Damned Pervert Priests - and other assorted Holy Scumbags

[Mister Agenda]

Will it ever end?

[The Grand Nudger]

I think so. You never hear about the priests of apollo raping kids these days.

[Fake Messiah]

Catholic Church in the Philippines Accused of Impunity Over Priest Abuse

A watchdog group on Wednesday accused the Catholic Church in the Philippines of a culture of impunity, saying it had found scores of priests who had been accused of sexually abusing children and that many remain in active ministry.

The group, Bishop Accountability, said it had identified 82 priests and brothers with links to the Philippines who had been accused of abuse in recent decades. It said it compiled the list from reputable media reports, court records, church documents and other public sources.

But not one priest has been convicted of sexual abuse in the Philippines, the group said, citing Bishop Buenaventura Famadico. The country has the third-highest number of Catholics in the world, about 85 million, after Brazil and Mexico.

It was the latest sign that the Catholic Church’s global abuse scandal is still ricocheting, this time in Asia, a region that the Vatican is eyeing for growth.

The list almost certainly did not cover all abuse because it often goes unreported. The group was established in Boston in 2003, and has compiled similar lists of priests publicly accused of abuse in the United States, Argentina, Chile and Ireland.

Take the example of the Rev. Jose Belcina, who was charged by prosecutors in the city of Cebu in 2006 with rape and child abuse. The church removed him from his parish and made him undergo “a process of spirituality,” Ms. Doyle said.

But when the police tried to arrest Father Belcina they could not find him. According to Ms. Doyle’s group, when a journalist asked the spokesman of the Archdiocese of Cebu about Father Belcina’s location, he responded that he was not the priest’s custodian.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/29/world...abuse.html

[Fake Messiah]

Bishop faces jail after admitting 'deeply shocking' sex offences against young boy - as Church admits members knew of another allegation but kept quiet

An Anglican bishop is facing jail after pleading guilty to 'deeply shocking' sex offences against a young boy who stayed silent for more than 30 years.

Anthony Pierce, 84, the retired Bishop of Swansea and Brecon, admitted five charges of indecent assault on the boy under the age of 16.

The allegations were reported to the Church in Wales in 2023 when the victim, now middle-aged but who has not been identified for legal reasons, told safeguarding officers what happened to him.

Pierce was released on bail at Swansea Crown Court on Friday and will return to be sentenced next month.

The Church in Wales has now admitted that some of its members were aware of another allegation against Rev Pierce but kept quiet.

That alleged offence happened in 1993 but wasn't reported to police until 2010 and Pierce was never charged.

It comes after the Archbishop of Canterbury dramatically resigned admitting he felt 'shame' over the way victims of the Church's most prolific child abuser were let down.

Similarly the Bishop of Liverpool was forced resign earlier last month after two women made allegations of sexual misconduct against him.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...quiet.html

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Italy Church abuse group highlights toll on families

An Italian support group for victims of clerical sex abuse launched a network Friday to help affected families, whom it said were often shunned by their communities in the mainly Catholic country.

Organisers said it was the first such association in Italy, where the culture of silence surrounding the sexual abuse of minors by priests is still strong, despite efforts by Pope Francis to tackle the problem.

One mother, Claudia, described how her devastation at discovering her two young sons had been abused by a priest was compounded when "the entire parish abandoned us".

"It was hell," as the community "turned its back on us" and "made fun of us", she told journalists at a news conference organised by the Rete L'Abuso association to launch the network.

Campaigners say Italy, where the Vatican still holds considerable influence, has been slow to confront the problem.

During the launch of the new "Survivors' Families" group, parents of children abused shared heartbreaking stories -- of regret that they were unaware of the crimes until much later, or anger that trust in their priests had been betrayed.

"Many of us have lost our faith because of the Church itself," said Cristina Balestrini, whose son tried to kill himself three times after being abused by a priest.

"For families, it's hard to explain that a crime of abuse creates a victim but also [affects] so many other people close to them," she said.

The creation of the new network was prompted by the recent suicide of a couple from Turin, who had campaigned for better protection for children.

They died two years after their daughter, who had been abused by a relative when she was five or six, killed herself aged 28.

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20...n-families

[Fake Messiah]

He’s possibly the youngest clergy abuse victim now suing the Catholic church in California. Now, he’s speaking out for the first time, saying abuse within the church is not a problem of the past.

“The house is still burning,” Doe said. “I shed a lot of light on the fact that these issues haven’t been resolved. Even if they have made reformative efforts, it’s BS.”

When Doe was 10 years old, Hector David Mendoza Vela became the pastor of St. John the Baptist in San Lorenzo. It's the church where his family and many other immigrants in the area attended.

Doe was an altar boy at the time and says the priest became almost like family.

“He would ultimately sleep over at my house,” he said. “We would give him safe passage in our home. We even gave him a key. That’s how much my parents trusted him.”

