NEW YORK
New York Daily News

BY Scott Shifrel
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

A Brooklyn rabbi faces decades behind bars - and sentencing on the eve of Passover - after a jury quickly convicted him of sexually assaulting a teenage boy.

Rabbi Baruch Lebovits showed no reaction as Brooklyn Supreme Court jurors found him guilty on eight of 10 counts after three hours of deliberations.

"Thank God, justice is served," the victim's father said in the packed courtroom as Lebovits family members wiped tears from their eyes.

GREECE
Taiwan News

Associated Press
2010-03-12

Greek police say they have arrested a priest from Kosovo wanted by Serbia on suspicion of embezzling state and church funds.

A police statement says Simeon Vilovski was taken into custody on an international warrant Thursday in Peraia, about 315 miles (510 kilometers) north of Athens.

AUSTRIA
The Associated Press

By GEORGE JAHN (AP)

VIENNA — Two former members of the famed Vienna Boys' Choir say they were sexually abused by their supervisors, a top Austrian newspaper reported Thursday, as allegations of misconduct against children in Austria spread beyond the Roman Catholic Church.

The Der Standard daily reported on its Web site that the allegation was made by two unnamed members of the group — both now adults.

One of the Austrian victims, a 33-year-old who now lives in Berlin, was cited as saying he and others were pressured to wash their genitals in the shower while supervisors watched. He also said an older choir member forced him to perform oral sex at one point while he was a member of the choir from 1985 to 1987.

GERMANY
Time

By Jeff Israely and Tristana Moore / Berlin

Pope Benedict XVI's triumphant return to his Bavarian hometown of Marktl am Inn four years ago — his first since becoming pontiff — was made all the more poignant by the presence of his older brother, Georg Ratzinger. Five decades after they'd entered seminary together, the new pontiff and retired church choir director stepped with the same soft gait and wavy white hair into the town's tiny riverside chapel. Praying silently, side by side, they might just as well have been an aging pair of humble village priests.

But that tender image has been shattered by recent allegations that young singers in the famed "Regensburger Domspatzen" choir, which the elder Ratzinger directed from 1964-1994, suffered sexual abuse and beatings at the hands of priests dating back to the 1950s. Though the retired Ratzinger, 86, denies any knowledge of sexual abuse during his time with the choir, he has admitted to slapping several singers and has apologized for not having intervened to limit the more cruel beatings that have been alleged by others.

AUSTRIA
News 24

2010-03-11 22:16

Vienna - Three ministers from a monastery in northern Austria have been dismissed after they were accused of sexually and physically abusing pupils in the 1980s, the head abbot revealed on Thursday.

This follows the resignation or suspension of several other priests since allegations of past sexual abuse in Austrian religious institutions arose on Tuesday.

Abbot Ambros Ebhart of Kremsmuenster monastery in Upper Austria told the press on Thursday that three ministers had been dismissed after five people came forward with accusations of sexual and physical abuse as children.

GERMANY
Voice from the Desert (United States)

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, national director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790 cell, 314 645 5915 home)

Church self-investigations [see below] are worthless. No institution can investigate itself, especially not an ancient, rigid, secretive, all-male monarchy like the Catholic hierarchy.

And no genuine probe starts with an arbitrary time deadline like two weeks. That alone should make people highly suspect of Regensburg church officials.

The solution is a truly independent, secular probe using experienced law enforcement officials with subpoena power. That’s the only way the truth will be revealed.

IRELAND
Irish Central

By DONAL THORNTON, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

The Bishop of Elphin, Christopher Jones, has branded the media’s treatment of the Catholic Church as "unfair and unjust."

He made the comments at a press conference in Maynooth, County Kildare, where he was attending a meeting of the Bishops’ Liaison Committee for Child Protection.

Jones said that the sex abuse "cover up" was not just confined to the church and added that society and local communities played a part in the cover up for centuries.

IRELAND
U.S. Catholic

Thursday, March 11, 2010
By Bryan Cones

If there is one thing European bishops should have learned from U.S. sex abuse crisis, it's don't blame the messenger. It just makes you look whiny.

The Irish bishops, at least Bishop of Elphin Christopher Jones anyway, have clearly not learned that lesson, with Jones lamenting the "unfair and unjust" coverage the Irish scandal is getting.

Even worse is pointing out that everyone else is doing it: "Could I just say with all this emphasis on cover-up, the cover-up has gone on for centuries, not just in the church… It’s going on today in families, in communities, in societies. Why are you singling out the church?" So how does that make the church look better?

The Times (United Kingdom)

Ruth Gledhill

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna has intervened in the debate on celibacy and clerical sex abuse. Read my own commentary to Richard Owen's story from Rome.

In this area, Cardinal Schönborn has previous. His intervention is interesting, albeit that an attempt has been made to minimise its significance, because he is conservative, hugely rated and is close to the Pope.

Rentapriest has details of his form:

'On the eve of the opening of the Year For Priests sought by Pope Benedict XVI, the question of priestly celibacy was again forcefully raised at the Vatican,' he wrote. 'During the two days of meetings that the Pope and the most important representatives of the Roman Curia had on June 15-16 with the Archbishop of Vienna and other representatives of the Austrian Church, discussion was not limited to the case of Gerhard Marie Wagner, the ultra-conservative priest named auxiliary bishop of Linz and later forced to step down because of a revolt by priests and laity in the diocese.

SOUTH BEND (IN)
Fox 59

By Associated Press
12:46 PM EST, March 11, 2010

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — A northern Indiana man has pleaded guilty to a bilking more than $2.9 million from real estate developers and churches while presenting himself as a priest.

Byron "Father Barney" Canada pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in South Bend Wednesday to 31 counts of wire fraud, money laundering and criminal conspiracy.

U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman Mary Hatton says Canada is an ordained priest of the Orthodox-Catholic church, but it was unclear whether he was currently affiliated with a church.

VATICAN CITY
news.com.au (Australia)

From correspondents in Vatican City From: AFP March 12, 2010

THE Vatican has reaffirmed the importance of celibacy for Catholic priests, the day after Austria's leading bishop urged a new look at the policy amid snowballing pedophilia scandals.

"Priestly celibacy is a gift of the Holy Spirit which must be understood and experienced with a fullness of feeling and joy, in a total relationship with the Lord," Cardinal Claudio Hummes was quoted as saying today.

"This unique and privileged relationship with God makes the priest an authentic witness of a singular spiritual paternity," said Cardinal Hummes, who heads the Vatican's department concerned with the priesthood, in remarks quoted by the ANSA news agency.

ST. CHARLES (IL)
Batavia Republican

By Hal Conick, hconick@mysuburbanlife.com
St. Charles Republican
Posted Mar 11, 2010
St. Charles, IL — A Catholic priest accused of molesting a St. Charles boy over a period of five years had his hearing delayed by the absence of a judge.

Alejandro Flores, 37, of the 600 block of Brook Forest Avenue, Shorewood, was scheduled to have a hearing early Thursday, but Kane County Associate Judge T. Jordan Gallagher was absent.

Flores, who made the sign of the cross as he entered Judge Thomas E. Mueller’s court room, was quickly sent back as Flores’ representing attorney Glenn Sowa, of Geneva, and Kane County Assistant State’s Attorney Debra Bree agreed to bring their cases back before Gallagher at 9 a.m. on March 17.

VATICAN CITY
ABC News (United States)

By CLARK BENTSON
March 11, 2010

Inside his small third floor office at Vatican City, the Rev. Gabriel Amorth prepares for his next client. In the corner, is a bed with restraining ropes. On the walls, pictures of the Virgin Mary. Near an armchair there is a Bible and other copies of prayers.

Looking his 85 years, the priest is still dressed in his pajamas, but his face shows signs of energy that has helped sustain him as the chief exorcist for the Vatican during the last 25 years.

In a rare interview with the Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, Amorth strongly defends his work and that of the Association of Exorcists.

"The devil is not everywhere," he says. "But when he is present it is painful." He says he has treated over 70,000 cases of demonic possession.

The Times (United Kingdom)

Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

The Jericho-style walls around the citadel of celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church might not yet be crumbling, but the ground beneath is shifting.

It is easy for conservative Catholics to dismiss the likes of the academic and writer Hans Kung when he challenges priestly celibacy, as he did in last week’s Tablet. His official teaching licence was removed three decades ago for questioning Papal infallibility, so while he might carry weight with non-Catholics, to many Church members he is an extreme liberal whose views must therefore be discounted.

But the intervention of the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna is of a different order altogether.

AUSTRIA
Mail (United Kingdom)

By Nick Pisa
Last updated at 4:35 PM on 11th March 2010

A leading cardinal today claimed that the sex abuse cases rocking the Roman Catholic Church were due to 'priestly celibacy'.

Calling for a 'change of vision', Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, leader of the Catholic Church in Austria, said the causes of sex abuse by priests could be found in 'priest celibacy' and 'priest training'.

In recent weeks the church has been rocked by a series of abuse scandals in Ireland, Holland and Germany - where Pope Benedict's retired priest brother Georg Ratzinger has admitted to hitting choir boys.

AUSTRIA
Guardian (United Kingdom)

Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent guardian.co.uk

The Archbishop of Vienna today said priestly celibacy could be one of the causes of the sex abuse scandals to hit the Catholic church.

In an article for Thema Kirche, his diocesan magazine, Christoph Schonborn became the most senior figure in the Catholic hierarchy to make the connection between the two and called for an "unflinching examination" of the possible reasons for paedophilia.

He wrote: "These include the issue of priest training, as well as the question of what happened in the so-called sexual revolution.

"It also includes the issue of priest celibacy and the issue of personality development. It requires a great deal of honesty, both on the part of the church and of society as a whole."

VATICAN CITY
Telegraph (United Kingdom)

Nick Squires in Rome
Published: 5:27PM GMT 11 Mar 2010

The Vatican is facing growing calls to tackle the previously taboo subject of clerical celibacy as a way of preventing future sex abuse scandals involving priests.

The head of the Catholic Church in Austria said the possible reasons behind sex abuse crises which have hit Austria, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands in recent weeks should be subjected to "unflinching examination".

A number of theologians and lay Catholic organisations have called for celibacy to be abolished on the grounds that it allows no outlet for priests' sexual urges, but it is rare for a senior figure within the Church to call for the issue to be debated.

VATICAN CITY
Reuters

Thu Mar 11, 2010

By Antonio Denti and Gabriele Pileri
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A German Catholic bishop said on Thursday the media had exaggerated a child abuse scandal in his diocese and there was no need to involve the pope.

A day before a meeting between Pope Benedict and the head of the German Bishops Conference in the Vatican, Bishop Gerhard Mueller of Regensburg said the Church would offer counselling to victims of priestly abuse but most of these cases were old.

"A lot of this is a great fuss made by mass media and we have other problems in Germany at the moment," Mueller told journalists at the Vatican. "Besides, there is no need to act because those are cases in the past."

GERMANY
The Associated Press

By VERENA SCHMITT-ROSCHMANN (AP)

BERLIN — German educators sharply criticized Roman Catholic church officials on Thursday for their handling of a spiraling child abuse scandal — comments that came a day before the country's highest bishop was to meet Pope Benedict XVI in Rome.

Germany's top education representative, Ludwig Spaenle, said the church failed to report cases of physical and sexual abuse in a timely fashion.

GERMANY
The Economist

Mar 11th 2010 | BERLIN | From The Economist print edition

THE Domspatzen have been singing in Regensburg, Bavaria, for a thousand years. But in the 1960s some choirboys there were victims of a “refined system of sadistic punishments connected with sexual lust”, according to Franz Wittenbrink, a composer who attended the choir’s boarding school until 1967. Their traumas are among scores of cases coming to light at Catholic institutions across Germany and elsewhere in Europe, mostly decades after the crimes were committed. The church is struggling to dispel the impression that it is the most flagrant abuser of its own principles. And Germany’s political leaders seem torn between their concern for children’s welfare and their ties to the church.

Christianity matters in Germany. Around two-thirds of west Germans identify themselves as Catholics or Protestants. Christians who pay income tax hand over an extra “church tax” that accounts for two-thirds of church revenue. Germans are not devout: 4% of Protestants and 14% of Catholics in the west are weekly churchgoers. But, says Detlef Pollack of the Wilhelms University in Münster, many count on the church to succour the sick, to offer counsel in times of need or to educate their children. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Chancellor Angela Merkel, daughter of a Protestant pastor, has its roots in the pre-war Centre Party, which was closely linked to the Catholic church.

UNITED STATES/IRELAND
Commonweal

Nicholas P. Cafardi

The Catholic Church in the United States owes its sister church in Ireland a great deal. It was the Irish who first brought our faith to these shores in great numbers, providing the nascent American church not merely with faithful lay Catholics in the pews, but with clergy on the altars, nuns in the convents, schools, and hospitals, and bishops in the chanceries. Sharing this common heritage, the Irish and American churches remain similar in many ways.

Now that the Murphy Report (formally, “The Commission of Investigation Report into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, July 2009”) has been issued by Judge Yvonne Murphy and her government commission, we can discern yet another similarity—a saddening and dispiriting one. For it is clear that for more than two decades, simultaneous tragedies of episcopal malfeasance played out in both the U.S. and Irish churches, as bishops in both countries systematically mishandled allegations of child sexual abuse committed by their priests.

AUSTRIA
TT

Von Peter Nindler

Innsbruck – Jener Zisterzienser-Priester, der nach sexuellem Missbrauch von Minderjährigen 1982 nach Tirol versetzt wurde, wird nicht mehr in die pfarrliche Seelsorge zurückkehren. Das erklärte gestern der Generalvikar der Diözese Innsbruck Jakob Bürgler. Hatte der Pfarrer vor der Versetzung nur einen Fall zugegeben, so soll er jedoch zehn Jugendliche missbraucht haben.

[summary]

The former Cistercian priest who was transferred in 1982 after being accused of sexual abuse will not return to parish ministry. Jacob Burgler, vicar general of the Innsbruck diocese, said yesterday the priest is said to have abused 10 youths although he admitted to one.

Voice from the Desert (United States)

Sister Maureen Paul Turlish, the well-known advocate for survivors of Catholic clergy sex abuse, asks, “Where Does the Buck Stop,” in response to a note issued by Holy See Press Office Director Fr. Federico Lombardi S.J.
We present Sister Maureen’s comments first, and they are followed by Lombardi’s note.

* * *
In a press release by the Holy See’s Press Office Director Fr. Federico Lombardi S.J., on March 9, 2010, ”concerning cases of the sexual abuse of minors in ecclesiastical institutions,” Lombardi parrots the Holy See’s predictable responses to the church’s widening problems of sexual abuse, particularly of minor children.

The institutional Roman Catholic church has reacted to the continuing sexual abuse debacle neither rapidly nor decisively, contrary to what Lombardi states. The Vatican has attempted to distance itself from what has happened in country after country, first categorizing it as an “American problem,” then as a ”homosexual problem.”

What was done by church leadership in the United States, for example, it was forced to do by the pressure of public opinion after records, files and correspondence were forced into the public venue in 2002 by Judge Constance M. Sweeney, a very brave, principled and grounded Catholic woman in Boston, Massachusetts.

