PEDO PRIESTS USA Update March 2016

Priests and church leaders sexually abused hundreds of children in Altoona Diocese: AG office - By Ivey DeJesus

The Pennsylvania Attorney General's office on Monday released a report finding widespread clergy sexual abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese. In this file photo from 2003, Brian Gergely, 33, right, and Kevin Hoover, 30, show old photographs of themselves during a news conference in Altoona. They said the pictures were taken during the time they allege a Roman Catholic priest sexually abused them while they were altar boys. The men, along with three others, were suing the Altoona-Johnstown diocese, Bishop Joseph Adamec, and former Bishop Joseph Hogan, claiming the church should have known about the abuse and was negligent. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic) (KEITH SRAKOCIC/Associated Press)

Hundreds of children were sexually abused over a period of at least four decades by priests or religious leaders in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, a statewide investigating grand jury has concluded.

The findings by the grand jury, released Tuesday by the office of state Attorney General Kathleen Kane, detail widespread abuse involving at least 50 priests or religious leaders. The findings reveal a troubling history of diocesan superiors concealing the child abuse as part of an effort to protect the church's image.

The 147-page report details — at times graphically — accounts of sexual abuse of children at the hands of priests and church leaders. The late Monsignor Francis B. McCaa, the report notes, was "a monster" who groped and fondled the genitals of at least 15 boys, many of them altar boys. McCaa was assigned to Holy Name Church in Ebensburg for more than 20 years.

At least one of his victims committed suicide, the investigation found.

The grand jury found the case of Joseph Gaborek, 70, to be "particularly heinous example of the Diocese exercising authority and influence to cover up the sexual abuse of a child at the hands of a Diocesan priest."

Gaborek, who was assigned to St. Michael's Church in West Salisbury and St. Mary's Church in Pocahontas in the early 1980s, sexually violated a boy after recruiting him to work at the parishes, according to the report. - Pls. CLICK HERE to continue reading..

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Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown's disturbing history of sexual abuse - By Christian Alexandersen 

The legacy of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown will be built on countless stories of child sexual abuse, broken trust and millions of dollars paid for the unforgivable sins of religious leaders. (Shutterstock)

The legacy of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown now will include countless stories of child sexual abuse, broken trust and millions of dollars paid for the sins of religious leaders.

The results of a state grand jury investigation released Tuesday found that hundreds of children were sexually abused and raped by diocese priests and religious leaders over the past 40 years. The widespread acts of abuse were perpetrated by more than 50 priests and religious leaders.

"The heinous crimes these children endured are absolutely unconscionable," said Pa. Attorney General Kathleen Kane on Tuesday in Blair County.

"These predators desecrated a sacred trust and preyed upon their victims in the very places where they should have felt most safe."

Lawsuits costs the diocese millions


Allegations of abuse by priests, and a cover up by diocesan officials, have long been known. - PLS Click HERE to continue reading...

"As many as 100,000 U.S. children may have been the victims of clerical sex abuse, insurance experts said in a paper presented at a Vatican conference in 2012. Some 4,300 members of the Catholic clergy were accused of sexual assault, of which at least 300 have been convicted, according to Bishop Accountability, a private group that has tracked the scandal." - http://www.businessinsider.com/r-as-pope-visit-nears-us-sex-victims-say-church-remains-obstacle-to-justice-2015-9

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The many sins of 'disturbed' priest Peter Searson - By Trevor Marshallsea

Peter Searson became parish priest at Doveton in Victoria in 1984 and was closely involved with the Holy Family school ( The image above is owned by Australian Broadcasting Corp. / Four Corners )

An accused paedophile priest, who threatened a girl with a knife and killed a bird with a screwdriver in front of children, has again been the subject of horrific claims at an Australian inquiry.

(Some readers may find the contents of this article disturbing)

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse has heard many allegations in its two-year history, but none more disturbing than those against Catholic priest Peter Searson.

Apart from allegations of repeated child sex abuse, the late Searson is said to have made children kneel between his legs during confession, tape-recorded confessions he found titillating, killed a cat by swinging it over a fence by its tail, showed children a dead body, shoplifted and misappropriated parish money.

