Catholic Abuse News - Ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in Court.

Former Cardinal McCarrick
Facing criminal charges for child sexual abuses in 1974

Defrocked prelate Theodore McCarrick arraigned for child sex abuse charges

Former Cardinal McCarrick, the most senior Catholic cleric in the USA and the most senior to be defrocked for child abuse to date, finally appeared in court in Dedham, Massachusetts, last Friday, charged with sexually abusing a 16-year-old boy in 1974. McCarrick, now aged 91 is charged with repeatedly sexually abusing the child of a family friend, including during the sacrament of confession at a wedding in Wellesley College. The alleged victim also claims that McCarrick abused him on family trips and at various hotels in the state.

He pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges and was ordered to stay away from the alleged victim and away from anyone under the age of 18. He has also been accused of similar offences in New York and New Jersey, where the statutes of limitation mean he cannot face prosecution for those offences in those states. These offences were investigated by the Vatican in addition to claims that he had sexually harassed and performed homosexual acts with adult seminarians under his authority. A two-year investigation by the Vatican also revealed that Pope John-Paul II had been aware of the allegations concerning his sexual relations with seminarians and allegations of paedophile abuse, when he appointed McCarrick to the post of Archbishop of Washington and made him a cardinal.

Given that Pope John-Paul II knew of these allegations, it is almost inconceivable that his then right-hand man and enforcer, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, effectively acting Pope in John-Paul II's prolonged dotage, later to become Pope Benedict XVI, knew nothing of them. This revelation then deepens the mystery surrounding why McCarrick was allowed to continue for so long in his post before anyone moved to stop him.

Here is how I covered it at the time:

The report bends over backwards to try to leave Pope Francis looking whiter than white but still leaves a number of questions unanswered. Particularly how much he was told about McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI following his sudden abdication, and if nothing, why not? According to Archbishop Viganò, Pope Francis was fully aware not only of the allegations against McCarrick, but also that his activities had been 'restricted' by Benedict XVI, but Pope Francis removed these restrictions anyway and was thus complicit in his further predatory behaviour.

During John-Paul II's reign, his 'enforcer' was none other than Cardinal Ratzinger, later to become Pope Benedict XVI. It was widely reported when the sexual abuse scandals began to emerge that Ratzinger, acting on John-Paul II's orders, has instructed senior figure in the church to supress allegations of sexual abuse in order to protect the Church's reputation. It was assumed that Benedict XVI's hasty elevation of the dead John-Paul II to the sainthood, was intended to quell these rumours, on the assumption that this was not what a future saint would do. Therefore he could not have ordered Ratzinger to pervert the course of justice, deny redress and compensation to the victims of abuse, and to facilitate the paedophile activities of the Catholic priesthood by being instrumental in covering it up and keeping it from the child-protection agencies.

Pope Francis denies this (in effect, calling Viganò a liar), which begs the question, why did Benedict XVI not tell him? Or did he? By claiming he knew nothing, Pope Francis is shifting the blame onto Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

The executive summary reveals a litany of bumbling incompetence, an over-eager willingness by both John-Paul II and Benedict XVI to believe people who were close to them, and a credulous receptiveness to lies and false assurances that was naive in the extreme. Neither man appeared to be capable of believing a senior Catholic cleric could behave in such a way and then lie about it when challenged. McCarrick's 'oath as a bishop' was regarded as sufficient evidence of his veracity, when he lied about his sexual predation.

The executive summary of that Vatican reports, in the embedded PDF, bears further reading, revealing as it does, scapegoating and a laisses-faire attitude to child abuse and other inappropriate behaviour by senior clerics by Pope John-Paul II and his close advisers.