The church’s response continues to be re-active rather than pro-active while minimizing the systemic and endemic abuse of power and authority which has enabled and exacerbated it on the one hand while covering it up whenever and wherever possible on the other.

VATICAN CITY
Vatican Radio

"For some months now the very serious question of the sexual abuse of minors in institutions run by ecclesiastical bodies and by people with positions of responsibility within the Church, priests in particular, has been investing the Church and society in Ireland. The Holy Father recently demonstrated his own concern, particularly through two meetings: firstly with high-ranking members of the episcopate, then with all the ordinaries. He is also preparing the publication of a letter on the subject for the Irish Church.

"But over recent weeks the debate on the sexual abuse of minors has also involved the Church in certain central European countries (Germany, Austria and Holland). And it is on this development that we wish to make some simple remarks.

DALLAS (TX)
Vatican Information Service

Appointed Msgr. John Douglas Deshotel of the clergy of the diocese of Dallas, U.S.A., vicar general, and Msgr. Mark Joseph Seitz, also of the clergy of the diocese of Dallas, pastor of the parish of St. Rita, as auxiliaries of Dallas (area 19,475, population 3,630,955, Catholics 1,094,688, priests 198, permanent deacons 143, religious 196). Bishop-elect Deshotel was born in Kinder, U.S.A. in 1952 and ordained a priest in 1978. Bishop-elect Seitz was born in Milwaukee, U.S.A. in 1954 and ordained a priest in 1980.

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The Times-Picayune

By Bruce Nolan, The Times-Picayune
March 11, 2010

Archbishop Gregory Aymond said he will heed an advocacy group’s call to alert New Orleans area Catholics that the Rev. Robert Poandl, a priest who lived in New Orleans in the early 1970s, is now under indictment for sexual abuse in West Virginia.

But Aymond declined to help victims’ advocates with another mission: publicizing the names of 17 people accused of abusing children at Hope Haven and Madonna Manor, two Catholic orphanages in Marrero, in a package of lawsuits the church settled in the fall.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests called on Aymond Wednesday to release all the names in the interest of helping victims of sexual abuse.

EUROPE
De Standaard (Belgium)

Dominique Minten

BRUSSEL - Analyse Paus wil misbruik niet langer ontkennen en toedekken Treedt Benedictus hard genoeg op tegen misbruik in de katholieke kerk? Slachtoffers vinden vaak van niet. Toch heeft deze paus een gedaanteverwisseling ondergaan.

Van onze redacteur

Twee citaten van Georg Ratzinger, de broer van paus Benedictus, die deze week meegesleurd werd in de schandalenstroom rond misbruik in de kerk. Ook in een school in Regensburg waar hij koorleider was, werden kinderen door priesters misbruikt. 'Ik was er niet van op de hoogte. Het gebeurde voor mijn tijd.' Tegelijk voegde hij eraan toe: 'Die berichten zijn bij mij zo zwaar aangekomen dat ik denk dat we iets moeten doen. Ik bied in elk geval mijn verontschuldigingen aan de slachtoffers aan.'

[summary]

There are two quotes this week from Georg Ratzinger, brother of Pope Benedict, who was caught in the current scandal surrounding abuse in the church. In the Regensburg school where he was choirmaster, children were abused by priests but Ratzinger said he was not aware of abuse and it happened before his time. But he offered his apologies to the victims.

There's a double standard of Georg Ratzinger - deny and apology. This is typical of the way church leadership, including his brother, have dealt with the scandals. The criticism is that church leadership is doing too little to punish priests who are guilty of abuse and the bishops are responsible.

Is that criticism justified? Yes and no.

When Pope Benedict was Joseph Ratzinger and head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he was partly responsible for policy on abuse. The essence of the policy was secrecy and concealment. Everything was based on the instruction of Crimen Sollicitationis, which dated from 1962. The heaviest penalty for a pedophile priest was that he was transferred with all the risks of recidivism. The suffering of the victims was not taken into account.

In 2001, Ratzinger sent an additional letter to all bishops. Even now the directive called for absolutely secrecy. It was that directive that the German Minister of Justice this week said how investigation works by the Vatican.

In 2002, the United states broke into a huge scandal. For years dozens of priests were abusing children and the only punishment they got was transfer to another parish where they continued to abuse children. Large claims were paid by dioceses on the edge of bankruptcy. Ratzinger was also closely involved. Most Vatican-watchers agree he understood the extent of the abuses.

On Good Friday, 2005, just before his election as pope, Ratzinger condemned publicly for the first time the scandal. He talked about filth. Marco Politi, a veteran fo the newspaper Vaticanist II Fatto said the attitude of the pope changed. He said the pope realizes the scandals are a serious problem for the credibility of the church.

Nevertheless, the victims are often left with the feeling that the church is lax is acting against abusers. When the Irish bishops last month meet with the pope, there was negative reaction afterward. They believe the pope should have dismissed the bishops who were responsible for years of covering up child abuse. On two months earlier, four Irish bishops resigned.

Even Benedict himself a few years ago took a hard line against the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, a conservative new religious movement that operates mainly in Latin American and Spain and is very influential. A thick dossier on Marcial Maciel, who abused students, for years was gathering dust at the Vatican. Benedict in 2006 sacked Maciel.

Nevertheless, priests accused and even convicted were often employed. De Standaard last month write about Luc Pirrong, who in 2002 was convicted of assault an altar boy. Yet again the man remained a parish priest. The argument that church leadership cities is that everyone deserve a half chance.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Thursday March 11 2010

A senior bishop has attacked the media for singling out the Catholic Church for covering-up paedophile priests when 95pc of child abuse occurs in families and community life.

Christopher Jones, the Bishop of Elphin and head of the bishops' committee on the family, said in Maynooth last night that he strongly objected to the way the church was being isolated. "Of course we have made mistakes," Dr Jones added.

"But why this huge isolation of the church and this huge focus on cover-up in the church when it has been going on for centuries?

VATICAN CITY
Telegraph (United Kingdom)

By Nick Squires in Rome
Published: 6:30AM GMT 11 Mar 2010

The Devil is lurking in the very heart of the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican's chief exorcist claimed on Wednesday.

Father Gabriele Amorth said people who are possessed by Satan vomit shards of glass and pieces of iron.

He added that the assault on Pope Benedict XVI on Christmas Eve by a mentally unstable woman and the sex abuse scandals which have engulfed the Church in the US, Ireland, Germany and other countries, were proof that the Anti-Christ was waging a war against the Holy See.

VATICAN CITY
Mail (United Kingdom)

By Nick Pisa

Child sex abuse scandals rocking the Catholic Church are evidence of the Devil's presence in the Vatican, the Pope's chief exorcist said in an interview yesterday.

Father Gabriel Amorth, 84, who has carried out more than 70,000 exorcisms in a career spanning 24 years said Pope Benedict 'fully agreed' with him in 'casting out evil'.

The Catholic church has been rocked in recent months by a series of sex scandals in Ireland, Holland and most recently Germany, where even the Pope's brother father Georg Ratzinger admitted to hitting choir boys.

VATICAN CITY
Bild (Germany)

By ANDREAS ENGLISCH
The Vatican’s chief exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth has claimed that Satan attacked the Pope himself!

Amorth has freed more than 70,000 demoniacs from Satan and demons.

And according to Italian newspaper ‘La Repubblica’, the priest has now warned “The Devil lives even in the Vatican!”

Amorth (85) said that there are "Cardinals who do not believe in Jesus and bishops who are linked to the demon". He also claimed that "violence and paedophilia" committed by Catholic priests was the work of the Devil.

AUSTRIA
The Times (United Kingdom)

Richard Owen in Rome

A cardinal seen as a future candidate for the papacy has broken a Vatican taboo by raising the possibility that priestly celibacy is among the causes of the sex abuse scandal sweeping the Roman Catholic Church.

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the Archbishop of Vienna and a protégé of Pope Benedict XVI, wrote in his archdiocese's magazine this week that the Church must make an "unflinching examination" of the causes of the scandal.

He said that these included "the issue of priests' training, as well as the question of what happened in the so-called sexual revolution of the generation of 1968".

ROME
The Times (United Kingdom)

Richard Owen in Rome

When Cardinal Sean Brady, the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, met journalists in Rome after a two day carpeting by Pope Benedict XVI of Ireland’s bishops over sex abuse scandals last month, he appeared contrite. "There have been failures in our leadership," he told us. "The only way we will regain credibility will be through our humiliation."

Lent, Cardinal Brady said, was "a time of penance, and we must begin with ourselves and have a change of heart."

Similar expressions of contrition and "humiliation" can be expected from Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, head of the German Bishops Conference, when he meets the Pope on Friday as the growing clerical sex abuse scandal engulfs the Pontiff’s native Germany.

OREGON
The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing

[with video]

Virginia Jones

I loved the Walked Across Oregon in 2008. My children also loved the Walk Across Oregon and so did my friend Mary Lou. So we all Walked Across Oregon to Stop Child Abuse and Heal the Wounds again in 2009. This time Kay Ebeling, the City of Angels Lady joined me with a friend, her daughter and her daughter’s friend. along with staff and volunteers from Domestic Violence Services of Umatilla County and Clatsop County Women’s Resource Center. My children had no choice but to suffer through carrying an inflatable boat to the shores of Wallowa Lake and walking it through the shallows so that the water was deep enough to row the boat. They had to suffer through walking along the Columbia River by The Dalles and Hood River to find beaches to play on, they had to suffer through walking by at least 12 Columbia River Gorge waterfalls.

VATICAN CITY
L'Osservatore Romano

di Lucetta Scaraffia

I cambiamenti delle società occidentali che hanno aperto alle donne gli spazi prima riservati agli uomini - cambiamenti che stanno influenzando le altre culture del mondo - hanno provocato una rivoluzione nella configurazione dei ruoli sessuali, ponendo anche per la Chiesa cattolica la questione di ampliare il ruolo delle donne. Si tratta di un problema di eguaglianza che la tradizione cristiana ha avuto ben chiaro fin dalle origini, portandola ad avviare un'autentica rivoluzione nei confronti del modo di concepire la differenza sessuale. A sua volta, questo mutamento radicale è all'origine della rivoluzione femminile contemporanea realizzatasi nelle società occidentali. Ma se nei secoli passati la Chiesa si è nei fatti dimostrata nei confronti delle donne più aperta del mondo profano, oggi la situazione si è capovolta, e le pressioni esterne e interne, affinché il nodo venga affrontato in ambito cattolico, sono forti e urgenti.

VATICAN CITY
Catholic Culture

Lucetta Scaraffia argues in a L’Osservatore Romano article that an increased presence of women, both religious and lay, in the “decisional spheres” of the Church could have helped prevent the “painful and shameful” clerical abuse scandal.

The Italian historian and journalist cites the example of St. Daniel Comboni (1831-81), who established missions in Sudan. According to Scaraffia, the saint believed that the presence of nuns is “essential” in the missions because they are a “defense and a guarantee” of the missionary priest’s chastity. Otherwise, Scaraffia writes, the isolated priest would “not improbably” be tempted to unchastity with women or boys.

VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A greater presence of women in decision-making roles in the church might have helped remove the "veil of masculine secrecy" that covered priestly sex abuse cases, a front-page commentary in the Vatican newspaper said.

The article said that despite calls by popes and others for welcoming women into equal, though diverse, roles in the church, women have generally been kept out of positions of responsibility.

As a result, the church has failed to take advantage of the many talents and contributions that could have been provided by women, it said.

GERMANY
Special Broadcasting Service (Australia)

Over two thirds of Germany's catholic dioceses have become embroiled in child abuse scandal after increasing evidence emerged of abuses at a home in the 1970s.

Even the pope's brother has asked for forgiveness after being linked to scandal at one home - although he denies any knowledge of abuses.

The diocese of Mainz near Frankfurt said it had preliminary indications that two people abused pupils boarding at Bensheim in the 1970s. State prosecutors have been informed, a statement said.

HARRISBURG (PA)
The Daily Item

By Rick Dandes
The Daily Item

HARRISBURG — Officials at the Diocese of Harrisburg, responding Wednesday night to reports of alleged abuse in a German Church choir once led by Pope Benedict XVI’s brother, called for “quick and decisive action to be taken in dealing transparently with allegations of child abuse, so that the truth can be uncovered and assistance given to the victims.”

Joseph Aponick, a spokesman for the diocese, said caring for children and young people is a sacred trust. Children have the right to be safe and protected, he said.

“The errors committed in religious institutions and by church figures are particularly hurtful,” he said in an e-mail. “Unfortunately, the tragedy of sexual abuse of minors is larger than the church and affects every segment of our society.”

VATICAN CITY
Detroit Free Press

BY VICTOR L. SIMPSON
ASSOCIATED PRESS

VATICAN CITY -- Church abuse scandals in Germany have reached as far as the older brother of Pope Benedict XVI and are creeping closer to the pontiff himself.

Although there has been no suggestion of wrongdoing by Benedict, the launch of an inquiry by German Catholic officials after his brother admitted slapping children years ago is stirring Vatican fears of a major crisis for the papacy.

Benedict, 82, was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982. He was brought to the Vatican to head the body responsible for investigating abuse cases. During that time, he was criticized for decreeing that even the most serious cases must first be investigated internally.

AUSTRIA
The Oklahoman

VIENNA (AP) — An Austrian diocese says it will examine abuse allegations against three retired priests at a Catholic boarding school affiliated with a monastery.

A former student at the school run by the Kremsmuenster Monastery in Upper Austria province has told the local newspaper that three priests inappropriately touched and hit misbehaving students in the 1980s.

EUROPE
Reuters

The more the scandal of Catholic priests sexually abusing boys in Germany spreads, the more the focus turns to Rome to see how Pope Benedict reacts. The story is getting ever closer to the German-born pope, even though he has been quite outspoken denouncing these scandals and had just met all Irish bishops to discuss the scandals shaking their country. Nobody’s saying he had any role in the abuse cases now coming to light in Germany. But the fact that some took place in Regensburg while he was a prominent theologian there, that his brother Georg has admitted to smacking lazy members of his choir there and that Benedict was archbishop in Munich from 1977 to 1991 lead to the classic cover-up question: what did he know and when did he know it?

This is only the start of what can be a long, drawn out and possibly damaging story for Benedict’s PR-deficient papacy. His crises to date have been linked to his statements or decisions, such as the controversial Regensburg speech that offended Muslims or several run-ins with Jews over restoring old prayers they consider anti-Semitic or rehabilitating an ultra-traditionalist priest who is also a Holocaust denier. But now it’s about what he did or didn’t do in the past and how he moves to avoid further scandals in the future.

EUROPE
America Magazine

Posted at: 2010-03-11 04:36:47.0
Author: Austen Ivereigh

Tom Heneghan at Reuters has an excellent analysis piece on the developing central European abuse crisis.

The more the scandal of Catholic priests sexually abusing boys in Germany spreads, the more the focus turns to Rome to see how Pope Benedict reacts. The story is getting ever closer to the German-born pope, even though he has been quite outspoken denouncing these scandals and had just met all Irish bishops to discuss the scandals shaking their country. Nobody’s saying he had any role in the abuse cases now coming to light in Germany. But the fact that some took place in Regensburg while he was a prominent theologian there, that his brother Georg has admitted to smacking lazy members of his choir there and that Benedict was archbishop in Munich from 1977 to 1991 lead to the classic cover-up question: what did he know and when did he know it?

