Catholic Church – Page 246

December 30, 2015

Filipino priest on hoverboard condemned by church

A Filipino priest has been condemned by diocese authorities, after video of him gliding around church on a hoverboard during Christmas Eve mass went viral.

The priest, who has not been named, can be seen sailing up and down aisles as churchgoers in Laguna province applaud.

“That was wrong,” the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Pablo said in a statement on its Facebook page.

It said he greeted people and sang a Christmas song on the hoverboard and he was now out of the parish to “reflect”.

“The Eucharist demands utmost respect and reverence. It is the Church’s highest form of worship, not a personal celebration where one can capriciously introduce something to get attention,” the diocese statement said.

It added that the priest saw the incident as a “wake up call”.

A version of the video was uploaded by traditionalist Catholic group Novus Ordo onto its Facebook page and was widely shared, but it has drawn a mixed reaction on Facebook.

“Complete and total disrespect not only for the Lord but also for the salvation of all those poor souls,” said Scott LaLonde. “To top it off he couldn’t even sing.”

Filipino Catholic Romy Vicente said the incident was “ridiculous”. “How can you meditate if you see this happening inside the church where holy mass is going on?”

Other users showed support for the priest and applauded his “fun spirit”.

“This is actually fun,” said Rob Trainor from Canada. “I am Roman Catholic but not a practising one that attends Mass regularly. If there were more priests like this one, I may be tempted to return to mass. If people keep calling for traditions, you will lose even the most ardent Catholics.”

“Doing a sermon from a hoverboard was a great way to show how Catholic church is making strides in entering the new era,” commented another Facebook user Mark Lewis.

The Philippines is the third largest Christian country on earth, with an estimated 80 million Catholics.

With 81% of the population defining themselves as Catholic, the country’s culture and society has been closely intertwined with the teaching of the church. Laws in the country are also often framed around traditional Catholic values.

Complete Article HERE!

December 23, 2015

Italian bishop protected paedophile priest: Report

An Italian bishop aided and abetted a paedophile priest, telling him to avoid the police and shrugging off warnings the prelate was meeting teenage boys on Grindr, Italian media reported on Sunday (Dec 20).

priest

Priest Antonello Tropea, 44, was arrested after a police investigation allegedly uncovered he was using the US-based gay dating app to pick up the teenagers, with whom he had sexual relations in his car or his rectory in Calabria.

Bishop Francesco Milito was accused by a prosecutor of failing to investigate widely-spread reports of the priest’s activities and encouraging him to “continue as before”, according to the reports. grindr

Police suspicions were raised after officers found Tropea in a car in a secluded spot with a teenager, and the priest not only said he was a physical education teacher but had suspicious objects in his rucksack.

An investigation was launched and wiretaps revealed not only Milito’s anger over an anonymous letter about Tropea, believed to have been written by a nun, but also how the bishop warned his charge to “avoid speaking to the police”.

According to La Repubblica newspaper, the two-month probe allegedly found that Tropea picked up boys on Grindr under the name Nicola, the same name as the patron saint of his parish in Messignadi in southern Italy, San Nicola di Mira.

Complete Article HERE!

December 14, 2015

Groups concerned about Walgreens’ ties to Catholic hospital

Walgreens_store

Nineteen groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter Monday to drug store chain Walgreens expressing concerns about the company’s plans for a Catholic hospital to run its in-store health clinics in Washington state and Oregon.

In the letter, the organizations asked if the clinics would allow access to contraception, abortion drugs and prescriptions to help terminally ill patients end their own lives, which is legal in both states.

The groups note that other health organizations have stopped providing abortions after partnering with Providence Health, the Catholic hospital.

“In our states, we have consistently seen that when secular entities join with religious health systems, the services, information, or referrals provided at the secular entity become limited by religious doctrine,” the letter said.

When Swedish Medical Center in Seattle partnered with Providence Health in 2012, it stopped offering elective abortion services, the groups say. When Harrison Medical Center in Bremerton, Washington, affiliated with a religious health system in 2013, its doctors stopped prescribing aid-in-dying medications.

Highline Medical Center in Burien, Washington, also agreed to comply with Catholic ethical guidelines when it partnered with a religious health system in 2013.

Organizations including NARAL, Planned Parenthood, Compassion & Choices and several gay-rights organizations signed the letter.

It also asked whether Walgreens would continue to serve all customers equally, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It questioned whether transgender men or women will be able to receive a prescription for hormone therapy at one of the clinics.

“Can Walgreens offer assurances that its LGBTQ customers and LGBTQ patients at the clinics will be treated with dignity and respect and will receive the same medical standard of care as any other customer?” the letter said.

Walgreens has announced that Providence Health will be opening 25 health clinics within its stores.

Jim Cohn, a spokesman for the Deerfield, Illinois-based drug store company, said he could not immediately comment on the letter.

The Catholic hospital did not immediately return a phone call and email seeking comment.

Complete Article HERE!

December 11, 2015

Priest paid his male ‘sex master’ from collection plate: lawsuit

By Julia Marsh

Miqueli:Crist — Rev. Peter Miqueli (right) and his “master” Keith Crist.

A Catholic priest swiped collection-plate donations to pay for drug-fueled sex romps with a heavily muscled S&M “master,” a new lawsuit charges.

Parishioners claim the Rev. Peter Miqueli has stolen at least $1 million since 2003 while leading churches on Roosevelt Island and in The Bronx, where he is currently pastor of St. Frances de Chantal in Throggs Neck.

