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An Oakland priest placed on administrative leave after accusations of inappropriate sexual misconduct with a minor has now reportedly fled the country, officials confirmed. Father Alex Castillo was living at a rectory in Oakland and reportedly was looking to live with friends for a few days immediately after he was placed on leave Jan. 30, the San Jose Mercury reported. The diocese said they last spoke with him Feb. 20, then were unable to reach him the following day. A missing persons report was later filed on Feb. 23, after calls to jails and hospitals in the area failed to...

A new bill in California seeks to intrude on one of the most sacred relationships—that between clergy and penitent in formal confession. Currently, clergy members are already mandatory reporters of child abuse and neglect, but sins confessed specifically in confession are exempt under current law from mandatory reporting. Bill 360, introduced by Democrat state Sen. Jerry Hill, would “delete that exception for a penitential communication, thereby requiring clergy to make a mandated report even if they acquired the knowledge or reasonable suspicion of child abuse or neglect during a penitential communication.” This is an egregious overreach of secular authority, stepping...

A top Catholic cardinal admitted on Saturday that Church files on priests who sexually abused children were destroyed or never even drawn up, a move which allowed paedophiles to prey on others. "Files that could have documented the terrible deeds and named those responsible were destroyed, or not even created," German Cardinal Reinhard Marx said in a speech to a landmark Vatican summit on tackling paedophilia in the clergy. "Instead of the perpetrators, the victims were regulated and silence imposed on them. The stipulated procedures and processes for the prosecution of offences were deliberately not complied with, but instead cancelled...

SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) — State Senator Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) has introduced a bill, SB 360, to end the “penitential communication” exemption to child abuse reporting. Currently, 43 categories of adults are required to report to the police if they know or “reasonably suspect” a child is “has been the victim of child abuse or neglect.” (Cal. Penal Code 11166(a).) There is an exception for clergy who gain knowledge of abuse during “penitential communication,” sometimes referred to as “confession.”  (Cal. Penal Code 11166(d).) Hill says “those in the clergy have been able to abuse and get away with it,”...

An 81-year-old former priest who the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office says raped a 6-year-old student at Holy Cross Catholic School in Santa Cruz during the mid-1980s was arrested Friday. Marvin Archuleta has been the subject of civil lawsuits accusing him of sexually abusing minors, and the Archdiocese of Santa Fe in 2017 included him on a list it released naming priests, deacons and brothers who had been credibly accused of sexual misconduct. State law enforcement agents arrested Archuleta at an Albuquerque apartment complex based on a criminal complaint filed in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court charging him with criminal...

The beliefs of the Catholic Church are defined by two thousand years of careful writings and a slow process of understanding the revealed truths. This has brought us our Catechism, our Creed, encyclicals such as Humanae Vitae, and other solid references which provide a foundation for living well, especially in stressful times. One role of the clergy is to guide us Catholics in these teachings. The Church is not defined by whatever a priest in Paducah happens to say on Tuesday, and its faithful are under no obligation to take direction from misguided clergy. But how do we determine when...

The Catholic Diocese of Austin and others across Texas has released a list of clergy that it believes could have sexually abused children. The church hopes this action will help to rebuild trust. 22 priests are named, and all one but are dead, retired or removed from the ministry. Click here to see the assignment information for the accused. The inclusion of a name on this list does not establish that the allegation was substantiated or proven to the Diocese of Austin, a court, or other authority; and does not establish that sexual abuse under the Texas Penal Code actually...

A scathing report from Attorney General Lisa Madigan finds the number of Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse against children in Illinois is much higher than previously acknowledged. The report said accusations have been leveled against 690 priests, while Catholic officials have publicly identified only 185 clergy with credible allegations against them.

Politics and sex. There was a time when some of us “seasoned” individuals believed you could not get enough of either. Sadly, that is not the case lately. Politics and sex; sex and politics. I do not know about you, but it has not been good for some folks in a long time. Sex in some form is all part of a day’s work for a political figure. It can range from criminal behavior (alleged or actual), to extramarital (real or imagined), to issues of gender (same or trans or whatever is in vogue at the moment). Former Louisiana governor...