Meanwhile, Pope Francis, who has shed crocodile tears over the abuse allegations and even blamed Satan, not for the abuses but for encouraging people to speak out against them, is still under a strict code of Omertà regarding the truth of Viganò's allegation that his predecessor, Benedict XVI, placed McCarrick on restricted duties but that Francis rescinded those restrictions, and Francis' claim that McCarrick was never restricted in the first place and he knew mothing of the allegations. Either Francis is lying, or Benedict XVI knew about McCarrick and did nothing he deemed worthy of informing Francis about on his sudden resignation. Either way, McCarrick's predation continued unchecked and it was only when the scandal became public that Francis decided to act, throwing his hands up in horror when the full scale of McCarrick's predatory behaviour and arrogant betrayal of his clerical vows became public knowledge.

Kim Davis, Christian extremist
Ambush meeting with Pope Francis arranged by Cardinal Viganò.

Mind you, it should be said that Viganò bears a grudge. As Papal Legate to Washington, he was in charge of Pope Francis' 2015 official visit, which had been something of a PR coup, until Viganò arrange an ambush meeting between the odious Kim Davis, and Pope Francis. Davis was a Christian extreme fundamentalist and serial adulterer, with multiple extra-marital pregnancies, then disobeying a court order to register same-sex marriage in her job as a registrar. Viganò then issued a press statement announcing triumphantly that Pope Francis had given Davis encouragement in her resistance to authority (and to the rule of law) in the name of Jesus and the sanctity of heterosexual-only marriage.

For a visiting head of state to be seen to encourage law-breaking in his host state and take sides with someone disobeying a court order, turned the triumph into a diplomatic disaster, all so Viganò could sequester the visit and turn it into a victory for right-wing Christian conservatism. He was promptly transferred back to the Vatican, and stripped of his diplomat status, and Francis was left looking like a patsy, casting round for a scapegoat and claiming he knew nothing of Davis' criminal behaviour in the name of Jesus and would not have met her if he had - although, of course, his church still agreed with her about same-sex marriage being a sin.

Maybe the truth about what Pope Francis knew of his predatory behavior will emerge during the coming court case, if McCarrick's lawyers don't manage to get it halted on the grounds that McCarrick is now too old and frail to stand trial, and anyway it was all a long time ago and McCarrick is very sorry. In which case, all the old predator will have suffered is a loss of status and his pension. None of his victims will have received justice.

Religion News - Ignorance and Indifference to Child Abuses in American Catholics

Former Cardinal McCarrick
Facing criminal charges for the sexual abuse of minors

National Survey of Adult Catholics | America Magazine (pdf)

As the news broke that former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, has been formally charged with sexual offences against minors, a survey revealed that 62% of American Catholics (52% of men and 69% of women) said they had never heard of him.

Given his former high profile as the senior Catholic cleric in America and the high-profile nature of both his crimes and his public laicisation, this shows an astonishing degree of indifference to the scandal of clerical sexual abuse that has engulfed the Catholic Church in recent decades. It suggests that many American Catholics are Catholic in name only, and have no particular affiliation to the Church or identification with what priests, Catholic school teachers, etc, have been doing under its protective and facilitative cover for decades now.

Catholic Abuse News - The Scandal Rumbles On...

Bishop Peter Libasci, centre, arrives at the Cathedral of St. Joseph for his Installation service as the Tenth Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, USA (2011). A lawsuit is accusing him of sexually abusing an unidentified, then 12- or 13-year-old youth, on numerous occasions in 1983 and 1984.

Photo: AP/Jim Cole

New Hampshire bishop accused of abusing teenage boy.

The latest senior Catholic to face allegations of the sexual abuse of a minor is Peter Libasci, bishop of the New Hampshire Catholic Diocese of Manchester.

A Lawsuit filed in Supreme Court in Suffolk County, New York alleges that he sexually abused a male youth aged 12 or 13 on numerous occasions while serving as a pastor in the Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius and the Saints Cyril and Methodius School in Deer Park, New York, in 1983 and 1984. The youth was a student at the school at the time. The church and school are run by the Diocese of Rockville Center.

We worry that allowing the Bishop to remain in ministry may further endanger young lives in New Hampshire. We hope that the Bishop’s Metropolitan or the Vatican intervene to correct this troubling situation immediately.

