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An internationally prominent Catholic priest has dropped out of sight in the Philippines, years after admitting to me that he had sex with altar boys in the U.S. and supplied them with drugs. Monsignor Cristobal Garcia’s sudden low profile coincides with a new National Geographic article on the ivory trade. It calls Garcia “one of the best known ivory collectors in the Philippines” and quotes him as giving advice on how to smuggle ivory into the U.S., in defiance of a 1989 global trade ban. The magazine refers to my 2005 investigative piece on the priest, who had fled the...

On February 29, The Washington Post created a scandal for the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington by dramatizing the denial of communion to lesbian activist Barbara Johnson at her mother’s funeral. Reporter Michelle Boorstein painted an emotional picture of a Catholic daughter being publicly shamed by a priest at her lowest moment. But new details keep ruining the Post’s report. Thomas Peters at Catholic Vote today reveals that Johnson has publicly declared she is a Buddhist, and not a Catholic! The Post is going to need to fill the Corrections box.

Due to clergy sex abuse scandals centered primarily in the Northern hemisphere, the moral authority of the Roman Catholic Church has been subjected to an opportunistic siege by prominent individuals and organizations who see the chance to advance their goals, including the ordination of women and the suspension of the requirement for priestly celibacy. There is also a strongly defensive element to this strategy. Opponents of the Church know that there is a well-documented and strong correlation between male homosexuality and child sexual abuse, but claim that there is no evidence supporting this connection. And, of course, those who are...

A Catholic priest charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl in Minnesota has been allowed to continue working at a Catholic diocese in southern India despite warnings from an American bishop that he could still “pose a risk to minors,” according to church documents released Monday. In a letter sent in December 2005, the bishop, Victor H. Balke, told Vatican authorities that preliminary investigations showed that the priest, Father Joseph Pavanivel Jeyapaul, had molested a 16-year-old girl after promising to discuss her interest in becoming a nun. Bishop Balke wrote that the priest had also “misappropriated a substantial amount of...

The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has lost all credibility because of its mishandling of abuse by priests, the leader of the Anglican church said in remarks released Saturday. A leading Catholic archbishop said he was "stunned" by the comments. The remarks released Saturday marked the first time Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has spoken publicly on the crisis engulfing the Catholic Church. The comments come ahead of a planned visit to England and Scotland by Pope Benedict XVI later this year. "I was speaking to an Irish friend recently who was saying that it's quite difficult in some parts...

A seminary is not the place where you'd expect sex to be a regular topic of conversation. But at the North American College in Rome, where student priests from across the United States are sent, new efforts to prevent sexual abuse are changing that. Part of the psychological element of the examination, says the Rev. Gregory Grannazzisi, involves asking students directly about sex and celibacy. "Some will ask you about your friendships," Deacon Michael Novajosky says. "They will ask about what is your sexual past." The difficult questions aren't kept secret, but discussed openly at the seminary as an integral...

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict, accused by victims' lawyers of being ultimately responsible for a cover-up of sexual abuse of children by priests, cannot be called to testify at any trial because he has immunity as a head of state, a top Vatican legal official said on Thursday. The interview with Giuseppe dalla Torre, head of the Vatican's tribunal, was published in Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper as Pope Benedict began Holy Thursday services in St Peter's Basilica and Catholics marked the most solemn week of the liturgical calendar, culminating on Sunday in Easter Day.

There is an interesting and very modern thing that often happens when individuals join and rise within mighty and venerable institutions. They come to think of the institution as invulnerable—to think that there is nothing they can do to really damage it, that the big, strong, proud establishment they're part of can take any amount of abuse, that it doesn't require from its members an attitude of protectiveness because it's so strong, and has lasted so long. And so people become blithely damaging...

Elizabeth Scalia is a contributing writer to First Things Magazine as the blogger known as The Anchoress. The question has come my way several times in the past week: "How do you maintain your faith in light of news stories that bring light to the dark places that exist within your church?" When have darkness and light been anything but co-existent? How do we recognize either without the other? I remain within, and love, the Catholic Church because it is a church that has lived and wrestled within the mystery of the shadow lands ever since an innocent man was...

LOS ANGELES – The head of a Roman Catholic order that specialized in the treatment of pedophile priests visited with the then-pope nearly 50 years ago and followed up with a letter recommending the removal of pedophile priests from ministry, according to a copy of the letter released Wednesday. In the Aug. 27, 1963 letter, the head of the New Mexico-based Servants of the Holy Paraclete tells the pope he recommends removing pedophile priests from active ministry and strongly urges defrocking repeat offenders. The letter, written by the Rev. Gerald M.C. Fitzgerald, appears to have been drafted at the request...

