Tag: Catholic Church

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‘Boys will be boys,’ Bishop Finn purportedly said after being told of priest’s lewd photos

When confronted by the diocese’s computer director about her concerns over lewd images found on a priest’s laptop, Bishop Robert Finn replied that, “Sometimes priests do things they shouldn’t,” court papers filed Thursday alleged.

“Sometimes, boys will be boys,” the bishop is purported to have said, court records show.

Julie Creech, the director of management and information systems for the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, described her meeting with the bishop during an Aug. 17 deposition in a Jackson County civil case. According to that lawsuit, the Rev. Shawn Ratigan abused a 9-year-old girl months after the diocese learned of the photos on his computer.

Finn and the diocese are scheduled for a criminal trial starting Sept. 24 on misdemeanor counts of failing to report Ratigan’s suspected abuse of children. Ratigan is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty in federal court earlier this month to producing and attempting to produce child pornography.

State prosecutors have identified Creech as a witness in their case against Finn and the diocese. A prosecutor’s spokesman declined comment on the Creech deposition Thursday.

The diocese and lawyers representing Finn declined comment Thursday.

Rebecca Randles, the lawyer representing the girl and her parents who filed the lawsuit, also declined to comment.

Though Creech’s concerns in December 2010 about the contents of Ratigan’s laptop previously had been reported in a fact-finding study commissioned by the diocese, her meeting with Finn had not been disclosed publicly until today.

According to the study, prepared by former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves, Creech examined Ratigan’s laptop on Dec. 16, 2010, and discovered hundreds of disturbing photographs of young children, primarily girls. That evening, Creech called vicar general Robert Murphy and advised him to call police, the study said. The diocese did not report the suspected abuse until May 2011.

In the Graves report, Finn said he didn’t see what was on the computer.

The civil motion filed Thursday quotes Creech as having been concerned when she heard that some at the diocese were saying that she had not found “lewd” photographs on the computer. In a partial deposition transcript included with the civil filings, Creech said she approached Finn about the diocese’s response to the Ratigan discoveries.

Finn, she noted, was not specific as to what actions the diocese would take.

“He did indicate that, you know, sometimes priests do things that they shouldn’t, and he said, you know, he said, ‘Sometimes boys will be boys,’ ” Creech said in the deposition.

Creech said she had no indication that Finn had ever seen any of the images from Ratigan’s computer and that the bishop never told her that he had.

Creech said in the deposition that she was “upset” during her meeting with Finn.

“I think I was upset in a different way than he was because of what I had seen,” Creech said.

Creech did not immediately return a call Thursday seeking comment.

Finn always has maintained that he never saw the images and that he had delegated the diocese’s initial response and management to his subordinates.

The civil lawsuit in which the deposition pages were filed Thursday alleges that Ratigan engaged a 9-year-old girl in sexually explicit conduct as late as May 2011 — about five months after the diocese learned of the pictures.

Complete Article HERE!

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Catholic Bishop’s Anti-Gay Campaigning May Violate WA Election Law

State workers who track election-law violations are meeting later this morning to discuss the Catholic Church, says Lori Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission.

At issue is a story I reported yesterday: Yakima bishop Joseph Tyson sent a letter this month instructing all priests in his diocese to begin a fundraising drive inside their parishes that directly funds the anti-gay-marriage PAC Preserve Marriage Washington, which is trying to reject Referendum 74 on the fall ballot. While I lamented that Tyson’s effort seems to comply with federal tax rules, it may not be legal under state law.

Here’s why: The church can’t act as an agent that collects money and sends it to the campaign. In his letter, Bishop Tyson asks the priests to circulate Preserve Marriage Washington’s fundraising envelopes among pews, collect the checks, and mail all the checks to the anti-gay PAC. As he put it, “Please place unopened envelopes into the addressed security envelope, and mail them to Preserve Marriage Washington.”

That sort of activity is informally called “bundling,” Anderson explains, and it would violate a state law that concerns collecting contributions on anther’s behalf. “A person, other than an individual, may not be an intermediary or an agent for a contribution,” says the RCW.

