Category: Priests In Trouble

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PA trial: Priests struggled with ‘sexual sobriety’

A string of Roman Catholic priests testified Wednesday in a landmark clergy-abuse case, saying they reported fellow priests to the archdiocese after finding them with pornography or in unhealthy relationships with children.

The priests, uncomfortably, are prosecution witnesses in the trial of a longtime supervisor in the Philadelphia archdiocese, Monsignor William Lynn. The former secretary for clergy is charged with endangering children by allegedly helping the church cover up abuse complaints.

The Rev. Joseph Okonski told jurors Wednesday that he found pornographic magazines and videos, and a sexually explicit letter to a seventh-grade boy, in another priest’s bedroom in 1995.

The graphic letter, which purported to be from a classmate, asked if the boy wanted oral sex. The author said he fantasized about seeing the boy getting spanked by his father. The boy was told to write “Yes” on a bulletin board at the parish school if he wanted to engage in sex acts with his “secret lover.”

Okonski said his housemate admitted writing the letter and soon left the parish. But the next trial witness said the priest landed at his rectory, where he worked with altar boys and had no restrictions on his ministry.

Prosecutors argue that predator-priests were, at best, transferred if they got in trouble, then left to seek out new victims.

The witnesses, on cross-examination, said the archbishop had the final say in priest transfers. Lynn could make recommendations, but the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua or his successor, retired Cardinal Justin Rigali, made the decision, they said.

“Inevitably, any movement of priests is done by the archbishop,” Okonski said.

The priests testified that they were put in awkward positions by the behavior of men with whom they lived and worked.

A Levittown pastor said he was tasked with finding out which priest had ordered the X-rated movies that showed up on their cable bill.

Another priest called the Office for Clergy because his North Philadelphia pastor had an all-consuming relationship with a young teen. Father Michael Hennelly said he was concerned, especially after hearing about the pastor’s last such relationship, when a fallout with the boy was said to have ended violently. Hennelly soon asked for a transfer.

“For my well-being, I couldn’t live and work there,” he said.

Hennelly later joined the Office of Clergy staff in 2004, the same year Lynn finished his 12-year stint as its director. He described working with priests trying to achieve what he called “sexual sobriety.”

St. John Vianney, a church-run hospital in Downingtown, had “Sexaholics Anonymous” meetings devoted exclusively to priests. Others attended “Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous,” Hennelly said.

There are about 800 priests in the Philadelphia archdiocese. More than 60 have been accused of molesting children since 1948, although only a few have ever been charged. About 500 Catholic priests in the U.S. have been convicted of sexual-abuse charges, according to the advocacy group BishopAccountability.org.

But no church supervisors were ever charged for mishandling abuse complaints until Lynn.

Prosecutors in Philadelphia issued two explosive grand jury reports on priest sexual abuse in 2005 and 2011. They blasted Rigali and Bevilacqua but concluded they could not make a case against either, in part because of legal time limits.

New accusations led Lynn to be charged last year with felony child endangerment and conspiracy. He faces up to 28 years if convicted. Prosecutors call the archdiocese an unindicted co-conspirator in his case.

Four others were charged in the same indictment with sexually assaulting boys. The Rev. James Brennan is on trial with Lynn. Defrocked priest Edward Avery will serve 2-1/2 to five years after pleading guilty last week to sexual assault and conspiracy. And the Rev. Charles Engelhardt and former Catholic school teacher Bernard Shero are set for trial later this year. They are accused of raping the same boy that Avery assaulted.

All but Avery have pleaded not guilty.

Complete Article HERE!

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Lapsed Catholics explain why they leave church

As part of a survey to understand why they have stopped attending Mass, a few hundred Catholics were asked what issues they would raise if they could speak to the bishop for five minutes.

The bishop would have gotten an earful.

Their reasons ranged from the personal (”the pastor who crowned himself king and looks down on all”) to the political (”eliminate the extreme conservative haranguing”) to the doctrinal (”don’t spend so much time on issues like homosexuality and birth control”).