One by one, as I predicted, the pathetic excuses of Joseph Ratzinger's apologists evaporate before our eyes. It was said until recently that when the Rev. Peter Hullermann was found to be a vicious pederast in 1980, the man who is now pope had no personal involvement in his subsequent transfer to his own diocese or in his later unimpeded career as a rapist and a molester. But now we find that the psychiatrist to whom the church turned for "therapy" was adamant that Hullermann never be allowed to go near children ever again. We also find that Ratzinger was...

Here below in full, the text of Pope Benedict's Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland. * * * 1. Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Church in Ireland, it is with great concern that I write to you as Pastor of the universal Church. Like yourselves, I have been deeply disturbed by the information which has come to light regarding the abuse of children and vulnerable young people by members of the Church in Ireland, particularly by priests and religious. I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have...

Vatican Denies Cover-Up In U.S. Sex Abuse Case New York Times reports future pope failed to defrock troubled priest Breaking news VATICAN CITY - There was no cover-up in the church's handling of the case of an American priest accused of molesting 200 deaf boys, the Vatican said Thursday, denouncing what it called attempts to smear Pope Benedict XVI and involve him in the scandal. L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said there was a "clear and despicable intention" to strike at the pope "at any cost" with recent revelations of how the Vatican handled clerical abuse. According to church and...

The Boston Archdiocese has admitted for the first time that Irish sex abuse priests worked in its diocese. The priests, named as Brendan Smyth, Dennis Murphy and Joseph Maguire, were transferred from Ireland to the U.S. in what critics say was little more than an attempt to insulate the priests from scrutiny and possible prosecution

Voice of the Faithful, the Catholic lay group that formed in response to the priest sex abuse scandal, is facing its own crisis: lack of money. The national organization said it is "at the crossroads of financial survival" and needs $60,000 in donations by the end of July to keep going. The news struck a chord at a local affiliate. "I'm not terribly surprised," said Jolene Guerra of Topsfield, co-coordinator of the North Shore-Seacoast affiliate, which has members from Salem to Newburyport. "I'm certainly disappointed. I think financially the national organization has been struggling." "I've already been receiving e-mails from...

A Roman Catholic diocese in Connecticut sought Friday to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to keep under wraps sex abuse documents that could shed light on how a prominent retired cardinal handled the allegations. Bridgeport Diocese officials asked the state Supreme Court to continue a stay on releasing the documents while it asks the nation's highest court to review the case. The state court has ruled that more than 12,000 pages of documents from more than 20 lawsuits against priests should be released. Those documents have been sealed from public view since the diocese settled the cases in 2001.

(From 2002-but even more relevant today) The sex-abuse scandal currently plaguing the Catholic priesthood has already grown to the point where it poses a serious threat to the power, prestige, and credibility of the American Catholic Church. The sky, so to speak, is falling. An institution whose fundamental strength and continuity (whatever its many problems) could once be taken for granted is experiencing a genuine crisis. Yet, over and above its significance for the Catholic Church, the greatest lesson of this scandal has yet to be drawn. The uproar over priestly sex abuse — especially the calls to do away...

A federal appeals court says the Vatican can be sued for abuse committed by its priests. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests can sue the Vatican even though it is considered a sovereign nation. The appeals court said there are exceptions to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, and abuse can be one of them. The Oregon case has been working its way through the federal appeals court since a judge in Portland ruled in 2006 that the Holy See can be held responsible for the actions of individual...

The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles is pursuing the theory that the prelate deprived parishioners of 'the right of honest services' by failing to protect their children from predatory clerics. By Scott Glover and Jack Leonard 4:44 PM PST, January 28, 2009 The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles has launched a federal grand jury investigation into Cardinal Roger M. Mahony in connection with his response to the alleged molestation of children by priests in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, according to two law enforcement sources familiar with the case. The probe, in which U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O'Brien is personally involved,...

The sexual-abuse litigation that has raged for years against the Catholic church just got a lot more interesting. In a landmark ruling yesterday, the Sixth Circuit concluded that the Vatican could be held liable for negligence in sexual-abuse cases filed in the U.S. It is the first time a circuit court reached that conclusion, and the opinion is considered a breakthrough by those allegedly abused by priests. Here’s the WSJ story. Catholic dioceses in the U.S. have paid out more than $3 billion to alleged abuse victims, most of that coming since the scandal broke open nationwide in 2002. Click...