Catholic Church – Page 268

December 12, 2014

Pope declines Dalai Lama meeting in Rome

File Under: DISAPPOINTED!

Pope Francis will not meet the exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama because of the “delicate situation” with China, the Vatican says.

The Dalai Lama, who is visiting Rome, had requested a meeting.

A Vatican spokesman said that although the Pope held him “in very high regard”, the request had been declined “for obvious reasons”.

Correspondents say the Vatican does not want to jeopardise efforts to improve relations with China.

China describes the Dalai Lama as a separatist and reacts angrily when foreign dignitaries meet him.

The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 after Chinese troops crushed an attempted uprising in Tibet.

He now advocates a “middle way” with China, seeking autonomy but not independence for Tibet. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

“Pope Francis obviously holds the Dalai Lama in very high regard but he will not be meeting any of the Nobel laureates,” a Vatican spokesman said, adding that the pontiff would send a video message to the conference.

The Dalai Lama told Italian media that he had approached the Vatican about a meeting but was told it could create inconveniences.

Analysts say the Vatican and China are at odds over control of the Catholic Church in China, which is believed to number about 12 million people.

The Church is divided into an official community, known as the Patriotic Association, which is answerable to the Communist Party, and an underground Church that swears allegiance only to the Pope in Rome.

A serious bone of contention between China and the Vatican is which side should have the final say in the appointment of bishops.

A Vatican official said the decision not to meet the Dalai Lama was “not taken out of fear but to avoid any suffering by those who have already suffered”.

The last time the Dalai Lama was granted a papal audience was in 2006 when he met former Pope Benedict XVI.

The Dalai Lama is in Rome for a meeting of Nobel Peace Prize winners. It was initially to be held in South Africa but was relocated to Rome after South Africa refused the Dalai Lama a visa.
Complete Article HERE!

December 9, 2014

Archdiocese hires criminal defense attorney in Nienstedt investigation

By Jean Hopfensperger

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has hired a prominent criminal defense attorney to continue its investigation into possible sexual misconduct by Archbishop John Nienstedt.

Attorney Peter Wold has been retained to continue the investigation completed by the Greene Espel law firm in July, Auxiliary Bishop Lee Piché confirmed Monday.

Wold has met with at least one man — previously unidentified in the media — who filed affidavits in the misconduct investigation earlier this year.

Joel Cycenas, a former archdiocese priest and former friend of Nienstedt’s, acknowledged he met with Wold last week. He had some concerns.

“I met with him [Wold] and they are trying to discredit my own affidavit,” wrote Cycenas in an e-mail. “I don’t get it.”

Cycenas would not provide details about the content of his affidavit or answer further questions.

Interviewed last summer, Nienstedt denied any sexual impropriety with Cycenas.

Wold was retained “to help with some remaining details” in the Nienstedt investigation, said Piché in a written statement. The results of the initial investigation were not made public. Details of the current investigation also were not forthcoming.

“It would be a disservice to those involved to discuss any more of the specifics of the investigation while it is ongoing,” said Piché.

About 10 men have come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct by Nienstedt while they were seminarians or priests, said Jennifer Haselberger, an archdiocese whistleblower who was interviewed by Greene Espel.

She said the archbishop also was accused of retaliating against those who refused his advances or otherwise questioned his conduct. The allegations appear to stem as far back as the 1980s and 1990s, when Nienstedt was working in the Archdiocese of Detroit.

Cycenas, a 47-year-old from the Forest Lake area, was among those interviewed by Greene Espel. Ordained in 2000, he became a parish priest at Holy Spirit Church in St. Paul several years later.

Nienstedt acknowledged last summer that the two were once good friends, and that they met while he was bishop of the New Ulm Diocese.

“We were very good friends at one point,” said Nienstedt. “We met at World Youth Day in Toronto [in 2002]. …

“We went to the State Fair together,” said Nienstedt. “Oftentimes I would stay at his rectory at Holy Spirit when I was coming up [from the New Ulm Diocese] to fly out the next morning.”

The friendship dissolved after Cycenas left the priesthood in 2009, Nienstedt said.

Cycenas now works as an outreach manager for a major Twin Cities nonprofit.

Haselberger said she was surprised the archdiocese has hired another lawyer to investigate the allegations.

“My impression was they [Greene Espel] were very consciously and diligently making efforts to get to the truth of the matter under very difficult circumstances,” she said.