“They can hand out those envelopes,” Anderson says, “but they that can’t collect them and send them in.” Anderson says that election workers will try to “head them off at the pass and see that they are complying.”

Bishop Tyson did not respond to a request for comment.

Complete Article HERE!

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Denis Lyons, ex-OC Roman Catholic Priest, Must Register as Sex Offender For Sex With Second Grade Boy

A onetime prominent priest with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange County finally will pay for repeatedly molesting a seven-year-old boy inside a parish rectory and church sacristy in the 1990s.

 

According to prosecutors, Denis Lyons pleaded guilty in March and last week received his punishment: one year in jail, five years of formal probation and 400 hours of community service.

The 78-year-old serial molester must also register for the rest of his life as a sex offender and won’t be allowed to visit places where children congregate.

In 2008, the victim filed a complaint with the Costa Mesa Police Department and officials arrested Lyons the following year at Leisure World in Seal Beach.

“Today is the day I finally have closure,” a prosecutor’s press statement quoted the victim as saying. “I have spent the last 16 years living in pain, living in shame. He took away my innocence as a child. This man has ruined my life and many others besides me. He has changed my perception of religion, life, and right and wrong . . . He is a bad person, a bad man.”

Lyons–whose infamous conduct won previous coverage by the Weekly’s Gustavo Arellano HERE and HERE–escaped convictions in other alleged molestations because of statute of limitation issues.

In addition to working in Costa Mesa, Lyons also worked as a priest at St. Edwards the Confessor Catholic Church in Dana Point and St. Mary’s by the Sea Church in Huntington Beach.

Complete Article HERE!

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Newly appointed SF archbishop arrested for DUI

Feet of clay after all. Just as I suspected. There goes his coveted red hat!

The newly appointed archbishop of San Francisco was arrested for DUI over the weekend.

Police in San Diego say Bishop Salvatore Cordileone was arrested over the weekend for driving under the influence. Police say it happened in San Diego’s College District just before 12:30 Saturday morning.

Bishop Cordileone is currently bishop of Oakland — a post he’s held since 2009. Last month Pope Benedict chose Bishop Cordileone to become archbishop of San Francisco — replacing retiring Archbishop George Niederaur. He’s scheduled to assume the new post in October.

Complete Article HERE!

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Woman shares story of alleged abuse by priests

An Iowa woman contemplating a return to the Roman Catholic Church last year agreed to meet with a priest on one condition — he remove his collar.

“Roman collars still frighten me,” Kathleen Bowman, 47, told the priest.

She then emerged from four decades of silence, having only ever shared with a therapist her story of alleged abuse as a child by three priests because the memories were making her suicidal.

“I didn’t know I could report,” Bowman told the Quad-City Times, her first time speaking publicly about the alleged abuse. “It was taking everything just to maintain life.”

The Clear Lake, Iowa, woman first told a Mason City parish priest in the Archdiocese of Dubuque in August 2011, and he encouraged her to report her story. That brought her before a review board with the Diocese of Davenport, where her three alleged abusers had been clerics around the time she says she was abused.

How the Davenport diocese handled her case was the subject of a judge’s decision last week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The diocese recently emerged from bankruptcy after a $37 million settlement covering 150 child sex abuse victims.

U.S. District Judge Lee Jackwig ordered the diocese to add the now-deceased Revs. John Bonn, Michael Broderick and William Dawson to its online list of credibly accused priests, according to a filing late Tuesday.

Bowman petitioned the court last month to require the diocese to put Bonn, Broderick and Dawson on the list. The diocese resisted, saying it had reviewed Bowman’s case and found her accusations not credible, although she received a settlement after an arbitrator heard her case earlier in the year.

“If they think throwing money at you compensates having your childhood ripped away, it doesn’t,” Bowman said. “I want the names on that list, so that if someone else comes forward, they don’t have to go through what I went through reporting my abuse.”

One of the bankruptcy settlement’s non-monetary requirements is that the diocese identify on its website priests whom it deems to be credibly accused of committing child sexual abuse. The list includes 31 former priests, their places of employment, dates and other details.

As of Friday, Bonn, Broderick and Dawson weren’t on the list.

