Pope Francis laicizes North Dakota priest after sexual assault guilty plea

By Daniel Payne

Pope Francis has ordered the laicization of a North Dakota priest who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a woman in that state.

Diocese of Fargo Bishop John Folda said in a statement this month that former priest Neil Pfeifer “received a dispensation from the clerical state (laicization) from Pope Francis” effective March 8.

Pfeifer himself “sought the dispensation after adult women came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct,” Folda said in his statement.

“Mr. Pfeifer pleaded guilty on July 13, 2023, to a misdemeanor charge of sexual assault in Stutsman County,” the bishop said.

Laicization is the term for when a priest has been dismissed from the clerical state. An individual who is confirmed as a priest will always remain one, but laicization takes away his ability to licitly execute the functions of the priesthood, except in the extreme situation of encountering someone who is in immediate danger of death.

Someone who has lost the clerical state also no longer has the canonical right to be financially supported by the Church.

Often, a man who is laicized is also dispensed from the obligation of celibacy and permitted to marry, though this is not always the case, especially when someone has been involuntarily removed from the clerical state.

Folda in his statement noted that the decision to laicize a priest “is not made by the local diocese or bishop but is determined by the Holy See.”

“Laicization means that Mr. Pfeifer has been returned to the lay state and may no longer exercise priestly ministry,” the bishop said. “As a result, in accord with canon law, he may no longer celebrate Mass, hear confessions, or administer other sacraments.”

“Laicization does not invalidate sacraments that he previously administered,” the prelate added.

“When members of the clergy or others representing the Church abuse someone, they violate a sacred trust,” Folda said in his statement.

The diocese announced in 2021 that Pfiefer had been appointed the pastor of St. James Basilica in Jamestown, St. Margaret Mary in Buchanan, and St. Mathias in Windsor.

Pfeifer’s term at those parishes was to last for six years, until 2027.

Complete Article HERE!

Vatican investigating historic child sex abuse claims against New Zealand Cardinal John Dew

Cardinal John Dew

By Michael Morrah

Newshub can reveal the Vatican is investigating New Zealand’s highest ranked Catholic over child sex allegations.

Cardinal John Dew, who delivered the church’s public apology to victims of clergy abuse at the Abuse in Care Royal Commission in 2021, is alleged to have sexually abused a boy who attended St Joseph’s Orphanage in Upper Hutt in 1977.

Wellington police spent months investigating, but recently closed the file and have not pressed charges saying they were unable to locate enough evidence.

Newshub has learned a church investigation, overseen by the Vatican, is now underway.

54-year-old Steve Carvell alleges Cardinal Dew sexually abused him when he was seven years old.

Cardinal Dew says it’s a “false allegation” and took Newshub all the way to the Supreme Court to prevent the reporting of the allegation. The court has allowed us to tell the story.

“That’s a shocking allegation and it did not happen” Dew told Newshub.

“I do not know Steven Carvell,” he said.

Carvell told Newshub he was 100 percent sure Dew abused him.

“The abuse still continues today because those memories and those obscene occasions, those things in life that I never, ever want to feel, I still today feel those intense feelings,” he said.

Steve Carvell has taken the step of asking a district court judge to waive his automatic right to name suppression so Newshub can tell his story.

Carvell also alleges that he was raped by the late Father Noel Donoghue, another priest who was at the Upper Hutt parish in 1977, and that he was sexually assaulted by a nun who visited the orphanage.

He took his complaint to police, the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care and the Catholic Church’s National Office of Professional Standards (NOPS).

Cardinal Dew, who retired as the leader of the Catholic church in New Zealand in May last year, cooperated with the police investigation.

He was interviewed for more than an hour by a detective at Lower Hutt Police station in December.

Speaking to Newshub, Dew said he was “absolutely certain” what Carvell has alleged did not happen

“I can honestly say with every ounce of my being that I have never abused anyone in my life. Ever.

“I would hope that people would believe someone who’s now had 48 years of experiences as a priest and has never had an allegation made against me,” said Dew.

