Abuse Tracker

NEW JERSEY
Home News Tribune

By MICHAEL DEAK • Staff Writer • July 31, 2008

NORTH PLAINFIELD —The former president of St. Joseph School's Home and School Association in North Plainfield has been indicted on a charge of theft following an investigation that revealed more than $2,500 in cash donations were stolen from four school-sponsored events, including an entertainment book fundraiser and a theater field trip.

Gretchen Lee, 37, of Malcolm Avenue, was indicted this week by a Somerset County grand jury.

The charge followed an investigation that began in late March, when Somerset County detectives met with the Diocese of Metuchen's finance director, who alerted authorities that Lee was a suspect in a continuing probe into incidents of theft from the Home and School Association, authorities said.

MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe

July 31, 2008 02:44 PM
By Globe Staff

The state's highest court ruled today that a law enacted after the clergy sex abuse scandal to penalize people who endanger a child applies to more than just sex abuse cases.

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled in the case of Thomas Hendricks, who led Mashpee police on a chase down a rural road in 2004 while his 3-year-old daughter was in his car. Officers pursued Hendricks into the woods after he left his vehicle and found him, lying on his back, with the child on his chest.

Hendricks admitted to police that he should not have been driving like that with his daughter in the vehicle, the court said in its opinion.

ALABAMA
TransWorldNews

Atlanta, GA 7/31/2008

An Alabama preacher has been arrested on murder charges after police found his wife’s body in his home freezer. Small-time evangelist Anthony Hopkins was arrested Monday night at a revival in Jackson.

Authorities searched Hopkins’ home after a female relative contacted police claiming the 37-year-old had repeatedly raped her over a period of time. The body of Atletha Hopkins was found in the home freezer during the search. Witnesses say Hopkins had been telling everyone that his wife died in childbirth.

ROSELLE (IL)
Catholic Explorer

Published Jul 31, 2008

ROSELLE, IL -- Fr. John Regan has been put on paid leave as investigators look into allegations that the Catholic priest stole $112,000 that he allegedly used to support a gambling addiction.

Fr. John Regan is pastor at St. Walter Parish in Roselle, IL in the Diocese of Joliet. The Joliet Diocese priest has been pastor at St. Walter Parish since he was assigned in 2006. Prior to his current assignment, Fr. Regan had been the Director of Vocations for the Diocese of Joliet.

The Bishop of the Diocese of Joliet, Bishop Peter Sartain, informed parishioners of St. Walter that an investigation into bank records suggest that Fr. Regan embezzled the money. As of yet, no criminal charges have been made.

MOBILE (AL)
The Associated Press

By GARRY MITCHELL

MOBILE, Ala. (AP) — A judge denied bond Thursday for a part-time evangelist charged with murder in the death of his wife, a mother of eight whose body was kept in a freezer for at least three years.

Arletha Hopkins, 36, apparently was killed in 2004, but the cause of death remains under investigation, Assistant District Attorney Ashley Rich said. ...

Hopkins was arrested Monday night while preaching at a revival at a rural church in Jackson, which is about 60 miles northeast of Mobile. Authorities said Hopkins preached while holding different jobs.

UNITED STATES
The Arizona Republic

by Ronald J. Hansen - Jul. 31, 2008 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
For weeks, Sen. John McCain's campaign has quietly resisted calls to dump one of his leading religious representatives who critics say is an inappropriate surrogate because of links to allegations of sexual impropriety.

At least three religious groups have asked the McCain campaign to remove Deal W. Hudson from its national Catholic-outreach group. The groups say Hudson, who quit President Bush's political team in 2004 amid similar calls, lacks the moral authority to represent the campaign on religious issues.

Hudson left a tenured professorship at Fordham University in New York after a 1994 incident in which he was accused of having sex with a freshman. He was never charged with a crime.

UNITED KINGDOM
The Times

Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has challenged an American woman bishop to produce evidence to back up her claim that bishops beat their wives.

Other bishops also criticised the US Episcopal Church's Bishop Catherine Roskam after she said at the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury that men beat women "because they can".

She said: "We have 700 men here. Do you think any of them beat their wives? Chances are they do. The most devout Christians beat their wives... many of our bishops come from places where it is culturally accepted to beat your wife."

ROSELLE (IL)
Beep

Elisabeth Mistretta | Daily Herald
Thursday, July 31, 2008
After only two years as pastor of St. Walter Catholic Church in Roselle, Rev. John Regan developed a strong following for his homilies, often using props to engage worshipers.

"I was impressed with him because he did give great sermons and commanded respect with his presence," said Linda Sharp, a member of St. Walter for 35 years.

Today, church members like Sharp are wondering if Regan still deserves their respect; he's on paid suspension after the Diocese of Joliet learned approximately $112,000 was misappropriated from church funds.

TEXAS
San Angelo Standard-Times

By Jayna Boyle
Wednesday, July 30, 2008

If convicted, a polygamist sect's doctor charged with failure to report child abuse may face restrictions on his ability to practice medicine in Texas, according to the state medical board.

Dr. Lloyd H. Barlow, 38, was arrested Monday in Schleicher County and charged with three counts of failure to report child abuse. Each count is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $2,000 and up to 180 days in jail.

Barlow could not be reached Tuesday for comment.

ALABAMA
Press-Register

Posted by ROBERT McCLENDON July 31, 2008 6:35 AM

Anthony Hopkins killed his wife in 2004 after she caught him sexually abusing one of their daughters, according to a court document used to obtain a warrant to search his house. The day after he is alleged to have killed her, he asked the daughter to help him hide her mother's body in a freezer, the document says.

The 2004 incident wasn't the first time the daughter had been abused by Hopkins, according to the document, which alleges that her father had been raping her since she was 11 years old, though it was never reported.

The body of her mother, Arletha Hopkins, apparently stayed in that freezer, under the same roof as the daughter, her seven siblings and their father, until police discovered the body there Monday night after searching the family's central Mobile house, Chief Phillip Garrett said Wednesday on a national cable television crime talk show.

Hopkins has been charged with murder, as well as several sexual abuse charges, including rape and sodomy. ...

It is known, however, that Hopkins acted as an evangelist, a roving preacher who never stayed in one place for very long, though he had lived the Rylands Street home, where the body was found, since 2004.

CANADA
Ottawa Sun

By TREVOR PRITCHARD, Sun Media

CORNWALL, Ont. — A former Roman Catholic bishop told a Cornwall, Ont., sexual abuse inquiry Wednesday that he knowingly recruited a priest who had left a New York state parish after an “affair with boys.”

Eugene LaRocque said he secured Rev. Carl Stone a position ministering at two facilities in the Cornwall area in 1981 on the condition he never be alone around children.

“I was trying to take every precaution, to give this man a chance,” said LaRocque, 81.

“I was also trying to be as prudent as possible so he wouldn’t do any harm to the people of our diocese.”

KENTUCKY
The Courier-Journal

By Melissa Gagliardi • mgagliardi@courier-journal.com • July 30, 2008

The woman who accused a Bullitt County youth pastor of sexually abusing a teen now admits the story was false.

Debra Kay Perez Johnson admitted in a settlement filed yesterday in Bullitt County Circuit Court that she made up the allegation that Clayton Pruett had sexually abused a teen at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, where he is a youth pastor.

Johnson, a former Bullitt County school board member, will pay Pruett an undisclosed amount of money, according to the settlement.

“It’s very gratifying that we have this document that shows what we have known all along,” Pruett said. “We can now show without a shadow of a doubt that I am innocent.”

KENTUCKY
WLKY

[with video]

SHEPHERDSVILLE, Ky. -- A Bullitt County youth minister once accused of sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl is speaking out about the former charges against him.

The charges against Clayton Pruett were dropped in January. He was also suing the alleged victim’s mother for the statements she made about him.

As part of a settlement to that suit, the mother admitted everything she said was a lie. She also agreed to pay an undisclosed amount in damages.

Pruett said life for him will never be the same, but he feels the statement from the accuser’s mother admitting what she said was a lie will help bring things back to normal.

KENTUCKY
WAVE

SHEPHERDSVILLE, KY (WAVE) - Charges of sexual abuse against a Bullitt County youth minister have been dropped. Seven months ago, a parent accused the Shepherdsville man of abusing her daughter while at church. WAVE 3's Scott Harvey obtained court documents which show that parent now admits to making up the whole story.

Not only did Debra Kay Perez Johnson admit to lying, she will also pay Clayton Pruett an undisclosed amount according to this settlement. Pruett told me Wednesday he's just glad it's over and knew the truth would come out. ...

Pruett told me the false accusations came after he repeatedly tried to discipline Johnson's daughter at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in Shepherdsville.

"When I tried to uphold that obligation that the church wants me to, she responded in a very negative way. A very horrible way."

FLORIDA
The Tampa Tribune

By LISA A. DAVIS
The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 31, 2008

LAND O' LAKES - A Hillsborough County minister surrendered at Land O' Lakes Jail on Tuesday evening to face a charge of lewd or lascivious battery - eight months after facing similar charges in Tampa.

The Rev. Daniel A. Gomez, 38, is accused of molesting a 12-year-old girl at her Pasco County home in summer 2005, according to the Pasco County Sheriff's Office.

Gomez went to the girl's home when her parents were not there and forced himself on her, kissing her and touching her in a sexual manner, a sheriff's office report states. Gomez reportedly took off his pants and removed the girl's pants, too, and attempted to have sex with her.

Hartford Courant

ROD DREHER

July 30, 2008

The eighth-grade thugs would pin younger boys to the ground in the locker room. The ringleader would put his fist into a plastic cone and try to shove it into his victims' rectums. His pack stood around and moaned to torment the weaker kids.

This went on almost daily, says one seventh-grader who saw it go down. "We're going to rape you," the bullies would say to the little guys. A Sheriff's Department investigation found that the gang of older boys had sexually terrorized seventh-grade boys at Sunnyvale Middle School near Dallas for most of a year. ...

Years later, when my own heart was broken by the systematic protection of sexual criminals by the Roman Catholic Church, I thrashed around, pinned by rage and panic over what pervert priests had done to children and what bishops who knew better allowed to go unpunished. I left my church to escape the pain like a wild animal chews off its leg to get out of a trap.

The anger that wrecked my faith didn't start with news stories of clerical sex abuse I read. It started the summer before eighth grade, on a hotel room floor. What happened in the Sunnyvale locker room won't stay there. Those brutalized boys will live with it the rest of their lives. So should the adults who failed them.

GALLUP (NM)
Las Cruces Sun-News

The Associated Press
Article Launched: 07/28/2008 11:21:18 AM MDT

GALLUP, N.M.—The city of Gallup has settled a lawsuit that had asked a judge to determine whether photographs of a former Roman Catholic bishop, who was injured in an apparent fall at his home, were public record.

Donald Pelotte, who stepped down earlier this year as bishop of the Diocese of Gallup, was taken to the hospital in July 2007 with heavy bruising across his chest, arms, knuckles, legs and feet. Physicians called police but the bishop told them he had fallen.

GALLUP (NM)
KVIA

Associated Press - July 29, 2008 10:45 PM ET

GALLUP, N.M. (AP) - Gallup's former Roman Catholic bishop admits it's hard to believe that injuries depicted in police photographs taken while he was in the hospital last year could have been caused by a fall at his home.

Donald Pelotte was taken to the hospital in July 2007 with heavy bruising across his chest, arms, knuckles, legs and feet. Physicians called police but the bishop told them he had fallen.

ITALY
anticlericale.net

In fondo si riporta il testo originale di una email inviata da Barb Dorris , attivista di SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, che significa Rete dei Sopravvissuti agli Abusi Sessuali da parte dei preti) riportante l’allarme dato da Bill Nash, una delle vittime di abusi sessuali da parte di Padre James Tully, che continua ad operare indisturbato nei locali di una parrocchia della diocesi di Vicenza.

[background]

This Italian Web site ran an Italian-language version of an announcement by the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests that a sidewalk vigil would be held today in front of the chancery in Springfield, Mass., U.S.A. The goal is to call attention to information that the Rev. James Tully, a Catholic priest who has been accused of sexual abuse, lives at a place in Vincenza where youth events are held. The English version of the advisory is also posted.

GALLUP (NM)
KRQE

[video presentation]

GALLUP, N. M. (KRQE) - The investigator's powerful photos documented critical injuries Gallup Bishop Donald Pelotte suffered in his home last year. He said he fell down a flight of carpeted stairs, but police shot the photos in case his story changed. A year later, after a lawsuit filed to withhold the pictures, investigative reporter Larry Barker has found there may be a more savage explanation.

GALLUP (NM)
Gallup Independent

[with photo of the bruised bishop]

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff writer

GALLUP — A picture tells a thousand stories, goes one version of an old saying.

Apparently some graphic police photographs — full of bruises, lacerations, and black eyes swollen shut — quickly changed the story that former Gallup Bishop Donald E. Pelotte has been telling since he was found severely injured in his Gallup home on July 23, 2007. Pelotte, along with a chorus of chancery officials who used to work under him, has been claiming that he merely fell down a flight of carpeted stairs.

That was until reporter Larry Barker, of Albuquerque television station KRQE, showed up on the doorstep of Pelotte’s Florida beachfront condominium, armed with an envelope of photographs that Gallup Police officers took of Pelotte in the emergency room last July. The photographs showed Pelotte covered head to toe with critical injuries that a forensic pathologist described as coming from a “savage beating” full of punches and kicks.

With his trademark soft voice, Pelotte admitted that the injuries depicted in the police photographs couldn’t have been caused by a fall.

“When you see those pictures there’s no way that I could have gotten that damage by falling down the stairs,” Pelotte told Barker. “But I don’t remember that.”

ST. PAUL (MN)
LawyersandSettlements.com

July 30, 2008. By Brenda Craig

St. Paul, MN: Attorney Jeff Anderson is a genuine firebrand. He has handled not hundreds, but thousands of cases on behalf of sexual abuse survivors across the US, and even outside the US over the last 25 years. “I have sued psychologists, psychiatrists, family members, movie stars, politicians, and every religious denomination you can think of including the Latter Day Saints, the Jehovah Witnesses and the Catholic Church," he says.

Passionate, articulate, appropriately enraged, Anderson is a one-of-a-kind
attorney. He is also one of the first lawyers in the US to take the Catholic Church to court and publicly expose the plague of sexual abuse that had been aided and abetted inside the Catholic Church for heaven knows how long.

It was 1983 when a family walked into Anderson’s office in St. Paul, Minnesota. Bewildered and confused, they began to tell him how a local Catholic priest, Father Thomas Adamson, had plied their son with alcohol, and then had sex with him.

“I learned this priest had a long history of sexual abuse, and the Catholic church had covered it up and concealed it, moving Adamson around from parish to parish for 20 years,” Anderson says.

UTAH
Deseret News

By Ben Winslow
Deseret News
Published: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 11:50 a.m. MDT

The future of the Fundamentalist LDS Church's real-estate holdings arm may hang on a lawsuit filed by a former child bride.

That's what attorneys for the court-controlled United Effort Plan Trust claim in new court papers filed in Salt Lake City's 3rd District Court. In a renewed motion for summary judgment over a multi-million dollar personal injury lawsuit filed by Elissa Wall, lawyers for the UEP Trust fear that if a judge holds the trust liable — it may not survive.

"Not only would the Trust face significant exposure to the plaintiff in the present case, such a holding would encourage other parties injured by Warren Jeffs' misconduct to pursue claims against the Trust," lawyer Jeffrey L. Shields wrote.

WASHINGTON
The Seattle Times

SPOKANE, Wash. —
Another lawsuit has been filed against the Morning Star Boys' Ranch by a man who contends he was physically, sexually and psychologically abused during the two years he lived at the home for troubled boys.

Joseph S. Matherly, 57, contends he was sodomized by ranch employees in the mid-1960s.

Matherly lived at the ranch for 18 months, when he was 14 and 15 years old, according to the lawsuit filed in Spokane County Superior Court last week.

That brings to 19 the number of people who allegedly suffered some form of abuse at the ranch and have made court filings since August 2005.

GERMANY
Earthtimes

Bamberg, Germany - A 63-year-old senior priest in Germany's Catholic archdiocese of Bamberg resigned Wednesday after four men said he had fondled them as boys when they were attending a Catholic boarding school. The priest headed the diocesan department for pastoral personnel and was on the cathedral council in the Bavarian archdiocese.

Michael Kleiner, deputy spokesman for Archbishop Ludwig Schick, said it was unclear as yet how grave the allegations were.

ROSELLE (IL)
Chicago Tribune

By Russell Working | Chicago Tribune reporter
12:57 PM CDT, July 30, 2008
Church officials have placed a Roselle Roman Catholic priest on administrative leave after he allegedly misappropriated $112,000 church cash to fund a gambling habit, a spokesman said Wednesday.

Diocese of Joliet Bishop Peter Sartain told worshipers at St. Walter Parish's weekend masses that an audit of bank records turned up evidence that Rev. John Regan had taken the money, spokesman Doug Delaney said.

The allegations came to light when the church's bank reported irregularities to the diocese, Delaney said. Sartain expressed "his deep personal sorrow" in the case.

IRELAND
RTE News

Wednesday, 30 July 2008

An action taken against the Broadcasting Complaints Commission by RTE over a decision made against its coverage of the Ferns inquiry into sexual abuses has been settled.

A viewer complained about a background image using religious symbols including rosary beads and a priest's collar in a report on the findings of the Ferns inquiry on the Six One news in December 2005. ...

Under the terms of the settlement agreed today RTE is no longer required to broadcast the terms of the BCC's decision, while the status of the proceedings will be detailed in the Commission's annual report and on its website.

INDIANA
Palladium-Item

A staff member at New Creations Christian Boarding School has been terminated after allegedly sharing marijuana and alcohol with juvenile students, according to an incident report.

No arrests have been made in the investigation, Wayne County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Jeff Cappa said this week, because New Creations' administration chose to handle the investigation "in-house."

The Palladium-Item typically identifies only those arrested and charged with felony crimes.

The instructor left the school grounds, 6400 National Road E., on July 23 after a sheriff's deputy responded to a call from New Creations Pastor Tim Cummings. Cummings for a few months had been investigating "rumors" about the instructor's possession of marijuana and alcohol and students' use of it, a release states.

NORTH CAROLINA
The Daily Reflector

By Kathryn Kennedy
The Daily Reflector

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

A former pastor once charged with secretly videotaping women and children is suing the church that fired him, according to documents filed at the Pitt County Courthouse.

Leon Harris, 56, filed a civil suit in superior court last week, claiming Rose Hill Free Will Baptist Church and the Central Convention of Free Will Baptists violated his contract when they fired him in 2005.

Harris entered an Alford Plea last July to four counts of sexual exploitation of a minor in connection with the videotaping charges. As part of that plea, 48 counts of felony secret peeping were dropped. The Alford Plea means that while Harris did not admit guilt, he conceded prosecutors had enough evidence to likely convince a judge or jury to find him guilty.

ROSELLE (IL)
Daily Herald

The Diocese of Joliet announced a priest in the St. Walter Parish in Roselle has been suspended while police investigate $112,000 in missing funds from church bank accounts.

The Rev. John Regan, pastor of St. Walter Parish in Roselle, was placed on administrative leave with pay by Bishop Peter Sartain due to alleged misappropriation of parish funds, said diocese spokesman Doug Delaney.

Roselle police have not charged Regan yet, Delany said, but he added an investigation into the missing money is ongoing.

ALABAMA
WKRG

[with video]

By Kesshia Peyton Anchor/Reporter

Kesshia Peyton Anthony Hopkins was a traveling minister.

He preached at several churches in Southwest Alabama.

Monday night, he was arrested after giving a sermon at a church in Jackson.
Hopkins and seven of his children were there as part of a revival at the Inspirational Tabernacle Church of God in Christ.

MOBILE (AL)
Press-Register

Wednesday, July 30, 2008
By ROBERT McCLENDON
Staff Reporter
While Anthony Hopkins was leading a revival in a small church on the outskirts of Jackson, Ala., Monday night, the body of a woman, presumed to be his wife, was stuffed in a freezer at his house in Mobile, waiting to be discovered by police.

Acting on a tip given by Hopkins' daughter, the eldest of eight children, police said they knew where to look and what they were likely to find when they searched the Rylands Street house.

Clarke County Sheriff's deputies found Hopkins at the church a short time later, still preaching and ministering to people in the crowd, according to the pastor of the congregation hosting the revival.

SPRINGFIELD (MA)
The Republican

Wednesday, July 30, 2008
By STEPHANIE BARRY
sbarry@repub.com
SPRINGFIELD - Two brothers who say they were cut out of a 2004 settlement between the local Roman Catholic diocese and alleged clergy abuse victims met with Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell at his home Tuesday.

Standing outside McDonnell's Elliot Street living quarters, Paul M. Herrick, 53, and Peter J. Herrick, 51, said they were excluded from a $7.7 million settlement in 2004, despite being among the first of 46 alleged victims to come forward.

"I asked: 'How could you? How do you stiff people like us - me, especially because I started the whole thing," Paul Herrick said, although both brothers agreed McDonnell was compassionate and responsive during the meeting.

DOYLESTOWN (PA)
News of Delaware County

By Bradley Schlegel; Special To The News
DOYLESTOWN - A priest accused of sexually assaulting a minor more than 30 years ago has been relieved of his duties at a parish in Doylestown Borough, according to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.The Rev. Gerard J. Hoffman was recently removed at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish by Cardinal Justin Rigali, pending a formal investigation, the archdiocese announced Monday.

The accusation is the first against Hoffman, who has served as parochial vicar at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish since 2002, according to a statement released by the archdiocese.

Hoffman has not lived at the parish rectory since last week, according to information from the archdiocese.

TEXAS
The Salt Lake Tribune

By Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 07/30/2008 12:05:18 AM MDT

A physician from a polygamous sect was released from the Schleicher County Jail on Tuesday after posting bail, but four other men have not yet been released.

The five men, all members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, appeared before Justice of the Peace James Doyle Tuesday on charges related to sexual assaults of minors.

The men turned themselves into authorities Monday, a week after being indicted.

Doyle ordered the men to avoid their victims, stay in Texas and notify law enforcement before leaving Schleicher County while they await trial. Lloyd H. Barlow, a physician charged with three misdemeanors, posted a $15,000 bail and was released after spending one night in jail.

TEXAS
The Dallas Morning News

By EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News
eramshaw@dallasnews.com

AUSTIN – Five men from a West Texas polygamist sect were arraigned on Tuesday, the day after they surrendered on charges related to the sexual assault and "spiritual" marriage of underage girls.

As of Tuesday evening, four of the men – members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – remained in custody in Schleicher County. A fifth had posted bail and been released, a sect official said.

A sixth suspect, sect prophet Warren Jeffs, is in jail in Arizona, but could be extradited to Texas to face his sexual assault charge.

Sect leader Willie Jessop, who is speaking for the group in Mr. Jeffs' absence, said he couldn't confirm whether the other men

PENNSYLVANIA
Delco Times

By: Marlene DiGiacomo, mdigiacomo@delcotimes.com 07/29/2008

MEDIA COURTHOUSE - Christine Kuhn was 13 years old when she sought solace in the First Presbyterian Church of Springfield and Gerald Klever, who was then a minister, befriended her.

But instead of finding the "father figure" she so desired in Klever, he preyed upon her and manipulated her by sexually abusing her for years. And he once told her that someday, "you'll look back on all of this and laugh."

Kuhn, now 46, endured years of pain trying to convince others in the church to believe what Klever had done to her. And she went through a period of alcoholism. But her faith and strength in God saw her through.

"I didn't give up. I wouldn't give up," she said as her blue eyes flashed with determination.

MARYLAND
Gazette

by Patricia M. Murret | Staff Writer

A former Baptist minister and youth choir director in Gaithersburg pleaded guilty last week to child abuse of a female youth choir singer that occurred over four years in the 1990s.

Timothy Chun-Chock Mann, 47, of Hoover, Ala., a former minister at First Baptist Church of Gaithersburg, and recent choir director at an Alabama congregation, will be sentenced on Sept. 29 in Montgomery County Circuit Court. Under Maryland code, sexual child abuse is a felony offense that brings a possible 15-year prison sentence.

Third-degree sex offense charges were dropped as part of Mann’s plea agreement, said Seth Zucker, spokesman for the State’s Attorney’s Office. A copy of a pre-indictment memorandum filed with the court’s assignment office and obtained by The Gazette shows that Mann agreed to plead guilty ‘‘to the sole count of sexual child abuse and the State and Defense will ask the Court to cap any period of executed incarceration at 7 years.” Sentencing guidelines for Mann, who has no previous criminal record, suggest 4 to 9 years in prison, according to the memo.

PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia Inquirer

By Mari A. Schaefer
Inquirer Staff Writer

Christine Kuhn would not give up. From the time she was 13, she told friends, church leaders, neighbors and therapists how her minister had sexually assaulted her.

"Like a dog with a bone, I was not going to let go," Kuhn said. She always hoped someone would listen and take action.

It took more than 30 years.

Yesterday, Gerald L. Klever, 76, of Tucson, Ariz., was sentenced in Delaware County Court to 10 years' probation, one year of house arrest, 1,000 hours of community service, and restitution of $25,000. In May, he had pleaded no contest to rape and guilty to sexual assault involving Kuhn and another woman, both now in their 40s.

DELAWARE
The News Journal

By ESTEBAN PARRA • The News Journal • July 30, 2008

An anonymous 61-year-old man Tuesday became the 14th person to file a sexual-abuse lawsuit against the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington.

The lawsuit, which was filed in New Castle County Superior Court, says the victim was sexually abused by the late Rev. Edward B. Carley at least 100 times when the boy was between 11 and 14.

Carley allegedly assaulted the victim, who is identified in the suit as as John Roe No. 1, while he rode in the priest's car on the way to and from funerals and on overnight trips to seminaries and churches, the suit says.

The assaults occurred from 1952 to 1962 when the victim was an altar boy at St. Ann's Church in Wilmington.

CANADA
Standard-Freeholder

(Staff) -- The man who helmed the local Roman Catholic diocese when a number of sexual abuse complaints were leveled against local priests is expected to appear at the Cornwall Public Inquiry today.

From 1975 until 2002, Eugene LaRocque, now 81, was the bishop of the Alexandria-Cornwall Roman Catholic Diocese.

In 1993, LaRocque agreed to an out-of-court settlement with David Silmser, who had alleged he was sexually abused when he was an altar boy in the 1960s and 1970s.

SPRINGFIELD (MA)
CBS 3

[with video]

By Justine Judge
Peter and Paul Herrick say they come from a family torn apart by the abuse inflicted upon them more than 40 years ago by Catholic priests.

They say they've never had the chance to share their side of the story until now.

Paul Herrick says, "These were horrendous crimes against young people."

When Peter Herrick and his 3 brothers were children, they were abused by several priests at Blessed Sacrament Church in Greenfield between 1967 and 1983.

MOBILE (AL)
My Fox Gulf Coast

MOBILE, Ala. -- 7/29/08: Mobile Police just released more details about a murder case, involving a woman’s body found in a freezer.

Investigators believe the victim was Arletha Hopkins, the wife of the suspect, Anthony Hopkins. A woman’s body was found last night in a chest-type freezer at the couple’s home on Ryland Street.

Police say the body was covered in a sheet. It appears to have been in the freezer for several years. Investigators say the discovery was finally made when one of the children accused Anthony Hopkins of sexual abuse. ...

Investigators say Anthony Hopkins is a preacher. At the time of his arrest, Hopkins was found at a church in Jackson, Alabama, where a revival was taking place. Hopkins is charged with murder and sodomy.

KENTUCKY
WHAS11

[with video]

(WHAS11) - Clayton Pruett got a little piece of his life back.

Clayton Pruett said, “It feels great it can show everybody what we’ve known all a long.”

A signed statement tonight says that sex abuse allegations against a Bullitt county youth pastor were all made up.

The mother of the accuser signed that statement today, clearing the name of Pastor Clayton Pruett.

TEXAS
Houston Chronicle

SAN ANTONIO — The five indicted followers of jailed polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs were arraigned Tuesday in Eldorado and ordered to avoid their alleged victims when they post bond.

Raymond Merrill Jessop, 36, Allan Eugene Keate, 56, Michael George Emack, 57, and Merrill Leroy Jessop, 33, appeared at arraignment hearings to be read the charge of sexual assault of a child they each face and to hear their constitutional rights. They'll enter pleas at a later court hearing.

TEXAS
San Angelo Standard-Times

By Jayna Boyle
Originally published 05:30 p.m., July 29, 2008
Updated 05:30 p.m., July 29, 2008

Dr. Lloyd H. Barlow, the physician at the FLDS ranch near Eldorado, posted bond after being arrested Monday, a sect spokesman said today.

Barlow, charged with three counts of failure to report child abuse, was released on bond set at $5,000 at an arraignment Tuesday afternoon in the Schleicher County Jail in Eldorado.

Willie Jessop, a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints spokesman, said late Tuesday afternoon that while Barlow has posted bond, the four other FLDS men arrested at the same time - each facing charges related to sexual assault of a child - have not posted bond. Their bonds were set at $100,000 each, according to a statement issued Monday by the Texas Attorney General.

ROSELLE (IL)
ABC 7

ROSELLE, Ill. (WLS) -- A northwest suburban priest is removed from his post for misappropriation of church funds.

It happened at the Saint Walter Parish in Roselle. A head bishop of the diocese in Joliet has placed Father John Regan on administrative leave

A local bank informed the diocese about irregular banking transactions. The church says it discovered a misappropriation of nearly $112,000. The money was allegedly used for gambling by Father Regan.

CANADA
Standard-Freeholder

By Trevor Pritchard

Former bishop Eugene LaRocque was “out of his depths” when sex abuse allegations against Rev. Gilles Deslauriers first surfaced in early 1986, the Cornwall Public Inquiry heard Monday.

Bernard Ménard was a priest with L’Arche – a faith community for disabled people – near Glen Roy from 1979 until 1986, and a family friend of Benoit Brisson, one of Deslauriers’ victims.

Deslauriers pleaded guilty in November 1986 to four counts of gross indecency involving young men, including Brisson.

Testifying largely in French, the 74-year-old Ménard told the inquiry that in January of that year, he received a call from Hubert and Lise Brisson, Benoit’s parents.

They wanted to talk about something “painful,” said Ménard, and asked him to come over to their home. Once there, Hubert and Lise revealed Deslauriers had sexually abused their son.

SPRINGFIELD (MA)
The Republican

Tuesday July 29, 2008, 3:41 PM
By STEPHANIE BARRY
sbarry@repub.com

SPRINGFIELD - Two brothers who said they were victims of abuse at the hands of a cabal of pedophile priests met with the Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell at the chancery today.

Paul M. Herrick, 53, and Peter J. Herrick Sr., 51, emerged this morning from an hour-long meeting at McDonnel's Elliot Street residence.

"He was there to listen, and he did. He heard us. ... He heard the pain in our voice," Peter Herrick, of Bangor, Maine, a father of two sons who works security for the federal agency that oversees airline travel.

ARIZONA
Deseret News

KINGMAN, Ariz. — A judge here has scheduled a hearing next month on motions in the criminal case against Fundamentalist LDS Church leader Warren Jeffs.

