Category: Priests In Trouble

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Lawyers: Prosecutors hanging blame for Philly church abuse on 1 monsignor; March trial looms

Prosecutors are trying to hold a single Roman Catholic church official responsible for the priest abuse scandal in Philadelphia, defense lawyers argued Tuesday at a key hearing in a novel clergy-abuse case.

City prosecutors want to include accusations against dozens of priests when Monsignor William Lynn stand trial on child endangerment and conspiracy charges in March. Most of the cases stem from a 2005 grand jury report that blasted church officials for keeping 63 problem priests on the job — but yielded no criminal charges.

Now, prosecutors are pushing to include about 30 of those cases in Lynn’s trial. Lynn served as secretary of clergy for the archdiocese from 1992 to 2004.

Prosecutors say the 61-year-old Lynn kept priests in ministry and around children despite explosive allegations in secret church files. Those files are now in prosecutors’ hands — and some of them are being aired in court.

Defense lawyers argued Tuesday that Lynn took orders from Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and several bishops above him in the church hierarchy. They said prosecutors should have indicted the archdiocese and others if they wanted to attempt a broad conspiracy case.

Lynn, they said, was doing his job as ordered in the era before 2002, when Catholic bishops nationwide, battling scandal, adopted formal rules on how dioceses should handle accused priests.

Church files “show when his marching orders changed,” defense lawyer Jeffrey Lindy argued Tuesday. “They can complain about his job. They can complain about the (archdiocesan) rules. … But the archdiocese is not charged.”

Prosecutors call the archdiocese “an unindicted co-conspirator” in the case. Bevilacqua is now 88 and in failing health. His successor, Cardinal Justin Rigali, retired last year after a second grand jury returned charges against Lynn and four others. The co-defendants — three priests and a teacher — are charged with raping boys.

Lynn is the first church official in the U.S. ever charged over his alleged administrative failures.

Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina is hearing arguments this week on what evidence should be included at his trial. Lynn will be tried with two of the co-defendants; the others will be tried separately.

Prosecutors are detailing accusations against various priests who remained in parish work despite complaints they had abused and sometimes raped boys on overnight trips, in schools and rectories, and even in the church sacristy. Prosecutors also allege that Lynn did little to ensure that priests sent for sex-therapy treatment were supervised upon their release.

Sarmina didn’t indicate when she would rule. But she tipped her hat on her view of the church’s oversight of its priests when Lindy suggested that Lynn was just one part in a strict chain of command.

“It doesn’t sound like it. Even though priests take vows of obedience, (and break them), … nothing happens,” Sarmina said, referring not just to accused molesters but also to priests who moonlighted as disc jockeys or who were accused of living with former students. “But that’s not what this trial is about.”

Sarmina could rule Wednesday on how many, if any, of the 2005 grand jury cases will find their way into Lynn’s trial.

The first case outlined was that of now-defrocked priest Stanley M. Gana, a one-time chaplain for the Boy Scouts of America. The 2005 grand jury said he abused “countless” boys at various parishes.

Lynn, when he served as dean of men at an archdiocesan seminary, knew Gana was frequently visiting a seminary student. The seminarian told Lynn in 1992 that Gana had been abusing him since he was 13, Assistant District Attorney Mariana Sorensen said.

Gana denied the rape accusation, but admitted he had given another accuser $12,000, she said. Gana was left in ministry, and continued to assault boys, until 2002, prosecutors said.

In a case described Tuesday, prosecutors said a priest went for inpatient psycho-sexual treatment after an abuse allegation surfaced, and was given female hormones that serve as chemical castration, but remained in parish work for years.

Other times, Lynn and others in the archdiocese investigated accusers, not the alleged molesters, and withheld information from families and parishes.

“They’re not concerned about the victims, they are just concerned about the almighty dollar, and the mother church,” Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington argued Tuesday.

The archdiocese cannot comment on the pretrial hearing because of a gag order, spokeswoman Donna Farrell said this week.

Complete Article HERE!

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The end of the mystique

A Philadelphia prosecutor has decisively — and good for him — ended 2000-years of unwarranted deference to the Catholic Church.

Prosecutors on Monday accused the Archdiocese of Philadelphia of being an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a clergy sex abuse case and said the Roman Catholic Church fed predators a steady supply of children.

Everybody willing to know the truth has known the truth for a long time: The Catholic Church has masterminded a global criminal conspiracy centered on the sexual abuse of children for a long time.

