Catholic Church used children fathered by priests as leverage to silence victims

By Laura Kelly

One priest raped a girl who bore him a child. Another made his victim get an abortion in violation of church doctrine. And others preyed upon women and girls in their parishes for years with impunity.

The crimes — and their cover-ups by Catholic church leaders, such as Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the current archbishop of Washington — are presented in graphic detail in a landmark grand jury report that documents decades of abuse committed by hundreds of clergy in six Pennsylvania dioceses.

Many previous reports about sexual misconduct among priests have focused on homosexuality and pederasty, but the grand jury report delves into sex crimes against female victims and their consequences when pregnancies occurred.

The report notes four cases that occurred in the Scranton diocese in which bishops and other church leaders allowed predator priests to continue in the ministry. The leadership also used confidentiality agreements with settlements to silence the victims. In one instance, they provided tuition for a young boy to attend a school in the diocese.

Children fathered by priests are also victims of trauma and unrecognized by the Church, says Vincent Doyle, the founder of COPING, Children of Priests International. A psychotherapist from western Ireland, Mr. Doyle, 35, is the son of a Catholic priest, which he discovered in 2011.

“I was subsequently called to keep quiet and interestingly enough, not by one single priest but by members of the lay community,” Mr. Doyle said in a phone interview with The Washington Times.

He started his organization to raise awareness of the plight of children of priests and call for recognition in the Catholic church. He was part of a landmark effort in Ireland that had the Catholic leadership acknowledge that children born to priests are due fundamental support including “personal, legal, moral, financial.”

A one-page communique by the Irish Episcopal Conference in May 2017, first made available by Mr. Doyle to The Boston Globe in its reporting on the cover-up of abuse in the Roman Catholic church, states that priests who father children must “face up to his responsibilities” and that the “two parents have a fundamental right to make their own decisions regarding their care of their new-born children.”

In cases outlined in the grand jury report, published Tuesday, at least one woman said she had a crisis of faith after becoming pregnant by her abuser-priest. The church gave her a large sum of money and thousands of dollars more later, when she said she continued to suffer from the trauma of sexual abuse.

“In terms of being proactive, the [U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops] need to emulate the Irish Episcopal Conference with regard to safeguarding of minors affected by the issue surrounding children of priests,” Mr. Doyle said.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops did not return a request for comment by press time.

Notably, Pope Francis has yet to issue a comment on the report, which names 301 priests in six Pennsylvania dioceses, accused of grievous acts of sexual violence and abuse on more than 1,000 children, some as young as 18 months old. The abuse was never brought to the attention of law enforcement, and when charges surfaced, victims were silenced and priests were hidden away.

Cardinal Wuerl, who served as bishop of Pittsburgh for 18 years, defended his role Tuesday in a statement: “While I understand this report may be critical of some of my actions, I believe the report confirms that I acted with diligence, with concern for the victims and to prevent future acts of abuse.”

The following four cases from the grand jury report show how the Scranton diocese dealt with pregnancies and the children of priests:

Father Thomas D. Skotek

Father Thomas Skotek sexually assaulted a minor female between 1980 and 1985, resulting in her pregnancy. He helped her get an abortion in 1986. When church officials, namely Bishop James Timlin, became aware of the situation, they transferred Father Skotek to another parish and, in 1989, offered $75,000 to the girl and her family contingent on a non-disclosure and confidently agreement.

“It is expressly understood and agreed that this release and settlement is intended to cover and does cover not only known injuries, losses and damages, but any further injuries, losses and damages which arise from or are related to the occurrences arising from the alleged sexual conduct of Reverend Thomas Skotek,” the agreement reads, according to the report.

Following the settlement, Bishop Timlin sought to reassure senior Catholic leaders in Rome that Skotek’s “criminal” acts would likely remain hidden.

Skotek served 39 years in the church in at least 10 communities. He was removed from active ministry in 2002, the same year The Globe broke the story of sex abuse and its cover-up in the Boston diocese.

Father Robert J. Brague

At the same time Bishop Timlin was shuttling Skotek out of Scranton and coordinating a payment to a young girl and her family, he was sent three letters accusing another of his priests, Father Robert Brague, 46, of a sexual relationship with a teenage girl.

The first two letters were sent anonymously, but a third letter was written from the sister of the high school victim. The letter author said her sister, at 17 years old, was pregnant with Brague’s child and that she believed him to be involved in at least two other affairs.

