Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, a longtime leader in the U.S. Catholic peace and justice movement, has died at the age of 94 in Detroit. He helped found Pax Christi and Bread for the World and was a war tax resister. He was also a survivor of sexual abuse in the church who was forced to resign in 2007 after he spoke out publicly in favor of an Ohio bill to extend the statute of limitations for cases of sexual abuse by clergy. In 2013, Bishop Gumbleton spoke to Democracy Now! about his work with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP.
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton: “Well, what really opened my eyes was when a friend of mine — in fact, the person who started SNAP — came to me and asked me to intervene with the local bishop, because the priest who had abused her, and who had also abused other people that she was aware of, was still functioning. And I said, ’That’s impossible.’”
Amy Goodman: “You were the bishop of Detroit, and he was in Toledo.”
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton: “Well, I was an auxiliary bishop in Detroit. But I was a friend of Barbara Blaine, the founder of SNAP, from decades — for decades. And when she came to me and told me this, I said, ‘Well, I’ll go see the bishop, and I’ll talk to him, and I’m sure he’s not going to continue to keep this covered up.’ Well, I went to see him, and he assured me, ’I’ll do something about it. I’ll take care of it.’ So I took him at his word, but nothing ever happened. And so, that made me realize that some of the, well, best bishops around were not dealing with this issue the way it needed to be dealt with. I mean, it just was terribly wrong to allow a priest to continue to function in a situation where he could abuse other children. And it turned out he was still abusing other people. And so, that” —
Amy Goodman: “The priest was.”
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton: “Yes, and the bishop was allowing this to go on.”
That was Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, who passed away Thursday at the age of 94.
— Belgian bishop Roger Vangheluwe admitted 14 years ago that he sexually abused his nephew but faced no Vatican punishment.
Bishop Roger Vangheluwe
By NICOLE WINFIELD
Pope Francis on Thursday defrocked a notorious Belgian bishop who admitted 14 years ago that he sexually abused his nephew but faced no Vatican punishment.
The case of Roger Vangheluwe, the emeritus bishop of Brugge, long ago became a symbol of the Catholic Church’s hypocrisy and dysfunction in dealing with cases of abuse. Not only was he allowed to quietly retire after the scandal broke in 2010, but the head of the Belgian church at the time, Cardinal Godfried Danneels, was caught on tape asking one of his victims to keep his abuse secret until the bishop left office.
The Vatican announcement that Francis had laicized Vangheluwe came a few months before the pope is due to visit Belgium, where the case would have been an unwelcome and problematic distraction.
Vangheluwe, 87, shot to international infamy in 2010 amid disclosures he had sexually abused his young nephew for over a dozen years when he was a priest and later a bishop. He later admitted he also abused a second nephew. All along, he made light of his crimes, describing his abuse as “a little game” that didn’t involve “rough sex.”
The Vatican embassy in Belgium said in a statement Thursday that in recent months “grave new elements” had been reported to the Holy See’s sex abuse office that justified reopening the case.
It didn’t say what new information had been received. In recent months Belgium’s own bishops have grown increasingly public in their stated outrage at the Vatican’s refusal to take action against Vangheluwe.
In September, Antwerp Bishop Johan Bonny told Belgian broadcaster VRT that the Belgian bishops had asked the Vatican for years, in writing and in person, to defrock Vangheluwe but got no response.
In its statement, the Vatican embassy said that after Vangheluwe’s defense was heard, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith presented the case to Francis on March 8. Three days later, it said, Francis decided to accept the recommendation that Vangheluwe be laicized. It is the harshest punishment that the Vatican can hand down, but it just means that Vangheluwe is now a layman and cannot present himself as a priest.
He asked to be allowed to live in a retreat house “without any contact with the world” to dedicate himself to prayer and penitence, the statement said.
Lieve Halsberghe, a Belgian advocate for abuse survivors, said the belated laicization brought no justice to Vangheluwe’s victims and was a mere “PR stunt” ahead of Francis’ visit later this year to Leuven, where the pope is to commemorate the 600th anniversary of Belgium’s Catholic university.
