Religion

Mississippi’s Starkville Daily News reports: A Starkville priest is at the center of a criminal investigation involving a string of fraudulent charity efforts that federal agents believe was covered up by church leaders in Jackson. According to a 37-page affidavit filed Friday by Department of Homeland Security Special Agent William G. Childers in U.S. District Court in Jackson, an ongoing …

From the National Catholic Reporter: The plenary meeting of the Unites States Conference of Catholic Bishops opened with a bombshell. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the conference, announced that the Holy See had insisted the U.S. bishops not vote on any concrete action items regarding the clergy sex abuse crisis, pending the February meeting of the presidents of all episcopal …

The Associated Press reports: Thirty-three priests or religious brothers in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Jefferson City, Missouri, have been “credibly accused” and/or removed from the ministry over sexual abuse of minors, the bishop of the central Missouri diocese said Thursday. Bishop W. Shawn McKnight released a complete list of the names that followed an internal investigation begun in February. …

ABC News reports: An Ohio priest is facing charges after his diocese said he admitted to having a relationship with a now-pregnant 17-year-old girl. Father Henry Christopher Foxhoven, 45, was the pastor at Holy Cross and St. Mary of the Hill parishes in the Diocese of Steubenville. According to the Athens County prosecutor, the teen was an altar girl at …

CBS News Chicago reports: A Northwest Indiana priest failed to adhere to (at least) one of the Catholic Church’s ’10 Commandments’–‘Thou Shalt Not Lie’–after accusations surfaced that he made up a story about being attacked at the altar in August. Father Basil Hutsko of Saint Michael Byzantine, a Catholic church in Merrillville, has been placed on administrative leave following allegations …

The Guardian reports: Campaigners in Ireland celebrated the end of a “medieval” ban on blasphemy on Saturday, after voters overwhelmingly backed removing the offence from the constitution in a referendum. The referendum saw 64.85% vote yes to remove the prohibition on blasphemy, with 35.15% in favour of retaining it. A total of 951,650 people voted for the change, with 515,808 …

The Malay Mail reports: Opposition leader Ahmad Zahid Hamidi expressed concerns about efforts needed to stem lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activities in the country, saying a recent earthquake in Indonesia was caused by such behaviour. Speaking at the Dewan Rakyat today during Question Time, Ahmad Zahid said he was worried that Malaysia might similarly incur the wrath of …

The Daily Beast reports: In a press release today, Museum of the Bible announced that independent scientific testing on five fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls on display at the museum had been completed. The tests “concluded that the five fragments show characteristics inconsistent with ancient origin and therefore will no longer be displayed at the museum.” In other words they …

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 …

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 …