In addition, they said, they didn’t like the church’s handling of the clergy sex abuse scandal and were upset that divorced and remarried Catholics are unwelcome at Mass.

The findings, based on responses to a survey in the Diocese of Trenton, N.J., are included in a report presented March 22 at the “Lapsed Catholics” conference at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Conducted by Villanova University’s Center for the Study of Church Management, the survey, called “Empty Pews,” asked Catholics in the Trenton Diocese a series of questions about church doctrine and parish life to better understand why they are staying home.

While the study was restricted to one diocese, chances are the responses could come from just about anywhere in the U.S., where a 2007 report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found one-third of Americans were raised Catholic but one-third of those had left the church.

Or, as Villanova’s Charles Zech put it, “These are issues that affect the whole church.”

The responses can be divided into two categories, said Zech, who co-authored the study and is director of the Villanova center. In one category are “the things that can’t change but that we can do a better job explaining.” The other category, he said “are some things that aren’t difficult to fix.”

Zech and the Rev. William Byron, professor of business and society at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, conducted the survey of 298 parishioners who have stopped attending Mass.

Almost two-thirds of the respondents were female, and the median age was 53, two facts that Zech finds troubling. “That’s a critical demographic. If we’re losing the 53-year-old women, we risk losing their children and their grandchildren,” he said.

About a quarter of the respondents said they still consider themselves Catholic despite not attending Mass. About half offered negative comments about their parish priests, whom they described as “arrogant,” ‘’distant” and “insensitive.”

“One respondent said, ‘Ask a question and you get a rule, you don’t get a “let’s sit down and talk about it” response,’” Zech said. “They feel no one is willing to explain things to them.”

Respondents also said they were troubled by the church’s views of gays, same-sex marriage, women priests and the handling of the sex abuse crisis.

Criticism of the sex scandal was predictable, Zech said. “That doesn’t surprise anybody. They did not manage that well, and they are still not managing it well,” Zech said. “It hasn’t gone away.”

The respondents also called for better homilies, better music and more accountability of the church staff.

Trenton Bishop David O’Connell, a former president of Catholic University, declined to be interviewed about the survey’s results, saying through a spokeswoman that he “needed to spend time with the findings and develop his own analysis of them.”

Though the project was undertaken to learn more about why church attendance continues to decline in the Trenton Diocese, it’s findings have broader implications, Zech said. “These are issues that affect the whole church,” he said.

Although it was an anonymous survey, about one in eight respondents said they welcomed a call from a church official and provided their names and contact information for that purpose. Many more indicated they were pleased to be asked for their input.

“The fact that they took the time to respond gives us a chance,” Zech said. “If some things change, or we do a better job of representing the church’s position, we might woo some of them back.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Memo: Philly parish misled about pastor’s leave

Prosecutors read dozens of confidential church documents aloud in court Tuesday to try to prove the Philadelphia archdiocese routinely buried complaints that priests were molesting children.

Monsignor William Lynn is the first Roman Catholic official in the U.S. charged with endangering children by keeping accused priests in parish work.

The letters and memos read in court Tuesday centered on now-defrocked priest Edward Avery. Avery, known as the Smiling Padre, adopted six Hmong children and moonlighted as a disc jockey at parties and nightclubs throughout his three-decade church career.

According to the documents, a medical student told the archdiocese in 1992 that Avery had molested him after a DJ gig when the priest and the high school freshman were drinking heavily at a West Philadelphia nightclub. It happened again at age 19 when the two shared a motel bed on a ski trip to Vermont with Avery’s brother, he said.

Avery denied the allegations to Lynn, but then said they “could” have happened. A four-day evaluation at a church-owned hospital showed he may be bipolar and have alcohol and psycho-sexual problems. Avery was admitted to St. John Vianney in Downingtown for nearly a year of sex therapy and mental health treatment.

