Time to shut this cess pool down

Davidtrios wrote:

norm wrote:

81 wrote:

no, but you have people here clamoring for PSU's head, but when the church is involved, those same people go radio silent.

yes but those people are being overly dramatic about psu

they allowed an environment for child rape.

A 77-year-old priest assigned to the chapel at Midway Airport was charged Saturday with sexual abuse after he allegedly tried to grab the crotch of a man who had attended services before boarding a flight to Kansas.

Father Bede R. Jagoe allegedly spoke to the 54-year-old victim after services on Dec. 11, Cook County prosecutors said.

As they boarded an elevator in the C Concourse, Jagoe allegedly told the man he was attracted to him and tried to kiss him on the mouth, then “grabbed (the victim’s) testicles,” prosecutors said.

Surveillance cameras near the elevator show Jagoe moving toward the victim as the elevator doors closed, prosecutors said.

The victim boarded his flight, and reported the incident to Chicago Police after he returned to his home in Kansas. He returned to Chicago on business last week and made a formal report Wednesday.

Jagoe was arrested Friday. On Saturday, he walked into Cook County Central Bond Court with the support of a cane. Jagoe was charged with criminal sexual abuse.

His attorney said Jagoe had been a priest for 51 years. Court records state Jagoe is a member of the Dominican Order and lives in River Forest.

A representative for the Dominican order’s Chicago province was traveling and not immediately available for comment.

..PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A nun testified Monday in a landmark church sex-abuse trial that she was fired from a southeastern Pennsylvania parish for reporting concerns to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia about explicit mail that a priest had received.

Sister Joan Scary said she lost her job as director of education at St. Gabriel's in the rural Montgomery County town of Stowe, near Pottstown, after she complained to then-Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua about the Rev. Edward DePaoli shortly after his arrival in 1995. She said she was concerned about mail DePaoli began to receive, including computer disks from Denmark and magazines containing "deplorable" content, none of which included DePaoli's clerical title or indicated that his address was a rectory.

DePaoli, who was defrocked in 2005, is not a defendant in the trial but prosecutors are using the testimony about him and others to build a case against Monsignor William Lynn, who was the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's secretary of clergy from 1992 to 2004 and entrusted within investigating complaints against priests.

Lynn is the first Roman Catholic official in the U.S. charged with endangering children for allegedly moving priests suspected of molestation from parish to parish without warning anyone of previous sex-abuse complaints. He is on trial with the Rev. James Brennan, who is charged with the attempted rape of a 14-year-old boy in 1996. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Scary said Monday she was unaware when he came to St. Gabriel's that DePaoli was convicted in federal court in 1986 of possessing child pornography and sentenced to probation. The conviction was not announced in the parish but Scary said she did think it odd that "he didn't really have duties."

"During Mass he would sit in the sanctuary and wouldn't do anything, other than just be there," she said. "Most priests would either read the gospel, give a homily, help out with communion ... it just seemed strange."

She testified she was warned by the church's pastor to keep any concerns about DePaoli to herself "or I could pack my bags and leave."

That's exactly what happened after she anonymously mailed one of DePaoli's magazines to Bevilacqua, she testified, with a handwritten note asking whether the cardinal thought that it was appropriate material for a priest. She was fired by the Rev. James Gormley, the pastor, in May 1996 after seven years at St. Gabriel's.

A detective went on the stand Monday to read a series of memos regarding the case of the Rev. Thomas Shea, who was removed from active ministry in 1994, a week after the archdiocese was contacted by an attorney who said his client was sexually abused as an altar boy by Shea in the 1970s at Saint Helena parish in Philadelphia. In one memo, Lynn suggests the priest might have been "seduced into it" by the then-altar boy.

Shea, who was sent to a Catholic treatment facility and diagnosed as a pedophile with the emotional maturity level of a 12- or 13-year-old boy, was permitted to retire in 1995 and said he had only two victims — the boy whose lawyer contacted the archdiocese and a boy who had since died.

In 2002, however, the archdiocese received an anonymous letter from someone who said his or her family member was one of several boys molested by Shea in the 1970s at Saint Joseph parish in Collingdale and "cannot to this day stop running away from his life."

A detective on the witness stand told Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington that investigators found no evidence that the archdiocese tried to locate the letter writer or any other potential victims.

..

The number of credible allegations of sexual abuse of minors committed by Roman Catholic priests or deacons in the United States rose 15 percent last year, and the church spent $144 million to deal with the ongoing scandal, according to a church-sponsored audit released on Tuesday.

A total of 489 people reported credible allegations of abuse by priests or deacons in 2011, the bulk of them involving adults victimized when they were children decades ago by now-deceased clerics, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a report on its ninth annual audit of the issue.

