A digest of links to media coverage of clergy abuse. For recent coverage listed in this blog, read the full article in the newspaper or other media source by clicking “Read original article.” For earlier coverage, click the title to read the original article.
WAUKESHA (WI)
FOX6 News
March 9, 2020
The jury trial begins on Monday, March 9 for a Pewaukee priest accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl.
Father Charles Hanel served at Queen of Apostles Catholic Church in Pewaukee. He’s accused of inappropriately touching a 13-year-old girl during confession.
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.
NORTH DAKOTA
Mea Worldwide
March 9, 2020
By Akshay Pai
New documents have named more than 50 priests with substantiated allegations of sexual abuse against a minor
A disgraced former North Dakota priest said he’s not remorseful for sexual assaults he carried out on young children decades ago.
New documents released following an investigation into more than 50 Catholic Clergy from the Fargo and Bismarck Dioceses have named 53 priests with substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor, including one Martin Cullen.
Cullen from Fargo was removed from the ministry in 1992 because of the allegations and admitted to Valley News Live that he sexually abused two children but said he wasn’t sorry for his crimes. He did concede he regretted the emotional abuse his victims may feel now but said no more.
Other priests mentioned in those documents include Fernando Sayasaya, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for molesting two children in Cass County, and Abraham Anthony, who was charged in Stutsman County for sex crimes against boys in 2000 but fled to India and died before he could be arrested.
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.
MADISON (WI)
Associated Press
March 8, 2020
Sexual misconduct allegations made against a retired Wisconsin Catholic priest who was acquitted last year on charges he sexually assaulted an altar boy are not credible, the Diocese of Madison said.
The diocese announced Saturday that William Nolan will return to his previous status as a retired priest of the Madison Diocese “in good standing.” The announcement comes after the church’s investigation into two separate allegations made against Nolan and his acquittal during a weeklong trial in September on charges that he sexually assaulted an altar boy over several years, starting in 2006.
Bishop Donald Hying said Nolan is owed “the presumption of innocence and right to a good name,” especially after his acquittal and the lack of evidence found in support of the allegations against him. Nolan will be allowed to minister publicly as a priest again, the diocese said.
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.
ROME (ITALY)
Crux Now via Angelus
March 9, 2020
By Inés San Martín
Recently the Vatican announced Pope Francis has created a task force to help bishops’ conferences around the world address the clerical sex abuse crisis. The lineup is impressive, but much like a high-profile February 2019 summit on child protection, laypeople — women in particular — are the missing link.
The eight-man lineup for the task force includes seven clerics, two of whom are regarded by all sides as part of the solution to the abuse crisis: Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, once the Vatican’s top prosecutor on priestly abuse of minors; and German Father Hans Zollner, SJ, a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and director of the Center for Child Protection of Rome’s Gregorian University.
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.
GLASGOW (SCOTLAND)
Daily Record
March 9, 2020
The Jesuit was removed from “ministry” on February 22 and the school informed four days later.
By Keith McLeod
A Jesuit priest has been removed from a prestigious fee-paying Catholic school and reported to police amid a “disclosure” of historical abuse against children.
The man was taken out of £13,455-a-year St Aloysius’ College in Glasgow after it received a report from the Jesuit safeguarding officer in London.
The Jesuit was removed from “ministry” on February 22 and the school informed four days later.
St Aloysius’ College then contacted Police Scotland and passed on the information it had received.
Last year, the school was rocked by historical allegations of sexual abuse against children.
In an email to parents, headmaster Matthew Bartlett said the individual “came into the school in their capacity as a Jesuit, which required minimal interaction with children whilst carrying out his duties.
“However, all appropriate safeguarding procedures were in place, as always is the case with anyone coming into the school. We have been informed by the Jesuits that the reason for his removal from ministry is not related to his time at St Aloysius’ College, but a period of time over 35 years ago.”
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.
MUMBAI (INDIA)
The Hindu
March 9, 2020
By Jyoti Shelar
Memorandum to Archbishop calls for equal participation
On International Women’s Day on Sunday, women have demanded equality in the Catholic Church of India. In a memorandum submitted to Cardinal Oswald Gracias, the Archbishop of Bombay who is also the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India and advisor to Pope Francis, women have called for a prophetic church where their voices count, and demanded respect from the clergy in their communication.
“We seek changes in the policies, practices and structures of the church so that women can participate fully in its life and leadership,” said the memorandum, which has 140 signatures and is being circulated to gather more endorsements. “Every year, we celebrate International Women’s Day with the full support of the bishops and clergy, but the concerns and frustrations of women within the church remain the same. We have leadership training for women but there are no spaces for them to exercise this leadership,” it said.
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.
MORRISTOWN (NJ)
Morristown Daily Record
March 8, 2020
By William Westhoven
A former Morris Catholic High School volleyball coach was charged with aggravated sexual abuse of two minor female students between 2015 and 2019, Morris County prosecutors announced Sunday.
Carlos A. Franco-Leon, 42, of Rockaway Township was taken to the Morris County Correctional Facility to await a court hearing on six first-degree counts of aggravated sexual assault, two counts of second-degree sexual assault and two counts of second-degree endangering the welfare of a minor.
Three Rahway men have been arrested and cocaine, heroin and cash were seized drug the execution of a search warrant at a Fulton Avenue address.
Three Rahway men have been arrested and cocaine, heroin and cash were seized drug the execution of a search warrant at a Fulton Avenue address. (Photo: ~File)
He is alleged to have committed sexual acts on female students known to him while he was working as a teacher and volleyball coach at Morris Catholic in Denville.
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 YORK (NY)
Crux
March 9, 2020
By Christopher White
A new analysis of diocesan lists of priests credibly accused of sexual abuse in the United States finds that more than 50 such clerics have been able to continue in ministry in another country, including work with minors, suggesting global gaps in the Church’s response to the abuse crisis.
The findings, published jointly last week by ProPublica and the Houston Chronicle, is a follow-up to an investigative effort commenced last year and published in January that includes the launch of an independent database listing nearly 6,000 priests accused of abuse in America.
Reporters from the two outlets analyzed lists from 52 U.S. dioceses, which revealed 51 priests facing allegations who continued in new assignments outside of the U.S., including Nigeria, Ireland, the Philippines, and Mexico, which proved to be the most common destination for such priests.
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.
MANILA (PHILIPPINES)
UCA News
March 9, 2020
Activists take aim at Duterte during International Women’s Day marches
The exploitation of women and other abuses committed against them are “an affront to God,” according to an official of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).
Every offense against the dignity of women is a sin, said Bishop Crispin Varquez of Borongan, chairman of the CBCP’s commission on women.
He cited sexual abuse, violence, prostitution and discrimination as being the main violations against the “intrinsic being” of women.
“Man and woman are equal in dignity,” Bishop Varquez stressed. “Their true relationship is to complement and complete each other.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of Filipino women set aside coronavirus fears and took to the streets of Manila and other cities for a rally to mark International Women’s Day on March 8.
During the rally protesters burned a large effigy of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, whom they accuse of being the country’s chief misogynist.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
AUSTRALIA
BigNewsNetwork.com (blog)
March 7, 2020
By Chris Friel
“He didn’t say in evidence or committal or anywhere that the wine bottle was in the sink area. He said it was in the alcove area So he always maintained that the wine bottle was there in the alcove. He never maintained it was in that new sink area we know exists now.” Mark Gibson, Closing Address.
In Locating the Wine in the Alcove I argued that the video we have of the police interview with Pell in Rome undermines the claim that, as far as the original story goes, the complainant was right about the wine. He did not locate wine in the alcove but rather in what was called a “storage kitchenette” immediately to the left of the door.[i] If this argument can be sustained it is significant for two reasons. First, it removes the Crown’s contention that the complainant’s knowledge of the “correct” location of the wine enhances his credibility, and second, it positively damages his credibility. This is because the complainant’s so-called knowledge of the layout is actually a knowledge about furniture that was only put in after 1996 which in turn suggests a visit or a coach with up-to-date information.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
AUSTRALIA
The Australian
March 7, 2020
By John Ferguson
It is a measure of George Pell’s lot that he finds himself in notionally better surrounds but not necessarily better company.
The cardinal, still Australia’s most senior Catholic, will monitor next week’s High Court developments while in isolation in his relatively new home at Victoria’s maximum-security Barwon Prison, near Geelong.
Barwon is a hole that swallowed gangland murderer Carl Williams but it’s not quite as deep as Pell’s former holding cell in the centre of Melbourne.
Pell, 78, now has more room to move, with a more modern but still austere toilet, shower and general living facilities. He is served shoddy food and his main human contact is with the prison guards who bring him his medication for twin heart conditions.
It remains a life of deprivation.
Given his convictions, most people will be happy with Pell’s plight. For others who have followed the facts of the case closely, including the brightest minds in the law, next week’s High Court appeal will be a significant moment in Australian legal history.
There are deep divisions about whether Pell should even be in jail.
“If you look at all of the case law about unreasonable verdicts, it’s (the Pell convictions) right on the borderline of what’s reasonable and what isn’t,’’ Sydney University academic Andrew Dyer told Inquirer.
Dyer, who has co-authored a paper on the Pell case with the university’s Professor David Hamer, is not predicting in any way how the High Court will act. Nor is anyone else with any certainty.
But the paper, published in the Sydney Law Review, makes clear what many independent voices suspect: Pell’s convictions may be flawed.
Dyer and Hamer write that it appears open to the High Court to overturn the Pell verdicts on the basis of the cumulative effect of the evidence, but they doubt the court will make this finding.
They express concern about the impact that rejection of the Pell decision would have on the standing of juries.
Dyer and Hamer’s views are not black and white. They also make clear that the law allows for convictions based largely or solely on the complainant’s evidence and a different tack would “undermine the prohibition against child sexual assault’’.
This is a tick to the prosecution’s heavy reliance on the surviving choirboy, whose evidence was central to the Pell convictions.