Avery’s parishioners were told that their outgoing, energetic pastor was on a “health leave” but heard no mention of the abuse allegation. Lynn’s lawyer said the documents show that Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua gave those orders.

St. John Vianney never diagnosed Avery as a pedophile but said he should not be around adolescents or work as a DJ.

Lynn next recommended that Avery go to a Philadelphia parish with a tough pastor, although that parish had a school attached. Bevilacqua instead sent Avery to work as a hospital chaplain, with residency at St. Jerome’s Parish. The northeast Philadelphia parish was home to many of the city’s police and firefighters and had an elementary school.

Avery, 69, admitted last week that he sexually assaulted a fifth-grader there in 1999, forcing the altar boy to strip naked after Mass in the church sacristy. Instead of going on trial with Lynn, Avery pleaded guilty to sexual abuse and conspiracy and will serve 2 1/2 to five years in prison.

The Rev. James Brennan, another co-defendant, is fighting charges that he tried to rape a 14-year-old boy in 1999.

Lynn also chose to go to trial, insisting that he tried to address the long-brewing sexual-abuse problem when he served as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004. Bevilacqua and other superiors quashed his efforts, defense lawyer Thomas Bergstrom argued Monday in opening statements.

The jury on Tuesday saw a 1994 list Lynn prepared that named 35 accused priests still on duty in the five-county archdiocese. Avery was on it and deemed “guilty” of the abuse. The list also shows whether the archdiocese could still be sued over each allegation.

Bevilacqua ordered that the list be shredded, although a copy survived, according to Bergstrom. Bevilacqua died of heart disease on Jan. 31, a day after he was ruled competent to testify at Lynn’s trial. He also had prostate cancer and dementia.

In 2002, a decade after the medical student came forward, his mother wrote to the archdiocese after seeing Avery at a party. He was still a priest and still working as a DJ.

“As a pediatric nurse, I must wonder who else was molested,” she wrote. “If he is anywhere near children, you have a problem.”

That year, the church sex abuse scandal erupted in Boston. Dioceses around the country agreed to review complaints in their files. In Philadelphia, those complaints were kept in secret archives in a locked room at the archdiocese. More than 60 priests had been accused since 1948. Many were still working around children.

A review board found the medical student’s complaint against the Smiling Padre credible, according to the documents shown in court. The archdiocese asked the Vatican to defrock Avery in 1993, saying he “has admitted an act of sexual abuse against a minor.” In 1995, the Vatican issued a decree in Latin, ending Avery’s 33-year church career.

The St. Jerome’s victim called the archdiocese in 2009. He said he had been raped by Avery, another priest and his sixth-grade teacher at St. Jerome’s. Defense lawyers question his credibility, given his long history of drug abuse and petty crime.

Avery reports to prison Monday.

Complete Article HERE!

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Savannah diocese, bishops sued over priest child abuse case

The Catholic Diocese of Savannah and two of its bishops have been sued in South Carolina over alleged sexual abuse of a minor by former priest Wayland Y. Brown.

The suit, filed Nov. 16 in the Court of Common Pleas in Ridgeland, alleged that Brown abused a Savannah youth whom he met through youth programs at Savannah’s St. James Catholic Church and school in the mid-1970s.

According to the suit, the victim, a “devout Catholic” identified as John Doe, was sexually abused by Brown on various church and school properties as well as in various locations in South Carolina.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Savannah and bishops Raymond Lessard and Gregory Hartmayer are named as defendants in the suit.

“In approximately 1976-1979, Priest Brown sexually assaulted the minor plaintiff, John Doe, on numerous occasions,” the suit alleged.

The 25-page suit also alleged the church “knew or should have known” Brown was assaulting the victim and the church used “a policy of concealment, secrecy and obfuscation of child abuse by church employees and priests.”

The suit asks for a jury trial to determine damages.