Bishop Timlin responded to the sister’s letter, saying he removed Brague from his duties as soon as he heard of the affairs but that the responsibility for the relationship rested solely on Brague and the young woman.

“Father Brague and your sister have a long, difficult road ahead … What has happened is their responsibility and certainly Father Brague will take care of his obligations,” Bishop Timlin wrote in a 1988 letter, according to the grand jury report.

In 1989, the teenage girl gave birth to a baby boy, and Brague was reassigned to a church in Florida in 1990.

In 1996, the mother asked the Scranton Dioceses to arrange for her son to attend one of the Catholic schools in its jurisdiction free of charge. The diocese arranged a scholarship for the boy.

Brague died in 1997.

Father Joseph D. Flannery

Father Joseph Flannery’s case is among the shorter cases in the report. It documents that between 1964 and 1966, the Diocese of Scranton received letters saying Flannery had engaged in affairs with women, dated and impregnated a young girl and was seen on vacation with her in Atlantic City.

There was no documentation showing an investigation or a questioning of the priest, the report states.

In 2016, the diocese sent a list to the district attorney’s office with the names of priests who had complaints against them sexual abuse of minors and included Flannery.

Monsignor J. Peter Crynes

Monsignor J. Peter Cryne resigned from the Diocese of Scranton in 2006 under credible allegations of sexual misconduct with teenage girls.

The grand jury report lists at least six encounters with teenage girls taking place throughout the 1970s, mostly girls between 15 and 17 years old.

In one situation, it is unclear exactly if Crynes impregnated a girl. That 15-year-old was sent to Crynes for counseling and support for an eating disorder. He brought her to a counseling center and stayed with her there, entering her room at night, kissing and caressing her.

“Upon returning home, the girl discovered she was pregnant,” the report states. The parents called Crynes again for support and help and he drove the girl to a nearby college, parked the car and “pulled her onto his lap. That was her last contact with him.”

When confronted with the allegations in 2006, Crynes confirmed the accusations and defended himself by saying his physical behaviors with women were “gestures of loving paternal affection,” according to the report.

Complete Article HERE!

Call for three cardinals to be removed from World Meeting of Families line-up

Survivors claim each has questions to answer about known clerical child abusers

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, from Drimnagh in Dublin, speaking in 2017 at the Dublin conference – hosted by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin – in preparation for this month’s World Meeting of Families.

By Patsy McGarry

A group representing clerical child sex survivors worldwide has written an open letter to Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin seeking the removal of three cardinals from World Meeting of Families (WMOF) events in Dublin later this month.

Archbishop Martin is chairing the WMOF board.

Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA) represents survivors in 15 countries and aims to hold the Vatican to account over clerical abuse of minors.

It says the three cardinals – Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect at the Vatican’s Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life which has overall responsibility for the World Meeting of Families, Cardinal Óscar Maradiaga of Honduras and a member of Pope Francis’s Council of Cardinals, and Archbishop of Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl should be “investigated, not honoured”.

The organisation claims they have covered up for clergy who abused minors, something denied by the three cardinals

“Any bishop who covers up for another bishop should not be trusted to safeguard Catholic families, much less preach to the world about the sacred and intrinsic dignity and meaning of family life. We are deeply troubled that three cardinals who may have protected abusive brother bishops are playing significant roles at the World Meeting of Families,” it said.

Sexually abused minors

They noted how recently former US cardinal Theodore McCarrick in the US was removed from ministry following accusations that he had sexually abused minors as well as seminarians and young priests.

Cardinal Wuerl succeeded McCarrick as Archbishop of Washington in 2006 “around the time New Jersey dioceses were settling with McCarrick’s victims.”

Last month it emerged that Cardinal Maradiaga’s close associate and auxiliary bishop in Honduras, Bishop Juan Jose Pineda, was removed because of sexually abusing seminarians.

Cardinal Farrell was consecrated Auxiliary Bishop of Washington in 2002 by then Archbishop McCarrick and served as vicar general.

“I was shocked, overwhelmed; I never heard any of this before in the six years I was there with him,” Cardinal Farrell said last month, referring to former Cardinal McCarrick and the allegations against him. He had “no indication, none whatsoever”.

