#BREAKING: Pope Francis vows justice for victims of clerical sex abuse, describing paedophilia as one of the "vilest" crimes ahead of a historic global meet on the crisis roiling the church pic.twitter.com/3IpfiU7SzX
— AFP news agency (@AFP) January 7, 2019
This morning.
Meanwhile…
High-profile French cardinal goes on trial accused of helping cover up abuse https://t.co/I1ghZNVjgV
— The Guardian (@guardian) January 7, 2019
This morning.
Archbishop of Chicago Blase Cupich in 2014
The Catholic Church in Illinois withheld the names of at least 500 priests accused of sexual abuse of minors, the state’s attorney general said in a scathing report that accused the church of failing victims by neglecting to investigate their allegations.
The preliminary report by Attorney General Lisa Madigan concludes that the Catholic dioceses in Illinois are incapable of investigating themselves and “will not resolve the clergy sexual abuse crisis on their own.”
The report said that 690 priests were accused of abuse, and only 185 names were made public by the dioceses as having been found credibly accused of abuse.
“I want to express again the profound regret of the whole church for our failures to address the scourge of clerical sexual abuse,” Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, said in a statement.
Child rapists, clockwise from top left: Fr Sean Fortune, Fr Ivan Payne and Fr Brendan Smyth
Incredible painstakingly-researched work on clerical abuse in Ireland (undertaken by Boston group).
1,300 Catholic clergy accused since 1975. 70 convicted and they’re all detailed here. What about the others? Church won’t release names.https://t.co/OP3RlFQglw pic.twitter.com/VGmzgJVVPG— NAMAwinelake (@namawinelake) August 21, 2018
BishopAccountability.org has identified more than 70 clergy in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland who have been convicted of sexually abusing children or whose alleged abuses have been amply documented in the Ferns, Ryan, Murphy and Cloyne reports.
This is our fourth published database: we have maintained an accused U.S. clergy database since 2005, and we recently launched databases of publicly accused clergy in Argentina and Chile.
These databases have confirmed for us the clarifying power of lists of names.
A public list makes children safer. It gives profound validation to victims. It serves as a resource for prosecutors, journalists, scholars and even church insiders: over the last few years, several church officials have asked us to add names or information to our U.S. database.
While we bring this simple idea of a list to the Irish clergy abuse problem, we are painfully aware of what we as outsiders do not bring.
We don’t have the anguished history of Irish survivors, or the deep knowledge of the Irish crisis that many visitors to this page will have.
We hope that even the most learned among you will find the list a helpful way to reflect on clergy abuse in Ireland, but we also hope that you will advise us and help us make this database better.
Earlier: ‘The Meeting Won’t Be Announced Until After It’s Over’
Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, with Pope Francis following a Mass outside the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, 2015
The US Pennsylvania Supreme Court last night released a grand jury investigation into child sexual abuse by Catholic priests in six state dioceses.
The 884-page document is being called “the most comprehensive report on clergy sex abusers by a US state“.
The findings include:
301 Catholic priests identified as “predator priests” who sexually abused children while serving in active ministry in the church.
Detailed accounts of over 1,000 children victimized sexually by “predator priests”, with the grand jury noting it believed the real number of victims was in the “thousands.”
Senior church officials, including bishops, monsignors and others, knew about the abuse committed by priests, but routinely covered it up to avoid scandal, criminal charges against priests, and monetary damages to the dioceses.
Priests committed acts of sexual abuse upon children, and were routinely shuttled to other parishes — while parishioners were left unaware of sexual predators in their midst.
The report faults Cardinal Donald Wuerl, former long-time bishop of Pittsburgh now head of the church in Washington DC, over his handling of abusive priests.
The report says Wuerl approved transfers for priests instead of removing them from ministry, oversaw inadequate church investigations and concealed information when priests were reported to law enforcement.
The report also says he advised parishes not to publicly announce or acknowledge complaints, and offered financial support to priests who were accused and later resigned.
