PREVIOUSLY POSTED ARTICLES
Boy Scouts of America sued over sexual abuse of children
By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, April 4th, 2010 -- 7:03 pm
With the Vatican in the grips of a pedophilia scandal, the spotlight in America is being turned on US scouting, which is accused of keeping quiet about decades of alleged sexual aggression by its leaders against young boys.
The Boy Scouts of America are being sued by a man who said he was abused five times when he was between 11 and 12 years old by his then-scoutmaster in Portland, Oregon.
The identity of the alleged victim, now 37, is being concealed for fear of reprisals related to the 29-million-dollar sex abuse lawsuit he brought against the Boy Scouts of America and its local Portland branch, the Cascade Pacific Council.
The plaintiff decried what he described as the group's silence on sexual abuses targeting children and teenagers at the hands of trusted scout leaders.
The alleged abuser, Timur Dykes, now 53, admitted after the incidents that he was a serial molester. He has been convicted three times for sex abuse against boys.
Story continues below...
Scouts have convicted before US courts time and again, but this trial has gained more notoriety as fresh accusations of sex abuse hit the Catholic Church, said Patrick Boyle, editor of the website youthtoday.com.
"Institutional child sex abuse is really on everyone's mind right now," said Boyle, author of the book "Scout's Honor: Sexual Abuse in America's Most Trusted Institution."
He said the court case "offers people another example of how institutions and organizations have so much sex abuse and have been hiding sex abuse for so long."
The trial is unique in that it has forced the Boy Scouts, which celebrates its centennial this year, to submit to the court for the first time in 20 years documents detailing sexual abuse recorded by the organization.
Although the group has been sued dozens of times over sex abuse, most cases settled out of court, which ensured the records were kept confidential.
"The files were created almost a century ago. So it shows what the scout officials knew, how many kids were abused ... where the abuse occurs," Boyle told AFP.
He said the Boy Scouts were aware of "thousands" of children abused over several decades.
Treading cautiously, the Texas-based scouts issued a terse statement saying: "Unfortunately, child abuse is a societal problem and there is no fail-safe method for screening out abusers."
But by Friday, the statement was no longer on the organization's website, www.scouting.org.
According to Boyle, scouts say they do not chose local leaders, a responsibility that falls instead to local officials, like the Cascade Pacific Council and the Mormon Church in the Oregon case.
But the scouts "do tell the troop's sponsors what kind of person you're allowed to take, what you have to do to check somebody out, and also to act when they do something like abusing kids," Boyle said.
The Oregon victim's lawyer, Kelly Clark, declined to comment on the trial, which got underway last month.
On his website, www.boyscoutabuse.com, Clark writes that victims may feel "an added sense of guilt about bringing legal action against an organization that many view in a positive light, one that no doubt has helped many boys, and, indeed, an organization that stresses 'loyalty' as one of its core values."
Boyle lamented that the Boy Scouts would not admit to their sex abuse problems.
"I wish the Boy Scouts would take all the files, give them to a researcher so that we know how often it's happened, how it happened so they can try to shape their program better to stop it," he said.
Pope: Church's Greatest Enemy Comes From Within
2010 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Lauren Frayer Contributor
LISBON, Portugal (May 11) -- In some of his most direct comments about priestly sex abuse, Pope Benedict XVI said today that the "terrifying" truth is that the Catholic Church's "greatest persecution" has come from within its own ranks.
Benedict arrived in Lisbon this morning at the start of a four-day Portugal tour that includes an open-air mass on the capital's riverfront this evening and a trip to Fatima, a pilgrimage site where faithful believe the Virgin Mary appeared to shepherd children in 1917. In Fatima, the pope is marking the 10th anniversary of the shepherds' beatification, which put them on the road to sainthood.
Aboard his plane en route to Lisbon, Benedict spoke to reporters from several news agencies and delivered perhaps his most forthright comments on the sex abuse scandal that broke two months ago, embroiling the church worldwide and leading to dozens of lawsuits as well as resignations of bishops and priests.
"Today we see in a truly terrifying way that the greatest persecution of the church does not come from outside enemies but is born of sin within the church," the 83-year-old pontiff said in response to a question about the scandal, submitted in advance.
"The church has a deep need to learn to do penance, accept purification, and to learn to ask forgiveness," he said. But he added that "forgiveness cannot be a substitute for justice."
Allegations that church leaders covered up sex abuse by pedophile priests and shielded them from prosecution in several European countries and the U.S. have overshadowed preparations for Pope Benedict's visit to Portugal, his first since becoming pope five years ago.
Portugal is an example of a once-traditional Catholic country that's become more secular in recent years, and where the church would like to reassert its influence. About 90 percent of Portuguese consider themselves Catholics, but only 20 percent attend weekly services. Until the mid-1970s, Portugal was ruled by a military dictatorship that leaned heavily on Catholic doctrine in its governing philosophy. But the country recently legalized abortion and has voted to allow gay marriage -- policies opposed by the church.
Wearing an ivory robe and large gold crucifix around his neck, Benedict stepped off his plane in Lisbon this morning and was greeted by Portugal's president, Anibal Cavaco Silva, and his wife Maria. The president welcomed the pope to a "free and plural Portugal" whose people, he said, have "a calling to recognize the value of diversity."
Portugal's Socialist party holds power in parliament, but Silva is from an opposition center-right party which opposed the country's gay marriage measure. The bill was endorsed by lawmakers, and Silva is due to decide next week whether to sign it into law. If he does, Portugal will be the sixth country in the world to allow same-sex marriage.
Pope Expresses 'Shame and Remorse' to Irish Catholics
Dana Kennedy Contributor
AOL News
(March 20) -- Pope Benedict XVI sent an impassioned and unprecedented pastoral letter to the people of Ireland Saturday, apologizing for decades of clerical sexual abuse but placing the blame squarely on Irish bishops.
The Pope said Irish bishops "failed, at times, grievously," and "serious mistakes were made" when confronted with clerical sexual abuse. He called the abuse, which was outlined in devastating detail in two investigations released last year in Ireland, "sinful and criminal."
Surprisingly, the Pope also put some of the blame on Ireland itself, for becoming more secular and abandoning old-school Catholicism.
"The church in your country has had to confront new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society," he wrote.
"Fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people's traditional adherence to Catholic teachings and values."
But Benedict made it clear that he understood the misery endured by victims of abuse and asked them to forgive the church.
"You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry," the Pope wrote. "I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated."
Thousands of Irish children were raped, molested, beated and otherwise abused by parish priests and by nuns and brothers in Catholic-run schools and orphanages, according to investigations between 2005 and 2009 by the Irish government.
No bishops ever reported the abuse to police until the first victims sued the church in 1996.
Benedict acknowledged the horrors faced by the victims and said he understood their anger.
"Many of you found that, when you were courageous enough to speak of what happened to you, no one would listen," he wrote. "Those of you who were abused in residential institutions must have felt that there was no escape for your sufferings."
"It is understandable that you find it hard to forgive or be reconciled with the Church," he continued. "In her name, I openly express the shame and remorse that we all feel."
The highly-anticipated, 4600-word letter, which will be read at evening masses Saturday and Sunday all over Ireland, promised a Vatican probe, called an "apostolic visitation," into certain dioceses in Ireland. The Vatican ordered a similar probe in the U.S. after 2002.
There was no mention of the Vatican bearing any responsibility for the abuse in Ireland and no indication that any immediate disciplinary measures were planned for Irish church officials involved in covering up child sexual abuse.
The Pope's harshest words were aimed at the clergy who abused children.
"You betrayed the trust that was placed in you by innocent young people and their parents," he wrote. "You have forfeited the esteem of the people of Ireland and brought shame and dishonor among your confreres."
Though the Pope wrote that " the problem of child abuse is peculiar neither to Ireland or the Church," his tone in the letter sounded oddly at times as if Ireland were the only country to be facing the results of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests.
The U.S. faced a massive Catholic sexual abuse scandal in 2002 and similar scandals are now erupting in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Brazil.
The Pope cited the country's long history of "persecution" and "recent decades of secularization" as some of the many cultural and societal factors that left Irish Catholics more vulnerable to "the disturbing problem of child sexual abuse."
Maeve Lewis, director of the Irish abuse survivors' group, One in Four, said she was "astounded at the Pope's assertion that that the roots of clerical sexual abuse lie in the secularization of Irish society, the falling off of religious devotion and failures to adhere to canon law."
"This shows a complete misunderstanding of the dynamics of sexual violence, and creates little hope that the Church will ever respond effectively to the problem," Lewis said.
Lewis added that the Pope blamed the Irish church without mentioning the Vatican's role.
"If the Church cannot acknowledge this fundamental truth, it is still in denial," she said.
In contrast, Irish Cardinal Sean Brady, under fire himself for his role in indirectly helping cover up the sexual abuse of Ireland's worst pedophile priest, Brendan Smyth, said he "welcomed" the letter during a Saturday address in Armagh.
"It is evident from the Pastoral Letter that Pope Benedict is deeply dismayed by what he refers to as 'sinful and criminal acts and the way the Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them,'" Brady said.
Pope Benedict XVI Allowed Pedophile Priest to Continue in Ministry
Dana Kennedy Contributor
AOL News
(March 12) -- The fallout from the growing Catholic sex abuse scandals finally reached as far as the pope Friday when it was revealed that Benedict XVI knew a priest was a pedophile in 1980 but approved a stint in therapy that allowed him to continue in the ministry, where he remains today.
The pope's participation in a case involving a priest in Essen, Germany, took place in 1980, when Benedict was archbishop in Germany. The priest was accused of forcing an 11-year-old boy to perform oral sex on him, the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Friday night.
Benedict approved a decision moving the priest, identified only as "H," to a rectory in Munich where he was to undergo therapy. After about a month, according to a statement issued Friday by the Munich-Freising archdiocese, Monsignor Gerhard Gruber decided to return the priest to a Munich parish.
But by 1985, new allegations surfaced. In 1986, the priest was convicted of sexually abusing other minors after he had been moved to the town of Grafing to do pastoral work. He received a fine, a suspended prison sentence and more therapy before again returning to pastoral work.
In May 2008, "H" was once again removed from his parish work, this time in the town of Garching, according to the diocesan statement. He works in the archdiocese's tourism operations but is not allowed to conduct any work involving children, the statement said.
The pope, then known as Joseph Ratzinger, was archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982. He then moved to Rome where he became the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith until he was elected pope in 2005 after the death of John Paul II.
The German archdiocese issued a statement Friday saying Gruber, now 81, takes "full responsibility" for the decision to return "H" to pastoral work. Gruber said in a statement released by the archdiocese that he had not made the pope aware of his decision because it was the kind of call that was often left to his underlings.
"The cardinal could not deal with everything," Gruber said. "The repeated employment of 'H' in pastoral duties was a serious mistake. I deeply regret that this decision led to offenses against youths. I apologize to all who were harmed."
Neither the Vatican nor Gruber commented on whether or not "H" would continue working in the church at his current post in Garching in Upper Bavaria.
Friday's revelations are just the latest bad news for the Vatican, which has been mired in intensifying sexual abuse scandals in Germany, Austria, Ireland and the Netherlands as well allegations that the Mexican founder of one of the church's most favored orders sexually molested his illegitimate sons.
The new information about the pope came less than a month after Irish bishops were summoned to the Vatican to discuss decades of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland and on the very same day that a delegation of German bishops met with the pontiff.
The crisis has been growing in Germany, where more than 170 students have alleged they were sexually abused at several Catholic high schools.
On Friday, the head of Germany's Catholic bishops apologized to victims after the meeting with the pope. He said Benedict had said he felt "great dismay" over the scandal.
On Wednesday, the pope's older brother, Georg Ratzinger, was also drawn into the furor. Some of most explosive clerical sex abuse claims in Germany center on a prestigious choir, the Regensburger Domspatzen, that Georg Ratzinger led for 30 years.
Several former singers in the choir have come forward with claims that at least two priests attached to the elementary boarding school allied to the choir sexually abused and brutally mistreated their charges.
Ratzinger denied any knowledge of sexual abuse but admitted he slapped some of the boys in the choir and knew of violence on the part of a headmaster associated with a school where choir members attended.
Cardinal Mahony To Resign, Search Under Way For Successor GILLIAN FLACCUS | 02/11/10 08:58 PM
LOS ANGELES — The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles said Thursday a search is under way for a successor to Cardinal Roger Mahony, who has spent 25 years as the spiritual leader of the nation's largest diocese and presided over a record-breaking clergy abuse settlement.
Mahony, the longest-serving U.S. cardinal since the Second Vatican Council, turns 74 on Feb. 27, and under church rules, bishops submit their resignation at age 75 to the pope.
The pope can decide whether to keep a bishop on the job longer.
Auxiliary Bishop Edward Clark notified his pastoral staff of the news in a memo Wednesday and included a prayer to be recited by parishioners for the success of the selection process.
The memo was first posted on the Catholic Web site Whispers in the Loggia.
A spokesman for the archdiocese confirmed to The Associated Press that the prayer was distributed.