“Images of child sexual abuse were found in 2011 on the man’s computer and charges were never laid, because Vangheluwe is protected in high places,” Halsberghe told The Associated Press. “The gesture of the Vatican today, after 14 years of charades with letters to and from the Vatican, is no more than a PR stunt of the Vatican, pressured by the Belgian bishops.”
The Vangheluwe scandal proved a watershed moment for the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nation of 11.5 million, though he was never prosecuted criminally in Belgium because his actions exceeded the statute of limitations.
In the wake of the revelations, a special commission produced a report with harrowing accounts of Catholic clergy molesting hundreds of victims, some as young as two years old, and said the abuse led to at least 13 suicides. The head of the commission said that, in reality, the abuse was even worse but many victims could still not bring themselves to talk.
The scandal is by no means over: Belgium’s parliament is currently holding hearings on abuse, and just this week protesters demonstrated outside the French Catholic community where Vangheluwe went to live after he retired.
“Justice kneels before the church,” read a sign one of the protesters held.
The Vangheluwe scandal isn’t the only one that has rocked the Belgian church and laid bare its wretched legacy of abuse.
In 2019, the Vatican’s Caritas charity admitted that it knew for two years of pedophilia concerns about the Belgian Salesian priest, Luk Delft, who ran its operations in the Central African Republic. But Caritas only removed Delft after CNN began investigating. It turns out, Delft had been convicted of child sexual abuse and of possession of child pornography in 2012 by a Belgian court, but the Salesians moved him to Bangui, where CNN said it found at least two more victims.
Delft was laicized and formally ousted from the Salesian order on Sept. 9, 2021, a decision that was reported to Francis on April 9, 2022, Archbishop Franco Coppola, the Vatican ambassador to Belgium, said in an email Thursday to AP.
Francis in May 2022 named Delft’s former Salesian superior, the retired bishop of Ghent, Luc Van Looy, a cardinal — an honor Van Looy subsequently declined because of his poor record dealing with abuse. Van Looy was in charge of the Ghent diocese when Delft was convicted by the Ghent court of abuse in 2012.
Joshua Love was recently paid $15,000 by a Catholic religious order to keep quiet about his claim that two Franciscan Friars abused him as a child. Now he’s going public and talking about how he’s tried to heal.
LAGOS, Nigeria — Statistics compiled by Amnesty International in 2021 show that there is a culture of stigmatization and victim-blaming towards rape survivors. The result is a large percentage of rape and sexual assaults go unreported in Nigeria.
Paul Akinyemi Thomson was far more than a statistic. It was a reality he lived every day for 21 years. Born in 1986, Thomson told Religion Unplugged that his mother was sexually molested by the Reverend Kolawole Olaiya Thomson of a Cherubim and Seraphim church starting from age 12.
Thomson said his mother had to go live with the late reverend from a young age because her parents could no longer raise her. It was at the reverend’s home that Thomson’s mother conceived him and his elder sister after being raped multiple times.
“This man of God already had like 10 wives, very respected in the community. … Peopled loved him because he does miracles and all that,” Thomson said. “My mother was complaining to people that this man of God molested her but nobody listened to her because in Nigeria they blame the victim first. The molestation by the pastor continued until she got pregnant at age 17 and had my big sister, they had me three years later.”
Thomson and his sister continued to be abused by his father and other fmaily members, including being subjected to curses, voodoo and constantly called “omo eru,” a slur in the Yoruba language meaning “slave.”
“I was sexually molested too and even this year they were still calling I and my sister slaves,” he added. “In 1998, my dad used Deuteronomy 28 to curse me. Deuteronomy 28 is the worse chapter in the Bible, and the only chapter in the Bible, filled with curses, generational curses and my dad was using it to curse and swear at me.”
