News Story of the Day

By Rosemary Parker | [email protected] January 19, 2016  MLive Michigan

BATTLE CREEK, MI -- A pastor was sick. Another priest was available.

When Archbishop John Nienstedt celebrated three Masses at St. Philip Catholic Church this weekend, he was merely helping out his old friend Fr. John Fleckenstein, who is ill. He plans to continue to help as needed for about a six months.

BY MIKE MULLEN, MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2016,  CityPages.com

It's hard enough getting a job these days. Here's a tip: You don't have to include all of your work experience, especially if you're not sure listing a previous gig will help you get the new job. Say, for example, your former employer is in bankruptcy, and you've been indicted as a lead figure in a conspiracy to cover up the sexual abuse of children. That might be something you would leave off your resume.

Garry Wills, January 15, 2016, New York Review of Books

Investigative reporting got a boost in 1976, after the movie All the President’s Menshowed what a small team (two men) could do if an editor and owner like Ben Bradlee and Kay Graham at The Washington Post let them keep digging for a long time. Another such coup was brought off by The Boston Globe in 2002, when its own investigative team of four people, called “Spotlight,” broke the story of Cardinal Law’s protection of priests who sexually preyed on children.  

By Brian Roewe, Jan. 14, 2016,  National Catholic Reporter

Two U.S. bishops who prematurely resigned their posts amid clergy sexual abuse scandals each have found new landing spots outside their previous dioceses.

A southern Michigan parish announced over the weekend that Archbishop John Nienstedt, formerly head of the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese, will help out temporarily in the coming months, while Bishop Robert Finn, former head of the Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo. diocese, began last month as chaplain for a Nebraska community of women religious.

GoLocalProv News Team and Kate Nagle, Wednesday, January 13, 2016, GoLocalProv.com

A teacher's aide at a Providence Middle School who was arrested for sexually assaulting a minor had been working part time at the Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul in Providence, GoLocal has learned. 

By Trey Bundy / January 11, 2016, Reveal, the Center for Investigative Journalism

A panel of judges in Philadelphia has ruled that Jehovah’s Witnesses used an “abusive tactic” to delay a trial in which a woman accused the religion’s leaders of covering up her abuse as a child.  

Mike Newall, Inquiry, January 10, 2016, Philadelphia Inquiry

Brian McDonnell lies in his small, dark room under the crucifix on his wall, praying Hail Marys on his blue plastic rosary beads. Symbols of a church that had forsaken him, but one that he has never abandoned.

He worries that he is dying. It is all he thinks about.

By David Rutter, January 8, 2016, Chicago Tribune Lake County News-Sun

In 2005, this was a snippet of Bishop Joseph Imesch's then-sealed sworn deposition detailing two decades of child sexual abuse by Joliet Diocese clerics under his management:

Imesch: "As far as I can remember, I think (priest) Gary (Berthiaume) admitted to me that he had done it before the conviction."

By Mark Mueller, January 7, 2016, NJ.com 

An arrest warrant has been issued for a suspended New Jersey priest who admitted to a reporter in August that he engaged in a sexual encounter with a teenage boy 13 years ago.

By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND, JANUARY 7, 2016, Talking Points Memo

A prominent leader in the conservative Christian homeschooling movement was accused of sexual abuse and rape in a lawsuit filed Wednesday by 10 former members of his ministry, The Washington Post reported.