Mohave County Superior Court Judge Steven Conn has set an Aug. 22 hearing on a motion to remand the criminal charges back to the grand jury that indicted him. He will also schedule future hearings at that time.

Jeffs' defense team is seeking to have the grand jury reconsider the case, arguing that the grand jury was not impartial and that prosecutors presented misleading information to jury members.

DELAWARE
Delmarva

Associated Press • July 29, 2008

WILMINGTON — Attorneys for a man claiming he was molested by a Catholic priest previously identified as a pedophile have filed a lawsuit against the Diocese of Wilmington.

The 61-year-old man, whose name was not released, alleges in the lawsuit filed today that he was repeatedly molested by the Rev. Edward Carley while he was an altar boy at St. Ann's church 50 years ago.

DELAWARE
WILM

By Ted Efaw
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
The lawsuit was filed in New Castle County Superior Court against the Diocese of Wilmington and St. Ann’s Church.

The 61-year old victim, whose name wasn’t released, charges Carley with abusing him at least 100-times from 1958 to 62. The abuses began when he was 11 years old.

DELAWARE
WDEL

By Peter MacArthur

A 14th lawsuit is being filed against the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington and a former priest.

A 61 year old man referred to in the suit as John Roe #1 says he was sexually abused by Reverend Edward Carley between 1958 and 1962 when he was an altar boy.

Carley died in 1998. The suit claims he was independently wealthy and would lure young boys by giving them money and buying them gifts, toys and sports equipment.

DELAWARE COUNTY (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By Mari A. Schaefer
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

A former pastor who preyed on teenage girls in a church youth group was sentenced today in Delaware County.

In May, Gerald L. Klever, 76, pleaded no contest to rape and guilty to sexual assault involving two women now in their 40s. Klever, who lives in Tucson, Ariz., was sentenced to 10 years' probation, one year of house arrest, 1,000 hours of community service, and restitution of $25,000.

Both crimes happened in 1980, when he was a pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Delaware County.

ROCKFORD (IL)
TomRoeser.com

Rockford.

The Rockford, Illinois diocese will not send seminarians to St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein for training. Two upperclassmen propositioned a Rockford youth for homosexual favors. So much for the change that has been promised in archdiocesan public relations pronouncements.

Thus the Rockford diocese has decided it is finished with Mundelein. Thus you have the archdiocese of Chicago where layman Chancellor Jimmy Lago (believe it or not that’s his baptismal name, not to be confused with his brother Timmy, his baptismal name as well)…Jimmy the best precinct captain onetime Democratic Cook county chairman now under indictment Ed Vrdolyak ever had… has been put in charge of combating sexual abuse and the same-old, same-old is happening. Of course the supine Chicago “religious” press is asleep at the switch.

IRELAND
RTE News

Tuesday, 29 July 2008 17:37
RTÉ has begun High Court proceedings against the Broadcasting Complaints Commission over a decision made against the station in its coverage of the report of the Ferns inquiry into sexual abuse.

The court heard that the BCC upheld a complaint made by one viewer about a background image using religious symbols in a report on the findings of the Ferns inquiry.

The viewer had complained about what he claimed was a 'profane use of the sacramentals' referring to the appearance of rosary beads, a priest's collar and a bible or breviary as a background.

BOSTON (MA)
Christian News Wire

CANDIA, NH, July 28 /Christian Newswire/ -- In an open letter to Boston area Catholics sent to Archbishop Sean Cardinal O'Malley, Rev. David Runnion-Bareford, Executive Director of the Confessing Movement in the United Church of Christ, apologized for the "division and confusion" caused by former Massachusetts UCC President Rev. Nancy Taylor and the UCC related Church of the Covenant who recently welcomed and hosted a schismatic "ordination" by the group "Womenpriests."

Rev. Runnion-Bareford wrote, "Please accept our deepest and sincere apology for the behavior of Rev. Nancy Taylor of Old South Church, UCC and the UCC related Church of the Covenant. They do not reflect the heart and mind of our United Church of Christ whose premise is 'that all may be one.' Those of us who truly value the unity of all Christians and treasure our ecumenical relationships with you as Catholic brothers and sisters in Christ are grieved.

"We are also fully aware that this event was not motivated by a sincere desire to honor the call of God and the anointing of the Holy Spirit on the ministry of committed Christian women. We know that 'Womenpriests' openly include candidates who are engaged in the practice of sexual license. It is significant that the participants would not take the vow of obedience or chastity. We are aware of the statements on their website proclaiming a false gospel of self and mutual affirmation, denying the fall of humanity and our need for repentance from sin and personal transformation through the atoning crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. www.womenpriests.org/body/body_ovr.asp

BOSTON (MA)
Catholic News Agency

Boston, Jul 28, 2008 / 06:13 pm (CNA).- Just over a week ago, the dissident group Womenpriests claimed to “ordain” three women as priests at a Boston-area Church of Christ location. The move was condemned by the Archdiocese of Boston and now the Rev. David Runnion-Bareford, a Church of Christ minister, is apologizing to the archdiocese for his fellow minister’s sanctioning of the event.

On Sunday, July 20, Roman Catholic Womenpriests held an alleged ordination ceremony of three women at the Church of the Covenant, which is affiliated with both the Presbyterian Church and the United Church of Christ (UCC).

The former president of the UCC in Massachusetts, Rev. Nancy Taylor attended the ceremony to show her support for the women and told the Boston Globe that she saw the women as being discriminated against by the Catholic Church. “Prejudice in liturgical clothing is still prejudice,” she said. ...

Rev. David Runnion-Bareford, Executive Director of the Confessing Movement in the United Church of Christ, responded to the situation by sending an open letter to Boston area Catholics via Cardinal Sean O'Malley. In his letter, he apologized for the "division and confusion" caused by Rev. Nancy Taylor and the Church of the Covenant—the church were the ceremony was held.

UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A man who was the victim of sexual abuse by a Church of England priest when he was a boy said it has scarred his life.

He spoke out after Collin Pritchard, of Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, admitted seven sex offences against children, in Northamptonshire in the 1970s and 80s.

Pritchard was jailed for five years at Northampton Crown Court on Monday.

Following sentencing, the victim told

BBC Look East: "I have lost faith - he said he was a man of God."

The offences took place while 64-year-old Pritchard was parish priest at St Andrew's Church in Wellingborough.

MAINE
Portland Press Herald

THE REV. ROBERT M. HOATSON, Special to the Press Heralds

July 29, 2008

As a priest, survivor of clergy sexual abuse and advocate for hundreds of clergy sexual abuse victims, I take exception to Arnold Besier's Maine Voices column in the July 15 edition of this newspaper ("Diocese treated hard-working priest unfairly"). I will attempt to explain to Mr. Besier and readers why he is flat wrong.

I am working with the heroic and brave victim of the Rev. James Robichaud who had the courage to come forward, risk ridicule and contempt, and expose her abuser.

Instead of protecting the priest, Arnold Besier should be traveling to Massachusetts to award her a medal of valor, because children in the United States are safer now than they were in the days before she went public.

UNITED KINGDOM
Northampton Chronicle & Echo

Published Date: 29 July 2008
By Rob Middleton
A parish priest who sexually abused two young boys while at a Northamptonshire church has been jailed for five years.

The Rev Collin Pritchard, aged 64, was in charge of a church in Wellingborough, when he started repeatedly sexually abusing a 12-year-old boy more than 25 years ago.

Pritchard, who was educated in Northampton, pleaded guilty at the town's Crown Court yesterday to four indecent assaults of two boys and three acts of gross indecency, dating back to the early 1980s.

ARIZONA
The Arizona Daily Star

07/28/2008 04:24 PM
Stephanie Innes
The national Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests is angry at Sen. John McCain.

Members of the national group say they’ll be holding a media event in Phoenix on Tuesday, July 29, to demand that McCain fire Deal Hudson from his Catholics for McCain steering committee.

The SNAP protestations come shortly after a group called Catholics United, which leans left, also demanded that McCain dump Hudson. Catholics United says Hudson does not represent Catholic values.

The reason? A sex scandal…..

In 2004 the National Catholic Reporter revealed that Hudson had resigned his faculty post at Fordham University a decade earlier — in 1994 — after an 18-year-old student complained that he had sexual relations with her in his office after taking her to a party at a New York bar and getting her drunk.

PENNSYLVANIA
The Tribune-Democrat

BY MIKE FAHER
The Tribune-Democrat

With an engineering study now complete, parishioners soon will have a chance to give their opinions on the planned merger of five Johnstown churches.

But even as that announcement was made Monday, a new controversy illustrated how sensitive and emotional the Cambria City consolidation will be.

Responding to the news that St. Columba is selling some of its stained-glass windows, some suspected that church leaders were forecasting that facility’s demise.

Diocesan officials insist that no decisions have been made on which of the five churches will serve as the neighborhood’s consolidated worship site.

NEW JERSEY
Courier-Post

By JIM WALSH • Courier-Post Staff • July 29, 2008

A review of facilities at two Catholic churches, announced in May after parishioners protested a planned merger, is near completion, according to the Diocese of Camden.

A diocesan spokesman on Monday declined to indicate if any changes would result from the review. But members of St. Vincent Pallotti parish in Haddon Township said they're hoping for revisions to a pending merger with St. Aloysius parish in Oaklyn.

Bishop Joseph Galante in April announced plans to combine the two parishes as part of a sweeping reconfiguration of the local diocese. Galante said then that St. Aloysius would be the primary worship center for the combined parish, upsetting members of St. Vincent Pallotti.

TEXAS
The Dallas Morning News

By EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News
eramshaw@dallasnews.com / The Dallas Morning News
Robert T. Garrett contributed to this report.

AUSTIN – Five men from a West Texas polygamist sect turned themselves in Monday, less than a week after they were indicted on charges related to the sexual assault and "spiritual" marriage of underage girls.

Attorney General Greg Abbott said law enforcement officials and an attorney for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints negotiated the surrender, which came sooner than expected, officials acknowledged.

A sixth sexual assault suspect – sect prophet Warren Jeffs – has already been convicted of similar charges in Utah. He is in jail awaiting trial in Arizona and could still be extradited to Texas.

The arrests follow child welfare investigators' seizure of 440 children and about two dozen women from the polygamist community in April, over allegations the sect permitted a culture of sexual abuse and marriages between young girls and much older men.

JAMAICA
The Jamaica Observer

Kimmo Matthews
Tuesday, July 29, 2008

MINISTER of Health, Rudyard Spencer, has given operators of children's homes until August 20 to apply for a licence to operate or face closure.

The Child Development Agency (CDA) has also been mandated to institute measures to ensure that places of safety and child care facilities across the island are operating under the Child Care and Protection Act.

The instructions were handed down by the minister at a meeting held yesterday with human rights lobby group Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ), which expressed concern after an Observer report last week, of allegations of buggery against the superintendent of a St Mary boys' home.

HAWAII
KITV

HONOLULU -- A Windward Oahu minister on Monday pleaded not guilty to the long-term sexual abuse of a member of his congregation.

Manuel Taboada made his court appearance via closed circuit television from Oahu Community Correctional Center.

He is accused of molesting a girl from age 12 for nearly eight years. The alleged victim was one of many people sharing his large home in Kaneohe, authorities said.

OHIO
WHIZ

By: Mike Partin

A Licking county pastor is accused of sexual abuse of a 5-year old boy.

Michael Lee reportedly failed a lie detector test and is facing one count of gross sexual imposition which is a third-degree felony.

Lee allegedly touch the child inappropriately over a three-year peroid of time.

PENNSYLVANIA
The Reporter

By Bradley Schlegel, Staff Writer 07/29/2008

A priest accused of sexually assaulting a minor more than 30 years ago has been relieved of his duties at a parish in Doylestown Borough, according to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

The Rev. Gerard J. Hoffman was recently removed at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish by Cardinal Justin Rigali, pending a formal investigation, the archdiocese announced Monday.

The accusation is the first against Hoffman, who has served as parochial vicar at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish since 2002, according to a statement released by the archdiocese.

NEWARK (OH)
Newark Advocate

Advocate staff report • July 29, 2008

NEWARK -- The minister of a Pataskala church who is accused of sexual abusing a 5-year-old boy failed a lie-detector test, according to court documents released Monday.

Pastor Michael Lee of the First Apostolic Church of Pataskala is facing one count of gross sexual imposition, a third-degree felony, and is accused of inappropriately touching the child during a three-year period immediately preceding March 4.

Lee, who was indicted earlier this month, volunteered to speak with a Newark police detective and denied the allegations, according to Detective Robert Huffman's statement of facts.

His answers to a computerized-voice stress analysis, or CVSA, test were deceitful on all relevant questions, Huffman's report states.

PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia Daily News

By JOHN F. MORRISON
Philadelphia Daily News

morrisj@phillynews.com 215-854-5573

The Rev. Gerard J. Hoffman, a former principal of Roman Catholic High School, has been named in a sexual-abuse complaint dating back 30 years and has been removed from duty pending a church investigation.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia said that the allegation involves a minor. The church now will determine if the complaint is credible.

Cardinal Justin Rigali, archbishop of Philadelphia, has relieved Hoffman of his assignment as parochial vicar at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish, in Doylestown. As of a week ago, he no longer lives at the parish rectory.

PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia Inquirer

By David O'Reilly
Inquirer Staff Writer

Cardinal Justin Rigali has suspended the former principal of Roman Catholic and St. Pius X High Schools pending an investigation into allegations he sexually abused a minor many years ago.

Until his removal last week, the Rev. Gerard J. Hoffman, 63, had been serving as parochial vicar at Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish in Doylestown since 2002. He is no longer residing at the parish rectory, according to the archdiocese.

In a prepared statement, the archdiocese said the allegation that prompted his suspension was the first it had ever received against Hoffman, who has served in numerous parishes and high schools during his career. It said it had occurred "more than 30 years ago."

LOWER POTTSGROVE (PA)
Pottstown Mercury

By Michael Hays, mhays@pottsmerc.com
07/29/2008

LOWER POTTSGROVE — A recent allegation of molestation has led to the removal of a former St. Pius X High School principal by Archdiocese of Philadelphia Cardinal Justin Rigali.

Father Gerard J. Hoffman was on the faculty at St. Pius X from 1976 to 1988, according to archdiocese spokeswoman Donna Farrell. Hoffman later served as principal from 1990 to 1993.

He is accused of sexually abusing a minor more than 30 years ago, the archdiocese said in a statement.

"This is the first allegation of sexual abuse of a minor that the archdiocese has received regarding Father Hoffman. Since 2002, he has been assigned as Parochial Vicar at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Doylestown, Bucks County. Father Hoffman is no longer residing at the parish rectory as of a week ago," the release stated.

PENNSYLVANIA
WFMZ

[video]

A former principal at St. Pius X High School in Pottstown is being investigated by the Catholic Church for sexual abuse. Gerard Hoffman served as principal of the school before moving to Philadelphia's Roman Catholic High School in 1993. He most recently worked at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Doylestown. Hoffman has been removed from duty while the church investigates. The allegations stem from an assault that allegedly occurred more than 30 years ago.

UNITED KINGDOM
Evening Telegraph

By Simon Hughes
Corby reporter
A former vicar who admitted sexually abusing two boys over 20 years ago has been jailed for five years.

Rev Colin Pritchard, 64, admitted four indecent assaults of two underage boys and three acts of gross indecency dating back to the early 1980s, at Northampton Crown Court yesterday.

The unmarried retired vicar was in charge of St Andrew's Church, in Berrymoor Road, Wellingborough, until 1989 and it was during this period that the abuse happened.

Judge Christopher Metcalf said: "It was the most appalling breach of trust. It's clear to me from the evidence that you have betrayed your calling. You took advantage of young boys who wanted to involve themselves in your church."

DOYLESTOWN (PA)
The Intelligencer

By CHRISTINA KRISTOFIC
Bucks County Courier Times

DOYLESTOWN - A Doylestown priest has been suspended pending investigation into allegations that he sexually abused a minor more than 30 years ago.

The Rev. Gerard Hoffman, who has served as assistant pastor at Our Lady of Mount Carmel since 2002, moved out of the rectory last week. His suspension was announced to the congregation at Masses on Saturday and Sunday, and counselors from the archdiocese were on hand to talk to parishioners.

This is the first allegation of sexual abuse that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia has received about the 63-year-old priest.

TEXAS
CW33

[with photos of the accused]

July 28, 2008

ELDORADO — Five members of a polygamist sect have turned themselves in to authorities.

They each surrendered Monday afternoon at the Schleicher County Sheriff's Office, after a grand jury indicted them on charges including sexual assault of a child and bigamy.

TEXAS
WOAI

By Jim Forsyth
Monday, July 28, 2008
Five members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints surrendered to the Schleicher County Sheriff’s Office to face charges including sexual assault of a child, 1200 WOAI news reports today.

“These are men who obviously have been indicted by a Schleicher County grand jury fro sexually assaulting young children,” Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said. “I would be concerned for the safety of any children they would be exposed to.”

SAN ANGELO (TX)
Reporter-News

By Paul A. Anthony
San Angelo Standard-Times
Originally published 05:54 p.m., July 28, 2008

SAN ANGELO -- Five indicted FLDS members have turned themselves in.

The men, sought since they were indicted Tuesday on a series of charges relating to alleged sexual abuse at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' Schleicher County ranch, turned themselves in to the Schleicher County Sheriff's Office about noon Monday, said Texas Ranger Capt. L.C. Wilson.

According to the Texas Attorney General's Office, the five men are:

Raymond Merril Jessop, 36, the alleged husband of a 16-year-old daughter of Warren Jeffs, is charged with one count of sexual assault of a child.

Allan Eugene Keate, 56, is charged with one count of sexual assault of a child.

Michael Gorge Emack, 57, is charged with one count of sexual assault of a child.

Merril Leroy Jessop, 33, is charged with one count of sexual assault of a child and bigamy.

Lloyd Hammond Barlow, 38, is charged with three counts of failure to report child abuse.

YUMA (AZ)
Yuma Sun

July 28, 2008 - 1:56PM
FROM STAFF REPORTS
A 75-year-old man is in custody in the San Bernardino County Jail pending extradition to Yuma to face child sex charges.

Aurelio Aguilar was arrested by the U.S. Marshals Service in Ontario, Calif., last week on a Yuma County indictment charging him with molestation of a child, sexual conduct with a minor and continuous sexual abuse, the Marshals Service said in a news release.

Jennifer Wells, spokeswoman for the marshals' Yuma office, said Aguilar is believed to be a former pastor, although she said she did not know if he had ministered in Yuma.

PENNSYLVANIA
Pottstown Mercury

07/28/2008

A former pastor at St. Basil the Great in Kimberton has been accused of sex assault, according to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

JAMAICA
Radio Jamaica

Monday, 28 July 2008
A licensing regime is to be put in place immediately to ensure that all child care facilities, state-run or private, are operated under the Child Care and Protection Act.

The decision came out of a meeting on Monday with officials of the Ministry of Health, the Child Development Agency (CDA) and other stakeholders.

It was revealed during the meeting that none of the island's childrens' homes is registered. ...

It's reported that a Pastor in the eastern parish of St Mary who is also a supervisor at a boys' home was charged with 30 counts of buggery when he appeared in court last week.

VIRGINIA BEACH (VA)
The Virginian-Pilot

By Steven G. Vegh
The Virginian-Pilot
July 28, 2008
VIRGINIA BEACH

A former pastor charged with embezzling his congregation is accused of yanking fixtures, a sink and appliances out of his home after it was recently auctioned off to pay his debt.

Kenneth L. Montgomery, who faces a criminal trial Aug. 20 in Virginia Beach Circuit Court, also made off with the mailbox, hot tub and kitchen cabinet knobs, according to attorney William Lascara, who oversaw the auction process.

“He took shrubbery, he must have dug up 15 to 20 bushes,” Lascara said.

Last year, a Virginia Beach judge ordered Montgomery to repay Hilltop Community Church more than $131,000 in a civil case. The house sale was arranged to pay back the church.

DELAWARE
ChildVictimsVoice.com

Expert panel to discuss law, answer questions

A panel, featuring survivors of childhood sexual abuse and experts in the fields of law enforcement, constitutional law, victims' advocacy and the counseling of childhood trauma victims, will discuss Delaware's Child Victim's Act at its one-year milestone.

When:
Tuesday, August 5, 7 p.m.
Free and open to the public

Where:
Bernard and Ruth Siegel Jewish Community Center
101 Garden of Eden Road Wilmington, DE 19803

TEXAS
The Associated Press

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A state law enforcement official says five indicted members of a polygamist sect in West Texas have turned themselves in to authorities.

The official, who spoke on a condition of anonymity, was not authorized to talk on the record until after a news conference by Attorney General Greg Abbott later Monday.

DOYLESTOWN (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

The Associated Press

DOYLESTOWN, Pa. - A Philadelphia-area priest has been named in a sexual-abuse complaint and removed from duty while the church investigates.

The Rev. Gerard J. Hoffman served as principal of the city's Roman Catholic High School from 1993 to 2002 and previously led St. Piux X High School in Pottstown.

UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A retired vicar has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing two boys when he was at a church in Northamptonshire.

Collin Pritchard, 64, now living in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, admitted seven sex offences, six of which were committed against one boy.

The offences took place while he was parish priest at St Andrew's Church in Wellingborough in the 1970s and 80s.

PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer

By David O'Reilly
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced today that Cardinal Justin Rigali had suspended from ministry the Rev. Gerard J. Hoffman, former principal of Pius X High School in Pottstown and Roman Catholic High School, pending an investigation into allegations he sexually abused a minor many years ago.

Hoffman, 63, was ordained a priest in 1973 and had served since 2002 as a parochial vicar at Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish in Doylestown. Since his suspension last week he is no longer residing at the parish rectory, according to the archdiocese.

In a brief statement, the archdiocese reported that the abuse allegation that prompted his suspension was the first it had ever received against Hoffman, who has served in numerous parishes and high schools during his career.

UNITED KINGDOM
Evening Telegraph

A retired parish priest from Wellingborough was jailed for five years today after he admitted sex attacks on two young boys.

Collin Pritchard, 64, was in charge of a church in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, in the early 1980s when he committed the offences, Northampton Crown Court was told.

The two victims, now adults, sat in court today to see the ex-clergyman admit four counts of indecent assault and three counts of committing an act of gross indecency.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
National Catholic Reporter

By TOM FOX, NCR staff writer
Published: July 28, 2008

Fr. Gerry Kleba, pastor of St. Cronan Parish, St. Louis, leads the Palm Sunday procession.If you don’t know Fr. Gerry Kleba you probably know a priest like him.

Kleba is one of those inner-city parish priests we have stumbled across and admired. This “Kleba” has worked tirelessly in the inner city of St. Louis through the last four decades. For the last six years, he has been pastor of St. Cronan parish, which inadvertently brought him unexpected attention after Sister of Charity Louise Lears, a pastoral associate in the parish, was banished last month by St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke. ...

Kleba does not hide his thoughts about Lears’ departure. He says he feels she was treated unfairly by the archbishop.

Speaking about a meeting he had with Archbishop Burke earlier this year, Kleba said, “He called me in and one of the things he wanted me to do was fire Sr. Louise and I said that this case is still open and I have to assume that while I don’t know much canon law, a person is innocent until proven guilty.”

“I told him I couldn’t fire her. He told me to seek out some further advice.”

So I decided to get a lawyer.

MASSACHUSETTS
The Salem News

By Paul Leighton
Staff writer

BEVERLY — When her family piled into the car on Sunday mornings for the drive to church, Carol Augulewicz knew the question was coming.

"Do you have the envelope?" her husband would ask.

The family no longer has to worry about forgetting the weekly donation. They're still faithful churchgoers, but now their gift to St. Mary Star of the Sea is made automatically, with the click of a mouse instead of the pass of a basket. ...

The Boston Archdiocese's support of electronic payments is not necessarily linked to the drop in donations that resulted from the priest abuse scandal, Landry said.

INDIA
Indian Catholic

CHENNAI, India (UCAN) -- A Catholic deacon in southern India has expressed relief after paternity tests exonerated him of making a schoolgirl pregnant.

I am relieved after the tests have proved my innocence," Amalanathan told UCA News on July 22. But the 26-year-old seminarian of Dharmapuri diocese in Tamil Nadu state said the charges caused him "much" suffering. The diocese is based in Dharmapuri town, 2,250 kilometers south of New Delhi.

A 16-year-old Catholic girl complained to the police on Jan. 10 that the seminarian molested her and made her pregnant. The girl, a student, lives in Savadiyur, a village in the diocese's territory. She was nine months pregnant when she made the complaint.

TEXAS
EURweb

(July 28, 2008)

According to a report by KPRC Local 2 in Houston, Rev. Val Adams was arrested and accused of theft and forgery. The preacher has been accused of stealing from his own congregation.

Rev. Adams took over Canaan Baptist Church when his father, Lonzo Adams, became ill. Church members said that is when money started disappearing.

He is known for his ambitious business ventures. Former members told KPRC, according to an article by Daniella Guzman, that Adam would ask members for money to invest in different business ideas.

NEW JERSEY
Philadelphia Inquirer

By Jan Hefler
Inquirer Staff Writer

Parishioners at a Haddon Township church that has been targeted for closure had their spirits lifted yesterday by news that the bishop was asking an advisory group to reexamine the decision.

"It's a ray of hope," said Tricia Newman, a paraplegic woman from Haddon Township who is deeply attached to St. Vincent Pallotti, one of the few Catholic churches in the region fully accessible to the disabled.

In April, Camden Bishop Joseph A. Galante angered many of the Camden diocese's faithful when he proposed merging 124 parishes into 66, one of the largest reconfigurations of Roman Catholic churches in the country.

UNITED KINGDOM
Liverpool Daily Post

Jul 28 2008 by Liam Murphy, Liverpool Daily Post

CAMPAIGNERS last night accused Catholic Church authorities of failing to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of parishioners’ money donated to help save a historic Merseyside church.

A pressure group set up to save the renowned SS Peter and Paul’s church in Wirral have now called for an investigation into church leaders by the Charity Commission. The campaigners say they have donated hundreds of thousands of pounds through Gift Aid – which allows the church to reclaim tax on the money – but that money has not been spent as they believed it would be, such as on routine maintenance.

The Catholic authorities refused to discuss the claims last night, and said there was nothing to add to the Bishop’s announced decision to close the church .

AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

BY GRAHAM DOWNIE
RELIGION REPORTER

28/07/2008 12:00:00 AM
Even with psychological testing and background screening of clergy, churches could not guarantee sexual abuse would not occur, former Anglican Archbishop of Adelaide Ian George has said in Canberra.

He described as a worthy aspiration demands that the Church prevent any further abuse. Though there was now zero tolerance of abuse, ''I suppose, sadly, it will happen'', he said.

The first thing the Church had learned about abuse was that it happened. ''For a very long time, that wasn't seriously believed,'' he said. In the past it had been either not believed or dismissed.

AUSTRALIA
The Herald

BY JOANNE MCCARTHY
28/07/2008 8:43:00 AM
A PRIEST who worked on the Central Coast has been found guilty of sexually abusing seven teenage boys in the 1980s.

A Sydney District Court jury found Paul Raymond Evans, 56, of Saratoga, guilty of 18 sex offences during his time as dormitory master at Boys' Town Catholic boarding school for troubled teenagers at Engadine.

He was in jail on Friday night after a judge refused bail.

The court heard Evans was charged and acquitted of sexual offences involving two teenagers in 1988 and was moved to St Patrick's parish at East Gosford in 1991 where he was assistant priest with the then Father Michael Malone, now the bishop of Maitland-Newcastle Diocese.

DAVENPORT (IA)
Quad-City Times

By Times Staff | Sunday, July 27, 2008
With every detail, the picture of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church gets clearer and clearer.

Four priests — James Janssen, William Wiebler, Francis Bass and Thomas Feeney — account for nearly 100 of the 150 abuse claims reported by the diocese.

The disclosure was provided by the Davenport Diocese following known settlements that total $47 million.

MAINE
Portland Press Herald

By BILL NEMITZ

July 27, 2008

Maybe it was the stutter. Maybe the Rev. John J. Curran saw 12-year-old Bob Dupuis struggling to get the words out and knew that this one would be easy prey.

"He basically stalked me," Dupuis said. "He knew who he could go after."

Dupuis, now 59, returned to his native Maine from his home in Connecticut last week not to confront Curran, who died in 1976. Rather, he came to dispel a myth.

"He was a pedophile and a child abuser," Dupuis said. "That's what he should be remembered for."

It takes guts to do what Bob Dupuis did last Monday evening. While some in the audience still shook their heads in disbelief, he stood before the Augusta City Council to say that Curran, a local icon if ever there was one, was not the man people thought he was.

The New York Times

By JOHN L. ALLEN Jr.
Published: July 27, 2008
FORTY years ago last week, Pope Paul VI provoked the greatest uproar against a papal edict in the long history of the Roman Catholic Church when he reiterated the church’s ban on artificial birth control by issuing the encyclical “Humanae Vitae.” At the time, commentators predicted that not only would the teaching collapse under its own weight, but it might well bring the “monarchical papacy” down with it.

Those forecasts badly underestimated the capacity of the Catholic Church to resist change and to stand its ground.

Down the centuries, Catholics have frequently groused about papal rulings. Usually they channeled that dissent into blithe disobedience, though occasionally a Roman mob would run the Successor of Peter out of town on a rail just to make a point. In 1848, Pope Pius IX was driven into exile by Romans incensed at his refusal to embrace Italy’s unification.

CANADA
The Telegram

NADYA BELL
The Telegram

Returning from a ceremony with Pope Benedict XVI in Rome, Newfoundland Archbishop Martin Currie says it’s likely that the pontiff, if he visits Canada, will apologize for the sexual abuse of children by members of the clergy in Newfoundland.

The Pope recently apologized for similar abuses in Australia during his visit to that country for World Youth Day, and apologized in April for abuses in the United States.

“I think if he ever gets to Canada he’ll probably incorporate that and Newfoundland and something with the residential schools,” Currie says.

ITALY
CronacaAqui

IVREA 25/07/2008 - Si dichiara innocente, don Pierpaolo Mologni, il parroco di Ozegna accusato di pedofilia. Ma dichiara anche di aver fiducia nella giustizia.

In clinica Ieri pomeriggio il sacerdote ha lasciato l’ospedale di Ivrea - dove fino all’altro giorno era ricoverato in rianimazione - ed è stato trasporto alla Casa del Clero, dove è attualmente ricoverato.

Una delle ultime persone ad averlo incontrato è stato il suo difensore, l’avvocato Elio uglielmino del foro di Ivrea.

[translation]

The words of the priest from Lombardone accused of sexual abuses
The Rev. Mologni: " Mudded by bad men, I trust justice"

IVREA - He declares to be innocent, the Rev. Pierpaolo Mologni, the parish priest at Ozegna accused of pedophilia. But he also declares to trust justice. Yesterday in the afternoon the priest left the hospital in Ivrea - where until the day after he had been in the ICU - and transported to the House of the Clergy, where he is now under care. One of the last persons to meet him was his defense lawyer, Mr. Elio Guglielmino, from the tribunal of Ivrea. The lawyer found the elderly parish priest in low spirits and in a precarious health condition , but adamant in rejecting all the charges. "I'm am extraneous from all the charges of the prosecutor office in Turin.