Doe said Fr. Vela began spending the night at his family’s house nearly every other day. The priest often picked him up from school, and those car rides home were where Doe said he began noticing red flags.

“He’d put his hand on my lap,” said Doe, who was about 14 when the touching began. “When I started to get frustrated with it, I started to really dig my hand into my lap just to prevent him from moving his hand up even more.”

The touching followed Doe from those car rides into his home, he said, when the priest slept over at night.

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigation...s/3781895/

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No, it's not over. In another part of the world, the Catholic church reinstates pedophiles to work with kids. A priest who also had accses to victim's home.

Croatia: Priest Served Prison Term for Pedophilia. Archbishop Hranic Reinstated Him To Work With Kids

For a year and a half, until last week, the priest had worked with altar boys and Catholic youth without any restrictions. As a rule, they were reinstated because, contrary to a secular verdict, a church court had acquitted them of guilt. Hranic's archdiocese apparently made the same acquittal decision, despite the rulings of three Croatian courts - the municipal, county and Supreme Courts.

During his service in the parish under Hranic's administration, the priest physically attacked a 17-year-old who was his altar boy in three different situations. Once, in the rectory, he "hugged him, kissed him on the mouth, laid down next to him and suddenly climbed on top of him and jumped on him, simulating sexual intercourse".

In addition, for more than a year, the priest, according to the conclusion of the Croatian courts, "came to his family home almost every day, went on trips with him, invited him to sleep over with him in the rectory, wrote him messages every day via SMS and Viber, telling him that he loved him, thus controlling who he hung out with and where he went out, that a woman would never satisfy him as a man, that it was him who will satisfy him ....., that he had to put oil on his mouth ......., that they were now married as husband and wife, asked him to massage him, to lie down next to him, kiss him and hug him, and when (the victim) wanted to move away from him, he put pressure on him through his mother to maintain contact and called him Judas and sent him a large number of SMS messages that, despite his behavior, he still loved him, which caused (the victim) great discomfort and concern".

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comment...edophilia/

[Fake Messiah]

German Catholic Church condemns provocative carnival float linking Jesus to church sex abuse

The float, which was unveiled Tuesday, shows an altar boy in front of a confessional with an arm sticking out and an outstretched hand luring the boy inside. On the side of the confessional, bold letters read “Jesus loves you.”



The Cologne archdiocese condemned the float as “tasteless.”

The floats for Cologne’s annual Shrove Monday parade are famous for poking fun at the powerful and mockingly referring to controversies. But the church’s reaction suggested that the city’s carnival committee went too far this time.

“If one assumes that the Son of God is partly responsible for the terrible acts of abuse that have also and especially occurred in the Catholic Church, a line has been crossed that cannot be justified for any reason in the world,” the archdiocese’s letter said.

However, many German Catholics, also in Cologne, have turned their backs on the church in recent years. Many say they felt betrayed by the scale of the sex abuse allegations and disappointed by what they describe as inadequate prosecution of perpetrators by the church.

In 2018, a church-commissioned report concluded that at least 3,677 people were abused by clergy in Germany between 1946 and 2014. More than half of the victims were 13 or younger, and nearly a third served as altar boys.

https://apnews.com/article/germany-carni...ce7567715b

[zebo-the-fat]

Aww...!

[Fake Messiah]

Louise Milligan on the monster priest no one will grieve

Louise Milligan is the author of Cardinal, which delved deeply into the issue of child abuse by priests of the Catholic Church, and the subsequent cover-ups. She has written a great deal on the Australia’s most notorious paedophile, Gerald Ridsdale, the former priest convicted of abusing 70 children, who died last week.

I don’t think that there should be a eulogy for Gerald Ridsdale. I think there should be a eulogy for the childhoods of so many little kids that were destroyed by him, the kids who deserved better. They were the ones who were let down so brutally, by “men of God”, who they looked up to and who they thought were people who would always do the right thing by them, and instead they did the worst thing by them. Worse than we can even imagine. The children are the ones we truly need to be thinking of right now.

Ridsdale was convicted in relation to abusing more than 70 kids, but it’s conservatively estimated that his victims run into the hundreds because he had 16 different priestly appointments at parishes over 29 years, and it was an average of 1.8 years in each parish. Obviously, they are just the ones that came to light. His abusing trajectory goes right back to when he was in the seminary in the 1950s, where he helps on camps for underprivileged children. When he was a trainee priest, he abused at least one boy and the chances are he abused more because wherever he went, he was just absolutely feral.

The principal at the local school, who was a nun, estimated he abused every single boy in a class. In that one diocese there were so many other abusive priests and brothers. I remember about the time of the royal commission, there was a class photo of boys at a school where Ridsdale was based for a time with a ring of paedophile Christian Brothers, and there were 13 kids from that class photo who were dead. So many kids who were victims of Ridsdale and those other men during those years went on to suicide, drank themselves to death, became drug addicts, died before their time.