Not for the first time, Searson's name was brought up at the commission on Wednesday when Australia's most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, continued giving evidence.

As the commission heard that the Church failed to act against Searson despite multiple claims of child abuse, Cardinal Pell described him as "one of the most unpleasant priests I have ever met".

This echoed former priest, Philip O'Donnell, who had told the inquiry his former colleague "really was a psychiatrically disturbed man". - Pls Click HERE and continue reading.

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Cardinal denies concealing knowledge of 2 Aussie pedophiles

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The lawyer for an Australian inquiry into child sex abuse suggested on Wednesday that one of Pope Francis' top advisers was lying when he denied knowledge of criminal allegations swirling around two notorious pedophile priests decades ago.

Australian Cardinal George Pell insisted he was telling the truth, testifying to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that he had changed a culture of "crimes and cover-ups" within the Catholic Church.

Pell gave more than 20 hours of evidence at the Child Abuse Royal Commission from a hotel room in Rome (The image above is taken from the article of DANIEL PIOTROWSK  entitled, 'He's a big bully, the best developed narcissist I've ever met': Priest launches extraordinary attack on Cardinal George Pell - who he has known for 30 years -    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3475660/Cardinal-George-Pell-attacked-priest-known-30-years.htm 

Pell, the pope's chief financial adviser, told the royal commission in three days of evidence this week that he was deceived twice by church authorities about child abuse allegations against priests Gerald Ridsdale and Peter Searson.

Pell said that as an assistant priest in the Australian city of Ballarat in the 1970s, Bishop Ronald Mulkearns had not told him that Ridsdale was repeatedly moved within the diocese because of pedophilia allegations.

Pell also said that as an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne in the early 1990s, the Catholic Education Office and Archbishop Frank Little had concealed from him accusations of pedophilia against Searson.

"It's a mystery, but in both cases for some reason, they were covering up," Pell told the inquiry in Sydney via videolink from a Rome hotel.

Commission chairman Peter McClellan told Pell that his evidence of a Catholic Education Office cover-up "makes no sense at all," because the office reported complaints about priests to the archbishop and vicar general.

The lead counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness, told Pell the same evidence was "completely implausible."

Pell's evidence that he was deceived by church authorities in both Ballarat and Melbourne was an "extraordinary position," Furness said.

"Counsel, this was an extraordinary world. A world of crimes and cover-ups and people did not want the status quo to be disturbed," Pell said.

"I not only disturbed the status quo, but when I became archbishop, I turned the situation right around so that the Melbourne Response procedures were light years ahead of all this obfuscation and prevarication and deception," he added, referring a program he initiated in 1996 to pay compensation to clergy-abuse victims.

Pell suspected church authorities kept him in the dark "because they would have feared that I would not accept the status quo."

"They realized very clearly I was not cut from the same cloth," Pell said.

"They might not have been certain I would take decisive action, but they would have been fearful that I would and pretty certain that I would have asked all sorts of inconvenient questions if I'd been better briefed," he said.

Furness put to Pell that he had known about allegations against Ridsdale and that he had been properly briefed by the Catholic Education Office about allegations against Searson. Pell denied both propositions.

Furness accuses the 74-year-old cleric of denying knowledge about the pedophiles as an explanation for his lack of action.

The royal commission — which is Australia's highest form of investigation — is investigating how Pell dealt with abuse allegations as a priest, educator and adviser to Mulkearns, as well as how the Melbourne archdiocese responded to allegations of abuse, including when Pell served as auxiliary bishop.

Mulkearns is dying and is too ill to testify to the royal commission. Little died in 2008.

Ridsdale is in prison on convictions of abusing more than 50 children. The church substantiated four complaints of child sexual abuse against Searson, who died in 2009.

Pell said he accepted that there had been failure of process in handling complaints against Searson.

Pell said he was only "tangentially, marginally" responsible for that failure "because as an auxiliary, you are not part of the official procedures."

"I regret that, even at this stage, I wasn't a bit more vigorous in my questioning or commenting," Pell said.

Wednesday was Pell's third day of testifying to the inquiry, which is investigating decades of abuse within churches and a variety of other organizations.