The story has the potential to unfold over the next weeks and months in ways that can only damage Pope Benedict -- which is why his spokesman took the very unusual step Tuesday of reading out a statement on Vatican Radio. As Tom notes, the Pope's "crises to date have been linked to his statements or decisions ..... But now it’s about what he did or didn’t do in the past and how he moves to avoid further scandals in the future."

And he adds:

The big question is whether someone in the Munich archdiocese will come forward with embarrassing charges of being abused sexually by a diocesan priest during the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s time as archbishop there. Seen from today’s perspective, where the focus is now on the victim rather than the perpetrator, even not knowing about abuse cases on one’s watch could be taken as a sign of negligent leadership. Once a debate starts off like that, who knows where it will end?

Guardian (United Kingdom)

Andrew Brown's Blog

There seems to be no end to the scandals buffeting the Roman Catholic church about the abuse of children; most recently in Germany, where the headmaster a school associated with a choir once run by the pope's elder brother Georg Ratzinger has been exposed as an abuser. And there is no doubt that a lot of children were damaged for life by priests, and that this was mostly covered up by the hierarchy until recently. But was the Catholic church unfairly singled out? Aren't all children vulnerable to exploitation, especially when they are poor and unwanted?

These questions lead into a thicket of horror. The most detailed statistics on child abuse for the Catholic clergy that I can find come from the John Jay Institute's report drawn up for the American Catholic bishops' conference. From this it emerges that the frequency of child abuse among Catholic priests is not remarkable but its pattern is. Although there are no figures for the number of abusers in the wider population, there are figure for the number of victims. These vary wildly: the most pessimistic survey finds that 27% of American women and 16% of men had "a history of childhood sexual abuse"; while the the most optimistic had 12.8% of women and 4.3% of men. Obviously a great deal depends here on the definition of abuse; also on the definition of "childhood". In some of these surveys it runs up to 18, which is a couple of years above the age of consent in Britain.

Asia One

Thu, Mar 11, 2010
my paper

By Woon Wui Tek

THE Catholic Church in Europe, mindful of the disastrous fallout from the paedophile-priest scandal in the United States, is striving to show decisive leadership as a wave of paedophilia cases buffets Europe.

Its public commitment to openness may help contain anger, but a senior spokesman's bid to put the issue into "perspective" by saying "sexual abuse of children went far beyond church walls" - even quoting statistics - may fare less well and be seen as missing the point.

Alleged paedophile priests have cropped up in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands - where bishops are to probe over 200 claims of abuse at church schools - and beyond.

OREGON
The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing

Virginia Jones

When I started this blog, I said I would tell the story of how I came to Walk Across Oregon. So many things have come up in the meantime, I haven’t gotten around to it. As usual, more things keep coming up. The news is depressing. The Pope’s brother was involved in physical abuse and maybe in the cover-up of abuse of children in a Catholic Choir he directed. Many people write very well about these issues, I will bow to them and not try to copy their words and ideas. I feel the pain and the weight of all this abuse. I have lived through my own abuse. Like Church and society and many survivors, I avoided dealing with it. Some of the abuse came in the form of a rape on a date. I was filled with so much shame and guilt and that I told no one. I still find it hard to talk about what happened the night of the rape as well as what followed. The problem is you can’t really heal without talking about it.

I remained largely silent about my past until the priest who baptized me and my children Catholic in 2001, was removed from ministry for sexual abuse of boys in 2002. Like other Catholics, I was in denial. I didn’t want to believe the abuse he perpetrated was as bad as it was or that church leaders I believed in had covered up the abuse. Those same leaders tried to move my parish forward without closure, without answering questions. They brought in a new, dynamic, Mexican born priest who attracted many new, Hispanic parishioners in the place of the whites who had left after the abusive priest was removed. Maybe the new priest was a little too dynamic.

AUSTRIA
Asia One

Thu, Mar 11, 2010
AFP

VIENNA - The Roman Catholic Church should take a look at priest celibacy when considering the possible causes behind the current sex abuse scandal, Vienna's archbishop said Wednesday.

But his office subsequently issued a statement insisting that the archbishop was not calling into question the Vatican's stance on celibacy.

In an article for his diocese's in-house magazine, Christoph Schoenborn, a cardinal, called for an unflinching examination of the possible roots behind the scandal.

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
WWL

[with video]

by Meg Farris / Eyewitness News

Posted on March 10, 2010

NEW ORLEANS -- A local support group for those abused by priests and other religious figures is going on the offensive tonight.

The group wants to let the public know about a former New Orleans priest who was recently charged in another state. And it's releasing new information in a separate high-profile local case.

Members of the survivors network of those abused by priests, known as SNAP, gathered at the office of the Archdiocese with complaints. The first was to alert the community that a priest who used to be in New Orleans was now under indictment for alleged sexual abuse of a child in West Virginia.

NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Fox 8

Reported by: Val Bracy, Reporter
Email: vbracy@fox8tv.net

New Orleans - The New Orleans Archdiocese is preparing to alert parishioners about a cleric indicted on charges of sexually abusing a 10-year-old boy.

The priest hasn't worked in New Orleans for decades but some say he could still have victims here.

Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests held a press conference about the case Wednesday morning.

ATLANTA (GA)
11 Alive

ATLANTA -- An activist group is calling on the Archdiocese of Atlanta to reach out to area Catholics who may be the victims of sexual abuse. In February, Father Robert Poandl was indicted on charges of sexually abusing a 10-year-old boy in West Virginia in 1991.

Until a year ago, he was a pastor in the Savannah Archdiocese in South Georgia. During the1980s he Pastored two North Georgia churches, one in Dahlonega and one in Blairsville.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) believes there may be more sexual abuse victims in Georgia.

VATICAN CITY
U.S. Catholic

By John Thavis, Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Vatican officials are concerned that the church's longstanding insistence on confidentiality in its treatment of priestly sexual abuse cases is being misinterpreted as a ban on reporting serious accusations to civil authorities.

As past episodes and accusations of abuse have come to light recently in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, media attention has focused in part on what kind of guidance or instructions local bishops received from the Vatican on how to handle such cases.

An increasingly widespread impression -- and a mistaken one, Vatican officials say -- is that Pope Benedict XVI himself, when he headed the Vatican's doctrinal congregation, ordered bishops not to inform civil authorities about accusations of sexual abuse by priests.

VATICAN CITY
AOL News

David Knowles

(March 10) -- The Rev. Gabriele Amorth, the man who has served as the Vatican's chief exorcist for 25 years, says the signs are there: The devil has infiltrated St. Peter's.

Specifically, Amorth cites recent sexual abuse and pedophilia scandals as well as what he deems a cover-up in the shooting deaths of two of the Vatican's Swiss Guards and one of the guard's wives as proof that the Catholic Church's most famous site is less than pure.

"When one speaks of 'the smoke of Satan' in the holy rooms, it is all true -- including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia," Amorth was cited as saying by The Times of London. The smoke of Satan references a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI

IRELAND
Catholic Culture

March 10, 2010

A letter by Pope Benedict XVI to the Irish Church, in response to the sex-abuse scandal there, will be made public next week, Irish Central has reported. The Vatican has not confirmed the timing of the letter's release.

GERMANY
Inquirer (Philippines)

Agence France-Presse
First Posted 06:30:00 03/11/2010

BERLIN—A Catholic convent school that closed in 1981 was on Wednesday the latest religious institution to become enmeshed in a child sex abuse scandal now involving over two-thirds of Germany's dioceses.

The diocese of Mainz near Frankfurt said that it had preliminary indications that two people abused pupils boarding at the Bensheim convict in the 1970s. State prosecutors have been informed, a statement said.

The scandal first erupted in January when an elite Jesuit school in Berlin admitted the systematic sexual abuse of its pupils by two priests in the 1970s and 1980s, and has now engulfed 19 of Germany's 27 dioceses.

IRELAND
Independent Catholic News

The Pope's recent letter concerning the recent sexual abuse scandals in Ireland and Europe and safeguarding children were top of the agenda at the Irish Catholic Bishops Conference Spring Meeting which has just concluded.

The also discussed a number of issues including ‘Why marriage matters’; Northern Ireland Trócaire; the Year for Priests – visit to Ireland of the relics of Saint John Vianney; Saint Patrick's Day and the Eucharistic Congress in Ireland in 2012

Regarding the Holy Father’s meeting with Irish Bishop, they said in a statement: The meeting in Rome on 15 and 16 February last provided a very important opportunity for the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI, the Prefects of the Congregations and the Irish diocesan bishops, to discuss openly the difficulties facing the Church in Ireland. The two day meeting allowed for a high level of information sharing and discussion around the forthcoming pastoral letter by the Holy Father to the faithful in Ireland.

GERMANY
The Press Association (United Kingdom)

(UKPA)

Germany's Catholic church announced two major child abuse investigations, one into the choir once led by the pope's brother and another into what everyone knew about the treatment of youngsters.

The diocese of Regensburg appointed an independent investigator to examine the allegations of physical and sexual abuse that have engulfed the prestigious Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir, led by the Rev Georg Ratzinger, the pope's older brother, from 1964 until 1994. So far, the sexual abuse allegations predate his term.

A spokesman said all charges will be investigated thoroughly.

GERMANY
Deutsche Welle

German archbishop Robert Zollitsch is set to meet Pope Benedict XVI for discussions on sexual abuse against children at church institutions. Meanwhile, the Pope faces questions on whether he knew anything of such crimes.

The head of Germany's Catholic bishops, Robert Zollitsch, is set for an audience with Pope Benedict XVI to discuss recent reports of sexual abuse at church schools.

Zollitsch, chairman of the German Bishops Conference, is due to meet Pope Benedict XVI on Friday, to brief him on some 170 abuse cases at Catholic schools.

GERMANY
The Times (United Kingdom)

Allan Hall, Berlin

The Roman Catholic Church in Germany ordered two separate investigations yesterday; the first into allegations of widespread sexual abuse in its institutions, and the second into whether Pope Benedict XVI knew about them when he was a bishop in Bavaria.

With nearly two thirds of dioceses caught up in the widening scandal, the German Bishops’ Conference said that it would examine all 170 allegations made so far. A spokesman said that the investigation would take a close look at the boarding school in Bavaria where the Pope’s brother, Georg Ratzinger, was choirmaster.

Several former members of the Regensburger Domspatzen boys’ choir have made allegations of physical and sexual abuse. On Tuesday Georg Ratzinger admitted that he had slapped students on occasion during the 30 years he led the choir until 1994.

GERMANY
Zeit

Im Bistum Mainz soll es in den Siebzigern in einem katholischen Konvikt zu sexuellem Missbrauch gekommen sein. Ein neuer Fall wird auch aus Sachsen gemeldet.

[summary]

Allegations of sexual abuse have been made known at a boys' boarding school in Bensheim, Hesse, which is in the Mainz diocese. Two offenders are said to have sexually abused students in the 1960s and 1970s. One suspect is the former school manager. Students were also beaten, according to the allegation. The school was closed in 1981 for economic and educational reasons. The diocese has asked former students to contact the diocese or the public prosecutor in Darmstadt. The diocese has offered assistance and support to victims.

Meanwhile, a first case has been reported in Saxony at the Eilenburger Ernst Schneller home for children. The sexual assaults are said to have happened in the 1970s and 1980s. Individual children were also beaten.

AUSTRIA
euronews

Austria’s Catholic Church has expressed deep shame and regret over a growing child sex buse scandal.

It has now been revealed a priest from the south east region of Austria is suspected of abusing up to 20 children.

The news follows the resignation of Arch-Abbot Bruno Becker following sex-abuse allegations dating back 40 years.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

The Catholic Bishop of Elphin, Christopher Jones, has accused the media of being “unfair and unjust” to his Church through a concentration on the handling by Church authorities of the clerical child sex abuse issue.

"Could I just say with all this emphasis on cover-up, the cover-up has gone on for centuries, not just in the Church….It’s going on today in families, in communities, in societies, Why are you singling out the Church?,” he asked at a press conference in Maynooth today where the Irish Episcopal Conference was concluding its three-day Spring meeting.

“I object to the way the Church is being isolated and the focus on the Church,” he said “We know we’ve made mistakes. Of course we’ve made mistakes but why this huge isolation of the Church and this huge focus on cover-up in the Church when it has been going on for centuries.”

GERMANY
Gulf Times (Qatar)

A Roman Catholic convent that closed in 1981 yesterday became the latest religious institution enmeshed in a child abuse scandal now involving over two-thirds of Germany’s dioceses. The diocese of Mainz near Frankfurt said it had preliminary indications that two people abused pupils boarding at the Bensheim convict in the 1970s. State prosecutors have been informed, a statement said.

FRANCE
Midi Libre

Publié à 15 h 57 - Le prêtre d'une paroisse du sud de Montpellier mis en garde à vue lundi pour détention d'images pédopornographiques vient d'être suspendu par l'archevêché de Montpellier. Le suspect devra également quitter la paroisse pendant la durée de l'enquête.

Les policiers ont découvert plusieurs images pornographiques mettant en scène des enfants en fouillant dans l'ordinateur du curé lors d'une perquisition concernant une autre affaire. L'homme de 58 ans avait en effet déjà été arrêté en novembre dernier pour avoir menacé une de ses paroissiennes avec qui il avait eu une relation sentimentale.

[summary]

A priest in a parish south of Montpellier was placed in custody Monday for possession of child pornography images. He has been suspended by the Montpellier archdiocese. The suspect must also leave the parish for the duration of the investigation.

Officers found several pornographic images featuring children on the priest's computer while searching on another matter. The man, 58, was arrested last November for threatening one of his parishioners with whom he had had a romantic relationship. At the first hearing, he said the images were downloaded in a moment of madness after the break-up. Examination of the computer tends to prove that some of the files were downloaded before the break with the parishioner.

FRANCE
Expatica

Paedophile pictures have been found in the computer of a French priest, sources close to the investigation said Wednesday, amid a widening European child sex abuse scandal.

The pictures were discovered by investigators involved in a probe into text messages allegedly sent by a priest in Montpellier to the husband of his then-mistress, the sources said.

The cleric initially said he had been carried away by the breakup, but later admitted he had downloaded the images before that event, they said.

IRELAND
Wexford People

ANALYSIS

By MARIA PEPPER

Wednesday March 10 2010

ONE OF the lessons to be learned from last week's controversy over Bishop Denis Brennan's address to the Diocesan Finance Committee, is the need for straight talking.

After the Bishop's statement was covered in the media, the Diocesan Communications Officer Fr. John Carroll said the newspapers had taken it up wrong.

In other words, various newspapers and radio stations had separately mis-interpreted the press release in the same way.

The relevant paragraph read as follows: 'As we look to complete this road, it will be necessary to invite the parishes to become part of the process financially. Funding sought is not about sharing the blame. It is about asking for help to fulfill a God-given responsibity'.

IRELAND
Wexford People

Wednesday March 10 2010

A COUNTY Wexford man who was abused by the late Fr. Sean Fortune has urged people to think long and hard before making any gesture to pay compensation bills facing the diocese.

