Italy's bishops reveal priest abuse figures

Clerical Whispers

05/27/2010

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For the first time the Roman Catholic Church in Italy has admitted that about 100 cases of paedophile priests have been reported to church authorities during the past 10 years.

But the Italian Catholic bishops' conference refused to reveal how many priests in the country had subsequently been defrocked under canon law.

It also did not say how many priests had been prosecuted by police.

The Church has been under pressure to reveal the secret statistics. Diplomatic immunity
Meanwhile, the public record of the number of cases of paedophile priests prosecuted in Pope Benedict's own backyard continues to grow.

On Monday, a priest in Savona went on trial for alleged sexual violence against a 12-year-old girl.

On Tuesday, a 73-year-old priest in Milan, known for his support of gay rights, was arrested for alleged sexual abuse of a 13-year-old boy.

Last week, an Italian bishop gave evidence for the first time at another trial that he knew about rumours of sexual abuse by a priest two years before his arrest, yet had never reported this to the police.

The Secretary General of the Italian bishops' conference, Monsignor Mariano Crociata, said there was no need for a special church committee to be set up to deal with cases of child molestation by priests as had happened in Germany and other European countries.

And despite the Pope's promise of zero tolerance in the future to crimes of sexual abuse by clergy, the Vatican continues to claim diplomatic immunity from prosecution in lawsuits arising from cases of sexual abuse by priests in the United States.

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First Responses: How Do You Feel About Obama Siding with The Vatican re Sex Abusing Clergy

City of Agel: Action 2010

05/27/2010

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The City of Angels is Everywhere...

Also by Kay Ebeling: Read Sunset Boulevard, work in progress at City of Angels 2

Thanks to 7 Generous Readers we got through last month's crisis. You can help us prevent another one with PayPal High Fives (donate button at left) to pay for readership. $110 from 4 readers so far this period.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

First Responses: How Do You Feel About Obama Siding with The Vatican re Sex Abusing Clergy

.(Here are the first responses to our quest for comments yesterday. First, this all started when last weekend I got this in my email and thought it must be a mistake:)

Obama Administration Kisses Vatican’s Ass

Apparantly the Obama Administration decided to kiss the Popes Ass instead of his ring, as three Federal U.S. lawyers told the U.S. Supreme Court, cowardly and predictably, that the Oregon case against the Vatican should not go forward last week.

The spineless lawmakers in the Obama administration were unable to overlook the fact that there are approximately 60 million potential Catholic votes in this country, enough to buy any US Presidents dignity and conscience.

So what if tens of thousands of children were abused, violated, sodomized, raped, and devastated for decades by the largest criminal syndicate of child molestation known to mankind. There’s voters out there

The fed court could decide that there weren’t enough kids raped by the deviates in the Catholic Clergy, and that the Bishops did such a wonderful job of covering it up, that the Pope can continue his charade, as long as the votes come in at election time.

Pope Benedict, the Prada wearing Kingpin of sex abusers was ecstatic at the news last week, and I am sure his expectations in the decision were granted according to Canon Law. Confusingly enough, the the Court would have to quote several passages from the Code of Catholic Canon Law, instead of the US Constitution, when delivering their “decision.”

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Catholic Bishops Disclose Priest Sex Abuse Stats

All Headline News

05/27/2010

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Danilo Gagelonia - AHN News

Rome, Italy (AHN) - Bowing to pressure, Roman Catholic bishops in Rome admitted Wednesday there have been at least 100 cases of pedophile priests that were acted upon by church authorities in the past 10 years.

The Italian Bishops’ Conference, however, declined to say if any of the cases were prosecuted by the police, or what disciplinary actions the church slapped on its erring clergy.

The IBC’s revelation came in the wake of reports that a priest in Savona went on trial Monday for allegedly molesting a 12-year-old girl, and the arrest Tuesday of a 73-year-old priest in Milan for allegedly sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy.

Despite their admission and the reports, IBC secretary general Monsignor Mariano Crociata said there is no need for a special church committee to handle charges of child molestation by priests.

