PRIESTS MOLESTING KIDS

What is written in this article took place in early 2018.

More than 1,000 children -- and possibly many more  were molested by hundreds of Roman Catholic priests in six Pennsylvania dioceses, while senior church officials took steps to cover it up, according to a landmark grand jury report released Tuesday. 

The grand jury said it believes the "real number" of abused children might be "in the thousands" since some records were lost and victims were afraid to come forward. The report said more than 300 clergy committed the abuse over a period of decades.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said the two-year probe found a systematic cover-up by senior church officials in Pennsylvania and at the Vatican.

"The cover-up was sophisticated. And all the while, shockingly, church leadership kept records of the abuse and the cover-up. These documents, from the dioceses' own 'Secret Archives,' formed the backbone of this investigation," he said at a news conference in Harrisburg.

Significantly, the report faulted Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the former long time bishop of Pittsburgh who now leads the Washington archdiocese, for what it said was his part in the concealment of clergy sexual abuse. Wuerl defended himself, releasing a statement Tuesday that said he had "acted with diligence, with concern for the victims and to prevent future acts of abuse."

The grand jury scrutinized abuse allegations in dioceses that minister to more than half the state's 3.2 million Catholics. Its report echoed the findings of many earlier church investigations around the country in its description of widespread sexual abuse by clergy and church officials' concealment of it. 

As CBS Pittsburgh reports, the report begins with the following statement: "We, the members of this grand jury, need you to hear this. We know some of you have head some of it before. There have been other reports about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church,. but never on this scale. For many of us, those earlier stories happened someplace else, someplace away. Now we know the truth: it happened everywhere."  

The panel concluded that a succession of Catholic bishops and other diocesan leaders tried to shield the church from bad publicity and financial liability by covering up abuse, failing to report accused clergy to police and discouraging victims from going to law enforcement.

However the grand jury's work might not result in justice for Catholics who say they were molested as children. While the probe yielded charges against two clergymen -- including a priest who has since pleaded guilty, and another who allegedly forced his accuser to say confession after each sex assault -- the vast majority of priests already identified as perpetrators are either dead or are likely to avoid arrest because their alleged crimes are too old to prosecute under state law.

The document comes at a time of renewed scrutiny and fresh scandal at the highest levels of the U.S. Catholic Church. Pope Francis stripped 88-year-old Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of his title and ordered him to a lifetime of prayer and penance amid allegations that McCarrick had for years sexually abused boys and had sexual misconduct with adult seminarians.

Wuerl has come under harsh criticism over his response to the McCarrick scandal, with some commentators questioning his claims of surprise and ignorance over allegations that McCarrick molested and harassed young seminarians. Wuerl replaced McCarrick as Washington's archbishop after McCarrick retired in 2006.

The Pennsylvania grand jury, convened by the state attorney general's office in 2016, heard from dozens of witnesses and reviewed more than a half-million pages of internal documents from the Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton dioceses.

Some current and former clergy named in the report went to court to prevent its release, arguing it violated their constitutional rights to reputation and due process of law. The state Supreme Court said the public had a right to see it, but ruled the names of priests and others who objected to the findings would be blacked out pending a September hearing on their claims. The identities of those clergy members remain under court seal.

A couple of dioceses decided to strip the accused of their anonymity ahead of the report and released the names of clergy members who were accused of sexual misconduct. On Friday, the bishop of Pittsburgh's diocese said a few priests named in the report are still in ministry because the diocese determined allegations against them were unsubstantiated.

                                                  

Hundreds of children in the Altoona–Johnstown Diocese in Pennsylvania were abused by at least 50 different priests or religious leaders over six decades, while two Catholic bishops covered up their crimes, according to a scathing report by a Pennsylvania state investigative grand jury.

The 145-page report, which is based on a two-year investigation of several handwritten notes, letters and documents detailing children being abused by members of the church, shows that Bishop James Hogan and his successor Bishop Joseph Adamec knew of the allegations and did nothing.