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KENYA
Vatican News
March 7, 2020
By Benedict Mayaki
AMECEA organizes meeting of Child Protection Officers to examine policy implementation in member conferences
One year ago, Pope Francis urged Bishops to renew child protection guidelines during his address at the conclusion of the meeting for the protection of minors. This week, the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA) organized a three-day meeting with the goal of examining the effects of policies regarding the protection of children and vulnerable adults in its member countries.
The meeting, from 3 – 5 March, took place in the diocese of Nakuru, Kenya. It is the second of its kind, after a similar one was held in Ethiopia last year.
Speaking at the start of the meeting, the Secretary-General of AMECEA, Fr. Anthony Makunde said: “After a year, we have taken some time to do a bit of self-monitoring, a self-evaluation as a region to see for ourselves how far we have managed to journey this road, which the mother Church has called us to journey on.”
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KINSHASA (DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO)
La Croix International
March 5, 2020
By Lucie Sarr
Papal nuncio reminds bishops they can be removed if they are not vigilant
The bishops of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have held their first training session on the protection of minors in the Church.
Meeting from Mar. 2-4 at a Caritas center in Kinshasa, the session was the Congolese Church’s latest effort to implement Pope Francis’ “motu proprio,” Vos estis lux mundi (You are the light of the world), on sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable persons.
The training session was funded and facilitated by the apostolic nunciature in DRC.
Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, who has been the pope’s representative to the county since July 2018, reminded the bishops of their responsibilities in the area of child protection.
“The universal Church is giving the bishops a great deal of space for the exercise of their function as judges in their respective dioceses,” he explained.
He warned them that bishops are called to account and could be dismissed if they have been seriously negligent in the exercise of their pastoral office.
Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo of Kinshasa, vice-president of the national bishops’ conference (Cenco), presided at the Mar. 2 opening Mass.
In his homily, the Capuchin Franciscan spoke of the situation of children in the city of Kinshasa, the seat of his archdiocese.
Archbishop Marcel Utembi of Kisangani, who is currently Cenco president, said the Church has a duty to administer justice well when dealing with crimes that violate the dignity of the child.
Measures for the protection of minors
Father Georges Kalenga, second secretary general of Cenco, outlined the measures the bishops have taken to protect minors in an interview last October with La Croix Africa.
He noted that in 2013 they published a text entitled “Guidelines for dealing with cases of clerical sexual abuse of minors”, which emphasize that special attention must given to the victims.
It states that “in the prevention of abuse and the protection of minors, another two-fold attention is needed: the training of clerics, as well as all the faithful, and the treatment of the accused in appropriate facilities to ensure they do not offend again”.
Training
“The bishops of Cenco also insist that clerics be informed of the damage that priest sexual abuse causes the victim and that the cleric must be held responsibility at the canonical and civil level,” explained Father Kalenga in that interview.
This is being reiterated in training sessions priests must take concerning sexual abuse.
Such training is offered to all Church employees and and those who deal in any way with children in Church structures: schools, hospitals, and the Catholic Action Movement. All coordinators of Catholic schools in DR-Congo are also given child protection training.
In addition, every diocese is urged to take initiatives to promote a frank dialogue within the Living Ecclesial Communities (CEV) on the issue of sexual abuse.
The Congolese bishops’ conference has also mandated that each diocese set up an office where people can report alleged abuse.
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.
[Constitutional Court orders the church to deliver files reserved to a journalist]
MEDELLÍN (COLOMBIA)
El Espectador
March 3, 2020
La Arquidiócesis de Medellín tendrá que entregar información sobre los antecedentes de 43 sacerdotes pedida por el periodista Juan Pablo Barrientos. El alto tribunal señaló que esta información era de carácter semiprivada y que primaba el derecho a la información frente a la privacidad de los miembros del clero.
El periodista Juan Pablo Barrientos es reconocido por sus investigaciones relacionadas con violaciones y abusos sexuales cometidos por el clero en Colombia. Archivo El Espectador
Una nueva victoria judicial tuvo el periodista Juan Pablo Barrientos, reconocido por sus investigaciones sobre actos de pederastia cometidos por miembros de la iglesia católica colombiana y por su libro “Dejad que los niños vengan a mi”. En esta ocasión, la Corte Constitucional le dio la razón frente a la solicitud de los antecedentes de 43 sacerdotes que hacían parte de la Arquidiócesis de Medellín. Por eso, el alto tribunal le ordenó a esta comunidad que entregue estos datos solicitados por el comunicador.
[GOOGLE TRANSLATION: The Archdiocese of Medellín will have to provide information on the background of 43 priests requested by the journalist Juan Pablo Barrientos. The high court said that this information was semi-private and that the right to information prevailed over the privacy of clergy members.
A new judicial victory was the journalist Juan Pablo Barrientos, recognized for his investigations into acts of pedophilia committed by members of the Colombian Catholic Church and for his book “Let the children come to me.” On this occasion, the Constitutional Court gave him the reason for the request for the background of 43 priests who were part of the Archdiocese of Medellín. Therefore, the high court ordered this community to provide this information requested by the communicator.]
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AUSTRALIA
Lawyers Weekly
March 5, 2020
By Naomi Neilson
With the special hearing to determine George Pell’s hearing approaching fast, Sydney law professors have looked into whether or not the cardinal stands a chance.
The High Court of Australia has been asked to decide whether the Court of Appeal of Victoria (VSCA) was right in finding, by majority, that it was open to the jury at Cardinal Pell’s trial to convict him of sexually abusing two young children.
Ahead of the Full Court sitting at Parliament House on March 11 and 12, professors in Sydney Law School Andrew Dyer and Professor David Hammer argue that if the HCA grants Cardinal Pell special leave to appeal, it should reject his argument that VSCA majority reversed the onus of proof when reaching the conclusion that it did.
“[Cardinal] Pell’s claim that the VSCA majority reversed the onus of proof is dubious,” Mr Dyer and Professor Hammer wrote. “But the evidence that Pell had no opportunity to offend was strong; and it does seem open to HCA plausibly to insist Cardinal Pell’s convictions were unreasonable. Against that are considerations of judicial restraint.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
AUSTRALIA
“Four Corners,” Australian Broadcast Corporation
March 2, 2020
By Louise Milligan
Child safety authorities have made numerous referrals to Victoria Police over allegations about teachers following a Four Corners investigation into Melbourne’s prestigious boys’ school, St Kevin’s College.
St Kevin’s new acting principal, John Crowley, Victoria’s Commissioner for Children and Young People (CCYP) and the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) have been given information containing potential concerns of conduct about several teachers which has then been passed on to police for investigation.
Four Corners understands that at least four referrals by the CCYP to Victoria Police relate to Peter Finnigan, who had been a very senior member of staff at St Kevin’s and other prominent Catholic boys’ schools around Australia.
St Kevin’s has been in the spotlight since a Four Corners investigation in mid-February revealed how the school did not support a student victim through a child sex offence trial.
Five teachers have left St Kevin’s College since the story aired including the headmaster and his deputy following criticism of the school’s handling of complaints.
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WASHINGTON D.C.
National Catholic Reporter
March 6, 2020
By Tom Roberts
Archbishop Charles Scicluna, Sr. Carol Zinn speak with NCR
Two Catholic leaders recently turned the discussion about the crisis in the church away from a focus on institutional change to the less measurable work of transformation, the significance of relationships and the need for members of the hierarchy to confront that culture’s past.
Sr. Carol Zinn, a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Philadelphia and executive director of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, widely considered one of the most significant forces in revealing the truth of the sex abuse crisis, advanced their ideas in separate interviews.
The two were among participants and panelists in a Feb 28-29 session organized by the Leadership Roundtable, an organization formed in 2005 following the revelations of widespread abuse and cover-up in Boston. The Leadership Roundtable event, “From Crisis to Co-Responsibility: Creating a New Culture of Leadership,” was held at the Fairmont Hotel in Washington. The two-day event explored ways in which mostly structural change could lead to more transparency and accountability and greater involvement of laypeople in the life of the church.
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LOS ANGELES (CA)
LaIst
March 6, 2020
By Jessica P. Ogilvie
The Catholic Church let at least 51 priests who were credibly accused of sexual abuse move to different countries to continue working as clergy, according to an investigation from ProPublica released Friday. Of those, a handful were accused in Los Angeles prior to going elsewhere.
Among the Los Angeles-based offenders is a man ProPublica reporters describe as, “One of the most notorious cases of an accused priest moving across international borders.”
Rev. Nicolas Aguilar Rivera was transferred to L.A. after being accused of sexual abuse in Tehuácan, Mexico. Once here, Rivera allegedly molested 10 boys. Rather than strip him of his priesthood or report him to the police, however, church leaders transferred him to Mexico once again.
The news outet’s report comes from an analysis of their own database, which gathered lists of credibly accused clergy and made them public and searchable.
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MADISON (WI)
Jefferson County Daily Union
March 8, 2020
By Frank Schultz
The Catholic Diocese of Madison is reinstating the Rev. William A. Nolan to his status as a retired priest after deeming that allegations of sexual misconduct against him were not credible.
Father Nolan served in several southern Wisconsin parishes, including St. Joseph Catholic Church in Fort Atkinson from 2002-07.
“In the coming days, Fr. Nolan will be reinstated to his previous status as a retired priest of the Diocese of Madison in good standing,” according to a news release from diocese communications director Brent M. King.
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VICKSBURG (MS)
Associated Press
March 6, 2020
A Mississippi church pastor was found guilty of sexually assaulting two girls between the ages of 14 and 16.
The Rev. Troy Anthony Piccaluga was arrested in March 2018 and charged with two counts of statutory rape and one count of sexual battery.
A Warren County jury found Piccaluga guilty Thursday of one count of statutory rape and one count of sexual battery, The Vicksburg Post reported.