Two dozen Australian abuse victims and their companions traveled across the globe to witness Pell's testimony in a hotel conference room, a significant show of accountability in the church's long-running abuse saga.

"George Pell has consistently pointed the blame elsewhere, accused everybody of being a liar and deceit. If he is telling the truth, that would make him an extraordinarily ignorant man," David Ridsdale, who was abused for years by his uncle Gerald Ridsdale, told reporters outside the hearing in Rome.

The victims said Wednesday that they had requested a meeting with the pope before they return to Australia on Friday.

Pell will testify for a fourth day on Thursday. 

(SOURCE: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a97db496fa7845f5b1afdb9e21af1e6d/cardinal-says-should-have-done-more-stop-aussie-pedophile )

The Jesuits covered up for an abusive Brother and merely moved him to another school

The Jesuits covered up for an abusive Brother and merely moved him to another school

Jesuit priests and brothers operate some of Australia's most prominent  schools, with famous ex-students such as former prime minister Tony Abbott. After Brother Victor Higgs committed sexual offences against boys at one of these schools (St Ignatius College,  Adelaide), the Jesuits kept Brother Higgs as a member of the Jesuit Order and moved him to their famous Sydney school (St Ignatius College Riverview). One of the Adelaide victims finally reported Brother Higgs to the South Australian police and, on 29 January 2016, Higgs was jailed for some of his Adelaide offences. New South Wales police might now examine Brother Higgs' career in Sydney.

The image above is taken from Part 1: Ex-Jesuit accused of sexual abuse - http://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/investigative/113912-philippine-society-jesus-sex-abuse-case

According to statements made in the Adelaide District Court, Victor Thomas James Higgs was born in the late 1930s, the youngest of nine children. After a period of training with the Jesuits, he became a Brother in the Australia-wide Jesuit religious order in 1963, aged in his twenties. He later spent three years working at St Ignatius College in Athelstone, Adelaide (1968 to 1970, inclusive, when he was aged around 30). He mostly did administrative duties for the school, although he taught some classes (for example, in religious education and in commerce).

After a complaint by a parent in Adelaide, the Jesuits transferred Brother Higgs to St Ignatius Riverview, Sydney, where he spent ten years. The Jesuits kept him as a member of the Jesuit religious order until he retired in Sydney in 2001.

Higgs was interviewed by South Australian police in early 2013 regarding boys from St Ignatius, Adelaide. When charged, Higgs indicated that would plead not guilty, meaning that he would fight the charges in court. Eventually, nearly three years later, he changed his plea to guilty, which meant that no trial would be needed (a judge would merely have to impose a sentence).

On 29 January 2016, Higgs (aged 78) was sentenced in the Adelaide District Court for indecent assault of two boys at St Ignatius Adelaide (one charge for each boy). These were not the only allegations that police had made against Higgs in Adelaide. These two charges were those to which he finally agreed to plead guilty.

Judge Gordon Barrett sentenced Higgs to a maximum jail sentence of two years and three months jail. He said that Higgs would be able to apply for parole after serving one year behind bars.

In his sentencing remarks, Judge Barrett told Higgs:

"The first [charge] involved a boy who would have been about 12 at the time. You took him into your room, made him take down his pants and there fondled his genitals. You did so on the pretext of giving him sexual counselling and assessing his development. You touched him on only that one occasion.

"In relation to the other boy, he was about the same age. He had misbehaved in class. You made him turn up at the canteen where you got him to take his pants down and bend over. He was expecting to be caned for his misdemeanour. Instead you touched his buttocks with a feather duster. The boy asked you what you were doing. You told him to get out. He reported the matter to his parents who raised it with the school. Whether as a result of that report or for some quite other reason, I am not sure, but you left the college in Adelaide and moved to a brother school in Sydney.

"While the two offences consist of a single episode of touching each boy in the ways that I have described, and it is not alleged that you touched other boys, your behaviour has to be seen in a context. That context is that you used to get boys into a private room, make them take down their pants and look at their genitals. You engaged them in sexual talk. All of this, the charged and the uncharged acts, were on the pretext of checking the boys’ development or counselling them, but it is quite plain that you were doing nothing of the sort. You were engaging the boys in this way for your own sexual gratification.