On the contrary I'm still unaware of the real reasons for these falsities and of the source these accusations are coming from. I don't know anything about the pedopornographic photos of children. During my life - he goes on - I believe I never committed a crime, I'm firmly convinced to be cleared from this story in the best of the ways for I never committed the acts for which I'm being investigated" . A completely different statement from what is written in the papers of the investigations: " Those are falsities - repeated the priest - I never touched a child in my life and such reports are due to the wickedness of some men . I'm a man of the Church and if I have to bear this Calvary, I do that with the serenity of a person who knows he never did anything wrong. And I now say - the parish priest of Ozegna concluded - I pardon those who orchestrated this painful calumny". Meanwhile the curia rushed to issue a press release, directly attributable to Bishop Miglio and agreed upon with cardinal Bertone, whereby they distance themselves from the investigated priest. "Surprise and suffering came from the accusations to a priest of our diocese - the bishop wrote, as if he wanted to eliminate the suspicion that story was already known in the ecclesiastical environment- he is esteemed and loved by those who know him , and we express our gratitude for the good he did and we
are near him in this particular moment". Bishop Miglio sends an appeal to the judges and the victims of the "alleged' pedophile priest: "We express our trust in the magistrates for their delicate duty, we are close and give our solidarity to those people, especially if minors, for what they had to put up with". And then the final "stroke": " It's very vivid in all of us the echo of the words pronounced by Benedict XVI, both in the recent trip to USA and in Australia for the World Youth Day just concluded", which means: "pedophile priests must be convicted".

25/07/2008

MILWAUKEE (WI)
United Press International

MILWAUKEE, July 26 (UPI) -- A married Roman Catholic priest with children will join the Milwaukee Archdiocese for the first time in its history, church officials say.

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan wrote in a letter to his priests that he was "impressed" by the Rev. Michael Scheip and was willing to let the married priest join the archdiocese, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Friday.

"He comes with a genuine desire to be of service to the church here in Milwaukee," Dolan wrote.

Scheip, 50, is coming from the Diocese of Venice, Fla., along with his wife of 24 years and will serve at Dolan's parish in Milwaukee.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Posted: July 26, 2008
The following is a Q & A sent by Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan to priests and deacons explaining how married clergy can become priests.

Q. We were always taught that married men could not be ordained Catholic priests. How is it possible that we could have a married Catholic priest here in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee?

A. Celibacy is a discipline of the Catholic Church practiced universally in the West. Although it is highly valued, Pope Paul VI states that celibacy "is not, of course, required by the nature of the priesthood itself. This is clear from the practice of the early church and the traditions of the Eastern rite churches."

AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

BY GRAHAM DOWNIE
27/07/2008 10:08:00 AM
HE MIGHT not have realised it, but World Youth Day coordinator Anthony Fisher touched on an important principle of healing, albeit expressed insensitively.

Having spent most of the past two years preparing for the event in Sydney, Bishop Fisher's frustration at those who spoiled the party by reminding the church of its sins was understandable, if not justified. He certainly reinforced his reputation as a hardline enforcer of church doctrine.

Yet when frustrated by niggling demands for a papal apology over sexual abuse by Australian Catholic priests and religious, Fisher complained the anger and suffering of victims was spoiling World Youth Day for everyone else. That thousands of lives had been scarred by sexual abuse seemed to escape him. The problem, as he saw it, was that these people were dwelling crankily on old wounds.

The question is, what is an apology worth if extracted only by public demands? Surely, a genuine apology is freely offered, not given begrudgingly in response to demands.

SALEM (OR)
KOMO

By Associated Press
SALEM, Ore. (AP) - The former pastor of a downtown Portland church has been given a six-month jail term for stealing $132,000 meant for such programs as helping the poor pay for food, rent and medical bills.

During Friday's hearing, Rex Loy shook his head as the judge imposed the sentence - apparently still denying prosecutors' assertions that he spent the stolen money on strippers, drugs and gambling.

NEW YORK
eFluxMedia

By Raoul Railey

Anne Hathaway's diaries have been confiscated by the FBI during a raid at her ex-boyfriend's Manhattan apartment, which the two shared until breaking up. The actress used to date Raffaello Follieri for about four years, and broke up with him just before he had been arrested by US authorities.

The police became interested in Follieri after gaining information that he might have been involved in fraud and money laundering. The Italian citizen had allegedly tricked people into believing he had connections in Vatican that would have allowed him to buy properties below the market price. Some people said that Follieri used to display Vatican robes in his office and that he once hired a priest to pose as a Vatican clergyman to back up his allegations of being a person close to city officials.

Among other things that have been taken from his apartment there were pictures of him and Miss Hathaway as well as the Clintons, Pope John Paul II and the McCains.

SANDPOINT (ID)
Bonner County Daily Bee

SANDPOINT — A Montana man is scheduled to be arraigned next month on allegations he fondled a preteen girl while he was a pastor at Priest Lake several years ago.

Stephen D. Bicknell is charged with sexual abuse of a child under the age of 16, an offense punishable by up to 25 years in prison. Bicknell, a 57-year-old from Libby, is free on bond while the case is pending.

Charging papers said Bicknell fondled the girl’s breasts when she was between the ages of nine and 10. The abuse occurred between 2005 and 2006, when Bicknell was between the ages of 54 and 55, the complaint said.

UNITED STATES
Voice from the Desert

The contributions of lay Catholics keep the Church functioning, yet contributors have no say in how the Church is run. This is in effect taxation without representation.

Reform efforts (e.g., Call to Action, Voice of the Faithful) have not had a wide appeal.

It’s clear to me that the only leverage reform-minded Catholics have is money, the universal language.

Here’s my idea.

Let’s pick a Sunday (or Sundays) when we send the bishops a message by withholding weekly contributions.

CANADA
Standard-Freeholder

By Trevor Pritchard

The local Roman Catholic diocese’s current committee for handling sexual abuse allegations will only go to police with the alleged victim’s permission, its chair told the Cornwall Public Inquiry yesterday.

But Raymond Legault added the five-person committee delivers every abuse allegation, current or historical, to the Children’s Aid Society.

“Although the law is not absolutely clear on (the requirement to report historical allegations) we want to make sure we do the right thing,” said Legault.

The inquiry is looking at how institutions like the Alexandria-Cornwall Roman Catholic Diocese responded when people brought allegations of sexual abuse from decades past to their attention.

FRONTENAC (KS)
The Morning Sun

By MATTHEW CLARK
The Morning Sun
Posted Jul 26, 2008 @ 12:00 AM

FRONTENAC — The misuse “tens of thousands of dollars” in church funds has been the centerpiece of a 10-month investigation by the Crawford County Sheriff’s Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

On Thursday, law enforcement officers executed a search warrant at Sacred Heart Catholic Church as part of that investigation.

“The entire investigation is geared toward their business manager,” said Crawford County Sheriff Sandy Horton. “Through our investigation we have seen tens of thousands of dollars misused.”
He added that the investigation began after the Sheriff’s Department received information regarding potential misuse of church funds and he said that “I took it from there.”

VERMONT
Times Argus

July 26, 2008

Staff, Wire Report

BURLINGTON — Vermont's Catholic Church has agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by a former Montpelier altar boy who says he was molested by a parish priest in the 1970s.

Neither the statewide Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington nor the plaintiff's attorney, Jerome O'Neill, are divulging the amount of the settlement, which comes less than a month before the case was set for trial in Chittenden Superior Court.

"The individual involved did not want it known that he had been molested," O'Neill said of the settlement.

SCOTLAND
Glasgow Daily Record
Jul 26 2008 By Chris Musson

A GAY priest was forced to hand over £3000 by a blackmailing rent boy.

Father Tony Sweeney, 61, quit the priesthood after details of the seedy plot emerged.

And yesterday, rent boy John Gallagher, who tormented the priest for almost three years, was facing jail after admitting blackmail.

Gallagher, 30, met Father Sweeney in 2003 at a meeting point for gay men in Glasgow's Kelvingrove Park, the city's sheriff court heard yesterday.

STAFFORD (VA)
Free Lance-Star

Date published: 7/26/2008

BY KEITH EPPS

Members of a national group against sex abuse came to Stafford yesterday to show support for a county man who was sexually abused as a teenager by a minister.

A handful of members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests were at the Stafford Judicial Center yesterday to lobby for a stiff penalty for the Rev. George Lowe, who has pleaded guilty to two counts of taking indecent liberties with a child.

Lowe molested Ben Marsh multiple times in 1984 and 1985, starting when Marsh was 15. Marsh, who has said he wants his name used, was also on the courthouse steps yesterday.

LONGBOAT KEY (FL)
Herald Tribune

By Michael A. Scarcella

LONGBOAT KEY - The former bookkeeper at St. Mary's Star of the Sea Church was arrested Friday on theft and fraud charges, accused of stealing nearly $330,000 from the Catholic church for personal use.

Margaret Carroll is accused of fraud and theft. Margaret Carroll is accused of fraud and theft.

Manatee County sheriff's detectives say Margaret A. Carroll, 66, whom the Diocese of Venice fired after theft allegations surfaced last year, spent tens of thousands of dollars on home repair and even bought a new car with stolen money. She also wrote checks to family members, authorities say.

The Tablet

Publication of Humanae Vitae 40 years ago was a seismic moment in the history of the Catholic Church. Today most practising Catholics ignore its teaching on birth control and more than half think it should be revised. This is the central finding of a major survey commissioned by The Tablet

By the time the contraceptive pill came on the market in 1962, Catholic couples had begun to wonder if it was the answer to their prayers: a reliable and convenient method of birth control they could use with the Church's blessing. The hopes of a great many Catholics were dashed with the publication of Paul VI's encyclical, Humanae Vitae on 29 July 1968 which forbad the use of all artificial forms of contraception including the Pill.

Exactly 40 years later, a major study conducted by The Tablet has found that its teaching is ignored by the great majority of Mass-going Catholics. This is one of the main findings contained in part two of our survey of 1,500 Catholics from parishes across England and Wales. Although almost half have never heard of Humanae Vitae, a large majority is aware of the Church's ban on artificial birth control and more than half believe it should be revised.

TEXAS
Marshall News Messenger

By Corrie MacLaggan
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, July 26, 2008
State child welfare officials, in anticipation of a possible lawsuit from a polygamous sect, are carefully watching what they say about an April raid on the sect's West Texas ranch.

Through spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman, Department of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Carey Cockerell and his boss, Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Albert Hawkins, this week canceled an interview scheduled for July 30 with the American-Statesman and the Houston Chronicle.

Both newspapers have repeatedly asked for the chance to query Hawkins and Cockerell about the decision to seize more than 400 children from the Eldorado ranch owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on suspicions of child abuse.

INDIANA
Indianapolis Star

By Robert King
Posted: July 26

When his childhood priest admitted to sexually abusing boys, a man suing the Archdiocese of Indianapolis said he thought the church also might confess that it should have taken steps to protect him and the other victims.

But so far the church has admitted only that the priest was a molester, accepting no responsibility itself.

So the man known in court documents only as John Doe NM is trying a new tactic to get the church to face its failures. His attorney has filed papers seeking punitive damages against the archdiocese -- raising the specter of the multimillion-dollar jury awards that have punished other dioceses across the country.

DENVER (CO)
Rocky Mountain News

Ashleigh Oldland
Saturday, July 26, 2008

A lawsuit filed Friday against Denver's Catholic Archdiocese alleges the Rev. Harold Robert White, who is now deceased, molested a young man in a Wheat Ridge parish in the 1980s.

The man who filed the suit, now in his 40s and living in California, says that church officials could have prevented the molestation.

White, who died in November 2006, worked in 11 parishes over 33 years. This is the third suit filed against the archdiocese this month naming White, according to a statement issued by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

FRONTENAC (KS)
Joplin Globe

By Greg Grisolano

ggrisolano@joplinglobe.com

FRONTENAC, Kan. — Authorities executing a search warrant Thursday seized financial documents and business records in connection with an investigation into allegations of misuse of church funds by an individual other than the priest, Crawford County Sheriff Sandy Horton said Friday.

Members of the Sheriff’s Department, the Kansas Bureau of Investigations and the FBI served the warrant at the business office of Sacred Heart Catholic Church, 100 S. Cherokee St., in Frontenac, Horton said.

No one is expected to be taken into custody yet, but Horton said the investigation points to thousands of dollars in church funds being misused.

“We’re talking tens of thousands of dollars at this point,” the sheriff said. “We want parishioners and the community to know that there are serious financial problems that need to be addressed.”

DAYTON (OH)
Dayton Daily News

By Lou Grieco
Staff Writer

Friday, July 25, 2008

DAYTON — A former Riverside pastor convicted of multiple sex crimes against underage females was sentenced Friday, July 25, to 20 years in prison.

"The damage done to the eight victims and their families is enormous," Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Dennis Langer told Dennis Bowling.

Bowling, 47, who had been pastor of Kingdom Harvest Church, 2360 Valley Pike, Riverside, pleaded guilty June 25 to 15 felonies, including two counts of rape of a child under the age of 13.

SCOTLAND
Scotsman

Published Date: 26 July 2008
By VICTORIA WELDON
A RENT boy tormented a gay Catholic priest for more than two years by threatening to expose his sexuality, a court heard yesterday.

John Gallagher forced the 61-year-old to pay £3,000 for his silence and regularly visited the chapel house in Glasgow to demand cash.

The pair met in Kelvingrove Park in the city's West End, where the cleric often went to use the services of male prostitutes.

INDIA
The Telegraph

OUR CORRESPONDENT
Gaya, July 25: Chief of a Bodh Gaya-based residential madarsa has been jailed on charges of sodomy.

The madarsa head, Shaheeruddin, was arrested late on Thursday evening after a 13-year-old pupil lodged a complaint against him alleging that the priest had been exploiting him for six weeks.

The victim, a resident of Malmal village of Madhubani district, met senior police officers with his guardian at the janata durbar on Thursday to register the complaint.

According to Bodh Gaya deputy superintendent of police Rajvansh Singh, doctor Sartaj Khan of Anugrah Narain Magadh Medical College and Hospital examined the victim. During the test, the doctor saw clear signs of sodomy.

UNITED KINGDOM
Guardian

Terry Philpot The Guardian, Saturday July 26 2008

Until 1992 the guidelines about child protection which governed the Catholic church in England and Wales were reactive: they were about what to do if a child was abused. Like the Catholic church in some other parts of the world, notably the US, the church here fell foul of a number of scandals where allegations of abuse were not only not reported to the police but suspect priests were moved elsewhere.

It was cases like these that caused the Bishops Conference of England and Wales in 2000 to set up an independent commission of inquiry under the Catholic peer and judge, the late Lord Nolan. Its majority of non-Catholic members drew up new proposals that enabled the church to adopt a preventative stance: how children and vulnerable adults could be better protected.

The Nolan report was published in 2001 and accepted by the bishops. The Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Adults (Copca) was created, together with a network, at parish and diocesan level and within religious orders, of child protection officers. ...

One of the most serious concerns has been the way that, after Nolan, accused clergy have been dealt with. They are not only suspended but evicted from their homes. Even when accusations are proved false or no conviction is secured in court, they can spend years in an ecclesiastical limbo undergoing psychological risk assessments and never returning to parish and ministry.

UNITED STATES
Voice of the Faithful

At its meeting on June 3, 2008, the Board of Trustees appointed Ron DuBois (Region 1) and Ed Wilson (Region 2) as the elected representatives of the National Representative Council to the Board.

The NRC re-elected Ron DuBois to a second term and elected Ed Wilson to fill the seat vacated when Dan Bartley became President in March.

The appointments mean that all eleven seats on the Board are full once again.

UNITED STATES
Voice of the Faithful

While in the U.S. and Canada, Bishop Geoffrey Robinson avoided responding to pressure from a Vatican official and some fellow bishops to abandon his book tour. But when he returned to Australia, Bishop Robinson posted his thoughts on the Catholica Australia website:

“In his letter asking me to cancel the tour, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, said, ’It has been brought to my attention by some Bishops in the United States who are concerned that you have been invited by some organizations that are not in communion with the Catholic Church…’.

“This is the exact opposite of my experience. The people who came to listen were mainly older people who had spent their lives as faithful and loyal Catholics, raising their children in that faith and supporting the church in every way they could. They still practice their faith. Yes, there were also victims present, and married priests and gay people and three Catholic women ordained as priests. Some of these were angry, some disillusioned and many were struggling hard to keep faith in the church. But even these disaffected people still cared and still wanted to see a better church.

CANTON (OH)
Canton Repository

UPDATE: 5:34 PM, Friday, July 25, 2008

REPOSITORY STAFF REPORT

CANTON A former minister accused of molesting a family member goes on trial Sept. 22.

Peter L. Pilger, 36, of Warren, is charged with three felony counts of attempted rape and single counts of rape, kidnapping and gross sexual imposition in Stark County Common Pleas Court.

Pilger's trial date was set this afternoon by Judge John G. Haas, according to court records.

AUSTRALIA
The Manly Daily

Rebecca Woolley

26 July 2008

A FORMER Collaroy Plateau priest has been found guilty of molesting seven teenagers when he was a teacher at a Catholic-run school for troubled boys in the 70s and 80s.

Paul Raymond Evans was yesterday convicted of 18 serious child sex offences committed against seven boys as young as 13 who were pupils at Boys' Town, Engadine in Sydney's south.

The 57-year-old, a dorm master and teacher at the school, was in the Salesian of Don Bosco order before becoming a diocesan priest and worked at St Rose of Lima church at Collaroy Plateau in the 1990s.

A jury of five men and seven women delivered their verdict at the Sydney District Court yesterday after taking more than a week to reach a decision.

TEXAS
San Angelo Standard-Times

By Paul A. Anthony
Originally published 02:17 p.m., July 25, 2008
Updated 02:17 p.m., July 25, 2008

Nearly four months after the largest child-custody case in U.S. history commenced, 51st District Judge Barbara Walther has broken it up, leaving 244 separate cases involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Walther split Case No. 2902 - which included more than 300 children - into 110 cases grouped by mother, and Case 2903, which included more than 30 children, into nine cases, also grouped by mother. They join 125 cases filed separately by the state's Child Protective Services agency, which removed nearly 440 children from the sect's Schleicher County compound in early April.

"This is something we've known all along needs to be done," said Tom Green County District Court clerk Vicki Vines. "Nobody had a good enough grasp on it (until now). Everybody's got it a little more under control."

NEW ZEALAND
Stuff

By JOHN HARTEVELT - The Press | Friday, 25 July 2008

After six years, 125 complaints and more than $5.1 million in compensation, the last of five Catholic brothers accused of sexually abusing disabled boys at a Christchurch school has walked free.

Father Raymond Garchow was given his freedom when the Crown entered a stay of proceedings with the Solicitor-General on Wednesday.

Garchow faced eight charges over the sexual abuse of boys at the Marylands school, run by the Brothers of St John of God Order, in the 1970s.

He was a sick man, and one of the two complainants was also unwell, which contributed to the case being pulled.

Catholic League

An ad criticizing the Catholic Church for its teaching on contraception was placed today in Italy’s largest newspaper, Corriere della Sera. The “Open Letter to the Pope” is the work of Catholics for Choice and was signed by many dissident Catholic organizations.

Here’s what Catholic League president Bill Donohue had to say about it:

“There are several anomalies here. First, the alleged subject matter of the ad, namely contraception, is a ruse. Second, the mission of some of the groups who signed it has absolutely nothing to do with contraception. Third, the group which promoted it has no members.

VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) — More than 50 dissident Catholic groups from around the world have written an open letter asking Pope Benedict XVI to lift the church's ban on birth control.

Taking a half-page ad in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, the groups said Friday that the Church's ban on artificial birth control has had "catastrophic effects," particularly in the fight against AIDS.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the accusation was "clearly unfounded" and insisted the Church is active in combating AIDS.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Review

by Joseph Kenny, Review Staff Writer

Three more St. Stanislaus Parish Corporation board members have reconciled themselves with the Catholic Church.

Bernice Krauze, Stanley Rozanski and Robert Zabielski met privately and individually with Archbishop Raymond L. Burke in June and are now in full communion with the Catholic Church.

Those three and another member, who also recently reconciled with the Catholic Church, are part of a lawsuit they hope will lead to the re-establishment of the Northside parish as a parish of the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

They hope a court ruling will nullify changes made by the St. Stanislaus board in recent years in the 1891 agreement between the civil corporation and Archbishop Peter Kenrick that established St. Stanislaus Kostka as a parish serving primarily Roman Catholics of Polish heritage.

DENVER (CO)
Denver Post

The Associated Press
Article Launched: 07/25/2008 08:59:57 AM MDT

DENVER—Advocates for victims of sexual abuse say another lawsuit is being filed against the Archdiocese of Denver.

It's the third suit to be filed this month accusing the archdiocese of covering up abuse by ex-priest Harold White. He was removed from ministry in 1993 and died in 2006.

AUSTRALIA
Daily Telegraph

By Kim Arlington

July 26, 2008 12:00am

THERE were emotional scenes in the District Court yesterday as a Catholic priest was convicted of sexually abusing seven of his charges at a school for troubled boys.

Father Paul Raymond Evans, 57, a former dormitory master at Boys Town in Engadine, stood trial accused of molesting and raping students between 1977 and 1988.

After a week of deliberations, the jury convicted him of 18 charges, including homosexual intercourse by a teacher and indecent assault.

BARTLETT (IL)
City of Angels

By Kay Ebeling
City of Angels

As we drove to morning mass at my perpetrator church Wednesday, we joked we were a vocal act, me in the lead, the three women from Geneva my backup singers. Inside the church, they got to the part where people call out, pray for this, pray for that, and the people say, "Lord hear our prayer." I thought, why not, and bellowed: “For all of us who were raped by pedophile priests as children and as a result live with damaged lives, but we still keep living.”

Silence. I saw bodies in front of me tighten. Silence continued. Finally one of my backup singers chanted, “Lord Hear our prayer” and the people in the church came back to life, responded with her, and they all then went on with their requests. No one looked at me, no one was curious. I know if I’d been in an evangelical church and said that, I’d be surrounded by women wanting to comfort me. Instead, I went outside and talked to God through a tree.

ARIZONA
Kingman Daily Miner

Friday, July 25, 2008

Aaron Royster, Miner Staff Reporter

Attorney General Terry Goddard gave testimony at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on polygamy related crimes.

In Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Goddard discussed his office's work to combat abuse and fraud in the communities of Colorado City and Hildale, Utah, during the past five years.

From the outset, Goddard said he wanted to make sure the committee understood he wasn't talking about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "Second, the work being done by my office in Colorado City is not about religion, culture or lifestyle," Goddard said. "Rather, it is about protecting women and children from domestic abuse and sexual violence; combating fraud and public corruption; enforcing civil rights laws; upholding peace officer standards; and ensuring that the rule of law is applied equally and comprehensively throughout our land."

BOSTON (MA)
The Pilot

Dale O’Leary

The Catholic Church has never ordained women to the priesthood and never will. However, with all the changes in the roles of women in the world, it is not surprising that some asked: Is the Church’s restriction of the priesthood to men ordained by God or merely an accommodation to culture?

In his letter on the dignity and vocation of women, John Paul II explained the reason for this practice:

“Since Christ, in instituting the Eucharist, linked it in such an explicit way to the priestly service of the Apostles, it is legitimate to conclude that he thereby wished to express the relationship between man and woman, between what is ‘feminine’ and what is ‘masculine.’ It is a relationship willed by God both in the mystery of creation and in the mystery of Redemption. It is the Eucharist above all that expresses the redemptive act of Christ the Bridegroom towards the Church the Bride. This is clear and unambiguous when the sacramental ministry of the Eucharist, in which the priest acts ‘in persona Christi,’ is performed by a man.”

NEW JERSEY
Daily Record

By Peggy Wright • Daily Record • July 25, 2008

The lawyer for ex-Bayley-Ellard High School Principal Frank Mattiace told a judge on Thursday that he plans to request a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation of a former student who accused the administrator of fondling him.

At a brief conference in state Superior Court in Morristown, defense attorney Gerard Hanlon told Judge John B. Dangler that he will file a motion seeking an evaluation of the now 22-year-old accuser. The accuser said Mattiace was sexually inappropriate with him on school grounds on several occasions in 2003.

Morris County Assistant Prosecutor Melanie Smith said she will oppose the request, which Dangler said he would hear on Oct. 16.

CANADA
The Sarnia Observer

Posted By CATHY DOBSON, THE OBSERVER

It took two years and a lot of persistence but Sarnia's Marilyn Gray has finally been paid full compensation for the years she suffered at a native residential school.

"It's such a relief," said the 73-year-old Gray. "They said they couldn't find my papers. They didn't do anything for so long. Now I've finally been able to pay some of my bills."

Gray applied to Service Canada after Ottawa approved a compensation agreement in 2006 for residential school survivors. It promised $19,000 for the four years she spent at St. Mary's School in Spanish, Ont., far from her home at the Cape Croker reserve near Wiarton.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Catholic News Agency

St. Louis, Jul 25, 2008 / 02:30 am (CNA).- Three members of the board from the breakaway St. Stanislaus Kostka parish in St. Louis have reconciled with the Catholic Church. The trio has also joined former parishioners in a lawsuit asking the civil corporation which owns the parish to adhere to its 1891 bylaws that require it to encourage attendance at Roman Catholic religious services.

Bernice Krauze, Stanley Rozanski, and Robert Zabielski, all members of the Board of Directors of Saint Stanislaus Parish Corporation, met on June 10 with then-Archbishop of St. Louis Raymond F. Burke to be reconciled with the Church. Their meeting followed the June 2 reconciliation of former board member Edward Florek.

The three board members reportedly personally asked Archbishop Burke for help in reconciling the parish with the Church.

The lawsuit filed by former parishioners, contributors, and board members of St. Stanislaus Kostka or its corporation asks the Saint Stanislaus Parish Corporation to adhere to its 1891 bylaws which, according to the Archdiocese of St. Louis’ website, deem the corporation’s purposes to include: to unite Polish Roman Catholics in a church congregation; to maintain a Polish Roman Catholic Church; and to encourage attendance at Roman Catholic religious services.

UNITED KINGDOM
Croyden Today

A pastor has stood down after a relationship with one of his congregation - Big Brother bully Alexandra de Gale's sister - left her pregnant.
Leon Richardson, of El-Shaddai Outreach Ministry, confessed to his West Croydon congregation that he had been seeing Donna de-Gale.
Although the minister, who has three children from a previous failed marriage, has stood down he continues to attend church activities and was at a bible reading session this Tuesday.
As a result around half a dozen church-goers have left the ministry in London Road as they objected to his continued presence.

CANADA
The Telegram

BRIAN JONES
The Telegram

Every time Pope Benedict XVI apologizes somewhere for the sexual abuse of children by members of the clergy, the ongoing silence of the Roman Catholic church in Newfoundland becomes more noticeable and despicable.

This week, the pope was in Australia, where he issued the apology at a public mass attended by thousands of people.

As quoted by The Associated Press, he said: "I would like to pause to acknowledge the shame which we have all felt as a result of the sexual abuse of minors by some clergy and religious in this country. I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured. I assure them as their pastor that I too share in their suffering."

WASHINGTON (DC)
azfamily

[with video]

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Polygamy is taking center stage in our nation’s capital in what is being called a historic hearing.

This was all at the request of Utah Senator Harry Reid, who said the polygamous followers were experts at committing crimes. Senator Reid introduced a bill to form a federal task force to address the crimes associated with polygamy, including violating child labor laws and tax evasion.

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard also testified Thursday. The polygamous followers of Warren Jeffs were not allowed to address the committee but they were at the hearing. They called it nothing more than religious persecution.

3TV ‘s Mike Watkiss reports there was plenty of damning testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee involving allegations of wrongdoing within the FLDS sect and against polygamous leader Warren Jeffs.

These allegations were vigorously denied by and FLDS spokesperson today by a man by the name Willy Jessop, who called the allegations nothing more than a witch hunt. He said that before a throng of reporters outside the hearing room. A rather heated and bizarre exchange took place once 3TV’s Mike Watkiss began asking some tough questions.

NEW JERSEY
Catholic Star Herald

Published by D. A. Barsotti
Thu, July 24 2008
Merging parishes requires time and work and, as Bishop Joseph A. Galante acknowledged in announcing plans for the reconfiguration of the Diocese of Camden, it also requires sacrifice and a willingness to work for the greater good.

“Shortly after the bishop announced the reconfigurations, we held a grief-sharing night,” said Father William C. Pierce, pastor of St. John Bosco Parish, Millville. “With help from diocesan facilitators, participants were given the opportunity to get out their feelings. It was very powerful. We were all in tears.”

At this point, people are coming to terms with the need to reconfigure parishes and more accepting, he said.

AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

July 25, 2008 04:13pm
A 57-year-old Catholic priest has been remanded in custody after a Sydney jury found him guilty of 18 sex offences involving seven boys.

After almost seven days of deliberations, the New South Wales District Court jury today found Father Paul Raymond Evans guilty of nine counts of homosexual intercourse by a teacher, seven counts of indecent assault and two acts of indecency.

He was found not guilty of one homosexual count and one indecent assault.

Evans, a member of the Catholic order the Salesians of Don Bosco, had been a dormitory master at Boys Town, Engadine, in Sydney's south.

NEW JERSEY
New Jersey Jewish Standard

By Lois Goldrich

In a letter sent on Tuesday by Rabbi Shmuel Goldstein, dean of the Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey, and Eli Weber, the school’s president, parents were notified that Adam Melzer, the River Edge school’s former basketball coach, had been arrested for child endangerment.

According to a statement from Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli, Melzer, a married Teaneck resident, allegedly targeted at least four former RYNJ students, securing nude photos of the teens — then between the ages of 14 and 16 — by claiming that blackmailers already had pictures of the boys naked.

The prosecutor’s office also reported that four boys involved in the investigation stated that the conversations they had with Melzer regarding the photos he requested, as well as the actual taking of the photos, took place in 2006 and 2007, when Melzer was a supervisor at a youth basketball program in River Edge where they served as volunteers.

WASHINGTON (DC)
Austin American-Statesman

By Jason Embry
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Friday, July 25, 2008

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants the federal government to use more muscle to fight possible organized crime among polygamists, such as those living at the Yearning For Zion ranch in West Texas.

Reid, D-Nev., has introduced legislation that would launch a federal task force, which would be made up of several agencies, to combat what Reid described as a broad pattern of crimes, including child abuse, welfare fraud, corruption and tax evasion.

Reid found a supporter of his plan in Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who told the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday that more federal help is needed because polygamists' alleged activities often cross state lines.

JAMAICA
The Jamaica Observer

Carl Gilchrist, Observer staff reporter gilchristc@jamaicaobserver.com
Friday, July 25, 2008

A pastor of a church in rural Jamaica, who is also a supervisor at a boys home, has been charged with 30 counts of buggery, allegedly committed against boys at the institution.

The accused, who was originally charged with one count of buggery, appeared in the Richmond Resident Magistrate's court on Wednesday.