From Drimnagh in Dublin, Cardinal Farrell and his brother Bishop Brian Farrell, secretary of the Vatican’s Council for Promoting Christian Unity, began their clerical careers as members of the controversial Legionaries of Christ.

Bishop Farrell remains a member while Cardinal Farrell left them in 1981.

Serial sex abuser

Legionaries of Christ founder Fr Marcial Maciel, who died in 2008, was exposed as a serial sex abuser of boys and young men and father of six children by multiple women and was removed from ministry in 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI.

In 2016, when asked by The Irish Times what he had known about Fr Maciel’s activities as a sexual predator, Cardinal Farrell said: “I never knew anything back then. I worked in Monterrey, and maybe I would have met Maciel once or twice, but I never suspected anything . . . I left the Legionaries because I had intellectual differences with them.”

The survivors want the pope to acknowledge and meet publicly with survivor leaders of Ireland during his visit and to announce that the next WMOF will be dedicated to the impact and prevention of sexual violence, particularly clergy sexual violence, on families.

Complete Article HERE!

The Catholic Church has obliterated its ability to inspire trust

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick listens during a news conference in Washington in this May 16, 2006, file photo.

by Elizabeth Bruenig

We live in an era of diminished trust and heightened cynicism. It is hard, now, to imagine someone expressing unqualified faith in government, the media, business — or even, for that matter, religious institutions. And the implication of this development is not simply the erosion of trust. It is the increasing difficulty of learning about the world around us, as we lose belief in those who might teach us.

Learning requires risk-taking. It forces us to face what we don’t know with the hope of advancing toward some grasp of it. The smaller the undertaking, the lower the emotional gamble — learning tomorrow’s weather forecast doesn’t entail an interior journey. But learning about the true and important things in life does require trust and dedication and vulnerability — usually under a teacher’s guidance. It is no surprise so many of us come to love the ones who teach us.

Neither is it a surprise, any longer, that some people charged with these roles of profound responsibility abuse them in the cruelest ways. The latest revelation concerns the former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, who resigned Saturday from the College of Cardinals. Over several decades, McCarrick is alleged to have sexually abused at least one child and several adult seminarians or young priests, all of whom looked to the charismatic prelate for guidance — moral, vocational, spiritual. Into his den, he drew them.

McCarrick, who has denied the allegation involving the child, has now become the first prince of the church to resign his role since 1927 and the highest-ranking member of the Catholic hierarchy to step down amid sexual-abuse allegations. But there are others in the church who presumably knew of the charges against him decades ago and failed to act when given the chance. Two New Jersey dioceses where McCarrick served as a bishop paid settlements to young men who alleged abuse as recently as the early 2000s; it isn’t likely that $180,000 went missing from church coffers with only McCarrick’s knowing. In 2011, a priest from Brazil filed a lawsuit against McCarrick for unwanted sexual advances. The suit was withdrawn — but again, it seems unlikely the episode came and went unknown to anyone other than McCarrick.

The question of who in the church hierarchy learned of the allegations against McCarrick — and when — has thus spawned its own predictable controversy. Some Catholics have blamed the hierarchy’s lax attitude toward abuse claims on a modern, Pope Francis-inflected tolerance for gay priests and disregard for traditional church doctrine on sexual morality. Others counter that scapegoating gay priests who remain faithful and celibate is a dangerous and misplaced overreaction. The particular matter of who abetted McCarrick and how has taken on a dimension of doctrinal argument, subtly shifting into a debate about what the church ought to teach.

I am a faithful Catholic, and I worry that this discussion seems not only off-point but also ominously premature. What the church ought to teach makes sense to debate only if it is established that the church can teach at all. And it is precisely that capacity that McCarrick, along with his anonymous enablers and his legions of abusing predecessors, have all but destroyed. As New York Times columnist Ross Douthat observed, “the Catholic bishops are now somewhat protected from media scrutiny by virtue of their increasing unimportance.” The price of that protection is a conspicuous moral muteness: The light has gone under a bushel, and the salt has lost its flavor.

The church has described itself as “mater et magistra,” mother and teacher. Yet, having obliterated its ability to inspire trust, in large part through decades of abuse and abuse-enabling, the church has now been rendered unqualified, in the eyes of many, to serve in that role. As McCarrick allegedly transgressed and abused his position as a spiritual guide, so, too, can it be said that the church has forfeited, at least for now, its own teaching role.