"The reaction of the two boys to your offending is instructive. The first boy appears to have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of another teacher at the school and so it is hard to separate the effects of your offending from the effects of the other teacher’s offending. However, his account of what happened after he came out of your room where you had indecently assaulted him is indicative of the consequences of your offending. Other students noticed the boy come out of the room. They asked him if he had let you touch him. Whatever his response, the other students assumed he had. He was taunted, suggesting he [the boy] was a homosexual. It appears your proclivities were widely known among the students. That boy’s trust in teachers and trust in that school has been damaged forever. It has caused frictions in his own family. When he disclosed what had happened to them, they either did not want to know about it or they told him to get over it. He has continuing anger. In addition, although this may have more to do with the offending by the other teacher, he has had some sensitivities in his personal life.

"The other boy’s reaction was different. He stood up to you. He immediately told his parents. His parents did something about it. He has not provided a victim impact statement. I do not know, but it is possible that he has not been affected in the same way as the first boy. However, that is just chance..."

Judge Barrett said that originally Higgs claimed to the police that, in his encounters with the boys, he had merely been  "counselling" them about sexual matters.

In sentencing, Judge Barrett told Higgs:

"You did tell the police that you had counselled boys about sexual matters, but in that interview there is a surprising lack of insight into your own motivations and the likely harm that you were causing the students. You really conceded no more than that you went about a legitimate task in the wrong way.

"You have entered your guilty pleas at a very late stage...

"I will give you the credit that the law entitles you to for your guilty pleas. It is up to 10%. A more timely guilty plea would have reduced the anxiety of the victims and the witnesses further, and would have entitled you to a greater leniency...

"This is serious offending. It was a breach of trust for you to behave as you did to these boys. If you did not know before, you know now of the consequences that your offending can have, and has had. You are to be sentenced only for two charges to which you have pleaded. Each is a single act of indecent touching but the acts do have to be understood in their context.

"The maximum penalty for indecent assault at the time was seven years imprisonment. I must sentence you on the law as it was then. I will impose one prison sentence for both offences but take both into account. If it were not for your guilty pleas, I would have sentenced you to two-and-a-half years imprisonment. I reduce that by about 10% to two years and three months. I fix a non-parole period of one year.

"The question of suspension [that is, postponing the jail term] is a difficult one. You are elderly and in ill health. You have no other court appearances. In many ways, you have led a productive life. On the other hand, your behaviour was a gross breach of trust. The students and their parents were entitled to your protection, not your abuse.

"I think the offending is too serious for me to be able to suspend the sentence. I have shown what leniency I can in fixing the non-parole period which is lower than I would otherwise have fixed. You will have to serve the sentence. It will begin to run from today."

St Ignatius College, Riverview, Sydney
A Sydney newspaper reported in March 2015 that a retired Jesuit Brother, now in his late seventies, has been accused of committing sexual abuse at St Ignatius College Riverview, Sydney, when he worked there in the 1970s and early 1980s. A former Riverview student lodged this complaint with the Catholic Church authorities in 2004 but (according to the church) he did not want to report this Brother to the police, the newspaper said. Therefore, the retired Brother has not been charged by police in court in New South Wales.

Riverview has a long list of well-known ex-students who have gone on to carve out distinguished careers in politics, law and professional sport. Former students include former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, federal minister for agriculture Barnaby Joyce and former NSW Premier Nick Greiner. Others include Chief Justice Tom Bathurst of the Supreme Court of New South Wales and Australian Test fast bowler Jackson Bird.

Likewise, St Ignatius College Adelaide has some famous ex-students, including former federal Coalition leader Brendan Nelson, federal Coalition minister Christopher Pyne and leading legal figures like Federal Court Judge Anthony Besanko.

SOURCE: http://www.brokenrites.org.au/drupal/node/392

PLS WATCH THIS VID: Fiona Barnett tells Her Story [Survivor Trigger Warning - Graphic]

Protecting paedophile priests goes back to canon law

Richard Ackland, Sydney Morning Herald columnist, Posted on June 12, 2014

Gave evidence to the special commission in Newcastle: Father Brian Lucas. Photo: Darren Pateman

How is it that the Catholic Church has not only harboured so many paedophile priests but strenuously covered up their criminal activities? 

