Tag: Catholic Priests

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Fr McVerry questions direction of church

By PATSY McGARRY

How can today’s young people be invited “to commit themselves to a male-dominated, authoritarian institution which suppresses dissent and attempts to control what its members may even discuss?” social justice campaigner Fr Peter McVerry has asked.

The founder of the Peter McVerry Trust for homeless people was speaking in Dublin last night at the first annual general meeting of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP). The meeting continues today.

He said there were “many priests and religious . . . who experience only condemnation, exclusion and marginalisation by the very church which was mandated by its founder to reach out to all in compassion, love, and tolerance”.

The church established by Jesus “was to be a community of brothers and sisters, free of all domination”, he said. Jesus warned against “replicating the relationships of power that existed in the wider society”.

“Whatever little theology I have, I learnt from homeless people,” he said. Listening to them had “changed my understanding of who God is and what God wants”.

Fear

Fr McVerry said the wealth, power and status of the church, and its “fear of losing them”, may have filtered “understanding of the message of Jesus”. Such fear was seen recently in the church authorities’ response to child sexual abuse.

He recalled that “for the religious authorities at the time of Jesus, God was a God of the law” and that “the church, too, has often proclaimed a God of the law”. It meant “anyone, like Jesus, dissident priests, organisations like the ACP who challenge this understanding of God, is seen therefore as a threat . . . to be got rid of”.

“Jesus . . . was just ‘the carpenter’s son,’ one of the laity no less” who “was moved by the suffering of his people. And Jesus proclaimed a different God, a God of compassion”.

He wondered whether this was why today the message of the church was seen by so many as irrelevant to their lives.

Complete Article HERE!

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Six men suing the Catholic church for alleged sexual abuse

A group of men from a northwestern Ontario First Nations community are suing a Winnipeg-based Roman Catholic order and others to seek redress for alleged sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of their community priest as young boys.

The six men from the Lac La Croix First Nation near Fort Francis seek unspecified financial damages from the federal government, a Catholic diocese in Thunder Bay and the order of Les Oblats de Marie Immaculee du Manitoba, along with a priest who lived and worked on the reserve in the 1960s.

The men range in age from 55 to 61.

In separate statements of claim, each alleges his life has been deeply and negatively affected by the aftershocks of sexual assaults he was subjected to — abuse the men say they felt powerless to speak out about given the priest’s position of power in their small community.

One man states that when he was 10 or 11 years old, the priest took him to his on-reserve home several times during the summer months and anally raped him. The behaviour continued until he was 13 or 14, the now-56-year-old says.

The other men make similar claims, one alleging he was abused more than two dozen times at the priest’s home and in a schoolhouse room. Another claims he was assaulted by the priest in a hotel room during a trip to Minnesota.

The priest died in May 1986.

The allegations have not been proven, and no statement of defence has been filed. No court date has been set to test the men’s claims.

The men state the Order and the Thunder Bay diocese should be held indirectly responsible for the actions of the now-late priest, who was a member of the order and an employee of the diocese, their lawsuits say.

“The Order and the Diocese held out (the priest) as an individual that embodied the values of the Roman Catholic faith such that it was implied that he could be trusted and that he would do no harm,” one lawsuit states.

The two organizations should have known there would be a “power imbalance” given the emphasis the faith places on obeying the wishes of its clergy, and the power the priest had over the “immortal souls” of the faithful in the community.

Complete Article HERE!

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Rev. Bourgeois offers apology to women barred from priesthood in Catholic Church

By Wes Woods

The Rev. Roy Bourgeois, who has been criticized by the Catholic Church for his support of women’s ordination, discussed his views Thursday night at Claremont Graduate University.
“I really want to begin with an apology,” Bourgeois said during a panel discussion.

“To all the women in the Catholic Church and also I think in society for taking so long to see this injustice. To see the root of our church’s teaching all about sexism.

“No excuses, I was asleep, I think, for many years and one of the many participating in what we call prejudice. I’ve come to see after much reflection that in life prejudice is our greatest enemy. We learn prejudice. And we can unlearn it.”

Bourgeois was part of a group that also featured Gina Messina-Dysert, visiting assistant professor in the department of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University; Rosemary Radford Ruether, visiting professor of religion; and Jane Via of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests.

Via said she agreed with the sentiment expressed by Ruether that the Catholic Church was much larger than the Vatican, which has condemned the idea of women being ordained.

“The Vatican is a tiny, tiny group of very powerful elderly, mostly Caucasian males,” Via said.

“That’s who they are. But the power they exert, over women and children, especially in non-industrialized societies worldwide is enormous. Women will never be able to push their way into that power structure without becoming ordained first,” she said.

Via said she will not walk away from the Catholic Church despite her disagreements.