"It's just an acknowledgment that the Cardinal is turning 74 and we have a year to go before he turns 75 and is required to submit his resignation," said Tod Tamberg, the spokesman.
During his tenure in Los Angeles, Mahony has been dogged by the clergy sexual abuse scandal.
In 2007, he agreed to a record-setting $660 million settlement with more than 500 alleged victims of clergy abuse.
A federal grand jury is also investigating how the Archdiocese of Los Angeles handled claims of abuse, and has subpoenaed several witnesses, including a former Los Angeles priest convicted of child molestation and a monsignor who served as vicar for clergy under Mahony.
Mahony's attorney has said the cardinal is not a target of the investigation.
The Rev. Thomas Reese, author of "Archbishop, Inside the Power Structure of the American Catholic Church," said it's unusual for an archbishop or cardinal to so openly indicate their departure before turning 75 and submitting their resignations to the pope.
Cardinals often stay on as archbishop of the diocese for several years past the retirement age. Cardinals can continue to vote until age 80 for the election of a pope.
"This seems to indicate that he's already talked to the pope or someone in the Vatican and made it clear that he's not kidding – he wants out when he turns 75 and the pope has said OK," said Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.
Mahony, who was born in Hollywood, was appointed archbishop of Los Angeles on July 16, 1985, and was elevated to cardinal by Pope John Paul II on June 28, 1991. Before coming to Los Angeles, he served as bishop in the Diocese of Stockton for five years in the early 1980s.
_____
AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll in New York contributed to this report.
Pope Meets With Irish Bishops on Abuse Scandal
Dana Kennedy
Feb. 15) -- As the increasingly vocal survivors of Ireland's Catholic sexual abuse scandal wait for answers and apologies, Pope Benedict XVI began an unprecedented two-day summit with Ireland's bishops at the Vatican today. The Pope's direct involvement marks a milestone in a crisis that has deeply marred the Catholic Church's image in what was once one of its most devoted countries.
The meeting comes a little more than two months after the release of a devastating investigation, known as the Murphy Report, revealing the scope of child abuse by priests in the diocese of Dublin. Like previous reports on other parts of the church in Ireland, it laid out how for decades the Catholic hierarchy appeared primarily concerned with covering up the crimes of its priests.
The Irish bishops, who formally apologized to Ireland in December, will reportedly be allowed seven minutes each to speak and may be questioned by the pope and senior curial officials. Twenty-four bishops went up, one-by-one, to see the pontiff as the summit began, according to published reports.
Pope Benedict XVI plans to hold a two-day summit with bishops from Ireland to discuss the Catholic child sexual abuse scandal.
Benedict has promised to write a pastoral letter to the people of Ireland about the damage done by the sex abuse and will reportedly outline several initiatives, including public services of repentance for Irish bishops and priests. The summit talks are meant in part to provide the pope with guidance in formulating that text.
But there is no guarantee any written response will be enough for the Irish people who feel betrayed by the church."I have a feeling the pope will just disappoint us again," saidAndrew Madden, who became the first victim to go public in 1995 with the revelation that church officials paid him off to stay silent after he told them the family priest had abused him for three years. "I'm not confident about much coming out of it. Every time you engage with the Vatican you hold out hope they'll react in a way that's real and human and connected and they never do."
What happened in Ireland goes beyond the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in the U.S. in part because the church is so entrenched in the economy of the country. The Catholic church, for example, runs 92 percent of the state-owned primary schools and owns some of the country's biggest hospitals.
"A lot of people in Ireland are so shocked and angry," said Maeve Lewis, executive director of One in Four, a Dublin-based support and advocacy group for victims of sexual abuse.
"In a way the worst part is finding out how much was known about these abusive priests and how much was covered up. The most heartbreaking calls we get are from victims who realize that if the church had acted sooner, they wouldn't have been abused."
Some of the Irish bishops at the Vatican summit were identified in the reports as participating in the cover-ups and will be resigning. Some of the victims have made sure their presence will be felt as well during the talks.
A letter, signed by two of Ireland's most prominent abuse victims and sent directly to the Vatican in time for the summit, chides the pope for not cooperating with the most recent investigating commission. It asks that he write to the people of Ireland "accepting fully the harm" caused by the culture of priestly abuse and cover-up in Ireland.
The Murphy report examined the cases of more than 320 victims of priestly abuse in the Dublin diocese from 1975 to 2004. Among its many findings was that one priest admitting molesting children more than 100 times. Another said he molested children at least once every two weeks for 25 years.
The report found that church officials routinely ignored complaints from children and their parents about abusive priests, concluding that all the Dublin diocese cared about was "the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets."
The findings came just seven months after the release of the Ryan report, the result of a harrowing nine-year investigation into the chronic beatings, rapes, near-starvation and humiliation of 30,000 children in state-run "industrial schools" and orphanages all run by the Catholic Church. Both reports detailed the cover-ups of the crimes by Irish church officials as well as the stonewalling and lack of cooperation on the part of everyone from the Christian Brothers to the Vatican.
The Murphy report specifically said that Vatican officials refused to deal directly with investigators, saying they had not gone through proper diplomatic channels.
Benedict XVI issued a strongly-worded statement in December after the release of the Murphy report, saying he "shares the outrage, betrayal and shame felt by so many of the faithful in Ireland." But many survivors of the abuse in Ireland believe the Vatican knew more about pedophiliac priests in Ireland and elsewhere over the years. They want the Pope to accept more public responsibility.
Some point to two Vatican documents that outline how clerical sexual abuse should be handled as characteristic of the culture of secrecy surrounding paedophiliac priests. The document titled crimen sollicitationis was issued in 1962 and revised in a different form in 2001 as Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela. Both were written entirely in Latin.
Filmmaker Colm O'Gorman, who said he was raped by a priest in County Wexford when he was 14, addressed the subject in his 2006 documentary, "Sex Crimes and the Vatican."
Since Madden's revelations, Ireland has been increasingly conscious of clerical sexual abuse over the past 15 years. Awareness was heightened the same year when the infamous Father Brendan Smyth was finally arrested at age 67 after about 40 years of abusing children in Ireland and the U.S., despite his behavior being known to higher-ups.
"Catholic priests have been the country's aristocracy since the 1850s," says Patsy McGarry, the religion writer for the Irish Times who is considered one of the experts on the sex abuse scandals. "It's hard for those outside Ireland to understand the kind of power they've had."
But that power is waning. Ireland is 86.7 percent Roman Catholic but regular Mass attendance dropped from 90 percent in 1973 to 43 percent.
Andrew Madden said he always wanted to be a priest, even after being molested for three years by Fr. Ivan Payne. After he was turned down by church officials -- because, he believes, he'd gone public about Payne -- he went through years of depression and alcoholism.
Now 45, Madden works in information technology and decided to formally leave the Catholic church, a process called "defecting." He used the resources of a Web site run by a group called "Count Me Out," formed in reaction to the Ryan report to help people make a "clean break" from the church.
"I'm still a spiritual person," Madden said. "But my higher power is no longer the Catholic Church."
latimes.com
Former Mahony aide testifies before grand jury in L.A. church abuse case
Msgr. Richard Loomis, ex-vicar of clergy for the archdiocese, spoke to a federal panel under 'use immunity,' meaning his testimony cannot be used against him in a criminal prosecution, a source says.
By Richard Winton and Victoria Kim
December 24, 2009
The former vicar of clergy for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles testified under a grant of immunity last week before a federal grand jury investigating the church's role in sexual abuse by priests, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Msgr. Richard Loomis, whose responsibilities as a high-ranking aide to Cardinal Roger Mahony included overseeing sexual-abuse cases against fellow priests, testified Dec. 16 under "use immunity," meaning his testimony cannot be used against him in a criminal prosecution, said the source, who asked not to be named because grand juries are confidential.
A "use immunity" agreement would not protect Loomis from being prosecuted based on statements made outside his grand jury testimony.
The source said other members of the church hierarchy "are being called, or in line to come" before the grand jury. "It's not [Loomis] alone," the source said.
Archdiocese attorney J. Michael Hennigan said he was not aware of any other grand jury subpoenas of church officials. He said he has been informed that Mahony is not a target of the inquiry. Law enforcement sources have told The Times that the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles had launched a grand jury investigation in connection with Mahony's response to the molestation of children by priests in the archdiocese.
Loomis testified at a civil deposition earlier this year that Mahony ordered him in 2000 not to contact police about allegations of sexual abuse by a priest. Loomis was testifying under questioning by civil attorney John C. Manly in a case involving the now-defrocked Rev. Michael Baker, who has since been convicted and sentenced to a 10-year prison term for molestation.
Mahony has said Baker's case "troubles" him the most and has publicly apologized for having allowed the priest to remain in the ministry. Baker was called to testify before the grand jury this year, The Times has reported.
Manly also said he was told by Loomis' civil attorney that he had appeared before the grand jury. That attorney declined to comment.
richard.winton@latimes.com
victoria.kim@latimes.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, April 4th, 2010 -- 7:03 pm
With the Vatican in the grips of a pedophilia scandal, the spotlight in America is being turned on US scouting, which is accused of keeping quiet about decades of alleged sexual aggression by its leaders against young boys.
The Boy Scouts of America are being sued by a man who said he was abused five times when he was between 11 and 12 years old by his then-scoutmaster in Portland, Oregon.
The identity of the alleged victim, now 37, is being concealed for fear of reprisals related to the 29-million-dollar sex abuse lawsuit he brought against the Boy Scouts of America and its local Portland branch, the Cascade Pacific Council.
The plaintiff decried what he described as the group's silence on sexual abuses targeting children and teenagers at the hands of trusted scout leaders.
The alleged abuser, Timur Dykes, now 53, admitted after the incidents that he was a serial molester. He has been convicted three times for sex abuse against boys.
Story continues below...
Scouts have convicted before US courts time and again, but this trial has gained more notoriety as fresh accusations of sex abuse hit the Catholic Church, said Patrick Boyle, editor of the website youthtoday.com.
"Institutional child sex abuse is really on everyone's mind right now," said Boyle, author of the book "Scout's Honor: Sexual Abuse in America's Most Trusted Institution."
He said the court case "offers people another example of how institutions and organizations have so much sex abuse and have been hiding sex abuse for so long."
The trial is unique in that it has forced the Boy Scouts, which celebrates its centennial this year, to submit to the court for the first time in 20 years documents detailing sexual abuse recorded by the organization.
Although the group has been sued dozens of times over sex abuse, most cases settled out of court, which ensured the records were kept confidential.
"The files were created almost a century ago. So it shows what the scout officials knew, how many kids were abused ... where the abuse occurs," Boyle told AFP.
He said the Boy Scouts were aware of "thousands" of children abused over several decades.
Treading cautiously, the Texas-based scouts issued a terse statement saying: "Unfortunately, child abuse is a societal problem and there is no fail-safe method for screening out abusers."
But by Friday, the statement was no longer on the organization's website, www.scouting.org.
According to Boyle, scouts say they do not chose local leaders, a responsibility that falls instead to local officials, like the Cascade Pacific Council and the Mormon Church in the Oregon case.
But the scouts "do tell the troop's sponsors what kind of person you're allowed to take, what you have to do to check somebody out, and also to act when they do something like abusing kids," Boyle said.
The Oregon victim's lawyer, Kelly Clark, declined to comment on the trial, which got underway last month.
On his website, www.boyscoutabuse.com, Clark writes that victims may feel "an added sense of guilt about bringing legal action against an organization that many view in a positive light, one that no doubt has helped many boys, and, indeed, an organization that stresses 'loyalty' as one of its core values."
Boyle lamented that the Boy Scouts would not admit to their sex abuse problems.
"I wish the Boy Scouts would take all the files, give them to a researcher so that we know how often it's happened, how it happened so they can try to shape their program better to stop it," he said.
Pope: Church's Greatest Enemy Comes From Within
2010 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Lauren Frayer Contributor
LISBON, Portugal (May 11) -- In some of his most direct comments about priestly sex abuse, Pope Benedict XVI said today that the "terrifying" truth is that the Catholic Church's "greatest persecution" has come from within its own ranks.
Benedict arrived in Lisbon this morning at the start of a four-day Portugal tour that includes an open-air mass on the capital's riverfront this evening and a trip to Fatima, a pilgrimage site where faithful believe the Virgin Mary appeared to shepherd children in 1917. In Fatima, the pope is marking the 10th anniversary of the shepherds' beatification, which put them on the road to sainthood.
Aboard his plane en route to Lisbon, Benedict spoke to reporters from several news agencies and delivered perhaps his most forthright comments on the sex abuse scandal that broke two months ago, embroiling the church worldwide and leading to dozens of lawsuits as well as resignations of bishops and priests.
"Today we see in a truly terrifying way that the greatest persecution of the church does not come from outside enemies but is born of sin within the church," the 83-year-old pontiff said in response to a question about the scandal, submitted in advance.
"The church has a deep need to learn to do penance, accept purification, and to learn to ask forgiveness," he said. But he added that "forgiveness cannot be a substitute for justice."
Allegations that church leaders covered up sex abuse by pedophile priests and shielded them from prosecution in several European countries and the U.S. have overshadowed preparations for Pope Benedict's visit to Portugal, his first since becoming pope five years ago.