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Italy priest abuse stats reveal 100 cases in 10yrs

ABC NEWS

05/27/2010

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The body representing Roman Catholic bishops admits there have been at least 100 cases of child sex abuse by priests reported to church authorities in Italy.

The Italian Bishops' Conference estimates there have been about 100 cases over the past 10 years that warranted church trials or other disciplinary action.

The group has refused to say how many of the cases were referred to police, or how many resulted in the priest being defrocked.

The Catholic Church has been under pressure to reveal the secret statistics.

Just this week a priest in Savona, in Italy's north, went on trial for alleged sexual violence against a 12-year-old girl.

And a 73-year-old priest in Milan who had publicly supported gay rights was arrested for the alleged sexual abuse of a 13-year-old boy.

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Visiting SJF priest accused of harassing nun

Pninsula New

05/27/2010

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RPV — A clergyman on sabbatical at St. John Fisher Catholic Church in Rancho Palos Verdes has been sent back to India, as his bishop investigates accusations of inappropriate conduct.


Rev. John Peter, from India, allegedly sexually harassed a Catholic sister in England, between October and December 2009, as he was awaiting his assignment in the United States. Peter has been at the RPV parish since January.The situation came to light last month, when the nun, who allegedly received inappropriate e-mails from Peter, called Monsignor David Sork, pastor at St. John Fisher, asking if the accused presently was at the church. On April 27, the sister e-mailed associate pastor Monsignor Steven Zak and copied several other staff members, detailing the allegations. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles received the e-mail the following day.

As the accusations heightened, Peter left St. John Fisher on May 5 and was sent back to India to complete an investigation into the situation.

“They’re serious enough allegations that I can’t have somebody who’s under that type of a cloud serving as a priest here … Because the allegations took place [outside] of this country, we can’t do anything in this country about it,” Sork said.

Upon having a discussion with the Pastoral Council, an announcement was made during Sunday service that the priest was recalled to India. Sork sent out a letter dated May 10 to all 3,000 parishioners.

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Report Outlines Abuse Claims at German Jesuit Schools

The New Hord Times

05/27/2010

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BERLIN — Deepening the sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, a special investigator released a report on Thursday saying that 205 former students claimed they had been abused in Jesuit schools, including at the prestigious Canisius-Kolleg in Berlin.

The investigator, Ursula Raue, said the actual number could be higher. “We cannot expect to have heard everything yet,” she said. “The question must be asked why the order dealt so dismissively with the well-based information about frequent incidents of sexual abuse in its institutions.”

Father Stefan Dartmann, Germany’s leading Jesuit official, immediately issued a statement acknowledging “with shame and guilt, our failure.”

“I ask for forgiveness,” he said, adding that there was a “widespread mentality in the order, and perhaps still is, that the primary concern was the reputation of the institution and its fellow brothers.”

The report is the latest blow to a church weathering its most serious crisis over sexual abuse, here in Germany and around the world. Pope Benedict XVI, who has faced accusations that he or his subordinates did not take strong enough actions in several cases in Germany and elsewhere, has acknowledged the depth of the problem, this month calling the crisis “truly terrifying.”

The Jesuit order in Germany had asked Ms. Raue to look into allegations of sexual abuse after 25 students came forward alleging abuse at Canisius.

Her report was unsparing in its details. She said 46 Jesuits and nonclerical staff members at the schools had been accused of abuse or of knowing of such crimes without acting.
A priest identified only as Father Eckhart, no longer alive, who was at Canisius-Kolleg, “liked very much to beat” the children. Another priest, called Father Michel, also at that school, was “a sadist who enjoyed and often beat the naked bottoms of the children.”

At three schools, a priest called Father Bertram beat 50 students in a “sadistic sexual” way on their bare or clothed buttocks in the 1970s and 1980s. According to the investigation, Father Bertram underwent years of therapy. Before leaving the order, he confessed in 1991 to having suffered emotional problems that led him to beat children.

“From 1957 to 1990, I beat several hundred children and adolescents of both sexes on their exposed buttocks, in nearly painless symbolic acts of punishment,” he wrote in a report in 1991.
Given that such priests had confessed or acknowledged abuse, Ms. Raue asked why the Jesuit leadership did not take action earlier.

