settlement in another diocese. Now, survivors and advocates are asking Chicago’s top catholic official to disclose if any other priests, nuns or brothers have been transferred into Chicago following abuse complaints.

Prior to his transfer to Chicago, Fr. C. John McCloskey was allowed to continue ministering to women in the D.C. area for at least a year after the complaint against him were made. While Opus Dei spokespeople minimize the abuse by pointing out that there has only been one settlement, those same spokespeople acknowledge that at least three allegations have been made.

Abusers often continue to hurt people until they are stopped. We believe it was irresponsible of Cardinal George to have allowed Fr. McCloskey to work in Chicago. In an effort to prevent this from happening in the future, we believe that Cardinal Cupich should disclose if any other priests, nuns, or brothers have been transferred into Chicago following allegations of misconduct.

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post

January 8, 2019

By Michelle Boorstein

A day after announcing that the global Catholic community Opus Dei had paid nearly $1 million to settle a 2005 sexual misconduct suit against a big-name D.C. priest, a spokesman for the ultraconservative institution Tuesday expressed regret that the Rev. C. John McCloskey had been allowed to remain in ministry after the allegations came to light.

“It’s an argument that is no longer tenable — this ‘Let’s quiet things over so priests can continue to do good,’ ” said Brian Finnerty, choking back tears as he spoke with unusual frankness.

Catholics in the region were stunned by the news that McCloskey, a high-profile media presence and adviser to Washington’s Catholic elite who prepared Republicans Newt Gingrich and Sam Brownback for conversion, was responsible for the $977,000 payout. An eloquent and intellectual priest, McCloskey for many years ran the Catholic Information Center, a bookstore, chapel and meeting center on K Street NW — a hub of Catholic life in the city.

“The reality is that there are many people out there who felt Father [McCloskey] was instrumental in bringing them closer to God. And whatever he did, that is true,” said Finnerty, adding that McCloskey had introduced him to Opus Dei. “But there is also the reality at the same time that he behaved in a way that was deeply wounding. If we were to handle the situation today, we would likely do it differently. Today is different — there is a deeper recognition that if something like this happens, you can’t keep it quiet.”

Finnerty said among his regrets was that the complaint came to Opus Dei in November 2002 but the community did not remove McCloskey from the Catholic Information Center until December 2003. He said he personally “hated” that decision. “The reality is he was around for a year after we were informed,” Finnerty said. “That’s the reality. It’s not good. But we may as well own it.”

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CHICAGO (IL)
OakPark.com

January 8, 2019

By Timothy Inklebarger

It’s been nearly a half century since the late Rev. William P. Farrell walked the hallways of Fenwick High School as a teacher, counselor and spiritual guide, but the damage the ordained Dominican priest left behind persists.

Decades after the alleged abuse took place, two victims from Fenwick and another young man from Minnesota targeted by Farrell have made their stories known.

Farrell, who died in 1989, is one of many hundreds of priests in various Catholic orders now accused of sexually abusing minors.

He was ordained into the priesthood on June 5, 1965 and taught at Bishop Lynch in Dallas prior to transferring to Fenwick, where he worked from 1967 to 1970.

He was an associate pastor at Our Lady of God Parish in Edina, Minnesota, beginning in 1971 and also served at St. Albert the Great Parish in Minneapolis, before being transferred to Hammond, Louisiana, in 1973, where he served as chaplain at Southeastern Louisiana University.

Farrell moved to St. Dominic’s Priory in New Orleans in 1975, where he worked part-time at Mount Carmel Academy and was a chaplain at Dominican College in New Orleans from 1976 to 1978.

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CHICAGO (IL)
Sun Times

January 8, 2019

By Robert Herguth

A Catholic priest and author who belongs to the tradition-minded Opus Dei organization and once tended to the conservative elite in Washington, D.C., later became a fixture in the Chicago area, where he lived and worked for almost nine years, until late 2013.

Why the Rev. C. John McCloskey left Washington and later was sent to Chicago in early 2005 is only now coming to light: Opus Dei confirmed Tuesday that he faced a “credible” allegation of sexual misconduct against a woman while working in Washington, and Chicago was considered a more structured environment for him.