Portugal is an example of a once-traditional Catholic country that's become more secular in recent years, and where the church would like to reassert its influence. About 90 percent of Portuguese consider themselves Catholics, but only 20 percent attend weekly services. Until the mid-1970s, Portugal was ruled by a military dictatorship that leaned heavily on Catholic doctrine in its governing philosophy. But the country recently legalized abortion and has voted to allow gay marriage -- policies opposed by the church.
Wearing an ivory robe and large gold crucifix around his neck, Benedict stepped off his plane in Lisbon this morning and was greeted by Portugal's president, Anibal Cavaco Silva, and his wife Maria. The president welcomed the pope to a "free and plural Portugal" whose people, he said, have "a calling to recognize the value of diversity."
Portugal's Socialist party holds power in parliament, but Silva is from an opposition center-right party which opposed the country's gay marriage measure. The bill was endorsed by lawmakers, and Silva is due to decide next week whether to sign it into law. If he does, Portugal will be the sixth country in the world to allow same-sex marriage.
Pope Expresses 'Shame and Remorse' to Irish Catholics
Dana Kennedy Contributor
AOL News
(March 20) -- Pope Benedict XVI sent an impassioned and unprecedented pastoral letter to the people of Ireland Saturday, apologizing for decades of clerical sexual abuse but placing the blame squarely on Irish bishops.
The Pope said Irish bishops "failed, at times, grievously," and "serious mistakes were made" when confronted with clerical sexual abuse. He called the abuse, which was outlined in devastating detail in two investigations released last year in Ireland, "sinful and criminal."
Surprisingly, the Pope also put some of the blame on Ireland itself, for becoming more secular and abandoning old-school Catholicism.
"The church in your country has had to confront new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society," he wrote.
"Fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people's traditional adherence to Catholic teachings and values."
But Benedict made it clear that he understood the misery endured by victims of abuse and asked them to forgive the church.
"You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry," the Pope wrote. "I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated."
Thousands of Irish children were raped, molested, beated and otherwise abused by parish priests and by nuns and brothers in Catholic-run schools and orphanages, according to investigations between 2005 and 2009 by the Irish government.
No bishops ever reported the abuse to police until the first victims sued the church in 1996.
Benedict acknowledged the horrors faced by the victims and said he understood their anger.
"Many of you found that, when you were courageous enough to speak of what happened to you, no one would listen," he wrote. "Those of you who were abused in residential institutions must have felt that there was no escape for your sufferings."
"It is understandable that you find it hard to forgive or be reconciled with the Church," he continued. "In her name, I openly express the shame and remorse that we all feel."
The highly-anticipated, 4600-word letter, which will be read at evening masses Saturday and Sunday all over Ireland, promised a Vatican probe, called an "apostolic visitation," into certain dioceses in Ireland. The Vatican ordered a similar probe in the U.S. after 2002.
There was no mention of the Vatican bearing any responsibility for the abuse in Ireland and no indication that any immediate disciplinary measures were planned for Irish church officials involved in covering up child sexual abuse.
The Pope's harshest words were aimed at the clergy who abused children.
"You betrayed the trust that was placed in you by innocent young people and their parents," he wrote. "You have forfeited the esteem of the people of Ireland and brought shame and dishonor among your confreres."
Though the Pope wrote that " the problem of child abuse is peculiar neither to Ireland or the Church," his tone in the letter sounded oddly at times as if Ireland were the only country to be facing the results of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests.
The U.S. faced a massive Catholic sexual abuse scandal in 2002 and similar scandals are now erupting in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Brazil.
The Pope cited the country's long history of "persecution" and "recent decades of secularization" as some of the many cultural and societal factors that left Irish Catholics more vulnerable to "the disturbing problem of child sexual abuse."
Maeve Lewis, director of the Irish abuse survivors' group, One in Four, said she was "astounded at the Pope's assertion that that the roots of clerical sexual abuse lie in the secularization of Irish society, the falling off of religious devotion and failures to adhere to canon law."
"This shows a complete misunderstanding of the dynamics of sexual violence, and creates little hope that the Church will ever respond effectively to the problem," Lewis said.
Lewis added that the Pope blamed the Irish church without mentioning the Vatican's role.
"If the Church cannot acknowledge this fundamental truth, it is still in denial," she said.
In contrast, Irish Cardinal Sean Brady, under fire himself for his role in indirectly helping cover up the sexual abuse of Ireland's worst pedophile priest, Brendan Smyth, said he "welcomed" the letter during a Saturday address in Armagh.
"It is evident from the Pastoral Letter that Pope Benedict is deeply dismayed by what he refers to as 'sinful and criminal acts and the way the Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them,'" Brady said.
Pope Benedict XVI Allowed Pedophile Priest to Continue in Ministry
Dana Kennedy Contributor
AOL News
(March 12) -- The fallout from the growing Catholic sex abuse scandals finally reached as far as the pope Friday when it was revealed that Benedict XVI knew a priest was a pedophile in 1980 but approved a stint in therapy that allowed him to continue in the ministry, where he remains today.
The pope's participation in a case involving a priest in Essen, Germany, took place in 1980, when Benedict was archbishop in Germany. The priest was accused of forcing an 11-year-old boy to perform oral sex on him, the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Friday night.
Benedict approved a decision moving the priest, identified only as "H," to a rectory in Munich where he was to undergo therapy. After about a month, according to a statement issued Friday by the Munich-Freising archdiocese, Monsignor Gerhard Gruber decided to return the priest to a Munich parish.
But by 1985, new allegations surfaced. In 1986, the priest was convicted of sexually abusing other minors after he had been moved to the town of Grafing to do pastoral work. He received a fine, a suspended prison sentence and more therapy before again returning to pastoral work.
In May 2008, "H" was once again removed from his parish work, this time in the town of Garching, according to the diocesan statement. He works in the archdiocese's tourism operations but is not allowed to conduct any work involving children, the statement said.
The pope, then known as Joseph Ratzinger, was archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982. He then moved to Rome where he became the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith until he was elected pope in 2005 after the death of John Paul II.
The German archdiocese issued a statement Friday saying Gruber, now 81, takes "full responsibility" for the decision to return "H" to pastoral work. Gruber said in a statement released by the archdiocese that he had not made the pope aware of his decision because it was the kind of call that was often left to his underlings.
"The cardinal could not deal with everything," Gruber said. "The repeated employment of 'H' in pastoral duties was a serious mistake. I deeply regret that this decision led to offenses against youths. I apologize to all who were harmed."
Neither the Vatican nor Gruber commented on whether or not "H" would continue working in the church at his current post in Garching in Upper Bavaria.
Friday's revelations are just the latest bad news for the Vatican, which has been mired in intensifying sexual abuse scandals in Germany, Austria, Ireland and the Netherlands as well allegations that the Mexican founder of one of the church's most favored orders sexually molested his illegitimate sons.
The new information about the pope came less than a month after Irish bishops were summoned to the Vatican to discuss decades of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland and on the very same day that a delegation of German bishops met with the pontiff.
The crisis has been growing in Germany, where more than 170 students have alleged they were sexually abused at several Catholic high schools.
On Friday, the head of Germany's Catholic bishops apologized to victims after the meeting with the pope. He said Benedict had said he felt "great dismay" over the scandal.
On Wednesday, the pope's older brother, Georg Ratzinger, was also drawn into the furor. Some of most explosive clerical sex abuse claims in Germany center on a prestigious choir, the Regensburger Domspatzen, that Georg Ratzinger led for 30 years.
Several former singers in the choir have come forward with claims that at least two priests attached to the elementary boarding school allied to the choir sexually abused and brutally mistreated their charges.
Ratzinger denied any knowledge of sexual abuse but admitted he slapped some of the boys in the choir and knew of violence on the part of a headmaster associated with a school where choir members attended.
Cardinal Mahony To Resign, Search Under Way For Successor GILLIAN FLACCUS | 02/11/10 08:58 PM
LOS ANGELES — The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles said Thursday a search is under way for a successor to Cardinal Roger Mahony, who has spent 25 years as the spiritual leader of the nation's largest diocese and presided over a record-breaking clergy abuse settlement.
Mahony, the longest-serving U.S. cardinal since the Second Vatican Council, turns 74 on Feb. 27, and under church rules, bishops submit their resignation at age 75 to the pope.
The pope can decide whether to keep a bishop on the job longer.
Auxiliary Bishop Edward Clark notified his pastoral staff of the news in a memo Wednesday and included a prayer to be recited by parishioners for the success of the selection process.
The memo was first posted on the Catholic Web site Whispers in the Loggia.
A spokesman for the archdiocese confirmed to The Associated Press that the prayer was distributed.
"It's just an acknowledgment that the Cardinal is turning 74 and we have a year to go before he turns 75 and is required to submit his resignation," said Tod Tamberg, the spokesman.
During his tenure in Los Angeles, Mahony has been dogged by the clergy sexual abuse scandal.
In 2007, he agreed to a record-setting $660 million settlement with more than 500 alleged victims of clergy abuse.
A federal grand jury is also investigating how the Archdiocese of Los Angeles handled claims of abuse, and has subpoenaed several witnesses, including a former Los Angeles priest convicted of child molestation and a monsignor who served as vicar for clergy under Mahony.
Mahony's attorney has said the cardinal is not a target of the investigation.
The Rev. Thomas Reese, author of "Archbishop, Inside the Power Structure of the American Catholic Church," said it's unusual for an archbishop or cardinal to so openly indicate their departure before turning 75 and submitting their resignations to the pope.
Cardinals often stay on as archbishop of the diocese for several years past the retirement age. Cardinals can continue to vote until age 80 for the election of a pope.
"This seems to indicate that he's already talked to the pope or someone in the Vatican and made it clear that he's not kidding – he wants out when he turns 75 and the pope has said OK," said Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.
Mahony, who was born in Hollywood, was appointed archbishop of Los Angeles on July 16, 1985, and was elevated to cardinal by Pope John Paul II on June 28, 1991. Before coming to Los Angeles, he served as bishop in the Diocese of Stockton for five years in the early 1980s.
_____
AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll in New York contributed to this report.
Pope Meets With Irish Bishops on Abuse Scandal
Dana Kennedy
Feb. 15) -- As the increasingly vocal survivors of Ireland's Catholic sexual abuse scandal wait for answers and apologies, Pope Benedict XVI began an unprecedented two-day summit with Ireland's bishops at the Vatican today. The Pope's direct involvement marks a milestone in a crisis that has deeply marred the Catholic Church's image in what was once one of its most devoted countries.
The meeting comes a little more than two months after the release of a devastating investigation, known as the Murphy Report, revealing the scope of child abuse by priests in the diocese of Dublin. Like previous reports on other parts of the church in Ireland, it laid out how for decades the Catholic hierarchy appeared primarily concerned with covering up the crimes of its priests.
The Irish bishops, who formally apologized to Ireland in December, will reportedly be allowed seven minutes each to speak and may be questioned by the pope and senior curial officials. Twenty-four bishops went up, one-by-one, to see the pontiff as the summit began, according to published reports.
Pope Benedict XVI plans to hold a two-day summit with bishops from Ireland to discuss the Catholic child sexual abuse scandal.
Benedict has promised to write a pastoral letter to the people of Ireland about the damage done by the sex abuse and will reportedly outline several initiatives, including public services of repentance for Irish bishops and priests. The summit talks are meant in part to provide the pope with guidance in formulating that text.
But there is no guarantee any written response will be enough for the Irish people who feel betrayed by the church."I have a feeling the pope will just disappoint us again," saidAndrew Madden, who became the first victim to go public in 1995 with the revelation that church officials paid him off to stay silent after he told them the family priest had abused him for three years. "I'm not confident about much coming out of it. Every time you engage with the Vatican you hold out hope they'll react in a way that's real and human and connected and they never do."
What happened in Ireland goes beyond the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in the U.S. in part because the church is so entrenched in the economy of the country. The Catholic church, for example, runs 92 percent of the state-owned primary schools and owns some of the country's biggest hospitals.
"A lot of people in Ireland are so shocked and angry," said Maeve Lewis, executive director of One in Four, a Dublin-based support and advocacy group for victims of sexual abuse.
"In a way the worst part is finding out how much was known about these abusive priests and how much was covered up. The most heartbreaking calls we get are from victims who realize that if the church had acted sooner, they wouldn't have been abused."
Some of the Irish bishops at the Vatican summit were identified in the reports as participating in the cover-ups and will be resigning. Some of the victims have made sure their presence will be felt as well during the talks.
A letter, signed by two of Ireland's most prominent abuse victims and sent directly to the Vatican in time for the summit, chides the pope for not cooperating with the most recent investigating commission. It asks that he write to the people of Ireland "accepting fully the harm" caused by the culture of priestly abuse and cover-up in Ireland.
The Murphy report examined the cases of more than 320 victims of priestly abuse in the Dublin diocese from 1975 to 2004. Among its many findings was that one priest admitting molesting children more than 100 times. Another said he molested children at least once every two weeks for 25 years.
The report found that church officials routinely ignored complaints from children and their parents about abusive priests, concluding that all the Dublin diocese cared about was "the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets."
