News Story of the Day

Kansas City diocese ordered to hand over documents in sexual misconduct case

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The first Catholic bishop criminally charged in the decades-long clergy sex abuse crisis will have to grant prosecutors access to a range of files regarding his diocese's response to previous accusations of clergy abuse, a county judge ordered Thursday.


The Earthly Power of a Philadelphia Jury

After months of testimony and deliberations the Philadelphia jurors who found Msgr. William Lynn guilty of child endangerment did more than any Vatican official has ever done to address the problem of sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church. This was made possible by the simple fact that the men and women of the jury confronted him as a peer, in a system that confers equal rights and responsibilities upon all.


St. Paul priest arrested; allegations of child abuse

ST. PAUL, Minn. — A St. Paul priest has been removed from his post after allegations surfaced that he sexually abused a minor.


Will Lynch trial: Defense alleges prosecutorial misconduct

Prosecutors in the San Jose priest-beating trial have said they pursued the case despite the accused man's understandable motive -- retaliating against the cleric he said brutally molested him as a child -- because it's the right thing to do.


Deadlocked or not, the priest sex-abuse jury did its job

SO IT'S still not over. After an 11-week trial, with almost 2,000 documents, 60 witnesses, multiple references to a dead cardinal and a defendant's suggestion that taking a 14-year-old to bed after watching porn with him was "borderline inappropriate" and not wrong, wrong, wrong, the jury has yet to reach a verdict in the landmark trial of Philadelphia Archdiocese Monsignor William Lynn and the Rev. James Brennan.


Sex Offenders Find an Unlikely Ally in the Catholic Church

There is no statute of limitation (i.e., a time frame set by government in which a crime may be prosecuted) in the U.S. for murder. So why are there state-by-state time limits for sexual assault, and why is the Catholic Church actively attempting to protect sex offenders from prosecution?


Catholic bishops -- religious liberty, religion's shame

Catholic bishops are spearheading a movement of rallies and prayer vigils for religious freedom this summer, which skeptics could view as a classic public-relations tactic of misdirection. The events happen to fall on the anniversary of the most shameful chapter of American bishops' history.


Victims Group Wants Local Priest Removed From Parish

Father Jose Alexis Davila has been a parish priest at St. Jude's in Southcrest for two years. Earlier this year, a 19-year-old woman accused him of fondling her in his home across the street from the church.


Milwaukee Archdiocese, Under Dolan, Paid Sex Abusers to Leave Priesthood

Laurie Goodstein reports in the New York Times:

[A] document unearthed during bankruptcy proceedings for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and made public by victims’ advocates reveals that the archdiocese did make such payments to multiple accused priests to encourage them to seek dismissal, thereby allowing the church to remove them from the payroll.


In Milwaukee Post, Cardinal Authorized Paying Abusers

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York authorized payments of as much as $20,000 to sexually abusive priests as an incentive for them to agree to dismissal from the priesthood when he was the archbishop of Milwaukee.


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