News Story of the Day

Associated Press, August 5, 2018

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Church leaders were more interested in preventing scandal than protecting children. That’s the finding of a grand jury investigating clergy sex abuse in six Pennsylvania Roman Catholic dioceses according to a court filing. The report also says in some cases leaders discouraged victims from going to police, or pressured law enforcement officials to end or avoid investigations.

The grand jury’s full, nearly 900-page, report is expected to be released in the next two weeks.

But a court filing made public Friday, resolving one of many legal disputes over the report, included excerpts from the grand jury’s findings on the role of church leaders in the clergy abuse scandal.

Mark Scolforo, Associated Press, August 3, 2018

A grand jury investigating clergy sex abuse in six Pennsylvania Roman Catholic dioceses found that church leaders were more interested in preventing scandal than protecting children, in some cases discouraging victims from going to police or pressuring law enforcement officials to end or avoid investigations, according to a court filing.

The grand jury's full, nearly 900-page, report is expected to be released in the next two weeks.

By Elizabeth Bruenig, Opinion columnist, July 31, 2018, The Washington Post

We live in an era of diminished trust and heightened cynicism. It is hard, now, to imagine someone expressing unqualified faith in government, the media, business — or even, for that matter, religious institutions. And the implication of this development is not simply the erosion of trust. It is the increasing difficulty of learning about the world around us, as we lose belief in those who might teach us.

Learning requires risk-taking. It forces us to face what we don’t know with the hope of advancing toward some grasp of it. The smaller the undertaking, the lower the emotional gamble — learning tomorrow’s weather forecast doesn’t entail an interior journey. But learning about the true and important things in life does require trust and dedication and vulnerability — usually under a teacher’s guidance. It is no surprise so many of us come to love the ones who teach us.

By Stephanie Sadowski | PennLive.com |  August 1, 2018

By NICOLE WINFIELD and RODNEY MUHUMUZA, AP, July 28, 2018

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The nun no longer goes to confession regularly, after an Italian priest forced himself on her while she was at her most vulnerable: recounting her sins to him in a university classroom nearly 20 years ago.

At the time, the sister only told her provincial superior and her spiritual director, silenced by the Catholic Church’s culture of secrecy, her vows of obedience and her own fear, repulsion and shame.

“It opened a great wound inside of me,” she told the Associated Press. “I pretended it didn’t happen.”

By Joshua J. McElwee, Heidi Schlumpf, July 28, 2018, National Catholic Reporter

Retired Washington Archbishop Theodore McCarrick has renounced his position in the College of Cardinals, leaving the global Catholic Church's most symbolic and powerful group in the wake of revelations that he sexually harassed or abused several young men during his meteoric rise to become one of the U.S. church's most senior prelates.

The move, announced in a press release from the U.S. bishops July 28, is without precedence since the founding of the American church with the creation of the diocese of Baltimore in 1789. While several U.S. cardinals have come under scrutiny in recent decades for their handling of abuse cases, none prior had set aside their red cardinalatial robes.

By Jay Tokasz, July 25, 2018, The Buffalo News

The former head of the Buffalo area's largest AIDS prevention organization is being accused of molesting three brothers from a South Buffalo family when he was a Catholic priest in the 1970s.

West Seneca resident and author P.A. Kane wrote a first-person essay accusing Ronald Silverio of being the young parish priest who molested him when he was a parishioner of Holy Family Church in South Buffalo.

By Ivey DeJesus, July 17, 2018, PennLive

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Tuesday is expected to release the latest salvo in a last-ditch effort to amend what is expected to be a blistering report on the Catholic Church statewide.

The court is slated to release the response of state Attorney General Josh Shapiro to efforts by at least two dozen priests seeking to revise the report from the 40th Statewide Grand Jury. The priests, current and former, whose names have been redacted from the report, have petitioned the court seeking to revise or block the release of the forthcoming 800-plus page report.