Every time authorities were about to catch up with him, he was simply moved. I mean, in one parish he actually left in the middle of the night because the cops told him that they were investigating. The bishop again sent him for counselling, but then he was appointed to another parish. As the royal commission said, this showed “extraordinary disregard” for the children. The bishop had been approached by the police, Ridsdale has fled in the middle of the night, and the bishop just bunged him into another parish.

It was just swept under the carpet to protect the church.

Fathers and mothers and teachers warned the church hierarchy, but they were rebuffed, and they were sent away, and they were dismissed. People were writing to the bishop, but nothing was done to stop it.

I spoke to an official in the Catholic Church who said a bishop asked Pope John Paul what he should do about this Ridsdale situation, and that Pope John Paul turned his back on him and walked away.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/louise-m...5lfp4.html

[Fake Messiah]

Catholic Church loses key battle to keep state probe of clergy sex abuse secret

After a Pennsylvania grand jury in 2018 found hundreds of Catholic priests had sexually abused at least 1,000 children over seven decades, New Jersey’s then-Attorney General Gurbir Grewal launched an investigation of allegations of sexual abuse by members of the clergy within Catholic dioceses here.

Prosecutors wanted a grand jury empaneled to consider evidence in the case, but Camden’s diocesan leaders successfully squashed it, persuading trial and appellate judges that a state grand jury had no authority to issue a presentment against a private religious entity — and that all court records in the matter should be sealed.

Wednesday, the state snagged a win in the long-fought battle, when the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered the records to be unsealed and agreed to hear arguments in the case next month.

Mark Crawford, the New Jersey director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said he’s thrilled the Supreme Court unsealed the court records and plans to attend the arguments.

“The victims here have a right to know what’s been going on after six dark years of silence,” Crawford said. “Look, the Camden bishop’s actions did not just impact the victims of the Camden diocese, but every victim in this state. The other Catholic dioceses all stood by in silence and said nothing — nothing! — when they knew that these items were being litigated in court to prevent the presentment by a grand jury.”

He called the Camden diocese’s actions to stifle the state investigation “the same old playbook.”

“It’s ‘let’s suppress what we know, prevent it from getting to the public’ while publicly saying ‘we’re going to cooperate, we’re going to be open and transparent,’” Crawford said. “What does that say about their care or compassion for the victims, who simply want to be validated, who want a voice, who want their stories told, who want to be heard?”

https://newjerseymonitor.com/2025/03/06/...se-secret/

[Fake Messiah]

This story isn’t about the priest who abused me. It’s about my mother

The church, though aware of our abuser’s crimes, had kept Father Francis Melfe employed and in our lives throughout our childhoods.

At Saint Patrick’s, where he was a priest, we were told to call him Father Melfe. At home, we were to call him dad.

Frank was my mother’s lover and the sexual predator to each of her five children, two girls and three boys. As well as being a pedophile, Frank was a thief and an arsonist. He lived outlandishly, spending money he stole from the church or, later, from an insurance company.

Like so many others before and after him, Frank had been able to use the Catholic church as a cover. This is why, on Valentine’s Day in 2019, decades after I’d last seen Frank, my husband, Todd, and I found ourselves crammed in the tiny reception area of the Bull and Moose Club in Albany, New York. We were there to attend a press conference heralding the Child Victims Act, which allows survivors of child sexual abuse to pursue civil damages against their abusers and their enablers, no matter how long ago the abuse occurred.

A few days after that, we filed suit against the Roman Catholic diocese of Albany. We were the first survivors in the diocese to do so. My siblings and I weren’t after money; we’d never want the church to think any sum could provide penance for their crimes. Taking on the diocese was about one thing only: stopping them.

Even with those facts at hand, it would have been reasonable to believe that my siblings and I didn’t stand a chance against the church. The Albany diocese is over 150 years old, extremely wealthy and powerful. It stretches across 14 New York state counties, has approximately 325,000 parishioners, and was served by nearly 200 priests. MOre than half of those priests were credibly accused of sexually abusing children. One hundred and six of them. Father Francis Melfe was just one among many.

As our lawyers submitted evidence and depositions, the church argued that because my mother’s role in the abuse was undeniable, they’d only pay for half of the damages.

A master archivist of lies, she kept herself busy late into the evenings, all while Frank had undisturbed access to our bedrooms. In the morning, she would deftly cover her children’s hickeys with Band-Aids before sending them off to school.

Like most highly skilled predators, Frank’s motivation to hunt was strong: he had another secret family on the side.

Mom knew about them: siblings headed by a single mother from the Philippines. Frank told us the poor Filipinos needed his help; he was called to duty.

Frank and Mom visited them, and Mom pretended she did not know who they really were. The youngest, the boy, I suspected may have been Frank’s. In one botched visit, Mom and one of my brothers caught the other mom and Frank together in bed.

Still, Mom stayed with Frank.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...use-mother