McCloskey reportedly groped a woman he was counseling at the Catholic Information Center, described by The Washington Post as “a K Street hub of Catholic life in downtown Washington.”

Opus Dei settled a legal claim by the woman for just under $1 million in 2005, around the time he started working in Chicago, Opus Dei spokesman Brian Finnerty said. He said Opus Dei is speaking about the case now because the woman recently asked the organization to publicize it.

This is the only misconduct-related legal settlement paid by Opus Dei in the United States, according to Finnerty, who said the payout was covered by a donor who wants to stay anonymous.

A complaint from the woman came to light in November 2002, according to a written statement from the Rev. Thomas Bohlin, vicar of Opus Dei in the United States. That complaint was investigated by the organization, and McCloskey was removed from his position at the center a year later, according to the statement.

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NODIA (INDIA)
The Indian Express

January 9, 2019

By Express News Service

The Catholic Church in Kerala has sent a warning to Sister Lucy Kalapura, a nun who was at the forefront of protests against rape-accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal, for “attending channel discussions”, writing articles in “non-Christian newspapers” and “making false accusations” against the Catholic leadership.

The warning, with the threat of dismissal from the congregation, has been issued by Sr. Ann Joseph FCC, Superior General of the Franciscan Clarist Congregation (FCC).

Mulakkal was accused of raping a nun belonging to the order of Missionaries of Jesus several times between 2014 and 2016, and spent three weeks in the sub-jail at Pala before he got bail. Kalapura and some other nuns of the order had staged a hunger strike near the High Court premises in Kochi for weeks last year demanding Mulakkal’s arrest.

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YUKON KUSKOKWIM DELTA (AK)
KYUK Radio

January 8, 2019

By Anna Rose Macarthur

A recent report offers details on Roman Catholic Jesuit priests, deacons, and laypeople accused of sexual abuse in dozens of communities across Alaska. Those communities include 13 villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. The region has a long history with the Roman Catholic Church, dating back to the late 1800s. Most of the church officials accused of abuse in the report are deceased. Jesuits West issued the recent report listing the perpetrators in December. Anchorage Daily News editor Kyle Hopkins has been following the story and talked with KYUK about his reporting on the issue.

Listen Listening…11:44 Listen to the interview with KYUK and ADN’s Kyle Hopkins here.
Transcript:

KYUK: “Jesuits West calls these 33 church personnel ‘credibly accused of sexual abuse.’ Eight of them were in Bethel. Do we know why Jesuits West chose this moment to release this information?”

Hopkins: “I spoke to a spokesperson for Jesuits West, and she was relatively new to that organization, which represents churches all in a 10-state area which includes, of course, Alaska. And it’s the organization that encompasses what used to be the Oregon diocese, which went bankrupt. And in that bankruptcy in Oregon, that led to a release of names of priests who had been accused, and there were a round of dioceses that went bankrupt when these civil lawsuits were filed in the mid to late 2000s after the abuse and the cover up were exposed in 2002 in Boston. In the subsequent years, you had many, many civil lawsuits that were filed, including a really big one in Alaska which involved the 300 plus people who were abused, or victims who were abused by priests. Many, many in western Alaska. And that lawsuit led to the bankruptcy of the Fairbanks diocese, and it was that lawsuit way back in 2013 that actually first revealed a lot of these names that many of us are seeing for the first time because the Jesuits then dug up those names, along with a whole slew of other names all across the West Coast, and put them all together for what might have been the first time, and then publicized that list, not in response to any kind of a legal requirement. But that effort did come after there was a really scathing report that came out of Pennsylvania that reignited interest and outrage at priest abuse all over the country.”

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ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

January 8, 2019

The case of Fr. C. John McCloskey is a perfect example of how a person in a position of power can use that power to manipulate and abuse a person during a vulnerable moment in their lives. It can sometimes be difficult for others to empathize with adults who have been abused, but most adult victims go to clergy for help because they are already struggling. However, this challenge of empathy is irrelevant to the facts: a woman was abused and we are now learning that she was not the only one who may have been hurt by Fr. McCloskey.