“My personal attitudes about that are that I am intelligent, articulate, I’m well-educated and if every voice like mine leaves the Catholic Church there will be no one left to speak for women,” she said.

The packed audience inside the Albrecht Auditorium cheered Via’s comment.

Bourgeois said the issue of women’s ordination was an important one.
“Who are we as men to say to women our call is authentic but your call is not?” Bourgeois said.

“Who are we as men to reject God’s call to women to the priesthood? What arrogance. And what I saw in our church’s teaching at its very root was that sin of sexism. And as we all know, sexism, like racism, like homophobia and all those other forms of discrimination is wrong. It’s wrong,” Bourgeois said.

He said such a rule is an injustice against the church.

“And of course an injustice against our loving God who calls both men and women into the priesthood,” Bourgeois said.

“What do we do? You and I when we see an injustice with such clarity. What we do know is silence is the voice of complicity. In order to sleep at night, I had to break my silence.”

Church teaching holds that the priesthood is reserved for men, since Christ chose only men as his apostles. Proponents of women’s ordination say there is no theological basis for excluding women from the priesthood, that there is evidence of women priests in the early church and that the Vatican’s ban is purely sexist.

Complete Article HERE!

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Parish in shock as priest found dead in home

The town of Ballina has been rocked by the sudden death of a local priest in what is believed to be the first case in recent years of a Catholic cleric in Ireland taking his own life.

Residents in the Co Mayo town yesterday expressed shock at news of the death of Fr Muredach Tuffy, a popular curate and director of the Newman Institute — an educational centre known as Ballina’s “Catholic university”.

The body of the 39-year-old was discovered early yesterday in his apartment, attached to the institute at Cathedral Close.

Local sources said no foul play was involved.

Fellow priests in Ballina and the Diocese of Killala were too upset to comment when contacted by the Irish Examiner yesterday.

Fr Gerard O’Hora, the parish priest of Ballina and spokesman for the Bishop of Killala, Dr John Fleming, was also unavailable.

A native of Castleconnor, Co Sligo, where he was ordained in 1999, Fr Tuffy had worked as director of the Newman Institute since 2003 and has been instrumental in its development and growth into a centre for adult religious education.

He was also the diocesan director of pastoral renewal and diocesan vocations director, as well as lecturing in applied theology at the Newman Institute. He also acted as Bishop Fleming’s spokesman.

Fr Tuffy officiated at the wedding of a friend in his home town of Castleconnor last Saturday.

Local Fianna Fáil TD Dara Calleary, who attended school with Fr Tuffy at St Muredach’s College in Ballina, said Ballina was “shocked beyond belief”.

Enniskillen-based priest and well-known broadcaster Fr Brian D’Arcy spoke earlier this week about the pressures of being a priest in Ireland amid the fallout of various clerical sexual abuse scandals, as well as grappling with controversial Church teaching on issues such as clerical celibacy, contraception, and homosexuality.

The Association of Catholic Priests yesterday expressed disappointment and sadness at the response of the Hierarchy to their request for greater engagement with the group about the future of the Church.

The organisation claimed there was often a “palpable sense of dejection, depression and sometimes almost despair when clergy gather as a group”.

The Irish Episcopal Conference told the ACP that engagement would best be conducted at local level using established structures.

Complete Article HERE!

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Marriage would have made me a better priest

One of Ireland’s best-known priests has revealed the anguish the Church’s requirement of mandatory clerical celibacy has caused him.

Fr Brian D’Arcy admitted: “I would have been a much better priest had I married.”

Marriage would have provided “a companion, a closeness, a friend, someone to call home” as well as requiring “making sacrifices for somebody else,” he told BBC NI. “At the end of my life, I don’t have a home. Ideally religious life is supposed to be a type of home. It isn’t, not now anyway.”

In a BBC documentary, he says he contemplated leaving the priesthood in the wake of his disciplining by the Vatican.

Last April, it emerged he had been told by the Vatican watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, that he must submit his writings and broadcasts to an approved Church censor before publication.

“Is the price of being a priest that you stay quiet, that you don’t be a whistle blower, and that the price of dying a priest is that you don’t speak the truth?”

The documentary makers followed the Enniskillen-based priest for several months as he talked to people within the Church about whether he should stay or leave after 50 years in the Passionist order.

Among those he consu-lted were the dissident Austrian priest, Fr Helmut Schüller, who is actively lobbying for reform of some of the Church’s core teachings, as well as Cardinal Sean Brady, who affirms the priest’s media work.

He is frank about the pain of his experience of sexual abuse, which occurred when he was an 18-year-old seminarian. “I was preyed upon by a member of my own order. Of course, the threat was made that unless I co-operated with this, that I would not be ordained.”