“This has come totally out of the blue 46, 47 years later and I’m telling my truth.”

Police spoke to other people who were at the orphanage at the time but told Newshub they have exhausted all available lines of enquiry.

“Police were unable to locate sufficient evidence to meet the evidential test – which requires sufficient evidence to provide a reasonable prospect of conviction.

“As such the case has now been closed, however Police will always consider new information that may come to light in relation to an investigation,” they said in a statement.

Dew’s successor as Archbishop of Wellington, Paul Martin, said the Cardinal “has not been involved in public ministry since he became aware of the complaint.”

This is standard practice while allegations against priests are investigated.

Steve Carvell’s story

Steve Carvell is deeply affected by memories of alleged sexual abuse which have surfaced in recent years.

“The reason I’ve decided to share my story and come forward today is in the hope that other victims out there draw some strength from what I’m doing.”

He claimed the sexual abuse happened during a stay at St Joseph’s Orphanage in Upper Hutt when he was a little boy.

His admission records confirm he was there for 12 days – from the 1st to the 12th of November 1977.

“I saw that I was seven years old and it was at that point in time that I really broke down. I thought I might have been a bit older than that,” said Steve.

“It was the saddest moment of my life.”

Carvell said on his first night at the orphanage, he was woken by then ‘Father’ John Dew.

“He said: you’ve been a naughty boy, you’ve woken everybody up in the room. But I’m going to let you off. How would you like to play a game of catch me if you can,'”

Carvell claims the game swiftly became sexual in nature.

“Things got a bit weird, so instead of tagging it became touching.”

Carvell’s complaint alleges it was not only Father Dew involved in the game, but also a nun he says spent time at the orphanage. A nun he says he liked and trusted.

Clergy directory records cited by Newshub confirm that Dew was one of four priests at the Upper Hutt diocese in 1977

He rose through the church ranks over the following decades and in 2015 Pope Francis made him a Cardinal

As the head of the church here, Dew went before the Royal Commission in 2021 to make a public apology to victims abused by Catholic clergymen.

“I apologise to you on behalf of the bishops and congregational leaders of the Catholic church,” he said at the time.

“We offer no excuses for their actions, or for ours, that have caused you harm.”

Dew told Newshub that his apology still stands, despite the allegations that have been made against him.

“Absolutely, I stand by every word I said and that apology. Every word I said.”

“I couldn’t have stood up at the Royal Commission and said all the things that I had if this was part of my background. I couldn’t have stood up if I was covering things up”, said Dew

Carvell alleged Father Noel Donoghue – another priest at St Joseph’s at the time – also harmed him.

Again, his memories are that the abuse occurred during a game of tag in the middle of the night.

When Donoghue couldn’t catch Carvell, the priest became angry and Steve alleges he was raped.

“It was the most painful thing that I’ve ever felt in my life.”

When asked if he understood what was going on at the time, given his age, Carvell said he just knew his parents didn’t hurt him like that.

He said he felt isolated and tormented and that Father John Dew made him feel what happened was his fault, telling him he’d been “naughty”.

“So, it was a feeling of just begging for help from an adult and it never came.”

Dew doubts the allegations against Donoghue are true.

“I find that very hard to believe. Very hard to believe,” he said.

When asked by Newshub’s Michael Morrah why he believed that he said “oh, just unexpected of a person, the person, that I came to know.”

What Carvell said he endured and witnessed hadn’t always been clear in his mind.

His flashbacks started in 2019. The memories have become increasingly detailed and, at times, overwhelming.

“That tends to be interestingly enough the primary way these memories come back. They tend to come back initially as fragments,” said Professor Martin Dorahy, a clinical psychologist at Canterbury University.

“And then over time these tend to be pieced together and then remembered.”

Steve Carvell has suffered from complex Post-traumatic stress disorder for many years – which he attributes to the trauma of the alleged abuse.