“This grand jury found that the actions of Bishops James Hogan and Joseph Adamec failed to protect children entrusted to their care and guidance,” the report said. “Worse yet, these men took actions that further endangered children as they placed their desire to avoid public scandal over the wellbeing of innocent children. Priests were returned to ministry with full knowledge they were child predators.”

Hogan led the diocese of just over 94,000 Roman Catholics from 1966 to 1986 before his death in 2005. Adamec, who took over from him, retired in 2011.

Revelations showed that some priests had habitually sexually abused children and that bishops had systematically covered up these crimes first came to light in 2002 when the Boston Globe reported widespread abuse in the Boston Archdiocese. The latest report comes just days after the Hollywood movie “Spotlight,” which chronicled the Boston Globe investigation, won an Oscar for best picture.

“A conspiracy of silence has deep roots in the Altoona-Johnstown Roman Catholic diocese, and in church law itself, where ‘secret archives’ are used to hide scandalous information, such as sex abuse by priests,” the report said. “Nationally, the sex scandal that started in Boston and spread from coast to coast, has torn down that wall of silence. Now, everyone’s talking, either in court or in the court of public opinion.”

The report contains explicit details of scores of attacks and names perpetrators, many of whom have since died.

In one of the more egregious cases, Francis McCaa — a cleric who spent nearly 40 years in the ministry and died in 2007 — was found to have groped and fondled at least 15 boys aged 8 to 15 between 1961 and 1985, while serving as a parish priest at the Holy Name parish in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania.  At least one of his victims committed suicide.

“Father Francis McCaa was a monster. Yet, McCaa was highly respected within the diocese of Altoona-Johnstown and was given the designation of Monsignor as a sign of respect and trust,” the report said. “Unlike his victims who sought to be saved from McCaa’s torment, Hogan enabled it. Bishop Hogan knew that Francis McCaa had engaged in sex acts with multiple altar boys by 1985. Within a year of Hogan’s meeting with the district attorney’s office, McCaa was reassigned as a hospital chaplain in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Hogan provided McCaa a glowing recommendation for his new post.”

Many of the surviving priests were still serving parishes at the time the investigation began, Pennsylvania State Attorney General Kathleen Kane, whose office made the report public Tuesday, said.

“The Grand Jury has learned that euphemisms like ‘sick leave’ and ‘nervous exhaustion’ were code for moving offending priests to another location while possible attention to a recent claim of child molestation ‘cooled off,’” the report stated.

However, none of the members of the clergy who committed the criminal acts documented in the report can be prosecuted as the statute of limitations has expired.

“This is by no means the end of our investigation. We will continue to look at this matter and consider charges where appropriate, which is why it is so important for those with information to come forward,” Kane said. “At the very least we must continue to shine a light on this long period of abuse and despicable conduct.”

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, says he expects a grand jury report being released  August 2018 on the sexual abuse of children by clergy in six Pennsylvania Roman Catholic dioceses to be critical of his actions as the former long time bishop of Pittsburgh. 

Wuerl, one of the highest-profile cardinals in the United States, wrote to priests in the Washington Archdiocese late Monday, defending himself ahead of the release of a roughly 900-page report that victim advocates call the largest and most exhaustive such review by any U.S. state.

Wuerl contended that he acted diligently to protect children after learning about incidents of abuse in Pittsburgh's diocese when he became bishop in 1988, holding the post for 18 years through 2006.

"It moved me not simply to address these acts, but to be fully engaged, to meet with survivors and their families, and to do what I could to bring them comfort and try to begin a process for healing," Wuerl wrote.

He said he imposed a "zero tolerance" policy for clergy who committed abuse and a process to address allegations.

Wuerl said he hopes "a just assessment of my actions, past and present, and my continuing commitment to the protection of children will dispel any notions otherwise made by this report."

Court records in a largely secret, months-long legal fight over the report say that it identifies more than 300 "predator priests." The grand jury concluded that a succession of Catholic bishops and other diocesan leaders tried to shield the church from bad publicity and financial liability by covering up abuse, failing to report accused clergy to police and discouraging victims from going to law enforcement.