The findings came just seven months after the release of the Ryan report, the result of a harrowing nine-year investigation into the chronic beatings, rapes, near-starvation and humiliation of 30,000 children in state-run "industrial schools" and orphanages all run by the Catholic Church. Both reports detailed the cover-ups of the crimes by Irish church officials as well as the stonewalling and lack of cooperation on the part of everyone from the Christian Brothers to the Vatican.
The Murphy report specifically said that Vatican officials refused to deal directly with investigators, saying they had not gone through proper diplomatic channels.
Benedict XVI issued a strongly-worded statement in December after the release of the Murphy report, saying he "shares the outrage, betrayal and shame felt by so many of the faithful in Ireland." But many survivors of the abuse in Ireland believe the Vatican knew more about pedophiliac priests in Ireland and elsewhere over the years. They want the Pope to accept more public responsibility.
Some point to two Vatican documents that outline how clerical sexual abuse should be handled as characteristic of the culture of secrecy surrounding paedophiliac priests. The document titled crimen sollicitationis was issued in 1962 and revised in a different form in 2001 as Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela. Both were written entirely in Latin.
Filmmaker Colm O'Gorman, who said he was raped by a priest in County Wexford when he was 14, addressed the subject in his 2006 documentary, "Sex Crimes and the Vatican."
Since Madden's revelations, Ireland has been increasingly conscious of clerical sexual abuse over the past 15 years. Awareness was heightened the same year when the infamous Father Brendan Smyth was finally arrested at age 67 after about 40 years of abusing children in Ireland and the U.S., despite his behavior being known to higher-ups.
"Catholic priests have been the country's aristocracy since the 1850s," says Patsy McGarry, the religion writer for the Irish Times who is considered one of the experts on the sex abuse scandals. "It's hard for those outside Ireland to understand the kind of power they've had."
But that power is waning. Ireland is 86.7 percent Roman Catholic but regular Mass attendance dropped from 90 percent in 1973 to 43 percent.
Andrew Madden said he always wanted to be a priest, even after being molested for three years by Fr. Ivan Payne. After he was turned down by church officials -- because, he believes, he'd gone public about Payne -- he went through years of depression and alcoholism.
Now 45, Madden works in information technology and decided to formally leave the Catholic church, a process called "defecting." He used the resources of a Web site run by a group called "Count Me Out," formed in reaction to the Ryan report to help people make a "clean break" from the church.
"I'm still a spiritual person," Madden said. "But my higher power is no longer the Catholic Church."
latimes.com
Former Mahony aide testifies before grand jury in L.A. church abuse case
Msgr. Richard Loomis, ex-vicar of clergy for the archdiocese, spoke to a federal panel under 'use immunity,' meaning his testimony cannot be used against him in a criminal prosecution, a source says.
By Richard Winton and Victoria Kim
December 24, 2009
The former vicar of clergy for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles testified under a grant of immunity last week before a federal grand jury investigating the church's role in sexual abuse by priests, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Msgr. Richard Loomis, whose responsibilities as a high-ranking aide to Cardinal Roger Mahony included overseeing sexual-abuse cases against fellow priests, testified Dec. 16 under "use immunity," meaning his testimony cannot be used against him in a criminal prosecution, said the source, who asked not to be named because grand juries are confidential.
A "use immunity" agreement would not protect Loomis from being prosecuted based on statements made outside his grand jury testimony.
The source said other members of the church hierarchy "are being called, or in line to come" before the grand jury. "It's not [Loomis] alone," the source said.
Archdiocese attorney J. Michael Hennigan said he was not aware of any other grand jury subpoenas of church officials. He said he has been informed that Mahony is not a target of the inquiry. Law enforcement sources have told The Times that the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles had launched a grand jury investigation in connection with Mahony's response to the molestation of children by priests in the archdiocese.
Loomis testified at a civil deposition earlier this year that Mahony ordered him in 2000 not to contact police about allegations of sexual abuse by a priest. Loomis was testifying under questioning by civil attorney John C. Manly in a case involving the now-defrocked Rev. Michael Baker, who has since been convicted and sentenced to a 10-year prison term for molestation.
Mahony has said Baker's case "troubles" him the most and has publicly apologized for having allowed the priest to remain in the ministry. Baker was called to testify before the grand jury this year, The Times has reported.
Manly also said he was told by Loomis' civil attorney that he had appeared before the grand jury. That attorney declined to comment.
richard.winton@latimes.com
victoria.kim@latimes.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
NICOLE WINFIELD | 09/14/09 12:01 AM | AP
ITALY GRAPPLES WITH PRIESTS SEX ABUSE
VERONA, Italy — It happened night after night, the deaf man said, sometimes in the priest's bedroom, sometimes in the bathroom, even in the confessional.
When he was a young boy at a Catholic-run institute for the deaf, Alessandro Vantini said, priests sodomized him so relentlessly he came to feel "as if I were dead." This year, he and dozens of other former students did something highly unusual for Italy: They went public with claims they were forced to perform sex acts with priests.
For decades, a culture of silence has surrounded priest abuse in Italy, where surveys show the church is considered one of the country's most respected institutions. Now, in the Vatican's backyard, a movement to air and root out abusive priests is slowly and fitfully taking hold.
A yearlong Associated Press tally has documented 73 cases with allegations of sexual abuse by priests against minors over the past decade in Italy, with more than 235 victims. The tally was compiled from local media reports, linked to by Web sites of victims groups and blogs. Almost all the cases have come out in the seven years since the scandal about Roman Catholic priest abuse broke in the United States.
The numbers in Italy are still a mere trickle compared to the hundreds of cases in the court systems of the United States and Ireland. And according to the AP tally, the Italian church has so far had to pay only a few hundred thousand euros (dollars) in civil damages to the victims, compared to $2.6 billion in abuse-related costs for the American diocese or euro1.1 billion ($1.5 billion) due to victims in Ireland.
However, the numbers still stand out in a country where reports of clerical sex abuse were virtually unknown a decade ago. They point to an increasing willingness among the Italian public and – slowly – within the Vatican itself to look squarely at a tragedy where the reported cases may only just be the tip of the iceberg. The Italian church will not release the numbers of cases reported or of court settlements.
The implications of priest abuse loom large in Italy: with its 50,850 priests in a nation of 60 million, Italy counts more priests than all of South America or Africa. In the United States – where the Vatican counts 44,700 priests in a nation of 300 million – more than 4,000 Catholic clergy have been accused of molesting minors since 1950.
The Italian cases follow much the same pattern as the U.S. and Irish scandals: Italian prelates often preyed on poor, physically or mentally disabled, or drug-addicted youths entrusted to their care. The deaf students' speech impairments, for example, made the priests' admonition "never to tell" all the more easy to enforce.
In this predominantly Roman Catholic country, the church enjoys such an exalted status that the pope's pronouncements frequently top the evening news, without any critical commentary. Even those with anti-clerical views acknowledge the important role the church plays in education, social services and caring for the poor.
As a result, few dare to criticize it, including the mainstream independent and state-run media. In addition, there's a certain prudishness in small-town Italy, where one just doesn't speak about sex, much less sex between a priest and a child.
"It's a taboo on top of a taboo," said Jacqueline Monica Magi, who prosecuted several pedophilia cases in Italy before becoming a judge. "This is the provincialism of Italy."
Breaking the conspiracy of silence, 67 former students from Verona's Antonio Provolo institute for the deaf signed a statement alleging that sexual abuse, pedophilia and corporal punishment occurred at the school from the 1950s to the 1980s at the hands of priests and brothers of the Congregation for the Company of Mary.
While not all acknowledged being victims themselves, 14 of the 67 wrote sworn statements and videotaped testimony, detailing the abuse they say they suffered, some for years, at the school's two campuses in Verona, the city of Romeo and Juliet. They named 24 priests, lay religious men and religious brothers.
Vantini said he, too, was silent for years.
"How could I tell my papa that a priest had sex with me?" Vantini, 59, told the AP one afternoon, recounting through a sign-language interpreter the abuse he said he endured. "You couldn't tell your parents because the priests would beat you."
Vantini named two priests and two lay brothers – three of whom are still alive – but asked that their names not be printed for fear of legal action. He spoke with the nervousness and agitation he says has accompanied him all of his life from being raped as a child by a priest.
"I suffered from depression until I was 30," said Vantini, who attended the school from age 6 to 19. "My wife said it was good that I spoke out because it lifted this weight from my chest."
Vantini's one-time schoolmate, Gianni Bisoli, 60, named the same men in his written declaration and in an interview, as well as 12 other priests and brothers from the Congregation, accusing them of sodomizing him, forcing him to have oral sex and to masturbate them.
In his declaration, Bisoli also accused Verona's late bishop, Monsignor Giuseppe Carraro – who is being considered for beatification – of molesting him on five separate occasions while he was a student at Provolo, which he attended from age 9 to 15.
A diocesan probe cleared Carraro of sex abuse. But the investigation interviewed none of the alleged victims, limiting testimony to surviving members of the Congregation, other school personnel and their affiliates, and documentation from the Congregation and Verona diocese.
The late bishop's beatification process was suspended pending the investigation, but is now going ahead to the Vatican's saint-making office.
Five decades later, Bisoli still recalls the route he said he took from the institute, located on a quiet street named for the congregation's founder, Don Antonio Provolo, along the serpentine Adige river to the bishop's residence tucked behind Verona's Piazza del Duomo.
Bisoli, who became deaf at age eight, said he was accompanied by one of his abusers and walked past the red brick Castelvecchio, an imposing 14th-century citadel, then along the main Corso Cavour thoroughfare or the more out-of-the-way pedestrian shopping street Via Mazzini.
"They brought me inside the curia (the diocese headquarters)," Bisoli recalled in an interview. "There was a servant who opened the door, then someone brought me inside. It was dark."
Bishop Carraro appeared, he recalled. "The bishop started to touch me, grope me," he said, running his hands up and down his body, pulling at his shirt and shorts to demonstrate. "I pulled away. But he continued to touch me for 15, 20 minutes. I didn't know what to do."
On a subsequent occasion, Bisoli says, the bishop tried to sodomize him with a banana. Another time, they were on the sofa and he sodomized him with his finger, offering him candy to appease him, Bisoli said.
Once, Bisoli said, the bishop offered him some gold crosses that had caught Bisoli's eye.
"I said 'at least give me 10,000-20,000 lire so I can buy a Coca-Cola or an ice cream,'" Bisoli recalled.
The current bishop of Verona, Monsignor Giuseppe Zenti, initially accused the former students of fabricating their claims in talking in January to L'Espresso, a left-leaning newsweekly. Zenti called the accusations "lies" and a stunt that was part of a long-standing real estate dispute between the Congregation and the deaf students' association, to which the alleged victims belong.
But when one of the accused lay religious men admitted to sexual relations with students, Zenti ordered an internal investigation into the Congregation. The results found that some abuse occurred, albeit a fraction of what has been alleged.
According to the diocese probe, there were episodes of physical violence against two unnamed students between 1958 and 1965. From 1965 to 1967, two would-be priests with "sexual disorders" were kicked out; while between 1965 and 1990 a religious brother had sexual relations with an undetermined number of students, the investigation found. In all cases the accused were removed.
"There could have been some episodes, some bad apples are possible," Carlo de' Gresti, spokesman for the Provolo institute said in an interview at the school's Chievo campus, where a lay staff now runs a technical school for poor teens. "It happens, even in families. That there could have been 26, 27, 25 pedophiles? There is no objective corroboration from anyone who isn't inside the (students') association."
Advocates, however, says the diocese's investigation was fatally flawed because it didn't interview the alleged victims and only people with links to the school who may have something to hide.
"If they had wanted to shed full light on it, they wouldn't have only heard from priests and lay brothers, but from the deaf as well," said Marco Lodi Rizzini, a spokesman for the victims.
The investigation has been forwarded to the Vatican, said the Rev. Bruno Fasani, spokesman for the diocese. He claimed former students had been manipulated into denouncing innocent priests and accused some of harboring a long-standing animosity to the church.
Zenti, for his part, asked forgiveness from the victims.
"The feeling that prevails is above all one of profound solidarity with the victims of abuse," Zenti said in a May statement. "To them and their families, a humble request of forgiveness is made."
Among the cases the AP tallied, there were charges of inducing boys into prostitution, participation in satanic rituals, and one notorious case in which the church itself determined that an elderly Florentine priest was responsible for "sexual abuse, false mysticism and domination of consciences."
Where there were sentences, they ran from a two-year suspended sentence to eight years in jail, although with Italy's notoriously lengthy appeals process it's unclear how many have been carried out. Where civil damages were awarded, which has been rare, the amounts ranged from about euro15,000 per victim to euro150,000 (about $22,000 to $220,000 at today's exchange rates).
The cases in the AP survey involve civil or criminal cases and investigations. For that reason, the Verona figures were omitted, since no criminal or civil action is pending because the statute of limitations has expired.
In 2002, when the abuse scandal was erupting in the United States, the No. 2 official in the Italian Bishops' Conference, Monsignor Giuseppe Betori, was quoted as saying clerical sex abuse was so limited in Italy that the conference leadership hadn't even discussed the matter.
