By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press
>> >VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Francis made another move to clean house at the troubled Vatican bank on Wednesday, naming a new roster of cardinal advisers to replace the ones who were in place during its latest brushes with scandal. >Only one cardinal from the previous commission overseeing the bank's operations, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, survived the cut.
By Sue Nowicki
snowicki@modbee.comJanuary 13, 2014
The Stockton Diocese announced Monday afternoon it will file Wednesday for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The move affects only the diocesan budget and property and will not have an impact on the individually incorporated parishes or ministries, Bishop Stephen Blaire said. The creditors, mostly victims of sexual abuse by priests, are expected to challenge that statement.
The Stockton Diocese becomes the 10th in the country and the second in the state to move under the protection of the bankruptcy court. The action was taken to reduce the amount of money the diocese must pay in civil cases involving priests and sexual-abuse victims. It also will put a time limit on filing any new lawsuits concerning past sexual abuse. But in an interview with The Bee on Monday afternoon, Blaire said he wasn’t trying to hide assets or blame the legal action on the abuse victims, some of whom have received multimillion-dollar awards.
“Very simply, we are in this situation because of those priests in our diocese who perpetrated grave, evil acts of child sexual abuse,” he said. “We can never forget that these evil acts, not the victims of the abuse, are responsible
Read more here: http://www.modbee.com/2014/01/13/3132755/stockton-catholic-diocese-to-file.html#storylink=cpy
By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel
Three years after it declared bankruptcy as a way to deal with its mounting sex abuse claims, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee is poised to file the reorganization plan that will detail how it compensates abuse victims and operates as an institution into the future.
The archdiocese is preparing that plan, but it has offered few hints about its content or when it might be filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Milwaukee….
With 575 sex abuse claims and legal fees topping $11 million, it is one of the largest and most contentious bankruptcies filed by Catholic dioceses around the country, say observers and lawyers who've worked on those cases.
Read more from Journal Sentinel: http://www.jsonline.com/mainheadlines/news/milwaukee-archdiocese-is-ready-to-file-bankruptcy-plan-b99180350z1-240195521.html#ixzz2qUXh0j
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- The Missouri Supreme Court is giving the Archdiocese of St. Louis additional time to release the names of more than 100 employees accused of child sexual abuse since 1986.
The high court’s ruling on Monday afternoon came after the archdiocese sought more time to comply with a lower court order to provide the names of 115 to lawyers for a woman who is suing the archdiocese.
The woman was 19 when the lawsuit was filed in 2011. She claims the abuse began when she was 5 years old and attended St. Cronan’s parish in the city. The now-defrocked priest had been convicted of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old boy at a University City parish decades earlier.
The state Supreme Court order delays release “until further notice from the court.”
Read the entire story by clicking on the following: St. Louis archdiocese wins delay in abuse case | KMOV.com St. Louis
By Karen Heller, Inquirer Columnist
Monsignor William Lynn descended five stories Monday from the courtroom to freedom, only to be met by a scrum of cameras and foul-mouthed hecklers. But he is also 80 pounds lighter from 18 months of exercise and prison grub, so perhaps incarceration wasn't all bad.
The day after Christmas, a three-judge appeals panel overturned the former archdiocese secretary's conviction of child endangerment in protecting pedophile and defrocked priest Edward Avery. The laws then on the books, the court ruled, applied only to direct supervisors of children, not people supervising those supervisors.
Pope Francis is set to make the most important decisions of his young papacy in the next few weeks by naming new cardinals – the “princes of the Church” who will help him set its future course and one day elect his successor from their number….
“He will feel very free to choose the people he thinks should be in those positions, regardless of what was done before,” said Father Antonio Spadaro, the editor of the Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica who interviewed the pope last summer.
“Certainly it will help us further understand where he wants the Church to go.”
Pope Francis set to name new cardinals to reflect his vision of the Catholic Church | FaithWorld
The Vatican's Secretary of State sent a letter to its embassies asking them to inform bishops' conferences of the change. From now on, the Vatican reported Tuesday, only diocesan priests who are "chaplains of the Holy Father," can use the honorific, and then only after they turn 65.
Bishops, vicars and archbishops still get to be called "monsignor" and Holy See officials will have the title if their office warrants it.
The Vatican noted that Pope Paul VI reduced the number of ecclesiastic honorifics in 1968 and that Francis' decision "should be taken in this vein, as a further simplification."
