Church fights new law on confessions in Australia

Three states adopt law requiring Catholic priests to report admissions of child sex abuse. For centuries, the sacrament of reconciliation - known as confession - has been a venerated practice of the Catholic Church, requiring people to reveal their sins to a priest, who must keep the confession secret. But the seal, or secrecy, of the confessional is under threat in Australia, following an inquiry which recommended that priests be forced to tell police about admissions of sexual abuse of children.

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/australianz/church-fights-new-law-on-confessions-in-australia 

Jesus identifies with abuse victims says theologian

Australian theologian Rev. Dr Michael Trainor has proposed that a pastoral way to help victims of sexual abuse can begin by looking closely at Jesus’ crucifixion and death and realising that Jesus identifies with the victims rather than the other way around. Speaking at a symposium called “The Body of Jesus and Sexual Abuse” at Holy Cross Seminary on April 27, Fr Trainor said Christians have become so used to spiritualising the Gospel stories and glossing over the passion and death to emphasise the Resurrection that “we’ve lost their corporeal power, the power of the body”.

https://www.nzcatholic.org.nz/2018/06/22/jesus-identifies-with-abuse-victims-says-theologian/ 

Australia state to allow sex abuse victims to sue churches

Victims of child sex abuse will be able to sue institutions such as churches under proposed new laws in Australia's most populous state, authorities said on Sunday (June 10). The proposed legislation came after a five-year royal commission - which released its final report late last year - detailed thousands of harrowing abuse cases involving churches, orphanages, sporting clubs, youth groups and schools and going back decades.

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/australianz/australia-state-to-allow-sex-abuse-victims-to-sue-churches 

Chile: Fourteen priests linked to sex abuse scandal stripped of duties

A Chilean bishop’s office in Rancagua has dismissed 14 priests suspected of covering up cases of child abuse by pedophile priest Fernando Karadima in the 1980s and ’90s. The scandal has rocked Pope Francis’ papacy. Fourteen priests engulfed in Chile’s Catholic church sex abuse scandal were stripped of their priestly duties Tuesday, the bishop’s office in the city of Rancagua announced Tuesday.

https://kathmandutribune.com/chile-fourteen-priests-linked-to-sex-abuse-scandal-stripped-of-duties/ 

Guilty verdict for Archbishop Philip Wilson 'almost unheard of', says Spotlight investigator

Walter "Robbie" Robinson was not in Newcastle on Tuesday to hear the gasps when Magistrate Robert Stone delivered his decision. But he knew how significant the verdict was. When Philip Wilson, the Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide, was found guilty of covering up child sexual abuse, reverberations from the landmark ruling made it all the way to Boston. Although Professor Robinson — a Pulitzer Prize-winner and veteran newspaperman — deflects much of the credit, he began writing this story 16 years ago. Professor Robinson ran Boston Globe's "Spotlight Team" in the early 2000s and its investigation into child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-23/spotlight-journalist-wants-church-change-after-wilson-judgment/9787066 

Reflection with Fr Shay Cullen: Child abuse in the Church

We live in a new age of freedom of expression when the long history of suppression and cover up of the truth is breaking out and social and mainstream media have championed the voice of victims and survivors of child sexual abuse. The controlling power and influence of some leaders in traditional institutions like the Catholic Church to instill fear, bury the realities, deny crimes of child abuse and silence the complainants are being challenged and their credibility has weakened.

https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/35000 

Bishop Cantú breaks silence on Hobbs priest accused of sexual abuse

LAS CRUCES - Las Cruces Bishop Oscar Cantú on Wednesday disputed allegations that the diocese conspired to cover up an investigation involving a Hobbs priest who has been charged with sexually assaulting a man. The bishop also maintained that diocesan officials did not receive complaints from Las Cruces parishioners over an eight-year period when the accused priest was at St. Genevieve Catholic Church. Cantú spoke candidly about what he did — and didn't do — when he learned about sexual abuse allegations involving Father Ricardo Bauza last year.

https://www.lcsun-news.com/story/news/local/2018/05/30/bishop-cantu-hobbs-priest-accused-sexual-abuse/656419002/ 

Cover Ups and Confessions: Pope Francis and Child Abuse

It is the season for exposures and exposes, and the Catholic Church has been making regular ripples of the wrong and undeniably crude sort. Globally, the church is finding itself being picked bare in terms of institutional malfeasance, not merely on the issue of having harboured abusive priests, but of placing a dark, impenetrable cover over them. No area of influence has been spared. In Guam, the disruptive efforts of former Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron made it into public eye with G. R. Pafumi’s work citing attempts to invalidate a 2016 statute lifting limitations for child sex abuse. In Pafumi’s grave words, “The Church believes it is never wrong because it has been guided by the Holy Spirit for nearly 2,000 years.”

https://www.modernghana.com/news/856953/cover-ups-and-confessions-pope-francis-and-child-abuse.html 

Grand jury secrecy hides reason for Supreme Court order barring release of priest sex abuse report

Two paragraphs, 63 words. That’s all it took for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to halt the pending publication of a lengthy grand jury report detailing decades of child sex abuse claims and possible cover-ups in six Catholic dioceses. The high court’s majority decision, issued Wednesday, could be unprecedented under the state’s grand jury law, which is revered by prosecutors for its investigative power, decried by some defense lawyers as unconstitutional overreach and the subject of separate judicial and legislative reviews.

http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/pennsylvania/capitol-ideas/mc-nws-catholic-priest-grand-jury-law-20180621-story.html 