But Italian prelates and the Vatican now seem to be taking the problem far more seriously. Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican prosecutor in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – which handles cases of priestly sex abuse – acknowledged that public awareness of the problem in Italy had increased as a result of the "tsunami" of cases that came to light in the United States.
"There is a change of mentality, and we find that to be very positive," he told the AP.
In a shift for the Vatican, Scicluna acknowledged that priestly sex abuse was an age-old problem that needed to be rooted out.
"I don't think it's a question of happening. It has always happened. It's important that people talk about it, because otherwise we cannot bring the healing which the church can offer to people who need it – both the victims and perpetrators."
ITALY GRAPPLES WITH PRIESTS SEX ABUSE
VERONA, Italy — It happened night after night, the deaf man said, sometimes in the priest's bedroom, sometimes in the bathroom, even in the confessional.
When he was a young boy at a Catholic-run institute for the deaf, Alessandro Vantini said, priests sodomized him so relentlessly he came to feel "as if I were dead." This year, he and dozens of other former students did something highly unusual for Italy: They went public with claims they were forced to perform sex acts with priests.
For decades, a culture of silence has surrounded priest abuse in Italy, where surveys show the church is considered one of the country's most respected institutions. Now, in the Vatican's backyard, a movement to air and root out abusive priests is slowly and fitfully taking hold.
A yearlong Associated Press tally has documented 73 cases with allegations of sexual abuse by priests against minors over the past decade in Italy, with more than 235 victims. The tally was compiled from local media reports, linked to by Web sites of victims groups and blogs. Almost all the cases have come out in the seven years since the scandal about Roman Catholic priest abuse broke in the United States.
The numbers in Italy are still a mere trickle compared to the hundreds of cases in the court systems of the United States and Ireland. And according to the AP tally, the Italian church has so far had to pay only a few hundred thousand euros (dollars) in civil damages to the victims, compared to $2.6 billion in abuse-related costs for the American diocese or euro1.1 billion ($1.5 billion) due to victims in Ireland.
However, the numbers still stand out in a country where reports of clerical sex abuse were virtually unknown a decade ago. They point to an increasing willingness among the Italian public and – slowly – within the Vatican itself to look squarely at a tragedy where the reported cases may only just be the tip of the iceberg. The Italian church will not release the numbers of cases reported or of court settlements.
The implications of priest abuse loom large in Italy: with its 50,850 priests in a nation of 60 million, Italy counts more priests than all of South America or Africa. In the United States – where the Vatican counts 44,700 priests in a nation of 300 million – more than 4,000 Catholic clergy have been accused of molesting minors since 1950.
The Italian cases follow much the same pattern as the U.S. and Irish scandals: Italian prelates often preyed on poor, physically or mentally disabled, or drug-addicted youths entrusted to their care. The deaf students' speech impairments, for example, made the priests' admonition "never to tell" all the more easy to enforce.
In this predominantly Roman Catholic country, the church enjoys such an exalted status that the pope's pronouncements frequently top the evening news, without any critical commentary. Even those with anti-clerical views acknowledge the important role the church plays in education, social services and caring for the poor.
As a result, few dare to criticize it, including the mainstream independent and state-run media. In addition, there's a certain prudishness in small-town Italy, where one just doesn't speak about sex, much less sex between a priest and a child.
"It's a taboo on top of a taboo," said Jacqueline Monica Magi, who prosecuted several pedophilia cases in Italy before becoming a judge. "This is the provincialism of Italy."
Breaking the conspiracy of silence, 67 former students from Verona's Antonio Provolo institute for the deaf signed a statement alleging that sexual abuse, pedophilia and corporal punishment occurred at the school from the 1950s to the 1980s at the hands of priests and brothers of the Congregation for the Company of Mary.
While not all acknowledged being victims themselves, 14 of the 67 wrote sworn statements and videotaped testimony, detailing the abuse they say they suffered, some for years, at the school's two campuses in Verona, the city of Romeo and Juliet. They named 24 priests, lay religious men and religious brothers.
Vantini said he, too, was silent for years.
"How could I tell my papa that a priest had sex with me?" Vantini, 59, told the AP one afternoon, recounting through a sign-language interpreter the abuse he said he endured. "You couldn't tell your parents because the priests would beat you."
Vantini named two priests and two lay brothers – three of whom are still alive – but asked that their names not be printed for fear of legal action. He spoke with the nervousness and agitation he says has accompanied him all of his life from being raped as a child by a priest.
"I suffered from depression until I was 30," said Vantini, who attended the school from age 6 to 19. "My wife said it was good that I spoke out because it lifted this weight from my chest."
Vantini's one-time schoolmate, Gianni Bisoli, 60, named the same men in his written declaration and in an interview, as well as 12 other priests and brothers from the Congregation, accusing them of sodomizing him, forcing him to have oral sex and to masturbate them.
In his declaration, Bisoli also accused Verona's late bishop, Monsignor Giuseppe Carraro – who is being considered for beatification – of molesting him on five separate occasions while he was a student at Provolo, which he attended from age 9 to 15.
A diocesan probe cleared Carraro of sex abuse. But the investigation interviewed none of the alleged victims, limiting testimony to surviving members of the Congregation, other school personnel and their affiliates, and documentation from the Congregation and Verona diocese.
The late bishop's beatification process was suspended pending the investigation, but is now going ahead to the Vatican's saint-making office.
Five decades later, Bisoli still recalls the route he said he took from the institute, located on a quiet street named for the congregation's founder, Don Antonio Provolo, along the serpentine Adige river to the bishop's residence tucked behind Verona's Piazza del Duomo.
Bisoli, who became deaf at age eight, said he was accompanied by one of his abusers and walked past the red brick Castelvecchio, an imposing 14th-century citadel, then along the main Corso Cavour thoroughfare or the more out-of-the-way pedestrian shopping street Via Mazzini.
"They brought me inside the curia (the diocese headquarters)," Bisoli recalled in an interview. "There was a servant who opened the door, then someone brought me inside. It was dark."
Bishop Carraro appeared, he recalled. "The bishop started to touch me, grope me," he said, running his hands up and down his body, pulling at his shirt and shorts to demonstrate. "I pulled away. But he continued to touch me for 15, 20 minutes. I didn't know what to do."
On a subsequent occasion, Bisoli says, the bishop tried to sodomize him with a banana. Another time, they were on the sofa and he sodomized him with his finger, offering him candy to appease him, Bisoli said.
Once, Bisoli said, the bishop offered him some gold crosses that had caught Bisoli's eye.
"I said 'at least give me 10,000-20,000 lire so I can buy a Coca-Cola or an ice cream,'" Bisoli recalled.
The current bishop of Verona, Monsignor Giuseppe Zenti, initially accused the former students of fabricating their claims in talking in January to L'Espresso, a left-leaning newsweekly. Zenti called the accusations "lies" and a stunt that was part of a long-standing real estate dispute between the Congregation and the deaf students' association, to which the alleged victims belong.
But when one of the accused lay religious men admitted to sexual relations with students, Zenti ordered an internal investigation into the Congregation. The results found that some abuse occurred, albeit a fraction of what has been alleged.
According to the diocese probe, there were episodes of physical violence against two unnamed students between 1958 and 1965. From 1965 to 1967, two would-be priests with "sexual disorders" were kicked out; while between 1965 and 1990 a religious brother had sexual relations with an undetermined number of students, the investigation found. In all cases the accused were removed.
"There could have been some episodes, some bad apples are possible," Carlo de' Gresti, spokesman for the Provolo institute said in an interview at the school's Chievo campus, where a lay staff now runs a technical school for poor teens. "It happens, even in families. That there could have been 26, 27, 25 pedophiles? There is no objective corroboration from anyone who isn't inside the (students') association."
Advocates, however, says the diocese's investigation was fatally flawed because it didn't interview the alleged victims and only people with links to the school who may have something to hide.
"If they had wanted to shed full light on it, they wouldn't have only heard from priests and lay brothers, but from the deaf as well," said Marco Lodi Rizzini, a spokesman for the victims.
The investigation has been forwarded to the Vatican, said the Rev. Bruno Fasani, spokesman for the diocese. He claimed former students had been manipulated into denouncing innocent priests and accused some of harboring a long-standing animosity to the church.
Zenti, for his part, asked forgiveness from the victims.
"The feeling that prevails is above all one of profound solidarity with the victims of abuse," Zenti said in a May statement. "To them and their families, a humble request of forgiveness is made."
Among the cases the AP tallied, there were charges of inducing boys into prostitution, participation in satanic rituals, and one notorious case in which the church itself determined that an elderly Florentine priest was responsible for "sexual abuse, false mysticism and domination of consciences."
Where there were sentences, they ran from a two-year suspended sentence to eight years in jail, although with Italy's notoriously lengthy appeals process it's unclear how many have been carried out. Where civil damages were awarded, which has been rare, the amounts ranged from about euro15,000 per victim to euro150,000 (about $22,000 to $220,000 at today's exchange rates).
The cases in the AP survey involve civil or criminal cases and investigations. For that reason, the Verona figures were omitted, since no criminal or civil action is pending because the statute of limitations has expired.
In 2002, when the abuse scandal was erupting in the United States, the No. 2 official in the Italian Bishops' Conference, Monsignor Giuseppe Betori, was quoted as saying clerical sex abuse was so limited in Italy that the conference leadership hadn't even discussed the matter.
But Italian prelates and the Vatican now seem to be taking the problem far more seriously. Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican prosecutor in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – which handles cases of priestly sex abuse – acknowledged that public awareness of the problem in Italy had increased as a result of the "tsunami" of cases that came to light in the United States.
"There is a change of mentality, and we find that to be very positive," he told the AP.
In a shift for the Vatican, Scicluna acknowledged that priestly sex abuse was an age-old problem that needed to be rooted out.
"I don't think it's a question of happening. It has always happened. It's important that people talk about it, because otherwise we cannot bring the healing which the church can offer to people who need it – both the victims and perpetrators."
Catholic Church shamed by Irish abuse report
Nine-year probe says child beatings, molestation, rape were endemic
Peter Morrison / AP
updated 3:21 p.m. PT, Wed., May 20, 2009
DUBLIN - Eleven-year-old Tom Sweeney kept skipping school. Eight-year-old Mannix Flynn got caught stealing a box of chocolates. And Christine Buckley, barely a month old, was found guilty of being the child of an unwed mother.
In the morally rigid Roman Catholic Ireland of old, such sins were sufficient to land all three children — and more than 30,000 others throughout the 20th century — in Dickensian workhouses for girls and boys run with an iron fist by Catholic religious orders.
A 2,600-page report, published Wednesday following a nine-year probe into child abuse by Ireland's fading Catholic religious orders, painted a damning portrait of a system that protected child-molesting church officials while consigning generations of Ireland's poorest children to misery.
The five-volume report on the probe — which was resisted by Catholic religious orders — concluded that church officials shielded their orders' pedophiles from arrest amid a culture of self-serving secrecy.
"A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from," Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse concluded.
'Named and shamed'
Victims of the abuse, who are now in their 50s to 80s, lobbied long and hard for an official investigation. They say that for all its incredible detail, the report doesn't nail down what really matters — the names of their abusers.
"I do genuinely believe that it would have been a further step towards our healing if our abusers had been named and shamed," said Buckley, now 62.
She spent the first 18 years of her life in a Dublin orphanage where she said children were forced to manufacture rosaries — and were humiliated, beaten and raped whether they achieved their quota or not. She didn't track down her parents, an Irish mother and Nigerian father, until her 40s, when she became one of the first to break silence and demand justice for her stolen youth.
"I didn't have a childhood," said Buckley, who recalled being constantly cold and hungry. She was severely beaten by a nun for trying to smuggle out a letter detailing the abuse, she said — which included being forced by nuns to have a "date" with a pedophile on staff.
The Catholic religious orders that ran more than 50 workhouse-style reform schools from the late 19th century until the mid-1990s offered public words of apology, shame and regret Wednesday. But when questioned, their leaders indicated they would continue to protect the identities of clergy accused of abuse — men and women who were never reported to police, and were instead permitted to change jobs and keep harming children.
The Christian Brothers, which ran several boys' institutions deemed to have harbored serial child molesters and sadists on their staff, insisted it had cooperated fully with the probe. The order successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep the identities of all of its members, dead or alive, unnamed in the report. No real names, whether of victims or perpetrators, appear in the final document.
The Christian Brothers' leader in Ireland, Brother Kevin Mullan, said the organization had been right to keep names secret because "perhaps we had doubts about some of the allegations."
"But on the other hand, I'd have to say that at this stage, we have no interest in protecting people who were perpetrators of abuse," Mullan said, vowing to "cooperate fully with any investigation or any civil authority seeking to explore those matters."
Nine-year probe says child beatings, molestation, rape were endemic
Peter Morrison / AP
updated 3:21 p.m. PT, Wed., May 20, 2009
DUBLIN - Eleven-year-old Tom Sweeney kept skipping school. Eight-year-old Mannix Flynn got caught stealing a box of chocolates. And Christine Buckley, barely a month old, was found guilty of being the child of an unwed mother.
