News Story of the Day

Posted on March 4, 2015, 8:50 AM, New Indian Express, UCAN India

Former nun Anita of St. Agata Convent is all set to launch an indefinite hunger strike in front of her convent at Thottakkattukara, Ernakulam.

Michael Dantonio, Posted: 03/27/2015 5:27 pm EDT Updated: 03/27/2015 5:59 pm EDT, HuffingtonPost.com

In Rome, Vatican watchers like to say that the institutional Catholic Church measures time not with a clock, but with a calendar, and that its memory is as durable as the records in its archives, where Galileo's signature, preserved in the documents from his famous trial, looks like it was penned yesterday.

Heather Crawford, WTLV 12:17 a.m. EDT March 27, 2015

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- On a mission to get Georgia's Hidden Predator Act signed into law, a local man who says he was sexually abused as a child is speaking out. He and the bill's sponsor, Republican State Representative Jason Spencer of Woodbine, say the bill is getting a lot of push back from some powerful special interest groups.

Joshua J. McElwee  |  Mar. 26, 2015, National Catholic Reporter

Rome

Two members of the new Vatican commission advising Pope Francis on clergy sexual abuse say they are both concerned and surprised at the pope's decision to appoint a bishop in Chile who is accused of covering up abuse, even witnessing it while he was a priest.

Speaking in brief NCR interviews Thursday in personal capacities, the commission members also said some in their group are considering traveling to Rome to speak to the pope face-to-face on the matter.

21 March 2015 by Elena Curti, The Tablet

Pope Francis must hope that his swift, decisive action against Cardinal Keith O'Brien will draw the line under a scandal that done great harm to the Church in Scotland and beyond. 

The Pope's personal intervention lies behind the announcement last Friday that O'Brien is surrendering the duties and trappings of a cardinal and the repetition of his profound apologies for sexual misdemeanours.

By Marianela Jarroud, Saturday, March 21, 2015, IPS -- Inter Press Service

SANTIAGO, Mar 20 2015 (IPS) - Victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Latin America are taking the first steps towards grouping together in order to bolster their search for justice – a struggle where they have found a new ally: filmmaking.

“Besides entertaining us, movies urge people not to forget, to memorise what is happening to us as a society,” Chilean filmmaker Matías Lira told IPS.

By Australian Associated Press, Published: 20:53 EST, 19 March 2015 | Updated: 20:53 EST, 19 March 2015,

There was a time when the Catholic Church knew exactly what to do when one of its clergy molested a child.

"A cleric or monk who sexually molests youths or boys is to be publicly whipped, his head shaved, spat upon, and kept in prison for six months in chains on a diet of bread and water," wrote Basil the Great, the Greek bishop of Caesarea in the 4th century.

Times LIVE | 19 March, 2015 14:41,

A suspended Catholic priest who dealt methamphetamines, owned a sex shop, and occasionally engaged in sex acts with men while cross-dressed has asked a judge for leniency.

According to the UK's Metro, Monsignor Kevin Wallin of the St. Augustine Parish in Bridgeport, Connecticut first made headlines in 2013 when he was charged with dealing in crystal meth.

By EVA VERGARA March 16, 2015 1:40 PM, AP, Yahoo News

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Juan Carlos Cruz recalls that he and another teen boy would lie down on the priest's bed, one resting his head at the man's shoulder, another sitting near his feet. The priest would kiss the boys and grope them, he said, all while the Rev. Juan Barros watched.