One of his biggest regrets is returning home to Ireland from South Africa in 1994. “I was 25 years ordained in 1994 and I went to Africa to get away from it. The Smyth affair had been going on for a year before and I was so disillusioned with the priesthood that I couldn’t even celebrate my silver jubilee. One of my regrets in life is that I ever came home.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Roman Catholic Priest Comes Out

A Catholic priest is now making the headlines in Italy after having decided to come out on Facebook on International Coming Out Day (11 October).

‘I am gay. Or, better, I am a happily gay priest,’ he stated.

Don Mario Bonfanti, 41, is a priest in Pagnano, near Lecco, in the Italian region of Lombardy. And his openness about his sexuality is something of a revolution.

Openly gay priests, in Italy, are a rarity. The Italian Catholic church is know for not being tolerant of LGBT people.

Bonfanti wrote on Facebook: ‘Truth makes us free, so Jesus said.

‘But, strangely, the Church denies this sentence. Catholic LGBT people must come out. They have to accept the truth.’

Last March, don Bonfanti was banned from another parish in Brianza, Lombardy, for having supported same-sex unions.

The local community defendend their priest, but the bishop did not change his mind and moved don Bonfanti to another church.

Now, a new group, with more than 1,200 followers, has been created on Facebook. ‘Io sto con don Mario’ (I support don Mario), is the name of the group.

Don Mario Bonfanti added: ‘I am happy in this way.’

Complete Article HERE!

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Popular priest found dead in rectory

The body of a popular Catholic priest known for ministering to police and the poor was found Saturday afternoon in the rectory of St. Lawrence Catholic Church on East Delevan Avenue.

The Rev. Joseph F. Moreno Jr., 54, was found dead in his room shortly before 4 p.m., police said. Several sources said he committed suicide.

Despite those reports, Buffalo Police spokesman Michael J. DeGeorge said Saturday night that an investigation into the cause is still ongoing.

“At this time, homicide detectives do not believe foul play was involved,” DeGeorge said. “An autopsy will be performed to determine an exact cause of death.”

Moreno, who was sacramental minister at St. Lawrence Parish in Buffalo, was known as a gregarious priest who would deliver pizzas in emergencies, gather food for the poor and respond to the needs of Buffalo police officers.

“He’s extremely, extremely well beloved,” Monsignor David G. LiPuma, priest secretary to Bishop Richard J. Malone and vice chancellor of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, told reporters Saturday. “He never said no to anyone, and he was there for every person at every station in life, whatever they needed. He seemed to always be present and always be able to help people in one way or another.”

LiPuma, who was called to the church shortly after Moreno’s body was found, offered a Mass in St. Lawrence on Saturday, where about 40 parishioners and law enforcement officers gathered after learning of his death.

“You can go on and on about the amount of lives that this one priest has touched,” LiPuma said. “And so right now, we’re just storming heaven with prayer for the peaceful repose of his soul. We’re just asking the Lord to give great comfort to all those who are mourning his loss and are trying to deal with this tragic, tragic loss right now.”

Moreno, of Buffalo, served a number of parishes in the diocese, but was in the process of being transferred to another assignment from St. Lawrence Parish, Kevin Keenan, a spokesman for the Diocese of Buffalo, said. His new assignment had yet to be determined.

Parishioners earlier this week wrote to Malone expressing concern about the transfer and for his welfare.

“We love, respect and hold our Father Joseph Moreno in the highest regard,” about two-dozen parishioners said in the letter, a copy of which was provided to The News.

In addition to his work in various parishes and at St. Francis Nursing Home, Moreno was known for ministering to area police.

In a 1997 interview with The Buffalo News, Moreno recalled one of his toughest calls as a police chaplain came when Genesee Station Officer Charles E. “Skip” McDougald was fatally shot and his partner, Officer Michael Martinez, was wounded.

Several officers guarding the Northhampton Street shooting scene smiled and could be heard saying, “There’s Father Joe,” as they stepped up to greet the priest, who had arrived with hot coffee, doughnuts and soothing words that it was “OK to grieve.”

He was honored in 1998 by the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association for his service.

“Being a priest is an honor that God gives, one we don’t deserve,” Moreno told The Buffalo News at that time. “I’m able to walk into officers’ lives at difficult times and be trusted. I’m able to see what makes them tick, and it has truly humbled me and made me a better priest.”

Not only was Moreno known for providing people comfort with his words, but with food.

He was a familiar sight at police district stations, entering with pizzas, chicken wings and a “thanks” for the work police perform.

“Joe had a way of not only feeding people with his love and his great heart, but physically feeding them,” LiPuma said. “If they were hungry, he found a way to get them food. He loved pizza, so that was his signature piece.”

In 2009, Moreno and St. Lawrence Catholic Church also organized a giant delivery of pizzas to flood victims and emergency workers, after the flooding in the villages of Cattaraugus and Gowanda.