Prof Dorahy says it’s uncommon for people to fabricate memories of sexual abuse, but they may misremember certain details.

“The majority of cases, it would seem, appear to reflect something that is more accurate, rather than something that is made up in a wholesale fashion.”

In his legal bid to stop Newshub reporting the allegations, Dew’s lawyer attacked Carvell’s credibility saying “the source of the allegations, one person’s memories of events some 46 years ago, is not reliable.”

Dew also said he had no idea why Carvell was making these claims

“I do not remember him. I do not remember any of the children from the orphanage, because we didn’t go to the orphanage.”

He has stood down from priestly duties while the police investigation took place and said that was very difficult.

“It meant two very good friends who died in that time, I had to tell their widows ‘I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to do this because an allegation has been made against me’,” he said.

Newshub has chosen not to name the nun accused as it was unable to independently verify her presence at the orphanage at the time.

The Sisters of Mercy – who ran the orphanage – refused Newshub’s request to access their records, but through their lawyers said Steve’s allegations were “demonstrably untrue”

In evidence provided to the court, Congregation Leader Sue France said the nun Carvell named was living and working full time in Palmerston North in the year the abuse was alleged to have occurred.

Further evidence provided on behalf of the Sisters of Mercy suggested it would have difficult for a nun to travel between Palmerston North and Upper Hutt.

One former nun also said in an affidavit that the abuse could not have occurred in the way Steve has described, without others hearing or being aware of it.

Noel Donoghue died in 2005.

Steve Carvell’s complaint was sent to the royal commission after the conclusion of its public hearings.

The commission told Newshub that accounts and experiences received would still inform its deliberations.

Now that the Police has closed its investigation, the Vatican is carrying out its own investigation into the allegations against Cardinal Dew.

The Vatican is expected to conclude its investigation later this year.

Where to find help and support:

Complete Article HERE!

Pope Francis orders investigation into sexual assault allegations against Archbishop Lacroix

Pope Francis has personally mandated retired Quebec Superior Court judge André Denis to conduct a preliminary investigation into allegations of sexual assault against the Archbishop of Quebec, Cardinal Gérald Cyprien Lacroix.

In a letter dated February 8 and signed by the hand of the Pope, including The duty obtained a copy, François asked former judge Denis to give him, at the end of his investigation, “a detailed report of your steps and your conclusions”.

This report will allow the pope to decide whether the allegations are sufficiently credible to justify the opening of a canonical trial. However, the alleged victim of Mgr Lacroix, whose identity is not known, refuses to participate in this process, indicated to Duty his lawyer Me Alain Arsenault.

The latter considers that the Vatican’s approach is not “credible”. The lawyer, who leads numerous class actions targeting religious orders and dioceses, reports that other victims have gone through this process and emerged “bruised and victims of reprisals”.

He asks that his client’s choice “not to call the police, not to contact the Pope, but to register for collective action” be respected.

Withdrawal

The name of Mgr Lacroix surfaced on January 25 in Superior Court when a new list of alleged attackers was filed as part of the class action brought against the diocese of Quebec.

The alleged victim, who was 17 years old at the time of the alleged acts (in 1987 and 1988), claims to have suffered touching, fellatio and penetration. These allegations have not yet been proven in court.

In a short press release released Monday, the diocese of Quebec offered “its full collaboration” to former judge Denis, “but will not intervene in the progress of the investigation nor in its conclusions.” The diocese added that it will make “no further comment on this approach”.

On January 26, the day after the allegations were made public, Bishop Lacroix announced that he was temporarily withdrawing from his activities “until the situation is clarified.” The cardinal also “categorically” denied having committed the actions with which he is accused, describing them as “unfounded”.

A few days later, in a video broadcast to his diocesans, Mgr Lacroix declared: “Never, to my knowledge, have I made any inappropriate gesture towards anyone, whether minors or adults. My soul and my conscience are at peace in the face of these accusations which I refute. »

Several mandates

Despite the victim’s refusal to participate in the process, retired judge André Denis intends to complete his investigation. In recent years, the former magistrate has been entrusted with other mandates linked to the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church.