Brown, 67, was ordained in the diocese in July 1977, allegedly over the objections of some diocesan staff, by then-Bishop Raymond Lessard and in 1988 served as associate pastor at St. James Parish in southside Savannah.

Hartmayer was installed as bishop Oct. 18.

Brown was removed from active ministry in July 1988.

Bishop J. Kevin Boland, who served between the two named bishops and is not a defendant in the civil case, started the process to remove Brown from the priesthood in February 2003.

The Vatican dismissed Brown from the priesthood in December 2004. Brown voluntarily agreed to return to Maryland in June 2002 to face prosecution on charges of molesting a Maryland teenager decades earlier.

He pleaded guilty in a Maryland court in November 2002 to charges of child abuse and battery for performing sexual acts on a teenage boy and his younger brother between 1974 and 1977.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but in April 2008 was released after serving five years based on good behavior.

He was required to register as a child sex offenders on the Maryland sex offender registry

Brown has not been charged with sexual abuse in the Savannah area, but at least one man has claimed he was molested by a former St. James priest.

“Father Brown is a convicted sex offender,” said Charleston attorney D. Scott Beard, one of John Doe’s lawyers. “According to our lawsuit, he was placed in a position of authority with young boys even though church officials knew of his inappropriate sexual behavior with minors.”

Beard said Brown “left a trail of child victims in the places where he was assigned by the Catholic Church. If Church officials had not acted recklessly in allowing Father Brown to be around children, they could have prevented John Doe and others like him from being abused.”

Diocese spokeswoman Barbara King said Friday, “We cannot comment on pending legal action.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Monsignor: Philly cardinal shredded abuse list

A Roman Catholic church official facing trial in a priest child abuse scandal created a list of problem priests in 1994, but Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua had it destroyed, according to a defense memo filed Friday.

Monsignor William Lynn, who’s accused of keeping predator priests in ministry and transferring them from parish to parish, wants his child endangerment case dismissed because of new evidence turned over by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, including his list of 35 accused priests.

Lynn took it upon himself to review secret church files after becoming secretary for clergy in 1992, and he later gave a list of accused, still-active priests to his superior, Monsignor James E. Molloy.

Bevilacqua had Molloy shred four copies of the list, according to a memo signed by Molloy and a witness. But Molloy kept a copy in a locked safe at the archdiocese, where it was found in 2006, after Lynn had moved on, according to his motion.

“It is clear from the Molloy memo, and (its) belated production, that Monsignor Lynn has been `hung out to dry,’” the defense motion says.

Lynn, who is charged with conspiracy and child endangerment, maintains his innocence. He has long argued that he took orders from Bevilacqua and is being made a scapegoat for the church’s sex abuse scandal.

Prosecutors themselves blasted Bevilacqua in two grand jury reports but never charged him with a crime. They have called the archdiocese and others “unindicted co-conspirators.”

Bevilacqua appeared before the first grand jury 10 times in 2003 and 2004 and denied any attempt to obstruct the investigation, according to Lynn’s motion. He died last month at age 88.

Molloy also denied destroying any documents from the secret archives, according to an excerpt of his grand jury testimony. He also is dead.

Late last year, Bevilacqua, who was suffering from dementia and cancer, gave a videotaped deposition that can be used at trial, but the value of his testimony remains unclear. Lynn’s lawyers have fought to have it excluded, based in part on Bevilacqua’s dementia. They renewed that request Friday, saying they never had a chance to ask Bevilacqua if he had Lynn’s list destroyed.

Lynn is the first U.S. church official charged for his administrative action. Jury selection is under way, with testimony scheduled to start March 26. A priest and an ex-priest charged with rape are on trial with him, and they also maintain their innocence.

A gag order prevents prosecutors or the archdiocese, which serves 1.5 million Roman Catholics, from commenting on Lynn’s allegations. Lynn, 61, would faces up to 28 years in prison if convicted on all counts against him.

Complete Article HERE!