“Why would they investigate again?” Haselberger asked. “I hope it won’t be an attempt to slander the victims, which would be a poor reward for coming forth.”

Haselberger also was concerned about the financial implications for the archdiocese, which is laying off staff and floating the possibility of bankruptcy. “Maybe their insurance is paying for it, who knows?” she said. “I’d like to know, ‘What are they hoping to accomplish?’ ”

Piché did not respond to written questions about the exact nature of Wold’s work, including the difference between Wold’s investigation and the previous one. However, he did note that none of the allegations against Nienstedt involved children or criminal activity with an adult.

Complete Article HERE!

December 6, 2014

Gay Catholic Music Director Files Discrimination Complaint Against Church For Unfair Termination

by Jack Jenkins

Colin Collette, a gay man, worked as the music director of Holy Family Catholic Community in Inverness, Illinois for 17 years, preparing songs for worship and orchestrating liturgy for weekly services. When Illinois embraced marriage equality in June, Collete and William Nifong, his partner of five years, celebrated a month later by getting engaged in Rome “in the shadow of St. Peter’s Basilica” and quickly announcing their betrothal on Facebook.

Instead of congratulating the couple on their upcoming nuptials, however, the priest at Holy Family responded by immediately asking for Collette’s resignation, saying his homosexuality violated tenets of the Catholic Church. When Collette refused, he was promptly fired.

“’Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is the policy in the [Catholic] church,” Collette told ABC 7, a local news affiliate, in August. “I guess as long as you’re willing to live the lie, you’re safe.”

The church’s decision outraged many in the suburban parish, several of whom have held prayer vigils and voiced public support for their former music director. On Thursday, however, Collette took the matter to court, filing a federal discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Cook County Commission on Human Rights. The move is a preliminary step towards filing a formal lawsuit; if the EEOC agrees with Collete’s complaint, it can either grant him the right to sue his former employer or even sue the church on his behalf.

“It is with deep regret that I have had to pursue this course of action,” Collette said in a press conference on Thursday. “I have chosen to enter into a marriage, as is my right under Illinois law, and perhaps I can open the door to other men and women who the church has chosen to exclude from the community.”

Collette, who holds a Masters in Divinity, named Holy Family’s priest and a parish manager in his complaint, saying his firing amounted to discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, and marital status. He also contended that his employer was well aware of both his homosexuality and his relationship with Nifong before he was let go, as the two were active members of the community.

“Our pastor knows both of us,“ Collette told the Chicago Tribune. “We’ve been to many social functions together, including the 20th anniversary of the parish.”

Collete’s complaint challenges the unusually broad power afforded to religious institutions to dictate who they hire. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that faith-based employers are allowed to hire and fire people for reasons that would otherwise be discriminatory because of a so-called “ministerial exception.” Although they are still technically subject to anti-discrimination policies, religious groups effectively have full control over “ministry” positions, a broadly-defined classification that extends beyond ordained clergy.

The case also poses a public test to the newly-appointed Archbishop of Chicago, Blasé Cupich. When Pope Francis tapped the former Bishop of Washington for the illustrious position in September, left-leaning progressives lauded the decision as a progressive step, citing Cupich’s passionate support for immigration reform and his willingness to condemn anti-gay bullying as “hateful and disrespectful” to “human dignity.” But while Cupich is far more progressive than Cardinal Francis George, his predecessor compared organizers of the Chicago Pride Parade to the Ku Klux Klan, he has not shown a willingness to break from traditional Catholic understandings of sexuality: Cupich openly opposed Washington state’s 2012 vote to embrace marriage equality, and has yet to respond to Collete’s complaint.

Collette’s filing is part of a growing number of LGBT people who are fighting back against the Catholic Church for firing people based on their sexuality. Colleen Simon, a Catholic food pantry worker in Kansas City, Missouri, who was fired in May for being gay, is suing the local diocese, saying they were aware of her orientation before her job was terminated. Meanwhile, several Catholic schoolteachers in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati are refusing to sign a new contract that reclassifies teachers as ministers and asks them to “refrain from any conduct or lifestyle” that is “in contradiction to Catholic doctrine or morals.”

Complete Article HERE!

November 7, 2014

Chicago Archdiocese Offers Sex Abuse Data

By MITCH SMITH and MICHAEL PAULSON

CHICAGO — The Roman Catholic archdiocese here released thousands of internal documents on Thursday that detailed decades of sexual abuse by its priests, a disclosure timed just days before the retirement of the current archbishop.