Last June, he was mandated by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate to lead an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse committed in Nunavut by Franco-Canadian priest Johannes Rivoire. He also led a statistical examination of the archives of the Archdiocese of Montreal (comprising the dioceses of Montreal, Joliette, Saint-Jean–Longueuil, Saint-Jérôme and Valleyfield) and the diocese of Mont-Laurier, which made it possible to determine that at least 87 priests perpetrated sexual abuse from 1940 to 2021.

Complete Article HERE!

Reckoning

— An NBC Bay Area investigation into a new wave of lawsuits accusing Catholic clergy of sexually abusing children

by Candice Nguyen, Michael Bott and Alex Bozovic

The Catholic church is once again being buried in child sex abuse accusations across California. More than 4,000 people are suing Catholic institutions across the state, enabled by a recent law that opened a window for survivors to sue their alleged abusers, no matter how far back their accusations go. Hundreds of Northern California priests are being accused for the first time, including some still working in churches and schools today. NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit dug through the new claims, which suggest the decades-long scandal could go far deeper than the public previously knew.

This page is the culmination of more than four years of reporting by NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit. You’ll find profiles on abuse victims we’ve interviewed over the years, responses to the new allegations from local bishops, and links to the stories we’ve published along the way.


RESPONSE FROM THE CHURCH

Archdiocese of San Francisco:

Diocese of Oakland:

Diocese of Santa Rosa:

Diocese of San Jose:

THE ACCUSERS

More than 1,500 people have sued the Catholic church in Northern California since 2020. A similar flood of lawsuits hit the church two decades ago. We’ve interviewed more than a dozen alleged victims, some who came forward long ago, and others now speaking out for the very first time. Here are some of their stories.

Resources for victims and survivors

If a child is currently in danger, call 9-1-1 or Child Protective Services.

To report past abuse, call your local police department.

The California Attorney General’s Office is conducting an ongoing investigation into accusations of Catholic clergy abuse. Report to the California Attorney General’s Office: ClergyAbuse@doj.ca.gov.

Reach out to advocates with the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (additional resources).

Understanding the utter dysfunction of the Vatican’s response to sex abuse scandals by Catholic clergy

— One afternoon in mid-December, Pope Francis had a meeting that was not on his official agenda or otherwise recorded, that underscored the utter dysfunction of the Catholic Church’s response to the global clergy sex abuse scandal.

In the main reception room of the Vatican hotel where he lives, Francis met for more than an hour with a Spaniard who as a young seminarian was molested by his spiritual director. The former seminarian was desperate.

He had lodged a complaint with the Toledo, Spain Archdiocese in 2009, and visited Vatican offices multiple times to deposit damning documents and demand action be taken against his abuser and the bishops who allegedly covered for him. But for 15 years, he had received no justice from the church.

While Francis’ decision to hear his story was laudable and pastorally sensitive, it was also evidence that the church’s in-house system to deal with abuse isn’t working — from the laws available to punish abusers to its policies for helping survivors. For every victim who has enough well-connected friends at the Vatican who can arrange a papal audience, countless others will never feel that the church cares for them or will provide them justice.

Five years ago, Francis convened an unprecedented summit of bishops from around the world to impress on them that clergy abuse was a global problem and they needed to address it. Over four days, these bishops heard harrowing tales of trauma from victims, learned how to investigate and sanction pedophile priests, and were warned that they too would face punishment if they continued to cover for abusers.

Yet five years later, despite new church laws to hold bishops accountable and promises to do better, the Catholic Church’s in-house legal system and pastoral response to victims has proven still incapable of dealing with the problem.

STAKEHOLDERS WARN CHURCH’S EVOLVING RESPONSE STILL HARMS VICTIMS

In fact, victims, outside investigators and even in-house canon lawyers increasingly say the church’s response, crafted and amended over two decades of unrelenting scandal, is damaging to the very people already harmed — the victims. They are often retraumatized when they summon the courage to report abuse in the face of the church’s silence, stonewalling and inaction.