In the morally rigid Roman Catholic Ireland of old, such sins were sufficient to land all three children — and more than 30,000 others throughout the 20th century — in Dickensian workhouses for girls and boys run with an iron fist by Catholic religious orders.
A 2,600-page report, published Wednesday following a nine-year probe into child abuse by Ireland's fading Catholic religious orders, painted a damning portrait of a system that protected child-molesting church officials while consigning generations of Ireland's poorest children to misery.
The five-volume report on the probe — which was resisted by Catholic religious orders — concluded that church officials shielded their orders' pedophiles from arrest amid a culture of self-serving secrecy.
"A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from," Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse concluded.
'Named and shamed'
Victims of the abuse, who are now in their 50s to 80s, lobbied long and hard for an official investigation. They say that for all its incredible detail, the report doesn't nail down what really matters — the names of their abusers.
"I do genuinely believe that it would have been a further step towards our healing if our abusers had been named and shamed," said Buckley, now 62.
She spent the first 18 years of her life in a Dublin orphanage where she said children were forced to manufacture rosaries — and were humiliated, beaten and raped whether they achieved their quota or not. She didn't track down her parents, an Irish mother and Nigerian father, until her 40s, when she became one of the first to break silence and demand justice for her stolen youth.
"I didn't have a childhood," said Buckley, who recalled being constantly cold and hungry. She was severely beaten by a nun for trying to smuggle out a letter detailing the abuse, she said — which included being forced by nuns to have a "date" with a pedophile on staff.
The Catholic religious orders that ran more than 50 workhouse-style reform schools from the late 19th century until the mid-1990s offered public words of apology, shame and regret Wednesday. But when questioned, their leaders indicated they would continue to protect the identities of clergy accused of abuse — men and women who were never reported to police, and were instead permitted to change jobs and keep harming children.
The Christian Brothers, which ran several boys' institutions deemed to have harbored serial child molesters and sadists on their staff, insisted it had cooperated fully with the probe. The order successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep the identities of all of its members, dead or alive, unnamed in the report. No real names, whether of victims or perpetrators, appear in the final document.
The Christian Brothers' leader in Ireland, Brother Kevin Mullan, said the organization had been right to keep names secret because "perhaps we had doubts about some of the allegations."
"But on the other hand, I'd have to say that at this stage, we have no interest in protecting people who were perpetrators of abuse," Mullan said, vowing to "cooperate fully with any investigation or any civil authority seeking to explore those matters."
Cardinal Mahony’s mishandling of sexually abusive priests
September 19th, 2009
Mahony ignored church policy and didn't inform parishioners about allegations of clergy sexual abuse, one of his top lieutenants testified.
Mahony ignored church policy and didn’t inform parishioners about allegations of clergy sexual abuse, one of his top lieutenants testified.
In an institution that supposedly devotes itself to God and truth, you had to wonder: When would someone within Cardinal Roger M. Mahony’s inner circle break ranks and tell the truth about how His Eminence actually handled claims of clergy sexual abuse?
Since the Catholic sex scandal broke in 2002, Mahony, with the help of his PR team, created a persona as a a long-time reformer who was way ahead of the curve when it came to tackling the problem of priests who molested minors. To listen to him, you would think he was the victims’ best friend.
Of course, the facts said otherwise. Evidence has shown Mahony harbored many known pedophile priests, some of whom went on to molest others. Still, no one in Mahony’s inner circle of brother priests and advisers ever stepped forward to say exactly what happened. "Careers over kids" is how many people saw it.
Msgr. Richard Loomis testified that Mahony ordered him not to call the authorities.
Msgr. Richard Loomis testified that Mahony ordered him not to call the authorities.
Now, under oath this week in a deposition, Msgr. Richard Loomis, the former vicar of clergy for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, reluctantly told the story of how his boss handled in 2000 allegations of sexual abuse of two minors brought against Father Michael Baker. (Remember, Baker had admitted to Mahony in 1986 that he had molested two different boys; the priest remained in ministry, often unsupervised.) For Watergate buffs, Loomis appears to be a more reluctant John Dean.
In a tense deposition with plaintiff attorney John Manly, Loomis testified that:
* Mahony ordered him to ignore official archdiocesan policy and not inform parishes of the allegations.
* Mahony gave two reasons for deviating from the policy. Loomis said the cardinal first said he was concerned about the pending litigation. Later, Mahony said he didn’t want to disrupt the process of getting Baker removed from the priesthood.
* Loomis was so upset at the cardinal’s action that he sent him an e-mail in which he cut and pasted the archdiocesan policy that was being violated.
* Mahony ordered no more announcements made in parishes about any new clergy sexual abuse allegations.
* Loomis wanted to contact law enforcement about Baker’s allegations and behavior, but Mahony ordered him not to.
* Members of the Sexual Abuse Advisory Board were also upset at Mahony’s decision, but none informed law enforcement to the allegations.
* Loomis would have considered resigning over Mahony’s order, but had a short time left in his tenure as vicar of clergy.
* After stepping down as vicar of clergy, Loomis made one more attempt to get the archdiocese to make announcements in the parishes because Baker had been removed from the priesthood. He said his request went nowhere.
In legal papers filed today in Los Angeles Superior Court, Manly said that the church’s attorney, Don Woods, "repeatedly obstructed the deposition process … by excessive objections, inappropriate hand gestures, whispering in the witness’s ear …" Woods instructed Loomis to not answer "in excess of 50 questions," including where the priest lived.
In court papers, Manly, who is representing another alleged victim of Baker, is asking a judge to prevent Woods from "making objections other than privilege or form, cease from coaching his witnesses, cease from taking breaks during lines of questioning."
Loomis, who himself had allegations of sexual abuse brought against him in 2003, is on administrative leave and refused to say if a church court had found him innocent or guilty of the allegations.
It will be interesting how the archdiocese spins this. Will Mahony’s team go after the credibility of Loomis? Or will they simply hope that the majority of media and parishioners are too numb to handle any more Catholic sex scandal news and this will all quickly fade away?
It’s also intriguing that Loomis said Mahony’s orders were given in e-mails and memos. There should be a paper trial that Manly can follow.
Bottom line: The testimony of Loomis is a bombshell that, in any institution other than the Catholic Church, would spark an internal investigation and, if found true, lead to the firing of the boss. Don Woods, the church’s attorney, sensed its gravity. In the deposition, it’s almost comical how many different ways Woods tries to get Loomis to shut up.
We already knew that Mahony kept known molesters in ministry (including two convicted felons!), and that some continued to abuse children. Now, according to Loomis, we also know how little regard Mahony had for the children of the archdiocese, unilaterally suspending the church’s own policy to avoid public scandal and perhaps his own skin.
With this new perspective, the recent words of J. Michael Hennigan, an attorney representing Mahony and the archdiocese, ring hallow.
Hennigan told the Los Angeles Times that "the archdiocese aggressively investigates every allegation or suspected incident, and in those cases looks for other victims. If SNAP has other information, they should deliver it to us and we will pursue it as we have done in the past."
But Mahony’s testimony in court in March now seems even more disingenuous.
"If anyone has knowledge that a child was in danger," he said, "any human being has to do something about it."
September 19th, 2009
Mahony ignored church policy and didn't inform parishioners about allegations of clergy sexual abuse, one of his top lieutenants testified.
Mahony ignored church policy and didn’t inform parishioners about allegations of clergy sexual abuse, one of his top lieutenants testified.
In an institution that supposedly devotes itself to God and truth, you had to wonder: When would someone within Cardinal Roger M. Mahony’s inner circle break ranks and tell the truth about how His Eminence actually handled claims of clergy sexual abuse?
Since the Catholic sex scandal broke in 2002, Mahony, with the help of his PR team, created a persona as a a long-time reformer who was way ahead of the curve when it came to tackling the problem of priests who molested minors. To listen to him, you would think he was the victims’ best friend.
Of course, the facts said otherwise. Evidence has shown Mahony harbored many known pedophile priests, some of whom went on to molest others. Still, no one in Mahony’s inner circle of brother priests and advisers ever stepped forward to say exactly what happened. "Careers over kids" is how many people saw it.
Msgr. Richard Loomis testified that Mahony ordered him not to call the authorities.
Msgr. Richard Loomis testified that Mahony ordered him not to call the authorities.
Now, under oath this week in a deposition, Msgr. Richard Loomis, the former vicar of clergy for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, reluctantly told the story of how his boss handled in 2000 allegations of sexual abuse of two minors brought against Father Michael Baker. (Remember, Baker had admitted to Mahony in 1986 that he had molested two different boys; the priest remained in ministry, often unsupervised.) For Watergate buffs, Loomis appears to be a more reluctant John Dean.
In a tense deposition with plaintiff attorney John Manly, Loomis testified that:
* Mahony ordered him to ignore official archdiocesan policy and not inform parishes of the allegations.
* Mahony gave two reasons for deviating from the policy. Loomis said the cardinal first said he was concerned about the pending litigation. Later, Mahony said he didn’t want to disrupt the process of getting Baker removed from the priesthood.
* Loomis was so upset at the cardinal’s action that he sent him an e-mail in which he cut and pasted the archdiocesan policy that was being violated.
* Mahony ordered no more announcements made in parishes about any new clergy sexual abuse allegations.
* Loomis wanted to contact law enforcement about Baker’s allegations and behavior, but Mahony ordered him not to.
* Members of the Sexual Abuse Advisory Board were also upset at Mahony’s decision, but none informed law enforcement to the allegations.
* Loomis would have considered resigning over Mahony’s order, but had a short time left in his tenure as vicar of clergy.
* After stepping down as vicar of clergy, Loomis made one more attempt to get the archdiocese to make announcements in the parishes because Baker had been removed from the priesthood. He said his request went nowhere.
In legal papers filed today in Los Angeles Superior Court, Manly said that the church’s attorney, Don Woods, "repeatedly obstructed the deposition process … by excessive objections, inappropriate hand gestures, whispering in the witness’s ear …" Woods instructed Loomis to not answer "in excess of 50 questions," including where the priest lived.
In court papers, Manly, who is representing another alleged victim of Baker, is asking a judge to prevent Woods from "making objections other than privilege or form, cease from coaching his witnesses, cease from taking breaks during lines of questioning."
Loomis, who himself had allegations of sexual abuse brought against him in 2003, is on administrative leave and refused to say if a church court had found him innocent or guilty of the allegations.
It will be interesting how the archdiocese spins this. Will Mahony’s team go after the credibility of Loomis? Or will they simply hope that the majority of media and parishioners are too numb to handle any more Catholic sex scandal news and this will all quickly fade away?
It’s also intriguing that Loomis said Mahony’s orders were given in e-mails and memos. There should be a paper trial that Manly can follow.
Bottom line: The testimony of Loomis is a bombshell that, in any institution other than the Catholic Church, would spark an internal investigation and, if found true, lead to the firing of the boss. Don Woods, the church’s attorney, sensed its gravity. In the deposition, it’s almost comical how many different ways Woods tries to get Loomis to shut up.
We already knew that Mahony kept known molesters in ministry (including two convicted felons!), and that some continued to abuse children. Now, according to Loomis, we also know how little regard Mahony had for the children of the archdiocese, unilaterally suspending the church’s own policy to avoid public scandal and perhaps his own skin.
With this new perspective, the recent words of J. Michael Hennigan, an attorney representing Mahony and the archdiocese, ring hallow.
Hennigan told the Los Angeles Times that "the archdiocese aggressively investigates every allegation or suspected incident, and in those cases looks for other victims. If SNAP has other information, they should deliver it to us and we will pursue it as we have done in the past."
But Mahony’s testimony in court in March now seems even more disingenuous.
"If anyone has knowledge that a child was in danger," he said, "any human being has to do something about it."
Clergy abuse settlements can lead to new suffering
The Associated Press - Gillian Flaccus - Sep 26, 2009
LOS ANGELES — David Guerrero lies curled like a small child in bed, his teeth chattering and his fever spiked at 104 degrees. He has left his room only once since he crawled home from his latest crystal meth binge three days ago, to let his mother drive him to the emergency room for his soaring temperature.
Now, Minerva Guerrero hovers close to her 41-year-old son, making a mental list of the day ahead: she must change his bed linens, nurse him, pick up his new prescriptions.
Sixty miles away and days later, Dominic Zamora rages at his father, who suspects he bought a house in someone else's name. You're not my father, Dominic screams. You just want my money. When the 36-year-old finally calls his parents three weeks later, he is drunk and angry at the world — and most especially, at them.
This was not the future the Guerreros and the Zamoras imagined when their sons received millions from the Roman Catholic church to settle claims they were molested by their childhood priests. But that was before the money ushered in a new and never-ending nightmare.
The money was meant to soothe the victims' wounds and be a bridge to a better life, and for many it did. But for a few, the most deeply scarred, the six- and seven-figure checks have instead made things far worse.
For these victims, the money has seeped like a poison into every relationship and laid bare feelings of anger, mistrust, bitterness and guilt that have been buried deep in their families for years. It has fed drug habits and alcohol binges, divided siblings and fueled resentment in parents who walked through hell with their children, only to find rejection and blame on the other side.