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JAMAICA
Jamaica Observer
March 8, 2020
The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Jamaica has moved to distance itself from one of its former pastors accused of sexually grooming, before sodomising, a teenaged boy in St Ann.
The pastor, who was initially based at the Adventist church in Claremont, St Ann, before being assigned to the church in Little London, Westmoreland, has since resigned and emigrated, claiming that allegations of immorality against him and threats on his life had forced him to leave Jamaica.
Late last week the leadership of the Adventist church confirmed that they were aware of the allegations against the pastor and that he had resigned.
But the church, in response to questions from the Jamaica Observer, made it clear that there would be no shielding of persons accused of child abuse in its ranks and that the pastor was not transferred because of the allegations.
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CANADA
Commonwealth Magazine
February 11, 2020
By Michael W. Higgins
It was early December of last year when I heard an extraordinary interview with a Canadian bishop on CBC Radio One, Canada’s premier English-speaking public broadcaster. Extraordinary, because it was thirty minutes long; extraordinary because it was on Sunday Edition, a coveted spot on the award-winning network’s flagship news roundup; and extraordinary most of all because it was a Canadian bishop being interviewed on the subject of clerical sex abuse in a way that was vigorously interrogatory without being adversarial.
Most importantly, the bishop, Thomas Dowd, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Montreal, was non-defensive, persuasively contrite, uncharacteristically spin-free and transparent in his responses, and genuinely warm and nonjudgmental in his pastoral approach.
Dowd was on air because of the controversy surrounding the allegations, trial, and sentencing of Brian Boucher, a priest-abuser of long standing. Dowd had listened to Boucher’s accusers, believed them, advocated on their behalf, and daily attended Boucher’s trial in order to be with them, the survivors.
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SACRAMENTO (CA)
ProPublica
March 8, 2020
By Katie Zavadski, Topher Sanders and Nicole Hensley
This story was produced by ProPublica and the Houston Chronicle
▪ ▪ ▪
The Rev. Jose Antonio Pinal, a young priest from Mexico, arrived at his first parish near Sacramento in 1980, fresh out of seminary. The priest befriended the Torres family, helping the parents, also immigrants from Mexico, to fill out an application for food stamps. Pinal became an occasional dinner guest and took the children to theme parks and on road trips along the Pacific coast. He encouraged 15-year-old Ricardo Torres to become an altar boy.
But in the priest’s quarters at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in the small city of Gridley, Torres said, Pinal, then 30, gave him alcohol, showed him movies with sex and nudity, and groped and raped him. The teenager told another priest in 1989 and the family was assured by lawyers for the diocese that Pinal would not be allowed around children, Torres said.
Thirty years later, in the spring of 2019, the Diocese of Sacramento put Pinal’s name on its list of credibly accused priests. The list had five allegations of sexual abuse against Pinal dating to the late 1980s.
Pinal had “fled to Mexico,” according to the list, and the diocese had prohibited him from performing priestly work in public in the 20 counties that make up the diocese. But an investigation by ProPublica and the Houston Chronicle shows the Catholic Church allowed or aided dozens of priests — including Pinal — to serve abroad as priests after being credibly accused of abuse in the United States.
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IRELAND
Irish Central
March 7, 2020
Ciaran Tierney
Survivors of Ireland’s notorious religious institutions feel they were re-traumatized as the Irish State attempted to construct a Redress scheme
The Irish State has been accused of compounding the physical and sexual abuse experienced by survivors of religious institutions through a redress scheme which has traumatised thousands of people and blocked them from speaking out about what happened to them as children.
A brilliant two-part documentary series which aired on Irish national television this week has exposed how survivors were forced to sign waivers before receiving financial compensation, imposing “gagging orders” on them which compounded their abuse with the threat of imprisonment and financial penalties.
The “Redress: Breaking the Silence” documentary, aired by RTE television over consecutive nights, exposed how survivors have been prevented from naming their abusers, or even where the abuse took place, and how much compensation they received from the Redress Board.
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CHARLESTON (SC)
Post and Courier
March 7, 2020
By Sara Coello
Months after his arrest on child sex charges, a former North Charleston pastor has pleaded guilty to assault and avoided jail time.
Karey Montrel Heyward, originally charged with third degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor under 16, pleaded guilty Thursday to second degree assault and battery.
Judge Markley Dennis sentenced Heyward in North Charleston to the maximum penalty of three years in prison, but suspended the punishment to 18 months probation, according to court records.
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FRANCE
Agence France-Presse via France 24
March 6, 2020
Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of a French cardinal who failed to report an alleged paedophile priest, the Catholic Church in Lyon said Friday.
Archbishop of Lyon Philippe Barbarin is the most senior French priest to be caught up in a global paedophilia scandal that has seen clergy hauled before courts from Argentina to Australia.
Barbarin, 69, a staunch conservative who became archbishop of the French city in 2002, has long been accused by victims’ groups of turning a blind eye to decades of child abuse in his diocese that blighted many lives.
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The Limited Times
March 6, 2020
On January 30, a few hours after being released on appeal in the trial for non-denunciation of sexual assaults on minors under 15 years of age in his diocese, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, had resigned to Pope Francis. The Archbishop of Lyon said he wanted to “turn the page” on the Preynat affair, the ex-parish priest accused of pedophile acts on young scouts. Friday March 6, the sovereign pontiff finally relieved him of his pastoral charge. A year ago, he had refused “out of respect for the presumption of innocence” a first proposal from the primate of Gaul, just sentenced to six months suspended by the correctional court of Lyon (Rhône) in the same case.
Retained in the Palestinian territories by the epidemic of coronavirus, the cardinal could not announce the papal decision himself, but he sent a message to the faithful of Lyon via Twitter.
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UNITED STATES
Eurasia Review
March 6, 2020
By William Donohue
The media can’t find new dirt on the Catholic Church, so they resort to finding old dirt. Any ethical media source would just move on, but there are some that bear an animus so strong that they can’t. The latest example is a report jointly issued by ProPublica, a liberal non-profit investigative internet outlet funded by establishment sources, and the Houston Chronicle.
The report is a bomb. It breaks no new ground. It focuses on the way the Catholic Church deals with a few priests who were credibly accused of sexual abuse and who are either no longer in ministry or have moved to another country. All the priests named in this anecdotally driven article of more than 5,000 words are alleged to have offended decades ago.
This exact same game was played last fall when the Associated Press, the Denver Post, USA Today, and WCPO (the ABC affiliate in Cincinnati) did stories on credibly accused, not convicted, priests who are either inactive or have been removed.
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PINCKNEYVILLE (IL)
Associated Press
March 7, 2020
A former southern Illinois priest sentenced to nine years in prison after pleading guilty last year to distributing child pornography and processing methamphetamine has died, authorities announced Friday.
Perry County Coroner Paul Searby said Gerald Hechenberger was pronounced dead Friday morning at Pinckneyville Community Hospital. He was serving his sentence at Pinkneyville Correctional Center. The Belleville News-Democrat reports Searby did not give a cause of death.
Hechenberger formerly pastored Holy Childhood Catholic Church in Mascoutah. He was arrested at the church in January 2018 after police received a tip about his activities. Investigators seized electronic devices and found drug paraphernalia, methamphetamine and images and videos of child pornography in the priest’s possession. Prosecutors said none of the children depicted in the pornography were southern Illinois residents.
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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WVUE-TV
March 6, 2020
By Kimberly Curth
New court filings accuse the Archdiocese of New Orleans of buying the silence of a priest credibly accused of child sex abuse.
Attorneys for an alleged victim say the church kept Lawrence Hecker on the payroll and even paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars since 2002 when the church claimed he was removed from the ministry.
The court filings are part of a civil lawsuit against the Archdiocese of New Orleans and Father Lawrence Hecker. That lawsuit claims Hecker is a serial pedophile who has sexually abused countless children. In a new motion filed Friday, attorneys for one of Hecker’s alleged victims, say they believe the Archdiocese continues to support him.
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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press
March 6, 2020
By Nicole Winfield
Pope Francis on Friday accepted the resignation of a French cardinal who was convicted and then acquitted of covering up for a pedophile priest in a case that fueled a reckoning over clergy sexual abuse in France.
Lyon Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, 69, had offered to resign when the Lyon court in March 2019 first convicted him and gave him a six-month suspended sentence for failing to report the predator priest to police.
Francis declined to accept it then, saying he wanted to wait for the outcome of the appeal. He allowed Barbarin to step aside and turn the day-to-day running of the archdiocese over to his deputy.
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VATICAN CITY
Vatican News
March 6, 2020
By Benedict Mayaki
Cardinal Barbarin’s resignation as Archbishop of Lyon follows his acquittal after being accused of covering up sexual abuse cases by a priest.
Pope Francis on Friday accepted the resignation of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin as the Archbishop of Lyon, France.
Cardinal Barbarin had first submitted his resignation to Pope Francis on 18 March 2019. Pending the end of his court case, the Pope did not accept it at that time. Rather, he preferred to allow him to “make the best decision for the diocese.”
On 30 January, Cardinal Barbarin was acquitted of a suspended six-month sentence by a French court in March 2019. He was originally convicted of failing to report cases of sexual abuse of minors by a priest in his diocese to legal authorities.
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MEXICO CITY (MEXICO)
Associated Press
March 7, 2020
By Maria Verza, Nicole Winfield and Christopher Sherman
Mexico’s bishops said Friday the Vatican had suspended a clerical sex abuse fact-finding and assistance mission to Mexico due to the spreading coronavirus in Italy and now the Vatican.
The Mexican Episcopal Conference said in a statement the Holy See had suspended all foreign activities after registering its first positive test Thursday. The Vatican announced no such ban publicly and the Vatican spokesman didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment.
The mission to Mexico, which was announced Monday, was known to have alarmed some in the Mexican hierarchy, and abuse survivors said they doubted the virus was the real reason it was scuttled. On Tuesday, the Vatican ambassador to Mexico, Archbishop Franco Coppola, revealed that the Vatican had been investigating four Mexican bishops since May for allegedly covering or mishandlinguse cases.
