Damned Pervert Priests - and other assorted Holy Scumbags

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The new Christian motto:
"Do evil, god forgives you."

How do they know god has forgiven him?  Where is the evidence (or are they just making stuff up again?)

'Again'?

Boru

[Fake Messiah]

Finally. We wouldn't want to break a beautiful age old Catholic tradition in which a pedophile comes to church every week and gets atoned for molesting a child in his care (or locked in his basement) because even pedophiles deserve to go to Heaven and play Pickleball with Jesus.

Washington will not require priests to report child abuse disclosed in confession

Washington has abandoned its effort to force Catholic priests and other religious leaders to divulge information on child abuse and neglect they learn of in confession.

With a pair of legal filings, the state agreed not to enforce the controversial provision of a new state law that adds clergy to a list of professions that must report to law enforcement when they have “reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect.”

The Trump administration had also weighed in on the case, siding with the churches.

https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2025...onfession/

[Fake Messiah]

New allegations of sexual and domestic abuse made against Jesus Army cult

About 60 former members of the Jesus Army, a cult described as one of the most abusive in British history, have come forward with new allegations against the group, according to a lawyer representing claimants.

The cases range from allegations of sexual or domestic abuse to claims for unpaid work from women who served as “domestic sisters” in the cult, which at its peak in the mid-2000s had several thousand members, many of whom surrendered their assets to the leadership.

Married women living in the group’s many communal houses were required to work long hours, unpaid, and some lawyers believe they were treated as modern slaves. Some of the claimants also allege they reported abuse to the Jesus Army’s leadership, who failed to act.

Founded in Northampton in 1969 by Baptist pastor Noel Stanton, the group’s leadership controlled members’ finances and enforced strict rules, including banning Christmas, snacks and cinema outings.

The Jesus Army closed down about six years ago amid widespread allegations of abuse and a cover-up by the group’s leaders. A redress scheme has previously paid out compensation to more than 500 former members of the Jesus Army for sexual, physical and emotional abuse. The scheme, which was implemented by the trust and open from September 2022 to December 2023, identified 264 alleged perpetrators, of whom 61% held leadership positions in the church, and estimated that one in six children in the group were sexually abused.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...-army-cult

[Fake Messiah]

Pope Leo holds first meeting with survivors of Catholic sexual abuse

Pope Leo met with survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy for the first time on Monday, participants said, days after the Vatican's child protection commission accused senior Church leaders of being too slow to help victims.

Leo held a meeting with Ending Clergy Abuse, an international coalition of survivors, the group said. The encounter, which included four victims and two advocates, lasted about an hour with "a significant moment of dialogue," they said.

An unusually critical report from the Vatican's own child protection commission, issued on Thursday, faulted senior bishops for not providing information to victims about how their reports of abuse were being handled, or whether negligent bishops had been sanctioned.

Survivors said he told them he was still coming to grips with the enormity of the Church's scandals.

"I think he is still in a phase where he is trying to find out how to best address these issues," said Matthias Katsch.

https://www.reuters.com/world/pope-leo-h...025-10-20/

---

Scharfenberger resigns as bishop of Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany

Pope Leo XIV has accepted the resignation of Bishop Edward Scharfenberger.

The Vatican made the announcement Monday morning. Mark O'Connell, auxiliary bishop of Boston, has been named Scharfenberger's successor.

It also follows Friday's news of an $8 million settlement in a child sex abuse lawsuit against a priest. That case was filed in 2020 as part of New York's Child Victim's Act.

In March 2023, the Diocese filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Earlier this year, it announced plans to realign or relinquish up to a third of its properties.

https://cbs6albany.com/news/local/scharf...l-pope-leo

---

Man who fought the State to reveal name of priest who raped him sues religious order

Jonathan Randall (50) was four years old on when he was violently raped as a child while on holiday in Bettystown, Co Meath.
In 2021, gardaí told the Dubliner they had identified his abuser, who is now dead, but they were not ­permitted to release the cleric’s name.

Mr Randall initiated legal action to force the State to reveal the name of his rapist.
The Chief State Solicitor’s Office told Mr Randall’s lawyer last year the man identified as having raped him was Joseph Michael Steele.

The Belfast-born priest was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in 1996 for “systematically” abusing 10 children over the course of 14 years in the North.

Mr Randall’s legal representative, solicitor and senior counsel Stuart Gilhooly, confirmed to the Sunday Independent that his client initiated a civil action last week against the Spiritan Order, which Steele was attached to.

Mr Randall said he hopes the legal action is “progress” towards receiving accountability from the religious order, as well as financial compensation, for the attack which he says stymied his childhood and still impacts his life today.