Years after the settlements, these families, once united against the church, are slowly becoming divided — and the money is in the middle.
"He's got a lot of hate inside of him because of what happened to him and he's passed it on to everybody in the family," said Robert Guerrero, who lives with his wife in a home his son David bought with settlement money. "I'm going to suffer when I go home tonight and when I go to sleep, I'm going to think about David and I suffer every time I think about him. That's just the way life is today."
Worse, these families have nothing to show for their emotional agony: The millions are gone, spent on flashy cars and art collections, drugs and alcohol and scams by investors who no longer return phone calls.
Wild spending and family dysfunction are common among people who come into fast money, said Steven Danish, a professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University who's studied the psychology of lottery winners.
But clergy abuse victims, emotionally ravaged, are especially at risk: "All the stuff that is hidden and has been brooding down there all of a sudden has this way to escape," Danish said.
"There's a lot of unconscious, or subconscious, motivation to punish members of their family — and maybe to punish themselves."
The agony of this small cluster of victims has been overlooked amid the stories of hundreds who have managed to move on after the money — to become authors and attorneys, to kick drug habits, to find forgiveness.
But a half-dozen of these families have managed to find each other and create a measure of stability in their unhinged lives through regular potlucks and phone calls and e-mails. And they are convinced they are not alone.
"Sometimes I think half the families out there are going through the same things we are, but they're ashamed to say anything," said Frank Zamora, Dominic's father. "But it's already out in the open. You can't hide it no more."
___
The day the attorneys deposited $700,000 from the Roman Catholic church into Dominic Zamora's bank account, he left a slurred, angry message on his parents' answering machine: "You treat me like a little stepchild."
The drunken message was the opening volley in a fierce and protracted battle over control of the settlement, a battle that plays on unresolved feelings of guilt and betrayal so intense that after one fight, Dominic's father blacked out at the sight of his son walking up the driveway.
Today, Dominic and his parents rarely speak, and Dominic has entrusted what remains of the $700,000 to a bail bondsman named Dave whom he met on the streets of Whittier. He owns eight cars, including a '53 Imperial and a '66 Thunderbird, and two flatbed tow trucks — even though he lost his license for drunken driving.
His parents are afraid to ask how much money, if any, is left from the settlement he received last fall.
"I used to manage his money but I was so upset that I went to the bank and I withdrew his money in a cashier's check and I said, 'Here, I don't want your money. You can stick it where the sun don't shine,'" said his father.
"Ever since that money came in, it's just an argument each time we see him."
Childhood photos of Dominic show an angelic-looking little boy in a short-sleeved dress shirt, with neatly combed hair and a shy, inquisitive smile and piercing, deep green eyes.
Three decades later, his arms snake with angry ink, chilling tattoos of skeletons with twisted faces that represent the devil and a pair of clowns grimacing with exaggerated grins and sneers. His cell phone rings to the song "I Need A Freak" by Too Short: "I need a freak, to hold me tight/I need a freak, every day and every night."
Earlier this year, he tattooed a devil's horn dripping red blood on each temple.
He blames his mother for sending him to be an altar boy at the parish church where his childhood priest got him drunk on communion wine and molested him for years. He blames his father for not standing up to her.
Their punishment, he says, is to watch him spend the church's money any way he wants — on cars, on a string of girlfriends and on the alcohol that has left him with just 10 percent of his liver.
"I blame it on them a lot. Everyone tells me forgive and forget, but how am I going to forgive something like that?" he said. "I think I'm torturing them, which I shouldn't have to be doing to my parents. They're after the money, they wanted the money."
"I ain't got no feelings for them. Like I said, I hatched from an egg. And the money made it worse."
Dominic's anger torments his father, a Vietnam veteran who is plagued with guilt because he did not protect his son.
For penance, he takes the abuse, the rejection and the anger — and when Dominic calls, he still comes running. When he arrives, Dominic leaves.
"He takes off and I'm there but I just, I just...," he said, trailing off. "It doesn't feel like I'm accomplishing anything and the guilt is still there. I can't make it up, I can't reverse the time."
But where Dominic's father is crippled by grief, his mother is more matter-of-fact.
Before the settlement, she would stand at his bedroom door in the middle of the night and listen with her heart in her throat as her youngest son thrashed and cried out in his sleep: "Don't hurt me, don't hurt me! I'll do what you say, I'll do what you want."
But over time, she has become hardened by his blistering anger over the money.
"If you could give me back my son's childhood, I'd gladly take that back because he had a future," she said. "Now he has no future, you see him, he has no future."
___
A year after David Guerrero received his money, he spent $40,000 to open a used modern furniture store in Palm Springs. His parents, Minerva and Robert, worked there at his request.
But when David called suddenly to tell them he was about to pay $20,000 for another store packed with secondhand goods, his parents rushed to intervene. They arrived too late; David had closed the deal.
As they walked into the new store, David dropped the keys in their hands. As he strode out, he told his parents: "This is your store now. Deal with it."
The Guerreros cleaned out the abandoned shop.
"We felt we had to do something or we would get yelled at," said Minerva Guerrero, as she recalled the incident. "It was like David was the parent and we were the children. We're the parents and David's the child, but it was the other way around. That's what I felt like."
The $4 million changed David, his parents say, and in changing him, it altered their family dynamic forever.
It left them with a son who would buy what he wanted, said what he wanted, did what he wanted to do. If he wanted to get high, he would leave for San Diego with no notice and come home days later to his mother's care.
In the nearly five years since his settlement, he has bought a stable of thoroughbred horses, luxury saddles and a vast collection of modern art, photography and art deco furniture. He gave $100,000 to a woman who told him the prince of Dubai was going to build a lavish development in the desert and spent $250,000 to build a yogurt shop that never opened.
He spent it all. His health insurance has run out and earlier this month, he applied for welfare.
His parents, who live with him in a new two-story home bought with David's money, are powerless to intervene. They have talked about moving out, but they are afraid if they do, their son will overdose or commit suicide.
"He says, 'Well, I bought you a home, what other kid would do that for their parents? You live comfortable, you have everything you want,'" Minerva Guerrero said. "Well, I could live in a tent and be happy rather than live in a home like this with all these problems, these problems with David. This is not normal."
When David is sober and upbeat, he opens the door to self-reflection and acceptance and his natural charisma shines through. He talks in a rapid, stream-of-consciousness monologue about forgiveness, going to catechism classes and how much he loves his parents.
His dark hair is slicked back and an open-chested cotton shirt and baggy jeans make him look half his age.
"I don't want to be a victim anymore, I want to be somebody that can redeem myself," he said. "I think I blamed my dad for not being there for me, I think I tried to blame whoever I could. I tried to blame whoever I possibly could because I had no other way of understanding what was going on with me."
But David's mood swings erratically, and when he reflects on the money he's lost, and the broken relationships, he grows resentful.
His parents "think the money has caused conflict, but you just have to live with it. I just have to live with the damage that's been done," David said. "That's all I can do."
He blames his family, he blames his attorney, he blames his financial adviser, he blames his bookkeepers and he blames his friends.
"Everybody knew this was going to happen," David said, his voice thin and high with anger. "How come I wasn't warned enough?"
___
Still, there have been signs of hope.
It's been almost a month since Dominic checked into alcohol rehab, the judge's alternative to a three-year prison term for back-to-back drunken driving convictions. The program is a Christian one, and each morning Dominic rises at dawn and gathers for prayer with his fellow alcoholics.
"I never thought I'd be back in a church again, and here I am," he said, his voice suddenly gentle. "I like it here."
David, too, is staying clean for the first time in months. The crystal meth finally overwhelmed him and nearly killed him. Now, he drives to Palm Springs every day for group therapy and, so far, he's come home every night.
These halting, fragile steps are a poor bet against a lifetime of failures and false starts, but for the Zamoras and the Guerreros, they are everything. The money is gone — and, for the first time, they dare to hope that their sons are still there.
"I say to myself, he's my prodigal son," said Frank Zamora. "He went away, but he's going to come home."
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
The Associated Press - Gillian Flaccus - Sep 26, 2009
LOS ANGELES — David Guerrero lies curled like a small child in bed, his teeth chattering and his fever spiked at 104 degrees. He has left his room only once since he crawled home from his latest crystal meth binge three days ago, to let his mother drive him to the emergency room for his soaring temperature.
Now, Minerva Guerrero hovers close to her 41-year-old son, making a mental list of the day ahead: she must change his bed linens, nurse him, pick up his new prescriptions.
Sixty miles away and days later, Dominic Zamora rages at his father, who suspects he bought a house in someone else's name. You're not my father, Dominic screams. You just want my money. When the 36-year-old finally calls his parents three weeks later, he is drunk and angry at the world — and most especially, at them.
This was not the future the Guerreros and the Zamoras imagined when their sons received millions from the Roman Catholic church to settle claims they were molested by their childhood priests. But that was before the money ushered in a new and never-ending nightmare.
The money was meant to soothe the victims' wounds and be a bridge to a better life, and for many it did. But for a few, the most deeply scarred, the six- and seven-figure checks have instead made things far worse.
For these victims, the money has seeped like a poison into every relationship and laid bare feelings of anger, mistrust, bitterness and guilt that have been buried deep in their families for years. It has fed drug habits and alcohol binges, divided siblings and fueled resentment in parents who walked through hell with their children, only to find rejection and blame on the other side.
Years after the settlements, these families, once united against the church, are slowly becoming divided — and the money is in the middle.
"He's got a lot of hate inside of him because of what happened to him and he's passed it on to everybody in the family," said Robert Guerrero, who lives with his wife in a home his son David bought with settlement money. "I'm going to suffer when I go home tonight and when I go to sleep, I'm going to think about David and I suffer every time I think about him. That's just the way life is today."
Worse, these families have nothing to show for their emotional agony: The millions are gone, spent on flashy cars and art collections, drugs and alcohol and scams by investors who no longer return phone calls.
Wild spending and family dysfunction are common among people who come into fast money, said Steven Danish, a professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University who's studied the psychology of lottery winners.
But clergy abuse victims, emotionally ravaged, are especially at risk: "All the stuff that is hidden and has been brooding down there all of a sudden has this way to escape," Danish said.
"There's a lot of unconscious, or subconscious, motivation to punish members of their family — and maybe to punish themselves."
The agony of this small cluster of victims has been overlooked amid the stories of hundreds who have managed to move on after the money — to become authors and attorneys, to kick drug habits, to find forgiveness.
But a half-dozen of these families have managed to find each other and create a measure of stability in their unhinged lives through regular potlucks and phone calls and e-mails. And they are convinced they are not alone.
"Sometimes I think half the families out there are going through the same things we are, but they're ashamed to say anything," said Frank Zamora, Dominic's father. "But it's already out in the open. You can't hide it no more."
___
The day the attorneys deposited $700,000 from the Roman Catholic church into Dominic Zamora's bank account, he left a slurred, angry message on his parents' answering machine: "You treat me like a little stepchild."
The drunken message was the opening volley in a fierce and protracted battle over control of the settlement, a battle that plays on unresolved feelings of guilt and betrayal so intense that after one fight, Dominic's father blacked out at the sight of his son walking up the driveway.
Today, Dominic and his parents rarely speak, and Dominic has entrusted what remains of the $700,000 to a bail bondsman named Dave whom he met on the streets of Whittier. He owns eight cars, including a '53 Imperial and a '66 Thunderbird, and two flatbed tow trucks — even though he lost his license for drunken driving.
His parents are afraid to ask how much money, if any, is left from the settlement he received last fall.
"I used to manage his money but I was so upset that I went to the bank and I withdrew his money in a cashier's check and I said, 'Here, I don't want your money. You can stick it where the sun don't shine,'" said his father.
"Ever since that money came in, it's just an argument each time we see him."
Childhood photos of Dominic show an angelic-looking little boy in a short-sleeved dress shirt, with neatly combed hair and a shy, inquisitive smile and piercing, deep green eyes.
Three decades later, his arms snake with angry ink, chilling tattoos of skeletons with twisted faces that represent the devil and a pair of clowns grimacing with exaggerated grins and sneers. His cell phone rings to the song "I Need A Freak" by Too Short: "I need a freak, to hold me tight/I need a freak, every day and every night."
Earlier this year, he tattooed a devil's horn dripping red blood on each temple.
He blames his mother for sending him to be an altar boy at the parish church where his childhood priest got him drunk on communion wine and molested him for years. He blames his father for not standing up to her.
Their punishment, he says, is to watch him spend the church's money any way he wants — on cars, on a string of girlfriends and on the alcohol that has left him with just 10 percent of his liver.
"I blame it on them a lot. Everyone tells me forgive and forget, but how am I going to forgive something like that?" he said. "I think I'm torturing them, which I shouldn't have to be doing to my parents. They're after the money, they wanted the money."
"I ain't got no feelings for them. Like I said, I hatched from an egg. And the money made it worse."
Dominic's anger torments his father, a Vietnam veteran who is plagued with guilt because he did not protect his son.
For penance, he takes the abuse, the rejection and the anger — and when Dominic calls, he still comes running. When he arrives, Dominic leaves.
