News Story of the Day

By Crux Staff, September 30, 2017, CRUX

An ex-Catholic priest serving a 14-year sentence for sexual abuse of seven minors in Rome, and who had been given permission to receive treatment for a health condition in a nearby clinic, surreptitiously left last week and hailed a taxi, escaping detection. On Thursday, police caught up to him in Milan’s San Raffaele hospital and placed him in custody. Now, he'll have to serve the remaining 11 years behind bars.

ROME - A former priest in Italy sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2013 for sexual abuse of seven minors was captured by police in Milan late Thursday, three days after escaping from a clinic in the hills on the outskirts of Rome where he had been taken for treatment.

According to police reports, Ruggero Conti, 64, had been serving his term under conditions of house arrest, and had been given permission to move to the clinic in the castelli, the hills surrounding Lake Albano outside Rome that also contain the papal summer residence of Castelgandolfo, to be treated for an undisclosed health condition.

By Shelley Orman, September 28, 2017, FOX5NEWS

BEL AIR, Md. (WBFF) - Neighbors in Harford County are still reeling after shocking and disturbing child pornography charges are filed against a former priest.

Fernando Cristancho is charged with creating and possessing child porn.

By Gil Corse, September 27, 2017, WDRB.com

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- They stand convicted of committing terrible sins, but pedophile priests are still being paid by the Catholic church in Louisville.

"I think it's absurd," Michael Norris said. "I just don't understand it." 

Norris is one of Fr. Joseph Hemmerle's victims, molested at age 11 at camp Tall Trees in Meade County in the 1970's.

"This man is who I was thought is an extension of God," Norris said. "That's what the Catholic church taught me. And here's God doing this to me. It really messes with your spirituality."

BY ESHA RAYGRAHAM RAYMAN, September 27, 2017, New York Daily News

Fifteen women are claiming Tuesday they were sexually abused by a priest at a Catholic school in Queens over a span of two decades.

The women say they were abused by the Rev. Adam Prochaski at the Holy Cross school in Maspeth between 1973 and 1994, according to their lawyer Mitchell Garabedian and Robert Hoatson of the New Jersey-based Road to Recovery group, which helps victims of sexual abuse.

Garabedian was portrayed by Stanley Tucci in the movie "Spotlight" about the Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize-winning series on clergy sexual abuse.

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN, SEPT. 25, 2017, The New York Times

Barbara Blaine, who was sexually abused by a Roman Catholic priest as a teenager and went on to found the nation’s most potent advocacy group for abuse survivors, died on Sunday in St. George, Utah. She was 61.

The cause was a sudden tear in a blood vessel in her heart, which she sustained on Sept. 18 after going hiking on a vacation, her husband, Howard Rubin, said. She lived in Chicago.

Ms. Blaine, a lawyer with a degree in theology, served for nearly 30 years as president of the group she founded, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP. She stepped down this year and had recently started a new international organization to hold the Vatican and church officials overseas accountable for covering up abuse cases.

ABC7Chicago, September 24, 2017

Blaine, 61, who resigned as SNAP president in February, was surrounded by family and friends when she died, the statement said.

Blaine stepped down after three decades of campaigning to force the Catholic Church to recognize the extent of the scandal and compensate thousands of people affected.

By Globe Staff, September 24, 2017, The Boston Globe

Today’s report started with the Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight.”

The film told the story of the Globe’s groundbreaking investigation of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. In 2016, the movie’s producers won the Oscar for Best Picture.

But the team at one of the companies behind the film — Participant Media, founded by Jeff Skoll and dedicated to entertainment that inspires social change — wanted to do more to champion the work of investigative journalists. So they created the Spotlight Investigative Journalism Fellowship.

By Kieran Tapsell, Sep 23, 2017, National Catholic Reporter

By Cody Hooks, [email protected], September 22, 2017, The Taos News

Armando Martinez grew up in Questa, the village of alfalfa fields and a couple of thousand people at the western base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Martinez didn't look for work at the nearby molybdenum mine, like a lot of young men from the village. Instead, he went into a Catholic seminary, became a priest and headed parishes from Belen to Tucumcari, Springer to El Rito.

In May 1997, Martinez was found naked and dead, his body left in a ditch near Bernalillo. His murderer turned himself in days later.

By Times Report, Crookston Times

Also, three more priests’ names added to list, and two served at the Diocese of Crookston in the 1940s and 1950s.