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Next Thursday, as the rest of us tuck into our turkey feasts, hundreds of needy families in Southern California will open "Boxes of Love." Delivered by several churches led by Pacific Crossroads in Santa Monica, Calif., the boxes contain ingredients for a Thanksgiving meal for six. They allow impoverished families to skip food lines and neighborhood pantries and enjoy the holiday in their own homes. What's unusual about the Pacific Crossroads congregation—and what underpins efforts such as Boxes of Love—is its theologically conservative raison d'être. A member church of the Presbyterian Church in America, Pacific Crossroads is committed to Reformation...

DALLAS (June 27, 2011) – Tomorrow night, “Dan Rather Reports” uncovers the dark and disturbing past of a priest who joined the Los Angeles Archdiocese, even as church leaders were promising to address its swelling clergy abuse scandal. The priest, Father Fernando Lopez-Lopez, went on to molest at least three teenage boys in his Los Angeles parish. Our report shows there were warning signs from a prior post in Italy that Lopez was trouble — signs that were missed by church officials in Los Angeles, even as its leader, Cardinal Roger Mahony, was pledging a new “zero tolerance” policy on...

An Illinois judge sharply criticized the Jesuit order in a ruling issued yesterday for not taking adequate steps to rein in defrocked priest and twice-convicted child molester Donald McGuire, asserting that McGuire was preying on teenage boys "right under the noses" of his superiors and that rules established to protect minors from him were "a sham." The ruling allows punitive damages to be levied against the Jesuits if they lose a lawsuit over McGuire's four-decade career as a predator priest that is now pending in Cook County Circuit Court. The lawsuit names as a defendant the Chicago Province of the...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Priest sex abuse victims are urging prosecutors in Jackson, Buchanan and Clay Counties to convene grand juries to investigate whether Catholic church hierarchy concealed crimes in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph. In a letter dated Friday, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests also asked for the cancellation of a weekend march in support of Bishop Robert Finn. Finn has apologized repeatedly for not taking action earlier in the case of a Kansas City-area priest charged with possessing child pornography. A federal lawsuit claims the diocese and Finn tried to cover up the priest's...

The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops on Thursday resisted calls for major changes in their child sex abuse policy despite recent cases involving priests in Kansas City and Philadelphia. Critics say those cases raise questions about whether some bishops are even following the policy, which was crafted nine years ago to address the sex abuse crisis that was rocking the church. The critics reacted swiftly after Thursday’s 187-5 vote, which approved a few revisions, including listing child pornography as a violation of church law. “We are dismayed that the new policy is almost identical to the current policy, despite horrifying recent...

U.S. Catholic bishops voted Thursday to approve minor changes to their child protection charter amid several new scandals over bishops who have failed to follow it, after a key advisory committee warned that without more clear, direct responses, they risked undoing their progress on the issue. On Tuesday, the bishops' conference was urged to "speak publicly and provide clear, accurate and honest information," said the report from the National Advisory Council, a demographically representative advisory board of 45 Catholics from across the U.S. The warning was delivered by Bishop William Skurla, the board's liaison to the bishops, at their summer...

The criminologists hired by the nation's Roman Catholic bishops to study the sexual abuse crisis in the church defended their findings on Wednesday at the bishops' headquarters - in particular their thesis that the abuse peaked in the 1960s and 1970s and dropped off significantly by the mid-1980s. Sexual abuse victims and experts in the field began to absorb and criticize what is thought to be the most extensive study ever conducted of child sexual abuse within an institution, produced after five years by researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York....

It was one of the more searing allegations in the recent Philadelphia grand jury report on clergy sex abuse: A Bristol Township man killed himself after the Archdiocese of Philadelphia refused to believe that a priest had molested him when he was an altar boy. On Wednesday, relatives of the man, Daniel Neill, became the latest to sue the archdiocese over its response to abuse victims. Neill shot himself in June 2009. "It's a wrongful death is what it is," said Jeff Anderson, a lawyer for Neill's family. The grand jury cited the handling of Neill's complaint as one of...

I was very glad and fortunate to have as my first post, an interview with a seasoned journalist from Kenya, who was a close personal friend of Barrack Hussein Obama, Senior, and a familiar associate of Sarah Obama, the US President’s co-grandmother. One of the first things to strike my interest was actually a peripheral minor detail. Perhaps you noticed it too. The currently recognized president of the United States of America, is Barack Hussein Obama; his father is Barrack Hussein Obama. Notice that? What’s in a name? In this name “Barack”, spelt with 1 letter “r”, there is a...

Catholic Church quietly closes sexual abuse case and retires priest with pension; priest’s accusers furious The priest's accusers accused the church of The Catholic Church of Denmark is being criticised for secrecy and inaction in its handling of the cases of several priests accused of sexual abuse against young men. The complaints follow the announcement by the church on Sunday that it had completed its last and most extensive investigation into the case of a priest who was suspended in April 2010 after being accused by five separate people of indecent exposure and sexual abuse. In a brief statement the...