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200 priests suspected of abuse living in California, victims’ lawyer says

Some 200 Catholic priests suspected of sexual abuse are living undetected in communities across California, according to an attorney who represents hundreds of plaintiffs who sued the LA Archdiocese alleging molestation they say was inflicted on them by priests and clergy of the church.

Ray Boucher has mapped 60 locations where suspect priests live, in cities and towns from northern to southern California, and provided those locations to NBC4 exclusively.

“Many if not all these priests have admitted to sexual abuse,” Boucher said. “They live within a mile of 1,500 playgrounds, schools and daycare centers.”

Since none of the priests has actually been convicted of sex abuse, none can be identified under Megan’s Law, or their whereabouts revealed in related public databases.

“What the issue is here, is how you weigh the right of the people,” said Boucher, who is also one of the attorneys representing students in the Miramonte Elementary School sex abuse scandal. “In particular the right of children to be protected from molestation versus the right of privacy.”

‘Public is often too squeamish’
Among Boucher’s many clients in the church action are Manuel Vega and Dan Smith.

Vega is a former police officer from Oxnard who took special interest in sex crimes investigations because, he says, he was sexually abused as a teenager by his parish priest.

“He forced me to masturbate while he took pictures of me,” said Vega, who believes that the public is often too squeamish to recognize what child molestation actually entails – and thus not properly outraged by it.

“When we talk about sexual abuse we’re talking about sodomy,” he said. “There’s pubic hair, there’s sweat, there’re smells, there’re grunts.”
Dan Smith, another alleged abuse victim, is reeling from the recent collapse of his marriage which he blames in part on the psychological effects of the molestation he says he suffered as a child – at the hands of his local parish priest.

“He would rape me and then say this is what God’s love feels like,” Smith said, struggling to hold back tears more than twenty years after the alleged incidents.

Both men helped make legal history by joining 500 other plaintiffs in suing the LA Archdiocese for sexual molestation, with Boucher as their lead attorney.

In 2007 the LA Archdiocese reached an unprecedented $660 million settlement with many of the plaintiffs without admitting any wrong-doing.
It also agreed to let the courts decide which of the case-related church files should be made public, including those identifying alleged and admitted predators.

But according to Boucher and court documents, the Catholic Church has since engaged in a cover-up. By Boucher’s account, church officials allowed priests suspected of sexually abusing children to retire, flee the country or hide in rehab clinics until the statute of limitations on prosecution ran out.

“What the church did is take these guys and send them off to facilities where they treat pedophile priests without ever alerting police,” Boucher said. “By enabling these priests to be hidden for so many years the church protected them from being prosecuted.”

Priests’ attorney: ‘That’s not fair’
Meanwhile legal disputes delayed the release of the promised personnel files, and Donald Steir, an attorney for several priests, went to court to argue that those who’ve been accused but not convicted should have their names and privacy protected.

“They are being punished as if they have been convicted, or at least that’s the desire – to punish them,” Steir said. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s difficult if you represent an alleged terrorist or a pedophile, because people don’t really care about the rights [including privacy rights] for these type of people,” Steir said. “But once we erode the rights of a group of people we don’t like, we effectively have started down a path where other people’s rights can be similarly denied.”

The courts, expressing concern for children, overruled most of these arguments and similar ones by the Archdiocese, which declined to comment for this story.

And a judge has ordered release of some personnel files, set for some time in the coming weeks. But he also credited the church for its increased sensitivity in dealing with molestation cases and decided to withhold the names of church officials who handled the earlier cases.

It is a ruling that reminds Boucher of the breakdown in accountability in the Penn state pedophile scandal.

“Look at Penn State and see how important and significant it is when people in authority enable sexual abusers to continue,” Boucher said. “That underscores how significant it is to get these names out.”

Under the judge’s ruling the church can also keep secret, subject to further court review, the names of priests who have not been convicted and who have only one or two allegations against them or have allegations disputed by the church.

To Smith that seems like a formula for further cover-up by church officials.