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Map of Catholic Priest Sex Abuse Cases Worldwide

City of Angels: Action 2010

05/26/2010

Link

City of Angels: Action 2010

Ongoing coverage of the pedophile priest epidemic in the Catholic Church since January 2007 at City of Angels 1 through 30.

Pursuing justice a story at a time

I was age five when the bishop stood over me and said, "Stop babbling about what the priest did to you." Then, forty years later... I started babbling again.


The City of Angels is Everywhere...

Also by Kay Ebeling: Read Sunset Boulevard, work in progress at City of Angels 2

Thanks to 7 Generous Readers we got through last month's crisis. You can help us prevent another one with PayPal High Fives (donate button at left) to pay for readership. $110 from 4 readers so far this period.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Map of Catholic Priest Sex Abuse Cases Worldwide

.From Post Italia, a Global Perspective translated from Italian :

Over the past fifteen years or so, greater attention to civil authorities, and a growing tendency on the part of victims to report incidents, brought public attention to the incidence of child abuse by members of the Catholic Church.

Click here for Global Map

Translation continued:

The scandal has forced Church leaders, have never been involved, starting to speak out publicly about the affair, following allegations that he operated a lack of transparency in dealing with cases of abuse and lack of incisiveness in punishing the guilty, in addition to systematically attempted to cover up cases without reporting them to law enforcement. In addition to the seriousness of the facts, and the crisis in which they dragged the self-criticism of ecclesiastical institutions is impressive geographical spread of abuse and violence, and diverted into a horrible reflection of the spread of the verb.

(Click here to continue reading and see map.)

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Homosexualist Activist Priest Arrested for Sex Abuse of Teen in Milan

LifeSiteNews.com

05/26/2010

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MILAN, May 26, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – One of Italy’s most outspokenly dissenting Catholic priests, Domenico Pezzini, has been arrested for abuse of a male teenaged victim. Pezzini, a 73 year-old priest of the diocese of Lodi, was arrested Monday in Milan. Police also revealed that a large quantity of child pornography had been found after a search of Pezzini’s residence.

In keeping with mainstream media coverage of clerical sex abuse, the Italian media is presenting the abuse as a case of “pedophilia,” or the abuse of a child. Nevertheless, police have made it public that the victim was not a child, but a minor adolescent, between 13 and 16, at the time of the alleged abuse, over three years ago.

Aurelio Mancuso, former president of Arcigay, the country’s leading homosexualist activist group, was quoted saying, “In these hours is strong discouragement among many gay Catholics who have known Don Mario Pezzini personally or through his actions and deeds.

“We have always enjoyed a journey of pastoral listening and defending the dignity of homosexuals within the Catholic Church. All this cannot overshadow the accusations made against the prelate that seem to be precise and detailed: violence and sexual abuse of children.”

Pezzini, a professor of English linguistics at the University of Verona, is a celebrity for homosexualist activists in the Catholic Church in Italy. In the 1980s, he helped to found a group, called The Source, similar to that of New Ways Ministry in the U.S., that attempted to pressure the Catholic Church to accept homosexual activity. He has authored several books defending homosexual behavior.

In 1999, Pezzini wrote an article attacking then-Cardinal Ratzinger after the latter had disciplined Sr. Jeannine Gramick and Fr. Robert Nugent, the founders of New Ways Ministry, who had refused to assent to Catholic teaching on sexuality.

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Bishop: 100 cases in 10 yrs for Italy priest abuse

AP Asociated Press

05/25/2010

Link
ROME — Italy's bishops' conference provided the first ever statistics of clerical sex abuse in the country Tuesday, saying there had been about 100 cases over the past 10 years that warranted church trials or other canonical procedures.

Monsignor Mariano Crociata, the No. 2 official in the Italian bishops' conference, gave the estimate during a press conference on the sidelines of the bishops' general assembly, the ANSA and Apcom news agencies reported.

He declined to say how many of the cases resulted in condemnation or defrocking of the priest, or how many were reported to police. While saying the church officials cooperated with police, he insisted that Italian law doesn't require bishops to report suspected abuse.