Statement by Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP)

The lawsuit also names the church and the school as well as the Sisters of St Joseph, which is responsible for organizing activities at the school. Rockville centre is one of a number of New York Catholic dices that have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection because of the large number of abuse allegations which have emerged since New York abolished the statute of limitations, allowing formerly time-lapsed allegations to come to court. This is but one of the more than 200 allegations of sexual abuse that have been filed against this one Catholic diocese since then.

Catholic Abuse News - Compensation for Victims of Paedophile Priests Bankrupts Yet Another Diocese

Bishop Michael R Cote
“grievously sorry.”

Connecticut diocese files for bankruptcy amid abuse claims

In common with many other American Catholic diocese, the diocese of Norwich, Connecticut has declared itself bankrupt and applied for Chapter 11 protection. This is often a devise to protect church funds from claimants and ensure victims are denied the compensation they are entitled to while the diocese hangs on to the funds it needs to pay its expenses such as the wages and pensions of those who oversaw the abuses.

This action was precipitated by dozens of lawsuits of victims of the regime that ran the now closed Academy at Mount Saint John School, a residential treatment centre for 'troubled youth' in Deep River. They are also suing the former Bishop of Norwich, Daniel Reilly.

According to this report in Religion News Service:

Religion - Providing More Excuses for People Who Need Excuses

Pastor Lewis Clemons
Kingdom Awareness Ministries International, Columbus, Georgia, USA
$500,000 compensation for rape victim

Jury imposes $500K verdict on pastor accused of rape | U.S. News | The Christian Post

Pastor Lewis Clemons, Could have settled a claim that he raped a 15-year-old girl with a simple public admission and an apology, but he refused. So, the jury in the Superior Court of Muscogee County, Georgia, found in favour of the complainant, Lequita Jackson, and imposed a $500,000 penalty against him.

In 2017, Jackson and another of Clemons' congregants, Lakisha Smith, launched a civil lawsuit against Clemons, claiming that he had sexually abused them when they were under 16 years old. During the trial, Jackson, who is now 33, told the court that Clemons routinely sought out girls from troubled backgrounds and

Look What Religion Can Be Used For! Kansa Rep. Mark Samsel Arrested for Battering a School Boy

Rep. Mark Samsel (R-Wellsville, Kansas)

Kansas Republican Mark Samsel arrested on battery charge after substitute teacher videos surface - The Washington Post

The other day, Christian fundamentalist and elected Representative for Kansas Wellsville, Mark Samsel, Republican, harangued a bunch of school kids about their sex live, masturbation, God and the Bible, then kneed one of the boys in the groin and invited his classmates to 'check his nuts', then told them they had permission to 'kick him in the balls'. He was acting as a substitute teacher at the time.

He was later arrested after complaints from parents and charged with battery. He was released on $1,000 the same day, and now claims it was a stunt in which his victim was fully compliant. They did it to warn the other children about the dangers of suicide [sic] allegedly. In a posting on SnapChat he said: It was all planned. Every little bit of it. That’s right. The kids and I planned ALL this to SEND A MESSAGE about art, mental health, teenage suicide, how we treat our educators and one another. To who? Parents. And grandparents. And all of Wellsville.
Samsel claimed he was trying to warn the children about:

A sophomore who’s tried killing himself three times [because] he has two parents and they’re both females. He’s a foster kid. His alternatives in life were having no parents or foster care parents who are gay.

And if you believe that, you'll probably believe anything.

---

Apparently, this is best done by pinning a child against a way and threatening to "Put the wrath of God in you" then sexually assaulting him in a way that could have affected his fertility and had life-changing consequences. After rhetorical questions about whether they enjoy 'making babies' because it feels good, he then asks the class if any of them have every masturbated and tells them not to answer because God knows already. At one point he asks the boy pinned against the wall if he believed God has been speaking to him (Samsel).