Meanwhile in Dublin…
Wuerl is scheduled to speak at the World Meeting of Families in Dublin this month during Pope Francis’s visit to Ireland.
He is listed as a keynote speaker and will give a speech entitled ‘The welfare of the family is decisive for the future of the world’ on Wednesday, August 22, at 2.30pm in Dublin’s RDS.
His speech will be followed by “testimonies of young people on their hopes and dreams for marriage and the family in the third millennium”.
Here’s the Alarming Pa. Catholic Church Child Sex Abuse Report (Philadelphia Magazine)
Yesterday: Worship Like It’s 1979
Previously: Falling Like Dominoes
Update:
When we did our @GlobeSpotlight stories on clergy sex abuse, some people asked us why Boston had this problem. But they were missing the larger, systemic tragedy: It was never just Boston. It was always everywhere: https://t.co/wVIFwQkTer
— Sacha Pfeiffer (@SachaPfeiffer) August 15, 2018
From top: Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington DC, stripped off his rank as cardinal and ordered him to live in seclusion; Australian Archbishop Philip Wilson, the most senior Catholic cleric to have been found guilty of concealing child sex abuse.
The Vatican has announced the resignation of the Australian Archbishop Philip Wilson, the most senior Catholic cleric to have been found guilty of concealing child sex abuse….
….The resignation came two days after the Vatican announced that the pope had stripped Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington DC, of his rank as cardinal and ordered him to live in seclusion.
Previously: Couldn’t Happen Here
Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson is the most senior Catholic cleric in the world to be convicted of concealing child sex abuse.
Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson has been sentenced to a minimum of six months imprisonment for concealing the historical indecent assault of two altar boys by paedophile priest James Fletcher in the 1970s…Wilson was today ordered to be assessed for his suitability for home detention…
Leave him alone.
He’s a ‘wounded healer’.
Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson sentenced to minimum six months jail (Herald Sun
Abuse survivors react to Archbishop Wilson’s sentence – video (Guardian)
Pic: ABC
Yesterday.
Griffith Avenue, Dublin 9.
Stan Erraught writes:
Fair comment like…
Dr. John Buckley, Bishop of Cork and Rosswith schoolgirls from the Secred Heart Secondary School, Clonakilty at the careers fair
Tuesday.
With ordinations and trainee uptake on the floor Bishop John Buckley and other representatives of the Diocese of Cork and Ross showed up at a careers’ fair in Cork’s Rochestown Hotel, run by the Institute of Guidance Councillors.
From the Cork Evening Echo:
Teenagers at the fair expressed their concerns about the priesthood, like the lack of women and the celibacy vow, but Bishop Buckley said that he was not sure what impact changes to Church policy would have.
“Celibacy is a regulation of the Church,” Bishop Buckley said. “Certainly, in the years ahead, people might look at that, and I wouldn’t see any difficulty, if they see that it’s absolutely necessary. But whether it would help increase the number of vocations, I’m not sure.
“Other denominations, which allow ministers to marry, are seeing a shortage of vocations,” Bishop Buckley said.
Bishop Buckley says celibacy is not the problem (David Linnane, Cork Evening Echo)
Pic via Cork Evening Echo
Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin
Patsy McGarry, in the Irish Times, reports:
Speaking at a Mass in Lucan Co Dublin marking the 10th anniversary of suicide support organisation Pieta House, [Archbishop Diarmuid Martin] said it would not be right not to accept the church’s role in fomenting such taboos.
“It would not be honest for me to stand here this afternoon and not recognise that the Church in Ireland and farther afield contributed greatly to the level of taboo which surrounded suicide,” he said.
He continued that “a Church which loses the sense of the priority of mercy gets trapped in a priority of rules, and loses the meaning of those rules. The preaching of Jesus was constantly directed against those who imposed burdens on others and never lifted a hand to help.
“That rigidity and hypocrisy remains always a temptation. It will not be combated simply by homilies and critique, no matter how important they are.”
Church ‘contributed greatly’ to taboos on suicide – Martin (Irish Times)
Sam Boal/Rollingnews.ie