Every effort ought to be made to restore this crucial function, which begins with rebuilding trust. And that requires accountability, which is painful. Francis has already mandated that McCarrick remain in penitent seclusion until the accusations against him can be examined at a canonical trial. This is a positive step, but the Vatican ought also to invite an independent inquiry into who aided McCarrick’s reported abuse, passively or otherwise, how and for how long.

The church should punish those found guilty and cooperate with law enforcement when needed.

The process will likely be ugly, but so much less so than what came before. It is not too much to ask not to be raped or otherwise sexually abused by shepherds of the faith in the course of following Christ. Neither is it too severe to say that if clerics cannot meet that meager demand, they can scarcely teach His people anything at all.

Complete Article HERE!

After decades of silence, nuns talk about abuse by priests

Some nuns are now finding their voices, buoyed by the #MeToo movement and the growing recognition that adults can be victims of sexual abuse when there is an imbalance of power in a relationship. The sisters are going public in part because of years of inaction by church leaders, even after major studies on the problem in Africa were reported to the Vatican in the 1990s.

Revelations that a prominent U.S. cardinal sexually abused and harassed his adult seminarians have exposed an egregious abuse of power that has shocked Catholics on both sides of the Atlantic. But the Vatican has long been aware of its heterosexual equivalent — the sexual abuse of nuns by priests and bishops — and done little to stop it, an Associated Press analysis has found.

An examination by the AP shows that cases of abused nuns have emerged in Europe, Africa, South America and Asia, demonstrating that the problem is global and pervasive, thanks to the sisters’ second-class status in the church and their ingrained subservience to the men who run it.

Yet some nuns are now finding their voices, buoyed by the #MeToo movement and the growing recognition that even adults can be victims of sexual abuse when there is an imbalance of power in a relationship. The sisters are going public in part to denounce years of inaction by church leaders, even after major studies on the problem in Africa were reported to the Vatican in the 1990s.

“It opened a great wound inside of me,” one nun told the AP. “I pretended it didn’t happen.”

Wearing a full religious habit and clutching her rosary, the woman broke nearly two decades of silence to tell AP about the moment in 2000 when the priest to whom she was confessing her sins forced himself on her, mid-sacrament.

The assault — and a subsequent advance by a different priest a year later — led her to stop going to confession with any priest other than her spiritual father, who lives in a different country.

The extent of the abuse of nuns is unclear, at least outside the Vatican. However, this week, about half a dozen sisters in a small religious congregation in Chile went public on national television with their stories of abuse by priests and other nuns — and how their superiors did nothing to stop it.

A nun in India recently filed a formal police complaint accusing a bishop of rape, something that would have been unthinkable even a year ago. And cases in Africa have come up periodically; in 2013, for example, a well-known priest in Uganda wrote a letter to his superiors that mentioned “priests romantically involved with religious sisters” — for which he was promptly suspended from the church until he apologized in May.

“I am so sad that it took so long for this to come into the open, because there were reports long ago,” Karlijn Demasure, one of the church’s leading experts on clergy sexual abuse and abuse of power, told AP in an interview.

The Vatican declined to comment on what measures, if any, it has taken to assess the scope of the problem globally, or to punish offenders and care for victims. A Vatican official said it is up to local church leaders to sanction priests who sexually abuse sisters.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak on the issue, said the church has focused much of its attention on protecting children, but that vulnerable adults “deserve the same protection.”

“Consecrated women have to be encouraged to speak up when they are molested,” the official told AP. “Bishops have to be encouraged to take them seriously, and make sure the priests are punished if guilty.”

But being taken seriously is often the toughest obstacle for sisters who are sexually abused, said Demasure, until recently executive director of the church’s Center for Child Protection at the Pontifical Gregorian University, the church’s leading think tank on the issue.

“They (the priests) can always say ‘she wanted it,’” Demasure said.

Demasure said many priests in Africa, for example, struggle with traditional and cultural beliefs in the importance of having children. Novices are particularly vulnerable because they often need a letter from their parish priest to be accepted into certain religious congregations.

“And sometimes they have to pay for that,” she said.

And when these women become pregnant?

“Mainly, she has an abortion. Even more than once. And he pays for that. A religious sister has no money. A priest, yes,” she said.

There can also be a price for blowing the whistle.