Their suit alleges he used the money to act out unholy fantasies as a sexual “slave,” blowing $1,000 at a time on bondage-and-discipline sessions where a “homosexual sex ‘master’ ” — identified in court papers as Keith Crist — “would force Father Miqueli to drink Keith Crist’s urine.”

Miqueli also spent $60,000 in 2012 alone for “illicit and prescription drugs” he used with Crist, bought a $264,000 home in Brick, NJ, and paid $1,075.50 a month for his master’s East Harlem apartment, court papers say.

Plaintiffs’ lawyer Michael G. Dowd also said that Miqueli at one point had Crist living in the rectory at St. Frances de Chantal but that Crist had since been kicked out.

The suit, which was filed in Manhattan Supreme Court Thursday, also charges that the Archdiocese of New York and Timothy Cardinal Dolan knew about Miqueli’s “illegal scheme” and did nothing to keep it from growing into “the monster it is today.”

“This lawsuit seeks to finally put an end to this truly sinful conduct so that St. Frances de Chantal parish can regain the strength, spirituality and faith it once had before Father Miqueli arrived,” the court papers say.

The suit says that during the summer of 2014, maintenance workers at St. Frances de Chantal saw “several unstacked piles of cash, each approximately one foot high, scattered throughout Father Miqueli’s rectory residence.”

In addition to skimming $20 bills from the collection plate there, Miqueli ripped off money raised to buy a new pipe organ at his former church, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini on Roosevelt Island, according to the suit.

He also put Crist in charge of the Cabrini thrift shop, where Miqueli “misappropriated and diverted money . . . for his own personal use” and destroyed financial records to cover up the theft, the suit says.

An on-and-off girlfriend of Crist’s, Tatyana Gudin, told The Post that the hulking bodybuilder once hurt his knees while having sex with Miqueli in a bathtub.

The suit seeks unspecified damages from Miqueli, Crist, Dolan and the archdiocese on grounds that include negligent supervision, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud and unjust enrichment. Crist

Dowd said, “I feel really bad for the parishioners,” and he estimated that Migueli “had to have taken $1 million from each parish.”

“We’ve done a lot of homework. This is a bad guy,” Dowd said.

He added, “The thing that’s really amazing to me is: How could this guy be acting this way for nine years or so and the archdiocese does nothing?”

A spokesman for the archdiocese said it “has . . . taken these allegations seriously and has been investigating them.”

Crist hung up on a reporter, and Miqueli declined to answer a call through a church receptionist.

Complete Article HERE!

December 8, 2015

Minnesota diocese files for bankruptcy after sex abuse award

By JEFF BAENEN

This photo shows the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary in Duluth, Minn., Monday, Dec. 7, 2015. The Diocese of Duluth, a sprawling but sparsely populated Roman Catholic diocese in northeastern Minnesota, filed an emergency petition for federal bankruptcy protection Monday after a jury found it partially responsible for millions of dollars awarded in a clergy sex abuse case last month.

The Diocese of Duluth, a sprawling but sparsely populated Roman Catholic diocese in northeastern Minnesota, filed an emergency petition for federal bankruptcy protection Monday after a jury found it partially responsible for millions of dollars awarded in a clergy sex abuse case last month.

The diocese said the move for Chapter 11 reorganization was necessary after efforts to reach a resolution with all abuse victims were unsuccessful. The diocese is the 15th U.S. diocese or religious order to seek bankruptcy protection in the face of sex abuse claims.

“There is sadness in having to proceed in this fashion,” the diocese’s vicar general, the Rev. James Bissonette, said in a statement on the diocese’s website. He said given the “magnitude of the verdict, the Diocese was left with no choice but to file for reorganization.”

In November, a Ramsey County jury awarded $8.1 million to a man who says he was molested by a priest in northern Minnesota more than 35 years ago when he was a boy. The diocese was held responsible for $4.8 million.

Bissonette said the bankruptcy filing safeguards the diocese’s limited assets while allowing the church’s day-to-day operations to continue. The diocese has more than 56,000 Catholics in 10 counties of northeastern Minnesota, extending south to Pine City, north to the Canadian border and west to Cass Lake.

The diocese’s operating budget for the last fiscal year was nearly $3.3 million. Even with insurance coverage and some available savings, the diocese said it could not cover the verdict, and no money would be available for remaining abuse victims who have brought claims.

William Weis alleged he was sexually abused by the Rev. James Fitzgerald at St. Catherine’s parish in Squaw Lake in 1978. The lawsuit centered on whether the Diocese of Duluth was negligent in how it supervised Fitzgerald, who died in 2009.

Weis was identified as Doe 30 in his lawsuit. The Associated Press normally does not identify possible victims of sex crimes, but one of Weis’ attorneys, Mike Finnegan, said Weis agreed to the use of his name.

The jury found the diocese was 60 percent at fault. Fitzgerald’s order, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, based in St. Paul, was found to be 40 percent at fault.

Finnegan said Monday the bankruptcy filing delays attempts to force the release of church documents on clergy sex abuse that Weis has sought to make public. A hearing on the issue had been set for Dec. 17.

For Weis, releasing the documents “was the primary thing he wanted then and still wants now,” Finnegan said.

But Susan Gaertner, an attorney for the Duluth diocese, said the bankruptcy filing will not interfere with the diocese’s efforts “to be transparent and foster healing.”

She said the diocese faces six lawsuits, including Weis’, as well as 12 additional notices of claims. Attorneys said Weis’ lawsuit was the first lawsuit to go to trial under Minnesota’s Child Victims Act, passed in 2013, that opened a three-year window to file claims for older incidents of abuse. That window closes in May 2016.

Complete Article HERE!