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READING, Pa. — Pennsylvania overhauled its child sexual abuse laws Tuesday more than a year after a grand jury report showed the cover-up of hundreds of cases of abuse in most of Pennsylvania’s Roman Catholic dioceses over the last seven decades. The central bill signed by Gov. Tom Wolf gives future victims of child sex abuse more time to file lawsuits and to end time limits for police to file criminal charges. The grand jury report spurred several states to change their laws and other states to begin similar investigations.

'What have I failed to do?' - Pope leads bishops in abuse crisis examination of conscience Vatican City, Feb 23, 2019 / 11:38 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Saturday led the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences in a penitential liturgy and examination of conscience on their failures in handling abuse within the Catholic Church.“For three days we have spoken to each other and listened to voices of victim survivors about the crimes that children and young people have suffered in our Church,” the pope said to bishops Feb. 23.“We have asked each other: how can we act responsibly and what...

Because I never see any news about pedo priests in other countries. Does Canada have the same problem, e.g.?ff

HOUSTON (AP) — As U.S. Catholic leaders head to the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis about a growing church abuse crisis, the cardinal leading the delegation has been accused by two people of not doing enough to stop a priest who was arrested this week on sexual abuse charges. The two people told The Associated Press that they reported the priest and met with Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. One of them says she was promised in a meeting with DiNardo, several years after she first reported abuse, that the priest would be removed from any...

New York and New Jersey have launched new probes into sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in light of Pennsylvania’s recent grand jury report. New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, moved by the Pennsylvania report on child sexual abuse, subpoenaed all eight dioceses in the state for information and documents regarding any allegations of sexual abuse, payments to alleged victims, and church investigation findings. Gurbir Grewal, the attorney general of New Jersey, meanwhile, announced the formation of a special task force assigned to investigate the way seven dioceses have handled sexual abuse allegations. (RELATED: Main Org For Catholic Business Owners...

Following weeks of pressure for Pope Francis to respond to accusations that he played a role in the cover-up of a Catholic Church pedophile ring, the pontiff finally spoke up on the scandal by referring to the victims of abuse as a "pack of wild dogs." During Mass at the Vatican’s Sanctae Marthae guesthouse, the Pope raised the issue by likening the latest child abuse scandal to a biblical story where Jesus is driven out of town by a pack of wild dogs.

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 28, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò is a “man of integrity” and “whistle blower,” whose secret letters to Pope Benedict XVI exposed corruption in the Vatican in 2012, EWTN World Over host Raymond Arroyo told Fox News viewers on Monday. In a segment on The Ingraham Angle (view below), Fox News host Laura Ingraham and Raymond Arroyo discussed the explosive charges against Pope Francis and the reaction to the Viganò revelations. Archbshop Viganò “was the Vatican Nuncio to the United States for about five years,” from 2011-2016, Arroyo explained to viewers. Prior to his post in Washington...

CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, Pa. - As pressure grows to have Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s name removed from North Catholic High School, the school’s sign was vandalized. On Monday morning, it was discovered that someone sprayed red spray paint over “Cardinal Wuerl” on the sign. The school’s principal, Luke Crawford, said the vandalism happened sometime between 8 p.m. Sunday and 6 a.m. Monday. Cranberry Township police are investigating. Monday marked the first day of school for students, who have the option of wearing the normal Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic uniform or opting for a plain white or red polo shirt or white oxford,...

* Church of England suggests offering transgender Christians re-christenings * Move is believed to provoke a furious backlash among some traditionalists* Last year committee said rules that might stop people changing sex should be abolishedThe Church of England yesterday suggested it will offer transgender Christians ‘re-christenings’ with their new names. Vicars cannot re-baptise those who have changed sex but could use existing ‘services of welcome’ to announce a new name before God, the most senior official said. The advice is likely to be endorsed next month by the Church’s parliament, the General Synod. It will ease pressure on Archbishop of...

1.Priestly celibacy is not the issue – married men are more likely to abuse children than unmarried 2.Most child abuse takes place within the home. 3.All religious groups have pedophile scandals, and the Catholics (while the largest religious group) are at the bottom of the list statistically. 4.Child abuse is prevalent in all areas of society: schools, youth organizations, sports, etc. 5.Statistically, of all the professions, Christian clergy are least likely to offend. Doctors, Farmers and Teachers are the professions most likely to abuse children–not clergy. 6.Among clergy offenders Catholic priests are least likely to offend. 7.Catholic cases of pedophilia...