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ATLANTA (GA)
Capitol Beat News Service
March 7, 2020
By Beau Evans
State lawmakers are mulling whether to broadly expand the statute of limitations in Georgia for people to sue who were sexually abused as children by members of businesses and nonprofit groups like the Catholic Church or Boy Scouts of America.
State lawmakers are mulling whether to broadly expand the statute of limitations in Georgia for people to sue who were sexually abused as children by members of businesses and nonprofit groups like the Catholic Church or Boy Scouts of America.
Since 2015, victims in Georgia have been able to sue their abusers and organizations that covered up the abuse before they turn 23 years old or within two years after those victims realized what they suffered was in fact abuse.
Victim advocates have praised that statute-of-limitation window as a tool for securing justice for people who repressed memories of their abuse for decades. But they argue Georgia law is still too limiting.
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IOWA CITY (IA)
Associated Press
March 7, 2020
A former director of a Jewish center in Iowa City has been convicted of molesting a 9-year-old boy.
A Johnson County jury found 29-year-old David Weltman guilty Thursday of second-degree sexual abuse. Prosecutors said Weltman abused the boy last year as he gave the boy Hebrew lessons at the Hillel House.
The boy reported to investigators that Weltman once picked him up, carried him into another room and touched him inappropriately. Weltman also confessed to a one-time friend that he has touched a child and that he is sexually attracted to young boys, police said.
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MADISON (WI)
Catholic Herald
March 7, 2020
Following is a statement released by the Diocese of Madison.
Following a thorough investigation and subsequent recommendation by the Diocese’s Sexual Abuse Review Board, the Diocese of Madison now announces Bishop Donald Hying’s determination that previously announced allegations of sexual misconduct made against Rev. William A. Nolan are deemed not to be credible.
In May 2018, two separate allegations of sexual misconduct against Fr. Nolan were brought forward and made public: one involving a man who claimed abuse from the time he was twelve or thirteen years old, until he was seventeen or eighteen (2006-2011), another involving a single incident with a man when he was twenty-one years old (2012). Upon receiving the allegations, Bishop Robert Morlino immediately excluded Fr. Nolan from sacred ministry and pledged cooperation with local law enforcement. In order to avoid impeding the work of law enforcement, the bishop postponed further canonical investigations into the alleged misconduct until all criminal investigations had concluded.
In early June 2018, the Janesville Police Department informed officials of the Diocese of Madison that it would not be pursuing any criminal investigation against Fr. Nolan concerning the alleged incident in 2012. However, regarding the alleged incidents from 2006-2011, the Jefferson County District Attorney charged Fr. Nolan with six counts of sexual assault of a child. On July 12, 2018, Fr. Nolan entered a plea of not guilty and his case proceeded to a full jury trial.
On September 12, 2019, Judge William F. Hue dismissed one of the six counts, and on September 13, 2019, Fr. Nolan was acquitted on all of the five remaining counts.
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IRELAND
The Journal
March 3, 2020
Michael O’Brien created one of the most powerful moments in Irish television, when he passionately told his story on RTÉ in 2009.
ABUSE SURVIVOR MICHAEL O’Brien explained why he felt he had to speak about his experience on a 2009 RTÉ programme that discussed redress for victims of institutional abuse.
Michael O’Brien was a member of a live studio audience for RTÉ’s Questions and Answers programme in 2009. As a child he had spent eight years in St Joseph’s Industrial School, also known as Ferryhouse, in Co Tipperary where he was raped and severely beaten.
Among the panelists on the RTÉ programme were Leo Varadkar, who was in opposition at the time, and the then Minister for Transport, Fianna Fáil’s Noel Dempsey.
O’Brien asked Dempsey if the government would freeze the assets of religious institutions if they didn’t pay more into the Redress Board Fund, which had been a topical issue at the time.
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IRELAND
RTÉ
March 4, 2020
Twenty-one years ago, the RTÉ television documentary series States Of Fear, profoundly changed the conversation about residential institutions in Ireland and caused a national outcry.
Now, using the personal testimonies of survivors of residential abuse who sought redress, a new two-part RTÉ series examines the Irish State’s response to those survivors.
Below, reporter Mick Peelo introduces Redress: Breaking The Silence – watch it here, via RTÉ Player.
I thought I was sensitive to the sufferings of survivors of childhood abuse. I’ve made television documentaries on the subject for years, so when it came to survivors of abuse in residential institutions, I thought we had addressed the mistakes of the past, made amends and helped them find healing and closure as best they could. I thought redress was done and dusted. I was wrong.
In 1999, in a series called States of Fear, my late colleague, Mary Raftery used powerful, first-person testimonies of survivors of abuse in residential institutions to tell a scarcely believable story from the darker edges of modern Irish history. Before the broadcast of the last programme in that series, the reaction of the Irish public was such that the then taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, apologised on behalf of the State to those children who had been abused while in its care. He promised “to address the injustices of the past”.
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IRELAND
Irish Times
March 7, 2020
By Diarmaid Ferriter
Too many who needed to be helped were instead subjected to new trauma
In 1972, A J Wallace, a 24-year-old former inmate of Artane Industrial School, who moved to London after his release, wrote to Taoiseach Jack Lynch: “It is now eight years since I left the Republic a free individual. Unfortunately for me, I can never forget one day of my 16 years in your country… I was admitted to an orphanage at the age of two years; at the age of 10 I was transferred to Artane where I was to stay another six years. I do not intend to put in writing at this very moment the treatment to which helpless children are subject to while in the care of the Irish Catholic authorities. I do not know if it could be possible, but I sure wish I had the opportunity to speak with you personally… I do believe that if I had a chance to tell my story a great deal of good could be done.”
Like many others, in reacting to the Ryan report in 2009, I highlighted its importance as a monument to the victims because it laid bare what went on in devastating but necessary detail and was a reminder it took decades for people like Wallace to tell their stories and get acknowledgement of the pain they suffered.
But there was to be no neat resolution, and what is appalling is that more than 10 years later, as heard in RTÉ’s powerful two-part series Redress, aired this week, some victims are still having to cope not just with the original abuse, but its compounding by church and state. Too many who needed to be helped by those with expertise in trauma were instead subjected to new trauma arising out of a badly mismanaged redress scheme.
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BUFFALO (NY)
GoErie.com
March 7, 2020
By Ed Palattella
Former bishop, accused of cover-up, is disputing constitutionality of New York law that lets plaintiffs sue in old cases.
Retired Erie Catholic Bishop Donald W. Trautman is challenging New York’s landmark Child Victims Act as he seeks to dismiss a lawsuit that claims he covered up clergy sex abuse of a minor when he was a top official in the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo in the 1980s.
The Child Victims Act “is unconstitutional,” lawyers for Trautman wrote in his initial legal response to the suit, filed in December in Erie County, New York.
The lawyers also wrote that the law violates Trautman’s rights to due process under the New York constitution, and that Trautman denies all the claims in the suit.
The complaint should be dismissed “in its entirety,” according to the response, filed Thursday. The 11-page response lists denials for the claims in the suit without providing details, as is customary in the early stages of litigation. The claims and counterclaims are expected to get more detailed as the case proceeds.
Trautman, 83, was vicar general of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo and then its auxiliary bishop for five years before he became bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Erie. He led the 13-county Catholic Diocese of Erie from 1990 to 2012.
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WINNIPEG (MANITOBA, CANADA)
Winnipeg Free Press
March 7, 2020
By John Longhurst
Jean Vanier, the founder of L’ARCHE, an international network of communities where people with and without intellectual disabilities live and work together.
The recent news about Jean Vanier’s coercive and abusive sexual encounters with at least six adult women has rocked the Christian world — and beyond.
A lot has been written about the revelations. Since Vanier was Roman Catholic, I wondered what some writers from that church were saying about it.
Writing for Catholic News Service, Jamie Manson noted Vanier’s abuse follows a pattern in the Catholic church of men in authority abusing children and women.
For him, the Vanier case reaffirmed that “the church’s radically patriarchal leadership structure and theology are at the root of most sex abuse cases in the church.”
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INDIANA
Crux
March 7, 2020
Father John Hollowell cried as he sat in the confessional of St. Paul the Apostle Church in Greencastle.
It was the summer of 2018 – a time when the tragedy of clergy sexual abuse surfaced again through government investigations and media reports.
Hollowell cried as he thought of the suffering of abuse victims across several decades.
From these tears came a prayer. Hollowell asked God to let him bear a cross on behalf of the victims of clergy sexual abuse.
About 18 months later, it would seem that prayer was answered. After having several fainting spells and spasms in 2019, Hollowell was diagnosed at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota earlier this month with a brain tumor.
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UNITED STATES
AdamHorowitzLaw.com (law firm blog)
March 7, 2020
Increasingly, venerable institutions like the Boy Scouts, the USA Gymnastics and Catholic dioceses say they are going into bankruptcy because of child sex abuse and cover up lawsuits.
So maybe it’s time to re-think those suits and the laws that enable them?
To put it bluntly, that’s a crazy idea. Bear with us as we explain.
For starters, let’s look more closely at why big non-profits like this sometimes seek Chapter 11 protection.
Are they being “forced to” (as some headline writers suggest)? Or are they doing so for selfish reasons?
Our bet is the latter.
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NEW ORLEANS (LA)
NOLA.com
March 6, 2020
By Ramon Antonio Vargas
Attorneys for a man who claims he was molested as a child by a predatory priest estimate that the clergyman has received hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of financial support from the Archdiocese of New Orleans since his forced retirement, according to court documents filed Friday.
The filing in the lawsuit targeting former priest Lawrence Hecker, 88, and the archdiocese calls attention to a church practice that is common nationwide but infuriates abuse victims and advocates.