The Pennsylvania report echoes the findings of many earlier church investigations around the country — and in other Pennsylvania dioceses — in its description of widespread sexual abuse by clergy and church officials' concealment of it.

What distinguished this probe was its extraordinary scope: The grand jury scrutinized abuse allegations in six of Pennsylvania's eight dioceses that, collectively, minister to more than half the state's 3.2 million Catholics.

Wuerl said he expects the grand jury's findings from the 70 years it explored will be "profoundly disturbing."

Yet the grand jury's work might not result in justice for Catholics who say they were molested as children. While the nearly two-year probe has yielded charges against two clergymen — including a priest who has since pleaded guilty, and another who allegedly forced his accuser to say confession after each sex assault — the vast majority of priests already identified as perpetrators are either dead or are likely to avoid arrest because their alleged crimes are too old to prosecute under state law.

The document comes at a time of renewed scrutiny and fresh scandal at the highest levels of the U.S. Catholic Church. Pope Francis stripped 88-year-old Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of his title and ordered him to a lifetime of prayer and penance amid allegations that McCarrick had for years sexually abused boys and had sexual misconduct with adult seminarians.

Wuerl has come under harsh criticism over his response to the McCarrick scandal, with some commentators questioning his claims of surprise and ignorance over allegations that McCarrick molested and harassed young seminarians.

Wuerl replaced McCarrick as Washington's archbishop after McCarrick retired in 2006.

The Pennsylvania grand jury, convened by the state attorney general's office in 2016, heard from dozens of witnesses and reviewed more than a half-million pages of internal documents from the Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton dioceses.

Some current and former clergy named in the report went to court to prevent its release, arguing it violated their constitutional rights to reputation and due process of law. The state Supreme Court said the public had a right to see it, but ruled the names of priests and others who objected to the findings would be blacked out pending a September hearing on their claims.The identities of those clergy members remain under court seal.

A couple dioceses decided to strip the accused of their anonymity ahead of the report and released the names of clergy members who were accused of sexual misconduct. The bishop of Pittsburgh's diocese said a few priests named in the report are still in ministry because the diocese determined allegations against them were unsubstantiated.

Summation  

Compounding the problem is the Catholic Church’s teaching of “once a priest, always a priest.” The fact that the “sacred ordination” cannot be invalidated has contributed to a reluctance to defrock pedophile priests. When abusive priests are transferred to different parishes, the same behavior is repeated. Also, lax rule enforcement and cover-ups have encouraged the application of pedophiles to the priesthood. Many pedophiles see the priesthood as a means of easy, unsupervised access to children.

Whatever the cause of the sexual abuse in the church, pedophile priests should be arrested and punished just as any other pedophile would be. Anyone covering up or, by negligence, enabling pedophilia in the church should be prosecuted. A priest who has sexually, abused anyone should never be allowed back into church as a priest as he could most definitely not be considered above reproach.

It is my contention that unbiblical requirement of celibacy on priests in the Roman Catholic Church likely contributes to sexual abuse in that men whom God (if he or she exists) never intended priests to be celibate and for this reason, they are forced into celibacy, resulting in sexual tension and stress. However, the stricture of celibacy is appealing to some men with abnormal sexual tendencies who view the priesthood as a means of keeping their desires under control. These men find that external rules do little to change the heart, and, when they give in to sexual temptations, the result is unnatural sexual acts, such as homosexuality or pedophilia. The irony is that the  Church permits married men to serve as priests of the Catholic Church. I dn’t know of any married priests ever being accused of sexually abusing children in their parish.

The pedophile priest scandal in the Roman Catholic Church is absolutely horrid. There is nothing more antithetical to the message of Christ than priests sexually abusing children. This scandal in a few years ago has awakened the Catholic Church of to the presence of its priests within the Church and to strongly motivate the Church to be fully biblical in all of its beliefs and practices.

The result of this scandal is that hundreds of thousands of parishioners have abandoned the Catholic Church. and the children of the their parents who were sexually abused by Catholic priests  will probably not be  attending a Catholic church.