A 2021 study by the United Nations Population Fund found that 28% of Nigerian women between the ages of 25-29 have experienced some form of physical violence since age 15. The prevalence of sexual violence against women in Nigeria is further boosted by victim blaming, which has flourished in Nigeria as a prevailing attitude. This has the concomitant effect of discouraging victims from seeking justice, thus allowing abusers to continue with impunity.
“I’m just trying to rewrite what’s wrong … because everybody blamed my mom then and I can imagine, why are you blaming a 12-year-old girl? She is just 12! The man doing this is 50 years old,” Thomson said.
In 2014, Thomson started a nonprofit organization named after his mother – Comfort Empowerment and Advocacy Foundation (CEAF) — to raise awareness about sexual assault, domestic violence and child marriages and to also provide free shelter and psychotherapy support to survivors.
Based in Lagos, CEAF offers victims access to free psychological counselling and therapy. CEAF also operate an online portal through which individuals can report abuse for CEAF staff to follow up with civil authorities.
CEAF has assisted over nine people since its founding with free legal services, psychotherapy support and financial grants. Currently, CEAF’s safe shelter, meant to house survivors of sexual violence, domestic violence and child marriage, is 90 percent complete, Thomson said.
One of such beneficiaries is Nkiruka Onyebuchi, 29, who told Religion Unplugged she was trapped in an abusive relationship for six years until CEAF intervened and gave her the help she desperately needed.
“I was in my early 20s when we met and started living together because we were to get married but the abuse was a lot and I could not really tell anybody including my parents because I never forgot what my mother always said to me ‘if you want to stay in a marriage, you need to have patience’ so I thought it meant I had to be patient with everything,’” Onyebuchi said.
She eventually got pregnant, which led to an increase in the physical and mental abuse she had endured.
“I actually thought the beating was going to stop when I was pregnant, but it got worse until I had the baby but the baby died,” Onyebuchi said. “He usually says the reason he beats me is because I’m stubborn and I believed him.”
In January 2023, Onyebuchi’s friend introduced her to CEAF. As a result, Onyebuchi’s boyfriend was arrested by the police and made to sign an undertaking not to physically abuse her again.
Onyebuchi also received financial help to move out of her house and lease her own place, receive counseling and help with finding a job.
“If I didn’t have the therapy sessions, I would not be having this interview with you because I had insecurity issues,” she said. “I was very defensive and aggressive then. The counseling sessions really helped at least 60 percent. I still talk to my therapist from time to time.”
A major challenge for CEAF has been funding and finding partnership. Thomson has been funding CEAF out of his pocket and has not had much success partnering with others, he said, including the Lagos’ Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency.
“Since I started CEAF, nobody has actually contributed any money, so all of the money I’ve made has been invested into CEAF,” he said. “I’m doing this because of my mom. This is personal to me and this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.”
Pope Francis is facing growing dissent among members of the Catholic Church over recent decisions that opponents portray as contrary to traditional church doctrine.
The most controversial has been the publication of a document in December by a Vatican bishop, with the pope’s approval, mooting the “possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples.” While the document stressed that it did not change the church’s stance on homosexuality, it brought a joint letter from Catholic clergy and scholars calling on others to disregard it.
Previously in his 11-year tenure as the head of the church, the pontiff has raised eyebrows by suggesting that even atheists could go to heaven and saying that he did not judge homosexuals, as well as taking a softer stance on abortion and remarriage.
Experts who spoke to Newsweek cast these tensions as an ideological clash between those in the church who wish to reform its message and those who want to conserve its traditional teachings, which reflects a broader culture war between liberal and conservative ideals.
Pope Francis has provoked controversy and growing dissent over some of his stances on church doctrine, including allowing same-sex couples to be blessed.
They said that rather than departing from the core principles of the faith, Francis was attempting to reach out to those who might not conform to a traditional view of family life to give them greater spiritual guidance without seeking to alter church doctrine.
While the dissent is expected to continue, Francis is unlikely to face calls for his removal, the experts said, and a split within the church is highly unlikely, owing to its historical structure.