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/man-...93103.html

---

Catholic priest exploited family deaths to abuse disabled boy

A Roman Catholic priest in New Orleans positioned himself as a mentor to a young disabled boy grieving two family deaths – and then exploited the proximity to abuse him for years, police allege.

Ford, 64, made an initial court appearance on Wednesday as he became the latest figure to come under scrutiny during the New Orleans Catholic church’s longstanding clergy molestation scandal.

Ford is one of several men who have worked as Catholic clergymen in New Orleans to have been arrested by authorities in connection with child sexual abuse allegations both before and after the city’s archdiocese filed for federal bankruptcy protection in 2020. That bankruptcy filing was designed to limit the archdiocese’s financial liability with respect to hundreds of claims of clergy molestation, mostly victimizing children, over several decades.

The New Orleans archdiocese has agreed to pay at least $230m to collectively settle with abuse survivors whose claims are tied up in the bankruptcy. Those survivors have until 29 October to vote on whether or not to approve the settlement.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...use-arrest

---

Allegations of sex abuse, misused church dollars against WA priest divide parish

Emily Chapman could feel a pressure rising inside her. In the gym at Our Lady of Fatima, the Catholic church where she works, the Spokane Diocese was recapping how a leader of the parish, Father Miguel Mejía, had allegedly abused his powers as a priest to have “consensual and nonconsensual sex” with multiple women.

They said he stalked a woman. That he gave money and gifts to women in exchange for sex. That he paid to have phone sex with a woman in jail — potentially misusing parish funds to do it.

At least five women had come forward about the priest’s behavior. Eight members of a review board tasked with looking at sexual abuse cases within the Catholic Diocese of Spokane had concluded that “overwhelming evidence” backed the women’s accounts.

https://www.investigatewest.org/allegati...de-parish/

[Fake Messiah]

[Fake Messiah]

Suburban woman accusing Catholic priest of sexual misconduct says: ‘I feel betrayed’

The woman says she was stunned at how her accusations were handled by the Diocese of Joliet — the arm of the Catholic church for DuPage, Kendall and Will counties led by Bishop Ron Hicks.

There’s no evidence church officials sidelined Sanchez as a result of the accusations until recently, more than a year after learning of them. This was after the woman filed suit, naming Sanchez and Hicks’ office as defendants.

Until then, the woman says Hicks’ office looked into her accusations but essentially branded her “a liar” even while concluding there likely was sexual contact but portraying it as “mutual, inappropriate, consensual behavior.”

The woman says there was nothing mutual about it. She says she had to fend off Sanchez and reported this to the police the next day.

According to her lawsuit, Sanchez, without the woman’s consent, “hugged plaintiff, spanked her buttocks, touched her left thigh, ran his hand up her dress, put his finger in her underwear, pulled her dress down, exposed her bra, kissed her shoulder and forcibly put plaintiff’s hand on his penis over his clothing.”

“I feel betrayed,” says the woman, who asked that she not be identified.

She says her treatment by Hicks’ office solidified her decision to sue. She says it’s not because of money but to help ensure that nothing like this happens again with Sanchez and also to push back against the contention she was somehow to blame.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/the-watchdo...-ron-hicks

[Fake Messiah]

Never Forget … or Forgive: The Ongoing Catholic Church Sexual Abuse Scandal

The sexual abuse scandal surrounding Jeffrey Epstein is especially outrageous inasmuch as he used his political connections (and money) to escape prosecution for so many years. But if it’s outrageous when money and power enable impunity for horrible crimes, shouldn’t it be even more outrageous when the pretense of moral authority enables someone to commit even worse crimes? I ask because an ongoing sexual abuse scandal with a more significant number of victims has been swept under the rug through the assumed holiness of its perpetrator.

I’m speaking, of course, of sexual abuse committed inside the institutions of the Catholic Church. The media silence about this atrocity, in the face of the Epstein story and the recent election of a new Pope, cuts across American political loyalties and reveals as much about the corrupt moral thinking of the left as it does about that of the right.

Between 1950 and 2002, in the United States alone Catholic priests were responsible for at least 10,000 cases of sexual abuse (as reported by the Church itself). Some estimates are as high as 100,000. By the Church’s own admission, 22 percent of the victims were younger than eleven. We know of 48 suicides among the reported victims, and there were likely more among the unreported.

Worldwide, the Vatican continues to deal with 800 new abuse claims every year.

About four percent of Catholic priests and deacons—over 4,300 of them!—were known to have been involved in the scandal. And it wasn’t just the Catholic Church. There is substantial evidence of similar widespread abuse in other American Christian churches, although it hasn’t been as well-investigated. Cover-ups have emerged in the Southern Baptist convention in 2019 and the Mormon church as recently as 2023.