Diocese weighs response

Diocese spokesman Deacon David Montgomery said the diocese received the court’s written order Thursday morning and is “exploring its options,” declining further comment about Bowman’s case.

A lawyer representing the diocese, Rand Wonio of the Davenport law firm Lane & Waterman, said the diocese is studying the judge’s order and will respond soon.

Bowman said she was 4 years old when a tall, white-haired man wearing a priest’s collar reached down and picked her up and carried her upstairs in her family’s home in Waterloo, Iowa. When she woke up from a nap, the priest was lying beside her, fondling her, she said.

The incident occurred in 1969, and Bowman has identified the man as John Bonn. She said she was abused again by Bonn as well as by Broderick and Dawson in separate incidents over the course of five years. She said her parents knew.

The three priests made multiple weekend trips together to her home, she said.

“They were family. They were my dad’s best friends.”

She said her father, Michael Huston, who once considered the priesthood, went to high school with Dawson at Catholic Central in Ottumwa, Iowa.

An obituary shows that Dawson co-officiated Huston’s funeral in 1997.

Fellow priest skeptical

The Rev. John Hynes, a retired Davenport diocese parish priest, said Friday that he knew Dawson for more than 60 years, since they were students in college, and affectionately called him “Digger.”

Hynes said he was “devastated” by the allegation against Dawson.

“Every instinct I have within me tells me it couldn’t have happened,” Hynes said.

He said Dawson was admired as a professor at St. Ambrose University in Davenport and was recognized for leading peaceful demonstrations during the Vietnam War. He received multiple awards for his teaching and has long been regarded for his work in social justice, Hynes said.

Hynes doesn’t remember an accusation ever being made against Dawson before this.

“Anyone who knew Digger well would have a hard time thinking he could be involved in such a thing,” Hynes said.

Hynes confirmed that Dawson and Huston were friends. Hynes said he personally knew Huston’s parents when he spent his first 10 years as a priest in Ottumwa, where Huston grew up.

“I knew of Michael Huston. He was a friend of Digger’s,” Hynes said. “I knew his parents.”

Dawson once visited Huston at a hospital after Huston was in a car accident, Hynes said.

Hynes also confirmed that Dawson and Broderick traveled together and were close friends. He said Broderick was a parish priest in Ottumwa while Dawson was a student, and “Broderick thought the world of Digger.”

He said he doesn’t recall Bonn ever joining Broderick and Dawson on their trips but said it is possible the three were acquainted. According to Hynes, Bonn served at the Ottumwa Naval Air Station during World War II around the same time Broderick and Dawson were in Ottumwa.

Bonn, a Jesuit priest from the New England Province of the Society of Jesus, relocated to the Davenport diocese in 1969, according to New England Province spokeswoman Alice Poltorick.

Poltorick said the Davenport diocese notified the province about the allegation in late 2011. The province has not received any other allegations against Bonn, she said.

Bonn was a professor at Boston College from 1937-43, when he joined the service as a World War II naval chaplain, Poltorick said. He returned to Boston College and was a member of the faculty until 1946, she said.

Bonn applied for and was given a faculty position at Marycrest College in Davenport in 1969, Poltorick said.

Bonn died in 1975; Broderick died in 1984.

Accuser denied meeting

Bowman brought her allegations to the Davenport diocese in September 2011, while Dawson still was alive. She repeatedly requested a meeting with Dawson and was refused, she said. He died Dec. 13, 2011, and she said she never received a written apology from him.

“With or without their blessing, I’m credible,” Bowman said. “I need them to do the right thing and name those priests.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Elderly Woman Sues The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles for Defrauding Her of $284k

An elderly widow claims in court that a Catholic priest defrauded her of $284,000 after her husband died.

Michalena Jones, 79, sued The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles and Father Peter Valdez, in Superior Court.

Archbishop Jose H. Gomez

Jones claims that Valdez befriended her after her husband died in 2003, then “enticed her” to give him $160,000 to buy himself a house.

That done, she says, “Valdez wrongfully placed his name [on] various checking accounts in which Jones had funds” and paid his mortgage out of those joint accounts until 2010.