"He takes off and I'm there but I just, I just...," he said, trailing off. "It doesn't feel like I'm accomplishing anything and the guilt is still there. I can't make it up, I can't reverse the time."
But where Dominic's father is crippled by grief, his mother is more matter-of-fact.
Before the settlement, she would stand at his bedroom door in the middle of the night and listen with her heart in her throat as her youngest son thrashed and cried out in his sleep: "Don't hurt me, don't hurt me! I'll do what you say, I'll do what you want."
But over time, she has become hardened by his blistering anger over the money.
"If you could give me back my son's childhood, I'd gladly take that back because he had a future," she said. "Now he has no future, you see him, he has no future."
___
A year after David Guerrero received his money, he spent $40,000 to open a used modern furniture store in Palm Springs. His parents, Minerva and Robert, worked there at his request.
But when David called suddenly to tell them he was about to pay $20,000 for another store packed with secondhand goods, his parents rushed to intervene. They arrived too late; David had closed the deal.
As they walked into the new store, David dropped the keys in their hands. As he strode out, he told his parents: "This is your store now. Deal with it."
The Guerreros cleaned out the abandoned shop.
"We felt we had to do something or we would get yelled at," said Minerva Guerrero, as she recalled the incident. "It was like David was the parent and we were the children. We're the parents and David's the child, but it was the other way around. That's what I felt like."
The $4 million changed David, his parents say, and in changing him, it altered their family dynamic forever.
It left them with a son who would buy what he wanted, said what he wanted, did what he wanted to do. If he wanted to get high, he would leave for San Diego with no notice and come home days later to his mother's care.
In the nearly five years since his settlement, he has bought a stable of thoroughbred horses, luxury saddles and a vast collection of modern art, photography and art deco furniture. He gave $100,000 to a woman who told him the prince of Dubai was going to build a lavish development in the desert and spent $250,000 to build a yogurt shop that never opened.
He spent it all. His health insurance has run out and earlier this month, he applied for welfare.
His parents, who live with him in a new two-story home bought with David's money, are powerless to intervene. They have talked about moving out, but they are afraid if they do, their son will overdose or commit suicide.
"He says, 'Well, I bought you a home, what other kid would do that for their parents? You live comfortable, you have everything you want,'" Minerva Guerrero said. "Well, I could live in a tent and be happy rather than live in a home like this with all these problems, these problems with David. This is not normal."
When David is sober and upbeat, he opens the door to self-reflection and acceptance and his natural charisma shines through. He talks in a rapid, stream-of-consciousness monologue about forgiveness, going to catechism classes and how much he loves his parents.
His dark hair is slicked back and an open-chested cotton shirt and baggy jeans make him look half his age.
"I don't want to be a victim anymore, I want to be somebody that can redeem myself," he said. "I think I blamed my dad for not being there for me, I think I tried to blame whoever I could. I tried to blame whoever I possibly could because I had no other way of understanding what was going on with me."
But David's mood swings erratically, and when he reflects on the money he's lost, and the broken relationships, he grows resentful.
His parents "think the money has caused conflict, but you just have to live with it. I just have to live with the damage that's been done," David said. "That's all I can do."
He blames his family, he blames his attorney, he blames his financial adviser, he blames his bookkeepers and he blames his friends.
"Everybody knew this was going to happen," David said, his voice thin and high with anger. "How come I wasn't warned enough?"
___
Still, there have been signs of hope.
It's been almost a month since Dominic checked into alcohol rehab, the judge's alternative to a three-year prison term for back-to-back drunken driving convictions. The program is a Christian one, and each morning Dominic rises at dawn and gathers for prayer with his fellow alcoholics.
"I never thought I'd be back in a church again, and here I am," he said, his voice suddenly gentle. "I like it here."
David, too, is staying clean for the first time in months. The crystal meth finally overwhelmed him and nearly killed him. Now, he drives to Palm Springs every day for group therapy and, so far, he's come home every night.
These halting, fragile steps are a poor bet against a lifetime of failures and false starts, but for the Zamoras and the Guerreros, they are everything. The money is gone — and, for the first time, they dare to hope that their sons are still there.
"I say to myself, he's my prodigal son," said Frank Zamora. "He went away, but he's going to come home."
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Retired priest pleads not guilty to molesting young boy
Denis Lyons, 75, is charged with molesting a Catholic school boy in the early 1990s in Costa Mesa
By LARRY WELBORN
The Orange County Register
NEWPORT BEACH -- A retired priest pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges that he molested a young boy at a Costa Mesa church more than 17 years ago.
Denis Lyons, 75, of Seal Beach, who is free on $100,000 bail, was arrested last month at his Leisure World home and accused of molesting the boy when he was a second and third grade student at St. John the Baptist Catholic School between 1992 and 1995.
Lyons, who was removed from ministry in 2002, was a priest at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church during those years.
He faces up to 14 years in prison if convicted of four felony counts of lewd acts on a child under 14, plus a sentencing enhancement that he committed substantial sexual conduct.
Superior Court Judge Derek G. Johnson scheduled a pretrial hearing for Lyons on Oct. 2 and a preliminary hearing on Nov. 5.
Lyons was accused in 2003 with molesting another boy at St. John the Baptist between 1978 and 1981, but county prosecutors dismissed that case after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling barred prosecution of some older sex crimes.
Denis Lyons, 75, is charged with molesting a Catholic school boy in the early 1990s in Costa Mesa
By LARRY WELBORN
The Orange County Register
NEWPORT BEACH -- A retired priest pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges that he molested a young boy at a Costa Mesa church more than 17 years ago.
Denis Lyons, 75, of Seal Beach, who is free on $100,000 bail, was arrested last month at his Leisure World home and accused of molesting the boy when he was a second and third grade student at St. John the Baptist Catholic School between 1992 and 1995.
Lyons, who was removed from ministry in 2002, was a priest at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church during those years.
He faces up to 14 years in prison if convicted of four felony counts of lewd acts on a child under 14, plus a sentencing enhancement that he committed substantial sexual conduct.
Superior Court Judge Derek G. Johnson scheduled a pretrial hearing for Lyons on Oct. 2 and a preliminary hearing on Nov. 5.
Lyons was accused in 2003 with molesting another boy at St. John the Baptist between 1978 and 1981, but county prosecutors dismissed that case after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling barred prosecution of some older sex crimes.
Christmas marred by civil war within Catholic hierarchy.
By Conor O'Clery - GlobalPost
Published: December 25, 2009 10:34 ET
DUBLIN, Ireland ― As the few remaining faithful in this once mass-going nation set out for midnight services on a freezing cold Christmas Eve, two bishops announced their resignation, bringing to four the number forced to step down since they were named in a report on the cover-up of sexual abuse by pedophile priests in Dublin.
The bishops are the latest casualties of a civil war within the purple-clad ranks of the once-dominant Irish Catholic Church hierarchy that could have ramifications in the Vatican itself.
Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field offered their resignations to Pope Benedict on Christmas Eve only after fighting a rearguard action against the Archbishop of Dublin, Dairmuid Martin, who has pressurized them publicly and privately to quit. They are accused of being part of a culture of silence and denial about abusive priests that is not peculiar only to Ireland but is worldwide.
The scandal has highlighted the role of the Vatican where this practice of "see no evil" was established by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with an emphasis on protecting church financial assets.
Outrage in Ireland over the actions of individual priests and bishops has consequently also been directed towards the Vatican. This has wider implications for the influence of the Catholic Church in a country where two decades ago there was 90 percent regular mass attendance.
Bitter criticisms of the Vatican and the papal nuncio — both declined to even respond to a letter from the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy that drew up the report on sexual abuse — have become the staple diet of current affairs programs on radio and television.
The infighting within the ranks of Ireland’s Catholic hierarchy, which consists of one cardinal, three archbishops and 24 bishops, became public after Bishop Walsh sent a letter to all priests in his area of the Dublin archdiocese claiming that Archbishop Martin had expressed full confidence in him at a meeting of clergy in a Dublin hotel. The archbishop’s spokeswoman retorted that while he had confidence in Walsh’s ministry, he and other bishops named in the report had questions of accountability to answer.
Walsh protested that it would be unjust to force him to resign as he had done no wrong. However in a joint resignation statement with Bishop Field, who also denied wrongdoing, just before midnight on Dec. 24, Walsh expressed the hope that on Christmas Day their action might help to bring Christ’s pace and reconciliation to the victims and survivors of child sexual abuse to whom they again apologized.
In another public display of the turmoil within the Catholic Church leadership, Cardinal Sean Brady criticized the indifference shown by the Vatican and Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, to the inquiry. "It is unfortunate the requests from the commission didn’t get a reply," he said. "They should have." In the careful language of the princes of the Church this was tantamount to a demarche.
The Murphy commission investigated 320 allegations against a sample of 46 out of 183 priests from 1975 to 2004. It found that several cardinals and bishops protected criminal priests while taking no action to protect children.
A number of priests have gone public with complaints of a witch-hunt against clerics and have protested at the pressure from Archbishop Martin on bishops to resign. Martin, who was sent from Rome in 2003 to handle the growing scandal, apologized at Christmas midnight mass in Dublin to priests who were suffering the consequences of his actions.
One of the five working bishops named in the Murphy report, Bishop Martin Drennan of Galway, who served in the Dublin diocese in the 1990s, has not declared his intention to resign but is now under intense pressure to do so. Walsh was the bishop of the Ferns Diocese and Field was president of the hierarchy’s Commission for Justice and Social Affairs.
The woes of the Church in "Holy Ireland" were compounded by a fire which broke out in St Mel’s Cathedral in Longford after midnight mass. By Christmas morning the 170-year-old building was reduced to a shell of its former glory — a metaphor for the condition of the Irish Catholic church itself.
By Conor O'Clery - GlobalPost
Published: December 25, 2009 10:34 ET
DUBLIN, Ireland ― As the few remaining faithful in this once mass-going nation set out for midnight services on a freezing cold Christmas Eve, two bishops announced their resignation, bringing to four the number forced to step down since they were named in a report on the cover-up of sexual abuse by pedophile priests in Dublin.
The bishops are the latest casualties of a civil war within the purple-clad ranks of the once-dominant Irish Catholic Church hierarchy that could have ramifications in the Vatican itself.
Bishops Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field offered their resignations to Pope Benedict on Christmas Eve only after fighting a rearguard action against the Archbishop of Dublin, Dairmuid Martin, who has pressurized them publicly and privately to quit. They are accused of being part of a culture of silence and denial about abusive priests that is not peculiar only to Ireland but is worldwide.
The scandal has highlighted the role of the Vatican where this practice of "see no evil" was established by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with an emphasis on protecting church financial assets.
Outrage in Ireland over the actions of individual priests and bishops has consequently also been directed towards the Vatican. This has wider implications for the influence of the Catholic Church in a country where two decades ago there was 90 percent regular mass attendance.
Bitter criticisms of the Vatican and the papal nuncio — both declined to even respond to a letter from the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy that drew up the report on sexual abuse — have become the staple diet of current affairs programs on radio and television.
The infighting within the ranks of Ireland’s Catholic hierarchy, which consists of one cardinal, three archbishops and 24 bishops, became public after Bishop Walsh sent a letter to all priests in his area of the Dublin archdiocese claiming that Archbishop Martin had expressed full confidence in him at a meeting of clergy in a Dublin hotel. The archbishop’s spokeswoman retorted that while he had confidence in Walsh’s ministry, he and other bishops named in the report had questions of accountability to answer.
Walsh protested that it would be unjust to force him to resign as he had done no wrong. However in a joint resignation statement with Bishop Field, who also denied wrongdoing, just before midnight on Dec. 24, Walsh expressed the hope that on Christmas Day their action might help to bring Christ’s pace and reconciliation to the victims and survivors of child sexual abuse to whom they again apologized.
In another public display of the turmoil within the Catholic Church leadership, Cardinal Sean Brady criticized the indifference shown by the Vatican and Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, to the inquiry. "It is unfortunate the requests from the commission didn’t get a reply," he said. "They should have." In the careful language of the princes of the Church this was tantamount to a demarche.
The Murphy commission investigated 320 allegations against a sample of 46 out of 183 priests from 1975 to 2004. It found that several cardinals and bishops protected criminal priests while taking no action to protect children.
A number of priests have gone public with complaints of a witch-hunt against clerics and have protested at the pressure from Archbishop Martin on bishops to resign. Martin, who was sent from Rome in 2003 to handle the growing scandal, apologized at Christmas midnight mass in Dublin to priests who were suffering the consequences of his actions.
One of the five working bishops named in the Murphy report, Bishop Martin Drennan of Galway, who served in the Dublin diocese in the 1990s, has not declared his intention to resign but is now under intense pressure to do so. Walsh was the bishop of the Ferns Diocese and Field was president of the hierarchy’s Commission for Justice and Social Affairs.
The woes of the Church in "Holy Ireland" were compounded by a fire which broke out in St Mel’s Cathedral in Longford after midnight mass. By Christmas morning the 170-year-old building was reduced to a shell of its former glory — a metaphor for the condition of the Irish Catholic church itself.