Church officials say that Pope Francis is likely to meet with victims of sexual abuse by priests when he comes to America this week — a sign of continuing turmoil and mistrust among Catholic parishioners following a series of scandals. And when critics call for more transparency and accountability, it’s Cardinal Bernard Law they often point to. Law was forced to resign as bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston after a series of stories by a team of investigative reporters at The Boston Globe found victims and uncovered documents showing that church authorities had protected pedophile priests from prosecution —...

A South African cardinal who helped elect Pope Francis has described paedophilia as a psychological illness and not "a criminal condition". The Catholic Archbishop of Durban, Wilfrid Fox Napier, said that people who were abused as children and became paedophiles were not criminally responsible for their actions in the same way as somebody "who chooses to do something like that". Cardinal Napier, who was among the 115 cardinals in the conclave at the Vatican that elected Pope Francis earlier this week, called paedophilia a "psychological disorder". He said: "What do you do with disorders? You have got to try and...

Many years ago, Harvard sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan said he was stunned by the swiftness of cultural change that took place in the 1960s. In particular, he cited the overnight conversion to co-ed dorms on college campuses. Lots of changes took place during this period, but fast as they were, their pace looks comparatively slow when measured against the lightening speed by which the homosexual agenda has proceeded in recent years. Indeed, it seems as though our culture is being driven by the Gay Express. Estimated at only a few percent of the population, homosexuals project a larger presence partly...

The USA’s first openly gay Episcopal bishop, Gene Robinson, has responded to presidential hopeful Rick Perry's anti-gay TV promotion suggesting that "it must break God's heart to see religion used in a political campaign like this." Bishop Robinson of the Episcopal Church showed his distaste in a TV interview with MSNBC and also by writing an opinion piece in the Washington Post newspaper. Perry had stated in his commercial that “You don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t...

Following on from threats in Ireland to require priests to break the seal of confession, I want to go through some of the basics concerning the seal, and then to deal specifically with some other questions (including what the priest might do if the civil authority asks him under penalty to break the seal.) I am particularly grateful for the manual of the saintly Fr Felix Cappello SJ: Tractatus Canonico-Moralis De Sacramentis Vol II. This series is not intended as a spiritual guide for how to make a good confession: you can find such guides elsewhere (on my parish website...

If true, this is indeed a bombshell... Dave Pierre, the author of the book, Double Standard: Abuse Scandals and the Attack on the Catholic Church, reports the following on his site, TheMediaReport.com:In a stunning ten-page declaration recently submitted to the Los Angeles County Superior Court, veteran attorney Donald H. Steier stated that his investigations into claims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests have uncovered vast fraud and that his probes have revealed that many accusations are completely false.Counselor Steier has played a role in over one hundred investigations involving Catholic clergy in Los Angeles. In his missive Mr. Steier relayed,...

Police investigating claims of child abuse by Belgian clergy have told the BBC they are probing death threats against witnesses and magistrates. Last month police raided a meeting of Belgium's Catholic bishops as part of their investigation, seizing computers and documents. They even searched the tomb of at least one cardinal, prompting an angry response from the Vatican. The country is one of several where the Church has been shaken by abuse claims. The investigation into child abuse allegations in Belgium's Catholic Church has already prompted extraordinary scenes, says the BBC's Dominic Hughes in Brussels. But now the investigation has...

VATICAN CITY - Gay groups and politicians condemned Pope Benedict's number two on Wednesday for calling homosexuality a "pathology" and linking it directly to sexual abuse of children. The comments made by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone during a visit to Chile, and the controversy they caused, were splashed on mainstream Italian newspapers on Wednesday. The French foreign ministry and some Catholic blogs that support the pope also condemned the cardinal's remarks.

Gay rights groups have condemned the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, for claiming that the Catholic church's sexual abuse crisis was linked to homosexuality and paedophilia and not celibacy among priests.Bertone, who is considered Pope Benedict's number two, sparked the controversy on a visit to Chile when he suggested gay sexuality was to blame for the church's child abuse scandals.Homosexual associations in Italy reacted with anger and indignation. The biggest group, Arcigay, called the cardinal's words "shocking and irresponsible". The president of the gay media service, Gaynet, said if senior church officials "feel constrained to dump the blame...

Having criticized particular Catholic cardinals for blaming everything–including the Church’s sex scandal–on “the Jews”, let me now come to the defense of the Pope and of the Church itself on this issue. To begin with, this is an extraordinarily complex problem, because the Church has at least five important traditions that make it difficult to move quickly and aggressively in response to complaints of abuse. The first tradition involves confidentiality, particularly not exclusively the confidentiality of the priest with regard to the penitent. But there is also a wider spread tradition of confidentiality within the Church hierarchy itself. Second, there...