The complaint continues: “Additionally, Valdez at various times would place his name on, and take his name off, the title of the property. This was done for purposes of re-financing the property at which time Valdez would secret, appropriate and retain the money from the re-finance. Defendant Valdez was given additional sums [of] money over the course of years from 2003 to 2010, in an amount in excess of $284,000.00.”

Jones says she met Valdez after her husband died, when she volunteered to work at her church, St. Mary’s in Palmdale. “Valdez, in his capacity as Jones’ Catholic priest, and in his official capacity as Catholic priest and under color of authority, made certain representations to plaintiff and enticed her to give money to Valdez in part for the purchase of a home for Valdez,” in Downey.

Jones says he handed over $160,000 to Valdez for the house, in the form of two cashier’s checks.

Jones describes herself in the complaint as a “devout Catholic,” who “developed a great admiration, trust, reverence, respect and obedience to, Roman Catholic clergy, who occupied positions of great influence and persuasion as holy men and authority figures. Plaintiff therefore was encouraged to trust, respect and obey Catholic priests, including defendant Valdez.”

Jones claims that the “defendant Archdiocese was aware of Valdez’s activity and condoned and otherwise approved of Valdez’s activity. Defendant Archdiocese was at all times aware of defendant Valdez’s activity and was specifically made aware of these activities by another Catholic priest who complained to the office of the Clergy in Los Angeles. Defendant Archdiocese, knowing that these events took place from 2003 through 2010 acted recklessly in failing to stop such wrongful activities and in failing to warn plaintiff and her family.” Jones seeks compensatory and punitive damages for elder financial abuse, fraud, conversion and negligent hiring, supervision and retention.

Complete Article HERE!

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Catholic priest faces excommunication after launching new parish

A Milwaukee-area Catholic priest sanctioned this year for indirectly violating the seal of the confessional now faces excommunication after launching a new parish with a breakaway diocese a few miles away.

Father David Verhasselt, once a popular priest at St. Catherine of Alexandria Parish in Oconomowoc, was named pastor this month at the newly founded Holy Name of Jesus Evangelical Catholic Church in nearby Ashippun, taking at least some of his former parishioners with him.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee said Verhasselt will be given an opportunity to reverse his decision and would incur “immediate excommunication” if he does not.

Verhasselt has declined repeated requests to be interviewed. But the Chicago-based Evangelical Catholic Diocese of the Northwest said he withdrew from the Roman Catholic Church in accordance with canon law.

“For the record, the Roman Catholic Church cannot declare a former member of its body ‘excommunicated’ after the fact,” it said in an email to the Journal Sentinel. “We are currently residing within the 21st century.”

Verhasselt’s departure is forcing a gut-wrenching decision for at least some of his former parishioners, many of whom still believe he was unjustly accused of breaching the confessional. Do they stay at St. Catherine’s or follow Verhasselt to his new spiritual home outside the Roman Catholic Church?

“I’m on the fence. I’ve been Roman Catholic and gone to church all my life. But I also love Father Dave,” said June Sawant.

“He’s the most wonderful man, so kind, so caring . . . he was born to be a priest.”

Those who follow a schismatic priest could face excommunication themselves, depending on the circumstances, according to canon lawyers. But that is unlikely to occur without a clear warning from the archbishop, said Father James Connell, a canon lawyer and former vice chancellor of the archdiocese.

No such warning has been issued.

Excommunication bars one from receiving the sacraments; it does not strip one of membership in the church, according to Connell.

“And the door remains open to repentance,” he said. “There is always the hope that they will return.”

Verhasselt had been on leave from St. Catherine’s since April 2010 after allegedly violating the seal of confessional, a charge many of his supporters believed was trumped up as the result of an ongoing feud with a priest in another parish.

Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki found Verhasselt guilty in March of an “indirect” violation – betraying the sin, but not necessarily the sinner – and sentenced him to a year of prayer and penance.

Verhasselt’s appeal to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was pending when he resigned to join the Chicago-based Evangelical Catholic Church, a small, dissident denomination not in communion with Rome.

Founded in 1995, the Evangelical Church has 17 parishes or missions in the United States and Ireland, according to spokesman Bill Morton.