The church provides retired priests with a monthly income, car insurance and a choice of living quarters, even when, like Hecker, they filed retirement papers in the wake of a credible accusation of child sexual abuse.
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UNITED STATES
AdamHorowitzLaw.com (law firm blog)
March 7, 2020
Five years ago, “Spotlight” rocked film audiences
And it’s worth watching a second (or 3rd, 4th) time!
This is the five year anniversary of the release of an incredible film, Spotlight.
We agree with one of the public relations professionals who works with Boston Cardinal Seán O’Malley. When the film came out, he said the archdiocese “would not discourage people from seeing it” and that viewing it “should be an individual choice.”
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/13/spotlight-reporters-uncovered-catholic-child-abuse-boston-globe
Yes, it’s your choice of course. And we hope you choose to see it (or see it again). It’s a powerful yet also entertaining reminder of how deceptive and powerful church officials have been (and largely still are) while also being an uplifting reminder of the wisdom of Dr. Martin Luther King, who said “No lie lives forever.”
It’s great film.
Don’t just take our word for it. Look at these facts and figures about Spotlight from Wikipedia:
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FriendlyAtheist.Patheos.com (blog)
March 6, 2020
By Hemant Mehta
According to a damning new report from ProPublica and the Houston Chronicle, dozens of priests who were credibly accused of sexual abuse found new homes in foreign countries where it would be much harder for local authorities to find them. The Catholic Church facilitated or looked the other way in many of those cases.
It’s just incredible work from journalists Katie Zavadski, Topher Sanders, and Nicole Hensley.
ProPublica and the Chronicle analyzed lists published by 52 U.S. dioceses — encompassing the top 30 in terms of the number of credibly accused living clergy and those located in states along the U.S.-Mexico border. Reporters found 51 clergy who after allegations of abuse in the U.S. were able to work as priests or religious brothers in a host of countries, from Ireland to Nigeria to the Philippines. At least 40 had worked in U.S. states along the southern border, including 11 in Texas. No country was a more common destination than Mexico, where at least 21 credibly accused clergy found refuge.
As recently as Wednesday, one of the priests in question told reporters that his time with a 15-year-old boy — a boy he allegedly got drunk before groping and raping him — was “screwed up, but whatever happened was consensual.”
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ROME
Crux
March 6, 2020
By Inés San Martín
Claiming that it’s due to the outbreak in Italy of coronavirus, the Mexican bishops’ conference announced Friday that a planned visit by two top papal aides to address a local clerical sexual abuse crisis has been “postponed.”
According to the statement released Friday afternoon, the mission of Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Spanish Father Jordi Bertomeu has been “postponed” because the Holy See has “suspended all activity abroad.”
“To be carried out from March 20 to 27, [the investigation] has been postponed due to the health situation in Italy, which has already touched the Vatican City, concerning the coronavirus (Covid-19),” the statement says.
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UNITED STATES
Houston Chronicle
March 6, 2020
By Katie Zavadski, Topher Sanders, ProPublica, and Nicole Hensley
The Catholic Church allowed more than 50 U.S.-based clergy to move abroad after facing credible accusations of sexual abuse. Some continued to work with children.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
This story is co-published with the Houston Chronicle.
The Rev. Jose Antonio Pinal, a young priest from Mexico, arrived at his first parish in rural Northern California in 1980, fresh out of seminary. The priest befriended the Torres family, helping the parents, also immigrants from Mexico, to fill out an application for food stamps. Pinal became an occasional dinner guest and took the children to theme parks and on road trips along the Pacific coast. He encouraged 15-year-old Ricardo Torres to become an altar boy.
But in the priest’s quarters at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in the small city of Gridley, Torres said, Pinal, then 30, gave him alcohol, showed him movies with sex and nudity, and groped and raped him. The teenager told another priest in 1989 and the family was assured by lawyers for the diocese that Pinal would not be allowed around children, Torres said.
Thirty years later, in the spring of 2019, the Diocese of Sacramento put Pinal’s name on its list of credibly accused priests. The list had five allegations of sexual abuse against Pinal dating to the late 1980s.
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NEW YORK (NY)
Crux
March 6, 2020
By Christopher White
As Bishop Edward Scharfenberger, the temporary leader of the Diocese of Buffalo, considers whether to reinstate a whistleblower priest, further questions have emerged about both whistleblower protections and potential conflicts of interest regarding the priest in question.
Father Ryszard Biernat last year secretly recorded private conversations with Bishop Richard Malone in which the now disgraced bishop raised serious questions about his handling of abuse cases and diocesan personnel matters – including a matter involving Biernat himself.
Last September, Biernat – who served as Malone’s secretary – released the audio recordings to Buffalo’s WKBW, in which he and Malone discuss a situation involving correspondence that suggests a romantic relationship between Biernat and a former diocesan seminarian who had recently resigned.
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LOS ANGELES (CA)
LAist
March 6, 2020
The Catholic Church let at least 51 priests who were credibly accused of sexual abuse move to different countries to continue working as clergy, according to an investigation from ProPublica released Friday. Of those, a handful were accused in Los Angeles prior to going elsewhere.
Among the Los Angeles-based offenders is a man ProPublica reporters describe as, “One of the most notorious cases of an accused priest moving across international borders.”
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SAO PAULO (BRAZIL)
Catholic News Service
March 6, 2020
By Lise Alves
The Archdiocese of Sao Paulo announced the creation of a commission to investigate allegations of sexual abuse linked to the Catholic Church.
Cardinal Odilo Scherer of Sao Paulo said the measure follows Pope Francis’s May 2019 document establishing new procedures for reporting abuse and violence within the Catholic Church. He said the commission will not only receive reports of sexual abuse committed by clergy and religious, but it will look at all areas of the church’s life in order to prevent abuse.
In a news conference March 5, Scherer said the commission would have up to 90 days to conclude its inquiries. He said the commission would “welcome people, listen and try to characterize the complaint.”
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CLEARFIELD (UT)
Standard-Examiner
March 6, 2020
By Mark Shenefelt
Clearfield police arrested a man Thursday on suspicion of multiple felony sexual abuse charges involving a 14-year-old boy.
A police probable cause statement alleges that Brad Isakson, 38, of Clearfield, committed six felony crimes against the boy, including masturbation and oral sex. He also enticed the boy via text message to have anal sex and sent him a video of himself masturbating, the police document alleged.
Isakson had occupied a position of trust as a youth leader of the victim, the statement said.
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NEW YORK (NY)
The Wall Street Journal
March 6, 2020
By Francis X. Rocca and Noemie Bisserbe
Cardinal Philippe Barbarin’s 2019 conviction was overturned by an appeals court in January
The pope has accepted the resignation of France’s most-senior Catholic cleric, the Vatican said, weeks after a French court overturned his conviction for failing to report child sex abuse.
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ROME
Crux
March 6, 2020
By Inés San Martín
According to one of the lay members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, it would be “naïve” to think that every case of abuse can be prevented, though much can be done to greatly reduce the number of cases and stop repeat offenders.
“If we would expect that with all the guidelines we have in place we can prevent abuse 100 percent, we would be naïve,” said Dr. Myriam Wijlens of the Netherlands. “We cannot prevent it in the Church in as much as we cannot prevent it in the Scouts or sports. No system will ever be perfect.”
However, she told Crux in an interview, “we can, and I believe we do, learn to be more attentive, listen and see the signals better and thus improve our reaction. This goes for those in leadership as well as parents and other faithful in the church: we are indeed all more attentive. There is also a better culture that encourages victims to speak and report. The preventive measures will hopefully mean that abusers are not moved and that thus repetitive abuse may be prevented.”
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MAINZ (GERMANY)
Catholic News Service
March 6, 2020
The German bishops, responding to criticism from survivors of clergy sexual abuse, will begin paying more compensation, reported the German Catholic news agency, KNA.
Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier said the Catholic Church in Germany will orient itself to compensation tables and the corresponding court rulings applied in civil law cases.
Those payments currently range between 5,000 euros ($5,650) and 50,000 euros per case. The bishop said the church will always pay sums “at the higher end of the margin of discretion.”
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MELBOURNE (AUSTRALIA)
Reuters
March 5, 2020
By Sonali Paul
Australia’s highest court will hear a final bid on March 11 by former Vatican treasurer George Pell to overturn his conviction for sexually assaulting two teenaged choir boys in the 1990s when he was archbishop of Melbourne.
Pell, 78, is in jail serving a six-year sentence which began a year ago after he was convicted by a jury on one charge of sexual penetration of a child under 16 and four charges of an indecent act with a child under 16.
The highest ranked Catholic worldwide to be jailed for child sex offences is appealing to the High Court of Australia after Victoria’s Court of Appeal upheld his conviction last August by a 2-1 majority.
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RAPID CITY (SD)
KOTA-TV
March 5, 2020
By Jack Caudill/Caroline Pettey
The jury in the trial of a former Rapid City Catholic priest hears an interview with police where he admits to stealing from the church collection.
41-year old Marcin Garbacz is facing a total of 65 federal charges including wire fraud, money laundering , transportation of stolen money and filing a false tax return.
In the interview from June 2018, Rapid City Police Sergeant Michael Shine asked Garbacz if it was him caught on surveillance video taking the collection bags at St. Therese Church in Rapid City.
He said it was and admitted to taking more than $200.
In that interview, Garbacz also admitted to four other thefts at the church, saying he took between $100 and $120 each time.
He said he took the tamper proof bags into the confessional at the church, took some of the money and then replaced the bags with new ones.
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MEXICO CITY (MEXICO)
Associated Press
March 5, 2020
By MARÍA VERZA
The Roman Catholic Church began investigating four Mexican bishops last May for allegedly covering up cases of pederasty, the Vatican’s representative in Mexico said.
Nuncio Franco Coppola said the inquiries were part of measures put in place recently to end “the culture of silence and fear” surrounding sexual abuse in the church.
