News Story of the Day

'No special treatment': Court confirms Cardinal George Pell will face justice next to bikies and murderers when he fights sex charges flanked by Australia's top defence lawyer

By SAM DUNCAN, DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA, July 14, 2017

  • This means he could be rubbing shoulders with hardened criminals at court
  • Normal security screenings will also apply to Australia's most powerful Catholic
  • The news comes amid concerns for Cardinal Pell's safety due to large crowds
  • Cardinal Pell will be represented by Robert Richter, former lawyer to Mick Gatto 

The Vatican's third most powerful figure will receive no special treatment when he appears in court to face multiple historical sex charges.

There have been fears for the safety of Australia's most powerful Catholic at his court appearance on July 26, as sexual abuse survivors are expected to attend. 

Melbourne Magistrates Court appears unconcerned, and stated that Cardinal George Pell's trial will be 'business as usual.'


Married Catholic school teacher & mother-of-five, is jailed for just 23 months for sexually abusing two female students

By Emily Crane and Jennifer Smith, Daily Mail, July 14, 2017

  • Former teacher Randi Zurenko, 34, was jailed in Pennsylvania on Thursday
  • She pleaded guilty to having sexual relations with two female teen students
  • The mother of five begged for leniency and was jailed for up to 23 months
  • She had been charged with more than 200 child sex offences during her time as a teacher at Bishop McDevitt High School
  • Police said Zurenko sexually abused her two victims, aged 16 and 17, hundreds of times between 2013 and 2016 

Criminal investigation to be launched into St. Paul’s School

By Danny McDonald, Boston Globe, JULY 13, 2017

Following new reports of sexual misconduct at St. Paul’s School, authorities in New Hampshire Thursday announced a criminal investigation into the elite boarding school.

New Hampshire Attorney General Gordon J. MacDonald’s office, Concord police, and New Hampshire State Police will conduct the investigation, authorities said in a statement released Thursday night.

The investigation will initially focus on whether the school engaged in conduct that endangered the welfare of a child, the attorney general’s office said in the statement. That office will also investigate whether the school violated a law that prohibits obstructing criminal investigations.


Cardinal 'knew about priest's conviction'

By Megan Neil, July 13, 2017, Australian Associated Press

Australia's first Catholic cardinal suspended a priest who exposed himself to children but the man later returned to parish work and allegedly abused a boy, documents before a royal commission reveal.

 


APNewsBreak: Priest who abused child still working with kids

By Michael Tarm, July 11, 2017, Washington Post

CHICAGO — The Claretians Roman Catholic order has settled a lawsuit from a man sexually abused as a 6-year-old by a teenager who later became a prominent priest in Chicago, confirming in the settlement obtained by The Associated Press that the longtime cleric recently left the priesthood.


He sues the church to comfort the afflicted

By Milan Simonich, July 9, 2017, Santa Fe New Mexican

Happenstance can change lives. In rare cases, it can even lessen human suffering that’s been unrelenting for 30 or 40 years.

New Mexico is home to one such story. It involves attorney Brad Hall and 68 of his clients. All of these clients initially identified themselves in court documents as John Doe. But they were not faceless people, not to Hall and eventually not to the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.


BACK IN AUSTRALIA, NUMBER THREE IN THE VATICAN ACCUSED OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

AFP, July 10, 2017, Sherbrooke Times

Cardinal George Pell, number three on the Vatican, arrived Monday in Australia, where it must be heard in two weeks on suspicion of sexual assault.

Pope Francis has granted leave to the head of finance for the Holy see to enable him to ensure its defense.

The prelate 76-year-old was charged in late June for ‘ crimes of sexual assault, old “, without any precision on the facts alleged or the ages of the alleged victims. It is convened on 26 July before the court of Melbourne for a preliminary hearing.


The Catholic Church in Mexico did not bring to justice pedophile priests, and this is their justification

By: Sergio Rincon, Univision Noticias, July 8, 2017

Mexican authorities investigate Cardinal Norberto Rivera for not denouncing acts of pederasty. The spokesman of the Mexican Archdiocese argued that before 2014 the law did not force them to denounce these facts, added that the Pope had finally punished the priests.

The central prosecutor says that Rivera, the highest ranking official of the institution in Mexico, knew that there were abusive priests but did not report violations to minors before Mexican authorities, so none of these religious were ever prosecuted and to date it is unknown how many Are and continue to be free. His only action before these sexual crimes was to initiate an internal judgment whose sentence and punishment gave the Pope of turn.


Man claims monk sexually abused him more than 100 times as a kid

LINDEN -- A New Jersey man who attended the now-shuttered St. Elizabeth of Hungary School more than four decades ago has anonymously stepped forward and accused a Benedictine monk of abusing him on more than 100 occasions as a teenager.

In a lawsuit filed Friday morning, a plaintiff identified as John Doe III alleges he was sexually abused on numerous occasions by the Rev. Timothy Brennan between 1968 and 1971 while a student at St. Elizabeth's School. 


LET THE BISHOPS BE JUDGED: THE DEPARTURE OF TWO CARDINALS LEAVES THE FRANCIS PAPACY AT A CROSSROADS

By 05 July 2017 | by Jason Berry, The Tablet

Cardinal George Pell’s return to Australia to face criminal charges has dealt a severe blow to Pope Francis’ reform agenda, making him the third consecutive Pope to find himself in a swamp over the long, aching crisis of clergy sex abuse.

Regardless of the allegations that he now faces, Pell’s record in Australia on sex abuse cases, particularly his approval of bare-knuckle legal counter-attacks on victims, should have disqualified him from a Vatican post. Yet Francis not only chose him to lead the clean-up of the Vatican’s murky finances but also asked him to join his circle of nine cardinal-advisers without regard for that past.


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