Samsel works with students in several capacities, including as a referee and through church groups, parents said. One parent, Joshua Zeck told the Kansas City Star:

I’m a concerned parent who doesn’t want this swept under the rug. He's around Kids all the time. He’s a state representative. He’s in a position of power.

Wellsville Unified School District Superintendent Ryan Bradbury said that Samsel will no longer be allowed to work for the district. Their priority is the safety of students.

Last February, Samsel was one of 13 Repuglicans who voted against a bill to end Kansas’s exclusion of spouses from sexual battery laws. Currently, it's not an offence for a man to rape or sexually assault his wife in Kansas, and Samsel wants to keep it that way. Speaking ahead of ther vote he said he did not want to criminalise sexual relations between spouses! Clearly, he has strange ideas about what normal sexual relations between spouses are and has no concern about the safety of women in an abusive marriage.

Samsel behaved like this because he is a fundamentalist Christian zealot.

The question is, has his Christian zealotry made him act in this bizarre way, or is it his excuse for sexually assaulting and verbally abusing children in his care? In other words, was Christian fundamentalism the cause of his insane behavious or was insanity the cause of his Christian fundamentalism?
Answers below, please.

Religious Abuse News - 99 Years for Child-Abusing Paedophile Pastor

Jeffrey Winston Forrest, Youth Pastor
99 years for aggravated sexual abuse of a child and jumping bail

Former Abilene youth pastor sentenced to 99 years in prison | KTXS

"Religion provides excuses for people who need excuses!"

This was never truer than in the case of former Abilene youth pastor Jeffrey Forrest, sentenced to 99 years in prison for the aaggravated sexual abuse of two boys, bail jumping and failure to appear. He had fled to Mexico where he was tracked down, arrested and extradited back to Texas in May 2020.

During the trial, multiple witnesses testified that Forrest admitted to the abuse. He allegedly told a good friend and a professional counsellor.

Religious Abuse News - The Mexican Cult With a Paedophile Leader - Allegedly

Naasón Joaquín García
Alondra Ocampo	Susanna Medina Oaxaca

Trial date set in sexual abuse case against La Luz del Mundo leader Naasón Joaquín García

On Monday, a Superior Court Judge reversed the April 8th decision of an Appeal Court that the case against alleged Paedophile, Garcia, be dropped because of procedural delays in bringing the case to court. The trial will now be held on September 27 and Garcia remains in detention in lieu of a $90 million bail.

Also to appear in court on the same day, is Susana Medina Oaxaca. The third defendant in the case, Alondra Ocampo, has pleaded guilty to four counts, include three counts of contact with a minor for a sexual offense, involving three Jane Does, and one count of forcible sexual penetration, involving a fourth Jane Doe. She is believed to have struck a deal with the prosecution, the details of which are not disclosed.

Garcia is leader of the Mexican fundamentalist Christian La Luz del Mundo (The Light of the World) church and is known to the sect as "The Apostle". He faces counts of forcible rape and forcible oral copulation of a minor, human trafficking and possession of child pornography.

According to court documents, Ocampo took photos of minor girls “touching each other sexually at her direction” to send the photographs to García. Ocampo directed one of the victims, along with other minors, to perform “flirty” dances for García while wearing as little clothing as possible.

After the dance, García “gave them a speech about a king having mistresses and stated that an apostle of god can never be judged for his actions,” according to the court papers.

According to this report in the Los Angeles Times:

Catholic Abuse News - The Church Pays Up to Avoid a Court Case

Fr. Gerald Ridsdale.
Predatory paedophile who abused almost 70 schoolboys when chaplain to their Catholic boys school.

Gerald Ridsdale: Victorian man abused as schoolboy by paedophile priest given $1.5m settlement | Victoria | The Guardian

A man who cannot be named for legal reasons, a victim of the notorious, predatory paedophile Catholic priest, Gerald Ridsdale, has been given one of the largest amounts received to date, a A$1.5 million settlement on the eve of the court case in which he was claiming compensation for the abuses he received from Ridsdale and two Catholic teachers at his school in the Catholic dioceses of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia.