Fr. McCloskey was allowed to continue ministering to women in the D.C. area for at least a year after the complaint against him were made. During this time, Opus Dei was “investigating” the “credibility” of the claim, something that should be first reported to law enforcement. Church officials have shown, time and time again, that their definition of “credible” is nebulous and unevenly applied.

In cases of abuse, there are three pathways for justice and prevention: criminal, civil, and occupational. While the first two are, ostensibly at least, available to survivors, the third pathway is one that can only be taken by officials and superiors within that occupation. For example, if a physician were to abuse an adult patient, the complaint would be turned over to police and the abuser would likely lose his license to practice from the AMA. If a professor were to abuse an adult student, the complaint would be turned over to police and that professor would likely lose their tenure with their university.

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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Angelus

January 8, 2019

By Archbishop José H. Gomez

I am writing to you from Chicago, where the bishops of the United States are finishing a weeklong spiritual retreat recommended to us by Pope Francis.

The retreat has been led by the preacher of the papal household, Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap., who is focusing our attention on the vocation and responsibility of bishops in this moment in the Church.

We are praying together as a visible sign of our unity as bishops and our communion with the Holy Father. There is a collegial spirit here and a firm commitment to address the causes of the abuse crisis we face and continue the work of renewing the Church.

On the first day of the retreat, Francis sent the bishops a long and challenging letter. He concluded with a quote from St. Mother Teresa. I want to share it with you:

“Yes, I have many human faults and failures. … But God bends down and uses us, you and me, to be his love and his compassion in the world; he bears our sins, our troubles and our faults. He depends on us to love the world and to show how much he loves it. If we are too concerned with ourselves, we will have no time left for others.”

As we begin a new year, I think this is an important point for all of us to reflect on — and especially those of us who hold leadership positions.

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NEW YORK (NY)
Esquire

January 8, 2019

By Charles P. Pierce

Back in 2003, when I was writing for The Boston Globe Magazine, I wrote a cover story about how the conservatives in the Roman Catholic Church were organizing themselves in the lengthening shadow of the crisis springing from the revelations of sexual crimes committed by members of the Church’s clergy. There was a conscious effort to prevent more liberal elements among American Catholics from using the exploding scandal to change the institutional Church from within in ways that the conservatives found contrary to what they believed to be unchanging Church doctrine.

Central to the story was an Opus Dei priest in Washington named John McCloskey, whose office literally was on K Street. It was McCloskey who baptized Beltway power brokers like Newt Gingrich, the late Bob Novak, current White House budget director Larry Kudlow, and former Kansas senator and governor Sam Brownback. McCloskey, whose first career was as a trader with Merrill Lynch, had some ideas that were…interesting. From our 2003 interview:

He is talking about a futuristic essay he wrote that rosily describes the aftermath of a “relatively bloodless” civil war that resulted in a Catholic Church purified of all dissent and the religious dismemberment of the United States of America.

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Patheos blog
January 8, 2019

By Sarah Beth Caplin

As more victims of pedophile priests in the Catholic Church come forward with threats to sue, one cardinal is requesting measures that will avoid “breaking” the Church.

Because we wouldn’t want to hurt the Church’s reputation by exposing child sexual abuse, would we…?

Someone should tell Cardinal Timothy Dolan it’s far too late for that.

His comments came during discussion of a possible bill in New York that would lower the statute of limitations for victims of abuse. As it stands, once you turn 23 in New York, you can’t file a child sexual abuse claim. That would likely change under the new bill, which would also create a one-year window for victims who couldn’t sue in the past for any number of reasons.

If the bill passes, obviously, the Catholic Church would be in a heap of trouble. That’s what worries Dolan, as he wrote in an op-ed for the New York Daily News:

I believe it is important to strengthen the Child Victims Act to ensure that all victim-survivors are the center of this much-needed legislation. The emphasis must be on helping them heal, not breaking government, educational, health, welfare, or religious organizations and institutions.