This conspiracy exists not only in Australia but in other countries where the Catholic Church functions. We've seen the same pattern in Ireland, Britain and the US. It is a cover-up on a global scale. 

With the work of the royal commission into child sexual abuse and the Newcastle Maitland special commission we've been hearing, almost on a daily basis, of senior priests protecting the worst sort of offenders, failing to report them to the civil authorities, moving them around when things got hot, and generally being part of what can only be described as a large-scale criminal protection racket. 

In his evidence to the special commission in Newcastle, Father Brian Lucas said that the obligation to report a serious crime depended on the wishes of the victim. The other rabbit hole of escape was that the secrecy of the confessional overcomes obligations to the criminal law. 

This week the Marist Brothers in Canberra have been the focus of the McClellan royal commission, and the story is the same – protection of clergy against whom allegations of paedophilia have been made and giving victims the most incredible run-around. 

But why? Why has the church taken that course of action instead of expelling these creepy "groomers and touchers" and sending them off to the police with a file note listing all the complaints against them?

It is puzzling, until you read Kieran Tapsell's just published book, Potiphar's Wife. 

Tapsell is a retired Sydney lawyer who also studied for the priesthood, with canon law as his special interest – and it is here that he locates the problem. 

You have to go back to the book of Genesis to work out who Potiphar and his wife were. Mrs Potiphar must have been the first recorded person to have accused her victim of rape, after unsuccessfully trying to seduce him. 

It is not as though the civil law has had a relaxed attitude to the sexual abuse of children, but current church law does. 

Yet, it wasn't always so. For 1500 years the Catholic Church stripped abusing priests of their office and status and handed them over to the state for punishment.

It was not until 1904 that Pope Pius X created a commission with the job of unifying the canon law code and tossing out unwanted bits. One of the discarded decrees was the one requiring priests who abused children to be sacked and prosecuted. 

In 1922, Pope Pius XI issued Crimen Sollicitationis, which imposed the secret of the holy office. Priests who were meddlesome in the worst ways imaginable were to be kept under wraps. 

This was subsequently confirmed in 1962. In 1974 the "secret of the holy office" was rebadged as the "pontifical secret". 

It was confirmed again in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. Later Benedict XVI (the German pope) conveniently declared the secrecy provisions extended to allegations of priests having sex with intellectually disabled people. 

By 2010, the scandals of paedophile priests were well and truly on the front page. The heat was on, so the Vatican got busy and came up with a harmless amendment to the established code. A restricted form of reporting to the civil authorities was permitted, but only where the civil law required it. 

Oddly enough, all Australian states have mandatory reporting for children at risk under 18 years of age. Only NSW has mandatory reporting for all abuse, including historic abuse. 

The principle was that the morality of the community was by now well enough entrenched so that serious crimes would be reported anyway, and there no longer needed to be a broad legislative requirement to do so. 

Tapsell says: "The leaders of the church did not share that moral sense when it came to priests sexually assaulting children." 

The response of the Vatican to the report of the Irish commission of investigation into priestly abuse of children, headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, was instructive. 

Benedict XVI had given the Dublin report "careful study" and was "deeply disturbed" by its contents. 

Three months later, the Pope released a pastoral letter in which he laid the blame at the feet of the Irish bishops for not applying "the long established norms of canon law". 

Yet it was those very norms of secrecy that the bishops had sworn to uphold to protect abusing priests. 

Certainly, there was no mention in the pastoral letter that the canon law was largely responsible for protecting these abusers. Nor was there any suggestion that this particular part of the code would be abolished, including the bit that makes it almost impossible to dismiss a priest without the priest's consent. 

Hence, Father Brian Lucas' day job, as he unfortunately expressed it, of "seducing" priests to resign. 

Twitter: @JustinianNews

SOURCE: The Sydeney Morning Herald

Jesuit Pedophiles... GUILTY!

Jesuit priest at Adelaide St Ignatius' College admits to child pornography offences
By court reporter James Hancock - Updated Thu 6 Mar 2014, 2:53pm AEDT

A Jesuit priest and teacher at Saint Ignatius' College in Adelaide has admitted to child pornography offences. Father Stan Hogan, 69, has pleaded guilty to accessing child pornography and an aggravated count of possessing child pornography. The offences happened between April-June 2012 and last August at suburban Athelstone.