The man, who does not wish to be publicly identified but has given his name and address to this newspaper, said he experienced 'pure disgust' when he read about Bishop Brennan's proposal for financial help from the parishes.

'Maybe, just maybe, it would be better if the people of this country stood up and said enough was enough, that they weren't going to take any more, that the church caused this hurt and they alone should fix it', he said in a letter which he also sent to the Bishop.

IRELAND
Wexford People

Wednesday March 10 2010

THE BISHOP of Ferns, Dr. Denis Brennan issued a letter last weekend to the priests and people of the diocese, following his controversial request for financial help from parishes to pay clerical abuse compensation bills.

In the letter, he said the diocese pursues an open policy approach in all aspects of its dealings with the issue of abuse involving some of its priests.

'At our 10th annual AGM at Enniscorthy, as full as picture as can be given of the current financial situation in the Diocese of Ferns, was presented, and how abuse by some priests – which has brought shame to us all – has affected the overall financial wellbeing of this diocese'.

IRELAND
Wexford People

Wednesday March 10 2010

THE DIOCESE has 'missed the boat' in selling high profile properties, which would have potentially made up the deficit needed to meet clerical abuse claims.

In Wexford town, the Diocese of Ferns has ownership of the Bishop's Palace in Summerhill, St. Peter's College Seminary buildings, a house in Wexford, some land on the Rosslare Road and the playing fields in Coolcotts which are currently leased to Clonard GAA.

In his letter to the parishes this week, Bishop Denis Brennan cited the sale of 'one or more of the five diocescan properties to meet all of the costs of outstanding claims and legal bills' as one of five options the Diocese has to meet its financial responsibilities to abuse victims.

GERMANY
ABC News

By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER and VERENA SCHMITT-ROSCHMANN Associated Press Writers
BERLIN

Catholic authorities in Germany announced two major abuse investigations Wednesday — one into the renowned choir once led by Pope Benedict XVI's brother and another into what everyone, including the pope, knew about the sexual and physical abuse of students.

The Roman Catholic diocese of Regensburg in southern Germany said it appointed an independent investigator to examine the allegations of physical and sexual abuse that have engulfed the prestigious Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir, which was led by the Rev. Georg Ratzinger, the pope's older brother, from 1964 until 1994. So far, the sexual abuse allegations predate Ratzinger's term.

NETHERLANDS
Radio Netherlands

Roman Catholic bishops in the Netherlands have decided to permit an external, independent investigation into sexual abuse by members of its institutions. Wim Deetman, a former education minister and mayor of The Hague, is to lead the investigation.

Speaking on behalf of the bishops, Bishop Gerard de Korte said, "We have been deeply affected by the [recent] moving stories of sexual abuse. It is dark page in the history of the Catholic Church."

The abuse came to light following revelations by Radio Netherlands Worldwide and the NRC Handelsblad newspaper that, during the 1960s and 1970s, boys at a boarding school in the town of 's-Heerenberg had been molested by Salesian fathers. The appearance of that story led to hundreds of other reports of abuse. Similar revelations have also surfaced in Germany and Austria.

ROME
The Times (United Kingdom)

Richard Owen in Rome

Sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that "the Devil is at work inside the Vatican", according to the Holy See's chief exorcist.

Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican's chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as "cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon".

He added: "When one speaks of 'the smoke of Satan' [a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI in 1972] in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and paedophilia."

NEW YORK
Spero News

By William Donohue

Orthodox Rabbi Baruch Lebovits was found guilty yesterday (March 8) on eight counts of sexually abusing a 16-year old boy in Brooklyn. When a Catholic priest is accused of embezzlement—never mind sexual abuse—it typically merits a front-page story in the New York Daily News and the New York Post; the New York Times usually places such stories in a less prominent spot. On Rabbi Lebovits, the Daily News ran a 334-word story on p. 15; the Post put a 143-word piece on p. 6; and the Times ignored it altogether.

NETHERLANDS
Radio Netherlands

Those investigating child sex abuse within the Dutch Roman Catholic Church are facing an enormous job which is increasing by the day. Complaints are flooding in from around the country following initial revelations made by Radio Netherlands Worldwide and the NRC Handelsblad newspaper.

The first reports of abuse came from a boarding school in the eastern town of 's-Heerenberg - now there allegations involving Roman Catholic institutions across the Netherlands.

One of these, featured in the latest reports from RNW and NRC Handelsblad, was an expensive boarding school for the children of diplomats and the wealthy at Eikenburg near the southern city of Eindhoven.

IRELAND
RTE News

Wednesday, 10 March 2010 17:09
Bishop of Elphin Christopher Jones has questioned why the Catholic Church is being singled out when the cover-up of child abuse is going on today in families and in society.

He said 95% of abuse happens in the family home and people are afraid to talk about it.

The Bishop said the Church is being isolated and focused on, he asked why the huge focus on cover-up in the Church was happening when abuse has been going on in the home for centuries.

UNITED STATES
Voice from the Desert

Statement by Barbara Blaine (312 399 4747) SNAP President

At the very moment when hundreds of deeply wounded European men and women are finding the courage to expose predator priests, protect kids, and heal themselves, the Vatican responds with finger-pointing and blame-shifting.

Vatican officials act as though only the predator priests are wrong-doers. They cleverly avoid mentioning that corrupt bishops are wrong-doers. And while child molesters are indeed found in every institution, we challenge the Vatican to find an institution that hides, moves and defends molesters as vigorously as the Catholic church.

As a parent, I can’t beat my children, then excuse my viciousness by pointing out that others beat children too. That is the height of moral irresponsibility. It’s is stunning that in 2010, any church official can be so callous as to try to deflect attention from the hierarchy’s on-going, awful and growing abuse and cover up scandal.

NETHERLANDS
Radio Netherlands

The Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands has ordered a "broad, external and independent" inquiry to investigate child sex abuse allegations.

While the Dutch Bishops' Conference and the Dutch Religious Conference met Tuesday to discuss the claims, politicians have been calling for a full parliamentary investigation. What approaches have been adopted in other countries?

Last week alone, there were over 200 new complaints of abuse within the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands. As in the United States and Ireland, it no longer appears that an investigation into individual cases will be enough. A comprehensive explanation is needed in order to answer the question: how could this have gone on for so long?

The Maylasian Insider

PARIS, March 10 — In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says that if anyone leads innocent children to sin, “it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

That passage must now be ringing in the ears of the Roman Catholic clergy in Germany and the Netherlands, where the Church’s latest scandals of priests sexually abusing boys have broken out, and echoing down the marbled halls of the Vatican.

The alarm bells are tolling all the more urgently in Rome, where tenuous links run from Bavarian boarding schools all the way to the German-born Pope Benedict. Critics are asking what he knew and did then and what he will do now.

NORTH DAKOTA
InForum

By: Forum staff reports, INFORUM

A Cass County judge has denied the initial attempts to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that a former Shanley High School teacher sexually abused a 14-year-old student there in the 1970s.

The lawsuit filed last fall by David Gaffaney accuses Brother Raimond Rose, a member of a Chicago order called Christian Brothers of the Midwest, of abusing him while he was sleeping on a school-sponsored trip to Orlando, Fla., in 1977.

Gaffaney claims that the Christian Brothers knew of complaints about Rose for years before he taught at Shanley during the 1970s. He faults the order, as well as the diocese and Shanley, for not disclosing the prior accusations.

AUSTRIA
The Age (Australia)

SALZBURG
March 11, 2010
The head of a Salzburg monastery has admitted sexually abusing a child decades ago and is offering to resign.

Arch-abbot Bruno Becker said he abused a 12-year-old boy more than 40 years ago. In a statement cited by the Austria Press Agency, he said he informed church authorities last year after his victim contacted him.

Becker said he was not yet ordained when the abuse occurred and apologised to the victim last year.

Politics Daily (United States)

David Gibson

With each passing news cycle, the scandal of the sexual and physical abuse of children by Catholic clergy seems to be moving closer to the Vatican. What was once dismissed by Vatican officials -- including then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now known as Pope Benedict XVI -- as a relatively minor problem in the United States that was being blown out of proportion by an anti-Catholic American media, the crisis has instead spread inexorably across Europe in recent weeks and now threatens to reach as far as the pope himself.

A confession by the pope's older brother, Father Georg Ratzinger, that he himself slapped boys in the world-famous Bavarian church choir he directed for 30 years was the latest shocker in a series of reports about abuse decades ago in the German church.

No sooner had Benedict concluded an unusual summit meeting at the Vatican last month with all of the bishops of Ireland to discuss the abuse crisis roiling the Emerald Isle than revelations of past abuse began to emerge in the Netherlands, Austria (which had already been rocked by scandal in the 1990s) and most surprisingly, in Germany.

GERMANY
Forbes

By JUERGEN BAETZ and KIRSTEN GRIESHABER

REGENSBURG, Germany -- The German Bishops Conference will lead an investigation into all allegations of the sexual and physical abuse of students in Germany, a top prelate announced Wednesday.

That investigation will include examining allegations of sexual abuse at a choir once led by the pope's brother and looking into what, if anything, Pope Benedict XVI himself knew in his previous position as the archbishop of Munich, prelate Karl Juesten told the Associated Press.

CANADA
The Windsor Star

By Sarah Sacheli, The Windsor Star

March 10, 2010

A former local Catholic priest charged with molesting teenage boys at the mission he founded in Haiti made a brief court appearance Tuesday in which he waived his right to a preliminary hearing and elected to have his case heard by a Superior Court judge.

John Duarte, 43, the former parish priest at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Windsor, St. Gregory the Great in St. Clair Beach and St. Michael's in Leamington, is charged with nine counts of sexual exploitation involving boys aged 12 to 17 in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince and the tiny fishing village of Labadie. Hearts Together for Haiti, a charity Duarte founded, operated schools, a health clinic and a sponsorship program for impoverished families. Canadian law allows citizens to be prosecuted in Canada for sex offences against children committed elsewhere.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Wednesday March 10 2010

Catholic bishops have allocated €2m for an all-Ireland audit of child protection procedures in the church's 26 dioceses and 186 religious and missionary orders.

The audit, which is expected to be completed within two years, will be conducted by the church's National Board for the Safeguarding of Children.

Welcoming the decision, the board's executive director Ian Elliott said he was confident that he would get most, if not all, of the review completed by the deadline, because the extra financial resources meant he could double his staff to eight. He said he would definitely publish a report on his findings.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

An audit of child sex abuse allegations in every Catholic diocese in the country will begin within weeks and is expected to take around two years to complete.

It comes after bishops agreed procedures for the inquiry which will investigate allegations against priests, missionary societies and members of religious orders.

INDIA
Press Trust of India

Kanpur, Mar 10 (PTI) A temple priest allegedly raped and later strangulated to death a seven-year-old minor girl, police said today.

25-year-old Narendra alias Kallu, a priest at the Guteshwar temple in Shivrajpur area, took the minor girl from her house last night on the pretext of offering 'prasad'.

When the girl did not return home, the parents started searching for her and found her body this morning, they said.

GERMANY
Sydney Morning Herald

ROME: The Pope's brother, Georg Ratzinger, has admitted slapping boys and failing to report physical abuse as scandal intensifies around sexual abuse in German boarding schools where he taught choir in the 1960s.

Monsignor Ratzinger, 86, said in an interview this week that the sexual accusations referred to a period before his tenure. But he apologised for slapping students before corporal punishment was outlawed in Bavaria in 1980.

''In the beginning I, too, slapped people in the face, but I always had a bad conscience about it,'' Passauer Neue Presse quoted him as saying.

''The problem of sexual abuse was never raised. I believe it wasn't just the church that remained silent. It was also clearly the society.''

IRELAND
Mountain Express

by Alli Marshall in Vol. 16 / Iss. 33 on 03/10/2010

"I would tell little stories to my wife and daughter over the years," says singer/songwriter Danny Ellis. It's what dads do: "Back in my day ..." and "When I was your age ..." — the sort of dad-isms that make kids roll their eyes. No groans from Ellis' family, though. "The look of horror on their faces led me to think I should take a closer look," he says.

“Music saved my life,” says Ellis, who sings of the hardships and rare joys of life at Artane Industrial School, a Catholic-run home for orphaned and abandoned boys.The reason for that horror is revealed in the title track of his CD, 800 Voices. "I'll be back for you this Christmas, I could hear my mammy say. And the bitter truth within that lie, I've yet to face today. When it gets too much for feeling, you just bury it somehow. And that 8-year-old abandoned lad still waits for her right now."

In 1955, Ellis, one of many children in an impoverished and fatherless Irish family, was delivered to Artane Industrial School, a Catholic-run home for orphaned and abandoned boys, located in a Dublin suburb.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Breda Heffernan

Wednesday March 10 2010

VICTIMS of clerical child sex abuse have called for more stringent monitoring of convicted sex offenders after an Irish paedophile priest started a new life in Scotland running a family guesthouse.

Former priest Bill Carney is understood to have fled the B&B in St Andrews after he was traced to Scotland by our sister paper, the 'Sunday Independent', last December.

He is now living in the Canaries.

Andrew Madden, a victim of clerical sex abuse, said: "He's very dangerous if he's isolated in the Canaries and feels he's on the run. Sending people underground is not a sensible child protection approach."

MILWAUKEE (WI)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

[with audio]

By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

Posted: March 9, 2010

Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki said Tuesday that he does not envision denying communion to politicians who vote contrary to church teachings. But he said that he cannot rule it out and that every case would have to be considered individually. ...

• On why he has refused to meet with representatives of the victims advocacy group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests: Listecki said SNAP has "politicized" the discussion of clergy sex abuse. "I'm concerned with the healing," he said. "And I'm not too sure the issues brought forth by SNAP are about healing."

• On the Vatican's inquiry into Catholic women in religious orders, and the fears of sisters that it's a crackdown meant to push them back into traditional roles: Listecki said the sisters have no cause to worry, and that the inquiry probably will assess what they're doing right, what they can do better and how closely they follow their charism, or purpose for being.

"My sense is one of the aspects the Vatican will be doing is to see how they are responsive to their charism, how they are living their faith," he said. "When you take a look at the power of religious women, we want to maximize that power. We don't want to . . . diminish that power."

VATICAN CITY
BBC News

By Robert Pigott
BBC News religious affairs correspondent

As accusations of historic sexual abuse by Roman Catholics emerge in another European country, the Vatican has insisted it has dealt with "the very serious issue" promptly and decisively.

After recent revelations of widespread abuse in Ireland, and claims of similar mistreatment of children by priests in Austria and Germany, Catholic bishops in the Netherlands have now set up an independent inquiry to look into allegations there.

More than 200 reports of abuse have been made to a victims' support organisation in the last few days.

IRELAND
Ireland Online

The mother of altar boy Paul Dwyer who was raped by former priest Bill Carney has said she blames those who protected the convicted paedophile.

Mr Dwyer took his own life at the age of 31 and his mother Bridie has said she wants justice for her son.

Former priest Bill Carney was named as one of the worst cases in Dublin's Catholic diocese in the Murphy report into clerical sex abuse.

MISSOURI
The Kansas City Star

By DONALD BRADLEY and LAURA BAUER
The Kansas City Star

One day last fall, a 25-year-old man — supposedly wearing a wire — sat down to dinner.

The older man eating across the table was Burrell Mohler Jr., his father.

