Tag Archives: Catholic Church

From the crowdfunding site Funding Morality: Chicago priest Father Paul John Kalchik is being persecuted by his bishop Cardinal Blase Cupich and was forced into hiding on September 21st after Cardinal Cupich threatened to have him committed to a psychiatric treatment center. Kalchik’s offense? Burning a banner that had been unused for close to a dozen years that depicted a …

From the right wing National Catholic Register: Catholics and exorcists are responding to the news that a curse on the newest U.S. Supreme Court Justice is planned for Saturday Oct. 20 at Catland Books, a “metaphysical boutique and occult bookshop” in Brooklyn, New York. He will be the main focus, at the “Ritual to Hex Brett Kavanaugh” but others will …

The Washington Post reports: The Justice Department has launched an investigation into alleged sexual abuse by clergy in the Roman Catholic Church in Pennsylvania, according to a person familiar with the matter. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Philadelphia began issuing subpoenas recently, the person said. The investigation was sparked after a state grand jury issued a scathing report in August …

The York Daily Record reports: A former Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing two boys and having one confess afterward, pleaded guilty to corruption of minors and endangering the welfare of children. Rev. David Lee Poulson pleaded guilty to the third-degree felonies during his court hearing on Wednesday. Poulson, 65, of Oil City, was arrested in May. Prosecutors have alleged …

The Associated Press reports: Pope Francis on Saturday defrocked two more Chilean bishops accused of sexually abusing minors, and to show greater transparency about how he’s responding to the church’s global sex abuse crisis, he publicly explained why they were removed. The Vatican’s unusually detailed statement announcing the laicization of retired Archbishop Francisco Jose Cox Huneeus and retired Bishop Marco …

The Washington Post reports: Pope Francis on Friday accepted the resignation of Washington’s archbishop, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who in a matter of months went from a trusted papal ally who had largely managed to avoid controversy over a long career to a prominent symbol of what many Catholics have come to regard as an infuriatingly weak and defensive response by …

Bloomberg reports: The devil is alive and well and working overtime to undermine the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis says. In fact, the pope is so convinced that Satan is to blame for the sexual abuse crisis and deep divisions racking the Church that he has asked Catholics around the world to recite a special prayer every day in October …

NBC News Chicago reports: In his first interview since he was forced out of his church following the burning of a rainbow pride flag, Father Paul Kalchik reveals that he’s been in hiding since the incident took place. Kalchik spoke to the conservative Catholic website Church Militant this week after he was removed from Resurrection Parish following the burning of …

Pope Francis today acknowledged that sexual abuse scandals all over the world are driving people away from the Catholic Church. Francis referred directly to the crisis convulsing his papacy on the fourth and final day of his Baltic pilgrimage, which coincided with the release of a devastating new report into decades of sex abuse and cover-up in Germany. Francis told …

The Chicago Sun-Times reports: The priest who ignited controversy last week by burning an LGBTQ-friendly flag on church grounds against the orders of Cardinal Blase Cupich [photo] has been removed from his Avondale parish. Cupich sent two of his top deputies to Resurrection Catholic Church on Friday to notify the Rev. Paul Kalchik that he was being removed as pastor, …

The New York Times reports: Four men who were repeatedly sexually abused as children by a religion teacher at a Catholic church in Brooklyn received a $27.5 million settlement from the Diocese of Brooklyn on Tuesday, in one of the largest settlements ever awarded to individual victims of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. The settlement comes two weeks after …

As I reported several days ago, the Archdiocese of Chicago ordered Father Paul Kalchik to cancel his plan to burn a rainbow flag that someone supposedly left in his church. He did it anyway and then some. NBC News reports: “We did so in a private way, a quiet way, so as not to bring the ire of the gay …

Euronews reports: Pope Francis appealed to Sicily’s Mafia on Saturday to abandon a life of crime and violence, saying the island needed “men and women of love, not men and women ‘of honor,’” using the term mobsters apply to themselves. Francis, in the Sicilian capital, said organized crime members – many of whom go to church and worship openly – …

Carrie Maxwell reports at the Windy City Times: In a Sept. 2 Sunday bulletin, Resurrection Catholic Church Pastor Fr. Paul Kalchik announced in a post-script to his re-printed Homily message that a Rainbow flag found in the church, along with parishioner’s pledge cards mixed with incense, would be burned in front of the church as a sacrilege during a prayer …

USA Today reports: Pope Francis has summoned the presidents of Catholic bishops conferences worldwide to the Vatican in February to discuss how to stop clergy from sexually abusing children. The meeting, on February 21-24, is believed to be the first of its kind. Some clergy from the Catholic Church have been carrying out abuse for decades. An investigation in the …

Reuters reports: The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Thursday to force the city of Philadelphia to resume the placement of children in need of foster care with a Catholic agency that refuses to accept gay couples as foster parents. In a decision that Catholic Social Services had said would force its foster care program to close, the justices refused the …

The Guardian reports: The Vatican has rolled back on a recommendation by Pope Francis that parents seek psychiatric help for children who show homosexual tendencies. The pope made the comments to journalists as he was flying back to Rome from Ireland, but the Vatican later removed his phrase from its official account, saying he had not meant to suggest that …

Via press release from Catholic League head Bill Donohue: Conservative Catholics have been especially strident in their comments. Unfortunately, they are being played. To be specific, their call for grand jury investigations in every state, and the wholesale release of priest personnel files, is playing into the hands of the enemies of the Catholic Church. So are their appeals to …

Agence France-Presse reports: Pope Francis has recommended parents seek psychiatric help for children who show homosexual tendencies, during a press conference on his plane taking him back to Rome from Ireland. A journalist asked the pontiff on Sunday what he would say to parents who observe homosexual traits in their children. “I would say first of all pray, not to …

Agence France-Presse reports: Pope Francis has declined to comment on a claim he personally ignored sexual abuse allegations against a senior clergyman, after a visit to Ireland dominated by Church scandals. Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former Vatican envoy to the United States, said he had told Francis of the allegations against prominent US cardinal Theodore McCarrick in 2013. But …