It bills itself as “a welcoming community of faith rooted in the Catholic tradition,” but it breaks with Rome in key areas, including ordaining women, allowing married and gay clergy, and in offering the sacrament of marriage to same-sex couples.

Morton said Northwest Diocese Bishop James Wilkowski reviewed the documents involving the charges against Verhasselt and found no evidence of a breach.

Wilkowski presided over an Aug. 4 Mass in which Verhasselt professed his faith in his new denomination, and he is expected to complete the process of incardination by the end of the year.

Complete Article HERE!

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N.J. man publishes book on abuse by priests in the Diocese of Trenton

It took Bruce Novozinsky more than seven years and 14,000 pages of letters, memos, manuscripts and interviews to produce his book on the decades of sexual abuse allegedly covered up by the powers that be in the Roman Catholic Church.

“Purple Reign: Sexual Abuse and Abuse of Power in the Diocese of Trenton”, written with co-author Linda Vele Alexander, hit stores and online in June and recently became the sixth-most purchased e-book about Christianity on Amazon.com.

“Purple Reign,” the result of what the Upper Freehold resident calls an “obsession,” chronicles his memoirs in Catholic school — and three years at the former Divine Word Seminary in Bordentown — and the sexual abuse suffered in the Diocese of Trenton through the mid- to late 20th century.

“We were all products of the 1970s, where you just kind of prayed to, obeyed and paid the church. Nobody ever questioned the politics involved,” Novozinsky said in a telephone interview earlier this week.

The book reads like a conversation with Novozinsky — “I write like I speak and that’s with candor and very little filtering,” he writes. The book is interspersed with firsthand accounts of others’ sexual abuse, correspondence with the alleged perpetrators more than 40 years later, and reflections on the abuse perpetrated by men wholly trusted by their victims.

“I didn’t look like the typical candidate for a kidnapping, or a sexual assault for that matter, and yet less than an hour before, I had a priest on top of me,” Novozinsky writes of his own close call with sexual abuse by his parish priest decades ago.

He latched onto the subject when news broke of the sexual abuse scandal 10 years ago in the Archdiocese of Boston, as those experiences and rumors started “eating at him.”

“To say that the Catholic Church abuse crisis started in January 2002 in Boston, Mass., is naive and simply not true,” Novozinsky writes. “Sexual abuse and the abuse of power in the Church have been around since Adam bit the apple.”

The book includes anecdotes of weeping parents pleading with priests to take action over the abuse witnessed by their sons — and the resulting inaction.

“Everybody had a horrible, horrible story to relay, but the common theme was, ‘Nobody did anything about it,’ ” Novozinsky said. “Or they settled a case and were told to be quiet, or were told, ‘This is a secret between us and God.’ Just being in a workforce and in corporate America, it just dawned on me that this is the highest degree of sexual harassment.”

“The abuse is bad enough. It’s horrid,” Novozinsky said. “But the cover-up is worse, as far as I’m concerned.”
Many of the alleged perpetrators — who he said were never charged due to a “loophole” in the legal system — still live in the area, still wearing priest collars.

Even Novozinsky’s attempted abuser lives “scot-free,” he said.

The Diocese of Trenton declined to comment on any of the allegations made in “Purple Reign.”

“We have nothing to say about this book,” spokeswoman Rayanne Bennett said in a statement. “Regarding the overall issue, the diocese has been proactive and diligent in the steps we’ve taken to protect children and assist victims. Our efforts have been pastoral and transparent and we take our responsibilities in this matter very seriously.”
Novozinsky said parents, though, have ramped up efforts to protect children.

“People today are so aware that if one accusation was made, the school would be shut down,” Novozinsky said. “People are much more in tune and sensitive to it.”

The sex abuse scandal and the cover-up his book alleges hasn’t shaken Novozinsky’s faith at all, he said. His children even attend Catholic schools.

“My faith is my faith in God and the Roman Catholics. I will always be a Roman Catholic. (The research) has made my faith stronger for me,” Novozinsky said. “However, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, from Trenton to Rome — I have absolutely no confidence in them.”

Complete Article HERE!