“When Pope Francis first became pope, I’d say very early on he really distinguished himself from his immediate predecessors Benedict and John Paul II,” Michele Dillon, a sociologist and dean of the University of New Hampshire’s College of Liberal Arts who specializes in the Catholic Church, told Newsweek.
“He said that, really, the church needs to go and walk with people where…they’re at, and that the church needs to be pastoral,” she said.
Dillon said this approach was designed to “recognize the complexity of everybody’s lived reality” in the modern world, allowing the clergy to continue “working with them to keep them close to God, close to the church.”
In the open letter opposing the possibility of same-sex blessings, which was published in February, over a hundred Catholic thought leaders called on Francis to “urgently withdraw this unfortunate document, which is in contradiction with both Scripture and the universal and uninterrupted tradition of the Church.” They argued that this would be tantamount to condoning “objectively sinful” relationships.
The pope in turn accused the naysayers of “hypocrisy,” arguing that they were willing to let him bless someone who exploits people despite it also being considered a sin.
He also recently provoked criticism for suggesting Ukraine should be willing to negotiate a peace settlement with Russia, but Dillon said this was a political controversy rather than a religious one.
She interpreted Francis’ sentiments on the invasion as arising from “his commitment to [the] sanctity of life, basically that war is not a good thing and, being realistic, to what extent can the valiant efforts of the Ukrainians…actually defeat Russia.”
In particular, Dillon said, the sentiments came from an understanding of “how much the Ukrainians have suffered and continue to suffer.”
The other controversies surrounding Francis primarily concern the church’s teachings and could be viewed as an attempt to keep the church relevant in a changing world. While the number of Catholics worldwide has more than tripled in the past century, the proportion of Catholics compared with the total global population has decreased slightly in that time.
In August last year, the pontiff called out the “backwardness” of some Catholic conservatives in the United States, arguing that they had replaced faith with political ideology.
His opponents appear to accuse him of the same. Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas—a firebrand who has frequently railed against what he has described as “woke” values and has been critical of the pope—was among the loudest voices to oppose the idea of same-sex blessings.
He has previously said that “we must be first-century Christians in the 21st century” and that “corruption” had a “devastating stranglehold” on the church.
Strickland was removed from his diocese in November following an investigation earlier in the year. The Vatican has not disclosed why it chose to remove him. Strickland said he had “threatened some of the powers that be with the truth of the gospel.”
Darrell Bock, a senior research professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, told Newsweek that Francis “represents a lean of the Catholic Church that tends to be more liberal and less traditional, and so some of the pushback is coming from the more traditional-oriented Catholics.”
Dillon said that the pope wanted to “find a way forward that can be inclusive rather than condemnatory.”
However, there is “a narrow segment—but it’s a loud segment—of very strongly conservative Catholics, including in the U.S….who really demand this [other] approach, even though the development of doctrine is something that is so essential to the Catholic Church,” she said.
Pope Francis appears alongside his cardinals to preside over the funeral of German cardinal Paul Josef Cordes on Monday in Vatican City.
Dillon described Catholic doctrine as a “living tradition” and said that Francis was seeking a discussion on how to interpret the religion’s teachings “in light of the realities of the time.” But others have argued that he has shown an intolerance for disagreement.
“So far, no doctrine has been changed,” she said. “He’s not talking about the core principles of the Catholic faith. He’s not talking about anything to do with the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus.”
Dillon argued that if Pope John Paul II—considered a more conservative pontiff—had been subjected to a similar form of public dissent by liberal bishops, “that would be seen as being heretical by the very same bishops who now seem to be calling out Pope Francis and exaggerating what it is he is doing.”
While Bock casts Francis’ softening of the church’s rhetoric on key issues as a bid to maintain relevance, Dillon argues it is more to appeal to Catholics who may have been overlooked by the church in the past.