What is so striking is that now a state prosecutor is saying so, too, instead of a few hundred cranky bloggers. However naturally this may follow from the past decade of revelations, however easily it may be overlooked in the cataracts of abuse stories, this is a milestone.

And it might be that the pews are at last waking-up, too. Notice this comment at Andrew Sullivan’s blog:

It’s funny that you linked to the story regarding the Catholic Church’s position on the birth control under the health care insurance rules. My wife, daughter and I went to mass on Long Island on Saturday night at 5PM, a mass that tends to be an older crowd though some families are mixed in. Our pastor was the celebrant and his sermon amounted to him yelling for 15 minutes about abortion, the administration’s anti-religious attacks, and contraception. He was particularly upset about the contraception rules – yelling about taking money out of his insurance premiums to subsidy the pill – to the point that he took the Lord’s name in vain as he walked in front of the altar. When he was screaming about the money, the only thought that went through my mind was the amount of money I’ve put into the collection box that was used by the Church to cover up pedophile priest cases.

This is the tipping point. Prosecutors will no longer go after just a single priest, but those who protected him, too. And they’re not going to have to worry any longer about public blowback, either.

Complete Article HERE!

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How long will church be allowed to keep its dangerous secrets?

An American priest, who has been financially supported for the past five years by the priest and parishioners of a Vancouver Catholic church, has been convicted of sexually molesting a minor by an ecclesiastical tribunal in Pennsylvania.

In its decision, reached last October, the tribunal recommended to the Vatican that Eric Ensey be dismissed as a priest.

“The tribunal reached moral certitude that Ensey had indeed committed the offences of which he was accused,” Fr. Tom Doyle wrote in letters sent last week to Vancouver Archbishop Michael Miller and John Horgan, the priest at Saints Peter and Paul Church.

Doyle, a Dominican priest and canonical lawyer, represented the victims.

“I realize that Ensey and his cohorts continue to insist on their innocence,” he wrote. “They have masked themselves with a deceitful veil of traditional orthodoxy, which has proven successful in duping a number of people. Unfortunately there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”

The tribunal spent nearly three years investigating Ensey, who since 2002 has been restricted from doing any ministerial work, presenting him-self as a priest, wearing clerical garb or performing any sacred functions.

Horgan passed none of that information on to parishioners.

“I told them he [Ensey] was a student priest,” Horgan told me in December. “I did not go into all the details because, in this case, I though the charity we were doing for him was sufficient. That may well have been a mistake of prudence on my part.”

At that time, Horgan also told me he was “fully aware” of the tribunal proceedings.

Horgan’s fundraising stopped in December after Miller ordered an end to soliciting and accepting tax-deductible donations for Ensey, other members of the Society of St. John, the seminary it runs in Paraguay, and an associated orphanage.

Ensey is appealing the tribunal’s decision, Doyle said in a telephone interview from Virginia. The appeal will be heard by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the body once known as the Inquisition.

“Ensey’s chances of winning an appeal are about as good as that of a rabbi being elected pope,” said Doyle, who has been involved in many similar cases since the first one in 1985 when he worked in the Vatican’s embassy in Washington, D.C.

The congregation will likely decide fairly quickly. But it doesn’t make its decisions public. The Vatican also provides no public access to its list of so-called defrocked priests.

It’s not clear how much money the Vancouver parish raised to support Ensey or whether they were given tax receipts for those donations. Horgan, however, told parishioners that he had been giving a third of his salary to the disgraced priest.

The archbishop’s direction to stop collecting donations resulted from parishioners’ complaints.

Nearly 10 years ago, Ensey was stripped of ministerial duties after a former seminarian filed a civil lawsuit alleging that he’d been sexually abused by Ensey and Carlos Urruti-goity, who is now a monsignor in Paraguay.

Ensey and Urrutigoity founded the Society of St. John in Pennsylvania. But the bishop there “suppressed” or disbanded it in 2004 because of allegations of rampant sexual misconduct and financial mismanagement.

Soon after the diocese had negotiated a $425,000, out-of-court settlement in the sexual abuse lawsuit in 2005, Ensey fled to Rome without the bishop’s permission.

Had Ensey followed orders and remained in Pennsylvania, he would not have needed the Vancouver parish’s charity. He could have collected a salary until the case was finalized.

Even so, it’s unlikely Vancouver parishioners would have financed his studies if they’d known Ensey was under investigation for sexual abuse, or helped a Paraguayan society whose leaders are also alleged sexual abusers and financial mis-managers.