The evidence being secretly sought involved a very personal matter — memories of his and his sisters of years of alleged sexual abuse by Mohler, his three brothers and their father, Burrell Mohler Sr.

VATICAN CITY
America Magazine

Posted at: 2010-03-10
Author: Austen Ivereigh

It is extremely unusual for the Vatican to make a statement on the clerical sex abuse crisis. The one read out by the Pope's spokesman, Federico Lombardi, on Vatican Radio yesterday is a sign that Rome feels it can no longer resist the accusation that it is maintaining a wall of silence on the issue -- especially because a tide of fresh allegations against church institutions of cover-up and indifference are breaking over Catholic Europe.

What Fr Lombardi said:
"For some months now the very serious question of the sexual abuse of minors in institutions run by ecclesiastical bodies and by people with positions of responsibility within the Church, priests in particular, has been investing the Church and society in Ireland. The Holy Father recently demonstrated his own concern, particularly through two meetings: firstly with high-ranking members of the episcopate, then with all the ordinaries. He is also preparing the publication of a letter on the subject for the Irish Church.

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

Details have emerged of church charges laid against the Anglican Bishop of the Murray diocese, Ross Davies.

Bishop Davies has denied all the allegations and is still practising in the diocese.

Adelaide Archbishop Jeffrey Driver and the Bishop of Willochra, Garry Weatherill, have laid nine church charges against Bishop Davies in a complaint document.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY

ANY INFORMATION Dublin’s archdiocese had about former priest and convicted child sex abuser Bill Carney “we shared with the gardaí”, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said.

“I don’t know whether they followed these up or passed them on to the DPP,” he continued.

Dr Martin was speaking in Maynooth yesterday before last night’s screening of a BBC Newsnight report, which traced Carney to a Scottish address and followed him to the Canary Islands, where he was on holiday.

VATICAN CITY
The Dallas Morning News

The New York Times, The Associated Press
ROME – Defending itself against a growing child sex-abuse scandal in Europe, one that has even come close to the brother of Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican said Tuesday that local churches had "acted swiftly and decisively" to address the issue.

But in a formal note read on Vatican Radio, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, cautioned against limiting the abuse scandal in Germany, Austria, Ireland and the Netherlands to Catholic institutions, noting that it also affected society in general.

The scandal sweeping church institutions in many European countries kept widening Tuesday.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney

Wednesday March 10 2010

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin spoke yesterday about his surprise at receiving a letter from Spain last month from a notorious paedophile ex-cleric telling him his marriage had broken down.

Speaking at Maynooth, where he was attending the spring meeting of the Bishops' Conference, Dr Martin said this was the first and only contact he had had with Bill Carney, who was named as one of the worst serial offenders in the Murphy report on clerical child sex abuse in the Dublin archdiocese.

"Nobody had the slightest idea he was married," the archbishop added. "It came as a complete and utter surprise to me."

GERMANY
Mirror (United Kingdom)

Pope Benedict XVI's brother yesterday admitted he had hit choir boys involved in the German catholic church abuse scandal.

Retired priest Father Georg Ratzinger, 87, was head of the male choir at the centre of the claims in the early 60s.

GERMANY
CNN

From Frederik Pleitgen, CNN
March 10, 2010

SCHARBEUTZ, Germany (CNN) -- Norbert Denef says for years he couldn't speak about the crimes committed against him during his childhood in Germany.

He grew up, got married and became a father, but never managed to tell his family what was lingering inside him and about the pain that was eating him up. He became depressed, thought about killing himself -- and then realized he had to speak or die.

One morning he stood in front of his mirror and wanted to say it. He remembers uttering a simple, "I ... I ... I ..." But he says his lips were shivering so hard he couldn't go on. He stood there for several minutes, crying, until his tortured past burst forth:

"I was sexually abused!"

NETHERLANDS
Dutch News

Wednesday 10 March 2010

Former parliamentary chairman and CDA member Wim Deetman is to chair an independent investigation into reports of sexual abuse at a number of Catholic boarding schools.

The far-ranging investigation was ordered by Catholic bishops on Tuesday following mounting reports of abuse by priests at schools and seminaries in the 1960s and 1970s.

Since the end of February when newspapers reported claims of abuse at a boarding school in 's-Heerenberg in the 1960s and 1970s, over 350 people have come forward, the Volkskrant said on Wednesday.

GERMANY
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER
The Associated Press

BERLIN — An apology by the pope's brother for not doing anything to stop the abuse of students in the 1960s is a "wonderful sign" that the church plans to get to the bottom of the allegations, a top Roman Catholic prelate said Wednesday.

Prelate Karl Juesten, the liaison between Catholic bishops and the German government, told The Associated Press that the Rev. Georg Ratzinger's apology to the victims was an act of courage.

Digital Journal

R. C. Camphausen
After the catholic church has been damaged by sexual abuse scandals in the US, Germany, and Ireland, now there's a focus on the Netherlands as well. It seems time for a worldwide inquiry. Should the catholic church be classified as a terrorist agency?
Please believe me, I believe!

I don't mean that I believe in the deity envisioned by the predominant patriarchal religion on the planet, Christianity, with at its forefront the Roman catholic church and it's obvious slogan Thou Shalt Not Sin, We're Better At It.

In fact, it's not difficult to convey what I do and don't believe, so here it is.

I don't believe in the deity the self-appointed followers of a perhaps historical Jesus have been pushing on us since about 2,000 years, but I do believe that their 11th commandment - eyes only - was and is the one they seem to promote and practice most eagerly.

NETHERLANDS
Javno (Croatia)

THE HAGUE, March 10, 2010 (AFP) - More than 300 people have lodged complaints of sexual abuse by priests, the Dutch Catholic church said Wednesday, after ordering a probe into alleged childsex cases.

Since the start of this month "there have been 350 complaints," of cases spanning from the 1950s to the 1970s, church spokesman Pieter Kohnen told AFP, adding that "the majority come from boarding schools across the country."

The complaints were received by an episcopal panel set up by the church in 1995 to help victims of sexual abuse by the clergy.

MILWAUKEE (WI)
Fox 6

[with video]

Jennifer Reyes FOX 6 Reporter

WITI-TV, MILWAUKEE - Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki answers tough questions and offers new insight. Listecki is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army Reserve, that's just one thing people learned about the Archbishop during a luncheon.

The newsroom pub in Milwaukee was packed with journalists waiting to hear Listecki speak. Listecki was the news maker luncheon guest speaker, but he does not see himself as a headliner. "I do not attribute myself to be a news maker." ...

The Archbishop also explained why he won't meet with the group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests(SNAP). "I'm concerned about the healing, you know, I'm not too sure that um suddenly the issues that are brought forth by SNAP are concerned with healing."

NEW YORK
The Jewish Week

by Ben Hirsch
Special To The Jewish Week

Last week The Jewish Week reported that Gov. Paterson had allocated $500,000 to be channeled to an as-yet-unnamed organization in the Brooklyn Orthodox community. The money is to be used to help address what many now believe is an epidemic of childhood sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox world. While in theory we as a community should welcome governmental support to help us solve our social problems, how does one explain the apparent absence of rabbinic and lay leadership on this issue? When did protecting our children become the job of the governor and a local assemblyman? Where are the voices of our rabbinic and lay leaders?

Until about four years ago, thankfully, I knew little about this issue. In late 2005 I was approached by a friend who had been molested as a teenager by both Rabbi Yehuda Kolko and Avrohom Mondrowitz. When he reported the abuse to Rabbi Kolko’s employer, he and his family were threatened and intimidated into inaction. This many years later he remained haunted by the fact that Rabbi Kolko was still teaching and asked that I help him get the rabbi removed once and for all from working with children.

With the help of a few other committed activists, I did just that. It was, to say the least, an informative process. I learned about the web of cover-ups that had served to protect Rabbi Kolko and also of the mistreatment, suffered not only by my friend, but of other Kolko victims, at the hands of rabbis and leaders revered by many in our community. And I learned, much to my growing shock and horror, about other stories, involving other victims and other predators in other communities from Williamsburg to Lakewood to Stamford Hill to Jerusalem to Bnei Brak.

American Magazine

Author: Kevin Clarke

European Catholics who may have hoped sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic clergy was mostly a North American problem may be waking up to the widespread reality of this crisis. A sudden eruption of stories of abuse emerging from Ireland, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands must be reverberating unpleasantly for victims of abuse in the United States. The scandal has even extended to Pope Benedict. His brother Msgr. Georg Ratzinger served for 30 years as choirmaster at Domspatzen, a school that trains the elite boys' choir of the Regensburg Cathedral. Today he apologized to child victims of sexual abuse at his former school even though he said he was unaware of the alleged incidents.

In an interview with the German newspaper Neue Passauer Presse, Ratzinger said, "There was never any talk of sexual abuse problems and I had no idea that molestation was taking place."

"I'm deeply sorry for anyone whose spiritual or physical integrity was injured by abuse," said Msgr. Ratzinger. "Today, such things are condemned even more because of greater sensitivities. I also condemn them, and simultaneously ask pardon from the victims." I'm presuming (hoping) that by "such things" he is referring to "mere" corporal punishment of his school boys. More sordid details have already emerged from the past at the Regensburg Cathedral.

GERMANY
AOL News

Dana Kennedy

(March 9) -- Sexual abuse scandals mired the Catholic Church on Tuesday as inquiries in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands intensified and the Vatican digested allegations that the Mexican founder of one of the church's most favored sects sexually molested his illegitimate sons.

The new revelations come less than a month after Irish bishops were summoned to the Vatican to discuss decades of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland.

A delegation of German bishops is scheduled to meet with Pope Benedict XVI on Friday about the growing crisis in Germany, where more than 170 students have claimed they were sexually abused at several Catholic high schools.

GERMANY/AUSTRIA
Bild

Sexueller Missbrauch, Prügel-Orgien, Einschüchterung, Angst: Noch weiß niemand, an wie viele Jungen und Mädchen sich Erzieher und Kirchenvertreter vergangen haben. Doch immer mehr von ihnen brechen ihr Schweigen!

WIE TIEF IST DER SEX-SUMPF NOCH? Die Liste der Schande.

[summary]

Sexual abuse, beatings orgies, intimidation, fear: No one yet knows how many boys and girls were abused by educators and religious leaders. But more and more of them break their silence!

HOW DEEP IS THE SEX SWAMP? The list of shame.

Odenwaldschule (Heppenheim)
Boys and Girls were sexually abused here for years. Odenwald has yet to have a clear picture of how many former students reported abuse from the 1970s and 1980s. Twenty-four victims are currently known but the number could still rise significantly. The Odenwald school board has resigned.

Kinderheim Vincenzhaus, Hofheim
Allegations of abuse in the 1950s and 1950s have been made by three former children who were in care at this orphanage. The alleged abusers were male teachers.

Ernst Schneller home .Eilenburg
A first suspect case of sexual abuse has been made at this home. One former residents said there were daily assaults on children and adolescents during the 1970s and 1980s.

Diocese of Limburg
Benno Grimm has investigated suspected abuse cases involving five priests and church staff. Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst last week said five priests already were reported for abusing at least six minors. The newly discovered abuse is said to have happened between the 1950s and1970s.

Bad Godesberg, Aloisiuskolleg
Thirty known cases of abuse have been made at Aloisius College. Statements have been made involving a range from general parently style to reports of severe and repeated sexual abuse.

Diocese of Fulda
Anne Schmitz, who is handling sexual abuse cases for the Fulda diocese, said they acknowledge a second victim from the Amoneburg (Marburg-Biedenkopt) seminary. A former student is said to have been sexually abused in the mid-1970s. Meanwhile, the diocese suspects three church staff of being abusers.

Diocese of Münster
The Munster diocese has reported another suspected case of sexual abuse. The man said he was abused during the years 1966 to 1968 by a techer in the board school Collegium Johanneum in Ostbevern, Munsterland.

Regensburg cathedral choir
Former members of the boys choir have reported sexual abuse and a headmaster is said to have kept a harem of boys. The pope's brother, Georg Ratzinger, a former director, has aplogized. He said the scale of the abuse was not known to him.

Salzburg, Austria
Sexual abuse cases are coming to light in Austria. Abbot Bruno Becker today resigned as head of the Salzburg monastery after admitting he abused a child 40 years ago.

Mehrerau Monastery, Vorarlberg, Austria
Students were abused by priests at the Mehrerau monastry. In one instance, the priest was transferred to the Tyrol where he was still working as a priest.

PENNSYLVANIA
WNEP

By Jon Meyer

A former Episcopal priest is now heading to trial on charges that he molested two boys.

Ralph Johnson, 82, went before a district justice Tuesday afternoon in Susquehanna County and through court papers new information has been learned about the prosecution's case against him.

The former Episcopal priest was first charged a month ago after a man came forward and said he was abused as a boy, then another alleged victim came forward.

PENNSYLVANIA
WBNG

[with video]

Clifford, PA (WBNG Binghamton) A former priest is closer to going to trial on charges for sexual misconduct.

82-year-old Ralph Johnson was in district court today in Susquehanna County.

He faces six counts of sexual misconduct stemming from two separate incidents while serving as an Episcopal priest.

VATICAN CITY
Inquirer (Philippines)

By Gina Doggett
Agence France-Presse

VATICAN CITY—The Vatican on Tuesday said national Catholic churches had reacted decisively to pedophile priest scandals while stressing that the sexual abuse of children is a "much wider" phenomenon.

"The main ecclesiastical institutions involved ... confronted the emergence of the problem rapidly and decisively," Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement read out on Vatican Radio.

He added, however: "All objective and informed people know that the issue is much wider, and to focus accusations only on the Church leads to a skewed perspective."

VATICAN CITY
Beliefnet

Tuesday March 9, 2010
VATICAN CITY (RNS) The elder brother of Pope Benedict XVI admitted striking members of the German boys' choir that he led for three decades, but denied knowing that some of the boys were victims of clerical sex abuse.

"I must admit that I often became depressed, because (the boys) did not achieve the results I wanted, and at the beginning I often handed out slaps, though afterwards my conscience pricked me for doing so," Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, who led the Regensburg cathedral choir from

1964 to 1994, told the German newspaper Passauer Neue Presse in an interview published Tuesday (March 9).

AUSTRIA
Burgenland

Ein Pfarrer in der Oststeiermark soll vor rund 25 Jahren laut der Wochenzeitung "Falter" bis zu 20 Kinder und Jugendliche sexuell missbraucht oder belästigt haben. Der Pfarrer wurde danach ins Burgenland versetzt. Die Taten sind verjährt.

[summary]

A priest in Eastern Styria had admitted to sexually abusing minors about 25 years ago. The priest was later transferred to Burgenland.

NETHERLANDS
BBC News

Dutch religious leaders have ordered an independent inquiry into alleged sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests.

Earlier, the Vatican defended its response to child sex abuse allegations in a number of European states, saying it had reacted rapidly and decisively.

In the latest revelations, the head of an Austrian monastery confessed to abusing a boy more than 40 years ago.

GERMANY
Bild

The Pope’s brother Georg Ratzinger has asked for forgiveness after reports of the abuse which went on at the boarding school of the Cathedral choir in Regensburg.