Priests abusing minors in Mexico was a long-running problem, but until Pope Francis laid out new guidance last spring it wasn’t clear how to handle the issue of the cover-ups, which proved more complicated than looking into the actual cases of abuse, Coppola said in an interview Wednesday.
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YOUNGSTOWN (OH)
WKBN-TV
March 5, 2020
The Diocese of Youngstown added two names to its list of priests that were “credibly accused” of sexual abuse of a minor.
The Diocese added Reverend William Hohman and Reverend Daniel Cipar to that list.
Rev. Hohman was ordained in 1938 and came to Youngstown in 1943.
He served at St. Stephen Parish in Niles, St. Brendan Parish in Youngstown, St. George Parish in Lisbon, St. Joseph Parish in Alliance, St. Ann Parish in East Liverpool and Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in Aurora.
Rev. Hohman died in 1988.
Rev. Cipar was ordained in 1961 and came to the Diocese of Youngstown as a missionary in 1993.
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FARGO (ND)
Valley News Live (KVLY)
March 4, 2020
By Joshua Peguero
A former Fargo priest says he is not remorseful for sexual assault incidents that happened dozens of years ago.
New documents revealed his name, Martin Cullen, as well as 52 other North Dakota Catholic priests who were moved to other churches after being accused of sexually abusing minors.
Three lawyers held a press conference in Fargo on Thursday stating they are making it their business to change state laws for victims of sexual abuse.
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UNITED STATES
GetReligion
February 29, 2020
By Richard Ostling
THE QUESTION:
Are U.S. Protestant congregations facing a dangerous plunge in income?
THE GUY’S ANSWER:
Note the subtitle of this recent book release: “The Coming Revolution in Church Economics: Why Tithes and Offerings Are No Longer Enough and What You Can Do About It” (published by Baker). Will many churchgoers no longer be able to keep the doors of their churches open? How bad will it get?
Authors Mark DeYmaz and Harry Li are evangelicals who lead the Mosaix Global Network based in Little Rock, Ark., which promotes and aids multi-ethnic churches. In addition to the book, they discussed their scenario and solutions in an article for www.christianitytoday.com. Their analysis pertains to Protestant congregations, so this Q & A article will do the same.
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UNITED STATES
GetReligion (blog)
February 23, 2020
By Julia Duin
When it comes to fights, the Southern Baptists don’t mess around. Whereas other denominations and religious bodies (Methodists, Episcopalians) at least try to keep things looking civil on the surface, not so America’s largest non-Catholic flock.
When these Baptists want a street brawl, the rest of us need to clear the decks. And what’s interesting in this newest set of battle lines is how women are getting involved and helping redefine this battle as something bigger than theological jousting. It’s even more than sexual abuse and #ChurchToo.
It’s about whether women will ever be taken seriously in the SBC when problems first arise, not when things have gotten so bad, the police are being called in.
The more recent unrest bubbled to the surface about a week ago. Outside of the denominational press, Religion News Service has been the main outlet covering the fracas. This story gives some background.
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LEICESTER (UNITED KINGDOM)
Crux
March 5, 2020
By Charles Collins
Former President of Ireland Mary McAleese has written Pope Francis threatening to quit the Catholic Church if it comes to light the Vatican “failed to act to protect members of the L’Arche community” from the organization’s founder Jean Vanier.
Vanier founded L’Arche in 1964 to work with the intellectually disabled under a community model where those with disabilities and the people who assist them live together. Although Vanier was Catholic, L’Arche isn’t affiliated with any religious denomination.
Vanier died at the age of 90 on May 7, 2019. After his death, Francis thanked God for his ministry and called him a “great witness.”
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OPEN TABERNACLE (blog)
March 5, 2020
By Betty Clermont
Pope Francis was elected on March 13, 2013. Since then, he has been directly responsible for past, present and future sexual torture and brutalization of children. He has obstructed the battle for women’s and LGBTQ persons’ equal rights and appeased tyrants. The pope has also created intentional and unnecessary acrimony with Vatican employees and within his Church.
VATICAN
On Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2019, Vatican police raided offices of the Secretariat of State and the Financial Information Authority, the Vatican’s money-laundering “watchdog” agency, as authorized by Pope Francis. “They seized documents, computers, telephones and passports and blocked bank accounts,” Edward Pentin reported.
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NEW ORLEANS
NOLA.com
March 5, 2020
By Ramon Antonio Vargas
The Archdiocese of New Orleans recently dropped one priest from a list of clergymen facing credible claims of molesting children and replaced him with another priest from the same religious order who had the same last name.
Officials with the archdiocese and the religious order, the Salesians of Don Bosco, this week chalked up the correction to a case of mistaken identity.
Both priests are dead.
The Salesian priest now named in the list is Joseph Sokol, who was born in 1908 and died in 1970. The priest who was removed is Alfred Sokol (no relation to Joseph), who died in 2004 at age 93, after spending much of his career at New Jersey’s prestigious Don Bosco Prep.
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BERLIN (GERMANY)
Associated Press
March 5, 2020
Germany’s Roman Catholic bishops on Thursday approved new guidelines that likely will provide for payments ranging up to about 50,000 euros ($55,700) each for victims of sexual abuse by clergy.
The church has been shaken in recent years by scandals in several countries, including Germany. A church-commissioned report in 2018 concluded that at least 3,677 people were abused by clergy in Germany between 1946 and 2014 — more than half of them 13 or younger and nearly a third of them altar boys. A top bishop has apologized for the abuse.
The German Bishops’ Conference said at the end of a regular meeting Thursday that compensation payments would be decided by “a central and independent body on the basis of an examination of plausibility.”
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BALTIMORE
Baltimore Sun
March 5, 2020
By Pamela Wood
A Maryland senator ruffled feathers in Annapolis by sending a lengthy letter to his fellow Republicans, urging them to vote against a bill that would give survivors of child sexual abuse more time to sue their abusers.
In his letter, Sen. Robert Cassilly draws parallels to the confirmation process of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was questioned about allegations that he assaulted a young woman at a teenage party decades ago. He suggests that giving abuse survivors unlimited time to sue would be akin to the “travesty” of the Kavanaugh hearings.
“As the Kavanaugh hearing showed, every day after an event occurs justice becomes less likely as it becomes increasingly more difficult to capture the truth,” wrote Cassilly, a Harford County Republican who also is an attorney.
The letter, which was sent Feb. 10 to Republican members of the House of Delegates, frustrated Del. C.T. Wilson, who has been working for years to make it easier for adult survivors of child sexual abuse to file lawsuits.
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MEXICO CITY (MEXICO)
Associated Press
March 5, 2020
By Maria Verza
The Vatican’s announcement that it is sending an investigative commission to Mexico later in March to look into cases of clergy sex abuse could become a turning point in the country that’s home to the second largest number of Catholics in the world. That is, if the information gathered by investigators leads to concrete results within the church and the criminal justice system. With a strong connection to church, a history of abuse denial and a cultural reticence about discussing sexual abuse, Mexico has trailed other countries where far more abuse has been revealed.
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WHY IS THE VATICAN SENDING THIS MISSION TO MEXICO AND WHY NOW?
More victims, especially of the Legion of Christ religious order, came forward in Mexico and media attention mounted, putting more pressure on the church. Mexico’s Vatican representative Franco Coppola said the Catholic church’s large presence in Mexico means how the abuse cases are handled could serve as a good or bad example for other countries. He cited the “seriousness” of the situation in Mexico for the decision to send the mission now.
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AUSTRALIA
The Catholic Leader
March 5, 2020
By Mark Bowling
LEADING Catholic figure Francis Sullivan has criticised Church authorities for a “glaring lack of moral leadership” over the child sex abuse crisis and has called for the Church to change its “terms of engagement” if it is to remain relevant and engaged in Australia.
“Unless we break the shackles of entitlement and cronyism, become inclusive and more representative in our decision-making we risk losing any claim to renewal and reform,” Mr Sullivan, former chief executive officer of the Catholic Church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council, told the biennial Catholic Social Services national conference in Melbourne on February 27.
“In a society that regards religion as just another lifestyle choice at best, we need to resist trying to pump air into old tyres that have run their course.”
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UNITED STATES
MSN
March 5, 2020
By Christine Byers
The attorney for a former Mormon church leader said Wednesday that his client was never a bishop and that the federal child pornography charges he is now facing are the result of a “very unique situation,” between the alleged 16-year-old victim’s family and his client’s.
Larry Deutsch, 54, appeared with his attorney, Gregory Wittner, Friday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Shirley Padmore Mensah wearing an orange prison sweatshirt and pants with his legs and hands shackled.
St. Charles County Prosecutor Tim Lohmar charged Deutsch with child pornography on Feb. 21. St. Charles County police described Deutsch as a bishop of a Mormon church in the Lake St. Louis area in court documents.
Police also said they had reason to believe Deutsch might have other victims because he had unsupervised contact with children as a part of his leadership and service activities at various churches throughout St. Charles County and Troy, Missouri.
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FARGO (ND)
The Associated Press
March 5, 2020
By Dave Kolpack
Three attorneys who conducted an investigation into clergy sex abuse said Wednesday the North Dakota Legislature should open up the statute of limitations for civil lawsuits and demanded that the state’s two Roman Catholic dioceses release more files on accused priests.
The Fargo and Bismarck dioceses in January released a list of 53 clergy members with substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor, but it did not include the assignment histories that were compiled and released Wednesday by attorneys Michael Bryant, Tatum O’Brien and Tim O’Keeffe. The lawyers said they hope their findings will help lay out timelines and encourage victims to come forward.
“I think that it’s really important for our victims to know and really important for the public to know where these priests were located at different times,” said O’Keeffe of Fargo. “Obviously it’s a very private issue for the victims. It’s a tough thing to talk about.”