In 2013, the Rev. Anthony Musaala in Kampala, Uganda, wrote a letter to members of the local Catholic establishment about “numerous cases” of alleged sex liaisons of priests, including with nuns. He was suspended until he issued an apology in May, even though Ugandan newspapers regularly report cases of priests caught in sex escapades.

Archbishop John Baptist Odama, leader of the Ugandan conference of bishops, told the AP that allegations against individual priests should not be used to smear the whole church.

“Individual cases must be treated as individual cases,” he said.

The reports in the 1990s were prepared by members of religious orders for top church officials. In 1994, the late Sr. Maura O’Donohue wrote about a six-year, 23-nation survey, in which she learned of 29 nuns who had been impregnated in a single congregation.

Nuns, she reported, were considered “safe” sexual partners for priests fearing infection with HIV from prostitutes or other women.

The reports were never meant to be made public, but the U.S. National Catholic Reporter put them online in 2001. To date, the Vatican hasn’t said what, if anything, it ever did with the information.

Complete Article HERE!

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick Resigns Amid Sexual Abuse Scandal

An investigation found credible evidence that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had sexually abused a teenager 47 years ago while serving as a priest in New York.

By Elisabetta Povoledo and Yonette Joseph

Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington and prominent diplomat at the center of a mushrooming sexual abuse scandal dating back decades, has resigned, the Vatican announced on Saturday.

In a statement, the Vatican said: “Yesterday evening the Holy Father received the letter in which Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop emeritus of Washington (U.S.A.), presented his resignation as a member of the College of Cardinals.

“Pope Francis accepted his resignation from the cardinalate and has ordered his suspension from the exercise of any public ministry.”

The statement said the cardinal would remain in seclusion “for a life of prayer and penance until the accusations made against him are examined in a regular canonical trial.”

Cardinal McCarrick, a prominent Roman Catholic voice in international and public policy, was removed from public ministry on June 20, after an investigation found credible accusations that he had sexually abused a teenager 47 years ago while serving as a priest in New York.

Cardinal McCarrick, now 88, said in a statement at the time that he was innocent.

Subsequent interviews by The New York Times revealed that some in the church hierarchy had known for decades about accusations that he had preyed on several men who wanted to become priests, sexually harassing and touching them.

At least one man said he was abused by Cardinal McCarrick when he was a New Jersey bishop in the 1980s. The Times investigation discovered settlements amounting to tens of thousands of dollars over the years, paid to men who had made allegations of abuse against Father McCarrick, then a rising star in the Roman Catholic church.

Cardinal McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals is the first since Father Louis Billot tendered his resignation in 1927 because of political tensions with the Holy See.

Keith Patrick O’Brien, a former archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, waived his rights as a cardinal in 2013, after accusations emerged of inappropriate sexual behavior with junior clergy. But he remained in the College of Cardinals until his death in March this year.

“The relevant point is that he is no longer a cardinal,” a Vatican spokesman, Greg Burke, said on Saturday of Cardinal McCarrick.

In recent months, the pope has worked to address concerns that he had a blind spot when it came to child sexual abuse by members of the clergy.

After a Vatican envoy confirmed this year that the Roman Catholic church in Chile had for decades allowed sexual abuse to go unchecked, the pope apologized, met with victims and accepted the resignation of some bishops — after the country’s clerical hierarchy offered to quit in May.

On Monday, prosecutors in Chile said they were investigating 36 cases of sexual abuse against Catholic priests, bishops and lay persons.

In April, Cardinal George Pell of Australia, who as the Vatican’s finance chief is one of the Holy See’s highest officials, was ordered to stand trial on several charges of sexual abuse. In May, Philip Wilson, the archbishop of Adelaide, was convicted of covering up a claim of sexual abuse in the 1970s.

Victims and their advocates have long held that bishops have not been held accountable for hiding sexual abuse. With his conviction, Archbishop Wilson became the highest-ranking Catholic official in the world to be convicted of concealing abuse crimes.

Last month, Msgr. Carlo Alberto Capella, a former Vatican diplomat, was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison by a Vatican tribunal for possessing and distributing child pornography.

He will now face a canonical trial, which could lead to his removal from the priesthood. The trial was the first time in modern history that the Vatican’s own tribunal had handed down a sentence in a clerical abuse case.

Complete Article HERE!