“What you’re seeing is an attempt to be more modern, more sensitive to the position of the church that’s been marginalized in a modern world. I think that’s the main thing that we’re seeing,” Bock said. “He is less bound by tradition as historically the Catholic Church has been and is willing to think through handling things differently than the way they’ve been handled, and I think that’s part of what you’re seeing.”
Dillon said, “It’s not trying to be relevant because he’s looking for votes at an election, so it’s not the relevance of a cynic.”
She added that a lot of sociological work in the 1990s investigated why gay individuals wanted to remain Catholic despite being stigmatized by the church and found that they saw its theology and rituals as a “very important part of their identity.”
“Despite the challenges that a lot of people have living out the letter of church teaching in terms of some of these issues, there’s still, nonetheless, a hunger for the spirituality and the theology…that the Catholic Church, over centuries, offers them,” Dillon said. “I think the challenge is for church leaders to try to harness people’s longing.”
But if the dissent over Francis’ leadership continues to grow, those more conservative voices might start calling for him to be replaced.
Pope Francis gestures to pilgrims as he arrives in St. Peter’s Square for his weekly audience on Wednesday in Vatican City. The pontiff has rebuffed the idea of stepping down.
“I am not sure how much power exists to try and challenge a pope within the structure of the Catholic Church,” Bock said. “I think the pressure that comes is just the pressure that will come from the internal debates among the leaders in the Catholic Church, and there are very much two sides. His election reflects that.”
Dillon said that removing a pope was ultimately precluded for theological reasons. “Catholics believe in the Holy Spirit,” she said. “From this perspective, there is a reason why he is chosen to be pope.”
Even though internal politics was likely at play in his election, the conclave of cardinals that select a new Catholic leader is supposed to be guided by divine inspiration in their choice. “They don’t have the authority to override what might be seen as the work of the Holy Spirit,” Dillon said.
But if the dissent became pronounced enough, Francis’ position might be seen as untenable. Questions have already been raised about his health and the possibility of his abdicating on such grounds, as his predecessor did.
But in recently published excerpts of his autobiography, the pontiff said that he did not see “any conditions for renunciation” and disregarded criticism of his leadership. Bock said Francis would likely see stepping down “as an abandonment of what [he’s] trying to achieve.”
Much of the conservative dissent against the pope’s decisions appears to come from the U.S. Many of those who signed the open letter were American. While there has not been a significant split in the Catholic Church in hundreds of years, could there be another on the way?
“The Catholic Church, precisely, is not a schismatic church,” Dillon said, adding that it has always had diversity. “To me, the talk of schisms is really attention-grabbing, and, in my assessment, it’s very un-Catholic to even have that thought.”
Bock agreed, saying, “The Catholic Church is structured in a very traditional and historical way, and I just don’t see it getting to the point of an absolute break of any kind. What you’ll get is just that sound of protesting voices in the internal dialogue within the church. This has been going on for a long time.”
— Court rules 4-3 to overturn law that had allowed victims to file civil suits over sexual abuse that took place decades ago
By David Hammer
In a split ruling that has major implications for hundreds of child sexual abuse victims, the Louisiana state supreme court has struck down a law that had allowed victims to file civil lawsuits over molestation that happened decades ago.
Child molestation victims and their advocates were devastated by the 4-3 ruling from a court whose members are elected.
Lawyers Richard Trahant, Soren Giselson and John Denenea, who represented the plaintiffs in the case at the center of Friday’s ruling, said: “Today, four of the seven … justices overruled a law passed by a unanimous Louisiana legislature, signed by then governor [John Bel] Edwards, supported by then attorney general and current governor Jeff Landry and current attorney general Liz Murrill. That’s nearly 200 elected officials who viewed this law as being constitutional.
“Four elected officials just obliterated that. They cannot fathom the excruciating pain this decision has heaped upon adults who were raped as children and already suffer a life sentence.”
