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pedophile priests
Pope Benedict: Church Must Reflect on Sex Abuse Scandals
By Theunis Bates - AOL NewsPope Benedict XVI today called on Vatican officials to examine why the Catholic Church allowed the sexual abuse of children by priests to continue unchallenged for so long, and to push through reforms to ensure such scandals never happen again. "We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that has occurred," the pope said in his traditional end-of-year speech to Vatican cardinals and bishops. "We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing to happen." Over the past year, the ...
Dutch Catholic Church Faces 2,000 Abuse Allegations
By Theunis Bates - AOL News
(Dec. 10) -- The Roman Catholic Church is still struggling to cope with the fallout of sex abuse scandals from Germany to the U.S., but it now faces a flood of damaging new allegations from the Netherlands. According to a report from an independent commission, almost 2,000 Dutch people have reported being sexually and physically abused by priests when they were children -- a huge number for a country with only 4 million Catholics. The church set up the investigative commission in March after scandals involving pedophile priests surfaced in neighboring Belgium and Germany. The panel published ...
Pope Sued in Wisconsin Clergy Sex Abuse Case
By Lisa Holewa - AOL NewsMILWAUKEE (April 22) -- A man who says he was molested by a priest while a student at a Catholic school for the deaf filed a federal lawsuit today against Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican and senior church officials, saying the Vatican knew the priest was a pedophile and could have stopped the sexual abuse. The plaintiff was identified only as John Doe 16, an Illinois man who said he was sexually abused by the Rev. Lawrence Murphy at St. John's School for the Deaf in a suburb of Milwaukee. The lawsuit asks that the Vatican be forced to release secret files with the names of clergy sex abusers ...
Cardinal Disinvited to Latin Mass at DC Basilica
By Lisa Holewa - AOL News(April 22) -- The nation's largest Catholic church has disinvited a former Vatican official from the first traditional Latin Mass in nearly 45 years because the cardinal once praised a bishop for failing to report a pedophile priest. Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos was to deliver the elaborate mass on Saturday at the Basilica in Washington, D.C. in honor of the fifth anniversary of the pope's inauguration, but advocacy groups for victims of the church's sex abuse scandal protested the appearance. And Wednesday, the Paulus Institute, the conservative Catholic group hosting the event, revoked the ...
Debate: 4 Things the Pope Needs to Do
By not in system - AOL News(April 20) -- My entry for the topic "pedophilia" in the 2007 Encyclopedia of Catholicism states: "Nothing has damaged the Catholic Church at the turn of the millennium more than the pedophile scandal. Many observers remain perplexed by the Vatican's continuing obtuseness toward the seriousness of the scandal." Unabated, the damage continues and the perplexity remains. And instead of addressing the problem, its leaders in the Vatican's inner sanctum offer lame explanations and excuses. _____________________ OPPOSING VIEWThere is no organization in the world that has admitted its mistakes, ...
Boy Scouts Hit With $1M Verdict in Sex Abuse Suit
By David Knowles - AOL News(April 13) -- A jury has ordered the Boy Scouts to pay more than $1 million in damages to an Oregon man who sued the group over sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of a troop leader in the 1980s. The plaintiff, Kerry Lewis, said he was molested by Timur Dykes, an assistant scoutmaster, beginning in 1983 when Lewis was 10. "We are gravely disappointed with the verdict," the Boy Scouts of America said in a statement on its Web site today. "We believe that the allegations made against our youth protection efforts are not valid. We intend to appeal." Rick Bowmer, AP An Oregon jury on Tuesday ...
Future Pope Resisted Defrocking Pedophile Priest, Letter Shows
By not in system - AOL NewsLOS ANGELES (April 9) -- The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including "the good of the universal church," according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature. The correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican's insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office. The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin ...
Why I Could No Longer Be a Catholic
By Delia Lloyd - Politics DailyAn old friend of mine recently posted the following sentence on his Facebook page: "I know this is totally not a PC thing to say, but can someone please explain to me why anyone is still Catholic?" ...
Priest's Dream to Help Others Became a Nightmare
By Dana Kennedy - AOL News(April 1) -- The story of the Rev. Gerald Fitzgerald, a pioneering priest whose name surfaced this week as one of the first clergymen to repeatedly warn the Vatican about pedophile priests, started off as heroically as a Bing Crosby movie. The Boston-born Fitzgerald drove from Massachusetts to a deserted, picturesque canyon in New Mexico where he founded the Roman Catholic Church's first order for wayward priests in 1947, three years after Crosby starred as a young, idealistic priest in "Going My Way." But in the end, things did not go the way Fitzgerald had planned for his Jemez Springs ...
1963 Letter Indicates Pope Paul VI Knew of Abuse
By not in system - AOL NewsLOS ANGELES (March 31) - The head of a Roman Catholic order that specialized in the treatment of pedophile priests visited with the then-pope nearly 50 years ago and followed up with a letter recommending the removal of pedophile priests from ministry, according to a copy of the letter released Wednesday. In the Aug. 27, 1963, letter, the head of the New Mexico-based Servants of the Holy Paraclete tells the pope he recommends removing pedophile priests from active ministry and strongly urges defrocking repeat offenders. AP A 1963 letter sent to Pope Paul VI may indicate the then-pope knew ...
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