NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Outsports [San Francisco, CA]
February 4, 2025
By Cyd Zeigler
The New Orleans Saints are under fire this week for the team’s involvement in the alleged cover-up and public-relations spin of the Catholic Church sex-abuse scandal, according to new reports. As the sports world descends on New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX, questions are mounting for the team and the NFL.
New emails revealed by the Associated Press, WWLTV and others show that the Saints front office was in regular communication with the local Archdiocese as the scandal in New Orleans unfolded. The team had claimed before this new revelation that their efforts in the cover-up and spinning of the scandal were minimal.
However, emails seem to show that the team had a year-long involvement in the situation, coaching the church on how to respond publicly and even seeming to sympathize with some in the church for having to deal with the issue.
In addition — and maybe the most damning piece of evidence — Saints vice president of communications Greg Bensel sent an email to team president Dennis Lauscha on the day the list came out saying he (or Saints staff) “Had a (conference call) w(ith) (then-District Attorney) Leon Cannizzaro last night that allowed us to take some people off the list.”
When Roger Goodell was asked about this new slew of emails that paint the involvement of the Saints in this issue as much more intimate than the team had claimed, he deflected to the FBI and local law enforcement.
“I leave it to them,” Goodell said, “but I am confident that they are playing nothing more than a supportive role to help be more transparent in circumstances like this.”
It’s a disappointing response at best from the most powerful person in all of American sports. As James Dator wrote for SBNation: “The ‘supportive role’ was being in constant communication with the archbishop of New Orleans to help him damage control while releasing the names of clergy members with credible allegations of sexual assault, whom the church had intentionally hidden until they were found out.”
For their part, the Saints are claiming that no one with the team had any influence over any list of clergy, despite the email from Bensel seemingly very clearly saying otherwise.
“No Saints employee had any responsibility for adding or removing any names from that list or any supplemental list,” the Saints said in a statement. Nor did any Saints employee offer any input, suggestions or opinions as to who should be included or omitted from any such lists. Any suggestion that any Saints employee had any role in removing anyone from the Archdiocese’s published lists of credibly-accused clergy is categorically false.”
The statement and the email now made public do not seem to match in any way.
It’s hard for anyone to hear this and not wonder why the Saints didn’t simply tell the church and other leaders, “Leave us out of this, go tell the truth, and help the police put these men behind bars for the rest of their lives.”
We’ve yet to see that Saints email be made public.
Victims have said publicly they are not surprised by the latest revelations, as they suspected all along the Saints were more intimately involved with the Church’s response than they previously acknowledged.
Any relationship with this lengthy history of the Catholic Church held by the Saints, NFL or any of its teams, executives, owners or players should be looked at as the horrific episode it is.