Richard Windmann, president of Survivors of Childhood Sex Abuse, said: “Once more the victims and survivors of childhood sex abuse have been denied justice. The institutionalized, systematic and wholesale rape of our children by these organizations is self-evident.”
Windmann pledged to take the case to the US supreme court if necessary, calling it “the final stop to see if we, as human beings, are going to let these atrocities stand and continue to happen”.
Kathryn Robb of ChildUSA, an advocacy group that helped pass lookback or revival windows across the country, said Friday’s ruling meant “predators and institutions that protect predators are going to continue with their bad practices”.
“They’re going to continue with their coverup,” Robb said. “They’re going to continue with putting children in harm’s way. And so I’m saddened. I’m saddened by this decision.”
Such laws were upheld as constitutional in 24 states and the District of Columbia. Louisiana now joins Utah as the only states to find them unconstitutional, Robb said.
Louisiana’s supreme court heard arguments in January involving cases filed against the Roman Catholic diocese of Lafayette over allegations that a priest in that region – about 135 miles (217km) west of New Orleans – molested several children between 1971 and 1979.
The lawsuits were filed under a “lookback window” law the Louisiana legislature passed unanimously in 2021, which eliminated deadlines for old claims in recognition of scientific research that found the average victim doesn’t come forward until that person is 52 years old.
Four Louisiana supreme court justices – James Genovese, Scott Crichton, Jeff Hughes and Piper Griffin – concurred that the “lookback window” law is unconstitutional. The majority opinion written by Genovese said reviving old sexual abuse claims violated the due-process rights of alleged abusers and their enablers to no longer be sued for damages once the original deadline to do so had passed.
The deadlines for filing such lawsuits have changed over the years. In the 1960s and 70s, victims – even children – had a single year to come forward. Those deadlines were extended in the 1980s and 90s to allow child victims to file suit well beyond their 18th birthdays. In 2021, such deadlines were eliminated entirely.
Several justices said from the bench that, regardless of how horrendous the harm caused by child molestation, applying the law retroactively raised constitutional concerns. But in his dissent Friday, Justice William Crain said Louisiana lawmakers should retain the power to give that right to victims.
“Absent a constitutional violation, which defendants have not established, the forum for this debate is the legislature, not this court,” Crain wrote. “The legislature had that debate and – without a single dissenting vote – abolished the procedural bar and restored plaintiffs’ right to sue.”
Crain was joined in dissent by colleagues Jay McCallum and John Weimer, the court’s chief justice.
Friday’s ruling does not affect measures eliminating deadlines to demand civil damages in cases of child sexual abuse that occurred after the law was enacted in 2021.
The lookback window struck from the books Friday was not exclusively for clergy abuse claimants. But it prompted many new cases of that nature against Louisiana’s Catholic institutions and clerics who worked for them.
Among the organizations standing to gain most from Friday’s ruling is the archdiocese of New Orleans, which declared bankruptcy in 2020 in an attempt to dispense with a mound of litigation related to a decades-old clerical molestation scandal there. The lookback window was the strongest legal weapon that clergy abuse accusers seeking damages from the archdiocese had in their efforts to drive the value of their claims up.
With the lookback window no longer a factor, the archdiocese’s efforts to settle those claims for as cheaply as possible received a significant boost.
“The organizations that enable and protect child molesters are rejoicing over this ruling,” said attorney Kristi Schubert, who represents a number of clerical abuse claimants caught up in the New Orleans archdiocese’s bankruptcy. “The ruling shields wrongdoers from the consequences of their evil actions.”
Some supporters of Catholic clergy abuse victims expressed concern that the Louisiana supreme court would ultimately rule against them after its justices prayed with New Orleans archbishop Gregory Aymond at a service in October at St Louis Cathedral. Organizers said the service’s purpose was for members of Louisiana’s legal profession to join Aymond – the leader of the state’s conference of Catholic bishops – in praying for the healing of clerical molestation victims.
Neither the archdiocese of New Orleans nor the diocese of Lafayette immediately commented on Friday’s court decision when asked.