What makes the Catholic cover-up unique, however, is that the Church is an international organization with state sovereignty via the Vatican. Its cover-up of sex crimes amounts to a proven version of the international criminal conspiracy that QAnon conspiracists have imagined to be perpetrated by their political enemies in “the deep state.” This very real conspiracy involved not only commands from the Vatican to keep it secret (dating back at least as far as 1962), regular shuffling of priests accused of abuse from parish to parish, a secret network of “treatment” centers to keep it a secret, and even a plan to buy a Caribbean Island where the most criminal priests could be hidden from society.

Scandalously, 1,700 priests and other clergy accused of molesting children still walk free. Just before his death, Pope Francis ordered that their names not be publicized. The Church chose to hide these crimes—and continues to encourage us to forget them—because, I submit, it wants to maintain a false moral authority from which it draws its spiritual strength.

While many publicly crusaded to expose Harvey Weinstein and other prominent individuals, cries of “me too” were conspicuously missing during the recent papal conclave to replace Pope Francis. This was especially evident from the fawning reception by the liberal press of the succession of Robert Prevost to the papacy in May.

The media covered the drama around the Papal conclave as though it were Oscar night or the NFL draft, speculating who would win the great honor. Never mind that, to one degree or another, it is likely that all of the candidate cardinals were involved in covering-up or looking the other way in the face of damning evidence of sex crimes.

https://www.skeptic.com/article/never-fo...e-scandal/

[Fake Messiah]

New report: Over 4,000 children among victims of priest abuse in Italy

Nearly 4,400 people in Italy have been victims of abuse by Catholic priests in cases reported since 2020, Reuters cites new allegations from a victims’ rights group that has renewed pressure on the country’s bishops to address a scandal that continues to shake the Catholic Church.

The figures were compiled by Rete l’Abuso, Italy’s largest association representing survivors of church-related sexual abuse.

The group’s founder, Francesco Zanardi, said the tally was drawn from victims’ testimonies, judicial sources, and media reports. The organisation did not specify how far back the alleged abuse cases date.

The report detailed cases involving 4,625 victims, of whom 4,395 were allegedly abused by priests. Among the survivors, 4,451 were minors at the time of the abuse, and 4,108 were male. The report also identified five nuns, 156 vulnerable adults, and 11 people with disabilities among the victims.

Out of the 1,106 priests accused of abuse, only 76 faced church trials, the report said. Seventeen were temporarily suspended, seven were reassigned to other parishes, and 18 were either defrocked or resigned from the priesthood. Five accused priests took their own lives.

https://caliber.az/en/post/new-report-ov...e-in-italy

[Fake Messiah]

Assemblies of God churches shielded accused predators — and allowed them to keep abusing children

A children’s pastor was caught filming girls in a church bathroom in Arkansas. Elders suspended him for a few weeks.

In Illinois, a preacher was accused of sexually abusing children. Church leaders sent him to therapy rather than call police.

In California, a worship minister went to prison for molesting boys. His congregation threw him a party when he returned.

All of these men remained in ministry in the Assemblies of God, the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination. All went on to abuse more children.

Since the 1970s, Assemblies of God churches have repeatedly reinstated ministers and volunteer leaders accused of sexual misconduct, returning them to pulpits and youth groups, an NBC News investigation found. While some of the other largest Christian denominations now require safeguards such as background checks and mandatory reporting, national Assemblies of God leaders have resisted, arguing such rules would increase legal risk, undermine its commitment to local church autonomy and defy a core biblical command: to forgive.

The result is a patchwork system that has protected accused predators and left generations of children in danger.

NBC News identified nearly 200 Assemblies of God pastors, church employees and volunteer leaders accused of sexual abuse over the past half century, based on a nationwide search of lawsuits, criminal records and news archives. Together, they allegedly abused more than 475 people — the overwhelming majority of them children. The allegations stretch into this year, when a 10-year-old girl said in a lawsuit that her pastor groped her during Bible study.

Survivors say they were violated in sanctuaries, at pastors’ homes and in tents on camping trips. A California preacher was accused of holding knives to children’s chests while forcing them to perform sex acts on each other. In Louisiana, a youth leader confessed to drugging and assaulting three boys during a sleepover. A couple in New Mexico say their pastor used his spiritual authority to drive them apart, then coerced the wife into sex.

Of the alleged abusers, 123 were ministers, and nearly half of those were youth pastors. Others were church employees, youth group leaders or Sunday school teachers. Dozens were accused of luring boys through the Royal Rangers, a Pentecostal version of the Boy Scouts.

