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Child sexual abuse revealed in confession would have to be reported to police and could be used as evidence if the Coalition wins Victoria's state election, the Opposition's most senior Catholic MP has announced. The Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse last year recommended that states introduce laws to make it a criminal offence to fail to disclose abuse revealed in the confessional. The Andrews Government has not ruled it out, but said it wanted to first examine a uniform national approach. Nationals Leader Peter Walsh told the ABC a Coalition Victorian government would change the law...

This week a grand jury reported on documents from six Catholic Church dioceses in Pennsylvania that revealed 300 “predator priests” have been accused of sexually abusing over 1,000 children. The grand jury report states: “We believe that the real number – of children whose records were lost, or who were afraid ever to come forward – is in the thousands. Most of the victims were boys; but there were girls too. Some were teens; many were prepubescent… But all of them were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and...

President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday lashed out against the Catholic Church again, breaking his promise of not making anti-Church statements. In a speech in Malacañang, Duterte explained his own concept of what God is, as opposed to the belief of Catholics. “It’s only one God, God the Father. He’s not even the father. He's God, period,” he said. The President then asked if there was a bishop in the audience, before threatening to “kick his ass.” “Is there any bishop here? I want to kick your ass, and the priest,” Duterte asked, eliciting laughter from the audience composed of businessmen...

The long-awaited state grand jury report into sexual abuse in six Pennsylvania dioceses, including Pittsburgh and Greensburg, has finally been released. The 884-page document, two years in the making, shines a light into the dark corners of these dioceses going back seven decades, exposing the predators and the efforts of their bishops to protect them. “Today, the most comprehensive report on child sexual abuse within the church ever produced in our country was released,” Attorney General Josh Shapiro said. “Pennsylvanians can finally learn the extent of sexual abuse in these dioceses. For the first time, we can all begin to...

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — The long-awaited state grand jury report into sexual abuse in six Pennsylvania dioceses, including Pittsburgh and Greensburg, has finally been released. The 884-page document, two years in the making, shines a light into the dark corners of these dioceses going back seven decades, exposing the predators and the efforts of their bishops to protect them. “Today, the most comprehensive report on child sexual abuse within the church ever produced in our country was released,” Attorney General Josh Shapiro said. “Pennsylvanians can finally learn the extent of sexual abuse in these dioceses. For the first time, we can...

Catholics on Tuesday were awaiting the release of one of the most sweeping investigations ever on U.S. clerical sex abuse of minors — an 800-page-plus grand jury report detailing 70 years of misconduct and church response across Pennsylvania. The release is the culmination of an 18-month probe, led by state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, on six of the state’s eight dioceses — Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Scranton, Erie and Greensburg — and follows other state grand jury reports that revealed abuse and coverups in two other dioceses. Legal challenges by some of the approximately 300 clergy named in the report have...

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"The Patriarchate of Constantinople is struggling with the Russian Church for influence in the Orthodox world. The Moscow and Constantinople Patriarchates are in tense relations today because of Ukraine.” Russian Orthodox priests are complaining they are unable to obtain Schengen visas for EU travel through Greek missions as relations between Athens and Moscow worsens... In a report carried by the BBC’s Russian-language service on Thursday, a source from the church in Constantinople claimed this Greek “policy” is because “Russian priests … are perceived as potential spies and agents of influence”. Several priests told the BBC they had either been refused...

HARRISBURG, Pa. — A landmark grand jury report identifies more than 300 "predator priests" in six of Pennsylvania's Roman Catholic dioceses, the state Supreme Court said Friday in ordering the findings released. (Tap here to read the court ruling.) The justices said the report on clergy child sexual abuse going back decades and allegations of cover-up efforts will be made public but without the names or "individual specific information" of priests and others who have challenged the findings, at least in the initial version to be released. The court wants the redaction process to be completed by Aug. 8, when...

Traditionalist priests now account for 20 per cent of ordinations in FranceThe number of new ordinations in France has fallen this year, from 133 in 2017 to 114. According to figures from La Croix, 82 of these new priests are diocesan, while the rest are members of various orders and societies of apostolic life. Paris and Bordeaux are the dioceses with most ordinations – six each – however, this still marks a considerable decline for Paris, which had 10 in 2017 and 11 in 2016. Lyon, Versailles and Fréjus-Toulon follow with five each, then Evry with four. However, a total...

