September 2020 – Page 2 – Hear Our Voices

September 8, 2020September 8, 2020

Ukrainian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Filaret contracts coronavirus after blaming gays for the virus

A prominent 91-year-old Ukrainian religious leader who blamed gay people for the COVID-19 pandemic has contracted the disease.

Leading Ukrainian religious figure Patriarch Filaret has contracted coronavirus, after blaming gay people for the disease.

The 91-year-old, who is the Patriarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Kiev Patriarchate, is currently in a stable condition being treated in hospital, with Ukrainian website 11.2 international also reporting he has pneumonia.

Filaret’s church, which is said to have more than 15 million followers among Ukraine’s 42 million population, confirmed the COVID-19 diagnosis in a Facebook post.

“We inform that during planned testing, His Holiness Patriarch Filaret of Kiev and All Rus-Ukraine tested positive for COVID-19,” the statement said. “Now His Holiness Bishop is undergoing treatment at a hospital.”

Filaret caused controversy earlier this year after he made comments about the coronavirus being a result of gay marriage.

He told Ukrainian national TV network Channel 4 in March that the pandemic was “God’s punishment for the sins of men, the sinfulness of humanity”.

“First of all, I mean same-sex marriage,” Filaret added.

Kiev-based LGBTQ+ group Insight announced in April it was taking legal action against Filaret, saying his comments were damaging for the gay and lesbian community.

“Our aim is to show people that there is no longer place for such statements from church leaders in Ukraine,” Insight’s head Olena Shevchenko told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Filaret was joined by a chorus of other prominent religious figures around the world who believe the coronavirus is “divine intervention” in response to the emergence of gay and lesbian rights.

The World Health Organisation has since urged against the spread of such misinformation, saying in a statement that these beliefs spark “stigmatisation and discrimination”.

But Filaret doubled down on his comments, with representatives for the Patriarch saying his views were “consistent with Ukrainian laws”.

Homophobia is still rife in the Ukraine, with same-sex marriage being illegal.

The Ukrainian Parliament refused to back a Council of Europe human rights treaty aimed at protecting women from domestic violence in 2016, because its references to sexual orientation and gender violated what politicians believed were basic “Christian values”.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

September 7, 2020

U.S. bishop-elect resigns over abuse allegation weeks before taking office

By Philip Pullella

An American bishop-elect has resigned just weeks before he was due to start the job, following an allegation that he had sexually abused a minor, Catholic Church officials said on Monday.

Father Michel Mulloy, 66, was appointed by Pope Francis on June 19 to be bishop of Duluth, Minnesota and was due to be formally installed in a ceremony on Oct. 1.

It is almost unheard of for a bishop-elect to resign between the time of his appointment and installation. The episode pointed to the continuing impact the abuse scandal is having on the 1.3 billion-member Roman Catholic Church.

It was not immediately possible to contact Mulloy or his lawyers for comment on Monday, a public holiday in the United States.

A Vatican statement said Pope Francis had accepted Mulloy’s resignation, but gave no more details.

The diocese of Rapid City, South Dakota, where Mulloy had served as a priest, released a statement saying it had last month “received notification of an allegation against Father Mulloy of sexual abuse of a minor in the early 1980’s”.

The diocese said that when it received the allegation, police were informed and Mulloy was instructed to refrain from public ministry while a Church investigation determined if the allegation was credible.

A diocesan board made up of mostly lay members reviewed the investigation’s findings and concluded that the accusation “met the standard” for further investigation, the diocese said.

Mulloy submitted his resignation after he received a summary of the allegation, the diocese added.

A spokesman for Rapid City’s police force said there was no active investigation into the bishop-elect. Police in Duluth did not immediately respond to calls for comment.

For the past two decades the Roman Catholic Church around the world has been hit by a raft of sexual abuse cases and has spent billions of dollars in settlements, expenses that in many cases have led to the closing of parishes and schools.

The U.S. Church is still reeling from a Pennsylvania grand jury report that revealed that priests had abused about 1,000 people over seven decades in that state alone.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

September 5, 2020

Catholic diocese paid paltry sums to two poor, black abuse victims

A SURVIVOR of clerical abuse, and now the Mississippi coordinator of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), has blasted the Jackson Diocese and a Franciscan order over paltry compensation payments made to two black men who were abused by a friar in the 1990s.

by Barry Duke

Mark Belenchia, above, was commenting on the settlements made to La Jarvis Love and Joshua Love who suffered abuse at the hands of Paul A West.

The former Franciscan friar and fourth-grade teacher has been extradited from Wisconsin to Mississippi to faces sexual battery charges.

Belenchia, whose abuse by a Catholic priest began when he was around 13 and lasted for three years, said of the settlements:

They were harmed as children and they were harmed as adults. The Diocese of Jackson and the Franciscan order ought to be ashamed of their performance.

Reporting for Religion News Service, Michael Rezendes wrote:

The men making the allegations, La Jarvis Love and Joshua Love, both 37, are cousins who grew up together and encountered West in the 1990s, when he was a teacher and later the principal at the St. Francis of Assisi School in Greenwood, Mississippi.

Three years ago, the cousins reported that West sexually assaulted them on school grounds and on road trips, including one to a New York summer camp established by the Franciscans, a Roman Catholic religious order.

As The Associated Press first reported, nearly two years ago La Jarvis Love and Joshua Love each agreed to settle their claims for $15,000 – far less than most clergy abuse victims receive.

A third man, Joshua’s younger brother, Raphael, also alleged West sexually abused him and reported the abuse to church authorities in 1998, after which West returned to Wisconsin. Raphael Love rejected a settlement similar to those signed by his brother and cousin.

In November, La Jarvis Love and Joshua Love filed a lawsuit in federal district court in New York, claiming the Franciscans pressured them into signing low-ball settlements that required their silence about their allegations. At the time they signed the settlements, they were not represented by an attorney.

“They felt they could treat us that way because we’re poor and we’re Black,” Joshua Love told the AP.

Father James Gannon, the leader of a Wisconsin-based group of Franciscan Friars, negotiated the settlements. Last summer, he denied that racism or the Loves’ poverty were factors in the amount of money offered . “Absolutely not,” he told the AP.

In 2006, the Catholic Diocese of Jackson, which includes Greenwood, settled lawsuits covering 19 victims — 17 of whom were white – for $5 million. That average payout of $263,000 for each survivor is 17 times that offered to each of the Loves. Payments in more recent settlements nationally have ranged far higher.

Gannon also attempted to negotiate a similar agreement with Raphael Love, Joshua Love’s younger brother, who is serving two life sentences in a Tennessee prison for a double homicide he committed as a juvenile. Raphael Love refused Gannon’s offer because, he said, the amount was not enough to hire a criminal attorney willing to argue that he deserves a new trial.

West, 60, did not contest his extradition at a hearing in Outagamie Country, Wisconsin on August 17. He arrived at the Leflore County Jail in Greenwood, Mississippi, earlier this week following an investigation by the Mississippi Attorney General’s public integrity division.

West also has been charged with second-degree sexual assault of a child in Wisconsin.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!