“If their interests were to protect the kids, they would have released the documents,” Smith said. “As a parent not knowing who your neighbor is — that is really scary.”

Many of these unidentified priests are included in Boucher’s location map.
“The danger,” said Vega, “is that you have a person who has this sickness in them who is amongst the children.”

The plaintiffs in the church scandal are planning to appeal the latest rulings to assure broader disclosure of suspects’ names and locations. But Boucher warned this could take time, allowing suspects to keep their privacy protected, as well as their undetected presence in neighborhoods across California.

Complete Article HERE!

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Philly Judge Again Finds Church Cardinal Competent

A retired Roman Catholic cardinal with dementia is competent and his recent deposition testimony can be used at an upcoming priest abuse trial, a judge ruled Monday.

A church official charged with child endangerment and accused of keeping pedophiles in ministry argues that Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua can no longer recognize him, even though he served the cardinal for more than a decade.

Monsignor William Lynn, 61, is the first U.S. church official ever charged in the priest abuse crisis over accusations of administrative failings.

Prosecutors argue that Lynn and the archdiocese fed predators a steady stream of young victims for decades rather than expose the church to scandal — and costly lawsuits. Lynn served as secretary of clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia from 1992 to 2004. He faces up to 28 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

His lawyers hint that he won’t go down alone. They stress that Lynn took his marching orders from Bevilacqua, who was never charged despite two grand jury reports that blasted both the cardinal’s leadership and his 10 grand jury appearances.

They say prosecutors are trying to make Lynn the scapegoat for the dozens of Philadelphia priests credibly accused of abusing children.

Prosecutors, though, say Lynn was among the select few who had access to sex abuse complaints kept in “secret archives” at the archdiocese.

No one was charged after the first grand jury report in 2005 because of legal time limits.

The second report last year recommended charging Lynn with child endangerment; prosecutors later added conspiracy charges as well. In court last week, they called the archdiocese “an unindicted co-conspirator.”

Lynn is set to go on trial in March with two co-defendants, a priest and a defrocked priest who are each charged with sexually assaulting a single boy, based on complaints filed under newly expanded time limits in Pennsylvania. Lynn’s defense lawyers want to limit the trial to his handling of those two men alone.

Prosecutors hope to tell jurors how Lynn and other church officials handled the careers of 27 other priests “credibly accused,” to show a pattern of behavior.

The judge heard details of those allegations, which range from “grooming” to fondling to rape, for several days last week. She pledged to rule by Monday.

“It’s very, very difficult, and maybe impossible, for us to defend 27 or 28 cases, which involve disparate elements and occurred 20, 30, 40 years ago,” Thomas Bergstrom, a lawyer for Lynn, argued Monday.

Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington debated the point.

“This case is not impossible, it’s (just) unprecedented,” he said.

Defense lawyers may call Bevilacqua to court if prosecutors seek to use his recent testimony. Bevilacqua was deposed in late November, to preserve his sworn statements in case he is unavailable during the monthslong trial. The retired cardinal suffers from both dementia and an undisclosed form of cancer, church lawyers have said.

Lynn’s co-defendants are former priest Edward Avery, 69, and the Rev. James Brennan, 48.

Brennan’s lawyer also wants to keep out the uncharged priest abuse allegations, lest his client get “swept up” by the tide.

“If that comes in, the danger we confront is whether my client, a Catholic priest, is going to be swept up in a perception that the Catholic Church, that the archdiocese, has a big problem, and he’s one of them, so he must be guilty,” said lawyer William Brennan, who isn’t related to his client.

Jury selection is scheduled for Feb. 21. The trial is scheduled to start on March 26.

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Corruption scandal shakes Vatican as internal letters leaked

Say it ain’t so! Vatican and scandal in the same sentence? Can’t be!

The Vatican was shaken by a corruption scandal on Thursday after an Italian television investigation said a former top official had been transferred against his will after complaining about irregularities in awarding contracts.