It was during the proceedings that it was revealed that other incidents had allegedly taken place between the accused and other boys at the institution.

SPRINGFIELD (MO)
News-Leader

Ashley Wiehle • News-Leader • July 25, 2008

A Springfield day-care worker and teacher has pleaded not guilty to charges of rape and sodomy of a now 11-year-old boy who said the woman --his baby sitter --repeatedly assaulted him over a two-year period.

Laura Kirkland, 25, was being held in the Greene County Jail Thursday evening in lieu of $75,000 bond after being arrested Wednesday night. She is charged with two counts of statutory sodomy with a person less than 14 years old and one count of statutory rape with a person less than 14 years old. ...

Kirkland was employed by Nurturing Place in Springfield and as a fifth-grade teacher for Christian Schools of Springfield.

AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Joel Gibson
July 25, 2008

THE Catholic Church's national sexual abuse assessment and treatment facility this month consists of one volunteer in Kincumber on a mobile phone.

Encompass, which treated more than 1100 Catholic clergy for psychosexual and other mental health issues, closed on June 30 after the church hierarchy decided against spending $200,000 a year to keep it going.

In the meantime, a former board member, Timothy O'Hearn has been left to answer Encompass's phone, referring church employees with mental health issues to private treatment.

Professor O'Hearn is on leave from his job as dean of students and director of ministry at the Australian Catholic University.

AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Arjun Ramachandran
July 25, 2008 - 12:48PM

A former Catholic school student says he was sexually abused by a priest and was "gut wrenched" to discover a number of classmates had also been abused.

The man told ABC 702 radio this morning that he had made at least 50 attempts to speak with Cardinal Pell and World Youth Day spokesman Bishop Anthony Fisher, since four other people in his class also claimed to be abused by the same priest.

The man, who identified himself as Paul, said he had tried to contact Bishop Fisher at his office at Watson's Bay, and had also called the Archdiocese of Sydney, St Mary's Cathedral and phoned and emailed the WYD information line.

MAINE
Kennbec Journal

After the unanimous vote Monday night by the Augusta City Council urging state legislators to rename the city's Father John J. Curran Bridge, we see no obstacle to lawmakers doing just that when they reconvene in January.

At least two people have come forward and claimed that Curran, an Augusta priest who died in 1976, sexually abused them when they were children. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland investigated both claims; spokeswoman Sue Bernard says the diocese believes one of the two formal accusations to be true and if Curran were alive today, the diocese would ask the Vatican to prevent him from ministering.

That has already led the University of Maine at Augusta to remove Curran's name from a scholarship there. The Calumet Club in Augusta also recently removed the priest's name from a scholarship it offers through its educational foundation, although foundation leaders say it was not related to the allegations of abuse. And Bishop John Malone, head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Maine, joined Calumet Club President Patrick Boucher in expressing support for the council's resolution.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By MARIE ROHDE
mrohde@journalsentinel.com
Posted: July 24, 2008
A man who says he was sexually abused in a state school by a Catholic priest with a history of earlier misconduct has filed a fraud lawsuit seeking damages from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

While most lawsuits involving sexual abuse that occurred decades ago are barred by the statute of limitations, the state Supreme Court last year opened the door to some cases, saying the church could be sued if fraud was proved. Those abused must show that church officials were aware of the misconduct and did not warn others.

The new lawsuit was filed by Donald Marshall, an adult living in Wisconsin who was a student at the Lincoln Hills School in the late 1970s when he said he was abused by Father Lawrence Murphy.

Murphy, who died in 1998, was believed to have molested dozens of boys at St. John's School for the Deaf in St. Francis, a residential facility for deaf children where he worked for 24 years.

AUSTRALIA
LIVENEWS

A catholic priest has been found guilty of sexually abusing seven boys whilst teaching at a boarding school for troubled teens.

Father Paul Raymond Evans would assault the boys when on school camping trips or in the dormitory at Boys Town, at Engadine in Sydney's south.

Throughout the five week trial the 57-year-old denied he molested the boys and engineered situation so he could indulge his sexual interest in the young victims.

ARIZONA
Deseret News

By Ben Winslow
Deseret News
Published: Friday, July 25, 2008 12:14 a.m. MDT

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard may go to court to get evidence seized from the Fundamentalist LDS Church's YFZ Ranch shared with states conducting investigations into alleged crimes within the polygamous sect.

"We haven't gotten the information that we've asked for. We have been pushing Texas, and federal authorities there, to try to release and help us evaluate some of the evidence," Goddard said in an interview with the Deseret News shortly after testifying in Washington, D.C., before a senate panel on polygamy-related crimes. "We may have to get a court order to do it."

Nearly 1,000 boxes of evidence were seized in the April raid on the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Texas. Some of the evidence that has been made public includes documents that reference underage marriages.

VERMONT
Burlington Free Press

By Sam Hemingway • Free Press Staff Writer • July 25, 2008

The state's Roman Catholic diocese has agreed to an out-of-court settlement in a case filed by a man who alleged as a Montpelier altar boy he was repeatedly molested by the Rev. Edward Paquette in the mid-1970s.

Lawyers for the diocese and man, identified in court papers only as "John Doe," confirmed Thursday that the two sides had agreed to a financial settlement Wednesday, but each declined to say how much money was involved.

"I'm not going to do that," said Jerome O'Neill, the man's lawyer, when asked what the settlement figure was. Tom McCormick, a diocesan lawyer, said the figure would be made public once the settlement paperwork was finalized.

ROME
Catholic News Agency

Rome, Jul 25, 2008 / 04:08 am (CNA).- Today marks the 40th anniversary of the often debated papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, in which Pope Paul VI reaffirmed the Church’s teaching against contraception. Looking back at the events as he experienced them, Cardinal James Francis Stafford writes that the reaction by dissenters to the papal document involved a level of infidelity which divided the ranks of the clergy to such an extent that they have still not recovered.

The recounting of the events of 1968 by Cardinal Stafford-who was the Archbishop of Baltimore at the time of the encyclical’s release-is eloquent, laced with scriptural allusions and the insights of a scholar. He set out to peer into the summer of 1968, “a record of God’s hottest hour,” as he dubs it, at the request of L’Osservatore Romano and has made his submission available to CNA.

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Victims of a Catholic priest say they are elated that he has been convicted of child sex offences after 30 years.

Seven former students of a boy's school in Engadine in Sydney's south accused Father Paul Evans of rape and sexual assault.

He pleaded not guilty, telling the court he hugged and comforted the boys but did not touch them in a sexual way.

Today, a jury found him guilty of 18 offences.

MAINE
Bangor Daily News

By Judy Harrison
Friday July 25, 2008 - Bangor Daily News

An Ellsworth man has been elected president of the Maine Chapter of Voice of the Faithful.

Bob McAteer, 70, is the first person to serve as president who lives in northern Maine. He also is the spokesman for VOTF-Maine.

The organization elected new officers earlier this month.

AUSTRALIA
Online Opinion

By Frank Brennan - posted Friday, 25 July 2008

It is very gratifying that Pope Benedict took the opportunity of his World Youth Day visit to apologise to the victims of sexual abuse by clergy and other church personnel. He ended his visit by celebrating mass with some victims, having already made his own courageous decision to say sorry for the pain and suffering endured.

His apology was heartfelt and included a clear directive to the local church to extend compassion, care and justice to the victims.

During his visit, some persons expressed dissatisfaction with the Catholic Church's protocol Towards Healing, which sets out the principles and procedures for the Church response to complaints of abuse against Church personnel. Father Chris Riley went so far as to label it “a joke”, with the perpetrators being the only winners.

I beg to differ. Towards Healing, established in 1996 and revised in 2000, is continually reviewed. There may well be defects in the protocol's application by some church authorities. But it would be a disaster for victims of abuse if the church were to dismantle Towards Healing leaving victims to rely solely on the civil law. The protocol and its application need to be assessed against the backdrop of Australian law.

CALIFORNIA
Napa Valley Register

By MARSHA DORGAN
Register Staff Writer
The former St. Helena High School wrestling and volleyball coach and youth pastor convicted of sexually molestation two of his students was sentenced Wednesday to 270 days in Napa County Jail and five years probation..

The probation department recommended the court find that Herschel Sandler, 45, had served his time and allow him to leave the courtroom a free man.

Napa County Superior Court Judge Rodney Stone, however, disagreed, ordering Sandler to serve the nine months in the county jail. He must also register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

SEATTLE (WA)
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

A woman has sued the Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle claiming her father was sexually abused by two priests employed by a North Seattle parish, P-I reporter Levi Pulkkinen reports.

In a lawsuit filed July 11, the woman says her father was sexually molested during the late 1960s and 1970s by Desmond McMahon and James McGreal, both ordained priests then working at the Saint Catherine of Siena parish.

The woman asserts she was deprived of a normal relationship with her father because of the abuse made possible by the church's attempts to cover up the behavior of McMahon and McGreal.

WASHINGTON (DC)
United Press International

WASHINGTON, July 24 (UPI) -- Polygamous groups are criminal gangs that commit welfare fraud and tax evasion as well as sexual abuse, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday.

Reid, D-Nev., a Mormon, spoke at the opening of a Judiciary Committee hearing on the communities, the Deseret Morning News reported. He said he was glad the hearing was being held on Pioneer Day, a Utah holiday commemorating the arrival of the Latter-Day Saints in Salt Lake City.

"I am here to tell you that polygamist communities in the United States are a form of organized crime," he said. "The most obvious crime being committed in these communities is bigamy, child abuse -- teen and preteen girls are forced to marry older men and bear their children."

WASHINGTON (DC)
The Salt Lake Tribune

By Thomas Burr
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 07/24/2008 03:53:56 PM MDT

Posted: 3:53 AM- WASHINGTON -- Polygamous groups have formed into a "sophisticated, wealthy and vast criminal organization" that the federal government must aggressively pursue, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid testified Thursday.
Despite opposition by polygamist sects and wariness from federal prosecutors, that action will happen either within the next five months or with a new administration, Reid vowed after the first congressional hearing on polygamy in more than a half-century.
"The lawless conduct of polygamous communities in the United States deserves national attention and federal action," Reid told the Senate Judiciary Committee during a nearly three-hour hearing where witnesses tossed out allegations of pervasive criminal activity in the sects.

WASHINGTON (DC)
Times Record News

[with video]

Trish Choate/Scripps Howard News Service
Thursday, July 24, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott believes the YFZ Ranch would never have sprung up outside Eldorado if the federal government had formed a task force 10 years ago to help states handle crimes suspected of polygamist sect members who set up housekeeping in his state.

In testimony Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Abbott painted a picture of a mobile Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints whose members and resources slip easily across state and international borders to escape crackdowns.

The task force proposal explored during the hearing would give prosecutors more tools to deal with challenging investigations, he said.

WASHINGTON (DC)
McClatchy Newspapers

By By DAVE MONTGOMERY | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - A Senate committee on Thursday heard appeals for the creation of a federal task force to combat polygamist sects that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid described as sophisticated organized crime rings.

WASHINGTON - Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, whose office has received nationwide attention for its investigation of a sect in Texas, was among those backing legislation sponsored by Reid, D-Nev. The bill would establish a task force in the U.S. Department of Justice and assist victims of polygamist groups.

The hearing, which included testimony from two former sect members, spotlighted the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints (FLDS) led by Warren Jeffs, who was once on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. Jeffs and four of his followers were indicted Tuesday by a grand jury in Texas for felony assault of a child.

WASHINGTON (DC)
FindLaw

By MARCI HAMILTON

Thursday, Jul. 24, 2008

The tide is turning in favor of protecting children in polygamous communities – as several new developments evidence. First, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding hearings on the crimes that occur in polygamous communities today. I have submitted written testimony to the Committee regarding this matter, which is reproduced below. As regular readers of this column know, I have been very concerned about the plight of children in these communities and, most recently, in the issues arising out of the Texas authorities' rescue of children from the FLDS compound in Eldorado, Texas. In prior columns, I covered both the initial Texas decision in that case, and the decision of the Texas Supreme Court.

Second, Texas authorities now have indicted six of the men from the FLDS compoundon a variety of counts, including child sex abuse, bigamy, and failing to report child sex abuse to the authorities. These indictments alone confirm the high level of risk faced by the children in the self-isolated FLDS, and should give fresh ammunition to Texas CPS authorities to protect the children from future abuse.To put the numbers in perspective, there were approximately 420 children rescued from the compound, a group the size of an entire small elementary school. Imagine if there were six teachers in your child's elementary school who sexually abused their students or failed to report abuse. That is the situation in which these FLDS children live daily, except that the children live at home with their abusers, and do not just see them at school.

Third, Sen. Harry Reid will be introducing a bill today that would establish a Task Force to investigate crimes in polygamous communities. While a Task Force is a great idea, there is a risk that the issue will be studied to death, without action ultimately being taken. In my testimony, reproduced below, I therefore ask the Judiciary Committee to charge the Task Force with consideration of three avenues of legal reform that would provide ways to punish and deter child abuse and neglect in polygamous (and other) communities: (1) amend the civil and criminal RICO laws to encompass child abuse and neglect; (2) incentivize the states to eliminate the statutes of limitations on child abuse and neglect; and (3) amend the tax laws to revoke the tax-exempt status of any organization that fosters or furthers child abuse or neglect. (I also suggest prohibiting federal agencies from doing business with organizations that foster or further child abuse or neglect.)

MILWAUKEE (WI)
TMJ4

Katie DeLong

MILWAUKEE – The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests wants a new name for the Cousin’s Center.

That’s the headquarters for the Milwaukee Archdiocese.

SNAP says the late Father Lawrence Murphy is accused of molesting dozens of boys at St. John’s School for the Deaf in St. Francis.

Arthur Budzinski says he was abused as a child. His daughter spoke on his behalf Thursday.

Eureka Street

Irfan Yusuf July 25, 2008

When it comes to sensitivity toward victims of sexual abuse and assault, Australian religious leaders could learn a thing or two from Pope Benedict. As could some allegedly conservative commentators and political leaders of all persuasions.

In the past two years, two prominent Australian religious leaders have seemed to cast aspersions on sexual assault victims and their families — former Mufti Sheik Hilaly and Catholic Bishop Anthony Fisher.

Hilaly used a Ramadan address in 2006 to suggest that some women ask to be raped by displaying themselves like 'uncovered meat'. He said this before a few hundred people in a Sydney mosque in Arabic, a language spoken by a minority of Australian Muslims. His remarks only came to general attention once translated into English and reported in the media.

Last Wednesday Fisher, the Australian bishop responsible for organising World Youth Day, responded to questions about the case of two girls repeatedly raped by priest Kevin O'Donnell between 1988 to 1993, when they were primary school students, by saying: 'Happily, I think most of Australia was enjoying, delighting in, the beauty and goodness of these young people (at WDY) ... rather than dwelling crankily, as a few people are doing, on old wounds.'

AUSTRALIA
National Catholic Reporter

All Things Catholic by John L. Allen, Jr.
Friday, July 25, 2008 - Vol. 7, No. 44

Benedict XVI is back in Italy (at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, to be exact), following the ninth, and longest, foreign trip of his papacy. In Australia, the pope turned in what was, by most accounts, another bravura performance.

A measure of the success of these outings, at least at the level of public relations, is whether the local media feels obliged afterwards to run a feature story along the lines of "Erstwhile enforcer shows human face." The Germans wrote such stories in 2005 after World Youth Day in Cologne, the Spaniards did them after the pope's visit to Valencia in 2006, and the Americans followed suit three months ago.

Sure enough, Monday's Sydney Morning Herald featured the now-predictable headline: "From theologian to pope of the people."

DAVENPORT (IA)
BishopAccountability.org

On July 17, 2008, the Diocese of Davenport released two versions of a list of accused priests to fulfill one of the nonmonetary requirements of its bankruptcy settlement. See List released of accused clergy and List of Credible Allegations Against Priests. This list is useful, but it explicitly excludes some accused priests and all nonparish assignments and chancery appointments.

In order to provide a more complete picture of the accused priests and their assignments, we have supplemented the diocese's list by adding 1) all accused priests whose names are known, 2) all nonparish assignments and 3) chancery positions within the diocesan management. We have used the color-coding so that our supplements in the table below are clearly marked. If you scroll through the table, the red and purple additions will show how incomplete the diocese's original list was.

Why does this matter? Many accused Davenport priests worked and offended in school settings, and the diocesan offices that some priests held provided them with increased opportunities to offend, as well as the ability to help themselves and other offenders. An unusual number of accused Davenport priests held chancery offices, including the offices of vicar general, chancellor, dean, youth director, Boy Scout director, vocations director, and the like. See our lists of chancery officials and deans. It appears that the culture of child abuse pervaded the Davenport hierarchy to a degree difficult to match in other U.S. dioceses.

DAVENPORT (IA)
Quad-City Times

By Ann McGlynn | Wednesday, July 23, 2008 8:01 PM CDT
A database of accused clergy in the Diocese of Davenport, created by an organization that tracks the sex abuse crisis nationwide, offers a more complete picture of where the clergy served than the diocesan-released listing, the group’s president says.

The new database, posted on the Bishop Accountability Web site, lists the schools, leaves of absences, leadership positions, out-of-diocese appointments and a couple of parish assignments within the diocese. They were not included by the diocese when it recently released a listing of parish-only assignments of credibly accused clergy, said Terence McKiernan, the director of Bishop Accountability.

The Bishop Accountability database also includes priests who have been publicly accused but not-yet listed as credibly accused by the diocese, including now-retired Bishop Lawrence Soens. More clergy could be added to the “credibly accused” list, the diocese has said.

WASHINGTON (DC)
The Dallas Morning News

BY SUZANNE STRUGLINSKI / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

WASHINGTON – State authorities need federal help in fighting polygamy, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott told a Senate panel Thursday, as members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints fought to get their opinions heard.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing examining state and federal coordination in pursuing crimes associated with polygamy, Mr. Abbott said that the church members' mobility and far-reaching size, makes it difficult to investigate and press appropriate charges.

"This group moves seamlessly from state to state, location to location and has the infrastructure necessary to thwart law enforcement," Mr. Abbott said. "Even Warren Jeffs, who has achieved international notoriety, managed to hide from authorities for over a year –and he was on the FBI's most wanted list."

On Tuesday, Mr. Abbott announced charges against Mr. Jeffs, the sect’s incarcerated leader, and five other church members, including felony sexual assault of a child.

WASHINGTON (DC)
KTAR

July 24th, 2008 @ 9:13am
by KTAR.com

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard went before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday to ask for more federal help in dealing with the polygamist communities of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, on the Arizona-Utah border.

Goddard told the committee that a partnership between his office and that of Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, began in 2003, has made important changes, but ``a great deal of work still lies ahead."

He said the polygamist communities of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have existed for years and, ````What has taken a century to build cannot be changed overnight."

NEVADA
Mohave Daily News

By NEIL YOUNG/The Daily News
Thursday, July 24, 2008 1:17 AM CDT

FORT MOJAVE - Expressing concerns about the health and welfare of the children in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) in the far-flung Mohave County community of Colorado City, k.Dee Ignatin spoke at the Mohave Valley Chamber of Commerce luncheon Wednesday.

The FLDS is a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church - the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - which renounced polygamy more than a century ago.

The FLDS, based in northern Arizona and southern Utah, believes polygamy brings glory in heaven. Male church members have been known to take several wives, many of them minors. Its former leader, Warren Jeffs, 52, occupies a cell in Mohave County Jail in Kingman, awaiting trial on charges he was an accomplice in committing four counts of incest and four counts of sexual contact with a minor in Arizona.

WASHINGTON (DC)
NECN

(NECN: Washington) - Law enforcement officials were joined by former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on crimes associated with polygamy.

The committee heard from United States Attorney Brett Tolman, who described the difficulty of cracking down on religious groups who support polygamy as well as Carolyn Jessop, who fled the FLDS with her children.

WASHINGTON (DC)
KSL

[with video]

July 24th, 2008 @ 11:45am
By Nicole Gonzales
The Senate Judiciary Committee today is discussing the possibility of a federal investigation of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The church is suspected of federal crimes, possibly including racketeering.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid requested the panel and was joined by a group of former polygamists, law enforcement officials, attorneys and authors to discuss a federal-state partnership aimed at policing polygamist communities.

Reid, who is a practicing member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, told the committee that polygamy is a form of organized crime.

"Witnesses at this hearing will describe a web of criminal conduct that includes welfare fraud, tax evasion, massive corruption and strong-arm tactics to maintain what they think is the status quo," Reid said.

WASHINGTON (DC)
CNN

[with video]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Polygamous sects that have spread throughout the United States and beyond are "a form of organized crime," largely unchecked by law enforcement, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday.

Sen. Harry Reid says polygamous sects have "wrongly cloaked themselves in the trappings of religion."

He is proposing a federal-state partnership aimed at policing such communities.

"The lawless conduct of polygamous communities in the United States deserves national attention and federal action," Reid said before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sects such as the Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have "wrongfully cloaked themselves in the trappings of religion" to conceal crimes such as bigamy, child abuse and statutory rape, the Nevada Democrat said. In such communities, teenage or preteen girls are forced to marry older men and bear their children, he said.

HAWAII
Honolulu Advertiser

By Mary Vorsino
Advertiser Staff Writer

An O'ahu grand jury indicted a Kane'ohe pastor yesterday on charges of sexually molesting a member of his ministry over an eight-year period, starting when she was 12.

Manuel Guillermo Taboada, 56, also known as "Memo," was charged with seven counts of first- and second-degree sexual assault for allegedly molesting a member of a family that belonged to his ministry. The victim told police she and her family lived with Taboada in a Kane'ohe home, according to court filings.

Taboada was arrested Monday at Honolulu International Airport and is being held in lieu of $2 million bail.

Authorities said yesterday they also are working with police in Portland, Ore., where Taboada is said to be facing similar allegations. However, officials declined to say how many other alleged victims, if any, are involved, saying they are still investigating.

CANADA
Standard-Freeholder

By Trevor Pritchard

Cornwall

The local Catholic diocese’s insurance company would have launched their own investigation into abuse allegations against Rev. Charles MacDonald had they been informed in September 1993, the Cornwall Public Inquiry heard Wednesday.

But Rev. Gordan Bryan said it would have been “useless” from a financial perspective for the Alexandria-Cornwall Roman Catholic Diocese to contact those insurers after striking a $32,000 settlement with David Silmser.

“I should have,” said Bryan. “But I also know once you’ve made a (settlement) your insurance company doesn’t cover it. So it would have been useless.”

As the diocese’s bursar from 1982 to 2005, Bryan managed many of the church’s financial affairs.

UNITED KINGDOM
Lowestoft Journal

24 July 2008

A respected Roman Catholic priest who stole more than £90,000 left to his church in a will has been sent to jail.

Eric Woodhead, aged 60, was the parish priest at the Our Lady Star of the Sea Roman Catholic Church in Lowestoft when he stole the money with 28-year-old Christopher Myhill.

A hearing at Ipswich Crown Court today heard that Myhill, who is of Queens Road, Yarmouth, helped Woodhead to set up a secret bank account so that £91,963 from a parishioner's will could be paid in.

UNITED KINGDOM
Coventry Telegraph

Jul 24 2008 By Emma Stone, Crime Reporter

THE extradition of a former Coventry priest, who is accused of abusing altar boys 25 years ago, has moved a step closer.

Specialist lawyers working for West Midlands CPS in London are considering the case of James Robinson who now lives in California.

They will decide whether West Midlands Police has a strong enough case to request the former priest's extradition back to the UK to face abuse charges.

OMAHA (NE)
KCCI

[with video]

OMAHA, Neb. -- An Omaha nun who was sentenced to prison for theft said this week that she wants to change her guilty plea.

Sister Barbara Markey, 73, was convicted of embezzling more than $250,000 from the Omaha archdiocese. She was sentenced to three to five years in prison. ...

"We felt we were misled in a number of respects," Gallup said. "First of all, we had an agreement with the church that they wouldn't do anything to oppose probation, and the church didn't. But some priest, on his own, sent a letter critical of the sister to the probation office, and we feel that's a breach of the agreement we had with the church."

Gallup also said dollar amounts of the embezzled money are in dispute and that new information from the IRS would have helped Markey.

UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News

A former Roman Catholic priest has been jailed for two and a half years for stealing £90,000 of church funds.

Father Eric Woodhead, who was the minister at Our Lady Star of the Sea Church, Lowestoft, Suffolk, had admitted the offence earlier this year.

Ipswich Crown Court had heard the money had been left to the church in a will.

Woodhead, 60, had resigned as parish priest in June 2007. Rt Rev Michael Evans, Bishop of East Anglia, said he received the news with "great sadness".

ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By Heather Ratcliffe
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
07/24/2008

St. Louis — The Archdiocese of St. Louis and six current and former members of St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church filed a lawsuit Wednesday that they believe will lead to a compromise on how the parish will be managed.

The plaintiffs are asking a judge to restore the structure of the parish to the way it was before 2001, when the St. Stanislaus board controlled the property and assets while the archbishop appointed board members and a pastor.

Archdiocese officials said St. Stanislaus would be unlike any other parish in St. Louis under this structure. They hope the lawsuit will lead to a compromise, one that the archdiocese is willing to make if it leads to reconciliation with the historically Polish parish, officials said.

BOSTON (MA)
Cape Cod times

July 23, 2008
BOSTON — The Rev. Frank Genevieve, a Franciscan priest from New York, has pleaded guilty to charges of raping three teenage boys during overnight trips to Boston in the 1970s and 1980s.

Genevieve served as an assistant priest at St. Margaret's Parish in Buzzards Bay in the late 1990s, according to WCVB-TV in Boston. He also had ties to Massachusetts as a former teacher at Christopher Columbus High School in Boston.

Genevieve, 52, avoided prison time during sentencing at Suffolk Superior Court yesterday.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Belleville News-Democrat

By CHERYL WITTENAUER
Associated Press Writer

ST. LOUIS --The Archdiocese of St. Louis and several parishioners on Wednesday sued St. Stanislaus Kostka parish, seeking to regain control of the Polish-heritage parish.

The lawsuit seeks to have the parish revert to its 1891 bylaws, which would give the Roman Catholic bishop authority to name the pastor and the parish corporation's board.

NAPA (CA)
NBC 11

NAPA, Calif. -- Former St. Helena High School coach Herschel Sandler was sentenced to nine months in the Napa County jail and five years probation Tuesday for two counts of oral copulation with two girls younger than 18 years of age 10 years ago.

Sandler, 45, a wrestling and volleyball coach at the school, was arrested April 2 and pleaded no contest in May to the two charges. ...

Cathy Capponi, secretary to Allan Gordon, Superintendent of the St. Helena Unified School District, said Sandler coached the girls' varsity volleyball team at the high school and the boys' wrestling team at the high school and middle school between March 1995 and October 2007 when he resigned. He also was a youth pastor at St. Helena Catholic Church.

NEW YORK
Troy Record

By:Tom Caprood, The Record 07/23/2008

A former Troy Franciscan priest that used to work in Troy pleaded guilty in a Massachusetts court to raping three teenage boys during overnight trips to Boston in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Rev. Frank Genevieve, 52, a former associate pastor of St. Anthony of Padua Church, at the corner of Third Avenue and State Street, and a former teacher at La Salle Institute, was sentenced by Suffolk Superior Court Judge Charles Spurlock to a suspended sentence of eight to 10 years in prison, with five years probation.
Genevieve was also ordered to have no contact with the victims or any minors, to register as a sex offender and wear a GPS device to monitor his whereabouts.
Mark Lyman, of Stillwater, who was abused by Genevieve at the age of 14, serves as an activist for local abuse victims as the upstate coordinator for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

HAWAII
KGMB

[with video]

Written by Tina Chau - tchau@kgmb9.com
July 23, 2008 10:33 PM

You may have seen him on an Olelo channel preaching messages of salvation.

As of Wednesday night, pastor Manuel Guillermo Taboada is inside the Oahu Community Correctional Center.

An Oahu grand jury indicted him on charges he sexually molested a young member of his church. The deputy prosecutor on the case said he separated her from her family and then allegedly molested her over an eight year period.

HAWAII
Honolulu Star-Bulletin

A minister who leads a Kaneohe commune is in jail on $2 million bail, accused of multiple sexual assaults against one of his young female followers.

City prosecutors allege that Manuel Guillermo Taboada, 56, also known as Memo Taboada, first assaulted the girl when she was 12 years old and continued the attacks over eight years.

He was indicted yesterday on four counts of sexual assault in the first degree and four counts of sexual assault in the second degree.

TEXAS
The New York Times

By GRETEL C. KOVACH
Published: July 24, 2008
DALLAS — Texas Rangers and prosecutors prepared Wednesday to arrest five members of a polygamous sect indicted the day before with their imprisoned leader on charges relating to under-age marriages and bigamy.

Also Wednesday, supporters and critics of the sect converged on Washington for a Senate committee hearing on “crimes associated with polygamy.”

The Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott, had announced the indictments by a Schleicher County grand jury late Tuesday, which accused the sect leader, Warren Jeffs, and four other members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of sexual assault. One of those men was also accused of bigamy. A sixth man was charged with three counts of failure to report child abuse.

The indictment against Mr. Jeffs, the only one yet made public, charges him with first-degree felony sexual assault involving a child.

AMITE (LA)
The Advocate

By DEBRA LEMOINE
Advocate Florida parishes bureau
Published: Jul 24, 2008 - Page: 6B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

AMITE — The upcoming trial of one of the Hosanna Church sex-ring suspects will remain in Amite despite concerns raised by defense counsel over pretrial publicity, state District Judge Zoey Waguespack ruled Wednesday.

Louis D. Lamonica, 49, of Holden, is scheduled to be tried on Aug. 18 on charges of aggravated rape of his two sons, age 11 or younger at the time of the abuse.

Lamonica is among the seven members of the now-defunct Hosanna Church in Ponchatoula indicted in 2005 in an investigation of alleged sexual abuse involving Lamonica’s minor sons and a 2-year-old girl related to another member of the church.

TEXAS
The Salt Lake Tribune

Tribune Editorial
Article Last Updated: 07/23/2008 11:20:40 PM MDT

One of several troubling aspects of the raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch by Texas authorities has been the absence of criminal charges. If children of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints all were in imminent danger of being made victims of systematic sexual abuse, as Texas child-protection authorities repeatedly argued, why was no one charged with a crime?
Now, more than three months after the April 3 raid, the state of Texas has begun to answer that fundamental question. A grand jury has indicted the polygamous sect's prophet, Warren Jeffs, and five other men on charges related to sexual assaults on underage girls. Presumably the charges arise from arranged marriages.

TEXAS
Deseret News

By Pat Reavy and Ben Winslow
Deseret News
Published: Thursday, July 24, 2008 12:11 a.m. MDT

ELDORADO, Texas — The search continues for five members of the Fundamentalist LDS Church who were indicted by a grand jury here.

"No one has been arrested yet," Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Tela Mange said Wednesday.

The names of the men will remain sealed by court order until they are in custody.