HEROISM AND GENIUS is the dramatic flesh-and-blood account of the real men who built the West's civilization during the dark centuries after the collapse of the Roman Empire. It tells the inspiring story of how these towering giants of mankind, their minds imbued with the genius of Christianity, integrated the achievements of the Jewish people, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Germanics, creating a new society that embodied the Catholic vision of God and man, time and eternity. Although it highlights the role of priests, there are countless interesting insights into the formidable laymen and women who also shaped the new social...

I’ve been thinking a lot about priests lately. In truth, I often do, as some of my best friends happen to wear Roman collars. I see them on their low days, and I see them in moments of true total self-surrender. Of course, you know why I’d be thinking about them even more lately. For priests who seek holiness in loving service to God’s people — striving to see God in every person they encounter — these are grueling times. And a few conversations I’ve had lately have reminded me that the good and holy among them, while still human...

Two Chicago PRIESTS are caught by police performing a sex act inside a car on a Miami street in broad daylight A bystander called police after spotting the two men engaging in oral sex inside a rented black Volkswagen around 3.20pm on Monday. The car was parked across the street from both a park and a children's playground. The officer said he could see Berrio, who was sitting in the passenger seat, performing oral sex on Cortez, who was in the driver's seat The officer said he could see Berrio, who was sitting in the passenger seat, performing oral sex...

Two Catholic priests were arrested Monday after police said they were caught performing sex acts on each other in a parked car near a Miami Beach playground, reports said. Diego Berrio, 39, and Edwin Giraldo Cortez, 30, face charges of lewd and lascivious behavior after a passerby spotted the alleged rendezvous in a rented Volkswagen Beetle in broad daylight, the New York Post reported. Giraldo Cortes also faces an indecent exposure charge. The car did not have tinted windows, so officers said they were able to witness the sexual acts upon arrival, the newspaper reported. The two Chicago-area priests apparently...

Two Priests show the true purpose for their service.

St. Monica and Prayers for Priests Msgr. Charles Pope • August 26, 2018 • On the Feast of St. Monica, who prayed at length for her son, I’d like to say that my mother prayed for me too! And I really needed (and still need) her prayers.In this time of pain in the Church where God’s people are rightly disturbed by the sins of the clergy, I know too that many of you have assured me and many clergy of your prayers. And thus, St. Monica, especially in this difficult time is an image not only of prayers for...

The Catholic Mass for August 26, 2018 - Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Fr. Paul Sullins, Ph.D., Research Associate of the Ruth Institute, Answers Questions on The Clerical Sex Abuse Scandal Is the current Catholic sex abuse scandal related to homosexuality?Yes. The current scandal includes mostly revelations about male on male sexual abuse of seminarians, where the victims are adults. These kinds of cases were not even considered in the responses to the 2002 scandal, which was about the criminal abuse of minors.Was the 2002 scandal also related to homosexuality?The US Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned two reports, one in 2004 and in 2011, by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice to...

Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s name will be removed from North Catholic High School, the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh announced Wednesday morning. In a news release, the diocese said that the board of directors of Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic High School and the board of Catholic High Schools of the Diocese of Pittsburgh accepted Wuerl’s request to remove his name from the school in Cranberry. Bishop David Zubik accepted the recommendations. The school’s name will be North Catholic High School.

A new grand jury report says that internal documents from six Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania show that more than 300 "predator priests" have been credibly accused of sexually abusing more than 1,000 child victims. "We believe that the real number of children whose records were lost or who were afraid ever to come forward is in the thousands," the grand jury report says. "Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades. Monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops, cardinals have mostly been protected;...

Cardinal Raymond Burke has called for “open recognition” of the Catholic church’s homosexual culture in light of recent revelations of sexual abuse. “I believe that there needs to be an open recognition that we have a very grave problem of a homosexual culture in the Church,” Burke said in an interview Thursday, “especially among the clergy and the hierarchy, that needs to be addressed honestly and efficaciously.” he former head of the church’s equivalent of the Supreme Court said it was already “clear after the studies following the 2002 sexual abuse crisis that most of the acts of abuse were...