The show “The Untouchables” on the respected private television network La 7 on Wednesday night showed what it said were several letters that Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who was then deputy-governor of Vatican City, sent to superiors, including Pope Benedict, in 2011 about the corruption.

The Vatican issued a statement on Thursday criticising the “methods” used in the journalistic investigation. But it confirmed that the letters were authentic by expressing “sadness over the publication of reserved documents”.

As deputy governor of the Vatican City for two years from 2009 to 2011, Vigano was the number two official in a department responsible for maintaining the tiny city-state’s gardens, buildings, streets, museums and other infrastructure.

Vigano, currently the Vatican’s ambassador in Washington, said in the letters that when he took the job in 2009 he discovered a web of corruption, nepotism and cronyism linked to the awarding of contracts to outside companies at inflated prices.

In one letter, Vigano tells the pope of a smear campaign against him (Vigano) by other Vatican officials who wanted him transferred because they were upset that he had taken drastic steps to save the Vatican money by cleaning up its procedures.

“Holy Father, my transfer right now would provoke much disorientation and discouragement in those who have believed it was possible to clean up so many situations of corruption and abuse of power that have been rooted in the management of so many departments,” Vigano wrote to the pope on March 27, 2011.

In another letter to the pope on April 4, 2011, Vigano says he discovered the management of some Vatican City investments was entrusted to two funds managed by a committee of Italian bankers “who looked after their own interests more than ours”.

LOSS OF $2.5 MILLION, 550,000 EURO NATIVITY SCENE

Vigano says in the same letter that in one single financial transaction in December, 2009, “they made us lose two and a half million dollars”.

The programme interviewed a man it identified as a member of the bankers’ committee who said Vigano had developed a reputation as a “ballbreaker” among companies that had contracts with the Vatican, because of his insistence on transparency and competition.

The man’s face was blurred on the transmission and his voice was distorted in order to conceal his identity.

In one of the letters to the pope, Vigano said Vatican-employed maintenance workers were demoralised because “work was always given to the same companies at costs at least double compared to those charged outside the Vatican”.

For example, when Vigano discovered that the cost of the Vatican’s larger than life nativity scene in St Peter’s Square was 550,000 euros in 2009, he chopped 200,000 euros off the cost for the next Christmas, the programme said.

Even though, Vigano’s cost-cutting and transparency campaign helped turned Vatican City’s budget from deficit to surplus during his tenure, in 2011 unsigned articles criticising him as inefficient appeared in the Italian newspaper Il Giornale.

On March 22, 2011, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone informed Vigano that he was being removed from his position, even though it was to have lasted until 2014.

Five days later he wrote to Bertone complaining that he was left “dumbfounded” by the ouster and because Bertone’s motives for his removal were identical to those published in an anonymous article published against him in Il Giornale that month.

In early April, Vigano went over Bertone’s head again and wrote directly to the pope, telling him that he had worked hard to “eliminate corruption, private interests and dysfunction that are widespread in various departments”.

He also tells the pope in the same letter that “no-one should be surprised about the press campaign against me” because he tried to root out corruption and had made enemies.

Despite his appeals to the pope that a transfer, even if it meant a promotion, “would be a defeat difficult for me to accept”, Vigano was named ambassador to Washington in October of last year after the sudden death of the previous envoy to the United States.

In its statement, the Vatican said the journalistic investigation had treated complicated subjects in a “partial and banal way” and could take steps to defend the “honour of morally upright people” who loyally serve the Church.

The statement said that today’s administration was a continuation of the “correct and transparent management that inspired Monsignor Vigano”.

Complete Article HERE!

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Towson priest charged with indecent exposure

A Towson priest has been removed from duty at the Church of the Immaculate Conception after being arrested last week on indecent exposure charges.

According to a police report of the incident, Mark Stewart Bullock, 47, was at Bush River Books & Movies, an Abingdon adult store on the 3900 block of Pulaski Highway, the night of Jan. 16, when two deputies, investigating complaints of indecent exposure, discovered him nude from the waist down in a movie theater inside the shop.