Hogan was suspended from the college after his arrest last August. A publication by the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide said Hogan was ordained in 1976 and also taught at schools in Victoria and New South Wales.

He is to be sentenced in the Adelaide District Court, where there will be a further hearing next month. The Jesuits have issued a statement saying Hogan acted alone and has had no contact with the college since the time he was arrested.

Statement from the Jesuits

A Jesuit priest, Fr Stan Hogan, today has pleaded guilty in an Adelaide court to two criminal charges: the use of the internet to view and download child pornography and to possession of child pornography.
Fr Hogan was suspended from all duties at St Ignatius’ College, Adelaide, as soon as these matters were brought to the attention of Jesuit authorities last August, when Fr Hogan was arrested. Since that time he has been on bail living away from the school, under supervision and where he will continue to live until sentenced. He has been allowed no contact with the College nor anyone in the wider community. Fr Hogan acted alone and there is no suggestion that his crimes are connected with anyone else. The Province has co-operated with the police and fully supports the due application of the

[caption id="attachment_2090" align="alignright" width="300"] PHOTO: Stan Hogan admitted his offending (ABC News: James Hancock)[/caption]

law. The welfare of all people served by ministries of the Australian Jesuit Province is paramount. Children in particular are owed special care and everything possible is done in our ministries to protect and nurture children at all times. Jesuits and lay friends and colleagues with whom Fr Hogan has worked are deeply shocked to learn of his crimes, which are an abuse of the children involved and a betrayal of them and of the wider community he was expected to serve. Child exploitation offences are serious crimes involving the sexual abuse of the children portrayed, and are morally repugnant. - Father Stephen Curtin, Provincial of the Jesuits (Source: ABC.net.au)

A Jesuit priest pleads guilty to offences against children

A Catholic priest in the Jesuit Order, Father David Rankin (now aged 79), is pleading guilty to historical acts of indecency on young boys in Sydney. The offences occurred in the 1960s when Rankin was a lay teacher before he joined the priesthood.

On 30 April 2014, Father Rankin (full name Gregory David Rankin) appeared in Sydney's Downing Centre District Court for pre-sentence proceedings. He confirmed his guilty plea.

He is scheduled to be sentenced on a later date.

According to court documents, David Rankin was a lay teacher at Northbridge Primary School in northern Sydney when he committed 11 acts of indecency on three boys in the 1960s.

The court documents said Rankin molested one boy after volunteering to tutor the 11-year-old after school in late 1963. The abuse continued at tri-weekly tutoring sessions the following year.

On one occasion, Rankin drove the boy to another school in Manly to commit an assault.

Rankin told the victim he loved him and gave him money on a number of occasions.

He swore the boy to secrecy, warning that he and the boy would both “get into big trouble” if the incidents were discovered.

About the same time, the offender molested two other boys during rehearsals for school musicals.

Both of those victims gave statements to police in 2012, leading to Rankin’s arrest.

The other victim told a number of family members of the abuse, but did not report it to police until 2009.

Footnote
Gregory David Rankin joined the Jesuits as a mature-age entrant in the early 1970s. The Jesuits are an Australia-wide organisation. In the Australian Catholic Directory, Reverend David Rankin, SJ, has been listed at Jesuit addresses in Melbourne (at the Jesuits' parish in Hawthorn), Sydney and Canberra. In some years he has been listed as living overseas (it is believed that his overseas locations included Canada and London).

According to a newspaper report, Father David Rankin spent some years in Canberra, most recently as a hospital chaplain.

In 2010, aged in his seventies, David Rankin was reported to be living in a Jesuit house in Canberra. On 13 October 2010 a Jesuit newsletter published this news item (under the heading "A trinity of jubilees"):

"On Sunday October 10 [in 2010], John Eddy, Frank Brennan and David Rankin celebrated significant anniversaries at the Jesuit residence in Yarralumla, Canberra.