“It’s a horrific experience. And it’s not something that I would advise anyone to do unless they are prepared to have not just their world, but their sense of being turned upside down,” said Brian Devlin, a former Scottish priest whose internal, and then public accusations of sexual misconduct against the late Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien marked O’Brien’s downfall.

“You become the troublemaker. You become the whistleblower. And I can well understand that people who go through that process end up with bigger problems than they had before they started it. It’s a hugely, hugely, destructive process.”

Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger revolutionized the way the Catholic Church dealt with abusive clergy in 2001, when he persuaded St. John Paul II to order all abuse cases be sent to his office for review.

Ratzinger acted because, after nearly a quarter century at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he had seen that bishops weren’t following the church’s own laws and were moving predators around from parish to parish rather than sanctioning them.

At the end of his 2019 summit, Francis vowed to confront abusive clergy with “the wrath of God.” Within months, he passed a new law requiring all abuse to be reported in-house to church authorities (but not to police) and mapped out procedures to investigate bishops who abused or protected predator priests.

But five years later, the Vatican has offered no transparency or statistics on the number of bishops investigated or sanctioned. Even the pope’s own child protection advisory commission says structural problems built into the system are harming victims and preventing basic justice.

“Recent publicly reported cases point to tragically harmful deficiencies in the norms intended to punish abusers and hold accountable those whose duty is to address wrongdoing,” the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors said after its last assembly. “We are long overdue in fixing the flaws in procedures that leave victims wounded and in the dark both during and after cases have been decided.”

At the 2019 summit, the norms enacted by the U.S. Catholic Church for sanctioning priests and protecting minors were touted as the gold standard. The U.S. bishops adopted a get-tough policy after the U.S. abuse scandal exploded with the 2002 Boston Globe “Spotlight” series.

SOME SAY VICTIMS SHOULD SKIP PURSUING JUSTICE FROM THE CHURCH

But even in the U.S., victims and canon lawyers say the system isn’t working, and that’s not even taking into consideration the new frontier of abuse cases involving adult victims. Some call it “charter fatigue,” that the hierarchy simply wants to move on beyond the scandal that spawned the 2002 Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

The Rev. Thomas Doyle, a U.S. canon lawyer who worked for the Vatican embassy in Washington and now provides consulting for victims, says he no longer advises they pursue church justice.

Why? Because “the church will screw them every which way from Sunday,” he said.

“Don’t waste your time,” Doyle says he tells victims. “The only justice, or semblance of justice that has been meted out is in civilian courts because the church can’t screw them up.”

Nearly every investigation into abuse in the Catholic Church that has been published in recent years has identified the church’s in-house legal system as a big part of the problem, from church-commissioned reports in France and Germany to government inquests in Australia, parliamentary-mandated studies in Spain and law enforcement investigations in the U.S.

While some reforms have occurred, including Francis’ lifting of the official secrecy covering abuse cases in 2019, core issues remain.

Part of the problem is that canon law was never meant to address the needs of abuse survivors or to help them heal: The official goal of the system is entirely institution-centric: to “restore justice, reform the offender and repair scandal.”

REPORTS IDENTIFY SPECIFIC ISSUES WITH CHURCH’S LATEST POLICIES

Even after the Vatican announced a revised penal code, more than a decade in the making, the outside reports were remarkably uniform in identifying:

• The structural conflict of interest built into the system. According to church procedures, a bishop or religious superior investigates an allegation that one of his priests raped a child and then renders judgement. And yet the bishop or superior has a vested interest, since the priest is considered to be a spiritual son in whom the bishop has invested time, money and love.

It is difficult to think of any other legal system in the world where someone with such a personal, paternal relationship with one party in a dispute could be expected to objectively and fairly render judgment in it.

The independent commission that investigated the French church’s abuse scandal said such a structural conflict of interest “appears, humanly speaking, untenable.”