Twenty-one of the victims were younger than 19 and victimized more recently. Attorneys for victims say there are likely tens of thousands more victims who have never come forward since the scandal erupted in Boston in 2002.

"We renew our promise to strive to the fullest to end the societal scourge of child sexual abuse," Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the conference, said in an introductory letter to the report.

Critics of the church's handling of the sex abuse crisis scoffed at the audit, saying it minimized the extent of the abuse and the culpability of the church hierarchy.

The yearly audit for the bishops identified credible allegations against 406 priests or deacons. In 2010, there were 428 credible allegations against 345 offenders. More than one-third of the alleged perpetrators had never been charged before.

The figures for victims and offenders were twice as high earlier in the decade, then dropped off beginning in 2008.

Twelve accused clerics remained active in ministry pending the outcome of investigations. Eleven percent of new allegations were deemed false.

Altogether, U.S. dioceses and religious institutes spent $144 million on abuse settlement-related costs, which included $50 million for settlements, $37 million in attorneys' fees, $6 million on therapy for victims and $10 million on support for offenders. About a quarter of the settlement amount was covered by church insurance policies.

The church spent another $33 million on child protection efforts last year. Nearly all church employees have undergone training on the issue, the bishops' audit said, and a majority of children in parishes have been instructed how identify when they are being "groomed" for abuse and what to do.

"The church must continue to be vigilant. The church must do all she can never to let abuse happen again. And we must all continue to work with full resolve toward the healing and reconciliation of the victims/survivors," Dolan said.

The yearly audit was conducted for the first time by StoneBridge Business Partners, which visited one-third of the 195 dioceses. Data was also provided by the Georgetown University-based Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

Critics such as the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and BishopAccountability.org have said the church cannot police itself, and that the crime of church higher-ups hiding and transferring offending priests is a persistent problem.

SNAP's outreach director Barbara Dorris called the audits "nearly meaningless." BishopAccountability.org president Terence McKiernan called it a "serious disservice to the public by pretending that all is well."

A trial is under way for a member of the church hierarchy in Philadelphia, Monsignor William Lynn, who is accused of transferring offending priests to unsuspecting parishes.

Lynn, 61, is the highest-ranking member of the U.S. church to go on trial in an abuse-related case, though Kansas City, Missouri, Bishop Robert Finn is to go on trial in September on a charge he failed to report to authorities about a priest found with pornographic pictures of young girls.

"Those horrific cases prove that, when it comes to kids' safety, little in church hierarchy has changed," Dorris said.

McKiernan of BishopAccountability.org said the number of priests credibly accused of molesting children since 1950 has now increased to more than 6,100.

Altogether, U.S. dioceses have spent $2.1 billion on settlement-related costs for the abuse scandal between 2004 through last year, according to the report. Eight dioceses, a Jesuit province, and the Irish Christian Brotherhood, a Catholic brotherhood that runs schools and orphanages, have declared bankruptcy since 2004, claiming overwhelming debts from the costs of the scandal.

The Vatican has ordered an overhaul of the most important group of nuns in the United States after an investigation found what Roman Catholic Church officials called "radical feminist themes" that questioned official positions on homosexuality and the ordination of women.

In a bluntly worded report, the Vatican's watchdog of orthodoxy, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, found what it called "serious doctrinal problems" with some of the comments and actions by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, based in Silver Spring, Md. The Vatican on Wednesday named Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle to oversee changes in the group, a process that could take up to five years.

The Leadership Conference, which says it has more than 1,500 members representing more than 80% of the 57,000 women religious in the United States, stated it was "stunned" by the official assessment.

"This is a moment of great import for religious life and the wider church," the group said in a statement posted on its website. "We ask your prayers as we meet with the LCWR National Board within the coming month to review the mandate and prepare a response."

The Vatican’s actions come at a time when Rome appears to be reasserting its conservative vision over some elements of the church, particularly in the United States.

Nuns have questioned a variety of church positions, including the ban on ordaining women. In 2010, American bishops opposed the Obama administration’s healthcare insurance overhaul, but some nuns were very visible in supporting the plan, whose constitutionality is now being considered by the Supreme Court.

In its assessment of the Leadership Conference, the Vatican cited letters from some in the group "protesting the Holy See's actions regarding the question of women's ordination and of a correct pastoral approach to ministry to homosexual persons."

"The terms of the letters suggest that these sisters collectively take a position not in agreement with the Church’s teaching on human sexuality. It is a serious matter when these Leadership Teams are not providing effective leadership and example to their communities, but place themselves outside the Church’s teaching," the report said.

The Vatican also "noted a prevalence of certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith in some of the programs and presentations sponsored by the LCWR, including theological interpretations that risk distorting faith in Jesus and his loving Father who sent his Son for the salvation of the world. Moreover, some commentaries on 'patriarchy' distort the way in which Jesus has structured sacramental life in the Church; others even undermine the revealed doctrines of the Holy Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and the inspiration of Sacred Scripture."