The Archdiocese of St. Paul has a list of 33 priests accused of sexually abusing minors. But, unlike a similar list of priests revealed this week by St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, the St. Paul priests will remain unnamed. St. John's released the names of 17 monks who have faced credible allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct as part of a lawsuit settlement. Victims' rights advocates have pushed to make such lists public for years. Roman Catholic archdioceses in Milwaukee, Chicago and Baltimore are among those that have revealed the names of accused priests...

Jesuit leaders in Chicago largely ignored or kept secret numerous reports, spanning four decades, that a prominent priest was sexually abusing teenage boys, lawyers for victims charged on Monday in a motion for punitive damages in a Chicago court. Included in the motion were more than 65 recently obtained church documents and depositions that, the lawyers said, demonstrated “a reckless disregard for the safety of others in the face of repeated reports of sexual misconduct” on the part of Chicago Jesuit leaders. The former priest, Donald J. McGuire, now 80, was convicted on several counts of sex abuse in state...

Bill Maher should be fired. It's not acceptable that in this country in 2011 a mother of five children should be called such a disgusting name on television. When Imus only chuckled at someone else's comment of "nappy-headed ho's" he was immediately dismissed. Why? Because blacks threatened to boycott CBS. And guess what? Boycotts work. Where is the boycott of Time-Warner after Maher's insane remarks? Anyone with a pencil or a computer should contact Time Warner and tell them we're going to boycott all Time Warner television shows, films and products until Maher is ousted for his foul comment last...

At an intensely combative and vitriolic hearing Friday afternoon in a sex-abuse case that has shaken the Philadelphia Archdiocese to its core, a state court judge shocked one priest's defense attorney by disclosing that the government thinks he might be a witness as a former seminarian and could be disqualified from the case. The lawyer, who represents one of three current and former Roman Catholic priests charged with raping boys in their parish, fired back that prosecutors were being "anti-Catholic" and had uttered an "abomination." Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes told defense attorney Richard DeSipio that she's received information that "might...

Three Roman Catholic priests, an ex-priest and a teacher are heading for trial in a sex abuse case after a Philadelphia judge upheld all charges. The judge is denying defense lawyers the chance to fight the evidence at a preliminary hearing. Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes says a 124-page grand jury report demonstrates probable cause, even on newly added conspiracy charges. She is also issuing a gag order. The case is drawing attention because prosecutors for the first time charged a church official with child endangerment for allegedly transferring problem priests to new parishes. Monsignor William Lynn faces up to 28...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska A clergy organization representing Jesuit priests in Western states has reached a $166.1 million agreement to settle approximately 524 claims of clergy sex abuse. The settlement is one of the largest in U.S. history relating to the Roman Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal. Under the settlement, the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus -- which represents Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Alaska and Montana -- will pay $48.1 million into a trust for the victims, while one of its insurance carriers will pay $118 million. In addition, the society will publicize the names of perpetrators, issue a written apology...

They are called the Amazon Warriors, the Lady Hawks, the Valkyries, the Durgas. There is something positively mythological about a group of strong women swooping down to shake the president out of his delicate sensibilities and show him the way to war. And there is something positively predictable about guys in the White House pushing back against that story line for fear it makes the president look henpecked. It is not yet clear if the Valkyries will get the credit or the blame on Libya. But everyone is fascinated with the gender flip: the reluctant men — the generals, the...

When Bill Clinton officially began his post-presidency in Harlem in 2001, he was greeted with open arms — thousands of them. At a plaza near his new office, at 55 West 125th Street, a crowd of 2,000 residents and civic leaders gathered on a hot July afternoon to celebrate the arrival of a neighbor whose presence, two blocks from the landmark Apollo Theater, seemed to put a presidential stamp of approval on the neighborhood’s revival. In his speech there in 2001, Mr. Clinton said, “Harlem always struck me as a place that was human and alive, where there was a...

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced Tuesday that it had suspended 21 priests from active ministry in connection with accusations that involved sexual abuse or otherwise inappropriate behavior with minors. The mass suspension was the single-most sweeping in the history of the sexual-abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, said Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, which archives documents from the abuse scandal in dioceses across the country. The archdiocese’s action follows a damning grand jury report issued Feb. 10 that accused the archdiocese of a widespread cover-up of predatory priests, stretching over decades, and said that as...

WILLIAM LYNN FIRST HIGH-RANKING CHURCH OFFICIAL TO FACE CHILD ENDANGERMENT CHARGES; DOZENS ACCUSED OF ABUSE REMAIN IN ACTIVE MINISTRY (CBS News) Phil Gaughan can't bring himself to talk about it in detail, but said when he was a teenager, he was sexually abused by a catholic priest, reports CBS News correspondent Elaine Quijano. "It just can't happen to anybody else," Gaughan said. "Nobody should have deal with what I've dealt with for 15 years, the way that I felt and no child should ever have to go through this again." After years of silence, Gaughan is publicly filing suit against...