With Pope Benedict XVI in a stance of passive silence on the clergy sex abuse crisis, the Vatican strategy of attacking the news media has made the pope more vulnerable to criticism. Loyal Catholics, and even political leaders inclined to give the pontiff the benefit of the doubt, are wondering why he can’t say what went wrong and how he will make structural changes.
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After Reverend Joseph Jeyapaul denied knowing the 15-year-old Minnesota girl he is charged with raping, attorney Jeff Anderson released emails showing the extent of their relationship.
At the heart of two lawsuits that are working their way through the federal courts lies one question: Does the Vatican control its Catholic bishops?
A Roman Catholic priest charged with sexually assaulting a teenage parishioner in Minnesota said Tuesday he would willingly leave his native India and try to clear his name in the courts if the United States tried to extradite him.
A Roman Catholic priest charged with sexually assaulting a teenage parishioner in Minnesota said Tuesday he would willingly leave his native India and try to clear his name in the courts if the United States tried to extradite him.
Top officials at the Vatican were warned more than four years ago about a Catholic priest later charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota, according to newly released Vatican correspondence, but to this day he continues to work in his home diocese in India.
Amato was secretary to Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles all abuse cases. In subsequent letters, Balke warned both Levada and a top Vatican official in the U.S. about Jeyapaul. “It is difficult for me to quantify the harm that this man has done to the dignity of the priesthood,” Balke wrote to Levada on Dec. 21, 2006.
Donald Marshall, 45, of West Allis, Wis., said last week in an interview that Father Murphy had molested him at the Lincoln Hills School for Boys, a detention center near Boulder Junction
Jeff Anderson has filed thousands of lawsuits alleging sex abuse by priests and won tens of millions of dollars for his clients, but he has had a bigger goal in mind for nearly two decades. He wants to bring his career-long legal crusade against misconduct in the Roman Catholic Church right to the top.
A man who says he was among some 200 deaf boys allegedly molested by a priest in Wisconsin said Monday the Vatican’s defensive responses to revelations about the case make him feel like he did when he was 12, when no one would listen to him about the abuse.