"Germany has been shocked by the scandal surrounding the world-famous choir. Victims were forced to endure excessive force, including violence, whipping and perverse sex games from teachers and even headmasters.

Many of them are still suffering today.

One of the victims, Manfred van Hove, told how the former boarding school master kept a 'boy harem'.

Earth Times

Vienna- Fresh allegations of sexual and physical abuse by Catholic clergy surfaced in Austria and the Netherlands on Tuesday, prompting the ousting of an abbot in Austria and an independent investigation in the Netherlands. The revelations came after a series of similar cases in German Catholic institutions, as well as in a non-denominational school in the state of Hesse.

Amid growing criticism of the church's handling of the widening scandal, the Vatican's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, insisted that Catholic institutions in these three countries moved with "timely and decisive action."

In the Saint Peter monastery in the Austrian town of Salzburg, a senior official confirmed the resignation of Arch-abbot Bruno Becker, who had admitted of molesting an 11-year-old boy over 40 years ago.

AUSTRIA
Sydney Morning Herald

The head of a Salzburg monastery has admitted to sexually abusing a child decades ago and is offering to resign.

Arch-abbot Bruno Becker says he abused a 12-year-old boy more than 40 years ago. In a statement cited on Tuesday by the Austria Press Agency, he says he informed church authorities last year after his victim contacted him.

NETHERLANDS
Expatica

Roman Catholic bishops in the Netherlands have decided to permit an external, independent investigation into sexual abuse by members of its institutions. Wim Deetman, a former education minister and mayor of The Hague, is to lead the investigation.

Speaking on behalf of the bishops, Bishop Gerard de Korte said, "We have been deeply affected by the recent moving stories of sexual abuse. It is dark page in the history of the Catholic Church."

The abuse came to light following revelations by Radio Netherlands Worldwide and the NRC Handelsblad newspaper that, during the 1960s and 1970s, boys at a boarding school in the town of 's-Heerenberg had been molested by Salesian fathers. The appearance of that story led to hundreds of other reports of abuse. Similar revelations have since also surfaced in Germany and Austria.

GERMANY
Swissinfo

By Christopher Lawton
BERLIN (Reuters) - The priest brother of Pope Benedict acknowledged on Tuesday that he had meted out corporal punishment when he taught at a German school, but said he had not known about a regime of more extreme violence now being alleged.

Reports of abuses have surfaced at three Roman Catholic schools in the conservative southern state of Bavaria including the Regensburg cathedral school where Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, now 86, was choirmaster from 1964 to 1994.

Corporal punishment was legal in Germany until 1980, but former pupils of the school have said they suffered sexual abuse and violent beatings and humiliation in the early 1960s by unnamed teachers.

Press TV (Iran)

Developments across Europe on Tuesday have intensified a damaging scandal over allegations of child molestation and physical abuse at Catholic-run schools.

Dutch religious leaders ordered a “broad, external, and independent” investigation into alleged crimes committed by pedophile Catholic priests.

The Dutch Religious Conference announced plans for an immediate launching of the probe following a meeting to discuss more than 200 allegations of abuse by former students at several Catholic-run institutions in the Netherlands between the 1960s and 1970s.

NETHERLANDS
Catholic Culture

March 09, 2010

The Dutch Catholic bishops have called upon a former government minister to head an independent commission investigating sex-abuse complaints. Citing more than 200 reports of abuse filed with a victims' group, the bishops asked Wim Deetman, a former mayor of The Hage, to lead the inquiry.

Reuters

REUTERS - The Roman Catholic Church is under increasing scrutiny as allegations of child sexual abuses by priests have emerged in several European countries.
Following are details of some of the major abuse scandals:

* NETHERLANDS: More than 200 Catholics have come forward in the past week with reports of abuse after a report by Radio Netherlands Worldwide and newspaper NRC Handelsblad that three priests from the Salesian order abused pupils decades ago at a boarding school.

* GERMANY: The Regensburg diocese said last week in a statement that one priest abused two boys sexually in 1958 and was sentenced to two years in jail. Another clergyman served 11 months in jail in 1971 for abuse. It mentioned three men who claimed to have suffered sexual abuse in the early 1960s by several unnamed teachers while they were at boarding schools connected to the "Regensburger Domspatzen" (Regensburg Cathedral Sparrows), the official choir for the diocese.

GERMANY
First Things

Tuesday, March 9, 2010, 3:44 PM
David P. Goldman
Inventing news where there is none is not a new pastime for the press, but the intense interest that the European media has shown in the Rev. Georg Ratzinger, the elder brother of Pope Benedict XVI, goes beyond the usual range of invidious gossip. The 86-year-old Monsignor Ratzinger, the retired conductor of the Regensburg Cathedral’s famous boys’ choir, assumed his post a decade after a sexual abuse scandal surfaced. The offenders were punished and the matter was put to rest. Earlier this week reporters cornered the retired priest and demanded to know whether he would testify about the sex scandal in his choir. Ratzinger replied that he would be happy to testify if asked, but as the events preceded his tenure he had no knowledge of the facts—and headlines appeared in major German media that “the pope’s brother is ready to testify about sex abuse.”

TAMPA (FL)
Tampa Tribune

By TOM BRENNAN | The Tampa Tribune

TAMPA - Prosecutors will not pursue charges against a Marine reservist accused of beating a Greek Orthodox priest with a tire iron.

Reservist Jasen Bruce said he simply was defending himself from a man who propositioned him and grabbed his genitals.

Mike Sinacore, head of the felony division of the Hillsborough County state attorney's office, said his office reviewed the law, the evidence, the testimony of those involved and the arguments of Bruce's attorney.

GERMANY
Newser

By Kevin Spak

(Newser) – Pope Benedict’s brother today revealed that he used to slap pupils in the face at the Catholic school in Germany whose prestigious choir he led, and that he’d ignored allegations of more serious physical abuses. “Pupils told me about what went on,” Georg Ratzinger said in an interview today. “But it didn’t dawn on me from their stories that I should do something. I was not aware of the extent of these brutal methods.”

VATICAN CITY
The New York Times

By RACHEL DONADIO and NICHOLAS KULISH
Published: March 9, 2010

ROME — Defending itself against a growing child sex abuse scandal in Europe, one that has even come close to the brother of Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican said Tuesday that local European churches had “acted swiftly and decisively” to address the issue.

In a note read on Vatican Radio, the Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, also cautioned against limiting the concerns over child sex abuse to Catholic institutions, noting that it also affected the broader society. The comment comes amid a wave of church sex abuse scandals to emerge in recent weeks in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, adding to the fallout from a broad abuse investigation in Ireland.

In his note, Father Lombardi said that local churches had demonstrated “a will for transparency, in a certain sense accelerating how the problem had been brought to light, inviting victims to come forward, even regarding cases from a long time ago,” he said.

NEW YORK
New York Post

By ALEX GINSBERG

An Orthodox rabbi repeatedly sexually abused his son's 16-year-old classmate, a Brooklyn jury ruled yesterday.

The 10 women and two men deliberated less than half a day before finding Rabbi Baruch Lebovits, 58, guilty on eight counts of sexual abuse. They acquitted him on two counts. "Justice was served," said the father of the boy, whose name is being withheld by The Post.

NEW YORK
Gothamist

The Borough Park rabbi/travel agent accused in hundreds of incidents of sexual abuse was convicted yesterday of molesting a 16-year-old student. Baruch Lebovits could be sentenced to 32 years in jail, after being found guilty on eight counts. "I understand that there are a significant number of Jewish holidays coming up,” said the judge. “And I am sorry." The young victim testified that in 2004 Lebovits offered to let him drive his car, then unzipped his fly and performed oral sex on him. Among the rabbi’s other alleged victims is a young Hasidic man who committed suicide on his honeymoon, by jumping from the seventh story of a hotel.

Last week the victim—who’s since left the ultra-Orthodox community—said that after being abused by Rabbi Lebovits, he’s fallen prey to heroin and other substances. The defense attacked him as an unreliable addict, and insists he was trying to blackmail the powerful community leader. "We’re extremely disappointed," said lawyer Arthur Aidala of the guilty verdict. "We were hoping that the jury was going to see things differently...Mr. Lebovits still maintains his innocence." Friends and relatives gasped at the ruling, but at least one person was pleased. "Thank God, justice was served," said the father of the abused boy, according to the Daily News.

NEW YORK
JTA

(JTA) -- A Brooklyn rabbi was found guilty of sexually assaulting a male teenager.

A Brooklyn Supreme Court jury on Tuesday found Baruch Lebovits guilty on eight of 10 counts, the New York Daily News reported.

Lebovits, 59, who owns a travel agency in Borough Park, was convicted of sexually molesting the Jewish teen in 2004 and 2005. He faces up to seven years in prison.

GERMANY
The Independent

By Jerome Taylor, Religious Affairs Correspondent

Tuesday, 9 March 2010

The Pope’s older brother has admitted to slapping pupils in the face while he was leader of a renowned choir in Germany which is currently at the centre of a new rash of child abuse allegations rocking the Catholic Church.

Georg Ratzinger, who led the Regensburger Domspatzen choir for thirty years until his retirement in 1994, confessed to occasionally hitting his pupils but added that he now regretted using corporal punishment.

In an interview with the Bavarian daily newspaper Passauer Neue Presse, the Pope’s older brother admitted: "At the start, I also slapped people in the face but I always had a bad conscience."

VATICAN CITY
Fox News

March 9, 2010 - 12:09 PM | by: Greg Burke
A Vatican spokesman that Tuesday that Church officials were responding quickly and decisively to the most recent charges of sex abuse in Catholic institutions in Europe.

“The correct starting point is the recognition of what happened, and concern for the victims,” said Father Federico Lombardi on Vatican Radio.

In recent weeks, charges of abuse have rocked the Catholic Church, especially in Germany, but also Austria and the Netherlands.

VATICAN CITY
Reuters

(Reuters) - The Vatican said on Tuesday it was wrong to focus blame for child abuse on the Catholic Church and denied accusations it had sought to cover up pedophilia by its clergymen around Europe.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi acknowledged the "gravity of the crisis the Church is undergoing" after fresh allegations surfaced in recent weeks of widespread sexual abuse by clergymen in Germany, Austria and Holland.

But he denied allegations by a German government minister that the Vatican had colluded to cover up pedophilia. Reports last month alleged that Catholic priests had sexually abused over 100 children at Jesuit schools there.

GERMANY
Der Spiegel

The child-abuse scandal that broke out in Germany in late January has now spread across the country. As shocked German politicians argue over whether to lift the statute of limitations or impose civil penalties, newspaper commentators are unanimous in their call for swift and concerted action.

At first, it seemed like an isolated incident of abuse at one Catholic school in Berlin. But now, in little over a month, it has ballooned into a massive scandal, with reports of molestations and beatings stretching back decades -- in all types of private institutions and all over Germany. Shocked by the scope and terrible nature of the scandal, Germans are clamouring to find the appropriate response.

The series of scandals broke out in late January with initial reports about abuse at Canisius College, a university-prep high school run by Jesuit priests in central Berlin. Since then, it has spread to include other Catholic institutions around the country, including boarding schools, a cathedral choir in Regensburg and a Benedictine monastery school in Ettal, as well as private, secular boarding schools, such as the Oldenwaldschule, an elite private school in Hesse.

GERMANY
Houston Chronicle

By MELISSA EDDY and ALESSANDRA RIZZO Associated Press Writers

BERLIN — The pope's brother said in a newspaper interview published Tuesday that he slapped pupils as punishment after he took over a renowned German boys' choir in the 1960s. He also said he was aware of allegations of physical abuse at an elementary school linked to the choir but did nothing about it.

The Rev. Georg Ratzinger, 86, said he was completely unaware of allegations of sexual abuse at the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir, part of a string of charges of sex abuse by church employees across Europe in recent days. ...

A statement by the U.S. group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests called the Vatican's claim that Catholic institutions had been timely in their reaction "depressing and disingenuous."

"Sadly, the truth is just the reverse," Peter Isely, Midwest director of the group. "Regarding pedophile priests and corrupt bishops, the church hierarchy responds only when forced to do so by external pressures."

GERMANY
The Huffington Post

Jerome Taylor, The Independent

A series of allegations in Germany and Holland have plunged the Catholic Church into a renewed crisis over how it has dealt with child abuse after it emerged that the Pope's brother ran a renowned choir at the centre of some of the latest claims.

Reports of systematic historical abuse by clergy have surfaced at three schools in the Regensburg diocese in Bavaria. One of them is the much-heralded Regensburger Domspatzen, a thousand-year-old male choir and boarding school, whose choral master for 30 years was the Pope's older brother, Georg Ratzinger.

UNITED STATES
Healing and Spirituality

Dr. Jaime Romo

I spent time with brilliant researchers and policy makers who seek to understand and prevent abuse at the National Partnership to End Inter-personal Violence Summit in Dallas. While the conference had little to do with religious authority sexual abuse explicitly, I attended several presentations that I linked to religious authority sexual abuse and how we might respond to it.

I heard:

Women who report to police or medical professionals 72-96 hours after being raped are often re-traumatized by the professionals who are there to help them.

We are one of the few industrialized countries that doesn’t have a national model/ plan to prevent abuse and end inter-personal violence.

Poverty is violence.

VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service

By Sarah Delaney and Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The religious orders and bishops' conferences dealing with cases of clerical sexual abuse of children in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands are acting quickly, decisively and with transparency to uncover the truth and assist the victims, said the Vatican spokesman.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, said March 9 that the religious orders and bishops' conferences not only "have proven their commitment to transparency, in a certain sense they have accelerated the uncovering of the problem by asking victims to come forward even when it involved cases from many years ago."

The correct way to proceed, he said, is to recognize what happened and concretely demonstrate concern for the victims and the consequences the abuse has had on them.

GERMANY
Deutsche Welle

As more and more allegations of sexual abuse in Catholic institutions come to light, German politicians debate whether to extend the statute of limitations for civil and criminal prosecution.

A rash of reported cases of sexual abuse and molestation in schools and other institutions run by the Catholic Church in Germany has led to a discussion about whether the country's time limit on civil and criminal prosecution of abuse cases should be raised.

Most of the alleged abuse now being reported occurred decades ago. Experts say it often takes years for victims to gather the courage to come forward and deal with what happened to them. German law allows for criminal prosecution only within 10 years of the alleged victim turning 18. The statute of limitations for pursuing financial compensation through a civil suit is three years.

GERMANY
Mail (United Kingdom)

By Nick Pisa
Last updated at 4:02 PM on 09th March 2010

Pope Benedict XVI's brother today sensationally admitted striking choir boys during his time as a teacher at a boarding school in Bavaria, southern Germany.

Retired Father Georg Ratzinger, 87, was choral master of the Regensburger Domspatzen for 30 years, a school which is now at the centre of a sex scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church in Germany.

The elder brother of the Pontiff made the dramatic confession after reports of abuse at the choir, as well as at several other German schools.

GERMANY
Telegraph (United Kingdom)

By Nick Squires in Rome
Published: 3:49PM GMT 09 Mar 2010

The brother of Pope Benedict XVI has admitted that he slapped choirboys at the German choir school that he headed for 30 years, as the Vatican struggled to address burgeoning sex abuse scandals across Europe.