But they didn’t know. Horgan’s lapses of judgment. The archbishop’s seeming lack of oversight. The Vatican’s hands-off approach that allowed the Society of St. John to be reconstituted in Paraguay and its leaders to oversee a seminary that graduated 36 priests last year.

And the Vatican’s continued secrecy regarding those who are being investigated or have been defrocked.

How long will Catholic faithful allow this to go on? They’ve already spent hundreds of millions of dollars defending priests and compensating their victims.

Vancouver Catholics dug deep to raise $19 million in 2002 for victims of the Christian Brothers’ Mount Cashel orphanage to avoid selling St. Thomas More College and Vancouver College.

If protecting children and youth isn’t a priority for church leaders, parishioners should, at very least, demand they do a better job of risk management.

Complete Article HERE!

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Church: Springs priest faces sex-abuse probe

After learning their pastor has been accused of sexually abusing a child, the shocked congregation of St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church was left in silence Saturday night.

The Rev. Rafael Torres-Rico told the packed, 1,100-member church during the 5 p.m. Mass that The Rev. Charles Robert Manning is being investigated by Colorado Springs police for “sexual abuse of a minor.”

No other details of the allegations against Manning were shared with the congregation, some of whom were in tears by the end of Torres-Rico’s announcement.

“It is important to remember that in both civil and canon law Father Manning is presumed innocent until proven guilty,” Torres-Rico told the church.

The allegations were brought to the police on Jan. 4, and Manning has since been asked to step down, Torres-Rico said.

Colorado Springs police spokeswoman Barbara Miller said she was not aware of the investigation and had no comment.

St. Gabriel’s, on Scarborough Drive in one of the fastest-growing neighborhoods in eastern Colorado Springs, opened its doors in 1998. The church, near the intersection of Powers Boulevard and Research Parkway, hosts five services per weekend for its growing congregation, according to the church’s website.

The church does not allow children under 12 years old to attend mass alone. At Saturday’s mass the congregation was reminded to accompany children under 12 anywhere in the building, including to the restroom.

Church-goers refused to comment as they left the service. Church officials had no immediate comment.

No criminal record for Manning can be found in Colorado. An online search shows that Manning has served in three parishes over the past decade.

In a 2002 posting on a Catholic website, a C. Robert Manning identified himself as pastor of St. Lawrence the Martyr Church in Bridgeton, Mo.

From 2004 to 2007, Manning headed a Catholic church in Imperial, Mo. There, he oversaw efforts to revive the church’s school, which faced falling attendance, according to the church website. The school closed in 2007, the year Manning came to Colorado Springs.

In 2010, Manning was named chaplain of the year by the Colorado branch of Knights of Columbus.

The Catholic Church has battled allegations of sex abuse by priests for years, including a revelation in 2010 that the former priest Divine Redeemer, in Monument, was accused of a sex abuse against a child in Denver.

When the priest, the Rev. Mel Thompson, was accused in 2010 of molesting a Denver boy, there had been 50 similar cases within the Denver Archdiocese over a five-year span.

Complete Article HERE!

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El Paso Catholic Diocese to pay $1.6M in abuse suit settlement

The El Paso Catholic Diocese will pay $1.6 million to settle a lawsuit involving allegations of sexual impropriety against a former Cathedral High School principal, a law firm announced Friday.

Officials of the law firm of T.O. Gilstrap said the lawsuit alleged that Brother Samuel Martinez abused or molested numerous boys, including the two plaintiffs who filed the suit. It states that the incidents occurred during Martinez’s tenure at the school. He was principal from 1976 to 1985.
Cathedral is a top private Catholic high school for boys in the El Paso region.

The Brothers of the Christian Schools, District of New Orleans-Santa Fe (NOSF), was under contract to run the school at the time.

“The lawsuit, which was filed in Santa Fe in the 1st Judicial District Court of New Mexico, alleged that Brother Martinez sexually abused the plaintiffs while they were students at Cathedral in the late 1970s and early 1980s,” said S. Clark Harmonson, one of the lawyers with the T.O. Gilstrap firm.
The diocese will pay $1.6 million to the plaintiffs.

The Rev. Anthony C. Celino, the El Paso Catholic Diocese vicar general and moderator of the curia, said Cathedral High School was incorporated in 1993 under a nonprofit designation as Cathedral High School Inc. and has a policy on sexual misconduct and safe environment.
“This includes background checks for all employees and those who work directly with students,” Celino said.

“They conduct sexual misconduct and safe environment training for all employees and those who work directly with students. They follow the reporting laws as provided in the Texas Civil Statute.