Way to sneak “religious organizations” in the middle there. If those institutions deserve to be broken for permitting the abuse of children, then break ’em.) Part of that healing process means bringing the offenders to justice, wherever they reside.

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Patheos blog
January 8, 2019

By Mary Pezzulo

It was only a matter of time before the defenses started.

Yesterday it was brought to light that Father C. John McCloskey, the famous Opus Dei priest who brough Newt Gingrich and others into the Catholic Church, groped woman who came to him for spiritual direction several times in 2005. Opus Dei quietly paid the woman $977,000 and “curtailed” his ministry, telling him to only give spiritual direction to women in a confessional with a physical barrier between himself and his directee. Words cannot express how inadequate this response was.

And right on queue, people began defending the priest’s misconduct. It did not escape my notice that two public Catholics who defended and coddled McCloskey are known for condemnation of “effeminacy” in the Church and fixation on conspiracies involving homosexuals in the priesthood. But when a priest’s victim is female, they rise to his defense.

Father Dwight Longenecker, who thinks the Works of Mercy are pelagianism and that the Fruit of the Holy Ghost known as gentleness is for sissies, has risen to the pervert’s defense. Today he tweeted, “Fr. McCloskey was a good priest who befriended, helped and encouraged me when I was very down. He prophesied my future and helped me move forward to the priesthood. When someone stumbles may we have the grace and mercy to remember the good we did not just their weakness.”

Molesting a woman, is a “stumble.”

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MONTREAL (CANADA)
CBC News ·

January 8, 2019

A Quebec court judge has found Father Brian Boucher guilty of all charges in a case involving the harassment and sexual assault of a former altar boy, starting when the youth was 12 years old.

Quebec court Judge Patricia Campagnone said Boucher asked the court to “believe the unbelievable” when he testified in his own defence in the case, finding the priest guilty of sexual assault, sexual interference and invitation to sexual touching for incidents dating back more than a decade.

In the trial before a judge alone, the complainant, now in his 20s, gave detailed testimony of the alleged assaults that he said continued for three years, escalating in their severity over time.

The judge called the victim’s testimony straightforward, frank and convincing.

The victim’s identity is protected by a publication ban.

The priest’s sentencing hearing has been set for March 25.

Crown prosecutor Annabelle Sheppard said she will be seeking “a substantial period of penitentiary time” for Boucher.

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CAMDEN (NJ)
NJ.com

January 8, 2019

By Kelly Heyboer

A veteran Camden County priest has stepped down from ministry after a decades-old allegation of sexual abuse was rediscovered during a review of personnel files, church officials said.

The Rev. John Bohrer wrote a letter to parishioners at Saint Teresa of Calcutta Parish in Collingswood saying he was retiring as parish administrator Dec. 31 for health reasons — and due to an accusation of sexual abuse, the Diocese of Camden said in a statement.

The accusation, made in 2002, said Bohrer sexually abused an alleged victim while he worked at Saint Pius X Parish in Cherry Hill in the mid-1980s, diocese officials said.

The paperwork detailing the accusation resurfaced during an independent review of the Diocese of Camden’s personnel files as all five of New Jersey’s Catholic dioceses prepare to release the names later this year of all clergy credibly accused of sexual abuse in the past.

The Archdiocese of Newark received what it expected to be one of many subpoenas in the attorney general’s probe into sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

In Bohrer’s case, the accusations against him were reviewed in 2002 and he was allowed to return to the ministry seven years later.

“It was reported to the diocese in October 2002 and subsequently reported to law enforcement, even though the criminal statute of limitations had expired,” the diocese’s statement said. “Shortly thereafter, Father Bohrer was removed from ministry and the allegation was investigated by the diocese, and subsequently reviewed by the Vatican.”

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WASHINGTON (DC)
Religion News Service

January 8, 2019

By Mara Willard

Pope Francis started the new year criticizing some Catholic bishops for their role in the church’s sexual abuse crisis. In a letter to bishops gathered at Mundelein Seminary in Illinois for a spiritual retreat, the pope said that the “disparaging, discrediting, playing the victim” had greatly undermined the Catholic Church. This followed the pope’s earlier remarks asking clergy guilty of sexual assault to turn themselves over to law enforcement.