TEXAS
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 07/24/2008 12:37:18 AM MDT

Texas authorities began efforts Wednesday to apprehend men from a polygamous sect who face charges of sexual assault, bigamy and failure to report child abuse.
Dirk Fillpot, a spokesman with the Texas Attorney General's Office, said the search is being "coordinated with multiple law enforcement agencies to ensure all the suspects are taken into custody quickly."
Texas Ranger Capt. L.C. Wilson told the San Angelo Standard-Times on Wednesday that authorities will first try to contact the men through attorneys they are believed to have retained.
FLDS member Willie Jessop said that once the sect learns who is named in the indictments it will make arrangements for the men to turn themselves in.

PENNSYLVANIA
The Morning Call

By Joseph Fuisz
July 24, 2008
In 2005, the Philadelphia Grand Jury Report on Pedophilia in the Philadelphia Diocese provided a window on Bishop Edward Cullen and where his sympathies lay in the Philadelphia sex scandal. The Morning Call wrote: ''Cullen is portrayed as perpetuating an unwritten policy of obfuscation and excuse-peddling in dealing with sexually abusive priests.'' His priority was not to protect vulnerable members of the flock, but rather to attempt to insulate the church hierarchy from the scandal.

Three years later, Bishop Cullen is closing almost a third of the parishes of the Allentown Diocese, including nearly all of the ethnic parishes. This will destroy the communities centered on the ethnic parishes. Again, Bishop Cullen places the interests of the hierarchy, in this case financial, over the good of the people. In response, the Coalition of Churches was founded by members of closed parishes to appeal the closings to the Vatican.

In a videocast on the Allentown Diocese Web site, Bishop Cullen calls on the faithful to ''bear the cross'' of the closings. He says that the closings are the necessary result of an aging clergy and a lack of vocations to replenish the ranks. He says that missionary priests from abroad should not and cannot be brought to bolster the ranks of priests. The Father, Bishop Cullen tells us, will provide.

SOUTH BERWICK (ME)
Foster's Daily Democrat

By JASON CLAFFEY
jclaffey@fosters.com

Article Date: Thursday, July 24, 2008
SOUTH BERWICK, Maine — Allegations of sexual molestation by a priest who served two local churches prompted members of the Augusta City Council to recommended removing the priest's name from a bridge there.

Rev. John J. Curran served at both St. Michael's Church and St. Ignatius, in Sanford, during his 41 year career and at one point had a bridge in Augusta named in his honor, according to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland.

On Wednesday, the Augusta city council unanimously supported a resolution urging the state Legislature to change the name of the bridge, a little more than a year after Robert Dupuis, of East Lyme, Conn., said he was sexually abused by Curran in 1961 at St. Joseph's Church in Old Town.

Any name change to the bridge would have to be approved in the form of a bill. The Legislature is currently out of session for the summer and will reconvene in December.

TEXAS
Abilene Reporter-News

By Paul A. Anthony
panthony@gosanangelo.com
Wednesday, July 23, 2008

SAN ANGELO -- More indictments against members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are likely as investigators pore over mountains of evidence seized from the polygamous sect's Schleicher County ranch, said one of the case's lead investigators Wednesday.

A day after a Schleicher County grand jury returned seven indictments against six members of the FLDS, Texas Ranger Capt. L.C. Wilson said the investigation is by no means over.

"I think I could safely say that," Wilson said when asked if more indictments could be expected. "There's certainly other persons of interest and other suspects in this case."

OMAHA (NE)
Action 3 News

Omaha, NE -- Headed for prison, a nun second guesses her decision to make a plea deal. Sister Barbara Markey admits she stole from the archdiocese. But didn't expect the judge at the Douglas County Courthouse would order prison time for the crime. So Wednesday, as Markey gets sent to the women's detention center, her attorney sends a rare motion to the judge.

"It's a long shot but it's something we have to do because it was an aberration to give her this sentence under these circumstances," says Bill Gallup.

The facts according to Gallup, that one, Markey only admits she stole six thousand dollars. And two, a prison sentence goes against the precedent set by other judges only ordering probation for catholic priests guilty of nearly the same crime. ...

In other similar cases judges chose probation over prison. In 2007 father Stephen Gutgsell admitted to stealing 125 thousand dollars from Saint Patrick Parish and Judge Russell Bowie sentenced him to five years probation.

And in 2006, church business manager Cory Pelnar stole 180 thousand dollars from Saint Bernadette's in Bellevue, getting the same, five years probation.

AUSTRALIA
Perth Now

By Verity James

July 24, 2008 11:00am
DOES Verity James have the right to be disgruntled by Sydney Archbishop George Pell?

This may seem a small point, even trivial. It could have been a slip of the tongue. It might not have been meant as it sounded, which does happen in TV interviews. It concerns Sydney Archbishop George Pell and his interview with The 7.30 Report.

Actually there were lots of things to be concerned about: his apparent total misreading of the situation, which he claims was an innocent mistake; his complete support of his priest, despite evidence to the contrary; and only when he was told he could listen to recorded phone discussions that may prove otherwise did he really seem to question himself.

Perhaps in some ways we should laud such loyalty to his employees and his organisation after all there have been so many bosses who in the face of criticism crumble like a creme brulee. Maybe he is just unbelievably loyal.

The crux of my discomfort is nothing more than he failed to address the man, the victim, by anything other than his surname as though Cardinal Pell was a senior prefect regarding a lesser being. He referred to him only as "Jones", three times. Not his first name, not "Mr", not the "poor soul" nothing but "Jones", and it rankles, at least with me.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
Voice from the Desert

WHAT

At a sidewalk news conference in front of the Archbishop Cousins Center , victims of sexual abuse by clergy will discuss a just filed new fraud lawsuit concerning the archdiocese most notorious priest pedophile, Fr. Lawrence Murphy.

A DVD with footage of a 1997 confrontation between deaf victims from St. John and Murphy at Murphy’s cabin in northern Wisconsin will be made available.

Murphy, who died in 1998, was known by former Archbishop William Cousins, to have sexually assaulted dozens of deaf youngsters at the former St. John’s School for the deaf. Murphy was reassigned to parishes in northern Wisconsin , where the plaintiff in Thursday’s lawsuit, Donald Marshall, was molested, when Murphy was a chaplain at a residential facility for youth in Alma, Wisconsin.

WHERE

Outside the front door of the Archbishop Cousins Center , 3501 S. Lake Drive , St. Francis. After making remarks, survivor will attempt to deliver a letter to Archbishop Timothy Dolan.

WHEN

Thursday, July 24, 10:00 a.m.

WASHINGTON (DC)
The Salt Lake Tribune

By Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune

A Senate hearing set to take place Thursday perpetuates a long history of persecution of a religious minority, according to a spokesman for a polygamous sect.
In a three-page letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Salt Lake City attorney Rod Parker said it is "unfortunate" that the panel will meet to discuss polygamy without allowing the subjects of the hearing to respond.
"History is replete with examples of misinformation becoming the foundation of persecution and hysteria, leading in turn to real harm to real people," his letter said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada requested the hearing in his effort to get federal assistance to investigate the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on racketeering and other alleged crimes.

TEXAS
San Angelo Standard-Times

By Paul A. Anthony
Originally published 04:15 p.m., July 23, 2008

A day after a Schleicher County grand jury indicted six members of a polygamous sect, one of the leaders of the investigation said he expects further charges.

Texas Ranger Capt. L.C. Wilson told the Standard-Times this afternoon that investigators have almost finished reviewing the roughly 300 boxes of paper evidence retrieved from the YFZ Ranch in the state's investigation into alleged sexual abuse among followers of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but that terabytes of digital evidence remain.

"We look for future indictments," said Wilson, who is based in Midland. "There's a lot of paper and documents. As we get the evidence, we'll present the cases to the grand jury."

TEXAS
The Olympian

By EMILY RAMSHAW | The Dallas Morning News • Published July 23, 2008

Authorities began their pursuit Wednesday of five members of a West Texas polygamist sect accused of committing crimes against children, but acknowledged the men - some of whom are believed to be influential elders who married underage girls - could be difficult to find.

By Wednesday evening, no arrests had been made, and state and county law enforcement officials said they had no timetable for completing them. Officials close to the investigation said the names weren't being released because the suspects are considered a flight risk - and some of the men haven't been seen in Texas since this spring's raid on the compound.

BOSTON (MA)
NECN

[with video]

(NECN) - The organization is called Roman Catholic Womenpriests. It is not recognized by the Roman Catholic church. And yet, they went ahead with a ceremony of ordination this week at a packed Protestant church in Boston. At the key moment, the women were vested with priests' robes, given a standing ovation, and declared to be priests.

AUSTRALIA
Star

A DANDENONG priest celebrating 50 years of service to the Catholic Church says the media has unfairly linked priests to child abuse.

Father Anthony Guelen, 80, this year celebrates his jubilee 50th year as a priest, which includes 23 years of service to Dandenong’s St Mary’s Catholic Church.

Fr Guelen said he was glad that Pope Benedict XVI this week apologised to victims of child sex abuse on behalf of the Catholic Church.

But he said media coverage had unfairly targeted all priests when the large majority were innocent.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By Tim Townsend and Heather Ratcliffe
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
07/23/2008

The St. Louis Archdiocese filed suit today against the St. Stanislaus Kostka church in an attempt to regain control of the former Polish parish.

Six parishioners, including three recent board members, joined the archdiocese in the suit. They are asking a St. Louis judge to void any changes to the St. Stanislaus' bylaws since 2001 and give the archbishop the authority to appoint a pastor and board there.

Last month, the St. Stanislaus board voted 4-3 to dissolve itself and allow parishioners to elect a new board at its annual meeting in August. Eight St. Stanislaus board members had been declared excommunicated by Archbishop Raymond Burke.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Tom Heinen
Wednesday, Jul 23 2008, 04:36 PM
The Archdiocese of St. Louis and six members of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church filed a lawsuit today seeking to regain control of the rebellious Polish parish, which has been locked in a dispute with Archbishop Raymond Burke over its management and property.

The archdiocese reported on its Web site that three former members of the parish board had reconciled their excommunications with Burke and joined in the suit. If the lawsuit is successful, the archdiocese is prepared to appoint a Jesuit priest, the Rev. Michael Marchlewski, to the parish as administrator, the statement on the Web site says.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports on its Web site that the three former parish board members were secretly reconciled with the Roman Catholic church last month in a meeting with Burke before Pope Benedict XVI re-assigned Burke - the former bishop of La Crosse and an expert in church law - to a new position at the Vatican as head of the supreme court. Last month, another former board member also reconciled with the church. ...

The Rev. Marek Bozek, a Polish-born priest who was excommunicated after he left a different diocese in Missouri without permission to become pastor of St. Stanislaus, is scheduled to speak in the Milwaukee area at 7 tonight at a Voice of the Faithful reform group meeting open to the public at Calvary Lutheran Church, 1750 N. Calhoun Road, Brookfield.

OMAHA (NE)
KPTM

OMAHA (KPTM) - The Omaha nun sentenced 3-5 years for embezzling money from the Catholic Church now claims the priest of the judge who sentenced her influenced her sentence.

73-year-old Barbara Markey was sentenced two weeks ago for stealing $250,000 from the Archdiocese.

Markey's attorney tells KPTM FOX 42 News that he has filed to withdraw her guilty plea, and is asking for the court to reconsider her sentence.

OMAHA (NE)
World-Herald

BY CHRISTOPHER BURBACH
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

An Omaha Catholic nun who was sentenced to prison for embezzlement from the church is seeking to withdraw her guilty plea and either be resentenced or take her case to trial.

Sister Barbara Markey did not enter the plea knowingly, her attorneys contend in motions filed in Douglas County District Court. The attorneys also argue that the sentencing judge, Thomas Otepka, was unduly influenced by a letter from the Archdiocese of Omaha, and that the letter violated an agreement that had settled a civil suit between Markey and the archdiocese.

The motions were filed Monday. A hearing is scheduled for Sept. 10.

Such motions are rarely granted. J. William Gallup, one of Markey's attorneys, acknowledged that on Tuesday, saying: "It's always tough to get a plea withdrawn. But sometimes judges will let you have a re-hearing on certain facts."

OMAHA (NE)
NTV

Associated Press - July 23, 2008 2:45 PM ET

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - A 73-year-old Omaha Catholic nun sentenced to three to five years for theft is now saying she wants to withdraw her plea.

Sister Barbara Markey says she wants a new trial or to receive a new sentence.

WASHINGTON (DC)
Voice from the Desert

Received via email from Marci Hamilton, 7.23.2008.

Note that the following is an advance copy of Professor Hamilton’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow, 7.24.2008.

It is published here with Professor Hamilton’s permission.
...

Testimony Before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Hearing on Crimes Associated with Polygamy: The Need for a Coordinated State and Federal Response

Thursday, July 24, 2008 10:00 a.m.

Marci A. Hamilton

Thank you for permitting me to submit written testimony regarding the serious problems created by the criminal activity of polygamous groups. I hold the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. My primary area of expertise involves the constitutional doctrines involving religious groups and individuals who violate the law and, in particular, child abuse and neglect within religious organizations. I have served as the constitutional law litigator for numerous victims of clergy abuse within numerous organizations. ...

My testimony will focus on the child abuse and neglect crimes that arise out of polygamous communities and suggest legislative solutions to these serious problems. As is well known, religious polygamous communities have exhibited a disregard for the laws of marriage, child sex abuse, statutory rape, and criminal child neglect.

The problems for children in these groups arise directly from the desired proportion of men to women in the groups. At the base line, girls and boys are usually born in about equal proportions. In order to have as many women to choose from as possible, girls are married to men as soon as they are of childbearing age and forced to have as many children as possible. To keep the number of men low vis-à-vis the women, select boys are discarded.

No civilized society can permit such practices – once known – to continue.

I applaud Senator Reid for introducing a bill to institute a federal task force to study abuse, extortion, embezzlement, and other illegal activities associated with polygamous groups. I strongly recommend that the Committee charge the Task Force with consideration of the following proposals.

NEW YORK
The New York Times

By Sewell Chan

When Gov. Alfred E. Smith ran for president in 1928, his candidacy was derailed in large part by anti-Catholic prejudice. It has been nearly 48 years since John F. Kennedy became the first (and so far only) Roman Catholic president, but experts say that anti-Catholic sentiment — much of it originating in, or as a response to, immigrants in New York — remains an enduring force in American culture.

That was the consensus of a panel assembled at the Museum of the City of New York on Tuesday night to consider the question, “Is Anti-Catholicism Dead?”
The panel is part of the exhibition, “Catholics in New York, 1808 to 1946,” which runs through Dec. 31. ...

It was only during the question-and-answer session that the church’s child sexual-abuse scandal came up. Mr. Steinfels said the scandal put fundamental issues about “sexuality, celibacy and the priesthood” before the public, while Father Neuhaus received applause when he said that Catholic bishops should have responded early in the scandal by acknowledging the extent of the scandal and begging for forgiveness.

ELDORADO (TX)
NPR

[with audio]

Morning Edition, July 23, 2008 · A grand jury in El Dorado, Texas, has indicted polygamist leader Warren Jeffs and a group of his followers on charges of sexual assault of a child. They're members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

ST. LOUIS (MO)
The University News

Kenneth L. Parker

Like many faithful Catholics in the Archdiocese of Saint Louis, I wish Archbishop Raymond Burke well as he prepares to take up his duties at the Vatican and assume a role for which he is eminently qualified. This is no doubt a great honor for him and the pinnacle of a canon lawyer's vocational aspirations. His emotional farewell address - clearly heartfelt - was received by a gathering of Catholics who shared a profound regard for the work he did in the archdiocese over the last four years and five months.

Indeed, he has been a great pastor for a portion of the flock in this archdiocese. He has provided clear and decisive judgments on thorny matters. This has pleased some. For those who long for pre-Vatican II liturgy, he created intentional parishes and has brought in religious communities devoted to that purpose. Anti-abortion and anti-stem cell research advocates have found him an unwavering leader. Those who have had the privilege to meet Burke have found him personable, quiet and humble. ...

I hope for a man who comprehends the pain of a flock that has been wounded by wave after wave of revelations that bishops-our bishops-have conspired in the concealment of the sexual abuse of our children; a leader who understands, in this context, the genuine concern over hierarchical decisions that affect parish property and resources. I pray that the next archbishop will not make our archdiocese notorious as a haven for priests who have faced sexual-abuse charges elsewhere.

FORT DODGE (IA)
The Messenger

By SANDY MICKELSON, Messenger staff writer POSTED: July 23, 2008

An abused person needs someone to talk to, someone with empathy, someone who cares.

Often that person is a good friend, a minister or a priest. But sometimes the abuser is the clergy.

That's where SNAP - Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests - steps in. With groups across the country to help those who have been victimized by clergy, SNAP offers support to survivors of abuse and their families.

In Fort Dodge, abuse survivor Janet Clark is heading a SNAP group that will meet at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. Those interested in attending the support group may call 573-4536 to get the location.

UNITED STATES
The Jewish Week

by Gary Rosenblatt
Editor and Publisher

The last time Mordechai Gafni was in the news was two years ago, when the charismatic and controversial rabbi accused of sexual misconduct here and in Israel was dismissed as the rebbe of Bayit Chadash, a spiritual renewal community in Tel Aviv.

Faced with sexual abuse complaints filed with the police in Israel by several women who were former students or employees of Bayit Chadash, Gafni came to the U.S., issued a public statement apologizing to those he had hurt, said he was “sick” and needed treatment, and disappeared.

At the time (June 9, 2006), I wrote: “In the past, when Gafni said he had made mistakes in his life but that he had done teshuva, some were ready to believe him; others were not. At some point in the future he is sure to reappear, eager to resume his role of spiritual guide and teacher, insisting he has gone through therapy and is cured.
“Will we believe him then?”

MASSACHUSETTS
Cape Cod Today

[with video]

A New York priest has pleaded guilty to four counts of rape and another count of rape and assault while on field trips with children in the Bay State in the late 1970s. The Rev. Frank Genevieve, 51, who now lives in a Franciscan retreat in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., was charged with taking children from his Troy, N.Y., parish on field trips to Massachusetts during a period of several years.

BOSTON (MA)
Albany Times Union

By MARC PARRY, Staff writer
First published: Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Three Capital Region residents had their abuse claims vindicated in a Massachusetts courtroom Tuesday when a New York priest admitted sexually assaulting them decades ago during repeated trips from Troy to the Bay State.

The Rev. Frank Genevieve, 52, a former associate pastor at Troy's St. Anthony of Padua Church and teacher at La Salle Institute, entered a surprise plea of guilty to five counts of statutory rape. ...

Mark Lyman was 14 when he spent the night with Genevieve in a North End rectory, according to the district attorney's office and Lyman. Genevieve shared a bed with Lyman and sexually assaulted him as he tried to sleep.

Thirty years later, Lyman is an activist for priest abuse victims. A Stillwater resident who works for the state, Lyman called Tuesday's plea "a tremendous weight off our shoulders."

BOSTON (MA)
Sun Herald

The Associated Press

BOSTON --A Franciscan priest from New York pleaded guilty to raping three teenage boys during overnight trips to Boston in the 1970s and 1980s and was ordered Tuesday to serve time on probation.

The Rev. Frank Genevieve avoided prison time as a Suffolk Superior Court judge sentenced him to a suspended sentence of eight to 10 years, with five years' probation.

THOMPSON (CT)
Norwich Bulletin

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
dracioppi@norwichbulletin.com; (860) 774-5585
Posted Jul 23, 2008 @ 02:30 AM

Thompson, Conn. — The collective grumbling Monday night at St. Joseph Church wasn’t so much because the parish will combine with St. Stephen and with Sacred Heart Mission Church in September.

And the tears shed by some of the nearly 100 parishioners in the basement at St. Joseph in North Grosvenordale weren’t because there will be fewer Masses celebrated.

The frustration, tears and anger were for St. Stephens’ priest, the Rev. Arul Peter, who will no longer be part of the local parish.

Peter is one of many priests with a future of service in an uncertain place, after the Roman Catholic Diocese of Norwich announced this month it will close five churches in the Putnam Deanery and combine several others because of a priest shortage.

TEXAS
North Texas e-News

"Earlier today the Schleicher County Grand Jury issued seven indictments containing nine counts of sexual assault, bigamy, and related charges against six individuals who are associated with the YFZ compound near Eldorado."

"The six suspects facing indictments include Warren Jeffs, who was charged with sexually assaulting a child, a first-degree felony. Four additional suspects were indicted for sexually assaulting young girls under the age of 17. Each of those suspects faces one felony count of sexual assault and one of the suspects faces an additional charge of bigamy. Another defendant has been charged with three counts of failure to report child abuse."

"The indictments issued today are part of an ongoing and continuing criminal investigation."

ELDORADO (TX)
San Angelo Standard-Times

By Matt Phinney
Originally published 10:00 p.m., July 22, 2008

ELDORADO - A Schleicher County grand jury Tuesday handed down seven indictments, including one against Warren Jeffs, imprisoned leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The indictments alleged a total of nine counts of sexual assault, bigamy and related issues against Jeffs and five other FLDS members whose names were not disclosed.

It was the second full day of testimony in grand jury proceedings stemming from an April raid on the polygamist sect's YFZ Ranch near Eldorado.

TEXAS
San Angelo Standard-Times

Staff Report

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

While a grand jury in Schleicher County deliberated over possible criminal charges against members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the attorney for one of the children in the case was attempting to keep her client.

Teresa Jeffs, 16, filed a motion in Schleicher County court, according to a story in the Salt Lake Tribune, seeking to have her court-appointed attorney, Natalie Malonis, dismissed. The motion, the paper said, included allusions to Malonis' personal life, including a divorce, to argue that the Flower Mound lawyer was unsuited to represent Jeffs.

"I don't know what my divorce has to do with Teresa's custody case," Malonis told the Standard-Times on Tuesday. Referring to the motion, she said, "It's not accurate, and it's a ridiculous tactic."

ELDORADO (TX)
The New York Times

By JOHN DOUGHERTY
Published: July 23, 2008
A Texas grand jury handed up an indictment Tuesday against a Mormon polygamist leader who is already serving time in prison, accusing him of sexually assaulting a girl under 17.

The defendant, Warren S. Jeffs, 52, was convicted last year of two counts of rape as an accomplice and sentenced to 10 years to life in prison in Utah. He is being held in Mohave County, Ariz., awaiting trial on charges of arranging underage marriages. He also faces federal fugitive charges in Utah.

Five other members of Mr. Jeffs’s church, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were also indicted by the grand jury, in Schleicher County. Four were accused of sexually assaulting girls under 17, with one also charged with bigamy. The fifth was charged with failing to report child abuse. The names of those indicted were sealed until arrest warrants could be served.

IIRELAND
Irish Independent

By Barry Duggan

Wednesday July 23 2008

A FORMER Church of Ireland rector who was caught with 210 images of graphic child pornography has received a three-year suspended prison sentence.

Former rector of Roscrea, Co Tipperary, Canon Joseph Condell pleaded guilty in Nenagh Circuit Criminal Court to knowingly possessing child pornography consisting of still images and movie files on the hard drive of his computer and on a disc.

Some of the images uncovered by gardai included children as young as two engaged in sex with adults.

American Chronicle

Eric Swenson
July 22, 2008
The Catholic youth conference in Australia has once again become a focus for the sexual misconduct scandals that have distracted the Catholic Church from performing its mission to spread the gospel of our LORD, JESUS CHRIST. Until the Catholic Church hierarchy fully comprehends the full measure of what it has done to the victims, the church's own purpose and the purpose of the victims will be denied. To understand what the church, the Pope, the priests and the victims need to do is clearly stated in the Biblical Scriptures, which makes it so disturbing that the Catholic Church has not healed these wounds.

ELDORADO (TX)
Deseret News

By Pat Reavy and Ben Winslow
Deseret News
Published: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 12:11 a.m. MDT

ELDORADO, Texas — Fundamentalist LDS Church leader Warren Jeffs could be served with a grand jury indictment today in his Arizona jail cell, charging him here with sexual assault, a first-degree felony.

A Schleicher County grand jury indicted Jeffs late Tuesday, alongside five other FLDS members. Their indictments remain sealed because they have not been taken into custody.

ELDORADO (TX)
The Salt Lake Tribune

By Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 07/23/2008 12:56:34 AM MDT

ELDORADO, Texas - A Schleicher County grand jury indicted polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs and five other FLDS men Tuesday on charges related to sexual assaults on underage girls.
The grand jury handed down seven indictments, which contained a total of nine charges. Jeffs, currently awaiting trial in Arizona, is accused of one first-degree felony count of sexually assaulting a child.
Four other men were indicted for allegedly sexually assaulting girls under the age of 17. Each of those suspects faces one felony count of sex assault, and one faces an additional charge of bigamy.

WASHINGTON (DC)
Las Vegas Review-Journal

By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- A bill to be introduced in the Senate today would establish a federal task force to combat polygamy-related crimes while offering grants to social service agencies that help former members of polygamous sects.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada was preparing to submit the bill and to promote it at a polygamy hearing the Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled for Thursday at his request.

The "Victims of Polygamy Assistance Act of 2008" would establish a task force to focus on abuse, extortion, witness tampering, embezzlement and other illegal activities suspected to be associated with polygamous groups, according to Reid's office.

"The federal government has a duty to help fight the serious state and federal crimes committed by these groups," said Reid, who is one of 16 Mormons in Congress.

ELDORADO (TX)
The Charleston Gazette

By MICHELLE ROBERTS
Associated Press Writer

ELDORADO, Texas (AP) -- Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs, already convicted in Utah of rape as an accomplice and awaiting trial in Arizona on other charges related to underage marriages, is now accused of assaulting a girl in Texas in January 2005.

A grand jury in this tiny western Texas ranching community indicted Jeffs and four of his followers Tuesday on charges of felony sexual assault of a child. Another was indicted for failing to report child abuse.

TEXAS
Guardian (United Kingdom)

Lee Glendinning and agencies
Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs and four of his followers have been indicted by a Texas grand jury on charges of sexual assault of a child after state officials raided a polygamist ranch near Eldorado in April.

Attorney General Greg Abbott said the five men have been formally accused of one count of sexually assaulting girls under 17. One of them also faces an additional charge of bigamy.

Abbott said a sixth member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is charged with three counts of failure to report child abuse.

Jeffs, 52, the controversial spiritual leader and self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, has already been sentenced in a Utah court to 10 years to life in prison as an accomplice to rape for forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her 19-year-old first cousin. He is in jail in Arizona awaiting trial on similar charges for arranged marriages there.

MASSACHUSETTS
News 24 (South Africa)

2003 - Massachusetts Attorney General's office issues a scathing report following an investigation into the handling of sexual abuse cases by the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Boston. Clergy members and others in the archdiocese are believed to have sexually abused more than 1 000 people over a period of six decades.

NASHVILLE (TN)
Nashville Scene

Henry Walker
Published on June 06, 2002
After 12 years as a Tennessean photographer and assistant photo editor, Rick Musacchio left the paper in 1998, still on good terms with his former colleagues and bosses. Now the spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Nashville is reluctant to communicate with Tennessean managing editor Dave Green or reporter Laura Frank, except by e-mail.

“I feel like I have been repeatedly misquoted,” Musacchio says, “so I want everything in writing.”

Since January 1999, the newspaper has published more than 60 stories about Edward McKeown, a defrocked priest now serving time for child molestation, and two $35 million lawsuits accusing the Nashville Diocese, in essence, of trying to cover up McKeown’s pedophilia. Frank, whose work on the earlier stories was commended in the Scene, wrote about half of them.

“I’m not afraid of fair reporting,” Musacchio says, “but after a long history of unfair and biased stories [by Frank], you begin to draw certain conclusions.”

BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

By Maddie Hanna
Globe Correspondent / July 23, 2008
A New York priest accused of raping three teenage boys in Boston during the 1970s and '80s pleaded guilty yesterday, in a deal that will spare him time in prison and the victims the anguish of testifying about their ordeal.

The Rev. Frank Genevieve nodded as Suffolk Superior Court Judge Charles Spurlock gave him a suspended sentence of eight to 10 years.

Genevieve, 52, who was removed from active ministry in 2002, was also put on five years probation and barred from contact with the victims or with children under 16. He also was ordered to register as a sex offender, to receive sex offender therapy, and to wear a Global Positioning System monitoring device during the probation, said Erika Gully-Santiago, a spokeswoman for the Suffolk district attorney's office.

CANADA
Standard-Freeholder

By TREVOR PRITCHARD, STANDARD-FREEHOLDER

"What do you expect me to do?"

Those were the words David Silmser heard when he first brought sexual allegations against a local priest to the attention of the Alexandria-Cornwall Roman Catholic Diocese, according to the handwritten notes of an Ottawa priest who testified Tuesday at the Cornwall Public Inquiry.

Msgr. Peter Schonenbach was the Ottawa archdiocese's delegate on sexual abuse matters when Silmser called in December 1992, alleging he'd been assaulted decades earlier by Rev. Charles MacDonald at St. Columban's Church in Cornwall.

Silmser would settle in September 1993 for $32,000 with the local diocese in exchange for not pursuing criminal or civil charges against MacDonald.

CANADA
Standard-Freeholder

By TREVOR PRITCHARD, STANDARD-FREEHOLDER

Eight years before David Silmser's $32,000 payout became public in 1994, church officials considered negotiating a similar settlement with another abuse victim, the Cornwall Public Inquiry heard yesterday.

Sr. Claudette Pilon was one of three people assigned by the Alexandria-Cornwall Roman Catholic Diocese to look into sexual abuse allegations against Rev. Gilles Deslauriers in 1986.

Among the witnesses the ad hoc committee -which also included Msgr. Bernard Guindon and diocesan lawyer Jacques Leduc - met with was Benoit Brisson, one of Deslauriers' victims.

Pilon said the committee was "really afflicted" after hearing Brisson's story and wanted to come up with a way to help him.

BOSTON (MA)
The Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) — A Franciscan priest from New York pleaded guilty to raping three teenage boys during overnight trips to Boston in the 1970s and 1980s and was ordered Tuesday to serve time on probation.

The Rev. Frank Genevieve avoided prison time as a Suffolk Superior Court judge sentenced him to a suspended sentence of eight to 10 years, with five years' probation.

UTAH
Deseret News

By Ben Winslow
Deseret News
Published: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 4:52 p.m. MDT

The U.S. Attorney for Utah predicts prosecutions against members of polygamous sects as part of a multi-state cooperative investigation into crimes associated with polygamy.

"I absolutely think that there will be charges," Brett Tolman said Tuesday. "They may range in nature and scope, but there will be charges."

It comes as a coalition of law enforcement from several states are beginning to share information about crimes within polygamy. Federal, state and local authorities from Utah, Arizona, Nevada and Texas met in Las Vegas last month to discuss crimes within polygamy — particularly the Fundamentalist LDS Church.

ELDORADO (TX)
Guardian (United Kingdom)

By MICHELLE ROBERTS
Associated Press Writer

ELDORADO, Texas (AP) - A Texas grand jury Tuesday indicted polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs on a charge of felony sexual assault of a child. Five of his followers have been indicted as well.

Attorney General Greg Abbott said four of Jeffs' followers are charged with one count of sexually assaulting girls under the age of 17. One of the four faces an additional charge of bigamy.