“Additionally, every year the school designates a day to discuss with all students a student safety awareness with regards to sexual misconduct and manner of reporting to school authorities, should such things occur.”
Celino said Martinez is in a retirement home outside of the El Paso Catholic Diocese and does not function in any ministerial capacity.

Catholic officials apparently had sent Martinez to El Paso after other complaints surfaced against him in another state.

“Allegations of sexual impropriety against Brother Martinez arose in 1971 at a school operated by NOSF Inc. in New Orleans, Louisiana,” Harmonson said.
“(He) was thereafter transferred to Cathedral High School following these allegations and a 100-day stay in Santa Fe at a retreat center operated by a religious order affiliated with NOSF Inc.”

“Part of our claim was for future therapy,” Harmonson said. “We hope and expect our clients to use part of the settlement funds to receive therapy.”
Harmonson said the diocese and the Christian Brothers order had a chance to prevent the abuse but didn’t.

“Instead of taking action then, Martinez was given a 100-day vacation at a retreat center in Santa Fe and then transferred to Cathedral High,” the lawyer said.

“There have been upwards of 10 allegations of abuse against Brother Martinez here in El Paso.”

The Brothers of the Christian Schools had prepared a document in 2004 titled “This safety plan is designed for Bro. SM (Sam Martinez).”

The document said Martinez had spent four months at a treatment center on the East Coast.

“Beginning in 1992, several complaints were raised about his improper behavior with students when he served as principal of a high school,” the religious order’s document said. “These complaints have to do with what allegedly occurred between 1981 and 1985.”

That document said that two other lawsuits were filed against Martinez, in 2004 and 2007, and subsequently settled.

Lawyers for T.O. Gilstrap of El Paso have represented at least 12 people who have made claims against the diocese, as well as survivors of sexual abuse against other religious denominations and institutions, including the Mormon church, the Methodist church, the Assembly of God church, the Boy Scouts of America and hospitals.

Complete Article HERE!

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Priest who fathered child removed from New York church

A newly installed Roman Catholic priest has been removed from his suburban New York parish after church officials on Thursday said he secretly fathered a child while attending seminary.

The removal of Reverend Casmir Mung’aho, 34, from his post at St. Stephen the First Martyr Church in the Orange County town of Warwick, New York, comes two weeks after the resignation of a Los Angeles assistant bishop who admitted he had two children.

Mung’aho was asked to step down after officials learned he fathered a child in a consensual relationship with an adult woman during his first year of seminary school, Bishop Dominick Lagonegro said in a statement.

While Mung’aho was removed from the congregation in Warwick, it was not yet clear whether he will remain a priest or be defrocked by the New York Archdiocese, said archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling. He said officials had yet to discuss with Mung’aho what action will be taken.

“Father never revealed this to our bishops or seminary authorities, which he certainly should have done,” Lagonegro said in a statement.

“Given the need for Father Casmir to address this matter and reflect on his responsibilities in a very serious way, his assignment to St. Stephen’s is now ended. Please pray for him, as well as for the mother and the child whose lives are so precious.”

The Catholic Church requires celibacy from its priests.

When asked how the church found out about the young child, the Rev. Michael McLoughlin, St. Stephen’s pastor, declined to elaborate to Reuters.

“We’re all sad and we’re all praying for him,” McLoughlin said. “Everything is out there now and other than that I have nothing to say.”

Attempts to reach Mung’aho were not immediately successful. According to his biography published in the New York archdiocese’s official newspaper last year, he grew up in Tanzania and came to the United States about six years ago. As a child, he had always dreamed of becoming a priest.

“The support and respect for the church in general is very high,” he said in his biography. “I see myself here being a model. It’s being an example every day.”

Mung’aho graduated from St. Joseph’s Seminary school in Yonkers, just north of New York City, last year before taking a position at the church in Warwick, a town about 60 miles north of New York City.

Earlier this month, Gabino Zavala, an assistant bishop of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles, resigned after admitting he had a secret family and the two teenage children he fathered were living with their mother in another state.

Complete Article HERE!

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Church’s response to abuse not good enough for some

Ten years after revelations of clergy sexual abuse rocked the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, victims of the scandal said yesterday that they remained unmoved by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley’s plea for forgiveness.

Instead, victims and advocates reacted to O’Malley’s written retrospective on the crisis with a demand that the church do more to make survivors confident that abusive clerics will be punished and that future cases will not be shrouded in secrecy.