Ridsdale was sentence in 1994, initially to 12 months in prison for abusing 9 boys, but this was extended as more victims came forward. By 2006, he had pleaded guilty to 54 more child victims and his sentence was extended so he would not be eligible for parole until 2019.

Since then, a further batch of 23 additional charges have been brought against him, bringing his total number of victims to 65, and he will now not be eligible for parole untill 2022, Judge Irene Lawson deciding that even at the age of 83 he still posed a threat to the community.

Catholic Abuse News - The Priest Who Saw Sex With Young Girls as Payment for His Good Works

Rev. Richard Daschbach

Defrocked US priest revered in East Timor accused of abuse

The newly-independent nation of East Timor, or Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste as it shoud be called, is said to be the most devoutly Catholic country outside the Vatican City.

It was in this atmosphere of unquestioning trust, almost amounting to idolization of Catholic Priests as Men of God, that the American, Rev. Richard Daschbach, predated on children to satisfy his sexual perversion.

He had risen to local fame when he set up a refuge for the destitute and orphaned child victims of the long, bloody war for independence from Indonesia, that the Timorese final won in 2002.

The way that you determine who sits on his lap is by the list that he’d have on his door, and that meant that you were the little girl that was going to go with him.

Abuse victim

But there was a grim price to pay for his protection. Every evening a list would be posted on his bedroom door and the girl whose name appeared at the top of the list was expected to share a bed with Daschbach and another elementary school-aged girl. Fear of banishment from the shelter prevented the young girls from complaining or resisting at the time.

The Fundamentalist Christian Child Pornographer and Trump Aide.

Christmas at the White House with Trump's Ad designer, child pornographer and paedophile rapist, Ruben A. Verastigui.

Former Trump and GOP Aide Ruben Verastigui Charged With Child Pornography Offenses

Of course it would be wrong to suggest that all Trump's supporters and staffers share his lack of moral scruples in sexual matters, but this one certainly did.

In fact, when he was working for the Senate Republican Conference and Christian pro-life groups, and designing social media ads for Donald Trump's Make America Great Again Committee and Donald J Trump for President, Inc., Ruben A. Verastigui was also trading in child pornography and telling his online pal and fellow paedophile:

Well like I said babies are some of my biggest turn-ons and beast. Young rape… Fuck I love all that.

According to this report in The Daily Beast:

D.C. Metropolitan Police arrested Ruben A. Verastigui on Friday after an investigation revealed he allegedly “distributed, received, and possessed images of child pornography” between March 2020 and February 2021. Jared Holt, resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, first reported Verastigui’s arrest on Twitter.

Catholic Child Abuse News - Suffer Little German Children, Sold By Nuns to Paedophiles

Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki.
Refusing to publish the report into the sexual abuse of children by Catholic nuns and priests in his archdioces.

Child abuse in the Catholic Church — a scandalous approach to scandal  | Germany| News and in-depth reporting from Berlin and beyond | DW | 25.11.2020

We're used to stories of the sexual exploitation and abuse of children by Catholic nuns, what with the Irish Mother and Bay Homes scandal and reports of Spanish nuns selling new-born babies and telling their single mothers their baby had died, that it comes as little surprise that a scandal has been uncovered in Germany, involving nuns and priest selling orphaned children for sexual exploitation in the Archdiocese of Cologne.

This scandal has come to light as a result of a lawsuit brought by some of the victims.

The lawsuit alleges that boys living in the boarding houses of the Order of the Sisters of the Divine Redeemer were sold or loaned for weeks at a time to predatory priests and businessmen in a sick rape trade. The boys were denied the chance of being adopted or fostered out to families because selling them or hiring them out for sex orgies was more lucrative.