The files, some of which show past church leaders permitting clergy accused of abuse to continue working, describe complaints against 36 priests, many of whom are now dead and none of whom remain in active ministry. Nearly all of the alleged abuse occurred decades ago, though in several cases the accusers waited years to come forward.

Cardinal Francis E. George, the Archdiocese of Chicago’s current leader, had promised to make the documents public. That pledge became more urgent when Pope Francis accepted the cardinal’s retirement and appointed Blase Cupich, currently the bishop of Spokane, Wash., to replace him later this month.

The priests whose personnel files were posted online Thursday have long been publicly identified by the Chicago archdiocese as having credible complaints of sexual misconduct against them.

In a statement, David Clohessy, the director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, criticized the archdiocese for not releasing the documents earlier. The roughly 15,000 pages published Thursday included graphic descriptions of abuse and, in some cases, evidence of a less-than-swift response from church leaders.

In the case of the Rev. John W. Calicott, parishioners objected when the priest was temporarily removed from ministry in the 1990s over abuse allegations concerning acts in the 1970s.

The priest’s support from his congregation — and his contention that he should be forgiven for long-ago acts — were well chronicled at the time. But the letters and petitions released Thursday show the intensity of the pushback, including some concerned about the impact of Father Calicott’s case on African-American Catholics, because he and many of his parishioners were black. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, then the archbishop, reinstated Father Calicott, with restrictions. His successor, Cardinal George, removed him from ministry.

Documents related to 30 other Chicago-area priests accused of sexual abuse were released in January. Those papers were examined by both the archdiocese and the law firm of Jeff Anderson, who has represented numerous victims of clergy abuse.

Mr. Anderson did not examine the most recent files in advance, and said he viewed Thursday’s release “with a great deal of suspicion and skepticism” because of what he considered a lack of outside scrutiny. But archdiocese officials said Thursday’s disclosure represented a desire to speak openly about past wrongdoing. “As we said in January, we are committed to transparency with the people we serve,” Cardinal George said, adding, “Child abuse is a crime and a sin.”

Complete Article HERE!

November 4, 2014

Church ‘leaving falsely accused priests in limbo’

By Caroline O’Doherty
A Catholic priest found not guilty of sexually assaulting a teenage girl is embroiled in a row with his order and the Archbishop of Dublin over claims they are punishing him for being accused.

Carmelite father Chris Conroy, 81, who is banned from saying public Mass and is defying orders to leave his family home and live in a monastery, says the Catholic Church has its own “Guantanamo Bay” for falsely-accused priests.

The former missionary from Co Wicklow, who was the subject of an award-winning documentary about his work with the Indians of the Peruvian Andes, says he has been in limbo for the last 10 years since his court case ended.

In his memoirs, to be launched next month, he accuses Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of interfering without authority to have him prevented from saying Mass and says his Order has shown undue deference to the Archbishop in attempting to impose other restrictions.

“This is why I wrote the book. I had to make a stand,” he said. “I spent my time in Peru fighting and putting my life on the line for the poor Indians and the suffering and injustice that they were enduring.

“Then I came back to Ireland to injustice and I said I’m not going to accept this, especially in the Church that I love and in the Carmelite Order that I love.”

In a statement, Archbishop’s House said it was not the practice of the archdiocese to comment on individual cases involving allegations of child sexual abuse.

Head of the Carmelites in Ireland, Fr Martin Kilmurray, however, said the memoirs contained “gross inaccuracies” about Fr Conroy’s dealings with the leadership of the order and with the archbishop.

Fr Kilmurray said he was “deeply concerned” that details of the case involving the teenage girl had been reproduced in the book.

“We see this as a blatant disregard for the wellbeing and right to privacy of this person. We have initiated contact with her, with a view of offering pastoral support,” he said.

Fr Conroy said he bore his accuser no ill will but he had to recall the case to illustrate the risks to clergy from unfounded accusations and their own hierarchy.

“Every priest in Ireland should read my book because it could happen to them tomorrow. I’m very lucky in one sense because I was accused publicly, I went to the public court and I was acquitted publicly.

“Supposing I had been accused and it didn’t go to the court and the Church was just dealing with it. I’d be in limbo forever. The Church doesn’t know how to deal with these types of cases.”

Complete Article HERE!