Some lawyers for victims say bishops are required to report abuse since they are public officials. Vatican norms say bishops should follow civil laws in reporting abuse.

Crociata's comments came a day after the head of the bishops' conference, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, opened the bishops' annual meeting by asking families to trust the Catholic Church despite the scandal, insisting that it had never intended to underestimate the problem.

The meeting came as more cases are coming to light in the Vatican's backyard: On Tuesday, the ANSA news agency reported that a 73-year-old priest well known in Milan's gay community had been arrested on charges he had sex with a 13-year-old boy, who is now 16. A day earlier, a priest in Savona went on trial for alleged sexual violence against a 12-year-old girl, ANSA said.

And last week, a Rome bishop testified in the case of another accused priest, the Rev. Ruggero Conti, that he knew about rumors of abuse two years before Conti was arrested yet didn't alert police or the Vatican or proceed with any canonical trial against him.

Mario Staderini, a member of Italy's Radical party who is a civil party in the Conti case, said it was unconscionable that a canonical trial hadn't proceeded against Conti, given the evidence provided to his bishop, Monsignor Gino Reali.

Reali testified that he had spoken to 20-25 people, including two boys who said they had been abused by Conti, yet didn't find their accusations credible. He said he convened a tribunal after receiving a written complaint from one of the boys, but it never got under way because the victim didn't show up.

Conti is charged with sexual violence and other charges. In police interrogations, the boys — some as young as 13 at the time of the alleged abuse — said Conti would masturbate them and force them to perform oral sex on him in his home, where he frequently invited them to eat dinner and watch movies.

"How is it possible that only in Italy no bishop has felt the need to resign or make a mea culpa for failing to be vigilant?" Staderini asked in a statement.

He said if the Italian bishops' conference wanted to be transparent and care for victims it should put some of the money that Italians earmark to the Catholic Church on their income taxes toward a fund for victims.

The main U.S. victims group, SNAP, Survivors' Network for Those Abused by Priests, denounced Crociata for his defense of not reporting abuse to police, saying "it's tragic and telling that most Catholic officials still insist on keeping clergy sex crimes secret."

The group's Midwest director Peter Isely said he doubted that there had only been 100 cases. "For decades, Catholic officials have underestimated and underreported the shocking extent of clergy sex crimes. We believe most of them still do."

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A betrayal of trust

Yass Tribune

05/25/2010

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Archbishop Mark Coleridge wrote a letter to all Catholics in the Canberra Goulburn Archdiocese last weekend, concerning sexual abuse and the churches response to it. It was written from a very personal point of view, and details his growing understanding of the nature, extent and effects of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.

The letter contains many pertinent points for us here in the Yass Valley, and not just for the Catholics amongst us. Sexual abuse by clergy is not confined to the Catholic Church, and clergy are not the only ones who betray the trust of the community.

In a community the size of ours, it is highly likely we have paedophiles in our midst. How many we can’t be sure, but they’ll be there, ingratiating themselves into unsuspecting families, making themselves indispensable and trusted friends and leaders.

Archbishop Coleridge was talking about Catholic priests when he wrote “paedophile clergy were extraordinarily adept at concealing their abuse of the young”, but the modus operandi would be similar for paedophiles throughout the community.

“At first I thought that most incidents of sexual abuse were one-off incidents, and that can be true at times. But I now know that most paedophile abuse is serial,” says Archbishop Coleridge.

“I was aghast to read transcripts of the trials of paedophile clergy; it seemed that their lives revolved around the grooming and abuse of children. It was apparent that this kind of abuse was something other than a moral lapse, a fall into sin, which could be made good by appropriate repentance, penance and a fresh start.”

This brings to mind the question about what to do with known paedophiles who have served their time in jail, and then return to society. How do we balance the rights of the offender to say they’ve done their time and paid their debt, with the rights of the victims to get on with their lives, and the rights of parents to protect potential victims from further harm?

This is a really tricky question, thrown into sharp relief when serial sex offender Dennis Ferguson was released from jail last year, free to live outside, but not free, because no one wanted him to live nearby.

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