As early as this month, the findings of a grand jury investigation into clergy sex abuse across six Pennsylvania dioceses could be released by the state’s Office of Attorney General.
The findings into the abuse of children by priests and church workers in the dioceses of Harrisburg, Scranton, Allentown, Greensburg, Pittsburgh and Eric would mark the latest chapter into the decades-old clergy sex abuse scandal in this country.
This three-minute video helps broadly explain the some of the key developments in this country, particularly out of Pennsylvania.
During hours of emotional meetings at the Vatican, Pope Francis begged for forgiveness from Chileans alleging priestly sexual abuse — according to those in attendance — who described their meeting with the pontiff as a “defining moment” in his papacy and demanded that he follow through by ousting Chilean bishops they accuse of coverups.
“I have never seen someone so contrite. He was truly sorry, and I felt he was hurting,” said Juan Carlos Cruz, one of three people invited to sit down with the pope over the weekend for individual meetings. “He said, ‘I was part of the problem. I caused this,’ ” said Cruz, who called his three-hour meeting with Francis “very raw.”
The three men allege they endured sexual abuse as youths in Chile at the hands of prelate Fernando Karadima, who was sentenced by the Vatican in 2011 to a lifetime of penance, which means he’s been forced to retire from public life and public ministry to a life of prayer for atonement.
The Vatican did not, however, believe the men’s claim that the abuse was witnessed and covered up by Chilean Bishop Juan Barros. Francis appointed Barros bishop of the town of Osorno in 2015, hugged him publicly during his visit to Chile in January and dismissed the men’s accounts as “slander.”
But as public fury in Chile grew, Francis drastically changed course last month, dispatching an abuse investigator to interview the men, inviting them to Rome, admitting he had made “serious mistakes” and summoning Chilean bishops to Rome later this month for a dressing down.
“For almost 10 years we have been treated as enemies because we fight against sexual abuse and coverup in the church,” the three men said in a statement released as they met reporters in Rome. “These days we met the friendly face of the church,” they added.
In a letter sent to Chilean bishops last month, Francis announced he felt “pain and shame” over the men’s accounts and said he wanted to “apologize to all those I have offended.”
A Vatican spokesman did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Critics of Francis’ track record on halting abuse in the church say his blind spot in Chile proves he still “doesn’t get it.”
Jose Andres Murillo, one of the accusers, said he saw a shift in Francis’ attitude when the pope told him that “abuse is not a sin, but corruption.”
In their statement, the three men said, “We spoke with the pope about the pathological and unlimited exercise in power which is the cornerstone of sexual abuse and coverup.”
During the “intense and long hours of conversation,” they said Francis asked them to come up with ideas for putting things right.
James Hamilton, another of the accusers, told reporters one of the pope’s closest advisors, Chilean Cardinal Francisco Errazuriz, was “a real criminal” who deserved to be in jail.
The cardinal has long cast doubt on the accounts of the Chilean men and is suspected of influencing Francis.
“Errazuriz covered up Karadima’s abuse for five years,” said Hamilton, who is a surgeon in Santiago, the Chilean capital.
Hamilton said if the pope meant business, he should remove Errazuriz from his so-called C9 committee of cardinals advising him on Vatican reform.
“That is my expectation,” he said. “I would also love him to remove many bishops. This is a defining moment of his papacy.”
Hamilton said he will be watching carefully when Francis summons Chile’s bishops to Rome this month. Many expect that at the very least, the pope will rescind his appointment of Bishop Barros.
“We are waiting for action. We are not here for public relations,” Murillo said.
Cruz said he believed Francis had been convinced by advisors over the years to be suspicious of the accusers.
“I told him toxic people surrounded him, and he had been duped,” he said.
A magistrate in Australia has ordered Cardinal George Pell, one of the Vatican’s senior-most officials, to stand trial on sexual abuse charges involving allegations from multiple individuals dating back decades.
Pell is the highest-ranking Vatican official to be charged in the church’s long-standing sex abuse scandal.
Although Melbourne Magistrate Belinda Wallington dismissed many of the charges against Pell, who was appointed archbishop of Sydney in 2001 and later oversaw the Vatican’s finances under Pope Francis, she said that the prosecution’s case was strong enough to warrant a jury trial on the remaining charges.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Wallington, following a month-long hearing committed the 76-year-old cleric “on charges against multiple complainants, involving alleged sexual offending at a swimming pool in the 1970s in Ballarat [near Melbourne], where the accused man was then working as a priest; and at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne in 1990s, when he was the then Archbishop of Melbourne.”
Asked for a plea, a seated Pell – who has consistently denied wrongdoing — clearly announced, “Not guilty.”
Last year, Pell stated publicly, “I am innocent of these charges, they are false. The whole idea of sexual abuse is abhorrent to me.”
Lawyers for Pell had argued that all the allegations were untrue and should be dismissed.
More than 30 witnesses testified in the four-week hearing. The Associated Press writes, “His alleged victims testified in the first two weeks of the preliminary hearing via a video link from a remote location to a room closed to the media and public.”
Pell, who is free on bail, was due to appear in County Court on Wednesday to hear his trial date.
The Herald reports:
“After the magistrate left the bench, a group of people at the back of the court room clapped.”
… Cardinal Pell left the court building at 11.55am, and was jeered by people outside the building as he got in a white car and was driven away. A wall of police officers stood on the bottom two steps of the court building to ensure he was not surrounded by media.”
The study used data from the 2011 University of Texas at Austin’s Research Consortium, which surveyed 21,247 18- to 30-year-olds. 2.3% identified as gay or lesbian, 3.3% as bi, and 1.1% were questioning.