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“An unholy mess”

That’s what an in-depth, investigative piece in the Economist called the state of finances in the Catholic Church in America: an unholy mess.

It’s hard to decide what is most horrifying in this report of financial mismanagement, which looks at data made public through bankruptcy proceedings in several dioceses:

  • Some dioceses have raided priests’ pension funds to pay for sexual abuse damages and other costs. Under Cardinal Bernard Law, the archdiocese of Boston contributed nothing to its clergy retirement fund between 1986 and 2002, despite receiving an estimated $70 million to $90 million in Easter and Christmas offerings that many parishioners believed would benefit retired priests.
  • The same is true for parish savings. A parish in Wilmington, Del., sent $1 million to be deposited in what it thought was a separate account, but was really a pooled, general cash account for the diocese. The parish lost the money when the diocese struck a sexual-abuse settlement.
  • Cardinal Dolan and other New York bishops are spending an estimated $100,000 a year to well over $1 million, sources say, on lobbying the state assembly to prevent an extension of the statute of limitations on sexual abuse, which would result in more lawsuits and more dioceses declaring bankruptcy.
  • Creditors in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee bankruptcy case have questioned the motives behind a $35 million transfer to a trust and a $55.6 million transfer from archdiocese coffers to a fund for cemeteries, alleging the movement of such large amounts was a fraudulent attempt to shield cash from sexual-abuse victims.
  • Dioceses in bankruptcy are required to enlarge their assets to satisfy their creditors, yet some have tried to shrink the size of their assets, by closing parishes or undervaluing property. The Diocese of San Diego listed the value of a whole city block in downtown San Diego at $40,000, the price at which it had been acquired in the 1940s, rather than the the current market value, as required.
  • The church is going into debt to pay its bills, with tax-free municipal bonds, a subsidy more commonly associated with local governments and public-sector projects. State and local authorities have issued municipal bonds for the benefit of at least 50 dioceses in almost 30 states. In California, at least $12 billion has been raised through municipal bonds over the past decade, $9 billion of which went to hospitals.
  • Estimated spending by the church and entities owned by the church was around $170 billion in 2010, only 6% of that for parish and diocesan operations and 2.7% of it for charitable activities. The majority, 57%, is on health care networks, followed by 28% on colleges.
  • Catholic Charities USA and its subsidiaries employ distributed $4.7 billion to the poor in 2010, of which 62% came from local, state and federal government agencies.

Similar financial mismanagement was reported in “Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church” by Jason Berry, who was quoted in the Economist article. It’s why more and more Catholics are considering whether this is an institution worthy of their donations.

Complete Article HERE!

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Fort Worth Roman Catholic Diocese settles sexual abuse case

A man who accused disgraced priest Philip Magaldi of sexual abuse settled his claim Tuesday with the Fort Worth Roman Catholic Diocese, according to a news release.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed at the man’s request, the diocese said.

The man’s attorney, Tom McElyea, said the abuse occurred in Tarrant County and started in about 1994 when his client was 9.

Magaldi was being defrocked when he died in 2008. Before his death, the diocese announced that he was HIV positive. McElyea said his client does not have the virus.

As with two other known accusations against Magaldi, the man was subjected to enemas as part of his abuse, McElyea said.

In 1997, while serving at a parish in North Richland Hills, Magaldi was accused of paying a young man to give him enemas. Within two years, another man came forward to say Magaldi had given him enemas and had raped him as a boy.

People also claimed that Magaldi engaged in other inappropriate behavior, including “looking for minors” in Web chat rooms and possessing “pedophilic material,” according to court documents.

Bishop Kevin Vann, leader of the diocese, said in a statement that “he is deeply sorry for any sexual abuse this victim may have endured and suffered by Magaldi.”

McElyea said the diocese worked to resolve the matter and “hopefully my client can live a productive life.”

Magaldi served at St. John the Apostle Catholic Church in North Richland Hills. Besides accusations of sexual abuse, he was a convicted embezzler of church funds from his Rhode Island parish.

He had also been accused of perjury in 1985 at the second attempted-murder trial of socialite Claus von Bulow.

Complete Article HERE!