“The church has failed miserably, miserably, miserably,’’ said Bernie McDaid, 55, of Peabody, who was abused in the late 1960s in Salem.

“Nothing has been done [except] whatever the court has made them do,’’ he said. “I’m so hurt by all this.

“After Penn State erupted, it put it right back in my face,’’ McDaid said, referring to a string of abuse charges filed recently against a former assistant football coach at the university.

According to O’Malley’s report, the archdiocese has settled about 800 clergy sexual abuse accusations, is providing care to about 300 abuse survivors at any given time, and has given training in identifying and reporting suspected abuse to nearly half a million children and adults.

Those adults include priests and candidates for ordination, O’Malley said.

The screening process, he said, has been made “the strongest possible, with particular attention to any issues related to child safety.’’

The archdiocese conducts more than 60,000 criminal background checks a year on priests, teachers, volunteers, and other people working with children, according to the report, “Ten Years Later – Reflections on the Sexual Abuse Crisis in the Archdiocese of Boston.’’

Although such work is a step forward, victims and advocates said, they question whether the church would have confronted abuse without the pursuit of news organizations and the persistence of survivors who went public with their pain.

The report from the archdiocese marked the 10th anniversary this week of the Globe’s publication of the first of a series of articles that reported a widespread pattern of covering up abuse in the archdiocese.

“I’m very underwhelmed,’’ said Terence McKiernan of BishopAccountability.org, a Waltham-based website that maintains records on priests accused of sexual abuse.

The cardinal, said McKiernan, president of the website, “basically recycles the usual claims that we’ve heard a lot already, that they’ve experienced a learning curve, that they really didn’t understand the situation.’’

Although background checks and increased awareness are welcome, McKiernan said, “it shows not so much that the church wants to do the right things here, but that they’ve been forced to do the right thing.’’

Questions about the archdiocese’s enthusiasm for the task were echoed by Phil Saviano, 59, of Roslindale, who founded the New England chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

The changes outlined by O’Malley, Saviano said, are “basic, common-sense procedures that any organization that has a lot of contact with children would take.’’

“It’s probably good for him to enumerate the things they’ve done,’’ he said, “but they’re not things that are that remarkable. I don’t think it’s anything to brag about.’’

Although Saviano was abused in the 1960s by a priest outside Worcester, he said he has worked with many victims of abusive priests from the Boston Archdiocese.

“Every step they’ve taken, they’ve done it begrudgingly,’’ Saviano said of the church.

Saviano and McKiernan cited O’Malley’s release of the names of 159 accused clerics in August as an example of half-steps to address the crisis.

A review by the Globe showed that 70 accused clerics had not been listed.

The cardinal said they had been left off the list because they belonged to religious orders or had been transferred to Boston from other dioceses.

“That excuse is really lame, because if you’re a 10-year-old kid and a priest is assaulting you, you’re not going to ask if the priest is a diocesan priest or a Jesuit or Franciscan that’s been assigned to the parish,’’ Saviano said. “The experience is the same.’’

O’Malley, however, said yesterday in the report that the crisis and its aftermath have been his top concerns.

“Since the time I was named archbishop of Boston in July of 2003, our highest priority has been to provide outreach and care for all the survivors of clergy sexual abuse and to do everything possible to make sure this abuse never happens again,’’ O’Malley said.

“As an archdiocese, as a church, we can never cease to make clear the depth of our sorrow and to beg forgiveness from those who were so grievously harmed,’’ he said.

O’Malley acknowledged that “one effect of the abuse scandal is that many people view a priest’s Roman collar and clerical appearance with suspicion.’’

Acknowledging that the “the task is never complete,’’ O’Malley also said he hoped that the church’s response would persuade Catholics to return to the church.

In addressing the “spiritual dimension,’’ O’Malley said, the church has held special services in parishes hit particularly hard by the crisis.

“It is our prayer that by seeing the response of the church and by viewing the issue in its proper context, all those who have been away will return to join with us, to make the church stronger and always a safe place for all people,’’ he said.

Ann Hagan Webb, a psychologist from Wellesley abused by a Rhode Island priest from the late 1950s through the mid-1960s, said the report seemed disingenuous.

“It really looks like more of the same,’’ Webb said. “It looks like he’s trying to use the 10th anniversary as a public relations moment. The crisis still continues.’’

McDaid, who founded a group called Survivors Voice, also said he is skeptical of the church’s motivation. “They only go so far every time, because they want to move on,’’ McDaid said.

