Breaking News, Latest Philippines Headlines, World, Entertainment, Politics, Weather & Video News
The Vatican Supreme Court has cleared a senior priest accused of making advances towards a German nun during confession, the Vatican said on Friday. The five-member Supreme Court, the Apostolic Signatura, said in a statement that after careful examination the “serious” allegation could not be proved “with the required moral certitude”. Austrian priest Hermann Geissler proclaimed his innocence but resigned in January as one of three top officials at the Congregation for the Doctrine of […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Five Americans who say they were sexually molested by Catholic priests filed a lawsuit against the Vatican on Tuesday to compel the church to open its archives and hand over the names and details of abusive clergy. The plaintiffs “were harmed as a result of the Defendant Holy See’s practice and policy of not reporting suspected child abuse to law enforcement officials,” stated the lawsuit filed in US federal […]
by Ella IDE Agence France Presse VATICAN CITY (AFP) — Catholic Church’s Pope Francis on Thursday passed a landmark new measure to oblige those who know about sex abuse in the Catholic Church to report it to their superiors, in a move which could bring countless new cases to light. Every diocese in the world will now be obliged to have a system for the reporting of abuse, under a new law published by […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — A hit documentary about how some Catholic priests allegedly abused nuns in different parts of the world has been pulled from the Franco-German television channel Arte after a priest complained to a German court. The big-budget media investigation, “Sex Slaves in the Catholic Church”, was broadcast in March and has been sold widely internationally since. Its broadcast came weeks after Pope Francis admitted that some rogue priests had used nuns as […]
MADRID, Spain (AFP) — Pope Francis said a process of “healing” had started within the Catholic Church in the wake of a pedophilia summit, but acknowledged guilty priests had not been punished. The Argentine pontiff last week issued stringent child abuse legislation for Vatican City employees as part of the Church’s bid to address a wave of sex abuse allegations against priests. In an interview broadcast on Sunday with Spanish TV channel La Sexta, […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Australian police said on Wednesday they had charged a Catholic priest with indecent assault of a 15-year-old boy more than two decades ago, the latest member of the clergy caught in the church’s global sex-abuse scandal. The announcement comes a week after disgraced Australian Cardinal George Pell was sentenced in Melbourne to six years in prison for the sexual abuse of two choirboys. Police said the 61-year-old man, whose identity was […]
by Catherine MARCIANO Agence France Presse VATICAN CITY (AFP) — French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who received a six-month suspended jail sentence for failing to report sex abuse by a priest under his authority, is to meet the Catholic Church’s Pope Francis at the Vatican to tender his resignation on Monday. The private meeting is expected to take place around 0900 GMT, according to his diocese, with the pontiff to decide within weeks whether to […]
by Ella Ide Agence France Presse VATICAN CITY (AFP) — Catholic Church’s Pope Francis on Sunday vowed to tackle every single case of sexual abuse by priests, comparing paedophilia to “human sacrifice”, but drew an angry response from victims. As the pope promised an “all-out battle” against abusive priests at the end of the landmark Vatican summit on the issue, his critics dismissed his speech as a “stunning letdown”. And when he blamed the […]
Pope Francis on Sunday compared the sexual abuse of children to human sacrifice as he addressed the Catholic church’s top bishops at the end of a landmark summit to tackle paedophilia. “Our work has made us realise once again that the gravity of the scourge of the sexual abuse of minors is, and historically has been, a widespread phenomenon in all cultures and societies,” he said. “I am reminded of the cruel religious practice, once widespread […]
A leading cardinal has acknowledged the global scale of the child sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church amid the refusal by some bishops — notably in Asia and Africa — to admit clerical paedophilia was an issue in their countries. Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias told the extraordinary summit, on Friday, on the second day of a landmark summit at the Vatican on tackling paedophilia in the clergy, that the refusal by some […]
WARSAW, Poland (AFP) — A foundation supporting victims of pedophile priests in Poland on Thursday released a report documenting nearly 400 cases of sex abuse by clergymen in the staunchly Catholic country. The publication of the 27-page report, which activists presented to Catholic Church’s Pope Francis on Wednesday, coincided with the pontiff gathering the world’s top Catholic bishops at the Vatican at a summit on tackling clerical sex abuse. Images broadcast on Polish television […]
by Catherine Marciano with Ella Ide in Rome Agence France Presse VATICAN CITY (AFP) — The Catholic Church’s Pope Francis on Thursday opened a landmark Vatican summit on fighting child sex abuse, calling for “concrete measures” and handing top Catholic bishops a roadmap to tackling paedophilia in the church. “The holy people of God looks to us, and expects from us not simple and predictable condemnations, but concrete and effective measures to be undertaken. […]