ELDORADO (TX)
The Salt Lake Tribune

By Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune

5:57 PM- ELDORADO, Texas -- A Schleicher County grand jury indicted polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs and five other men today on charges related to sexual assaults on underage girls.
The grand jury handed down seven indictments, which contained a total of nine charges. Jeffs, currently awaiting trial in Arizona, is accused of one first-degree felony count of sexually assaulting a child.
Four other men were indicted for allegedly sexually assaulting girls under the age of 17. Each of those suspects faces one felony count of sex assault, and one faces an additional charge of bigamy.
The final defendant has been charged with three counts of failure to report child abuse.

BOSTON (MA)
Schenectady Gazette

By Jill Bryce
Gazette Reporter

BOSTON — A Franciscan priest from New York state with ties to Massachusetts pleaded guilty today to five counts of statutory rape of two minors from a Troy parish during trips to Boston over a 12-year period.

Rev. Frank Genevive, 53, who lives in a Franciscan retreat in Wappingers Falls and once worked in a Troy church, entered a guilty plea as part of a plea agreement just before his trial was expected to start today in Suffolk Superior Court.

One of his victims, Mark Lyman of Stillwater, Saratoga County, who is the co-director of the Albany chapter of SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, was in court and preparing to testify, when Genevive pleaded guilty as part of a plea bargain.

“It is a victory. I have been vindicated,” said Lyman. “Today I go from an alleged victim to a victim. I've always had a problem with that word alleged.”

CANADA
Standard-Freeholder

By TREVOR PRITCHARD, STANDARD-FREEHOLDER

A North Stormont clergyman told the Cornwall Public Inquiry he was "not at all prepared" to handle abuse allegations he received in the 1950s and 1960s against his fellow priests.

Msgr. Réjean Lebrun, who was ordained by the Alexandria- Cornwall Roman Catholic Diocese in 1962, told a lawyer for a community group he didn't turn over complaints against Paul Lapierre, Lucien Lussier, and Carl Stone to the authorities because of his inexperience.

"I was not at all prepared for that type of situation," said Lebrun, 73.

"It was completely beyond me."

BOSTON (MA)
NECN

[with video]

(NECN: Brad Puffer, Boston, Mass.) - A former New York priest was sentenced in a Boston courtroom today for raping children 30 years ago. Several of his victims showed up in court.

51-year-old Frank Genevieve allegedly took the victims on field trips to Boston and would abuse them in the rectory across the street from Christopher Columbus High School in the North End.

WAUKESHA (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Tom Heinen
Tuesday, Jul 22 2008, 03:18 PM
Members of a victims' advocacy group distributed fliers over the weekend at First United Methodist Church of Waukesha to call attention to the fact that a minister who served as the church's pastor in the mid-1980s was convicted and sentenced last week for sexually assaulting a 17-year-old boy in 1987 while pastor of First United Methodist Church of Rice Lake. He has not been accused in Waukesha.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests wanted to point out, among other things, that child sexual crimes are "not just a Catholic problem" as the group continues to seek support for a Wisconsin Assembly bill that would require all religious denominations to provide the identities and case summaries of clergy, lay teachers, and employees who had sexually assaulted children but were not reported to the police.

The minister, Angel R. Toro, is noteworthy for another reason. After leaving Wisconsin in about 1989, he was granted ministerial standing in the United Church of Christ in 1997 and rose to national leadership positions in that denomination while serving as pastor of Chapel on the Hill in Seminole, near St. Petersburg, Fla. Acclaimed for increasing attendance there from about 30 people to 500 people, Toro served on the denomination's 90-member executive council, was on the team that implemented the "God is still speaking" national identity campaign in 2004 and is a past president of the Local Church Ministries Board, one of the denomination's four national ministry boards.

BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe

July 22, 2008 03:26 PM
By Maddie Hanna, Globe Correspondent

A New York priest pleaded guilty today to raping three teenagers in the 1970s and 1980s while on trips to Massachusetts, admitting that he abused the boys in his car and at a rectory in Boston’s North End.

Rev. Frank Genevive nodded his head as a Suffolk Superior Court judge gave him a suspended sentence of eight to 10 years. Before the sentencing, two victims addressed the packed courtroom and spoke about the sentence they approved of to avoid rehashing their ordeal in a trial.

"He should have gotten longer," said one victim, David Landfear, 40, reading his impact statement as he looked at Genevive. "You ruined my life. Period."

BOSTON (MA)
GetReligion

Posted by Mollie

Many readers submitted a piece from the Boston Globe this weekend about the ordination of women claiming to be Roman Catholic priests. Some said the story was horrific. Others said it was fantastic. Turns out there were two stories. The first is not so good.

Reporter Michael Paulson’s piece was headlined in the manner to which we’ve become, sadly, accustomed with these stories:

3 women to be ordained Catholic priests in Boston
Excommunication automatic, church warns

The subhead is fine and good. The main headline has problems. Will these women be ordained Catholic priests or does a group claim that they will be ordained Catholic priests? The lede compounds the problem:

Three aspiring Catholic priests will be anointed and prayed over this weekend in an ordination liturgy that will resemble the traditional in most ways but one: The three being ordained are women.

It isn’t until the 9th paragraph that we’re told that the ordinations are being done by Roman Catholic Womenpriests. And the article, while mentioning that actual Roman Catholic officials oppose the ordinations, doesn’t do a good job of explaining that such ordinations are not considered valid, licit, legal, etc.

BOSTON (MA)
TheBostonChannel

BOSTON -- A New York priest has pleaded guilty to four counts of rape and another count of rape and assault while on field trips with children in the Bay State in the late 1970s.

Rev. Frank Genevieve, 51, who lives in a Franciscan retreat in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., was charged with taking children from his Troy, N.Y., parish on field trips to Massachusetts over several years time. Once here, according to the victims, he would abuse them.

The boys were between 13 and 16 years old at the time. One boy was raped three times and another boy once at an unnamed rectory in the North End or in Genevieve's car in downtown Boston, said a spokesman for the Suffolk County district attorney.

BOTSWANA
Sunday Standard

by SAONE NONOFO-MOREBOLOKI
22.07.2008 6:33:04 P

Even after last week’s historic vote by the General Synod of the Anglican Church to allow women to hold Episcopal office, there is near consensus that the debate that has besieged the worldwide Anglican Communion will not go away soon.

To be fair to the Anglicans, the question of the status of women in the ministry is a hot potato for many other Christian denominations, – including the world’s largest Christian formation, the Catholic Church.

So what is the cause of the hardened positions? The conservative voice within the church argues that Christ’s timeless Church is not subject to shifts of social fashion. On another level, the scripture is shoved into the faces of advocates of women’s ordination. Didn’t Christ commission 12 men as disciples and promote them to apostles? Didn’t St Paul say that the man “is the head of the woman” and much else besides about a woman knowing her place? If it is so clear cut, what’s the basis for the argument?

AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

July 23, 2008 12:00am
HERE'S just the latest example of how our victim industry works, feeding on problems and starving on solutions.

Flying to Sydney for World Youth Day, the Pope told reporters he wanted to express regret to victims of priests who abused them.

But Broken Rites, the victims' group, said this was not enough, and he must "formally apologise". Said spokesman Bernard Barrett: "He made some general remarks about regret to reporters and that's not good enough."

All right: in Sydney, the Pope gave a formal apology.

But Broken Rites said this was now not enough, and he must apologise directly to a few representative victims. Said another spokeswoman, Chris MacIsaac: "It really needs to be delivered directly to the people who suffered that abuse. They could have looked some victims who represented all victims in the eye and said, the Pope could have said 'I am truly sorry'."

UTAH
Deseret News

By Ben Winslow
Deseret News
Published: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 11:00 a.m. MDT

The law firm that once represented the Fundamentalist LDS Church is fighting subpoenas to hand over documents to the court-controlled real estate arm of the polygamous sect.

Lawyers for the United Effort Plan Trust served the subpoenas on Snow, Christensen & Martineau, seeking to compel the law firm into handing over documents. The firm is resisting, arguing attorney-client privilege.

"It is impossible to characterize legal advice given to FLDS leadership regarding the UEP Trust as having been given to them in any particular capacity," attorney Rod Parker wrote in documents filed last week in Salt Lake City's 3rd District Court.

AUSTRALIA
CounterPunch

By BINOY KAMPMARK

The usual recipe of the zealous World Youth Day advocate rarely changes. Travel to distant locations for these pilgrims often results in headaches for local officials charged with the mission making things most comfortable for both Pontiff and standard devotees. Problems in the Catholic Church are given a cosmetic touch-up.

Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Sydney, which now draws to a close, was no exception. The Catholic Church proudly notes that World Youth Day in Sydney has brought more visitors to the city than the Olympic games of 2000. Numbers are rough, but some make it 125,000.

In countries where a notionally progressive protest movement can be organized, pro-contraception activists (amongst others) muster rallies and dispense condoms. Their aim is to convince starry-eyed pilgrims seduced by the stupefacient called Papal love to abandon their sunny optimism for darker appraisals of Church policy. ...

But World Youth Day always masks the deeper grievance. The pope’s journey to Australia was best characterised by the floundering antics of Sydney Archbishop, Cardinal George Pell. Prior to WYD, it surfaced that Pell had been mind numbingly insensitive over a case of child abuse. In time, it became obvious that Pell had been complicit in inflicting suffering on one victim in particular, dismissing his charge of abuse against a priest, Father Terence Goodall. The encounters had been ‘consensual’ in character.

ELDORADO (TX)
Deseret News

By Pat Reavy
Deseret News
Published: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 8:11 a.m. MDT

ELDORADO, Texas — A grand jury investigating alleged crimes within the Fundamentalist LDS Church reconvened here today, with the Texas Attorney General making an appearance.

FLDS member and spokesman Willie Jessop has been subpoenaed to testify. Some FLDS women have also appeared at the memorial building.

Jessop was en route to the grand jury this when he was pulled over in a traffic stop. Asked why he was stopped, Jessop chuckled to reporters.

ELDORADO (TX)
The Salt Lake Tribune

By Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 07/22/2008 09:12:00 AM MDT

Updated: 8:53 AM- EL DORADO, Texas -- FLDS spokesman Willy Jessop was pulled over and handed a subpoena early Tuesday morning to appear before a grand jury considering criminal charges against members of his polygamous sect.
Jessop, who has become the public face for the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints since sect leader Warren Jeffs was convicted of being an accomplice to rape and jailed, later spoke briefly to reporters outside the Schleicher County Courthouse.
"We'll see how it all turns out," was all he would say when questioned about the case.

BARTLETT (IL)
City of Angels

By Kay Ebeling
City of Angels
Bartlett, IL

“One of the worst faculty offenders was Fr. Donal Collins, teacher and then principal,” writes Joe Rigert about St. Peter’s College Seminary in Ireland. “In a bizarre manifestation of his perversion, Collins would visit a dormitory at night to measure the penises of the boys under the pretext of ascertaining whether they were growing normally.”

The image of a little Irish priest in his night vestment with a nightcap on, maybe shaped like a leprechaun, approaching the boys’ dorm beds with his fingertips dancing, a Dr. Seuss villain grin on his face as he sings, “I'm coming to measure your penis tonight” -- that image kept bouncing into my head making me sit upright and laugh, brought me back to life Monday night.

I went to Mass, or tried to go to Mass, at the church my perpetrator priest founded last Sunday. I ended up having to run out of the church doubled up in pain. I sat in the back, knowing I might need to make a fast exit. Every five minutes one of the ushers would come up to me, “Do you want me to deliver to you the Holy Eucharist?” They kept saying that to me like Communion was this mystical magical almost scary thing. I sat through a sermon where the guy twisted the meaning of a Bible passage, I listened to a reading from The Book of Wisdom thinking wha-? Now they even make up their own books of the bible?

AUSTRALIA
The Epoch Times

By Sonya Bryskine
Epoch Times Staff Jul 22, 2008

The week-long World Youth Day (WYD) events in Sydney were a huge success, said the organisers, but for the victims of Catholic priest sex abuses, the Papal apology was not enough.

An estimated 400,000 people packed the Randwick Race Course as the German Pontiff made his final appearance for the July 20 Sunday Mass. ...

Broken Rites, a Melbourne-based network for victims of church-related sexual abuse, has received “thousands and thousands” of calls, says Mrs MacIsaac. Over the past decade, the group has lobbied for the conviction of 107 brothers and priests, many of whom were repeat offenders.

Of all the victims who contacted Broken Rites, more than half were males and were sexually assaulted in their childhood. Some remained silent for decades before speaking out about their experiences.

WHEATON (IL)
Naperville Sun

July 22, 2008

By RON PAZOLA rpazola@scn1.com
A local civil rights leader and longtime Wheaton minister is no longer pastor of Second Baptist Church in Wheaton. He was arrested last year on charges of battery and disorderly conduct.

The congregation voted Saturday to remove the Rev. Andre Allen from his position as the church's senior pastor. Allen, 54, was pastor at the church for 23 years.

Allen was arrested in November after two women accused him of touching them inappropriately while he claimed to be a self-defense instructor at a Lifetime Fitness in Schaumburg. Because Allen pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct Jan. 18 for impersonating a health club employee, prosecutors agreed to drop the battery charge. He was sentenced to a year of court supervision and 60 hours of community service.

RAPID CITY (SD)
Rapid City Journal

By Mary Garrigan, Journal staff Tuesday, July 22, 2008

A church youth group at First Assembly of God in Rapid City is being investigated on unspecified allegations of child abuse, the Rapid City Police Department confirmed Monday.

"We are not able to make any comment on that case, because it is an open investigation," Capt. Deb Cady said.

Cady said no arrests and no criminal charges have been filed in the investigation, which has been ongoing for more than two weeks.

Two members of the church who asked not to be identified said the investigation involved an all-night youth group activity called "Underground Church" that is designed to teach youth about the persecution of Christians in countries where religious freedom is not allowed by the government. The event took place June 13-14.

MANSFIELD (OH)
News Journal

By MARK CAUDILL
News Journal

MANSFIELD -- Only when John Picard left Mansfield did one of his alleged victims feel strong enough to talk to police.

"It helped when he moved. The only contact we had was over the phone," the 28-year-old woman said. "It gave me the space I needed to come forward."

The News Journal is not identifying the woman because she's the alleged victim of a sex crime.

A former Mansfield youth pastor, Picard, 40, of Springboro pleaded innocent Monday to 10 counts of sexual battery at his arraignment in Mansfield Municipal Court. Magistrate Don Teffner set a $250,000 cash bond.

LOUISA (VA)
Star Exponent

Media General News Service
Published: July 21, 2008

A judge postponed a plea hearing scheduled for yesterday for the former Catholic priest accused of stealing from two Louisa County churches. Prosecutors expect to change the dates on some of the 13 embezzlement charges against the Rev. Rodney L. Rodis (left).

Lawyer John R. “Jack” Maus said his client would need extra time to consider the changes. Rodis’ arraignment has been rescheduled until Sept. 8.

WASHINGTON (DC)
The Salt Lake Tribune

By Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 07/22/2008 01:01:57 AM MDT

The witness list for Thursday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on polygamy includes U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett Tolman and law enforcement from around the West.
The hearing, requested by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., will explore "Crimes Associated with Polygamy: The Need for a Coordinated State and Federal Response."
Reid, who has pushed for a federal task force, is expected to be the first witness. He will be followed by Tolman; Gregory Brower, the U.S. Attorney for Nevada; Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

WASHINGTON (DC)
Deseret News

When someone mentions an organized crime family, certain names come to mind. Corleone. Genovese. Gambino.
Not Barlow, Jessop or Jeffs.
Unless you are U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada.
Reid, the U.S. Senate's majority leader, has asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to conduct a hearing this Thursday on how to coordinate a state and federal response to crimes associated with polygamy.
Reid contends that the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is a crime syndicate that has engaged in bribery, extortion, fraud, embezzlement, witness tampering and labor violations. In other words, a crime family. He wants the Justice Department to launch a federal racketeering investigation.

TAMPA (FL)
St. Petersburg Times

By Colleen Jenkins, Times Staff Writer
In print: Tuesday, July 22, 2008

TAMPA — For a moment Monday, the only sound in Courtroom 52A was the clerk reading the jury's verdict form in the first-degree murder trial of Joshua Rosa. In an even voice, she rattled off the formal charge and case number.

Then one word shattered the quiet.

"Guilty," she said.

Rosa's jaw dropped. The 22-year-old former church youth leader hung his head.

WASHINGTON (DC)
Times Record News

Trish Choate
and Daniel Collins
Times Record News Washington Bureau
Monday, July 21, 2008

WASHINGTON - A Senate investigation into polygamy and federal crime will take place in three acts Thursday and will star a powerful senator angling for a federal task force, high-level federal and state prosecutors, two former sect members turned outspoken critics of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and a true-crime author who wrote a book about imprisoned FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs.

No FLDS members in good standing are on the witness list for the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing at 10 a.m. on Capitol Hill, but members of the breakaway Mormon sect, including FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop, will attend.

"They're not going to give us an opportunity to say anything, but we're going to at least be there," Willie Jessop said Monday.

ELDORADO (TX)
Deseret News

By Ben Winslow
Deseret News
Published: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 12:05 a.m. MDT

Diaries and dictations may be used to build underage marriage cases against Fundamentalist LDS Church leader Warren Jeffs as a grand jury meets today in Eldorado, Texas.

Court documents obtained by the Deseret News focus on three marriages allegedly performed by Jeffs on July 27, 2006, including one in which Jeffs himself is purported to have been "sealed" to a then-12-year-old girl.

"I seek unto the Lord for his Spirit to be with me and guide this record-keeping," Jeffs began a dictation recorded that night.

ELDORADO (TX)
Deseret News

By Pat Reavy and Ben Winslow
Deseret News
Published: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 12:05 a.m. MDT

ELDORADO, Texas — A grand jury is expected to reconvene here today to continue investigating possible crimes by members of the Fundamentalist LDS Church.

Some familiar with the grand-jury proceedings have said it is possible that indictments could be issued by the end of the day. However, those indictments may remain sealed until warrants and summons are issued.

"There are a lot of issues to work through here. To the extent that they're relying on member witnesses, they've got to deal with an immunity issue," said Rod Parker, a Salt Lake attorney acting as a spokesman for the FLDS Church.

NEW ZEALAND
3 News

[with video]

When Antonie Dixon told the jury an astonishing tale of sexual abuse by his mother and beatings at the hands of Jehovah's Witnesses, they must have wondered whether any of it was believable.

Today they heard from someone else who was there at the time and she confirmed much of what he said.

According to Dixon's sister Carla, he was dubbed "devil spawn" by their mother.

Carla Dixon-Foxley says she was his closest friend and ally, but from a young age she knew something was not quite right with her baby brother.

"He used to bash his head on the couch and he used to just sit there and like that, bashing, bashing, bashing," Ms Dixon-Foxley says.

Ms Dixon-Foxley says Dixon was abused by their mother, who would tie him to a clothesline outside their Grey Lynn house and invite fellow members of the Jehovah's Witness church to beat him.

ELDORADO (TX)
The Dallas Morning News

By EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News
eramshaw@dallasnews.com

ELDORADO – When a grand jury reconvenes here today to hear evidence of alleged sexual abuse inside a West Texas polygamist community, the state's chief law enforcement official will be in the courtroom – Attorney General Greg Abbott, two officials said.

Though Mr. Abbott's office declined to comment on whether he would be in town, two law enforcement sources close to the massive child welfare investigation confirmed that he was coming, a move they indicated could signal indictments.

Jerry Strickland, a spokesman with Mr. Abbott's office, said on Friday that the DNA samples taken from parents and children at the Yearning For Zion ranch had been sent to the court "in the last week," though he wouldn't speculate about whether that meant criminal charges were on the way.

AUSTRALIA
GetReligion

Posted by Mark Stricherz

Like political conventions and track-and-field meets, Papal visits deserve multiple story lines. Focus on one angle and the story is bound to be incomplete. Focus on several angles and the reader will get a broad view of reality.

In examining the coverage of Pope Benedict XVI’s weekend appearance at World Youth Day, I conclude that only one story met this standard of success. The article, by Tim Johnston of The New York Times, began with the Pope’s speech:

In his final address to hundreds of thousands of young Catholics gathered in Australia, Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday sharply criticized the violence and materialism of the modern age. ...

The Los Angeles Times, for example, wrote almost entirely about the sex-abuse scandal. It story included this voice-of-God line:

[A]s in his spring visit to the United States, one theme loomed over Benedict’s weeklong pilgrimage to Australia: the sexual abuse of minors by clergy.

A careful reader will wonder who determined that this theme loomed. Was it the media, victims and alleged victims, political activists (as tmatt’s story suggested), or mainstream Catholic leaders? Without an answer, it’s difficult to support the reporters’ thesis. Yes, reporters Traci Wilkinson and Jennifer Bennett did give readers a statistic about the number of convicted priests, but the time line was never mentioned.

NIGERIA
Daily Triumphy

Archbishop John Onaiyekan, President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), in Abuja decried the way the international media report religious events.
Onaiyekan told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in an interview that their reports most times were dictated by their own agenda.
`` The areas they are interested in are not the ones we are interested in and any intelligent person, who tunes to CNN and BBC, should put that at the back of his head that what we are seeing is the world as seen by BBC or CNN,'' he said.
Onaiyekan cited the issue of sexual abuse among some priests as related to the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Sydney, as an example.
``Though it is bad if any priest engages in such but that was not the focus of the Pope's visit to Sydney.

AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

BY JAMES MASSOLA

22/07/2008 12:00:00 AM
Two thousand years after the crucifixion, can World Youth Day help the Catholic Church in Australia rise again?

Church officials certainly hope so.

While senior church figures, including Cardinal George Pell and Bishop Anthony Fisher, bore the brunt of questions about the Church's handling of sexual abuse cases, World Youth Day organisers battled to accentuate the positives of the just-completed Catholic fiesta.

And despite the attempts of protesters and victim support groups to sully the event, the six days in Sydney were a triumph.

WISCONSIN
Leader-Telegram

The Wisconsin Supreme Court handed down a significant ruling last month allowing prosecution of a sex offender to move forward. The case is against an 86-year-old priest for sexually assaulting girls between 1965 and 1972.

The court ruled that sex offenders can be prosecuted for decades-old cases if they left the state before the expiration of the six-year statute of limitations in effect at the time. Fortunately for victims of sexual abuse after 1989, the law now allows prosecutions until age 45.

Ironically, the decision struck a cruel blow to the victims of childhood sexual abuse who only recently have come to terms with their abuse, but whose abusers stayed in Wisconsin and are well beyond the six-year time limit in effect before 1989. Simply because their perpetrators stayed within state lines, they have no ability to pursue justice.

AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

BY DANNY ROSE AND NICK RALSTON

22/07/2008 12:00:00 AM
The Catholic Church has been accused of ''hand-picking'' four victims of clergy sex abuse for a secretive meeting with the Pope.

Pope Benedict XVI met the victims and their supporters after holding a private mass for them at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney early yesterday morning, before he flew out of Australia. ...

The 30-minute meeting was not made public until after it had occurred, but Sydney Archbishop Cardinal George Pell said it had been weeks in the planning. It was one of the pontiff's last acts before jetting out of Australia at the conclusion of the World Youth Day program.

Support group Broken Rites said the meeting was more about managing the media than addressing concerns over the Church's continued handling of child sex abuse by clergy.

BOSTON (MA)
Boston Herald

By Margery Eagan
Tuesday, July 22,

The latest uppitty women to get whacked by the Roman Catholic Church are would-be priests Judy Lee of Florida, Gloria Carpeneto of Maryland and Gabriella Verlardi Ward of New York.

Sunday in Boston all three were “ordained” in a ceremony run by a pro-women priest organization. The Archdiocese of Boston promptly declared that the women had automatically excommunicated themselves by such action. Their excommunicable sin: yearning to dedicate themselves to the church and faith they love.

Meanwhile, here’s who hasn’t been excommunicated: hundreds of priests and bishops who’ve admitted to or been accused of multiple sexual assaults on children and teenagers. Some resign. Some are defrocked. But many more remain Catholics in good standing or even retain their titles, their pay, their clerical trappings and the support of the church.

AUGUSTA (ME)
Kennebec Journal

BY MATTHEW STONE
Staff Writer 07/22/2008

AUGUSTA -- A push to rename the city's Father John J. Curran Bridge gained momentum Monday night, as city councilors unanimously backed a resolution urging legislators to rename the downtown bridge.

The issue could next see life in the state Capitol, where legislators have the power to authorize a name change for the bridge.

The Augusta Council's endorsement of the resolution Monday night followed an emotion-filled discussion in the council chambers in which an alleged survivor of sexual abuse by the Rev. John Curran urged councilors to call for removing the late priest's name from the bridge. The discussion also featured a handful of residents who fondly recalled Curran as a priest who worked tirelessly for his community. ...

Robert Dupuis told councilors of suffering sexual abuse by Curran in 1961, when he was a 12-year-old altar server in Old Town.

DENVER (CO)
The Denver Post

An anonymous plaintiff sued the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver on Monday, alleging he was molested as a 12-year-old altar boy by now-deceased priest Harold Robert White at St. John the Evangelist Parish in Loveland around 1969.

Since 2005, the archdiocese has settled 43 claims for more than $8.3 million.

White retired from active ministry in 1993 and was stripped of his priesthood by the church in 2004. He died in November 2006 at age 73 while vacationing in Mexico.

DENVER (CO)
KJCT

DENVER (AP) - Another man has filed a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Denver alleging he was abused by an ex-priest about 40 years ago.

The lawsuit identifies the alleged victim only as "John Doe 2B". The man claims he was abused by the late Harold White around 1969 when he was 12 at St. John the Evangelist Church in Loveland. ...

A spokeswoman says Archbishop Charles Chaput (SHAP'-yoo) and the archdiocese are open to meeting with victims of sexual abuse by clergy members and continue to offer help to those who come forward.

DENVER (CO)
The Denver Post

By Electa Draper
The Denver Post

Article Last Updated: 07/21/2008 05:36:53 PM MDT

"John Doe 2B," the latest in more than 30 cases of childhood sexual abuse against deceased ex-priest Harold Robert White, sued the Archdiocese of Denver today in Denver District Court. The anonymous plaintiff said he was molested as a 12-year-old altar boy at St. John the Evangelist Parish in Loveland around 1969.

A support group for victims of clergy sexual abuse demanded at a news conference today outside the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, that Archbishop Charles Chaput stop keeping secrets about accused priests and personally visit the parishes of known pedophiles to urge any victims to come forward.

"The archdiocese has refused to take meaningful action. It's time for Chaput to come clean," said Kirsten Boyd, a Denver spokeswoman for the Survivors Network of Those Accused by Priests, or SNAP.

AUSTRALIA
Western Advocate

22/07/2008 8:28:00 AM
A FORMER teaching priest appeared before Bathurst Local Court yesterday facing 33 charges of sexual assault on five students, dating back to the 1980s.

Former St Stanislaus’ College teacher Brian Joseph Spillane has not entered pleas on any of the 33 charges.

Red-haired and bespectacled, Spillane – from the Sydney suburb of Riverwood – wore a dark suit with a tartan pattern scarf and sat quietly behind Sydney lawyer Greg Walsh in Bathurst Local Court.

Magistrate Thomas Hodgson conducted yesterday’s hearing in open court and ordered nothing be published that might identify the alleged victims.

AUSTRALIA
la Repubblica (Italy)

SIDNEY - Prima di ripartire da Sydney, Benedetto XVI ha incontrato una rappresentanza delle vittime dei preti pedofili. Il Papa ha celebrato questa mattina una messa con un gruppo di persone che hanno subito abusi sessuali da parte di religiosi cattolici, "ha ascoltato le loro storie e li ha consolati assicurando la sua vicinanza spirituale".

[translation]

A little time before leaving for Rome, Benedetto XVI celebrated mass with some persons who were sexually abused by the clergy Sydney, the Pope meets the victims of pedophile priests
The issue dominated all the time of the visit in Australia for the World Youth Days

SIDNEY - Before leaving Sydney, Benedetto XVI met a group representing the victims of
pedophile priests. The Pope celebrated this morning a mass in the presence of a group of persons who were sexually abused by the clergy, "he listened their stories and he consoled them, assuring his being spiritually near them".

"Assuring his spiritual vicinity - a note of the Vatican press room explains - he promised to continue praying for them, for their families and for all the victims". With that paternal gesture
- the note adds - the Holy Father wanted to show once more his solicitude towards those who
suffered from sexual abuses".

The meeting took place this morning at 7 a.m. Australian time in the chapel of the Cathedral
House where the Pope was lodged in these days. Four victims were present: two women and
two men, together with two assistants and the priest who accompanied them Benedetto XVI celebrated with the cardinal of Sidney George Pell, with the substitute secretary of State monsignor Fernando Filoni and with two secretaries.

At the end of the mass the guests were allowed to speak separately with the Pontiff , who said
"affectionate words of participation and comfort". The meeting ended a short time before 8 a.m. and " everything happened in a respectful climate, in spirituality and intense commotion".

The Vatican press release explains that "as it was already done in USA the Pope wished to meet some of the victims as a concrete gesture to express those feelings he had already
manifested many times during his interventions on the drama of the sexual abuses". In Australia he wished to do that after the conclusion of the World Youth Days, being that the reason for his trip".

The scandal of pedophilia in the church of Australia was in the background of Pope Ratzinger's trip. When he was in the plane, while flying towards Sydney, the Pontiff admonished that
" pedophilia was incompatible" with priesthood. And last Saturday, in front of the Australian clergy, he harshly condemned sexual abuses, defining them "misdeeds which constitute a grave betrayal of trust". "These misdeeds, he went on, must be condemned in the most unequivocal way. They have caused great pain and damaged the witnessing of the church. The victims must receive compassion and care and those responsible of these evils must be brought to justice. It's an urgent priority to promote a safer and sounder environment , especially for the youth". These words were accompanied however by the polemics about his not having already met with the victims of sexual abuses. In the end the Pope decided to
satisfy those requests.

In Australia the convictions for sexual abuses by the clergy have been 107 until now but many other cases are still waiting for the conclusion of the trial.