Catholic Abuse News - Former Priest Jailed for Sadistic Paedophile Offences

Former Catholic priest and education advisor to Catholic schools, Joseph Quigley,
"Sadistic paedophile and voyeur"

Ex-priest Joseph Quigley jailed for child sex offences - BBC News

Yes, it's yet another tale of a predatory paedophile Catholic priest and an archbishop (now cardinal) who did little to stop his abuses or safeguard his potential victims.

A former Catholic priest and former national education advisor for Roman Catholic schools, Joseph Quigley, has been jailed for 11 years and ordered to sign the Sexual Offenders' Register for life after being convicted at Warwick Crown Court last December of four counts of engaging in sexual activity with a child, two counts of sexual assault, one count of child cruelty and two counts of false imprisonment.

Catholic Abuse News - Irish Church Ratting on Compensation Promise

Site of the Mother and Baby Home at Tuam (now demolished).

Dáil hears call for church assets to be seized if religious orders refuse to pay for abuse - Independent.ie

20 years ago, the then minister Michael Woods, a Fiana Fáil TD, struck a €120 million deal with the Catholic Church in Ireland to pay compensation and reparations to the survivors of the Mother and Baby homes run by Catholic nuns.

Under their draconian, abusive and judgmental regimes, hundreds of babies, stigmatised as the illegitimate products of 'sin', died from diseases, neglect and malnutrition, their bodies then being disposed of like rubbish by being thrown in disused septic tanks or given to the gardener/handyman to dispose of in unmarked graves in the grounds. Some of the bodies were sold to Dublin medical schools to be used for dissection, for as little at 50 pence per body.

The €120 million was to be the Church's contribution to a government-run 'restorative justice' scheme. Most of the commitment has been reneged on.

Catholic Abuse News - Government of Ireland Apologises for Abusive Nuns

Archbishop Eamon Martin, Leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland
"People were frequently stigmatised, judged and rejected"

Irish government to apologise over mother-and-baby homes - BBC News

Taoiseach Mícheál Martin, head of government in the Republic of Ireland, has formally apologised for the state's part in the regimes of terror and casual abuse of mothers and babies in the homes run by Catholic nuns in the 1950s through to the 1990s in Ireland. This abuse led to the premature deaths of some 9000 babies and children and the casual disposal of their bodies in unmarked graves and even in disused septic tanks. Some bodies were even sold to Dublin medical schools for as little as 50 pence!

The Catholic Church's and the Irish states complicity in these systematic and institutionalised abuses of single mothers and their children was acknowledged in the Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes.

These centres of systematic abuse, humiliation and casual neglect for vulnerable women and their children were set up when Ireland, under the malign and all-pervading influence of the Catholic Church, was a deeply conservative, judgemental, misogynistic country in which sex and pregnancy outside wedlock were regarded as amongst the worst of sins, with prgnancy regarded as an ofence and the girls bearing the brunt of the blame. Their babies were regarded as the product of sin and unworthy of love and care, carrying a stigma that would haunt them for life.

A couple of paragraphs from the Report's Executive Summary are particularly telling of the social attitudes and Irish society and of the nuns in particular:

Catholic Abuse News - Letting The Predatory Priests Off

Roger Sinclair, who was removed by the Diocese of Greensburg in Pennsylvania in 2002 for allegedly abusing a teenage boy decades earlier. Now serving a prison sentence in Oregan for abusing a developmentally disabled man in 2017.

Credit: Deschutes County District Attorney's Office / via AP

Almost 1,700 priests and clergy accused of sex abuse are unsupervised

An investigation by reporters from Associated Press has discovered that almost 1700 American Catholic priests and clergy who had been named as credibly accused of sexual abuses are working unsupervised in the community, often with children.