Georg Ratzinger, 86, who ran the choir from 1964 to 1994, said he now regretted using corporal punishment against his charges and asked their forgiveness.

"At the beginning I administered clips round the ear, but I always had a bad conscience about it. I was happy when in 1980 corporal punishment was banned by law," he said.

GERMANY
Reuters

(Reuters) - The brother of Pope Benedict said in an interview on Tuesday he slapped pupils in the face at a German school where he led the choir, but had been unaware of the brutality of discipline there.

Rev. Georg Ratzinger, 86, made the comments to a German paper following charges of sexual and physical abuse in Catholic schools in the pope's native Bavaria. Sexual abuse scandals have also rocked the church in the United States and Ireland.

"Pupils told me on concert trips about what went on. But it didn't dawn on me from their stories that I should do something. I was not aware of the extent of these brutal methods," Ratzinger told the Passauer Neue Presse.

VATICAN CITY
The Associated Press

(AP)

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican says sexual abuse scandals in Germany and other countries are cause for anguish but the church's response has been prompt and transparent.

Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Tuesday that any abuse in the church is "especially deplorable" given its educational and moral responsibilities but the issue of child abuse goes beyond the church

VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service

VATICAN CITY, 9 MAR 2010 (VIS) - Given below is the text of note issued today by Holy See Press Office Director Fr. Federico Lombardi S.J. concerning cases of the sexual abuse of minors in ecclesiastical institutions:

"For some months now the very serious question of the sexual abuse of minors in institutions run by ecclesiastical bodies and by people with positions of responsibility within the Church, priests in particular, has been investing the Church and society in Ireland. The Holy Father recently demonstrated his own concern, particularly through two meetings: firstly with high-ranking members of the episcopate, then with all the ordinaries. He is also preparing the publication of a letter on the subject for the Irish Church.

"But over recent weeks the debate on the sexual abuse of minors has also involved the Church in certain central European countries (Germany, Austria and Holland). And it is on this development that we wish to make some simple remarks.

CANADA
The Windsor Star

By Dalson Chen, The Windsor Star
March 9, 2010

Supporters of a Polish Catholic priest accused of sexual misdeeds are rallying behind the 84-year-old clergyman.

Rev. Piotr (Peter) Sanczenko of Windsor has been charged with two counts of indecent assault due to statements made by two males about incidents that allegedly happened around 40 years ago, when they were under 12 years old.

But people who knew Sanczenko as children say they don't believe the accusations.

UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph

A married vicar has been suspended from duty over allegations of an ''improper relationship'' with a female member of his congregation.

Reverend Simon Lloyd, 51, who is the vicar of Minehead, Somerset, agreed to stand down from his post after he was confronted with the allegations on Friday.

The father-of-one, who has not moved out of the home he shares with wife Susie and their young daughter, will remain suspended while an investigation is carried out.

SOUTH AFRICA
IOL

Three children who were allegedly sexually abused by a Randburg Catholic priest have testified against him.

The priest, from the German St Bonifatius Catholic Church in Sundowner, who is charged with three cases of sexual assault, appeared in the Brits Magistrate's Court yesterday.

VATICAN CITY
Expatica

Roman Catholic authorities in Germany, Austria, The Netherlands and other countries reacted rapidly and "decisively" to paedophilia priest scandals in their churches, the Vatican said Tuesday.

The German, Austrian and Dutch Catholic churches as well as that of Ireland have been rocked by scandal over "the very serious issue" of abuse of children by priests and teachers at Catholic schools, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said on Vatican Radio.

However, he said: "All objective and informed people know that the issue is much wider, and to focus accusations only on the Church leads to a skewed perspective.

AUSTRIA
IOL

Vienna - Child sex charges hit the Roman Catholic Church in Austria on Tuesday after a man said he was sexually abused by three clergy as a child.

A Catholic boarding school spoke out meanwhile about another case in the 1980s.

A 53-year-old Austrian told national radio Oe1 on Tuesday that he was abused for six years from the age of 11 by two priests and once by a trainee priest who is now abbot of Sankt Peter monastery in Salzburg.

UNITED KINGDOM
BBC

Former priest Bill Carney was named as one of the worst paedophiles in Dublin's Catholic diocese in the Murphy report into clerical abuse there. However, for the last 10 years he has been free to live quietly in Britain.

Newsnight's Olenka Frenkiel has investigated his case and tracked him down in the Canary Islands.

All the children in Ayrfield, Dublin, knew fun-loving Father Bill Carney - not just the altar boys and those who met him through school, but members of the Scout troop he ran and the groups of local children he took swimming.

His door was always open, there was a ready supply of Coke in the fridge and in the 1980s he had the very latest thing to lure youngsters in - a video player.

GERMANY
The Times (United Kingdom)

Allan Hall, Berlin

Germany has blamed a “wall of silence” created by the Vatican for hampering investigations into decades of abuse of schoolchildren by Catholic clergy.

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the Justice Minister, said that Vatican secrecy rules, including a 2001 directive requiring even the most serious cases to be investigated first by Church officials, were complicating efforts to shed light on claims of abuse at some of Germany’s most highly regarded schools.

Many of the alleged cases fall outside the 20-year statute of limitations, so abusers are protected from prosecution. Annette Schavan, the Education Minister, said that the limit on sex crimes involving children must be re-examined.

MEXICO
Catholic Culture

March 09, 2010

Attorneys representing an alleged former lover of Father Marcial Maciel and her children have severed ties with the family because their recent public accusations differed "in some substantial points" from what the attorneys had previously been told. Blanca Estela Lara Gutierrez claimed last week that the founder of the Legionaries of Christ fathered two children with her, and her sons claimed that Father Maciel sexually abused them.

In January, the woman’s eldest son asked for $26 million from the Legionaries of Christ in return for silence, according to a press release issued by the religious order.

AUSTRALIA
ABC News

An Adelaide Anglican Bishop says he will defend himself against charges laid by the church at a tribunal hearing next week.

The Bishop of the Murray Diocese, Ross Davies, has had nine charges laid against him, including an allegation he kidnapped and sexually assaulted a woman last July.

The charges were laid by the Archbishop of Adelaide Jeffrey Driver and the Willochra Bishop, Garry Weatherill.

NETHERLANDS
Forbes

AMSTERDAM -- A leading Catholic bishop in the Netherlands has called for an independent investigation into the sexual abuse of children by priests after 200 alleged victims contacted help services last week.

What started as allegations of repeated incidents within a single cloister last month has quickly spread, and the Church victims' support organization Hulp en Recht has now received 200 complaints.

Rotterdam Bishop Ad van Luyn has apologized to victims and called for an independent investigation. Leading political parties have echoed those calls.

GERMANY
The Age (Australia)

ANNE PADIEU, BERLIN
March 10, 2010

GERMANY'S justice minister has hit out at the Vatican over a child sex abuse scandal engulfing the country's Catholic Church, including at a choir formerly run by the Pope's brother.

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said a ''wall of silence'' was prevalent at Catholic-run schools because of a 2001 church directive that cases of abuse be ''subject to papal confidentiality''.

This meant that abuse allegations ''were not supposed to go outside the church but instead were meant to be investigated internally'', she told Deutschlandfunk radio.

CANADA
Toronto Sun

By Sidhartha Banerjee, THE CANADIAN PRESS

MONTREAL — She was just a 16-year-old teen, admittedly timid and naive, dealing with the trappings of a troubled childhood and problems with her father.

Enter Daniel Cormier, a charismatic minister who held incredible sway and whose word was as good as gold. Or so she thought.

The impressionable girl’s trust was exploited relentlessly by Cormier, a Quebec court judge said Monday as he sentenced the former preacher to nine months for sexually abusing the teenager.

LOUISIANA
The News-Star

By Johnny Gunter • jgunter@thenewsstar.com • March 9, 2010

A Fourth District Attorney Jerry Jones said Monday that the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeal has upheld the sentence of a former youth mentor at a Sterlington church who received eight years each on three counts of sexual battery of a juvenile.

Jeremy Michael Little, 26, was sentenced May 28 by 4th District Judge Carl Sharp. Little had pleaded guilty after his arrest in January 2009. Sharp also revoked Little's probation on a previous drug charge and he will have to serve another three years on that charge for a total of 27 years.

"He used his position with the church to prey on young men," Jones said. "He deserves every day he got."

Press TV (Iran)

While German authorities are seeking to break the Catholic Church's “wall of silence” on child molestation, Catholic reformers turn to Pope Benedict XVI for answers.

Sexual abuse of child pupils at several German Catholic schools, including a monastic boarding school in Bavaria, have sparked a nationwide scandal with more than 150 ex-students coming forward with allegations of suffering abuse during the 1970s and 80s.

In a German radio interview On Monday, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger criticized a 2001 Vatican directive requiring even the most serious abuse cases to be first investigated internally, saying it had erected a "wall of silence," around the issue.

Recent media revelation about the sexual and physical abuse of former choirboys of the famous Regensburger Domspatzen choir, which was once headed by the Pope's brother Georg Ratzinger, has turned the spotlight to Rome.

The Independent

By Jerome Taylor, Religious Affairs Correspondent

Tuesday, 9 March 2010

A series of allegations in Germany and Holland have plunged the Catholic Church into a renewed crisis over how it has dealt with child abuse after it emerged that the Pope's brother ran a renowned choir at the centre of some of the latest claims.

Reports of systematic historical abuse by clergy have surfaced at three schools in the Regensburg diocese in Bavaria. One of them is the much-heralded Regensburger Domspatzen, a thousand-year-old male choir and boarding school, whose choral master for 30 years was the Pope's older brother, Georg Ratzinger.

Monsignor Ratzinger has agreed to testify in any eventual prosecutions – but says that he knew of no abuse. And last night the German Justice Minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, joined a growing chorus of politicians in Berlin to criticise the church over its attitude to the investigation, accusing Catholic institutions of a policy of secrecy.

The Independent

Revelations that Pope Benedict's brother may be called upon to testify in a church abuse scandal raise valid questions about how much the current Pope knew about the allegations. A more revealing line of inquiry would be to examine the extent of the pontiff's knowledge of the global clerical sexual abuse scandals.

In December 2002, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, suggested that media coverage of clerical sexual abuse was a conspiracy to bring down the Catholic Church. At the time he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In this powerful position he was in charge of managing cases of priests who abused children in any Catholic diocese across the world.

The Pope's brother appears to share the view that the emergence of the scandals has a sinister anti-Catholic church agenda. The Reverend Georg Ratzinger told an Italian newspaper: "I want to note that I sense a certain animosity toward the church."

GERMANY
The Local

Pressure was mounting on Germany's Catholic Church to offer compensation to sexual abuse victims Tuesday, as Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger called for ''a piece of justice'' for victims.

However, the minister's demand was in sharp contrast to remarks by Stephanie zu Guttenberg, the head of a leading child protection group and wife of Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who called on the state to get tougher on abuse rather than leave it to the Church.

In the strongest intervention yet on the issue by a senior government minister, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said compensation would be “piece of justice, even if the injustice suffered cannot be materially compensated for.”

BOSTON (MA)
Catholic News Agency

Boston, Mass., Mar 9, 2010 / 02:03 am (CNA).- The Archdiocese of Boston has launched its 2010 Catholic Appeal, with recent figures indicating significant financial recovery since Cardinal Seán O'Malley took over the leadership of the archdiocese in 2003.

“The Archdiocese is blessed by the continued generosity of our parishioners and friends,” Cardinal Seán O’Malley, the Archbishop of Boston, commented. “In a particular way the priests, deacons, religious and lay members of our parishes are able to build up communities of faith and service because of the contributions in support of the Annual Appeal.”

Monetary contributions to the Catholic Appeal have increased nearly 75 percent, $6.3 million, since 2002. That year, reports about the archdiocese’s treatment of priests accused of sexual abuse sparked great controversy that led to the resignation of the cardinal’s predecessor, Cardinal Bernard Law.

The Times (United Kingdom)

Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

A leading Roman Catholic theologian has linked clerical sex abuse with priestly celibacy, blaming the Church’s “uptight” views on sex for child abuse scandals in Germany, Ireland and the US.

Father Hans Kung, President of the Global Ethic Foundation and professor emeritus at the University of Tübingen in Germany, said that the Church’s attitude was also revealed in its opposition to birth control.

The German church rejected any suggestion that abuse was linked to celibacy, homosexuality or church teaching.

UNITED STATES
College News

Joe Anello

As we first covered last week, The Center for Public Integrity has published a series of articles investigating sexual assaults on campuses across the nation. Alongside Kristin Jones, veteran investigative journalist Kristen Lombardi was one of only two reporters at the frontline of this process. Lombardi was kind enough to take some of her time to talk to College News.

College News: This process was a year-long affair. What were your expectations going in?

Kristen Lombardi: Most journalists want something to come out of their reporting. They want something to happen as a result of what they are uncovering. I’m writing for a purpose. This is a situation ripe for change and I want to make a difference. Sometimes it’s just lifting the veil and shedding light on a problem that’s pervasive so that people can begin to debate. Sometimes it’s as simple as giving a voice to a voiceless constituency.

CN: After the initial research, did you find it difficult to secure interviews with the alleged victims?

KL: I’ve been a journalist for 15 years, mostly as an investigative journalist. I’ve done a lot of sex abuse victim stories, so I was familiar with the difficulty in trying to get subjects to open up about an obviously very private topic. I wrote the first stories in Boston about the pedophile priest that sparked the Catholic Church abuse scandal but those victims were reliving and retelling abuse from when they were children, so time had passed.

CathNews

Swiss theologian Father Hans Kung says clerical sex abuse across the globe is linked to priestly celibacy and the Church's "uptight" views on sex.

Fr Kung, President of the Global Ethic Foundation and professor emeritus at the University of Tübingen in Germany, said the Church's attitude was also revealed in its opposition to birth control, Times Online reports.

Writing in The Tablet, Father Kung, who in 1979 was stripped of his licence to teach Catholic theology after he rejected the doctrine of Papal infallibility, welcomed an apology from the head of Germany's bishops on the latest reports of abuse.

MEXICO
The Associated Press

By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO (AP)

MEXICO CITY — A Mexican lawyer said Monday he has resigned from handling the case of a woman and her sons who claim the males were sexually abused as boys by the founder of a conservative Roman Catholic religious order.

Lawyer Jose Bonilla said he and a team of other lawyers who had represented the family would no longer do so, after one of the sons acknowledged he had asked the order for $26 million to keep quiet about the case.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By SHANE PHELAN

Tuesday March 09 2010

BILL CARNEY was a serial sexual abuser who preyed on young boys and girls before he was eventually defrocked.

But prior to the publication of the Murphy report he was better known around north Dublin as a talented golfer, and was even named golfer of the year at the Royal Dublin Golf Club in 1994.

Born in 1950, his abuse of children began at a very early age, even before he was ordained for the Archdiocese of Dublin in 1974.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By John Cooney Shane Phelan and Tom Brady

Tuesday March 09 2010

A NOTORIOUS paedophile priest named in the Murphy report on clerical sex abuse has spoken out to dispute its findings.

Bill Carney (60) made the comments after being tracked down by the BBC's 'Panorama' TV programme while he was taking a sun holiday in the Canary Islands.

