News Story of the Day

Patrick Sanders insists he is innocent, saying, “I feel an injustice has been done to me and my life’s vocation has been taken away.”

NEW ORLEANS — A former New Orleans-area priest who was removed from the ministry over credible allegations of child sex abuse before becoming a successful personal injury attorney recently surrendered his law license forever because he hid his scandalous past from bar exam administrators.

By Randy Evans - The Bloomfield Democrat June 29. 2021

Talk about lousy timing.

The biggest religion story in Iowa last week was a jaw-dropper. Attorney General Tom Miller announced he has concluded a three-year investigation of sexual abuse allegations against priests in the four Roman Catholic dioceses in our state.

As church membership continues to decline nationwide and scandal upon scandal is visited upon the doors of diocesan headquarters across the country, America’s Roman Catholic bishops have decided that now is the time to take a stand by denying President Biden communion. In doing so, they find themselves on the shakiest of ground.

JACKSON, Mich. (AP) — A former Catholic school teacher has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing children during his tenure at a southern Michigan school in the 1970s.

Robert McGowen's hopes for relief decades after he says he was sexually assaulted by a Catholic priest are still alive after the Mississippi Supreme Court overturned a lower court's ruling Thursday.

ALBANY COUNTY — Rensselaerville resident Richard Tollner has filed a legal petition against the Diocese of Albany, relating to an effort to secure justice against a Catholic priest whom Tollner says sexually abused him when he was a teenage prep-school student in Nassau County. 

ROME — Pope Francis seems to have no trouble using the word “sorry” and recommending others use it often.

In the final hours of the state legislative session that ended Thursday, lawmakers unanimously approved a bill that removes deadlines for child sex abuse victims to pursue damages in civil court.

The word “shocking” has come up a lot in news stories about the discovery of the remains of 215 children at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops; though, to anyone familiar with the history of such schools, there was nothing remotely surprising about it.

I don’t know whether he lacks the will or the courage, or whether he is incapable of asserting real and moral authority. I don’t know whether he has been undermined from within, or is just an old man incapable of seeing anything resembling a bigger picture.