The Pa. Supreme Court has denied church abuse victims a voice

In most cases, we depend on our courts to shine the light of truth, to right injustices and to ensure that the voiceless among us have a voice proportionate to those who are in power. But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court did the exact opposite this week when it blocked the release of an 800-page grand jury report detailing decades of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy and the subsequent cover-ups that allowed those priests to continue their abuse - sometimes for decades.

https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2018/06/the_pa_supreme_court_has_denie.html 

The Pa. Supreme Court has denied church abuse victims a voice | Editorial

In most cases, we depend on our courts to shine the light of truth, to right injustices and to ensure that the voiceless among us have a voice proportionate to those who are in power. But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court did the exact opposite this week when it blocked the release of an 800-page grand jury report detailing decades of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy and the subsequent cover-ups that allowed those priests to continue their abuse - sometimes for decades

https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2018/06/the_pa_supreme_court_has_denie.html 

Church sell-offs rub salt into wounds

It was a big weekend for us, a family christening. Naturally I’m conflicted here, giving some credence to the idea that faith-type decisions should be taken consciously not in the cradle. But a resounding argument for the affirmative was the church itself, a Blacket, chosen for its loveliness – the attenuated stone, the lingering incense, glancing light and evocative, time-polished liturgy. As our large and mostly heathen tribe traipsed in over the threshold almost everyone exhaled some involuntary version of “oh how beautiful!”

https://www.smh.com.au/national/church-sell-offs-rub-salt-into-wounds-20180621-p4zmyw.html 

Watch: Angry French Priest Slaps Baby During Baptism

Despicable child abuse: In a horrifying video out of France an angry old priest is seen slapping a crying infant during baptism. In a YouTube video released yesterday and titled “Un prête gifle un nourrisson lorde son baptême” (“A priest slaps an infant during his baptism”) an angry old French priest can be seen slapping a crying infant during their baptism.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2018/06/watch-angry-old-french-priest-slaps-baby-during-baptism/ 

Church now facing its own #MeToo moment, says Australian archbishop

ROME – In the wake of historic allegations of sexual abuse and cover-up in countries around the world, the Catholic Church is experiencing the same challenge that has brought a reckoning to those who used their authority to abuse or silence victims, said an Australian archbishop. Allegations such as those raised against Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, retired archbishop of Washington, represent a "major shift" within the culture of the church, Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane said June 21. Abuse survivors are "willing to speak and they are believed," and the church has new processes of investigation, he added.

https://www.catholicregister.org/home/international/item/27604-church-now-facing-its-own-metoo-moment-says-australian-archbishop 

WDSU Investigates: Victim of alleged sexual abuse by Catholic church deacon speaks out

NEW ORLEANS — A victim of alleged sexual abuse by a member of the clergy is speaking out to WDSU Investigates. His comments come after the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans gave him a high six-figure settlement. The man's lawyer said there could be more victims. The victim and his lawyer now want the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office to look into a criminal prosecution. "I was a child and he was an adult male in a powerful position," said the victim, whom WDSU is not identifying.

http://www.wdsu.com/article/wdsu-investigates-victim-of-alleged-sexual-abuse-by-catholic-church-deacon-speaks-out/21798796 

JUSTICE ‘We’re Coming for Them’: Survivors Demand Release of 884-Page Pennsylvania Clergy Sex Abuse Report

JUSTICE ‘We’re Coming for Them’: Survivors Demand Release of 884-Page Pennsylvania Clergy Sex Abuse Report Mark Rozzi thought he was days away from justice, or at least the beginning of it. It started when he was 13, and a priest at his school in Hyde Park, Pennsylvania, started grooming him. For months, the Rev. Edward Graff talked with Rozzi about sex, gave him alcohol, and showed him pornography. Then, one fateful day, he raped him in a rectory shower.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/were-coming-for-them-survivors-demand-release-of-884-page-pennsylvania-clergy-sex-abuse-report 

AP: Ex-Priest Who Abused Child Allowed Access to Chicago Schools

Chicago Public Schools correspondence provided to The Associated Press shows that the nation's third-largest school district gave a former Roman Catholic priest access to its schools for months despite knowing he was forced to leave the priesthood for sexually abusing a boy of 6 when he was around 15.

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/ap-ex-priest-who-abused-child-allowed-access-to-chicago-schools-486294791.html 

The Catholic Church turned its back on Father Glen Walsh, says his brother

GLEN Walsh was the whistleblower Catholic priest who died alone in a Newcastle church building in November, only weeks before he was due to give damning evidence at the trial of Archbishop Philip Wilson. He took his own life, aged 55 – a priest who paid a devastating price for reporting Hunter paedophile priest Jim Fletcher to police in 2004, while the archbishop kept silent about what he knew.

https://www.theherald.com.au/story/5445686/sent-to-coventry-the-good-priest-who-broke-ranks-and-reported-child-abuse/?cs=305 

Rick Warren Warns Hundreds of Priests About Moral Integrity at Sexual Abuse Prevention Conference

Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, recently spoke to nearly 800 priests at a sexual abuse prevention conference in New York where he urged them to protect themselves from temptation in order to maintain their moral integrity. Warren's advice came earlier this month at the Archdiocese of New York's biennial Safe Environment Convocation at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/rick-warren-warns-hundreds-priests-moral-integrity-sexual-abuse-prevention-conference-225281/ 

What’s Next for Cardinal McCarrick? How the Church Addresses Sex-Abuse Allegations

WASHINGTON — The allegation that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick sexually abused a teenager is a bombshell for the Catholic Church in America. Cardinal McCarrick has stepped down from active priestly ministry at the direction of the Holy See, after an initial investigation judged the allegation to be “credible and substantiated.”  What does that mean, and what might be next for McCarrick?

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/whats-next-for-cardinal-mccarrick-how-the-church-addresses-sex-abuse-allega