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CHICAGO (IL)
CNS
March 5, 2020
By Michelle Martin
Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, one of the world’s leading experts on safeguarding minors, said the church is suffering “institutional trauma” from clerical sexual abuse, trauma that it must learn to integrate into its theology and understanding of salvation if it is to overcome it.
He visited the Archdiocese of Chicago March 1-3 to speak with seminarians, clergy and members of religious congregations on “The Present Status of Safeguarding in the Church,” which also was the topic of his March 2 DePaul University talk.
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VATICAN CITY
Associated Press
March 5, 2020
Pope Francis has named Savannah Archbishop Gregory J. Hartmayer as the new leader of the Catholic Church in Atlanta.
Pope Francis has named Archbishop Gregory J. Hartmayer as the new leader of the Catholic Church in Atlanta.
Hartmayer, 68, replaces Archbishop Wilton Gregory, who took over as head of the church in Washington, D.C. in the aftermath of the 2018 explosion of the sex abuse and cover-up scandal.
Hartmayer, a Conventual Franciscan, has been bishop of Savannah, Georgia since 2011.
A native of Buffalo, New York, Hartmayer worked as a guidance counselor, school director and teacher in a variety of Catholic schools in Baltimore, New York and Florida.
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BOSTON (MA)
The Conversation
March 5, 2020
By Kathleen McPhillips and Tracy McEwan
Women still make up the majority of the Catholic workforce and Catholic congregations, but their participation in church life is in decline.
Indeed, each generation of Catholic women in Australia is less likely than the previous one to attend church and participate in parish life.
There are a number of reasons for this decline, one of which is a continued lack of action by church leadership in including women in agenda-setting and decision-making processes in church life.
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LOS ANGELES (CA)
Angelus News
March 5, 2020
By Tom Hoffarth
For almost the last 20 years, a handful of men and women — among them attorneys, mental health professionals, a couple of priests, a woman religious, even a pediatrician — have met regularly to provide a service Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez couldn’t do his job without.
Known as the Clergy Misconduct Oversight Board (CMOB), the independent board has reviewed every case of suspected sexual impropriety committed by priests and deacons in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles since 2002. Some are survivors of sexual abuse by clergy themselves.
Their task: to carefully evaluate every accusation before advising the archbishop on what actions should be taken, whether related to policy or outreach to those affected by abuse.
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UNITED STATES
USA TODAY
March 3, 2020
By Nancy Armour
Sexual abuse survivors have made it clear they will not accept a settlement offer from USA Gymnastics that releases the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) without it making a significant financial contribution.
They have a powerful ally: the judge overseeing the case.
During a Feb. 10 status call, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robyn Moberly took the USOPC to task, saying it needed to be “actively participating, particularly with their pocketbook.”
“It isn’t news to anybody on this phone call, nor is it news to me, that the U.S. Olympic Committee needs to be an active participant, and I mean beyond just throwing in their insurance coverage in this,” Moberly said, according to a transcript of the call obtained by USA TODAY Sports.
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MOUNTAIN VIEW (CA)
CBS SF
March 5, 2020
Mountain View Police arrested a teen who was serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as part of a child pornography investigation.
According to police, officers arrested 19-year-old Hayden Hunter on suspicion of child pornography and child pornography distribution. Hunter, who is from Pleasant Grove, Utah, was stationed as a missionary in Fremont at the time of his arrest Wednesday morning.
Police said they received a tip in September of a private Facebook Messenger group chat linked to suspected child pornography, with members possibly as young as 13-years-old. Over the course of the investigation, detectives identified “numerous videos and images” that they determined were child porn.
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KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
March 4, 2020
By Heidi Schlumpf
A survivor of sexual abuse is conducting what she believes is the first broad survey of victims of sexual abuse in the U.S. Catholic Church, with the hopes that the information will clarify and counteract common misperceptions about the survivor community.
Among those myths: that all the victims are male and were abused by priests.
The survey, which was launched Sunday, already is finding “a lot more women are survivors than generally thought,” said Joelle Casteix, an author and advocate for survivors of child sexual assault and institutional cover-up.
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CLAYTON (MO)
Moose Gazette
March 4, 2020
A priest who formerly worked at a St. Louis County Catholic school was sentenced Wednesday to two years’ probation for stalking a woman last year and hiding in the bushes outside her home.Michael McCusker, 37, who was once a theology teacher at St. Louis Priory School in Creve Coeur, was sentenced by Associate Circuit Judge Mondonna Ghasedi. While working at the school, McCusker referred to himself by his religious name, the Rev. John McCusker.McCusker pleaded guilty in January to two misdemeanor counts of second-degree stalking and resisting arrest.His lawyer, Jesse Ullom, said Wednesday he thought the judge “gave fair consideration to everybody’s concerns.” Other conditions of McCusker’s probation include 80 hours of community service, no alcohol consumption and no contact with the victim.
The Rev. Michael McCusker, a former teacher and priest at St. Louis Priory School, was charged Feb. 4, 2019, with stalking and resisting arrest.
Richmond Heights police said in February 2019 that officers were called to a home in the 9000 block of Greenridge Drive where a woman reported a man looking through her windows.Officers spotted McCusker hiding in the bushes, prompting McCusker to run, police said.McCusker now lives in Maryland and is still a priest, his attorney said. He hopes to join the armed forces and become a chaplain.
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Christian Century
March 5, 2020
By Philip Jenkins
I would love to see Americans’ reaction if a US politician proposed a law requiring most citizens to pay a tax for the upkeep of churches (albeit with the right to opt out). Surely the vast majority would reject the idea as blatant theocracy, even the first move toward a Republic of Gilead.
Yet that is the prevailing system in several countries in Europe, including Scandinavian lands that we normally think of as highly secular. And that system is surprisingly popular.
The European system is a vestige of an older world of established churches that once exercised great control and influence. Long after churches ceased to exercise any kind of monopoly, millions of believers continued to affirm their membership in a church of one denomination or another, and the state cooperated by collecting the taxes associated with membership.
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LAWRENCE (KS)
Lawrence Journal-World
March 5, 2020
What the Kansas Catholic Conference might consider giving up for Lent is its official neutrality on a bill that would eliminate the statute of limitations for civil suits filed by victims of childhood sexual abuse.
To do otherwise would give the surely mistaken impression that the Catholic Church still doesn’t understand and/or care about the extent of the damage caused by its long history of covering up abuse perpetrated by priests.
If you understand abuse at all, you know that it takes even most adult victims many years to come forward. The average age of disclosure is 52.
So Kansas law, which gives childhood victims only three years after they turn 18 to file lawsuits, desperately needs the overhaul that it might finally get, though legislators have opposed such an update in the past and many are hesitant still.
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MISSOURI
Associated Press
March 5, 2020
A Missouri youth group leader has been charged with raping one girl and exchanging nude photos with two others.
Twenty-two-year-old Benjamin Blake, of Rogersville, was freed on bond Wednesday after he was charged last week with the rape count and five other felonies.
The probable cause statement says he convinced one of the girls whom he is accused of exchanging photos with to perform a sex act on him and threatened to harm himself if the other girl didn’t send pictures, the Springfield News-Leader reports.
The statement says Blake, who was a youth group leader at Temple Baptist Church in Marshfield, was 18 and 19 at the time, while the girls were 13 and 14.
His attorney didn’t immediately return a phone message from the News-Leader or The Associated Press.
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SOUTH BEND (IN)
Notre Dame Magazine
March 5, 2020
By Margaret Fosmoe ’85
A leader among lay Catholics in the response to the abuse crisis calls for a broad coalition to institute meaningful reform.
Responding to the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church requires the active involvement of survivors, the clergy and other religious, as well as lay men and women, according to Kerry Alys Robinson, who has devoted much of her life to the Church.
“Diversity matters. Who is at the tables of decision-making matters,” said Robinson, founding executive director and global ambassador of Leadership Roundtable, an organization dedicated to promoting ethics, accountability and best practices in the Church through lay involvement. “We all need to solve the myopia. We are all myopic, on our own or within our own narrowly defined groups.”
Called and co-responsible
Robinson’s spoke March 4 at the Morris Inn during the first day of a conference, “Called & Co-Responsible: The Mission of the Church,” organized by Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life. The conference continues until March 6 and many of the sessions are being livestreamed.
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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Boston Globe
March 5, 2020
By Edward Fitzpatrick
A R.I. Supreme Court justice has been fighting a $200 ethics fine for months — using a taxpayer-funded insurance policy
The fine came to just $200.
But a Rhode Island Supreme Court justice has spent the past year fighting a legal battle, paid for by a publicly financed insurance policy, to avoid that ethics code penalty.
In February 2019, the state Ethics Commission fined Justice Francis X. Flaherty $200 for failing to disclose that he was the president of a Catholic legal group while he was ruling on a priest sexual abuse case.
Flaherty appealed the ruling nearly a year ago, and oral arguments are set for Wednesday morning in state Superior Court before Judge Brian P. Stern.
“Normally, people settle for a nominal fine, but Justice Flaherty seems to be trying to make some points about his view of the code of ethics,” said John M. Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island. “It seems like a giant waste of time and resources.”
Flaherty declined to comment Tuesday, and his lawyer, Marc DeSisto, said he won’t comment until the case is over.
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BUFFALO (NY)
Catholic News Agency
March 4, 2020
The day before he left his office, Bishop Richard Malone of Buffalo forbade his former priest secretary from celebrating sacraments, after the priest leaked audio recordings that showed Malone knew about clerical sexual abuse allegations months before he acted on them. Buffalo’s temporary leader is now considering reinstating the priest.
A Dec. 3 document, titled “Decree Imposing A Penal Remedy,” is addressed to Fr. Ryszard Biernat, who served as Malone’s secretary and vice chancellor of the diocese, until he was placed on leave by the bishop in August 2019.