In about 30 instances, church leaders placed alleged abusers into positions of authority after they had been accused, freeing them to strike again. Convicted sex offenders led youth groups. Accused ministers were reinstated or quietly moved to new congregations. As a result, according to lawsuits and police records, dozens more children were abused.

In nearly 40 other cases, leaders allegedly covered up or dismissed reports of misconduct — often by failing to alert police or pressuring victims to stay quiet. Melody Meza recalled a leader in her congregation praying for lying, demonic spirits to leave her after she reported abuse by a church elder.

“They made me feel like something was wrong with me and not the person abusing me,” said Meza, one of nearly 20 people suing an Assemblies of God church in California accused of concealing decades of abuse.

Others said preachers twisted scripture to silence them. “Touch not the Lord’s anointed,” pastors warned, citing a verse from Psalms that some interpret as a command to never question spiritual leaders.

Courtney Blackburn said when she reported misconduct by her youth pastor in Arkansas, she said, they left him in place. He went on to sexually assault two children, criminal records show.

In August, NBC News uncovered how an Assemblies of God college ministry funneled hundreds of students to the home of Daniel Savala, a sex offender some pastors hailed as “the holiest man alive.” In both cases, leaders dismissed warnings, allowing the abuse to continue.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ass...rcna240213

[zebo-the-fat]

Assemblies of God churches shielded accused predators — and allowed them to keep abusing children

A children’s pastor was caught filming girls in a church bathroom in Arkansas. Elders suspended him for a few weeks.

In Illinois, a preacher was accused of sexually abusing children. Church leaders sent him to therapy rather than call police.

In California, a worship minister went to prison for molesting boys. His congregation threw him a party when he returned.

All of these men remained in ministry in the Assemblies of God, the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination. All went on to abuse more children.

Since  the 1970s, Assemblies of God churches have repeatedly reinstated ministers and volunteer leaders accused of sexual misconduct, returning them to pulpits and youth groups, an NBC News investigation found. While some of the other largest Christian denominations now require safeguards such as background checks and mandatory reporting, national Assemblies of God leaders have resisted, arguing such rules would increase legal risk, undermine its commitment to local church autonomy and defy a core biblical command: to forgive.

The result is a patchwork system that has protected accused predators and left generations of children in danger.

NBC News identified nearly 200 Assemblies of God pastors, church employees and volunteer leaders accused of sexual abuse over the past half century, based on a nationwide search of lawsuits, criminal records and news archives. Together, they allegedly abused more than 475 people — the overwhelming majority of them children. The allegations stretch into this year, when a 10-year-old girl said in a lawsuit that her pastor groped her during Bible study.

Survivors  say they were violated in sanctuaries, at pastors’ homes and in tents on camping trips. A California preacher was accused of holding knives to children’s chests while forcing them to perform sex acts on each other. In Louisiana, a youth leader confessed to drugging and assaulting three boys during a sleepover. A couple in New Mexico say their pastor used his spiritual authority to drive them apart, then coerced the wife into sex.

Of the alleged abusers, 123 were ministers, and nearly half of those were youth pastors. Others were church employees, youth group leaders or Sunday school teachers. Dozens were accused of luring boys through the Royal Rangers, a Pentecostal version of the Boy Scouts.

In about 30 instances, church leaders placed alleged abusers into positions of authority after they had been accused, freeing them to strike again. Convicted sex offenders led youth groups. Accused ministers were reinstated or quietly moved to new congregations. As a result, according to lawsuits and police records, dozens more children were abused.

In nearly 40 other cases, leaders allegedly covered up or dismissed reports of misconduct — often by failing to alert police or pressuring victims to stay quiet. Melody Meza recalled a leader in her congregation praying for lying, demonic spirits to leave her after she reported abuse by a church elder.

“They made me feel like something was wrong with me and not the person abusing me,” said Meza, one of nearly 20 people suing an Assemblies of God church in California accused of concealing decades of abuse.

Others said preachers twisted scripture to silence them. “Touch not the Lord’s anointed,” pastors warned, citing a verse from Psalms that some interpret as a command to never question spiritual leaders.

Courtney Blackburn said when she reported misconduct by her youth pastor in Arkansas, she said, they left him in place. He went on to sexually assault two children, criminal records show.

In August, NBC News uncovered how an Assemblies of God college ministry funneled hundreds of students to the home of Daniel Savala, a sex offender some pastors hailed as “the holiest man alive.” In both cases, leaders dismissed warnings, allowing the abuse to continue.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ass...rcna240213

Again??