Stories of clergy sex abuse have continued to increase. Among the more recent revelations, a Catholic diocese recently released the names of Jesuit priests who face “credible or established” accusations of abuse of minors. Church members learned that many priests accused of sexual abuse on Indian reservations were retired on the Gonzaga University campus in Spokane. And another external investigation has revealed that the Catholic Church failed to disclose abuse accusations against 500 priests and clergy.

Church attendance has been on the decline for some time, with the steepest fall of an average 45 percent, between 2005 to 2008. And with these latest scandals, as a theologian recently wrote, the Catholic Church is in the midst of its “biggest crisis since the Reformation.”

But what many do not realize is that staying in the church does not mean agreeing with its policies. In the past, Catholics have challenged the church through multiple forms of resistance – at times discreet and at other times quite dramatic.

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NANTUCKET (MA)
The Associated Press

January 7, 2019

By Alanna Durkin Richer

Kevin Spacey must stay away from the young man who accused him of groping him at a Massachusetts bar in 2016, a judge ordered Monday.

The disgraced actor was arraigned on a charge of felony indecent assault and battery during a hearing at Nantucket District Court. He did not enter a plea. The judge set another hearing for March 4. Spacey does not have to appear, the judge ruled, but said he needs to be available by phone.

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NANTUCKET (MA)
The Associate Press

January 7, 2019

The Latest on the arraignment of Kevin Spacey (all times local):

11:40 a.m.

Kevin Spacey’s legal team has entered a not guilty plea on his behalf to charges the actor groped an 18-year-old busboy in a Massachusetts bar in 2016.

Spacey was arraigned on a charge of felony indecent assault and battery during a hearing Monday at Nantucket District Court. The judge ordered the disgraced actor must stay away from the young man.

Another hearing is set for March 4. Spacey does not have to appear.

Spacey’s lawyer has questioned the evidence against him. The judge granted a request by Spacey’s lawyer to preserve the young man’s cellphone data for the six months following the alleged assault.

It’s the first criminal case brought against the 59-year-old after a string of sexual misconduct allegations crippled his career in 2017.

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NANTUCKET (MA)
The Guardian

January 8, 2019

By Josh Wood

Actor will face a maximum of five years in prison if convicted over groping incident that allegedly took place at a bar in 2016

At a minutes-long arraignment on the ritzy Massachusetts island of Nantucket on Monday, Kevin Spacey did not appear to utter a word.

The 59-year-old Oscar-winning actor appeared before a judge, alongside his lawyers. He was accused of groping a then 18-year-old man at the Club Car restaurant and bar on the island in 2016.

The charge, of indecent assault and battery, is a felony. If convicted, Spacey will face a maximum of five years in prison and registration as a sex offender.

His lawyers entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf and a pre-trial hearing was set for 4 March. Judge Thomas S Barrett said Spacey would not have to appear then, but must be available by phone. Spacey was ordered to stay away from the alleged victim and his family.

Barrett granted a request by Spacey’s attorneys to preserve the alleged victim’s cellphone data for six months after the date of the alleged assault. Spacey attorney Alan Jackson said there was data within that would be “likely exculpatory”.

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NANTUCKET (MA)
The Associated Press

January 7, 2019

By Alanna Durkin Richer

Kevin Spacey arrived at a courthouse on a resort island Monday to answer accusations that he groped a young man in a bar there in 2016.

The two-time Oscar winner has said he will plead not guilty in Nantucket District Court to felony indecent assault and battery.

The hearing comes more than a year after a former Boston TV anchor accused the former “House of Cards” star of sexually assaulting her son, then 18, in the crowded bar at the Club Car, where the teen worked as a busboy.

Spacey’s lawyer, Alan Jackson, has sought to poke holes in the case, noting that the teenager didn’t immediately report the allegations. If convicted, Spacey faces as many as five years in prison.

The civil attorney for the accuser said in a statement ahead of the hearing that his client is “leading by example.”

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