San Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy sharply criticized the Eternal Word Television Network, the conservative Catholic U.S. media conglomerate, in an interview with Spanish magazine Vida Nueva published on March 24. Vida Nueva asked McElroy about the decision of newly installed Bishop Fernando Prado of San Sebastián, Spain, to ban diocesan television from carrying content produced … Read more
S. District Court Judge Eric R. Komitee March 15 sentenced a former deacon who once ministered at a parish in the Diocese of Brooklyn to 16 years in prison for enticing three minors to engage in sexual conduct. As part of his sentence, Rogelio Vega, 52, of Maspeth in the New York borough of Queens, … Read more
A research team from Xavier University in Cincinnati has created a tool that measures the “moral injury” caused by clergy sexual abuse and its concealment by officials in the Catholic Church. In a report on the pilot study, released Dec. 12, moral injury is described as persistent psychological and emotional distress, spiritual anguish, moral confusion, … Read more
More than a half million U.S. Catholics have participated in synodal listening sessions over the past year as part of Pope Francis’ two-year process of grassroots listening ahead of the 2023 Synod of Bishops in Rome, and responses indicate that many Americans want a more welcoming church that reaches out to the marginalized, especially the … Read more
A Kentucky bishop has withdrawn from the speaker lineup of a Catholic men’s conference in Cincinnati that the local archdiocese is not sponsoring or participating in because of the “significant baggage” of its featured speakers, which include EWTN anchor Raymond Arroyo and “Passion of the Christ” actor Jim Caviezel. The Cincinnati Men’s Conference, scheduled for … Read more
The Vatican’s big fraud and embezzlement trial, which opened to great fanfare in July, suffered another delay Tuesday as the tribunal postponed any further decisions until prosecutors finish redoing their investigation of four of the original 10 defendants. The delay means the trial, which had already been proceeding at a snail’s pace even by Italian … Read more
National Catholic Reporter reports that Gonzaga University, a Jesuit-run institution in the state of Washington, released a 46-page report on Sept. 1 from its University Commission on Gonzaga’s Response to the Catholic Sexual Abuse Crisis. The commission’s work coincided with media reports that detailed a decades long pattern of sexually abusive Jesuits being permitted to … Read more
A Roman Catholic diocese in Connecticut filed for federal bankruptcy protection on Thursday, July 15, to resolve dozens of lawsuits alleging the abuse of teenage students decades ago at the former Academy at Mount St. John School, a residential treatment center for troubled youth in Deep River. Documents filed by the Norwich Diocese, which oversaw … Read more
A former campus minister at Franciscan University of Steubenville has been charged with rape and sexual battery against an individual with mental illness placed under his care for mental health treatment. The charges against Third Order Franciscan Fr. David Morrier were filed on April 7 in Jefferson County, Ohio. Morrier, 59, is charged with one … Read more
A group called Lay Catholic Voices for Change has sent a letter to Bishop Mark Brennan of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, asking that the diocese investigate charges of sex abuse of minors by former Bishop Michael Bransfield. The letter also asked that Bransfield be ordered not to use the title bishop emeritus to describe himself. Bransfield … Read more