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is now led by an American, Cardinal William Levada, formerly the archbishop of San Francisco. He follows in the footsteps of Pope Benedict XVI, who headed the office before he assumed the papal triple tiara in 2005.

The investigation of the American women religious began in 2008; when it was announced, some nuns and their backers complained that it was an attempt to rein in their communities, which often provide key social services in schools and hospitals -- often at salaries below what the non-religious earn.

Despite its strong language questioning the nuns on doctrine, the report praised their work.

"The Holy See acknowledges with gratitude the great contribution of women Religious to the Church in the United States as seen particularly in the many schools, hospitals, and institutions of support for the poor which have been founded and staffed by Religious over the years," the report said.

The Roman Catholic religious order that runs Brother Rice High School in Chicago and St. Laurence High School in Burbank didn't want Brother Edward Chrysostom Courtney in Chicago any longer. So in the early 1970s, the Irish Christian Brothers shipped him to the West Coast and kept the troubling reasons to themselves.

When he was finally ousted from the parochial system 10 years later, landed in a public school in rural Washington and sexually abused a boy there, those reasons came to light. Law enforcement finally got involved. The Christian Brothers dismissed Courtney from the order shortly before he pleaded guilty to indecent liberties with a child in Washington and became a convicted sex offender.

On Thursday, more than 80 alumni of both schools plus Leo High School, also once run by the order, learned they would receive compensation from a lawsuit against the order for allowing Courtney and 11 other men to teach despite allegations that those men had sexually abused children.

The $16.5 million payout to 400 accusers nationwide will come out of a Chapter 11 reorganization settlement between creditors and the Edmund Rice Christian Brothers North American Province, known as Irish Christian Brothers. In addition, the order agreed to enforce a zero-tolerance policy for brothers accused of abuse.

Rising legal costs prompted the Christian Brothers to file for bankruptcy in April 2011. At that time, the religious order notified alumni that they could file claims through U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

"Intense negotiations during the past three months have led to painful concessions in bringing about this mutually agreed upon settlement," Brother Kevin Griffith, deputy province leader said in a statement. "This settlement will allow an opportunity to recommit ourselves to bringing the Gospel of Jesus and the charism of our Founder, Blessed Edmund Rice, to those we serve. The protection of children must remain the highest of priorities in creating safe environments at our ministry sites and in our communities. Let us continue to pray for all those affected by child sexual abuse and ask the Lord for healing and reconciliation."

Unable to get restitution in federal bankruptcy court until Thursday, more than 30 Chicago-area men filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court earlier this month. More than half of the plaintiffs in that lawsuit said they were sexually abused by Courtney at all three Chicago-area schools.

The order still runs Brother Rice and St. Laurence, but it severed ties with Leo in 1992. The order is not the same as the De La Salle Christian Brothers who run Chicago's De La Salle Institute.

Nine other brothers and two laymen also are named in the suit: Dennis Bonebreak, Robert Brouillette, Edmund Corrigan, Thomas Duffin, C.B. Irwin, Daniel McDonough, Paul Reycraft, Michael Trujillo and Phillip Vorlick. The suit also named football coach Joe Johnston and wrestling coach Robert Cachor. Johnston died in 1987. Cachor retired in 1998. He denied the allegations on Thursday.

It's unclear if the order has substantiated any of the allegations against the accused brothers. Unlike many dioceses, the Christian Brothers don't publicize the names of credibly accused clergy.

In addition to Courtney, Brouillette was convicted in December 1999 of exchanging child pornography with a New Hampshire police officer posing as a trader in an online chat room. Those images were among the roughly 400 images on computer disks seized by police at the Joliet home Brouillette shared with three other Christian Brothers.

The plaintiffs' lawyers said it took 10 years of litigation against the Christian Brothers to unearth proof that the order and other church officials quietly shuttled Courtney around the country knowing he was a danger to children but not telling law enforcement. After documents surfaced that the order previously said didn't exist, lawyers sued for fraud.

In minutes from a 1974 meeting, one brother wrote that "Chris is to have no contact with Rice, Leo or Laurence in any way, shape or form." He went on to become the principal of the elementary school at St. Alphonsus' Parish in Seattle.

Six years later, the Rev. Jeffrey Sarkies, then pastor of St. Alphonsus, "reluctantly" accepted his resignation.

"Ed, it is important that you understand the reason we were able to keep the matter that led to your submitting a letter of resignation quiet was because the parents concerned, who also admired your abilities, were assured … that you would then terminate," Sarkies wrote.

"To alter the course would be to run the very real risk of turning this situation into a cause celebre thereby doing damage to your name and reputation and that of the school."