(21 luglio 2008)

UNITED STATES
Catholics for Choice

[with link to the full pdf-format report]

The latest report in the Opposition Notes series examines the work of the Catholic League and its president, Bill Donohue, who has waged a long and lonely campaign to bully into silence anybody he deems to have insulted the Catholic church. According to an annual report put out by the League, the number of examples of anti-Catholicism grew from 140 in 1995 to 320 in 2006, yet the only thing that seems to have actually increased is the League's definition of what constitutes anti-Catholic activity.

from the report:

Another attempt to silence the loyal opposition involves the pedophile scandal that has dominated news about the church over the past few years. Unable to explain away the Catholic
church’s embarrassing pedophilia scandal, Donohue tried to turn it back on progressive Catholic activists, claiming that they were exaggerating the scandal to try and bring down the church: “For the past few decades, so-called progressive Catholics have been itching for large-scale reform in the Catholic church. What they object to most of all is the church’s teaching on sexuality. Representative of the fringe, they are now seizing the moment to install their agenda…Make no mistake, the Catholicbashers are loving this moment.”61

Overall, Donohue has been an apologist for the church on the issue of clergy sexual abuse and echoed the conservative line that the problem was not one of pedophilia or mandatory celibacy but of homosexuality: “For 2000 years, the Catholic Church has been the subject of countless lies, especially on issues that touch on sexuality. Today, the biggest lie is that the Church suffers from a ‘pedophilia’ problem. And now that the Vatican has released its document on
homosexuals in the priesthood, look for the lie to grow like a cancer.”62 In advance of two major studies on the extent of sexual abuse committed by Catholic priests, the Catholic League
produced a study which appeared to be trying to whitewash the scandal by claiming that the rate of sexual abuse in the church was no higher than in other religious denominations: “the incidence of the sexual abuse of a minor is slightly higher among the Protestant clergy than
among the Catholic clergy, and it is significantly higher among public school teachers than among ministers and priests.”63 The study also claimed that “almost all the priests who abuse
children are homosexuals.”64 In fact, studies have shown that many child molesters don’t have an adult sexual orientation at all, so they cannot be meaningfully described as homosexuals
or heterosexuals. Their sexual attraction is based on age, not gender, so the data suggest that gay men are not any more likely than heterosexual men to molest children.65

UNITED STATES
Arizona Daily Star

Stephanie Innes
I don’t know for certain, but my guess is that pretty much every religion reporter in the country is well-acquainted with the ultra-conservative Catholic League.

They fax press releases with a regularity that’s unmatched by any other religious group, at least in my experience. The group caught my notice for its rants on pop culture.

Known for its staunch defense of the Roman Catholic Church, the Catholic League expresses frequent outrage at what it considers ‘slights’ against Catholicism. ...

Catholics For Choice — Catholics who support legalized abortion — have now taken on the Catholic League in a 25-page report. The length and effort that went into the report speak to the magnitude of the Catholic League’s media.

We media types like getting the “other side” and Donohue provides ready-made if not convenient fodder for controversy.

Catholics for Choice president Jon O’Brien says that when the media covers the “tempests that Donohue manages to whip up from time to time, few ever stop to examine the most basic premise of his objections — they just cover the dog fight.”

The Catholics for Choice report says that the Catholic League uses, “intimidation, bullying and distortion to suppress critics of the Catholic Church, the Vatican and the church’s many controversial policies.”

Catholics for Choice also says one of Donohue’s most heinous faults is turning the Catholic church’s sexual abuse scandal back on progressive Catholic activists, claiming they were exaggerating the scandal to try and bring down the church.

Donohue has been a particularly harsh critic of the national Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests — SNAP. He says that SNAP should disband because the abuse crisis is all but obsolete.

ITALY
Fai Notizia

Vinnie Nauheimer's article called I Accuse , posted yesterday on this site, was translated into Italian and appears on this Web site.

di Vinnie Nauheimer (19 luglio 2008)

(La seguente e’ la traduzione dall’inglese dei primi paragrafi dell'articolo qui segnalato, un convincente atto di accusa nei confronti della Chiesa Cattolica Romana, definita “Organizzazione Criminale Internazionale”)

"Vi siete mai sentiti come quel ragazzo che grida, “L’imperatore e’ nudo?” Avete mai gridato a voi stessi , “per la miseria, questa cosa e’ sbagliata!”? Avete mai visto qualcosa di cosi’ chiaro e vivido tanto da chiedervi, “Com’e’ che nessuno se ne accorge?” Se la stessa cosa succede molte volte e di continuo, in una citta’ dopo l’altra, in uno Stato dopo l’altro, in un Paese dopo l’altro, perche’ non chiamamo le cose con il loro nome? Se l’atto e’ un atto criminale, perpetrato dai membri della stessa organizzazione e nascosto da coloro che la dirigono, perche’ non possiamo semplicemente chiamarlo un crimine organizzato a livello internazionale?

AUSTRALIA
Zenit

By Anthony Barich

SYDNEY, Australia, JULY 21, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Cardinal George Pell said the private pastoral visit Benedict XVI had with victims of sexual abuse by clergy was positive and particularly moving.

The Pope celebrated Mass and had a meeting with four Australian victims of sexual abuse by clergy on Monday morning local time at St. Mary’s Cathedral House in Sydney.

The Pontiff was in Australia to preside at the World Youth Day celebrations, which end Sunday. He left Monday evening for Rome.

Cardinal Pell, the archbishop of Sydney, said the visit with four victims -- two men and two women aged 30 and over, chosen by the Professional Standards Office of New South Wales -- had been organized over a number of weeks.

Wheeling News-Register

Momsense

In Cleveland, a Catholic priest who was reinstated after a sexual abuse claim resigns after another abuse victim comes forward.

In Australia, the Pope celebrates Mass before "a representative sample" of two men and two women who were sexually abused by priests.

And here in the Ohio Valley, a former Martins Ferry pastor is accused of raping a female family member over a period of six years, while a Neffs priest remains on leave as the Guernsey County prosecutor's office investigates allegations of sexual abuse against a young girl.

Once again, I find myself asking why and wondering if anyone is safe in this messed-up world.

LOUISA COUNTY (VA)
WCAV

July 21, 2008

A former priest convicted on federal charges of stealing from two Louisa County churches appeared back in court Monday morning.

Rodney Rodis now faces multiple state charges in Louisa County.

The 13-count indictment accuses Rodis of embezzling money from two Louisa County parishes between September 1995 and September 2006.

Rodis' lawyer explained why his client did not enter a plea to the charges Monday.

LOVELAND (CO)
Coloradoan

By Douglas Crowl • Loveland Connection • July 21, 2008

A victims advocate group has announced the second lawsuit in six days regarding child molestation against the Archdiocese of Denver connected to a one-time Loveland priest.

The lawsuit involves Harold Robert White allegedly molesting a 12-year-old boy in 1969 while he served at St. John the Evangelist Church in Loveland, said Jeb Barrett, the Denver leader of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, also known as SNAP.

The group plans a press conference detailing the lawsuit at 1:30 p.m. today at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver.

TAMPA (FL)
Miami Herald

TAMPA -- A jury has convicted a former church youth leader of strangling a teenage boy.

Hillsborough Circuit Judge William Fuente on Monday sentenced Joshua Rosa to life in prison without parole after the 22-year-old was convicted of first-degree murder.

A message left for Assistant State Attorney Jay Pruner was not immediately returned, and defense attorney Brian Gonzalez was not available for comment.

MANVILLE (NJ)
The Manville News

Monday, July 21, 2008 2:19 PM EDT
By Eileen Oldfield Staff Writer

Christ the King Church Assistant Pastor Tomasz A. Zielinski, 31, a Polish citizen, has been removed from church duties after being charged with simple assault July 11 for allegedly groping a 16-year-old girl.

The incident allegedly occurred during a July 5 LOT Polish Airlines flight from Warsaw, Poland, to Newark Liberty International Airport.

A criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court on July 11 said the Rev. Zielinski admitted to the incident during a July 9 investigation that involved the FBI, the Manville Police Department, and the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office.

TAMPA (FL)
Associated Content

By Rosa Hayes, published Jul 21, 2008

It is a sad day in Pentecostal church history and even more sad for the family members of Stephen Tomlinson, as youth pastor Joshua Rosa is found guilty of first degree murder in Stephen Tomlinson's death on Monday morning. Joshua Rosa was charged after 13-year-old Stephen Tomlinson's body was found at Logan Gate Park in Hillsborough County, Florida, in December. Stephen Tomlinson was strangled to death in 2005, according to ABC Action News.

The medical examiner on the case against Joshua Rosa said of the allegations that Rosa had stated where false. Rosa had said he was trying to help young Stephen Tomlinson when he died and not trying to injure him. But the medical examiner's testimony proved otherwise, as reported by Tampa Bay.

TAMPA (FL)
ABC Action News

Reported by: Keith Baker
Email: kbaker@abcactionnews.com

TAMPA, FL -- Youth minister Joshua Rosa was found guilty of first degree murder Monday morning in the strangulation death of 13-year-old Stephen Tomlinson of Citrus Park.

The jury reached a verdict after deliberating Friday afternoon but postponed further proceedings until Monday.

Rosa appeared visibly upset as the verdict was read. Several family members cried as the jury was polled.

MANSFIELD (OH)
WBNS

MANSFIELD, Ohio — A judge on Monday set bond at $250,000 for a former youth pastor accused of sexually assaulting a teenager.

John Picard is accused of having sexual relations with a girl starting in 1992 when she was 13 and continuing until she reached adulthood when he was at Mansfield's Grace Brethren church, 10TV News reported.

Picard pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of sexual battery.

MANSFIELD (OH)
News Journal

BY MARK CAUDILL
News Journal

MANSFIELD — Bond was set at $250,000 this morning for a former Mansfield youth pastor accused of 10 counts of sexual battery involving a teenage parishioner.

John Picard, 40, of Springboro pleaded innocent before Mansfield Municipal Court Magistrate Don Teffner to the 10 counts, all third-degree felonies. He is accused of having sexual relations with a girl starting in 1992 when she was 13 and continuing until she reached adulthood. Picard was youth pastor at Grace Brethren Church on Marion Avenue at the time.

Police said they think there are other victims.

BOSTON (MA)
NECN

[with video]

(NECN: Boston, Mass.) - The Catholic Church has excommunicated three women who said they were ordained as priests in Boston.

An activist group says it ordained the women Sunday at a Protestant church. The group, known as Roman Catholic Women Priests, is pushing the Vatican to drop its ban on female clergy.

AUSTRALIA
ABC (AM)

[with audio]

AM - Monday, 21 July , 2008 08:16:00
Reporter: Paula Kruger
TONY EASTLEY: When the Pope apologised on Saturday to people who had been sexually abused by Catholic clergy it caught many by surprise.

The Pontiff's words went much further than an expression of regret he gave during a recent visit to the United States.

Victims groups in Australia liked what they heard but they are upset the statement wasn't made directly to the people affected by abuse.

VIRGINIA
Richard Times-Dispatch

A Louisa County judge postponed an arraignment hearing today for former Catholic priest accused of stealing from two local parishes he pastored.

Commonwealth's Attorney Thomas A. Garrett Jr. intends to change the dates of some of the 13 felony embezzlement charges against the Rev. Rodney Rodis.

Rodis' attorney, Jack Maus, asked to postpone the plea hearing because of the last-minute change by the commonwealth's attorney.

AUSTRALIA
ABC (The 7.30 Report)

[with video]

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 21/07/2008

Reporter:
The Pope's visit to Sydney was a logistical success for the organisers of World Youth Day. While the planned protests had virtually no impact the church did face once major obstacle during the week, the issue of sexual abuse.

Transcript
KERRY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: After a jubilant weekend culminating with more than 400,000 young Catholics from 170 nations at the Randwick Racecourse mass, Pope Benedict's last day in Australia was somewhat more subdued.

SHARON O'NEILL: Before he left Sydney this morning that Pope still had one piece of unfinished business. In a private gathering and mass at Cathedral House he met four hand picked victims of sexual abuse who wish to remain anonymous.

GEORGE PELL: They were chosen by our Professional Standards Officer. We have a system to deal with these problems and they do this well and sensitively, they chose these people.

SHARON O'NEILL: The victims did not include Anthony and Christine Foster, whose two daughters who were raped by a Catholic priest while in primary school. The Fosters flew into Sydney last week hoping for a meeting with the pope.

ANTHONY FOSTER: I think it is simply underhanded, sneaky and everyone involved in it should be ashamed of themselves.

PHILIPPINES
Sun.Star

By Pachico A. Seares
News Sense

IT WAS the second apology from Pope Benedict XVI when he said Saturday during World Youth Day that he was “deeply sorry” about sex child abuse by Roman Catholic clergy in Australia.

In April this year, during a US visit, Pope Benedict also said he was “deeply ashamed” about the sex scandal involving American priests.

Pope John Paul II, whom Pope Benedict succeeded, made the same apology for erring priests at least 10 times from 1992 to 2001, according to an Associated Press listing.

SEMINOLE (FL)
Bay News 9

[with video]

SEMINOLE (Bay News 9) -- A man who was raped by a minister in 1987 traveled to the Bay area to reach out to other possible victims, but the peaceful mission turned into a screaming match Sunday at a church in Seminole.

"I'm here for the survivors," Douglas Guillen said. "Me, it's history; I want to know who else did he hurt."

Six days ago, former Chapel on the Hill United Church of Christ in Seminole minister Angel Toro pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting Guillen at a Wisconsin church when Guillen was 17 years old. Toro resigned from the Seminole church in 2007.

Guillen says he was ordered to leave the church Sunday while he was handing out fliers.

AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

Neil Ormerod

July 22, 2008 12:00am
DESPITE my own apprehensions, the overall organisation and executionn of the World Youth Day week was excellent.

It went off without a major hitch and much of the credit for this must go to Bishop Anthony Fisher and the team gathered around him. ...

I would have hoped that the church leaders would be media-savvy enough to have prepared a response to those who took this opportunity to raise abuse scandals.

Instead, they appeared to be caught off guard, leaving the impression that they still don't "get it".

In his defence, it should be noted that Bishop Fisher's remarks about dwelling on old wounds were directed at the style of media reporting -- not the victims.

DENVER (CO)
CBS 4

DENVER (AP) ― Advocates for sex abuse victims say another person is filing a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Denver.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said Monday that the latest suit involves the late ex-priest Harold White. The suit alleges that White abused a 12-year-old boy around 1969 at St. John the Evangelist Church in Loveland.

AUGUSTA (ME)
Maine Today

By Keith Edwards
July 21, 2008 10:45 AM

Augusta City Councilors meet tonight to discuss whether the name of the Father Curran Bridge should be changed.

Councilors are scheduled to discuss whether the bridge over the Kennebec River in downtown Augusta should be renamed due to allegations of sexual abuse by the late priest. The business meeting begins at 7 p.m. in council chambers at Augusta City Center.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Monday July 21 2008

A CATHOLIC bishop has claimed that Pope Benedict's sincerity in cleaning up the Catholic Church of clerical sexual abuse will remain questionable until he orders a full-scale review of obligatory priestly celibacy.

Australian Catholic Bishop, Geoffrey Robinson, yesterday welcomed Pope Benedict's apology on Saturday for the sexual abuse of children by some Catholic priests in Australia.

Speaking on RTE radio, Bishop Robinson said that allowing priests to marry would not of itself resolve the abuse issue, but it would help to restore the church's credibility. Bishop Robinson said until the Catholic Church puts celibacy on the table for serious discussion, people would not believe it was serious about abuse.

AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Joel Gibson, Paola Totaro and Annabel Stafford
July 22, 2008

THE Catholic Church has defended its handling of a secret Mass involving the Pope and four victims of sexual abuse early yesterday amid criticism that the sunrise meeting excluded hundreds of abuse survivors, their families and support groups.

At 7am, hours before he flew out of Sydney, the Pope conducted a private Mass in a chapel attached to St Mary's Cathedral.

But a Melbourne man, Anthony Foster, whose two daughters were repeatedly raped by a Catholic priest at primary school, and who had returned from Europe to seek a meeting with the Pope, said he was disgusted that he and other vocal victims had been sidelined from the meeting.

"I'm happy for the people who did meet him, if it helped them. But I think [the church] has lost an opportunity to speak to people like us and Broken Rites [a support group] who truly represent the needs of all victims," he said.

AUSTRALIA
Guardian (United Kingdom)

Monday July 21, 2008

Pope Benedict met victims of sexual abuse by the Catholic clergy in the last hours of his nine-day visit to Australia, underlining his earlier public apology for the pain they have suffered.

But his efforts have been criticised by victim support groups, who accused the church of stage managing the meeting, choosing people who would not speak out.

The Pope held a private mass in a chapel at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney and then spoke privately with four representatives of abuse victims – two men and two women - for around an hour "as an expression of his ongoing pastoral concern for those who have been abused by members of the church", the Vatican said in a statement.

AUSTRALIA
Boston Herald

By Herald staff and wire reports
Monday, July 21, 2008

SYDNEY, Australia - Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of the Boston archdiocese traveled with several hundred young parishioners to Australia and yesterday stood alongside Pope Benedict XVI, who reportedly met with victims of clergy child sex abuse in the country.

The pontiff held a Mass yesterday with two men and two women who represented the victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests as a gesture of consolation and his concern about the issue, the Vatican said in a statement.

It was unclear whether O’Malley had a role in the Mass. Archdiocesan spokesman Terrence C. Donilan said he had not been briefed on O’Malley’s itinerary.

CHESTER (VA)
Richmond Times-Dispatch

A man who sued the Catholic Diocese of Richmond and other defendants in 2003, alleging two priests abused him decades earlier, has died.

Stephen Edward Kopalchick Sr., 55, died Friday at his Chester home. He was a former plant manager at Berry Plastics Corp., a deacon at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Colonial Heights and a member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

He made news when he filed a $5 million suit alleging he was abused by two priests from 1962 to 1966. The suit alleged that officials of the diocese knew the two priests were pedophiles but only moved them to different positions when questions arose. Mr. Kopalchick said publicity about sexual abuse by priests in Boston in 2002 stirred memories of the molestation he endured.

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

The Catholic Church's most senior figure in Australia, Cardinal George Pell, has defended the selection process for four victims of sexual abuse who met the Pope this morning.

Pope Benedict celebrated mass with two men and two women selected by the church's Professional Standards Office about 7:00am (AEST) at St Mary's Cathedral before leaving the country.

He then spoke to the two men and two women for half an hour. The pontiff listened to their stories and promised to pray for them, their families and all victims.

The Pope's office says the unscheduled meeting demonstrated the pontiff's deep concern for all those who have suffered sexual abuse.

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Two victims of sexual abuse have released a statement about their meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in Sydney this morning.

The Pope celebrated mass with two selected men and two women about 7:00am (AEST) at St Mary's Cathedral before leaving the country

The two, who wish to remain anonymous, say the Pope twice told them abuse must be stopped at the Seminary training stage.

They say the second time the pontiff directed his comments towards clergy who were standing a short distance away.

AUSTRALIA
National Catholic Reporter

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.

According to a Vatican statement released early Monday morning in Australia, Pope Benedict XVI has met with four victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, listening to their stories and celebrating Mass for them.

The meeting came at the end of Benedict's July 12-21 visit to Sydney, Australia, for World Youth Day. On Saturday, the pope delivered a public apology for the sex abuse crisis, saying he was "deeply sorry" and that he shared the suffering of the victims.

The meeting in Sydney marks the second time Benedict XVI has encountered sex abuse victims, following a similar session during his mid-April visit to the United States. As in that instance, neither the Vatican nor the Australian victims issued any notice of the meeting.

AUSTRALIA
WA Today

July 21, 2008 - 6:50PM
The Catholic Church has been accused of "hand-picking" four victims of clergy sex abuse for a secretive meeting with the Pope.

Pope Benedict XVI met the victims and their supporters after holding a private mass for them at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney early this morning, before he flew out of Australia.

The Vatican said the pontiff held the meeting to reiterate his deep concern following his apology to sex abuse victims on Saturday.

"He listened to their stories and offered them consolation," the Vatican said in a statement.

CANADA
The Western Star

ST. JOHN'S
EVERTON MCLEAN
The Telegram

Sean Walsh emerges from his basement apartment in Mount Pearl with two documents in hand - an apology from Roman Catholic Bishop Douglas Crosby for abuses Walsh received from a priest as a young man, and a copy of settlement he got for those abuses in 2005.

"They're not worth the paper they're written on," he says, flipping through them.

More than three years after the settlement, he's still waiting on 40 per cent of his money from the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corp. of St. George's - as are about 40 other victims of sexual abuse.

Walsh was abused by former priest Gary Hoskins while in the Deer Lake area during the summer of 1983, on a weekend trip to learn more about the priesthood. At the time, he was thinking of joining the clergy.

AUSTRALIA
The Star (South Africa)

July 21, 2008 Edition 4

Sydney - Four victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests who met Pope Benedict XVI before his departure from Australia, today were hand-picked by the church and not representative, an activist said.

Anthony Foster, who travelled from Britain in the hope of meeting the religious leader during his visit to Australia, said the pope's failure to meet him or to inform activists of the meeting showed a lack of compassion.

The four had clearly been "hand-picked by the church" and judging by past experience, the church was unlikely ever to say even who they were, Foster told AFP.

AUSTRALIA
The Age

Annabel Stafford
July 22, 2008

TWO victims of church sexual abuse who met the Pope in a secret Mass just hours before his departure yesterday morning have said they spoke to the Pontiff on behalf of all victims.

The two, believed to be siblings, also pleaded with other victims to respect their need for anonymity.

In a statement released via the Sydney Archdiocese, the victims said they had provided the Pope with written accounts of "the abuse to which we were subjected and its effect on our lives" prior to the Mass held at 7am in a private chapel at Sydney's St Mary's Cathedral.

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

A Hunter Valley man who was sexually abused by a Catholic priest has labelled the Pope's apology for sexual abuse as a "job half done".

Peter Gogarty from Vacy has spent months calling for a papal apology.

At the weekend mass, the Pope said he was "deeply sorry" for sexual abuse committed by priests and other Catholic figures.

AUSTRALIA
NEWS.com.au

IT was not possible for the Pope to make a personal apology to every Australian victim of sex abuse by Catholic clergy, the Archbishop of Sydney says.

Pope Benedict XVI met four victims of sex abuse by the clergy this morning after celebrating a private mass for them in Sydney.

The victims and their supporters joined the Pope for mass at St Mary's Cathedral before meeting him for up to half an hour in a last minute addition to the 81-year pontiff's itinerary.

BOSTON (MA)
WJZ

BOSTON (WJZ) ― A Baltimore County woman along with two other women became Catholic priests Sunday.

Of course, the Roman Catholic church has a long-standing prohibition against female priests.

But the group of three held an ordination ceremony in Boston Sunday morning at a Presbyterian church, defying the Vatican's ban.

AUSTRALIA
The Age

July 21, 2008 - 11:35AM

A support group fears only victims of clergy abuse who were satisfied by the Catholic church's handling of their complaints were hand-picked for Monday's meeting with the Pope.

The two men and two women who met with Pope Benedict XVI were nominated by the church's Professional Standards Office, a body established to deal with responses to church-related abuse complaints.

The victims and their supporters joined the Pope for mass at St Mary's Cathedral at 7am (AEST), before meeting with him for up to half an hour in an emotional last-minute addition to the 81-year-old's itinerary.

"I'm afraid that what they've done is selected victims who have agreed with what the church's policies are," Broken Rites spokeswoman Chris MacIsaac told AAP.

AUSTRALIA
The Northern Advocate

19.07.2008
by Lindy Laird
As speculation mounts over whether the Pope will deliver an apology to victims of sexual abuse, a Whangarei woman is among those waiting for an apology from the Catholic Church.

Ann - who for legal reasons cannot be identified - said she had lived for more than 50 years with the trauma of being raped by a priest in 1956.

BOSTON (MA)
NECN

[with video]

(NECN) - The ceremony in Boston's Back Bay is already underway tonight -- at a Protestant church.

The three women -- from Maryland, Florida and New York City -- have been working with a group that opposes the church's ban on female priests.

AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

July 21, 2008 08:39am
POPE Benedict XVI has met Australian victims of clergy sex abuse in a surprise move on the last morning of his Australian visit.

The victims and their supporters joined the Pope for mass at St Mary's Cathedral at 7am, before meeting with him for up to half an hour in a last-minute addition to the 81-year-old's itinerary. ...

"Assuring them of his spiritual closeness, he promised to continue to pray for them, their families and all victims.

"Through this paternal gesture, the Holy Father wished to demonstrate again his deep concern for all those who have suffered sexual abuse."

AUSTRALIA
Reuters

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict met victims of sexual abuse by the clergy in Australia on Monday at a private mass, an unscheduled meeting that followed his public apology at the weekend to all Australian victims.

"A group of victims attended a papal private mass this morning," the Vatican said in a statement. "With this fatherly gesture the Holy Father wanted to once again show his concern for all those who had suffered sexual abuse."

AUSTRALIA
AFP

SYDNEY (AFP) — Pope Benedict XVI on Monday held mass with four Australian victims of sexual abuse by priests and listened to accounts of their ordeals, papal spokesman Father Frederico Lombardi told journalists.

The meeting with victims came two days after the pontiff issued a historic apology for what he described as the "evil" of sex abuse by clergy, saying he was "deeply sorry" and calling for those responsible to be punished.

"With regard to abuses by members of the clergy, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI on Monday morning celebrated mass with a group of representatives of victims of sexual abuse," Lombardi said in a message to reporters in Italian.

AUSTRALIA
LIVENEWS

Pope Benedict XVI has consoled four victims of sex abuse by the clergy after celebrating a private mass for them in Sydney.

The victims and their supporters joined the Pope for mass at St Mary's Cathedral at 7am (AEST) on Monday, before meeting with him for up to half an hour in a last-minute addition to the 81-year-old's itinerary.

The Pope was scheduled to leave Australia at 10am after bringing World Youth Day (WYD) to a close on Sunday with a huge open-air mass at Randwick Racecourse.

AUSTRALIA
ABC

Pope Benedict XVI met a small number of Australian victims of sexual abuse by the clergy at a private mass in Sydney this morning, the Vatican says.

The Pope listened to the stories of the victims and offered them consolation in the chapel of St Mary's Cathedral.

The unscheduled meeting followed his public apology at the weekend to all Australian victims.

AUSTRALIA
USA Today

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — The Vatican says Pope Benedict XVI met with victims of clergy child sex abuse in Australia as a gesture of consolation.

The pontiff held a Mass on Monday with two men and two women who represented victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests. The Vatican said in a statement Monday that the pope wanted to show his concern about the issue.

AUSTRALIA
Radio New Zealand

Published at 11:02am on 21 July 2008

Pope Benedict XVI met victims of sexual abuse by the clergy in Australia on Monday at a private mass.

The meeting followed a public apology at the weekend to all Australian victims.

The pontiff issued the apology on Saturday, on the eve of his World Youth Day open-air mass in Sydney.

There have been 107 convictions for sexual abuse in the Catholic church in Australia but victims groups say there may be thousands of cases.

AUSTRALIA
Geelong Advertiser

July 21st, 2008

THE Roman Catholic Church has played a huge role in the evolution of Australia's cultural environment. However, if one was a subscriber solely to the Fairfax newspapers or watched and listened only to the ABC, one could come away with the view that every child who received a Catholic education had been subjected to abuse at the hands of the Catholic clergy.

But that is patently not so. While some children undoubtedly suffered miserably and horribly, it is notable that the ABC chose to prosecute the case of a man who was nearly 30 when he was attacked by a notorious priest some 26 years ago. A man, moreover, who has taken the matter through the civil processes and received court-ordered compensation.
The importance of victimhood is as important to the taxpayer-funded broadcaster and Fairfax as maintaining the Church as the unforgivable perpetrator. One might also be led to believe that Australia was a bastion of prejudice against Roman Catholicism but that, too, would be untrue.

AUSTRALIA
BBC News (United Kingdom)

Pope Benedict XVI has met victims of child sex abuse by Catholic clergy at the end of his visit to Australia, the Vatican has said.

In a statement, the Vatican said a group of victims met the Pope, who wanted to show his concern for those who had suffered.

AUSTRALIA
Special Broadcasting Service

Monday, 21 July, 2008

Pope Benedict XVI this morning met with a four people who have been abused by Catholic clergy in Australia, in a private mass at St Mary's.

SBS World Youth Day correspondent Auskar Surbakti reports the meeting took place in the chapel of St Mary's Cathedral this morning where the Pope conducted a private mass.

There were four victims present -- two men and two women. The victims were accompanied by their supporters and at least one priest was present and one senior Seloni (an interior Vatican secretary).

The names of victims were not yet known.

NEW ZEALAND
NZ City

21 July 2008
A woman who was sexually abused by a priest doubts the Pope's apology will do any good.

As part of World Youth Day celebrations in Sydney, Pope Benedict apologised to Australian victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy.

Wairarapa woman Ann-Marie Shelley was abused by a priest while she was a student at Lower Hutt's Sacred Heart College in the 1970s and eventually received an apology and compensation from the Catholic Church. She says the Pope's apology was far too little, far too late, as the church took no action on allegations against the clergy for many years.

AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

BY KAREN DAVIS

21/07/2008 12:00:00 AM
The Pope's apology to sexual abuse victims will galvanise the Catholic Church in Australia to improve the way it deals with such evil, a bishop says.

The Pope apologised on Saturday for the sexual abuse of minors by members of the clergy in Australia, saying he was ''deeply sorry'' for the pain and suffering victims had endured.

''These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation,'' the pontiff told a congregation of 3400 people, including Sydney Archbishop Cardinal George Pell, bishops, seminarians, and religious and school groups.

''Those responsible for these evils must be brought to justice. It is an urgent priority to promote a safer and more wholesome environment, especially for young people.''

World Youth Day coordinator Bishop Anthony Fisher said yesterday he joined with the general community in welcoming the pontiff's ''heartfelt'' words.

ITALY
L'Espresso

Mario Bertoldi
Per la condanna di don Giorgio Carli è bastata la parola della presunta parte offesa. Decisivi anche i consulenti dell’accusa:
la Corte ha accolto in pieno il teorema della Procura
Nessun dubbio sulla veridicità dei ricordi riemersi grazie alle cure psicoanalitiche

[translation]

THE APPEAL RULING - Published yesterday after three months the reasons for which the priest was considered guilty «The girl was credible, and the leads were enough»
the guilt of the Rev. Giorgio Carli was proven by what was said by the alleged offended party. A decisive role was played by her consultants: the Court fully accepted the thesis brought forward by the Prosecutor. No doubt upon the veracity of the remembrances thanks to the psychoanalytic therapy

BOLZANO. Linear remembrances, never contradictory. It was the story told by the offended party to be decisive for the sentence issued by the Appeal Court on last April 16, in which the Rev. Giorgio Galli was given 7-years-and-half in jail after he had been acquitted by the Tribunal of first degree (the judges were all women) from the charge of having sexually abused a parishioner for some years, in the period of her childhood. The Court says her report was founded, with a full probatory basis.

According to the Court, therefore, what the girl had told was sufficient to demonstrate the facts really occurred. In the sentence the judges say her "behavior during the trial was very balanced" and underlined that nothing in her story emerged due to some particular interests which could push her to tell something untruthful. Not only that. Her indications related to the time, places, people and things are all correct. Her remembrances, emerged first thanks to the interpretation of a dream and then through a long and articulate psychological therapy, and the details she furnished were numerous, precise and correct. Perfectly anchored to reality - the Appeal judges wrote - were also what the offended party (who was to be considered in a perfect mental condition) are her descriptions of the personal and parish activities.

«Confused and evasive» were considered the reports of two other witnesses the first degree Tribunal had judged positively. The witnesses were the Rev. Gabriele Pedrotti and the catechist Culati Vigni, tied by intimate and affectionate relationship. Their previous reports were defined "intrinsically contradictory and in contrast with the acts of the process, in respect to the different statements made during the preliminary investigation, which had been denied in an illogical and unconvincing way".
(16 luglio 2008)

Voice from the Desert

By Vinnie Nauheimer 7/19/08

Have you ever felt like the boy who yelled, “The Emperor has no clothes?” Did you ever scream to yourself, “Damn, this is wrong!”? Have you ever seen something so clear and vividly that you wondered, “How come everyone doesn’t see this?” If the same thing happens time and time again, in city after city, in state after state, and in country after country, why do we fail to call it what it is? If the act is a criminal act, perpetrated by members of the same organization, and covered up by the management of said organization, why can’t we just call it organized international crime?

