A clergy abuse survivor was asked to step aside from the Pope’s commission to protect minors after a clash over the group’s work and mission. According to an Associated Press report, Peter Saunders said the members of the 17-person Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors asked him to step aside, with one abstention. This Read more
Cardinal George Pell will give evidence to a child sex abuse inquiry in Australia through video link from Rome later this month. In a ruling released on Monday, the head of Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Justice Peter McClellan, accepted medical evidence of a risk to the cardinal’s health if he undertook Read more
The head of the Church’s doctrinal office has been accused of running a German diocese in a way that resulted in sexual abuse investigations being hindered. The claim against Cardinal Gerhard Müller came from the former chairman of a lay diocesan council in Regensburg, Germany. Cardinal Müller was bishop in Regensburg between 2002 and 2012, before he Read more
Cardinal George Pell looked “ashen and grey” last month, according to a priest testifying at an Australia inquiry into child sex abuse. Fr John Walshe told a royal commission hearing about a lunch at Cardinal Pell’s apartment in Rome in November. “I couldn’t get over how poorly he looked when I saw him last month,” Read more
A health issue means Cardinal George Pell will not go to Australia this month to testify in person before a royal commission into child sex abuse. The cardinal, currently based at the Vatican, had been scheduled to appear before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Sexual Abuse in Melbourne on December 16. But Cardinal Read more
Capping compensation payments to abuse victims saved Melbourne archdiocese A$62 million, according to calculations by an Australian newspaper. The Melbourne Response, which was created in 1996 by then-Archbishop George Pell, capped payments to victims at $A50,000 and then $A75,000. But a Sunday Age analysis of data compiled by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Read more
An Australian priest broke the seal of Confession to warn a fellow paedophile priest about an altar boy’s abuse complaint. On Monday, during hearings in Melbourne, Australia’s Royal Commission on Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard from the victim about the 1968 incident. In the confessional, “BTU” told Fr Wilfred Baker that Fr Ronald Read more
The former secretary to and biographer of Blessed Oscar Romero has been suspended after an investigation found he had had sex with a minor. El Salvador’s Catholic Church said a preliminary investigation showed Msgr Jesus Delgado had sex with a minor aged between 9 and 17. The female victim, who is now 42, presented the Read more
In a statement from the Vatican, Cardinal George Pell has said the Church’s failure to deal with Melbourne’s paedophile priests was shameful. Cardinal Pell was responding to a television interview of abuse victim Julie Stewart, where she was critical of the cardinal’s testimony to a previous Victorian inquiry. Ms Stewart was abused in the confessional Read more
Lawyers for Cardinal George Pell will cross-examine victims who allege he was complicit in a cover-up of clergy sexual abuse. The move comes despite a commitment by the Australian Catholic Church not to subject victims of child sexual abuse to gruelling cross-examination. Cardinal Pell denies the allegations against him concerning the period when he was Read more