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The archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis discovered in 1966 that a Minnesota priest was engaging in sexual contact with boys, but the priest was still assigned to four more parishes over the next 25 years, according to information made public Wednesday by St. Paul attorney Jeffrey Anderson. The accused priest, John Brown, 92, who retired in 1991, said in an interview at his assisted-living apartment in Maplewood that he “very, very vaguely” recalls fondling some boys in a locker room. He was asked if he was sorry. “I have to be sorry,” he said. “Wouldn’t anybody be sorry?” Anderson held …

 Campaigners have called on Pope Francis, who was elected in March, to make tackling the issue of sexually abusive priests an urgent priority of his papacy. The UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child released its demands for information from the Holy See on Tuesday. The committee said that “in the light of the recognition by the Holy See of sexual violence against children committed by members of the clergy, brothers and nuns in numerous countries around the world, and given the scale of the abuses”, the Vatican should provide detailed information on all cases of child sexual abuse c…

BOSTON, Philadelphia, Los Angeles. The archdioceses change but the overarching story line doesn’t, and last week Milwaukee had a turn in the spotlight, with the release of roughly 6,000 pages of records detailing decades of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests there, a sweeping, searing encyclopedia of crime and insufficient punishment.  But the words I keep marveling at aren’t from that wretched trove. They’re from an open letter that Jerome Listecki, the archbishop of Milwaukee, wrote to Catholics just before the documents came out. “Prepare to be shocked,” he said. What a q…

MILWAUKEE — As more victims of clergy sex abuse came forward, then-Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan oversaw a plan to pay some abusers to leave the priesthood after writing to Vatican officials with increasing frustration and concern, warning them about the potential for scandal if they did not defrock problem priests, according to documents released Monday. Dolan’s correspondence with Vatican officials and priests accused of sexual abuse was included in about 6,000 pages of documents the Archdiocese of Milwaukee released Monday as part of a deal reached in federal bankruptcy court with…

(St. Paul, MN) – Jeff Anderson, an attorney for hundreds of survivors of sexual abuse in the Milwaukee Archdiocese bankruptcy case said information in the thousands of documents released in the case today contain “revealing and rev…

Duluth, MN (NNCNOW.com) – A man, who claims as a child, he was sexually abused by a priest, has filed suit against the Catholic Diocese of Duluth, under Minnesota’s new Child Victims Act. Michael DeRoche says he was abused by Father John Nicholson, who has since died.He was abused when he attended St. Rose in Proctor between the ages of 9 and 10. The lawsuit claims the Diocese knew, or should have known, that Nicholson was a danger to children and should have stepped in to protect his victims. In a written statement the Diocese said, “It deeply regrets any long-lasting and devastating effec…

 News ReleaseJune 26, 2013 Lawsuit says former St. Rose parish priest in Proctor was child sex abuserArizona man seeks to have Court order the Diocese of Duluth to release the names of the 17 priests the Diocese knows were accused of sexually molesting minors New Minnesota Child Victims Act allows victim to file lawsuit for abuse committed when he was a child in Proctor (Duluth & Brainerd, MN) – Attorneys for a 55-year-old Arizona man filed a lawsuit in St. Louis County today claiming that beginning in the early 1960s officials of the Diocese of Duluth knew a parish priest assigned…

CROOKSTON, Minn. — A lawsuit filed by Saint Paul attorney Jeff Anderson in Crookston Monday morning charges The Diocese of Crookston, the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts and the Servants of the Paraclete group with a dozen counts of nuisance and negligence in their handling of former Priest James Porter. Porter admitted or was linked to the abuse of more than 100 young boys and girls, dating back to the 1950’s. This lawsuit involves the case of a unnamed Minnesota woman, now in her 50’s, who alleges that Porter, who died in 2005, molested her while he was a priest at St. Phillips parish…

During private encounters away from church, a Colorado Springs priest allegedly lavished attention on a 15-year-old altar boy – showering him with gifts and supplying him with booze, pot and cigarettes. But according to the Rev. Charles Robert Manning’s one-time assistant, all that attention came with a price. “He told me there were three things he wanted to do before he died: To kiss me, to see me naked and to have sex with me,” the former altar boy, now 18, told a jury Monday in recounting an alcohol-fueled day in the fall of 2011 in which he said Manning, 78, crossed all three wishes from…