“I’m half Italian and I try to Italianize the world through food,” Moreno told The Buffalo News in a 1997 interview. “You can never have enough food.”

Moreno was ordained to the priesthood in April 1986 in Holy Spirit Church in Buffalo.

Malone, who was in Portland, Maine, on Saturday, said Moreno was “affable, unpretentious and had a giving heart.”

“It is with profound sadness to learn of the passing of Father Joseph Moreno, a faithful priest of the Diocese of Buffalo since 1986,” Malone said in a statement released by the Diocese. “Father Joe was dedicated to the priesthood, especially when it came to serving others. His presence to the parishioners of St. Lawrence made him much beloved.”

Funeral arrangements will be announced at a later date, Keenan said.

Complete Article HERE!

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More sex charges filed against priest removed from St. Paul church

A priest who had been charged with criminal sexual misconduct now faces 17 counts of possessing child pornography, Ramsey County authorities said Tuesday.

The Rev. Curtis Wehmeyer, 48, of Oakdale, was removed as pastor of Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in St. Paul in June amid an investigation into child sex assault.

During the summer of 2010, Wehmeyer allegedly brought two young brothers to his camper trailer, parked in the lot of the church, and showed the boys, then 12 and 14, pornographic movies.

He gave them alcohol and marijuana as he allegedly molested one and exposed himself to the other, according to the complaint filed in late September.

“As the parish priest for this family, the defendant betrayed a sacred trust and forever marred the innocence of two young victims,” Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said Tuesday. “We will pursue justice for the family, as well as the community.”

After he was arrested in June at the church rectory, Wehmeyer saw the boys’ mother and told her that he intended to plead guilty.

The complaint filed Monday details pornographic images showing nude prepubescent boys alone and engaged in sexual acts with each other.

Investigators allegedly found the videos and photos on the priest’s laptop computer, in a closet in the rectory, while executing a search warrant in July.

Each of the 17 counts is punishable by up to five years in prison and/or a fine of up to $5,000.

The earlier charges are second-degree criminal sexual conduct and two counts of gross misdemeanor fifth-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Wehmeyer was ordained in 2001 and served as associate priest at St. Joseph Catholic Church in West St. Paul from 2001 to 2006. Since 2006 he had served at Blessed Sacrament.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis released a statement after the September charges were filed, saying it “deeply regrets the pain caused by clergy misconduct or by others within the Church, and is offering its support and assistance to all concerned.”

Complete Article HERE!

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US Roman Catholic priest is reported missing in Greece

The aunt of a Roman Catholic priest missing in Greece said she fears her nephew is dead but holds out hope because he is known for surviving against great odds.

Sister Marcianne Kappes, a professor at St. Gregory’s University in Shawnee and a Carmelite Sister of St. Therese from Villa Teresa Catholic School in Oklahoma City, said the details of her nephew’s disappearance are sketchy but that his family is sure he is in trouble.

The Rev. Christiaan Kappes, 36, told family members he feared for his life earlier this week. He was dropped off at an airport in Athens on Monday but never boarded the plane and has not been seen since, Sister Kappes said on Thursday.

“I’m waiting from a call from my four younger brothers to find out the latest,” she said. “Either he’s dead or he’s managed to go into hiding, but if they’re holding him I think he’s dead.”

Kappes, who is attached to the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, Ind., has been attending the University of Athens for about three years, said Greg Otolski, a spokesman for the archdiocese.

He was sent there at the request of the Vatican, which is trying to improve relationships between the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox churches, Otolski told the Indianapolis Star.

The church, the U.S. State Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been notified of his disappearance.

Sister Kappes said her nephew may have gotten into trouble through his translator, but said she’s heard differing reports about his disappearance and declined to speculate further.

Kappes told his family on Monday that he and his translator, a Greek woman, were in danger from her family, who was seeking to take away inheritance money, according to the Star.

A man known for immersing himself in some of the world’s poorest areas, Sister Kappes said her nephew is well-traveled and has escaped trouble before.

A member of the national exhibition wrestling team in the 1980s, he spent a week without food in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, she said. He previously spent a year working with the poor in Mexico.
“I never give up hope to the last minute, and even to the last minute my family is a little crazy — we believe in life after death, and we believe we will see each other again,” Sister Kappes said.

Her nephew visited Oklahoma City for wrestling clinics nearly every year when he was young, and was well known to some of the monks at St. Gregory’s despite not having visited for the past decade or so.
On Thursday, the university in Shawnee held a special mass to support him.

“I think the interesting thing about Chris is, no matter where he is he works with the poor,” she said. “He’s the kind of guy that is multifaceted; he’s equally at home with a group of dignitaries as he is working with orphaned gypsy boys. You know, you hate to lose kids like him for the world.”

Complete Article HERE!