In September 2019, Biernat took recordings of several conversations with Malone to a local media outlet. In those conversations, Malone acknowledged the legitimacy of accusations of harassment and a violation of the seal of confession made against a diocesan priest, Fr. Jeffrey Nowak, by a seminarian, months before the diocese removed Nowak from active ministry.
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REGINA (SASKATCHEWAN)
Global News
March 4, 2020
By Jonathan Guignard
The Regina Catholic School Division is moving forward with changing the name of Jean Vanier School, after sexual abuse allegations against its namesake surfaced last month.
The decision was made at their board meeting on Tuesday night.
“It’s important to rename the school so the school isn’t painted with the same brush that came from the reports of sexual abuse,” said Twylla West, Regina Catholic School Division spokesperson.
“Our prayers remain with the victims and all victims of sexual abuse.”
According to a report released by L’Arche International on Feb. 22, there was enough evidence to show that Vanier engaged in “manipulative sexual relationships” over a period from 1970 to 2005, usually with a “psychological hold” over six alleged victim
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ATLANTA (GEORGIA)
Augusta Chronicle
March 4, 2020
By Beau Evans
State lawmakers are mulling whether to broadly expand the statute of limitations in Georgia for people to sue who were sexually abused as children by members of businesses and nonprofit groups like the Catholic Church or Boy Scouts of America.
Since 2015, victims in Georgia have been able to sue their abusers and organizations that covered up the abuse before they turn 23 years old or within two years after those victims realized what they suffered was in fact abuse.
Victim advocates have praised that statute-of-limitation window as a tool for securing justice for people who repressed memories of their abuse for decades. But they argue Georgia law is still too limiting.
House Bill 479, dubbed the “Hidden Predator Act,” would expand the age range and timeframe for many more adults in Georgia to file lawsuits for sexual abuse they suffered as children.
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MEXICO CITY
Reuters
March 3, 2020
Two Vatican officials charged with investigating accusations of sexual abuse by clergy will visit Mexico for a fact-finding mission later this month, the Church said on Tuesday.
Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu will meet with church leaders and alleged victims during their week-long visit to the world’s second largest Roman Catholic country, the Mexican bishops’ conference said.
Auxiliary Bishop Alfonso Miranda Guardiola, general secretary of the bishops’ conference, told a news conference in Mexico City that the Church had requested aid from the Vatican in order to help the youngest and most vulnerable in Mexico.
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MEXICO CITY
Associated Press
March 3, 2020
Victims of clerical sex abuse have expressed skepticism over a Vatican investigative commission that will collect statements and information about abuse in Mexico, though most said they would meet with Pope Francis’ investigators.
“Only by speaking with them can you demand results,” said Biani Lopez-Antunez, who was abused by a Legion of Christ school director in Cancun between the ages of 8 and 10 years old. “The results of this visit must be measured only based on the facts, the reports, because I’m already tired of the fake action that operates at all levels of the Church.”
The Vatican announced Tuesday that two investigators, Charles Scicluna, archbishop of Malta and deputy secretary for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Jordi Bertomeu, will be in Mexico City March 20-27. They will meet with bishops, leaders of religious orders and victims who want to speak with them. They promise confidentiality.
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PROVIDENCE (RI)
NBC 10 News
March 4, 2020
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence said Wednesday that a West Warwick priest who became embroiled in a controversy over comments he made about pedophilia and abortion was hurt in serious car crash north of Boston.
The Rev. Richard Bucci of Sacred Heart Parish was injured in the single-car crash on the Lynnway in Lynn at about 1 p.m. Tuesday. The front end of the car was ripped apart.
State troopers said they believe the driver struck a tree and a pole, trapping him inside the car.
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BUFFALO (NY)
Catholic News Service
March 4, 2020
The bishop serving as apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Buffalo said he regretted the “pain and further disillusionment” of clergy sexual abuse survivors caused by the participation of priests credibly accused of abuse in a private Lenten Mass at which he presided.
Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger of Albany, New York, said March 1 in a statement that the Mass at the start of Lent for all priests of the diocese emphasized “the need to atone for and work toward the healing of all who have been harmed by the scourge of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy.”
His statement came in response to angry reaction to the Mass by Robert Hoatson, co-founder of Road to Recovery, an sexual abuse victims’ advocacy group.
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FARGO (ND)
Inforum
March 4, 2020
By Patrick Springer
Lawyers representing victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests and other clerics released a report detailing the assignments of priests the church has identified as having been accused of sexual abuse and demanded the public release of church files.
The lawyers released information about the church assignments of 53 priests, deacons and others who face substantiated allegations of sexual abuse of a minor in a news conference on Wednesday, March 4. The Catholic dioceses of Fargo and Bismarck had released the names of the priests and others in January, but did not provide details about which parishes they had served.
The church has a responsibility to release “files pertinent to the histories of each perpetrator to the public and law enforcement,” the lawyers said. Failure to do so, they added, will make the Catholic dioceses of Fargo and Bismarck “complicit in concealing this hazard.”
“There’s still potential dangers to children,” said Michael Bryant, a lawyer from Waite Park, Minn., who spoke at the news conference. “That’s what we’re trying to prevent.”
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IRELAND
The Impartial Reporter
March 4, 2020
By Rodney Edwards
A ground-breaking documentary series by a Fermanagh born filmmaker on the criminal priests and brothers of the Catholic Church and their crimes in Australia will be laid bare for the first time in their own words next month.
In a series of television firsts, Revelation by Nial Fulton features interviews with two of Australia’s worst serial paedophiles, an ordained priest and a religious brother, and takes cameras into court to follow the drama of their criminal trials.
The compelling interviews, carried out by journalist Sarah Ferguson, are the first insiders’ accounts of the system of protection and cover-up that allowed its members to get away with such heinous crimes for so long.
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PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal
March 4, 2020
A West Warwick priest who’s been in the news recently for comments on abortion and pedophilia was seriously injured in Lynn, Massachusetts, Tuesday afternoon when his vehicle veered off the road and hit a tree and a pole.
The Diocese of Providence confirmed Wednesday morning that the Rev. Richard Bucci was the person injured in the crash, and requested prayers for Bucci, his family, friends and the parish.
Bucci, pastor of Sacred Heart Church in West Warwick, was freed from the wreckage and taken by helicopter to Salem Hospital, then to another hospital, according to the Massachusetts State Police.
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BUFFALO (NY)
Catholic News Service
March 3, 2020
The bishop serving as apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Buffalo said he regretted the “pain and further disillusionment” of clergy sexual abuse survivors caused by the participation of priests credibly accused of abuse in a private Lenten Mass at which he presided.
Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger of Albany, N.Y., said March 1 in a statement that the Mass at the start of Lent for all priests of the diocese emphasized “the need to atone for and work toward the healing of all who have been harmed by the scourge of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy.”
His statement came in response to angry reaction to the Mass by Robert Hoatson, co-founder of Road to Recovery, a sexual abuse victims’ advocacy group.
Hoatson charged March 1 in front of diocesan headquarters that Bishop Scharfenberger “disrespected” and retraumatized sex abuse survivors by having the accused priests at the Mass. Hoatson, a former priest, called on Bishop Scharfenberger to resign.
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ALBANY (NY)
WAMC
March 3, 2020
By Jackie Orchard
It is a troubled time for the Catholic church and its flock. Roughly 80 priests in the Albany Diocese have been accused of sexual abuse and roughly 70 priests have been accused in Buffalo. Amid that troubling backdrop, Siena College hosted a “Let’s Rebuild Our Church” panel Saturday.
The panel included a priest, a professor of theology, and a survivor of sexual abuse who gathered to answer questions about how abuse in the church occurs and what is being done to stop it.
Father Tom Konopka of the Albany Diocesan Counseling Center is a social worker. He says when he entered the seminary in 1984 there were psychological tests, IQ tests, and several interviews. He says the process is even more thorough today, as New York state’s Child Victims Act helps focus attention on decades of alleged abuse within the church.
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BUFFALO (NY)
Law.com/New York Law Journal
March 3, 2020
By Tom McParland
The diocese, a spokeswoman emphasized, was reorganizing, not liquidating, and survivors would be a “No. 1 priority” among its creditors.
The Diocese of Buffalo’s decision last week to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection was expected to complicate, but not foreclose, efforts to recover on behalf of alleged victims of child sexual abuse, an attorney for some of the accusers said Tuesday.
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IRELAND
Extra.ie
March 4, 2020
By Graham McGrath
Mary McAleese said that she will leave the Catholic Church if abuse claims from within a community for people with disabilities were ignored by the church.
The former President of Ireland has written to Pope Francis for answers about allegations of abuse from L’Arche Community founder Jean Vanier and priest Fr Thomas Phillipe.
L’Arche International is an organisation for people with intellectual disabilities and it has centres in 39 countries, including four centres in Ireland.
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ROCHESTER (NY)
Rochester City Newspaper
March 4, 2020
By David Andreatta
On Sunday, a retired Catholic priest unknown to these parts visited a handful of churches around Rochester and spoke to congregants at the end of Mass.
He was the Rev. John Cusick, a straight-shooter from Chicago, where he was known for reviving a parish and preaching to young adults in barrooms. It has been reported that he delivered his homilies off the cuff.
Cusick told parishioners at Church of the Assumption in Fairport that he had been sent — by whom he didn’t say — to “fire up the troops,” and he invited congregants to join him the following evening for some sort of pep talk.
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IRELAND
Irish Times
March 3, 2020
By Patsy McGarry
Church must say how it commended ‘a man whose predatory proclivities it was aware of’
Former president Mary McAleese has written to Pope Francis saying she will leave the Catholic Church “if it transpires that the Holy See failed to act to protect members of the L’Arche Community”.
She said people should have been alerted to “the known predatory activities” of the community’s founder Jean Vanier and his mentor, Dominican priest Fr Thomas Philippe.
“I have to say that this will be my final line of least resistance. I could not in conscience continue to support an institution capable of such gross negligence,” Mrs McAleese said in the letter.
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