SNAP asks Pope Leo XIV to sign canon law on clergy sex abuse
A group known for protecting those sexually abused by Catholic priests has sent a letter to Pope Leo XIV to ask him to sign new canon law taking a zero tolerance stance on sex abuse in the clergy, while questioning why he didn't do more in his decades spent in the Catholic Church.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests sent the letter the day the new pope stepped out onto the Vatican balcony. It calls for a number of action in his first 100 days.
The biggest ask is making zero tolerance part of the church's canon law, defining it as the permanent removal of a person from ministry following a single act of sexual abuse "admitted or established after an appropriate process," "found guilty" in the judicial system, or "found liable in a civil proceeding."
The group also spoke out about their new Conclave Watch project, writing to the pope on the day of his election, "You can end the abuse crisis — the only question is, will you?"
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/sex...-xiv-peru/
Film festival to premiere clergy sex abuse documentary partly based on Guardian reporting
The producer of the 82-minute film is Michael Brandner Sr, who in 2018 discovered a pile of what were essentially love letters to his younger brother, Scot, from a Roman Catholic priest named Brian Highfill. Scot – who was a teenager when he received the letters – never told anyone about them and died by suicide at age 29 in the early 1990s.
Michael presented the letters to New Orleans’ Catholic archbishop, Gregory Aymond. In a recorded phone call between the men, Aymond told Brandner that the letters were likely grooming material but “weren’t explicit enough” to warrant Highfill’s inclusion on a list released by the archdiocese that identified clergymen faced with substantial allegations of child molestation.
Aymond ultimately added Highfill to that list in October 2020 after WWL Louisiana and a reporter now at the Guardian questioned the archdiocese about at least three other victims who had reported their own allegations of sexual abuse at the hands of Highfill over the previous 18 years.
God As My Witness in part recounts the experiences of Brandner’s family with Highfill, who died in 2021, and a number of people who endured being sexually molested as children by clergymen while growing up in the Catholic church in New Orleans. It also tells the stories of the attorneys who have advocated for clergy abuse survivors after the New Orleans church faced so many clerical molestation claims that it filed for federal bankruptcy protection in May 2020.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...e-festival
A group known for protecting those sexually abused by Catholic priests has sent a letter to Pope Leo XIV to ask him to sign new canon law taking a zero tolerance stance on sex abuse in the clergy, while questioning why he didn't do more in his decades spent in the Catholic Church.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests sent the letter the day the new pope stepped out onto the Vatican balcony. It calls for a number of action in his first 100 days.
The biggest ask is making zero tolerance part of the church's canon law, defining it as the permanent removal of a person from ministry following a single act of sexual abuse "admitted or established after an appropriate process," "found guilty" in the judicial system, or "found liable in a civil proceeding."
The group also spoke out about their new Conclave Watch project, writing to the pope on the day of his election, "You can end the abuse crisis — the only question is, will you?"
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/sex...-xiv-peru/
Film festival to premiere clergy sex abuse documentary partly based on Guardian reporting
The producer of the 82-minute film is Michael Brandner Sr, who in 2018 discovered a pile of what were essentially love letters to his younger brother, Scot, from a Roman Catholic priest named Brian Highfill. Scot – who was a teenager when he received the letters – never told anyone about them and died by suicide at age 29 in the early 1990s.
Michael presented the letters to New Orleans’ Catholic archbishop, Gregory Aymond. In a recorded phone call between the men, Aymond told Brandner that the letters were likely grooming material but “weren’t explicit enough” to warrant Highfill’s inclusion on a list released by the archdiocese that identified clergymen faced with substantial allegations of child molestation.
Aymond ultimately added Highfill to that list in October 2020 after WWL Louisiana and a reporter now at the Guardian questioned the archdiocese about at least three other victims who had reported their own allegations of sexual abuse at the hands of Highfill over the previous 18 years.
God As My Witness in part recounts the experiences of Brandner’s family with Highfill, who died in 2021, and a number of people who endured being sexually molested as children by clergymen while growing up in the Catholic church in New Orleans. It also tells the stories of the attorneys who have advocated for clergy abuse survivors after the New Orleans church faced so many clerical molestation claims that it filed for federal bankruptcy protection in May 2020.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...e-festival
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