Bullock was sitting on a couch with “his pants completely off,” stated the report, which went on to state that “Bullock was not wearing any underwear and [was] exposing his penis.” He was sitting in a public area where store customers could see him, sheriff’s deputies said.

The deputies instructed Bullock to get dressed and charged him with indecent exposure, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum fine of $1,000 and three years in prison, police said.

Bullock could not be reached Sunday. A court date is set for March 6.

In a letter to parishioners, Rev. Joseph Barr said the Baltimore Archdiocese removed Bullock’s “faculties to function as a priest and initiated an investigation to learn more about the incident” as soon as officials were made aware of the arrest.

Bullock has been ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation, and he is no longer allowed to celebrate Mass publicly or to present himself as a priest, the letter said. The removal from the ministry is indefinite, it added.

“He will no longer reside at the parish rectory and is not permitted to attend or participate in any parish or school functions,” Barr noted in the letter.

“I realize this information may be shocking and painful for you to hear, which I sincerely regret,” Barr wrote. “However, in the interest of transparency and out of an abundance of care for this parish and our community, I wanted to share this news with you directly and ask for your prayers for Fr. Bullock and for our parish.”

Barr could not be reached Sunday, nor could a spokesman for the Baltimore Archdiocese.

The arrest appears to be Bullock’s first, according to online court records. He lists the church’s address, on the 200 block of Ware Ave., as home.

Monica Worrell, a spokeswoman for the Harford County Sheriff’s Office, said deputies routinely look in on adult bookstores to ensure they are complying with the law. This particular shop was drawing more traffic than normal, according to community members, who had voiced concerns at a council meeting, leading the sheriff’s office to investigate.

“Throughout the course of doing that, we found violations of law,” Worrell said. Several arrests were made, she said.

Complete Article HERE!

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September trial date set for KC bishop, diocese

The trial of Bishop Robert W. Finn and the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., the first bishop and diocese to face criminal charges in the decades-long clergy sex abuse crisis, has been set for September.

Finn and the diocese were charged in October by a grand jury in Jackson County, Mo., with separate counts of failing to report suspected child abuse in the case of Fr. Shawn Ratigan, a diocesan priest who was arrested last May for child pornography.

Lawyers for Finn and the diocese met with Jackson County Judge John Torrence on Thursday to set a Sept. 24 trial date in the case. Finn and the diocese have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Speaking to NCR after the meeting, which was held in the judge’s chambers, Jackson County prosecutor Jean Peters-Baker said Torrence also set the next pretrial hearing for March 27, when the court would deal with motions from the defense.

Gerald Handley, one of three lawyers representing the diocese, said the judge had given defense lawyers until early February to file motions in the case, which the prosecution would have to respond to by March 9. Two other lawyers were also present to represent Finn.

News of the trial date comes after the diocese confirmed Wednesday that it placed another diocesan priest on administrative leave pending a review by the diocesan review board into unspecified allegations.

In a press release, no details about that case were available because the review board’s investigation is still under way.

“While this investigation is in a preliminary phase, the diocese urges everyone to understand that further information only can be made available once the facts are known,” the statement reads.

The trial date also comes as Finn is undertaking court-mandated parish visits to parishes in Clay County, Mo., as part of an agreement with the county prosecutor there to avoid charges in the Ratigan case.

The diocesan chancery is located in Jackson County. The parish where Ratigan last served as pastor is in Clay County.

The Clay County agreement between Finn and prosecutor Daniel White allowed the bishop to avoid criminal charges if he agreed to meet with diocesan parishes in that county to outline diocesan reporting procedures for suspected child abuse.

Finn also agreed to meet monthly with White to discuss all reported suspicions of abuse in the county and to appoint a new director of child and youth protection.

The second in a series of visits to county parishes took place Jan. 14 at St. James Church in Liberty, Mo.

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