LGBQ youth reported that they had attempted suicide at least once in their lives at a higher rate than straight people. 5% of straight people said that they had attempted suicide, while the rates for LGBQ youth ranged from 14% to 20%.
While studies have already shown that queer youth are more likely to have attempted suicide, this study went a step further and asked participants to rate the importance of religion in their lives.
Gay and lesbian youth who said that religion was important to them were 38% more likely to report recent suicidal thoughts compared to gays and lesbians who said that religion wasn’t important to them.
The difference was more stark for questioning youth – they were three times more likely to report recent suicidal thoughts if they were religious.
Religiosity was not correlated with suicidal thoughts among bi youth, who reported high rates of suicidal thoughts no matter their religiosity.
For straight people, the correlation was the opposite: they were less likely to report suicidal thoughts if they were religious.
“Religion has typically been seen as something that would protect somebody from thoughts of suicide or trying to kill themselves, and in our study our evidence suggests that may not be the case for everyone, particularly for those we refer to as sexual minority people,” said John Blosnich of West Virginia University, one of the study’s authors.
“It can be very scary to be caught in a space where your religion tells you that you are a ‘sinner’ just for being who you are,” he said. “Sexual minority people may feel abandoned, they may experience deep sadness and anger, and they may worry what this means for their families ― especially if their families are very religious too.”
The study did not ask participants what their religion was, so there isn’t any data to show whether more supportive religions were less correlated with suicidal thoughts.
The authors conclude that faith-based suicide prevention services “should be willing and equipped to assist all people who seek their services, regardless of sexual orientation.”
The problem is that the “gay condemning” parts of a religion cannot be separated from the “suicide preventing” parts. Religious conservatives often say that they are appalled by suicide and want to help queer people, and they imagine that they can be supportive of LGBQ people while still condemning homosexuality.
That’s not how it works, but a lot of religious people aren’t willing to change their opinions, even when people’s lives literally depend on it.
For a very short time, Irish American Jennifer O’Malley thought about turning her back on the Catholic Church. Despite being brought up in an active Catholic family and attending Catholic school from kindergarten through high school, as many children with a Co. Mayo grandfather would, she felt the Church had left her wanting in her inability to be ordained.
“I did think about the possibilities of being ordained with the Episcopal Church and explored that very briefly but as soon as I started exploring it, I realized that was not my calling,” O’Malley, who is based in Long Beach, California, told IrishCentral.
“I’m Catholic in my blood and in my bones.
“I quickly realized that it was almost a responsibility to stay, to refuse to leave, and to force the institution to reckon with the vocation that God has called me to.”
Having read about the emergence of the Roman Catholic Women Priests Movement initially in the newspaper, a nun in one of the parishes O’Malley attends told her more about it, introducing her to a woman priest within the Catholic faith who was also based in California.
“I was participating in a small faith community and they recognized a call to priesthood in myself,” O’Malley said.
“Once I met this other woman priest, and some of my other friends who had said to me ‘oh, you should think about becoming a priest’ or ‘I wish there was a way that you could be ordained’ also met her, we all thought ‘yeah, this is perfect.’ It’s what I’m being called to.”
The Roman Catholic Women Priests Movement officially started in Germany in 2002, where seven women were ordained as priests within the Catholic Church. Since then, bishops from among these women have also been ordained, allowing them to ordain further women around the world.
According to the movement’s website, there are currently over 145 Roman Catholic women around the world who are “reclaiming their ancient spiritual heritage and are re-shaping a more inclusive, Christ-centered Church for the 21st century.”
“We advocate a new model of priestly ministry united with the people with whom we serve. We are rooted in a response to Jesus who called women and men to be disciples and equals living the Gospel,” the movement states.
It was ten years after this official start, in 2012, that O’Malley was ordained and she now serves ministries in her local community in the evenings and weekends, around her full-time job as a specialist director.
While she says that up to 95% of the people she meets with are happily receptive to her role as a woman priest, those who don’t agree with it are not extremely vocal, even when they express their opposition.
“God doesn’t call people based on gender or on biological parts, to be frank, but rather God calls people based on the gifts that God has given us,” O’Malley argues, adding that she feels it’s only by making bold moves such as this one that she will see the changes within the Catholic Church that she desires.
“The Canon Law that says only a man can be a priest is a human-created law that’s flawed. Those things [flaws] are changed by people breaking laws and that’s what we’re doing.
“It’s 2018. To have an institution say that a person cannot hold a position simply because of their gender is so ridiculous, to be quite honest, and I think it’s very oppressive of the Church to continue to oppress women’s call to the priesthood.”
Much of this oppression is upheld by Pope Francis, she believes, who while loved for his views on helping immigrants, is still opposed to the idea that a woman can be ordained.
“I think his view of women is not what it should be,” she states.
“He’s made it clear that he doesn’t support the ordination of women. He has said that the door continues to be closed and it’s unfortunate because he talks to accepting migrants and working with the poor.
“However, women are disproportionately affected by these things and while he continues, or the institution continues, to oppress women, I don’t think that he can fully talk about these other issues.”
It’s not just ordaining women,” O’Malley adds.
“It’s not just putting a woman on the altar and solving everything.
“It’s also about making sure the voices of the people in parishes [are included] and including the voices of everybody in decision making, changing some of the language we use to be more inclusive, and reaching out to other oppressed communities in the church like the gay and lesbian community.
“We’ve got to look at all the other parts of the institution that also need to be changed … The Church is becoming irrelevant in some ways, especially amongst younger people.”