Carney, who was named as one of the worst serial offenders in the Murphy report, pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assaulting altar boys in 1983.

IRELAND
Irish Independent

By Olenka Frenkiel

Tuesday March 09 2010

ALL the children in Ayrfield knew the fun-loving, smiling Fr Bill Carney. Not just through school. And not just his altar boys. He also ran the Boy Scouts and loved to take kids swimming.

His door was always open. There was always Coke in the fridge and in the 1980s he had the very latest thing to lure his prey -- a video player.

Grown-ups disapproved of his swearing and crazy driving, but the church was still so trusted, no-one suspected the truth.

CORPUS CHRISTI (TX)
Caller-Times

By Mike Baird

CORPUS CHRISTI — A lawsuit against the Catholic Diocese of Corpus Christi alleges repeated sexual abuse of a teenage male 38 years ago by a priest who died in 2008.

A statement from the diocese Friday indicated that both parties were adults. The diocese said, when informed of the allegation in 2008 shortly before the priest’s death, the diocese immediately furnished all information to the district attorney, who declined to prosecute.

Three pages of the original lawsuit, filed Friday in 94th District Court, were missing at the Nueces County District Clerk’s office, according to officials there. Houston attorney Daniel L. Shea said he will refile to include the deceased priest’s trust as a third defendant.

The district clerk’s office initially withheld the lawsuit Monday from the Caller-Times. The newspaper was told early Monday that Deputy District Clerk Claudia Pullin was reviewing the file behind closed doors and that it wouldn’t be available until after lunch. Pullin, reached by phone, told the newspaper that the clerk’s office had 10 days to fulfill open record requests.

UNITED KINGDOM
lep

A former top City lawyer whose school days were blighted by sickening sexual abuse at the hands of a Jesuit priest has suffered a legal setback in his quest for more than £4m compensation.

High Court judge Mrs Justice Swift ruled in May last year that Patrick Raggett, now 51, had been subjected to humiliating sexual assaults and abuse, sometimes several times a week, at the Preston Catholic College, by Father Michael Spencer, who has since died.

She also decided that, although more than 30 years have passed since the abuse, it was "equitable" to allow Mr Raggett to pursue his damages claim against the school's governors.

NETHERLANDS
HRC Handelsblad

By Joep Dohmen
Aegon insurance company has put aside a million euros to pay for claims by Dutch victims of sexual abuse suffered at the hands of Catholic clerics. Feature - More priests' abuse victims speak out

Aegon and the archdiocese of Utrecht, which acted on behalf of the Roman Catholic church in the Netherlands, came to this agreement in 2006, an investigation by NRC Handelsblad and Radio Netherlands Worldwide has shown. If damages exceed a million euros, the Church will have to pay for them itself.

Aegon broke with church after 45 years

The deal ended a long-lasting dispute regarding the coverage offered by the church’s liability insurance policy with Aegon. The Church felt it could claim any damages paid to victims of sexual abuse by priests as bodily damage incurred by them. Aegon refused, saying it did not want to “put a premium on the abuse of minors”.

AUSTRIA
Earth Times

Vienna - Cases of sexual and physical abuse by Catholic clergymen surfaced in Austria on Tuesday, as a boarding school in the Mehrerau abbey confirmed anonymous accusations and a victim spoke out in Salzburg. The revelations came after a series of similar cases in Germany came to light involving Catholic institutions and a non- denominational boarding school.

In Mehrerau in western Austria, one priest had sexually abused a male pupil at the boarding school in the 1980s, Abbot Anselm van der Linde alleged in an interview published on Tuesday.

Another Mehrerau priest sexually abused a young male drug addict in the town of Innsbruck in 2001 while he was studying there, the head of the abbey told the regional daily Vorarlberger Nachrichten.

GERMANY
World Bulletin

Tuesday, 09 March 2010 13:39
Germany's justice minister accused the Vatican on Monday of covering up severe sexual abuse in the Church after fresh reports surfaced at three Catholic schools in Bavaria.

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger called the developments frightening after the cathedral choir in Regensburg, the Benedictine monastery school at Ettal and a Capucian school in Burghausen revealed new cases of sexual and physical abuse.

The revelations followed reports last month that Catholic priests had sexually abused over 100 children at Jesuit schools around Germany, which led to a public apology from Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, head of the German Bishops Conference.

GERMANY
Der Spiegel

In die Debatte um Missbrauchsfälle hat sich nun auch Stephanie zu Guttenberg zu Wort gemeldet und gefordert, dass Straftaten von Priestern und Geistlichen geahndet werden müssten. Die Bundesregierung will zum Runden Tisch einladen. Und auch die Kultusministerkonferenz will sich des Themas annehmen.

[summary]

Stephanie Guttenburg has demanded that crimes committed by priests and clergymen be punished. She is the wife of the Federal Minister of Defense and is president of the child protection organization called Innocence in Danger. Ms. Guttenburg said priests and ministers are citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany and must obey the laws.

GERMANY
Bild

Auch bei den Limburger Domsingknaben (Hessen) soll es sexuellen Missbrauch gegeben haben. Nach Informationen der „Nassauischen Neuen Presse“ hat ein ehemaliges Chormitglied den Bischof Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst angeschrieben. Der Mann berichtete ihm von Übergriffen des damaligen Dirigenten. Dabei geht es um den Zeitraum nach der Gründung des berühmten Knabenchors zwischen 1967 und 1973.

[summary]

An allegation of sexual abuse has been made involving the Limburg Cathedral Boys' Choir. A former choir member wrote to Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst to tell of abuse. The abuse concerns the period from 1967 to 1973. The accused priest died in 2002. Benno Grimm, who handles abuse complaints for the diocese, said so far five priests have been accused and six victims has come forward.

GERMANY
input-aktuelle

Koblenz/D. (red) Aufgrund einer Anzeige des Bistums Limburg führt die Staatsanwaltschaft Koblenz ein Ermittlungsverfahren wegen sexuellen Missbrauchs gegen einen Pfarrer, der Anfang der 90er Jahre in einer Pfarrei des Westerwaldkreises tätig war.

[summary]

The Koblenz prosecutor is investigating a priest who was working in the early 1990s in a parish in the Westerwalk district. The accusations innolved sexual abuse of minors and the priest had admitted to the allegations.

AUSTRIA
Die Presse

Ein Salzburger Erzabt gibt zu, vor 40 Jahren einen Minderjährigen sexuell missbraucht zu haben. Zum Zeitpunkt der Tat sei er 24 Jahre alt und noch nicht Priester gewesen.

[summary]

The wave of abuse cases in the Catholic Church has spilled over into Austria. On Monday, Bruno Becker, abbot of the Salzburg Benedictine Abbey of St. Peter, announced his resignation. More than 40 years ago he was involved in a sexual act with a minor. He was 24 at the time and was not a priest.

GERMANY
Scotsman

By Allan Hall and Christopher Lawton
GERMANY'S justice minister has accused the Vatican of covering up severe sexual abuse after reports of cases at three Catholic schools in the Pope's native Bavaria.

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger called the developments "frightening" after the cathedral choir school in Regensburg – once overseen by Pope Benedict XVI's brother – the Benedictine monastery school at Ettal and a Capucian school in Burghausen revealed new cases of sexual and physical abuse.

"In many schools there was a wall of silence allowing for abuse and violence," Ms Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a secular liberal who has been the government's leading critic of the Church, told a German radio station.

AUSTRALIA
Adelaide Now

Sean Fewster, Court Reporter

A NORTHERN suburbs priest will stand trial after denying allegations he kidnapped a young girl and "compelled" her to perform sex acts for his amusement.

The man, who cannot be identified, made a brief appearance in the District Court this morning.

He pleaded not guilty to one count of kidnapping, two counts of indecent assault and one count of compelling an act of sexual manipulation.

NEW YORK
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Jay Street — Kings County District Attorney Charles J. Hynes announced Monday the conviction of Baruch Lebovits, for sexually abusing a 16 -year-old boy on eight occasions in 2004 and 2005.

Lebovits was convicted on eight counts of Criminal Sexual Act in the Third Degree. When he is sentenced on March 29, he will face up to four years in prison on each count.

The victim knew Lebovits as a rabbi and prominent businessman in the Borough Park community, where they both lived.

By ALEX GINSBERG
Posted: 6:14 PM, March 8, 2010

A Brooklyn jury today convicted an orthodox rabbi of repeatedly sexually abusing a 16-year-old classmate of his son.

The panel of 10 women and two men deliberated less than half a day before finding the rabbi, Baruch Lebovits, 58, guilty of eight counts of sexual abuse.

The jury acquitted him of two counts.

VATICAN CITY
Beliefnet

Monday March 8, 2010
(RNS) Pope Benedict XVI will meet with the head of Germany's Catholic bishops on Friday (March 12) to discuss allegations of widespread sexual abuse of children in the pope's homeland.

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg, president of the German bishops' conference, said through a spokesman that he will brief Benedict on some 170 abuse allegations involving children at Catholic schools. The charges, which surfaced in January, have prompted a possible criminal probe by prosecutors.

In addition, church officials in Regensburg confirmed on Friday (March 5) that a former member of the boys choir there -- which was directed for 30 years by the pope's own brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger -- had filed his own allegation of abuse. Ratzinger said he was unaware of any history of abuse, but that he would be willing to testify to prosecutors.

UNITED KINGDOM
Mail

By Luke Salkeld

A married vicar has been suspended from duty over allegations of an 'improper relationship' with a female member of his congregation.

Reverend Simon Lloyd, 51, the Vicar of Minehead, Somerset, stood down from his post after he was confronted on Friday.

The father-of-one, who has not moved out of the home he shares with wife Susie and their young daughter, will remain suspended while an investigation is carried out.

GERMANY
ABC News

[with audio]

By Rachael Brown

The brother of Pope Benedict XVI has agreed to testify in the sex scandal rocking Germany's Catholic Church.

Former members of the Regensburger Cathedral Choir allege they were sexually and physically abused at two boarding schools attached to the choir.

The pope's brother, Georg Ratzinger, who led the choir for 30 years, says he knows nothing about the alleged abuse cases.

GERMANY
Der Spiegel

Former choirboys of the Regensburger Domspatzen have told SPIEGEL about sexual and physical abuse at two boarding schools attached to the famous Catholic choir. One former choirboy says it's "inexplicable" that the Pope's brother Georg Ratzinger, a former head of the choir, didn't know about it.

The abuse scandal at the Regensburger Domspatzen choir is bigger than had been thought so far. Therapists in and around Munich treated several former choirboys who were traumatized by sexual and other physical abuse.

One man affected told SPIEGEL about cruel rituals in the Etterzhausen boarding school, a preparatory school for younger pupils from which the choir draws its recruits.

He said that at the end of the 1950s the headmaster of the school, a Catholic priest, had dealt out hard physical punishments. He had often practiced what was called "naked beatings" in his private rooms, where boys aged eight or nine had to undress and were beaten by hand. In some cases, the victim said, penetration took place.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

The chairman of the Catholic bishops commission on education has expressed surprise at a speech by the Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe last Friday in which he said that his department “will shortly be providing an initial list of about 10 urban areas that can be used to test the concept of reducing the number of Catholic schools”.

Speaking in Maynooth this afternoon, as the Irish Bishops’ Conference began its three-day Spring meeting, Bishop Leo O’Reilly said that last November, at a meeting of the bishops, the Minister and his officials in Dublin it had been agreed the Department would undertake research on areas where the concept of reducing the number of Catholic schools could be tested out and that they would then get back to the bishops.

“They didn’t do so,” he said, even though Fr Michael Drumm, executive chairman of the Catholic Schools Partnership, had been appointed as mediator by the Church on the matter. “It was a bit of a surprise, in that sense,” he said.

GERMANY
The Associated Press

BERLIN — Germany's justice minister said Monday that a Vatican secrecy rule has played a role in a "wall of silence" surrounding sexual abuse of children.

The Vatican says it wouldn't comment on the criticism from Germany, the homeland of Pope Benedict XVI. Later Monday, Chancellor Angela Merkel praised the German church's effort to respond to a spate of abuse allegations.

IRELAND
The Irish Times

Germany's justice minister accused the Vatican today of covering up severe sexual abuse in the Church after fresh reports surfaced at three Catholic schools in Bavaria.

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger called the developments "frightening" after the cathedral choir in Regensburg, the Benedictine monastery school at Ettal and a Capucian school in Burghausen revealed new cases of sexual and physical abuse.

The revelations followed reports last month that Catholic priests had sexually abused over 100 children at Jesuit schools around Germany, which led to a public apology from Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, head of the German Bishops Conference.

GERMANY
The Times (United Kingdom)

Allan Hall, Berlin

Germany has blamed a “wall of silence” created by the Vatican for hampering investigations into decades of abuse of schoolchildren by Catholic clergy.

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the Justice Minister, said that Vatican secrecy rules, including a 2001 directive requiring even the most serious cases to be investigated first by Church officials, were complicating efforts to shed light on claims of abuse at some of Germany’s most highly regarded schools.

Many of the alleged cases fall outside the 20-year statute of limitations, so abusers are protected from prosecution. Annette Schavan, the Education Minister, said that the limit on sex crimes involving children must be re-examined.

GERMANY
BBC News

Germany's justice minister has criticised the Vatican for what she called a "wall of silence" over recently-emerged abuse allegations.

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said Vatican secrecy rules were complicating investigations of the cases.

Allegations of sexual abuse are being investigated in 18 of Germany's 27 Roman Catholic dioceses.

GERMANY
Catholic Culture

March 08, 2010

Pressure is mounting on Church officials in Germany to provide a thorough accounting of sex-abuse complaints. And the country's justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, has criticized the Vatican for what she called a "wall of silence" regarding the problem.

Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger cited Vatican policies established in 2001, calling for confidential Church investigations of all sex-abuse complaints. However, that policy does not prevent bishops from reporting the complaints to public law-enforcement officials as well.

VATICAN CITY
Catholic.net

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 7, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The Holy See is supporting a German diocese looking into allegations of sexual abuse linked to the boys' choir that Benedict XVI's brother would later direct.

Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller of Regensburg released a statement informing about cases of abuse in the Regensburger Domspatzen from 1958, which have already been legally resolved.

The prelate noted that the cases were from years prior to Monsignor Georg Ratzinger's directing of the choir, which spanned from 1964 to 1994.

ROME
Catholic.net

ROME, MARCH 7, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI today told parishioners of a Roman parish that there is a need to change mentalities, so as to see laypeople as co-responsible for the Church, not merely as collaborators of the clergy.

The Pope made this reflection today when he celebrated Sunday Mass at one of the parishes in the north of the Diocese of Rome, San Giovanni della Croce in Colle Salario.

The Bishop of Rome made various concrete exhortations at the parish.

VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Agency

Vatican City, Mar 8, 2010 / 02:54 pm (CNA).- “Enough! There needs to be a serious house cleaning in our Church. And the Pope is not just going to stand by and watch.” These were the words of Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, that were printed in the pages of Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper on Saturday.

The German cardinal’s strong words followed Friday’s news of abuse in the Diocese of Regensburg’s boy’s choir.

“Sexual abuses of minors by representatives of the clergy are criminal acts, shameful, inadmissible mortal sins,” he said in the interview. They are “ignoble actions, among the darkest of the Church.”