Even the pope’s own Synod of Bishops came to a similar conclusion. In their November synthesis document after a monthlong meeting, the world’s bishops identified conflict of interest as an ongoing problem.

“The sensitive issue of handling abuse places many bishops in the difficult situation of having to reconcile the role of father with that of judge,” they said, suggesting that the task of judgment be assigned to “other structures.”

• The lack of fundamental rights for victims. In canonical abuse investigations, victims are mere third-party witnesses to their cases. They cannot participate in any of the secret proceedings, they have no access to case files and no right to even know if a canonical investigation has been started, much less its status.

Only due to a Francis reform in 2019 are victims allowed to know the ultimate outcome of their case, but nothing else.

The Spanish ombudsman, tasked by the country’s congress of deputies to investigate abuse in the Spanish Catholic Church, said victims are often retraumatized by such a process.

“Despite the regulations enforced over the last few years, if we take into account international and national standards on the minimum rights of victims in criminal proceedings, the rights and needs of victims in canon law proceedings continue to be neglected,” the report found.

The French experts went further, arguing that the Vatican is essentially in breach of its obligations as a U.N. observer state and member of the Council of Europe, which requires upholding the basic human rights of victims.

Citing the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, the French report noted that a fundamental right includes access to a fair trial “which guarantees, in particular, the right of access to independent justice and an adversarial procedure, and, for the victim, the right to an effective remedy.”

“Canon law will only be able to provide a genuine response to the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable persons in the Catholic Church if it meets the universally recognized requirements of justice and if it is implemented more effectively,” the French commission concluded.

• No published case law. Unlike the Vatican tribunal known as the Roman Rota, which publishes redacted marriage annulment cases, the Vatican’s sex abuse office doesn’t publish any of its decisions about how clergy sexual abuse cases have been adjudicated.

That means that a bishop investigating an accusation against one of his priests has no way of knowing how the law has been applied in a similar case. It means canon law students have no case law to study or cite. It means academics, journalists and even victims have no way of knowing what types of behavior gets sanctioned and whether penalties are being imposed arbitrarily or not at all.

Independent legal experts who investigated clergy abuse in Munich, Germany, said the publication of canonical decisions would help eliminate uncertainties for victims in how church law was being applied. Australia’s Royal Commission, the highest form of inquest in the country, similarly called for the publication of abuse decisions, in redacted form, and to provide written reasons for decisions “in a timely manner.”

In-house, canon lawyers for years have complained that the lack of published cases was deepening doubts about the credibility and effectiveness of the churches’ response to the church scandal.

“This lack of systematic publication of the jurisprudence of the highest courts in the church is unworthy of a true legal system,” Kurt Martens, a professor at Catholic University of America told a canon law conference in Rome late last year.

Monsignor John Kennedy, who heads the Vatican office investigating abuse cases, said his staff was working diligently to process cases and had received praise from individual bishops, entire conferences who visit and religious superiors.

“We don’t talk about what we do in public but the feedback we receive and the comments from our members who recently met for the Plenaria are very encouraging,” he wrote. “The pope also expressed his gratitude for the great work that is done in silence.”

But such praise comes from the hierarchy, not those who have been harmed: the victims.

They are left to languish, even if — as now advised by the church — they report their abuse. The Spanish seminarian who met with the pope first filed his complaint against his abuser with the Toledo Archdiocese in 2009. But the Toledo archbishop only launched an internal investigation in 2021 and informed the Vatican, after Spain’s El Pais newspaper reported on the case.

The identity of sexual abuse victims is not released unless they choose to go public.

In October, a Spanish criminal court convicted the priest and sentenced him to seven years. An appeals court recently voided the sentence on a technicality.

The seminarian has remained in touch with Francis and recently wrote him saying he was “exhausted” with the process but had nevertheless appealed to Spain’s Supreme Court.

Francis called him right back and encouraged him to keep fighting, he said.

Complete Article HERE!