According to this report by Claudia Lauer and Meghan Hoyer of Associated Press:

Nearly 1,700 priests and other clergy members that the Roman Catholic Church considers credibly accused of child sexual abuse are living under the radar with little to no oversight from religious authorities or law enforcement, decades after the first wave of the church abuse scandal roiled U.S. dioceses, an Associated Press investigation has found. These priests, deacons, monks and lay people now teach middle-school math. They counsel survivors of sexual assault. They work as nurses and volunteer at nonprofits aimed at helping at-risk kids. They live next to playgrounds and daycare centers. They foster and care for children. And in their time since leaving the church, dozens have committed crimes, including sexual assault and possessing child pornography, the AP’s analysis found.

Catholic Abuse News - "A Sorry History of Child Sexual Abuse in the Roman Catholic Church"

Cardinal Vincent Nichol
"[Church's] moral purpose betrayed over decades" but not resigning.

Inquiry finds Catholic Church prioritised reputation over the welfare of children | IICSA Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

The report published a couple of days ago by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse into the conduct of the Catholic Church in Britain, makes grim reading for anyone interested in child welfare.

It should have made grim reading for the head of the Catholic Church in Britain, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, since it called into question his leadership of the Church and his moral authority, but he has so far refused to even consider his position, claiming that he formally offered his resignation to Pope Francis when he reached the traditional retirement age for senior clergy, but Pope Francis formally declined it.

Catholic Abuse News - Vatican Report Blames Pope John-Paul II For the Cardinal McCarrick Debacle.

Former Cardinal McCarrick.
Sexual predator and paedophile who pulled the wool over the eyes of three popes.

Vatican says Pope John Paul II ignored sex abuse allegations to promote ex-Cardinal McCarrick - CBS News

Pope John-Paul II knew about Cardinal (then Archbishop) McCarrick's sexual predation on children and young seminarians, but turned a blind eye to it when he promoted him to Cardinal.

That is the conclusion of a Vatican investigation into the omnishables that lead to Theodore McCarrick firstly being promoted to Archbishop, then to Cardinal and ending up as the most senior Catholic cleric in America, to then be summarily sacked and defrocked when Pope Francis finally learned the truth about him, to become the most senior Catholic cleric to be so treated. The report into the scandal (English Language version)^(PDF) is published today.

Clerical Child Abuse News - Anglicans As Bad as Catholics

Church of England failures 'allowed child sexual abusers to hide' - BBC News

A report published yesterday by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, paints a sorry picture of an Anglican Church more interested in protecting its own reputation and that of its clergy, than in the welfare of its victims. In an carbon-copy of the Catholic Church's approach to reports of its priests sexually abusing minors and other vulnerable people, the Anglican Church sought to keep the problem under wraps rather than deal with the problem, while its victims were left to fend for themselves and seek justice against an uncaring and indifferent Church establishment.

From the Executive Summary to the report:

Executive Summary

This investigation concerns the extent to which the Church of England and the Church in Wales protected children from sexual abuse in the past. It also examines the effectiveness of current safeguarding arrangements. A public hearing on these specific areas was held in 2019. This report also draws on the previous two case studies on the Anglican Church, which related to the Diocese of Chichester and Peter Ball.

In addition to recommendations made in the case studies, we make eight recommendations in this report, covering areas such as clergy discipline, information-sharing and support for victims and survivors. We will return to other matters raised in this investigation, such as mandatory reporting, in the Inquiry’s final report.

Catholic Child Abuse News - Duluth Bishop-Elect Resigns

Father Michel J. Mulloy

Father Michel J. Mulloy Resigns Weeks Before Becoming Bishop of Duluth - The New York Times

The person chosen by Pope Francis to become Bishop of Duluth, Minnesota, Father Michel J. Mulloy, has resigned before taking up the post, amid allegations that he sexually abused a minor in Rapid City, in the early 1980s.

Father Mulloy, a South Dakota native, was ordained in 1979, according to a post on the website of the Diocese of Sioux Falls announcing his appointment as a bishop. His first assignment was at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Rapid City from 1979 to 1981. He was then assigned to Christ the King Parish in Sioux Falls and held positions at several other parishes in South Dakota during the 1980s.