News Story of the Day

Pope Francis today announced the formation of a high-level commission to advise him on how to handle instances of clerical sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. It is a cautious and underwhelming response. From the NYT report:

There is no question that Pope Francis has put a shine on the tarnished Catholic church through acts of humility and courage in the first eight months of his papacy. Cold calls to Catholics and random acts of kindness—including  rumors that he regularly sneaks out of Vatican City at night to help feed the poor in Rome—have endeared him to the most ardent naysayers.  But the first Latin American pontiff hasn’t won everyone over quite yet.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Top officials at the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis have said they didn't know about sexual misconduct by the pastor at the Church of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Maplewood until this year, but a document obtained by MPR News shows that a church official flagged the priest for sexual misconduct a decade ago.

THE Grafton Anglican Diocese had access to more than $200 million in assets when it refused to pay out less than $4 million to victims of child sex abuse, the royal commission has heard.

The revelation came just moments before former registrar Pat Comben surprisingly announced he had voluntarily relinquished holy orders and was no longer a reverend of the Anglican Church.

Two months ago, news broke that a priest in the Diocese of Trenton had been exchanging sexually charged text messages with someone he thought was a 16-year-old boy.

I was that fictitious boy.

There’s another lawsuit against the Catholic Church over more sexual abuse claims.

The lawsuit names the Order of St. Benedict/St. John’s Abbey, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Saint Luke Institute and Father Francis Hoefgen as defendants.

It was June 21, 2012, and the Rev. Curtis Wehmeyer was about to be confronted by officials of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The pastor of Blessed Sacrament Parish in St. Paul had been under church supervision for sexual misconduct, and a mother had recently confronted him with suspicions that he was abusing her son. Now she had gone to officials at the chancery.

In Ritual Bathhouses of the Jewish Orthodoxy, Children Are Systematically Abused

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Law enforcement authorities on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota have opened an investigation into alleged sexual abuse of children by a Minnesota priest.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis was at the forefront of extensive lobbying against efforts to expand the time limit for lawsuits by victims of childhood sexual abuse, according to a document obtained by the Star Tribune.