We label those dealing in cocaine, the South American Drug Cartels. We label terrorists with cells in multiple counties with names like Al Queda. There is the Golden Triangle that supplies heroin to Southeast Asia and then there is the Illicit Drug Trade that refers to the heroin coming out of Afghanistan. All encompassing multinational criminal enterprises have names like the Mafia, Triad, Cosa Nostra, Yakuza etc. Even stand up institutions like banks have been referred to as Money Launderers. So why haven’t we labeled and pursued the Catholic Church for their worldwide sexual abuse of children?

The crime of clerical sexual abuse committed by Catholic priests has been publicly documented in the following countries around the globe: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Columbia, Croatia, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Slovenia, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, United States and Venezuela.1 This should put an end to the fallacious argument used by the last pope that clergy sexual abuse was strictly an American phenomenon. Sexual abuse reported in 28 countries can hardly be called an American problem. ...

Further proof of the international scope of these criminal activities comes to us in the form of a secret instruction sent to all bishops around the world in 1962. It also cites an 1887 document as seen below. The operative word here is secret. One of the hallmarks of any organized criminal element is their fanatical obsession with secrecy.

WHEATON (IL)
Daily Herald
By Melissa Jenco and Justin Kmitch | Daily Herald Staff

After three hours of heated debate, Second Baptist Church in Wheaton voted Saturday to oust the Rev. Andre Allen as its pastor.

The decision was sparked by news that Allen, who has been at the helm for 23 years, was arrested late last year on battery and disorderly conduct charges.

"This is a very difficult and emotional time," Deacon Frank Jarrett said after a special church meeting Saturday. "But this evening the people have spoken and made a choice to move on without Pastor Allen. The majority of parishioners wanted him dismissed. We are praying for Pastor Allen. We love Pastor Allen."

Church leaders only learned of Allen's Nov. 2 arrest last month and asked Allen to resign two weeks ago but he refused.

AUSTRALIA
Ballarat Courier

21/07/2008 12:16:00 AM
BALLARAT victims of clerical sexual abuse have welcomed a papal apology made to Australian victims.

But they say the Pope's words must be backed up with "action" from the Catholic Church.

On Saturday Pope Benedict XVI said he was "deeply sorry" for the suffering endured by victims of abuse by Catholic priests and brothers in Australia.

"Indeed I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured and I assure them that, as their pastor, I too share in their suffering," Pope Benedict said.

AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

PAOLA TOTARO AND JOEL GIBSON
21/07/2008 12:00:01 AM

THE Pope has left the door open for a face-to-face meeting with Australian victims of sexual abuse by the Catholic clergy, with victims' groups calling on him to follow up Saturday's apology with concrete action to reform the church's complaint handling procedures.

The pontiff's spokesman, Padre Federico Lombardi, said yesterday he would not rule out a private meeting between the Pope and sex abuse victims or their families despite the Pope's departure this morning. He pledged to provide details of any meeting, but said: "The last word will only occur when the plane leaves, when the door closes."

Senior Vatican press members were told informally early yesterday an unscheduled, informal meeting with representatives of sex abuse victims in Sydney might be on the cards.

PENNSYLVANIA
PennLive

7/20/2008, 9:42 a.m. EDT
The Associated Press

MAHANOY CITY, Pa. (AP) — Seven parishes are now one in the Diocese of Allentown.

Members of the former St. Fidelis, St. Canicus, Sacred Heart, Assumption BVM, St. Casimir and St. Joseph churches in Mahanoy City and the former Our Lady of Siluva, in Maizeville, have merged into the congregation of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. The union was celebrated with a symbolic ceremony Saturday at the former St. Joseph Church building.

SCRANTON (PA)
Roman Catholic Diocese of Scranton

This links to the preliminary recommendation for parish reconfiguration in the Scranton diocese and to Monsignor Vincent J. Grimalia's letter regarding the recommendations.

SCRANTON (PA)
Standard Speaker

BY KELLY MONITZ
STAFF WRITER
Published: Saturday, July 19, 2008 4:24 AM EDT
The Scranton Diocese Planning Commission made preliminary recommendations on church restructuring in an 11-county area available on its Web site on Friday.

Half of the Roman Catholic churches in Hazleton will close in the next three years through the restructuring process with some churches being merged into new parishes, others linked through a shared pastor and still others partnered with other churches sharing services.

Being consolidated are Sacred Heart in Harleigh, St. Mary’s in Lattimer Mines and Our Lady of Grace in Hazleton; St. Nazarius in Pardeesville and Good Shepherd in Drums; Holy Trinity (Slovak), St. Stanislaus and St. Joseph’s, all in Hazleton; Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and St. Gabriel’s in Hazleton; and Ss. Peter and Paul in Hazleton, St. Francis of Assisi and Transfiguration, both in West Hazleton.

WHEATON (IL)
Chicago Tribune

Associated Press
5:18 AM CDT, July 20, 2008
WHEATON, Ill. - The Second Baptist Church has voted to oust the Reverend Andre Allen as its pastor.

The decision Saturday was sparked by news that Allen, who has been at the helm for 23 years, was arrested last November on battery and disorderly conduct charges.

MICHIGAN
Jackson Citizen Patriot

The following is a Jackson Citizen Patriot editorial for July 20:

We cannot pretend to read the mind of Bishop Earl Boyea, but we can hazard a guess as to how he might act in the months and years to come. The region's Catholic Diocese is almost certain to lose parochial schools or even parishes in response to declining numbers of parishioners and priests.

Catholics can expect major changes, but the result can be a stronger community of faith despite any losses.

The Jackson area's still-sizable Catholic population should prepare for that future with faith that the Church can emerge stronger after any changes. A report crafted with input from 94 of the diocese's 97 parishes landed in Bishop Boyea's hands this month. He suggested that he will act on its ideas now and over the next few years. He has little choice.

In the Jackson area, he must consider these two facts:

• The area's 10 Catholic churches lost 2,000 members from 1995 to 2005.

TOLEDO (OH)
Toledo Blade

Jack Lessenberry

To blog or not to blog.

That's a question facing newsrooms - and editors and reporters - across the nation. Should reporters be allowed to maintain individual "blogs"? (Blog to the non-Internet savvy, is an abbreviation for "Web log.")

Normally, blogs are sort of a diary, or running commentary, that appears on the Internet. While The Blade has officially sanctioned blogs that can be found on the newspaper's Web site (Toledo blade.com), other reporters and editors maintain their own private blogs.

David Yonke, religion editor for The Blade, has a blog. And Sally Oberski, communications director for the Diocese of Toledo, doesn't like it.

"[In] several instances on his blog, he reflects his personal opinion on many issues of our diocese. I clearly see this as a conflict while he remains as religion editor. While he offers his personal opinion regarding issues of the diocese on his blog, I can't help but think this clouds his objectivity as a writer/editor on the same subjects," she wrote to me.

Ms. Oberski then sent me a long list of examples where she felt Mr. Yonke showed bias. For the record, your ombudsman has no dog in this fight. I am not a Catholic, nor an anti-Catholic, nor a member of any religious faith.

TEXAS
KWES

Staff Report
NewsWest 9

Polygamist Leader Warren Jeffs says he never married his underage daughter to an adult, but officials say they have found evidence to the contrary.

Photos, diaries, and a marriage record all suggest that Jeffs' daughter who was 15 at the time, married a 34-year-old man.

The documents were filed in a report by the girl's guardian and given to a San Angelo court.

Members of the FLDS sect said in past interviews that no marriage had existed.

AUSTRALIA
Green Left

Jay Fletcher & Kerry Smith, Sydney
19 July 2008

A spirited rally of 1500 people protesting against the pope’s reactionary policies took place on July 19 against the backdrop of an important civil liberties victory in the courts.

“We won the battle in court”, Rachel Evans, one of the rally organisers, told the crowd. “This is not just a victory for the NoToPope Coalition (NTPC), or just for the queer community, or just for campaigners for reproductive rights. This is a victory for all protesters.”

Evans was referring to the July 15 Federal Court ruling that overturned part of the state Labor government’s World Youth Day (WYD) laws that would have made “annoying” Catholic pilgrims during WYD activities a crime punishable by fines of up to $5500.

DELAWARE
The News Journal

The News Journal • July 20, 2008

Suits filed to date -- in U.S. District Court and Delaware Superior Court -- under Delaware's 2007 Child Victim's Act, which eliminated the civil statute of limitations in cases of child sexual abuse and opened a two-year "window" that allows previously time-barred suits to be filed.

(Three suits filed before the act passed were amended to incorporate the provisions of the new law.)

Jan. 8, 2004: Eric Eden v. the Rev. James W. O'Neill, Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, Salesianum School, the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, abuse by O'Neill 1976-85. Settled with Salesianum and Oblates on March 24, 2008, and with the diocese on May 15, 2008, with apology, revocation of O'Neill's authority to minister in the diocese, and an undisclosed sum.

AUSTRALIA
Special Broadcasting Service

[with video]

A "deeply sorry" Pope Benedict XVI issued a landmark apology to thousands of Australians sexually abused as minors by clergymen, but disappointed victims said they wanted much more than words.

The Pope's apology, on the eve of his concluding mass for half a million pilgrims attending the Catholic Church's World Youth Day (WYD) in Sydney, went further than a similar apology in the US earlier this year.

The Pope not only called for care and compassion for victims but said the perpetrators of the "evil" of church-related abuse should be brought to justice urgently for their "grave betrayal of trust".

AUSTRALIA
Canada.com

Chris McCall , AFP
Published: Saturday, July 19, 2008
SYDNEY - Pope Benedict XVI's historic apology for child sex abuse by Catholic priests should have been made to a cathedral full of victims rather than clergymen, activists said at the weekend.

The pope told Catholic bishops, seminarians and novices in Sydney's St Mary's Cathedral on Saturday he was "deeply sorry" for the abuse of children by predatory priests in Australia and called for the guilty to be punished.

"Here I would like to pause to acknowledge the shame which we have all felt as a result of the sexual abuse of minors by some clergy and religious (order members) in this country," Benedict told the gathering.

AUSTRALIA
Green Left

Kerry Smith
19 July 2008

The fact that the NSW Labor government’s World Youth Day laws — which would have made “annoying” Catholic pilgrims during WYD activities a crime punishable by fines of up to $5500 — was a failed attempt to silence criticisms of the Catholic Church was brought home when WYD organiser Bishop Anthony Fisher effectively dismissed criticism of the church’s handling of cases of child sexual abuse by clergy.

Responding in part to public criticisms by Andrew Foster, whose two daughters had been repeatedly abused by Catholic priest Father Kevin O’Donnell, Fisher said on July 16 that some victims were “crankily dwelling on old wounds”. One of Foster’s daughters committed suicide and the other was permanently disabled in a car accident after a long struggle with alcoholism.

Foster requested a formal apology from the church and a meeting with the pope, and insisted that the church ends its policy of covering up and resisting compensation claims by victims.

On July 19, the pope included in his address to pilgrims an apology to the victims of sexual abuse by clergy, however, individual victims and their families have not been allowed to meet with him. Foster said that the pope’s apology was inadequate in the absence of serious action by the church to redress the wrongs and stop further abuse.

AUSTRALIA
LIVENEWS

World Youth Day organiser Bishop Anthony Fisher has apologized about comments he made about victims of clergy sexual abuse.

Bishop Fisher was widely criticised for comments he made earlier in the week that people complaining about sexual abuse cases by Catholic priests were “dwelling crankily on old wounds”.

He’s used a closing World Youth Day press conference to clarify his comments, saying he was referring to the media and not victims of sexual assault.

AUSTRALIA
Los Angeles Times

By Jennifer Bennett and Tracy Wilkinson, Special to The Times
July 20, 2008
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA -- Pope Benedict XVI chose this land of majestic natural beauty to condemn the squandering of the planet's resources. He used a gathering of tens of thousands of Catholic youths to warn against sterile materialism and the exploitative manipulation of mass media and the Internet.

But, as in his spring visit to the United States, one theme loomed over Benedict's weeklong pilgrimage to Australia: the sexual abuse of minors by clergy.

On Saturday, the pope delivered one of his most forceful and personal apologies for the scandal that he said had brought shame and pain to the Roman Catholic Church. He said those responsible must be brought to justice, their victims given "compassion and care."

DELAWARE
The News Journal

By BETH MILLER • The News Journal • July 20, 2008

In the year since Delaware adopted the Child Victim's Act, considered the nation's toughest law against child sexual abuse, three men have won financial settlements, public acknowledgement of their childhood abuse and apologies from the institutions that once supervised their abusers.

Ten other men, claiming abuse that occurred as far back as 1954 and as recently as 2006, are awaiting their days in court.

Considered a national model by some children's advocates and a dangerous constitutional precedent by some defense attorneys, the law eliminated the state's two-year civil statute of limitations in child sexual abuse cases and provided a two-year window -- ending July 10, 2009 -- during which cases previously barred by the time limit can be filed.

AUSTRALIA
The Times (United Kingdom)

Roy Eccleston, Sydney
The Pope launched a fresh assault on consumer culture and materialism today, warning of a “spiritual desert” spreading across the world in a speech to a sprawling, flag-waving crowd of about 400,000 worshippers at a mass in Sydney.

Benedict XVI, who yesterday apologised to children abused by paedophile priests, challenged young people to help build a “new age” by rejecting the “indifference, spiritual weariness and blind conformity” of the times. He also urged them to fill the growing gaps in the ranks of priests and nuns.

AUSTRALIA
PR-Inside (Austria)

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday leads a huge open-air Mass marking the culmination of the World Youth Day festival he has been attending in Australia.
The Mass, at a horse racetrack in Sydney, follows a forceful apology Saturday for the sexual abuse of children by Australia's Roman Catholic clergy, keeping up efforts begun in the United States to publicly atone for what he called evil acts by priests.
But the pope's apology was not enough to satisfy representatives of the victims of clergy sexual abuse, who said it must be backed by Vatican orders to Australian bishops to stop what they say are efforts to cover up the extent of the problem and to block survivors' attempts to win compensation.
The pope flew in a helicopter _ dubbed the «holy-copter» _ over the crowd of pilgrims, estimated at more than 200,000 at the track and overflowing into a nearby park. He then drove slowly through the crowd in the popemobile.

AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times

20/07/2008 10:01:00 AM
WITH expectations in the past week waning that Pope Benedict XVI might say sorry to sex abuse victims of clergy, it was heartening to see yesterday's decisive apology.

It has been the elephant in the room throughout what has been an overwhelmingly celebratory week for the Catholic Church during its World Youth Day activities.

The pontiff's apology was unequivocal such abuses were a source of shame, deserving of condemnation, and the perpetrators must be brought to justice.

He described the ''evil'' acts as a grave betrayal of trust. The issue of sex abuse has shadowed the Catholic Church for too long. Stories of young victims surface, sometimes years after the fact, and accusations of mishandling of many allegations have been a blight on the institution.

AUSTRALIA
Watching the Watchers

Commentary By Lee Russ
Watching the Watchers

I've complained before about the Pope's carefully tailored apology for the abuse of children by Catholic priests. It's good to know the Pope pays no attention to me--he just reiterated the same limited apology which puts all the wrong on the priests who directly committed the abuse, whitewashing the church bureaucracy that fostered it and allowed it to continue so much longer than it otherwise could have.

Speaking in Sydney, Australia, the Pope made the following apology:
I would like to pause to acknowledge the shame which we have all felt as a result of the sexual abuse of minors by some clergy and religious in this country.
I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured. I assure them as their pastor that I too share in their suffering.

Those responsible for these evils must be brought to justice.

The last line is promising, until you realize once again that he's only talking about the clergy who directly perpetrated the abuse. Once again, no need to find, name, and punish those who made the abuse possible by concealing it and continuing to allow the abusers access to more children.

AUSTRALIA
Zenit

Interview With President of Australia's Episcopal Conference

By Catherine Smibert

SYDNEY, Australia, JULY 19, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI apologized on Saturday to the victims of sexual abuse in Australia, a gesture the Pope also said must be supported by measures to prevent the crisis from happening again.

Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide, the president of the Australia's episcopal conference, agrees that the Church needs a plan to not only respond, but also to prevent these acts from happening in the future.

During the past week Archbishop Wilson has been personally accompanying the Pontiff as he presides at the World Youth Day celebrations, which will culminate on Sunday with the closing Mass.

In this interview with ZENIT, the archbishop comments on the concrete measures needed to prevent a future sexual abuse crisis, as well as the effect World Youth Day has had on Sydney.

CALIFORNIA
Three Rivers Episcopal

"James Tramel went from convicted murderer to priest while in prison, a transformation that the Episcopal Church used to successfully lobby for his parole and celebrate him before politicians and the press.
But the church is now grappling with the sexual abuse of a parishioner under his care. Tramel has been suspended for sexual misconduct, temporarily stripped of his priestly authority and left searching for a new job."

CALIFORNIA
Skeptico

Don't you just love those stories about how some criminal found Jesus while in prison, and gave up his criminal ways? No, me neither. But the religious do. Specifically, the Episcopal Church, who converted the convicted murderer James Tramel. Tramel was convicted in the stabbing death of a homeless man in 1985, but apparently he found love for Jesus in prison, to the extent that the Episcopal Church ordained him as a priest. The Church naturally lobbied for Tramel to be paroled, and only four months after his release in 2006, they made him rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in San Francisco.

What a heartwarming story. What could possibly go wrong? Try sexual abuse of a parishioner:

It's [at the Church] that the victim said Tramel, who is married and has a young child, took advantage of her during counseling sessions.

BARTLETT (IL)
City of Angels

By Kay Ebeling
City of Angels

Considering the subject matter, Catholic priests who rape children, I often think there's a spiritual force pointing me in the next direction I should go to pursue these stories. So when I looked out my hotel window and saw just past the duck pond the beige façade and proud cross of Evangel Church, I thought it was a sign, the next step to take. I made an appointment with Pastor Ron, introduced myself and said, I always do what God puts in front of me and so I'm contacting you. Pastor Ron towered over me, but wilted as I spoke of my mission to write about pedophile priests. “I have a wife and three children,” he interjected into the conversation in what was to me a non sequitur. I said, "There have been three pedophile priests in the Catholic Church in Bartlett and I'm here to write that story. I contacted you to try to find other victims like me, uh, you see, because I’m always attracted to fundamentalist evangelical churches like yours, I mean like this church, um, so I thought there might be, you know, other pedophile priest victims here". . .we weren’t connecting.

“I want my secretary to be in here taking notes to document everything you say,” Pastor Ron spewed. “If you contact other pastors the way you've contacted me, they're going to wonder what your real motives are.” He was looking down at me like he was wondering himself, just what is your motivation, ma’am. So I made a fast exit. Curiously the sidewalk surrounding Evangel Church in Hanover Park is covered with little turds, probably from the geese. Okay maybe every sign isn’t from God, sometimes it’s just a sign painted on the side of a building.

Downtown Bartlett, after several hours wandering around town, I was hot tired and thirsty. Walked into Bartlett Tavern and ordered both an ice tea and a beer and a couple patrons made a joke about me as a two-fisted drinker. That opened a conversation. I said I'm a journalist in town working on a story. After talking to a woman in the group I purred, you're one of the lucky ones, able to be a housewife and stay home with your kids. Yeah, she said, although you can find me here most afternoons. “My kids are in the children’s program at St. Peter Damian Church,” she giggled. I gulped. Later she asked me, what are you writing about? I said St. Peter Damian Church. Both of us darted our eyes away from each other.

AUSTRALIA
The Times (United Kingdom)

The media has given unfair coverage of World Youth Day focussing on paedophile scandals rather than the joy of pilgrims says the Abbot of Worth
The Abbot of Worth, Christopher Jamison

Sydney has never seen anything like it since the Olympics. Not even that event, however, could match the spectacle of a papal ‘boatacade’ gliding past the bridge and the opera house to deliver Pope Benedict into the cheering embrace of 150,000 young people from around the world. The Pope’s arrival at World Youth Day had a theatrical quality worthy of the media world in which today’s young people live. By contrast, his message to them was delivered in a self-effacing, direct manner, making clear that the Pope refuses to cast himself as a rock star; he is a teacher and he set about teaching. The young listened with great respect, some closing their eyes, concentrating deeply on his words. He commended to them the care of the planet that he had flown over, inviting them to live by the values of truth, beauty and goodness as the way to heal the scars not only of our planet but also of our souls. Cries of delight erupted as the Pope concluded by greeting the different language groups. The final singing of the World Youth Day anthem, Receive the Power of the Holy Spirit, had the crowd in full voice, hands lifted high and swaying gently in time with the simple alleluia of the chorus, all nationalities united in one word and one gesture.

You would have to be hard hearted not to be moved by so many young people singing their hearts out affirming their acceptance of the Pope’s demanding invitation to follow Christ. Yet hard hearted is exactly the quality that has characterised the Australian media coverage leading up to the event. The city’s leading daily, the Sydney Morning Herald, has for weeks been pursuing an agenda highlighting the civic disruption, the cost to the taxpayer and a whole host of local concerns summed up in the headline ‘The Stations of the Very Cross.’ In parallel, the national TV channel, ABC, led a concerted attack on Cardinal Pell, with ‘Lateline’ (think Newsnight) running negative stories about his alleged mishandling of cases of clerical abuse. All the perpetrators had gone to jail but the Cardinal was still in the firing line from the victims or their families. Insensitive remarks by church spokesmen prolonged the agony.

Ignatius Press

Author: Russell Shaw

Shaw, widely known Catholic writer, speaker and former communications director for the U S Bishops, discusses the abuse of secrecy in the Church, the scandals it has caused and the serious problem of mistrust that exists in the credibility of the Church. Not concerned with the legitimate secrecy that is necessary to protect confidentiality and people’s reputations, Shaw is rather concerned here with the stifling, deadening misuse of secrecy that has done immense harm to communion and community in the Church in America.

Shaw shows the secrecy issue is a theological as well as practical problem that raises such questions as: What kind of Church do we want our Church to be, open or closed? What kind of Church should it be? And how much secrecy is compatible with having such a Church? As Pope Benedict XVI has stated, “The consequence is clear: we cannot communicate with the Lord if we do not communicate with one another.”

The Church is a communion, not a political democracy, and thus openness and accountability are even more crucial for the life of the Church than they are in a democracy. In a talk he gave many years before he became the current Pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had this to say about the reality of ecclesial communion: “Fellowship in the Body of Christ and receiving the Body of Christ means fellowship with one another. This of its very nature includes mutual acceptance, giving and receiving on both sides, and readiness to share one’s goods . . . In this sense, the social question is given quite a central place in the theological heart of the concept of communion.”

AUSTRALIA
ABC (Lateline)

[with video]

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 18/07/2008
Reporter: Virginia Trioli

Channel Seven has reported Catholic priest Michael Endicott, seen here indulging his interest in photography at this week's Youth Day celebrations, recently came to the attention of Queensland police for taking pictures of naked teenage boys.

Transcript
VIRGINIA TRIOLI, PRESENTER: World Youth Day celebrations have been dampened by allegations a Catholic priest taking part in the event took pictures of naked teenage boys. Channel 7 is reporting tonight that Father Michael Endicott, seen here indulging his interest in photography at this week's Youth Day celebrations, recently came to the attention of Queensland Police. The allegations were made by three former students at Villanova Catholic College in Brisbane.

ANONYMOUS FORMER STUDENT, VILLANOVA CATHOLIC COLLEGE: He liked to photograph naked boys.

CHANNEL 7 JOURNALIST: And you were one of them?

ANONYMOUS FORMER STUDENT: I was.

AUSTRALIA
The Age

Barney Zwartz
July 20, 2008

WITH much-anticipated words, Pope Benedict XVI has apologised to Australia's victims of sexual abuse by clergy and people in religious orders, declaring abuse an "evil" whose perpetrators must be "brought to justice".

"I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured and I assure them, as their pastor, I too share in their suffering," he said.

The words of apology yesterday were not included in his planned speech, which "acknowledged the shame which we have all felt as a result of the sexual abuse of minors by some clergy and religious", but the Pope departed from the script to add the actual words of apology and to identify personally with victims.

AUSTRALIA
Adelaide Now

July 20, 2008 12:30am
THE Pope's apology will be "meaningless" to those whose lives and faith have been destroyed by their abuser, according to an Adelaide victim.

"Michael", who was indecently assaulted by a Catholic priest while a student at Salesian College at Brooklyn Park in the 1960s, said such an apology "was just words".
"I just think rhetoric is worth nothing," he said. "What it says to people like me is that it's okay to go and do what you want, as long as you say you are sorry. It is a start, it's a recognition."

Michael, 57, who gave evidence to the Mullighan inquiry about his experiences at Salesian College, said his dealings with church officials had left him feeling bitter and questioning its motives and purpose.

AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald

Sarah Price
July 20, 2008

IT WAS much longed for and, when it came, Pope Benedict XVI's apology to victims of clerical abuse took everyone by surprise.

The lines of apology were not included in the text given to journalists before the Mass at St Mary's Cathedral but were added by the pontiff during his homily, to the joy of victims watching around the world.

Before 3400 guests, including cardinals, bishops, Australian seminarians, victims and pilgrims from around the world, he said: "Here, I would like to pause to acknowledge the shame which we have all felt as a result of the sexual abuse of minors by some clergy and religious in this country.

AUSTRALIA
Herald Sun

James Campbell

July 20, 2008 12:00am
THE father of two girls raped by a Melbourne priest said the Pope's apology to the Catholic Church's victims did not go far enough.

Emma Foster killed herself in January and sister Katherine was left disabled when hit by a drink driver in 1999.

"It was a reasonable level of apology, but it was restricted to minors," Anthony Foster said.

"And it was just words; there was no instruction and no guarantee that help for victims would be unlimited. The victims need unlimited practical, psychological and emotional help."

AUSTRALIA
Adelaide Now

CHRIS PEPPER, MICHELE CAZZULINO in SYDNEY
July 20, 2008 12:30am
ADELAIDE'S Catholic leader yesterday promised Pope Benedict XVI that the church in Australia would treat sexual abuse victims with care and compassion.

Archbishop Philip Wilson, in an address in front of the Pontiff just hours after his historic apology to church sex victims, vowed every effort would be made to respond to sexual abuse cases.

In the speech at a St Mary's Cathedral House lunch attended by the Pope and Australian bishops, Archbishop Wilson said: "The terrible scandal of sexual abuse carried out by some clergy, religious and church personnel and the way these issues were addressed in the past, has had deep and lasting consequences.

"Holy Father, I can assure you we are all making every effort in our response to cases of sexual abuse, with compassion and care for victims."

AUSTRALIA
Catholic Online

SYDNEY (Catholic Online) - His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI today delivered a heartfelt apology to the victims of sexual abuse by clergy in Australia.

Departing from his official homily, the Holy Father said: “Indeed, I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured, and I assure them that as their Pastor, I too share in their suffering.”

The apology was delivered during a special service at St Mary’s Cathedral – the Dedication of a new altar before seminarians and other young religious people.

AUSTRALIA
The Age

July 20, 2008

THE papal apology to the thousands of Australians who have been victims of predatory priests was genuine and heartfelt. Benedict XVI is apparently much more determined to tackle the problem of clerical sexual abuse than was his predecessor.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the department he used to head as Cardinal Ratzinger, has spent much more time on this issue since he became pope, and much less on heresy-hunting.

It is hard to imagine a bigger insult to victims than John Paul II gave when he appointed the disgraced Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, to a sinecure as archpriest of one of Rome's most important basilicas, Santa Maria Maggiore.

AUSTRALIA
The Press Association (Ireland)

Catholic bishops and priests have been urged to demonstrate true remorse for clerical child sex abuse after Pope Benedict publicly apologised to victims in Australia.

Ireland's One-in-Four support group welcomed the Pope's strong apology but warned previous words had not been matched by actions in the church's hierarchy.

TEXAS
San Angelo Standard-Times

By Paul A. Anthony
Originally published 10:30 p.m., July 18, 2008
Updated 11:06 p.m., July 18, 2008

It is not in the best interests of Warren Jeffs' 16-year-old daughter to remove the girl's attorney or replace her with one hired by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the girl's court-appointed guardian determined Friday.

In documents filed in state district court in Tom Green County, the guardian presented evidence that the girl was married to a 34-year-old sect official just after her 15th birthday and that the ceremony was officiated by her father, the now-jailed leader of the polygamous sect.

"If (the girl)'s preferences were allowed, it would place her in a dangerous environment and subject her to sexual abuse," according to the report, filed by Court-Appointed Special Advocate Connie Gauwain and obtained by the Standard-Times.

WISCONSIN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By TOM HEINEN
theinen@journalsentinel.com
Posted: July 18, 2008
Excommunication has not eroded the personal beliefs of the Rev. Marek Bozek, a Polish-born priest who butted heads with Archbishop Raymond Burke and the Vatican by leaving his assignment in a different Missouri diocese to become the pastor of a rebellious parish in St. Louis.

Comparing his situation to the underground Solidarity Movement in Poland during communist rule, he still insists that individual conscience trumps authority.

Bozek, 33, the pastor of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, will reflect on that in a talk titled “The Odyssey of Joseph the Dreamer: A Reflection on Those Who Care to Dream” at a Voice of the Faithful reform group meeting open to the public at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Calvary Lutheran Church, 1750 N. Calhoun Road, Brookfield.

Burke, former bishop of La Crosse, recently was named to head the Vatican’s supreme court.

SCRANTON (PA)
Times-Leader

By Mark Guydish mguydish@timesleader.com
Education Reporter

SCRANTON – The Diocese of Scranton Planning Commission “respectfully” disagreed with proposals on church consolidations submitted by 21 of the 50 parish clusters in the 11-county diocese.

The diocese released the recommendations issued by the planning commission Friday. Those recommendations were a response to recommendations submitted by cluster teams composed of representatives from parishes in those clusters.

While the diocese had issued guidelines and some restrictions on the configurations cluster teams could submit, the teams were free to give their own proposals. The planning commission either affirmed those proposals or disagreed, and offered its own plan.

The diocese divided the cluster teams into four regions, with the South region covering most of Luzerne County except for four Hazleton area clusters. In the South region, with 15 clusters, eight of the cluster team recommendations were accepted and seven rejected. Among the Hazleton area clusters, three were rejected and one was accepted.

AUSTRALIA
Zenit

SYDNEY, Australia, JULY 18, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI is praying that this period of purification after the clergy sexual abuse scandal will lead to reconciliation and greater fidelity to the Gospel.

The Pope said this Saturday morning local time in a brief mention of the scandal during his homily at Mass with Australian clergy.

"Dear friends, may this celebration, in the presence of the Successor of Peter, be a moment of rededication and renewal for the whole Church in Australia," the Holy Father said. "Here I would like to pause to acknowledge the shame which we have all felt as a result of the sexual abuse of minors by some clergy and religious in this country."