"John Eddy, the doyen of the community who has spent most of his life as a Jesuit at the Australian National University in Canberra, celebrated his sixtieth anniversary as a Jesuit. David Rankin celebrated his fortieth anniversary as a Jesuit. Frank Brennan celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of his ordination as a Priest.

"Special guests at the celebrations included Australian Jesuit Provincial Fr Steve Curtin and the former Australian Prime Minister, Hon Kevin Rudd MP.

"The afternoon tea also offered guests the opportunity to see the renovations at the Yarralumla residence, which will enhance its value as a centre of ministry."

In April 2014, the Jesuits' Australian provincial-superior (Father Steve Curtin) told the media that David Rankin was removed from active ministry after the Jesuits learned of charges against him when he was arrested in August 2012.

Fr Curtin said David Rankin moved to a Jesuit community in Victoria where he is under supervision in compliance with his bail conditions.

In the mid-2013 edition of the Australian Catholic Directory, the Jesuit listings included:
"RETIRED - Rev. David Rankin SJ."

SOURCE: BRA

You can also read - JESUIT PEDOPHILE RINGS -Pls. Click Here.

John Paul's Legacy Stained by Sex Abuse Scandal

Pope John Paul II is rightly credited with having helped bring down communism, of inspiring a new generation of Catholics with a globe-trotting papacy and of explaining church teaching on a range of hot-button issues as Christianity entered its third millennium.

But the sexual abuse scandal that festered under his watch remains a stain on his legacy.

John Paul and his top advisers failed to grasp the severity of the abuse problem until very late in his 26-year papacy, even though U.S. bishops had been petitioning the Holy See since the late-1980s for a faster way to defrock pedophile priests.

The experience of John Paul in Poland under communist and Nazi rule, where innocent priests were often discredited by trumped-up accusations, is believed to have influenced his general defensiveness of the clergy. The exodus of clergy after the turbulent 1960s similarly made him want to hold onto the priests he still had.

Pope Francis has inherited John Paul's most notorious failure on the sex abuse front — the Legion of Christ order that John Paul and his top advisers held up as a model. Francis, who will canonize John Paul on Sunday, must decide whether to sign off on the Vatican's three-year reform project, imposed after the Legion admitted that its late founder sexually abused his seminarians and fathered three children.

Yet the Legion's 2009 admission about the Rev. Marcial Maciel's double life was by no means news to the Vatican.

Documents from the archives of the Vatican's then-Sacred Congregation for Religious show how a succession of papacies — including that of John XXIII, also to be canonized Sunday — simply turned a blind eye to credible reports that Maciel was a con artist, drug addict, pedophile and religious fraud.

By 1948, seven years after Maciel founded the order, the Holy See had documents from Vatican-appointed envoys and bishops in Mexico and Spain questioning the legitimacy of Maciel's ordination (by his uncle, after Maciel was expelled by a series of seminaries), noting the questionable legal foundation of his order and flagging his "totalitarian" behavior and spiritual violations of his young seminarians.

The documents show the Holy See was well aware of Maciel's drug abuse, sexual abuse and financial improprieties as early as 1956, when it ordered an initial investigation and suspended him for two years to kick a morphine habit.

Yet for decades, thanks to Maciel's ability to keep his own priests quiet, his foresight to place trusted Legion priests in key Vatican offices and his careful cultivation of Vatican cardinals, Mexican bishops and wealthy, powerful lay Catholics, Rome looked the other way. Vatican officials were impressed instead by the orthodoxy of his priests and Maciel's ability to attract new vocations and donations.

John Paul, who in 1994 praised Maciel as an "efficacious guide to youth," wasn't alone in being duped. His top advisers were some of Maciel's fiercest supporters, convinced that the accusations against him were the typical "calumnies" hurled at the greatest of saints. They were swayed instead by numerous testimonies from bishops and others of his greatness — documentation which also features in the Vatican archives.

Two years after the Vatican sentenced Maciel to a lifetime of penance and prayer for sexually abusing his seminarians, John Paul's No. 2, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, in 2008 was still praising the spirit of Maciel and his "humility" in stepping aside after the Vatican finally confronted him with the accusations.

John Paul's prefect of the Congregation for Religious, Cardinal Franc Rode, told Legion priests that same year he had absolved Maciel and praised the good "fruits" that Maciel's Legion had given the church.

