Free Republic

CANTERBURY, England — The number of Roman Catholic adherents in England and Wales fell by more than 90,000 in 2012, despite a wave of immigrants from Poland and other Eastern European countries with historically Catholic backgrounds. Prominent Catholics say the recent wave of sex abuse scandals involving priests and children is responsible for the decline.

ext week the Chicago Archdiocese will release the names and details of 30 priests involved in sexual misconduct, and the information will grace the bulletins for thousands of Catholics this weekend. The disclosures are part of a settlement agreement ongoing for years. The church notes that most of these cases are from 20 years ago. Cardinal Francis George has written a letter to all priests under his supervision, and requested that his letter be published in this Sunday’s parish bulletins, hoping to get in front of what he explains will be the “the actual records of these crimes.”

The Catholic Diocese of Beaumont recently settled a civil suit alleging a priest abused young boys for 30 years. The suit was filed April 12, 2012, against the diocese and Bishop Curtis Guillory. It alleges the Rev. Ronald Bollich abused six boys in at least three parishes over three decades. Guillory and the diocese were accused of negligence for keeping Bollich on staff when it “knew or should have known he had a propensity to molest boys,” the suit states.

An Afghan girl believed to be 10-years-old says that her brother and his friend forced her to wear a suicide vest and carry out an attack on police. The BBC reported that the girl, named Spogmai, could be as young as eight and is the sister of a prominent Taliban commander known as Zahir. According to Britain’s Daily Telegraph, her brother strapped her into the explosive harness and sent her across a river to her target, a border police checkpoint in Helmand province. In an interview after the ordeal, she said that she shouted “it’s cold and I can’t cross...

On January 16, a Vatican delegation is due to appear before the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child at a hearing in Geneva as part of an investigation into allegations of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy around the world and an alleged system of cover-ups by the Holy See. Pope Francis and the Catholic Church have a clear opportunity to help victims whose lives have been ‘shattered’ by child abuse and help prevent ‘further suffering’, campaigners say.

A Dutch Catholic bishop burned alive in 1937 by Japanese troops for protecting Chinese girls from rape may become the patron saint of sex abuse victims worldwide. Frans Wiertz, who is bishop of Roermond in the southeastern Netherlands, has sent a dossier to the Vatican requesting martyred bishop Frans Schraven be beatified, one step away from becoming a saint, the bishopric said on its website on Monday. Bishop Wiertz "suggests that he be considered as the patron saint of victims of sexual abuse", it said.

Recent revelations of clergy sex abuse cases here and abroad have caused great distress among the people of God. There is simply no excuse for such offenses that can satisfy, and there should not be. The crime is bad enough but further charges of cover up cause even more distress and anger.But while the Church remains in the media focus, questions should also arise in the minds of all observers. Is the Church the only place where such things take place?Are the Church and Catholic Clergy worse offenders than, say, non-Catholic denominations and clergy, or public schools, or sports teams,...

He socked it to her. Eliot Spitzer lusted after violence, a former hooker says in a new tell-all book — revealing in graphic detail how the love gov pinned her to a bed inside a posh, Murray Hill apartment and then gripped her by the neck until she feared for her safety. The violence was scripted by Spitzer, who wanted his hooker to follow a role-play dialogue in which she would pretend she had just taken a self-defense class. The kinky politician would then pretend to test her skills by announcing, “Well, then, let’s see if you learned anything,” and...

An inquiry into child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church has revealed a paedophile priest was allowed to continue teaching at a Sydney school, despite a number of complaints against him. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is examining the church's responses to Raymond Foster and his victims.

A judge has reserved her decision on a further extradition hearing for former Catholic brother Bernard Kevin McGrath who faces hundreds of child sex abuse charges in Australia.

A CATHOLIC priest ran a cult-like group sexually abusing young girls giving them all the surname Brown, as in Charlie Brown from the Peanuts comic strip, the royal commission has been told. Her voice wavering, one member of the group, Joan Isaacs, said Father Francis Derriman told her he was dying and had to have sex with her first. He fathered a child with another girl in the group when she was 17.

Austin residents may not remember much about Louis Cook or Jack Krough, but the two are spurring conversation after they were among 14 priests accused of sexually abusing children identified by the Diocese of Winona Monday. Many residents, including many Pacelli Catholic Schools graduates, were unhappy to hear about the two priests, one of whom taught at Pacelli, but few were willing to speak about the issue.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Thursday ordered the formation of a team of experts to address the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church, in his first major step to tackle a crisis that has plagued it for two decades. The group will consider ways to better screen priests, protect minors and help victims in the face of charges the Vatican has not done enough to guard the vulnerable or make amends.

It's coming up on three years since the Milwaukee Archdiocese declared bankruptcy. Archbishop Jerome Listecki has spent $11 million on lawyers' fees trying to limit the amount of money paid to the more than 500 people who say they were sexually abused by local Catholic clergy. Recently, insurance companies started buying back policies they sold to the archdiocese as a way of limiting liability.

A former Mormon bishop in Riverside County is expected to serve three years in prison for sexually assaulting two teenage girls who attended a Menifee church, prosecutors said. Todd Mitchell Edwards, 49, pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts related to the assault of the teens, ages 16 and 18, as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, said John Hall, a spokesman for the Riverside County district attorney's office. The counts were sexual battery and sexual penetration with a foreign object. In addition to the prison time, Edwards will also have to register as a lifetime sex offender as part...

PROVIDENCE - In a recent investigation, the NBC 10 I-Team obtained through a records request 88 pages detailing sexual abuse by Rhode Island Roman Catholic priests, going back more than 30 years. In each case, a letter detailing allegations of sexual abuse was sent to Rhode Island State Police by the Diocese of Providence. The diocese began the practice around 2003, although there's no legal mandate requiring the letters. A total of 45 letters were sent to state police between 2003 and 2013.

Senior Catholic Church leaders protected pedophiles, allowed them to keep offending and kept Victorians in the dark about the problem. A Victorian parliamentary report is scathing of the church's leadership prior to the 1990s, saying child abuse was trivialised and their protection of pedophiles meant abuse happened when it could have been avoided. Archbishop Denis Hart apologised to victims and said previous responses to abuse cases were inexcusable, calling it the worst betrayal of his lifetime in the church.

MARTINSBURG - A lawsuit filed in Berkeley County against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormon Church, and local church officials accuses church leaders of covering up allegations that the son of local church officials sexually abused 12 children over the course of more than five years. Christopher Michael Jensen, 22, of Cheswick Drive, Martinsburg, was found guilty of one count of first-degree sexual assault and two counts of sexual abuse by a custodian Feb. 6 following a jury trial in Berkeley County Circuit Court. The criminal charges involved only two of the 12...

Church spent heavily to prevent expansion of time limit for lawsuits by childhood sexual abuse victims. The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis was at the forefront of extensive lobbying against efforts to expand the time limit for lawsuits by victims of childhood sexual abuse, according to a document obtained by the Star Tribune.

Twenty former residents of a Catholic boys home in Bedfordshire have now joined a legal action to seek compensation. Detectives are investigating claims of sexual and physical abuse at the St Francis Boys Home, in Shefford. But ex-residents are angry that police files from two previous enquiries have gone missing.