Cardinal Cupich has been holding seminars on implementing Amoris Laetitia. These “New Momentum Conferences” will “provide formative pastoral programs.” I wonder whether these seminars will include anything for reluctantly divorced persons. No one else seems to be doing anything for abandoned spouses. Perhaps Cardinal Cupich and his friends will step up to the plate.The public, including many Catholics, has the impression that no-fault divorce allows two sensible and mature adult people to agree to end their marriage. We imagine that the state must not interfere in this mutual decision. No one should cry over the spilt milk of a “dead...

A Pre-Lenten Preparation for Priests and a Request for Prayers from the Faithful Msgr. Charles Pope • February 12, 2018 • Priests need to prepare for Lent too. The Book of the Prophet Malachi provides a kind of mini-examen for them.As we consider the sins of the priests enumerated below, please understand that neither the biblical text nor my commentary should be construed as meaning that all or even most priests are like this. Sadly, though, sins and shortcomings are far too common among the clergy. As priests must strive to be better and more holy, so must the...

The cardinal who heads the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy suggests in a new book that the Catholic Church should consider ordaining married men in some cases. The Church shouldn’t be “closed or rigid” as it considers this topic, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy Cardinal Beniamino Stella wrote in Italian in All Francis’ Men, just released Monday. The Catholic Herald first translated Stella’s proposition. In remote places “there is acute suffering because of a real ‘sacramental emergency,’ which the few priests present are not able to accommodate,” Stella wrote. “Continuing to maintain their family and jobs and receiving...

“But now I shall tell you God’s will in this matter……Know this too: that if some pope concedes to priests a license to contract carnal marriage, God will condemn him to a sentence as great, in a spiritual way, as that which the law justly inflicts in a corporeal way on a man who has transgressed so gravely that he must have his eyes gouged out, his tongue and lips, nose and ears cut off, his hands and feet amputated, all his body’s blood spilled out to grow completely cold, and finally, his whole bloodless corpse cast out to be...

Pope Francis has requested that Roman Catholic priests be given the right to get married. The request applies to priests in Brazil, and is on the agenda for an upcoming synod (church council) in the Amazon region. The controversial move would address the critical shortage of men joining the priesthood

According to the Austrian Catholic website Kath.net, Pope Francis is considering allowing the ordination of so-called viri probati. These “tested men” are said to have “proved their worth” by living virtuously in their marriages and in parish life, indicating a proposed relaxation of the requirement of celibacy in the priesthood for these men who would assist in the duties of celibate priests, including the offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Based on a report in the German newspaper Die Zeit, kath.net says that the promoter of the idea of married priests, Bishop Erwin Kräutler — an Austrian-born prelate who has spent...

At a memorial Mass this week for a Cameroon bishop who died under mysterious circumstances, a cleric who's taken over as the administrator of the diocese charged that the authors of the murder were in the church, "pretending to sympathize," and that the bishop died for standing up against gays in the priesthood.YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon - Ever since the body of Bishop Jean Marie Benoit Bala of Bafia, Cameroon, was discovered in a local river about four miles from where his car had been abandoned, questions have abounded about his death - was it suicide, as the police allege, or a...

Francis Names New Director For Battered Roman Seminary Father Gabriele Faraghini, a Little Brother of Jesus, was named as the new rector of the Seminario Romano where the new priests of the Diocese of Rome are formed. Liberal media calls this enthusiastically "a decision without precedents" in line with Francis' poverty ideology. The Seminario Romano is in a crisis because, like all seminaries run by liberals, it is not attractive for young men who desire to join the priesthood. This year Francis ordained only six men for his diocese of which only three were Romans. In 2015 the diocese ordained...

The man who leads the largest Roman Catholic Church in America is advocating that the church allow married men to become priests, and plans to spend his retirement ministering among the poorest of the poor.Monsignor John McSweeney, 75, who is originally from New York, is concluding 43 years of ministry in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he has most recently served as priest at St. Matthew in Ballantyne, an affluent suburb of the state's most populous city.St. Matthew Catholic Church is the largest Roman Catholic parish in the United States which boasts of over 10,000 families, according to The Charlotte Observer Sunday.Much...