"The fruit is good. The fruit is extraordinarily good. It is excellent," Rode said, according to his November 2008 speech made public online by Mexico's El Zocalo newspaper. "Can we say the tree is bad then? Purely from a logical standpoint, I would say no. I absolve Father Maciel. I do not judge him."

Maciel's fraud, one of the greatest scandals of the 20th-century Catholic Church, raises uncomfortable questions for today's Vatican about how so many people could have been duped for so long. It also brings into question how the church's own structure, values and priorities enabled a cult-like order to grow from within and how far accountability for all the harm done should go.

Finally, it begs the question of whether the order has really been purged of the abuses that allowed generations of priests to subject themselves to blind obedience to a false prophet.

In his 2013 book "I Lived With a Saint," John Paul's longtime Polish aide, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, said his pope knew "nothing, absolutely nothing" about Maciel's misdeeds.

"For him, he was still the founder of a great religious order and that's it. No one had told him anything, not even about the rumors going around," wrote Dziwisz, the leading force behind John Paul's remarkably fast canonization.

He blamed the Vatican's "extremely bureaucratic structure" for preventing such information from reaching John Paul and denied that his pope was slow to react to the abuse scandal.

Juan Vaca begs to differ.

Vaca was the Legion's superior in the U.S. from 1971-1976, when he left the order and joined the diocese of Rockville Center, New York. In 1979, a year after John Paul was elected, Vaca's bishop sent the Congregation for Religious a bombshell set of documents in which Vaca and another ex-Legion priest detailed the sexual abuse they and some 19 other priests and seminarians had endured at Maciel's hands.

He later was one of a half-dozen former Legionaries who brought a canonical case against Maciel at the Vatican in 1998. It took eight years — and the death of John Paul — for Pope Benedict XVI to sanction Maciel.

"I feel once more outraged, furious with feelings of deception and rebellion at the circus process to make 'saint' a pope who did nothing to preserve the Catholic Church and society from the horrendous crisis inflicted upon them by the Catholic clergy sexual abuse," Vaca told The Associated Press in an email.

Vaca questioned why Francis was "following the same dubious decision — initiated by Benedict XVI — to make a saint with such an urgency a personality who was involved either in a voluntary complicity or in responsible ignorance in reference to Maciel."

Source: Naharnet.com

Pope Francis accused of cover-up in Dominican Republic pedophile scandal

Pope Francis is accused of attempting to cover-up a church pedophile scandal in the Dominican Republic after Archbishop Josef Wesolowski, the papal nuncio in Santo Domingo and alleged pedophile, was secretly removed from his post without the Vatican sharing the news with the public.

A statement issued Thursday, Sept. 5, by Barbara Dorris, outreach director for the US-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), condemned Pope Francis:

    "Like all of his predecessors, Pope Francis is acting belatedly, secretively and recklessly. Catholic officials act only when forced to do so by media pressure. When they do act, they act secretively — in this case, by not disclosing the allegations, the suspension or the reason for the suspension.

In an attempt at damage control, a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, confirmed that Archbishop Josef Wesolowski had been removed from his post and that the church was conducting an investigation of him. He declined to provide any details about the accusations against the Polish-born prelate

Authorities in the Dominican Republic report they are investigating allegations of child sex abuse against Wesolowski. Attorney General Francisco Dominguez Brito told reporters at a news conference that the investigation was in its initial stages and largely in response to media reports of allegations of sexual misconduct by Wesolowski

Wesolowski's sudden and secretive departure from the Dominican Republic has been the cause of feverish speculation in local media. Dominican television is reporting that Wesolowski had “slept” in the same room as several altar boys at his beach house.

The Dominican press also reports that Wesolowski had sex for money with underage boys in the "Zona colonial," the historic center of Santo Domingo.

Wesolowski, a 65-year-old Pole who has been the papal envoy in Santo Domingo for five years, was ordained in 1972 by the then Archbishop of Krakow, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, who later became Pope John Paul II.

Wesolowski was secretly relieved of duties without the Vatican sharing the news with the public on August 21.

Source: http://www.examiner.com/