“What people don’t understand about survivors is that we have a trust issue,’’ said McDaid, who met Pope Benedict XVI in Washington in 2008. “For us to move on, we have to have some degree of faith’’ that those clergy responsible for abuse “will be charged, reeducated, something.’’

“If anything, it’s worse than we ever thought,’’ McDaid said.

To mark the 10th anniversary of the reports on abuse, survivors will gather in Boston beginning tomorrow for a three-day conference to recognize victims who stepped forward to speak of their abuse and others who worked to reveal the extent of the scandal.

The gathering, at the Holiday Inn on Blossom Street on Beacon Hill, is expected to include a demonstration at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

Complete Article HERE!

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Courtroom fury as Catholic bishop walks free just hours after child porn sentencing

Angry scenes erupted inside an Ottawa courthouse Wednesday after a Catholic bishop with an addiction to Internet pornography walked free despite admitting to possessing images of naked boys wearing rosary beads and crucifixes.

Ontario Court Justice Kent Kirkland sentenced Raymond Lahey to 15 months in jail Wednesday, time that he will be credited with already having served, prompting an outburst from one man in the court.

“You’re not a pedophile, you’re a demon, you f–king idiot,” the man yelled at Lahey.

“I’m a survivor, I got to live with it. He’s a f–king demon!” the man shouted, as the judge called for security.

Lahey, who once negotiated a $13-million settlement for victims of child sex abuse by priests as the bishop of Antigonish, N.S., pleaded guilty in May to possession of child pornography for the purpose of importation.

However a leading children’s rights activist said Wednesday that the 15-month sentence did not reflect the seriousness of the crime.

Rosalind Proger of Beyond Borders said Lahey helped fuel a market for child pornography.

“These are real children in these images,” she said from Winnipeg. “They are not drawings. If you look at this sentencing from the perspective of the victims — the children in those images he had — there is a real disconnect between the crime and it ramifications on young lives.

“If the children in those images could have stood in the court room perhaps the sentence would have been tougher.

“No one would be making child pornography if there wasn’t demand and what people like Lahey do is create the demand”, Ms Proger said.

Complete Article HERE!

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US Catholic bishop with secret family, Gabino Zavala, quits

A Catholic bishop who fathered two children has stepped down.

Pope Benedict has accepted the resignation of Gabino Zavala, an auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles, the Vatican said.

The Archbishop of Los Angeles, Jose Gomez, wrote in a letter to worshipers that Bishop Zavala told him in December that he was the father of two teenage children.

The children, who are minors, live with their mother in another state.

Archbishop Gomez said that the archdiocese was offering the family “spiritual care,” as well as funding to help the children with college costs.

In his letter he described the news as “sad and difficult” and said Bishop Zavala had been living privately and not participating in ministry since resigning.

Bishop Zavala is 60 and was born in Mexico. He has campaigned against the death penalty and for immigrants’ rights.

The Vatican did not spell out the reason for Bishop Zavala’s resignation in its statement, but made reference to canon law which allows bishops to step down before normal retirement age if they are ill or unfit for office for some other reason.

The Pope has shown no sign of relaxing the Roman Catholic Church’s rule on priestly celibacy, which has been in place since the 11th Century.

In March 2010 he described celibacy as “the sign of full devotion, the entire commitment to the Lord and to the ‘Lord’s business’, an expression of giving oneself to God and to others”.

Priests are not allowed to marry but married Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism are exempted from the celibacy rule.

Two days ago Pope Benedict appointed an American married priest to head the first US structure for Anglicans converting to Roman Catholicism.

Complete Article HERE!

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Miami’s Catholic leaders accused of running underground gay sex mafia

In disturbing news: One of Florida’s most powerful Catholic leaders is being accused of running the Miami Archdiocese like a gay sexual mafia boss.

Gawker reports that a group of Catholics from South Florida calling their organization Christifidelis had launched a major investigation into the activities of Archbishop Emeritus John C. Favalora. In a report from Christifidelis called “Miami Vice,” the group found that Favalora was part owner of a company that manufactured an aphrodisiac drink and took trips to Key West with “gay associates.”

He also reportedly had sexual relationships with several underlings, including at least two monsignors, a rector, and a former student. The report indicated that many other priests in South Florida are gay and have live-in boyfriends. Some engaged in pedophilia.

Favalora resigned eight months before his 75th birthday, when archbishops routinely retire. Soon after, new archbishop Thomas Wenski was supposedly brought in to “clean up Favalora’s mess,” a source told Gawker. Many of the 35 priests named in the report had either retired or been reassigned.

Complete Article HERE!