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LILONGWE, Malawi (AFP) — A Malawi Catholic priest, a policeman and hospital worker are among a dozen convicted over the 2018 gruesome murder of a man with albinism, a court official said Friday. Five out of the 12 were found guilty of killing MacDonald Masambuka, 22, at the height of a crime spree that saw over 40 murders and 145 assaults on people with the condition in the country. The priest, Masambuka’s brother, a […]
NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — A diocese in New Jersey has agreed to pay $87.5 million to settle hundreds of sexual abuse claims, one of the largest settlements involving the Catholic Church in the United States. The agreement between the diocese of Camden, near Philadelphia, and 300 victims regarding abuse committed by priests in the 1970s and 1980s was announced on Tuesday. The payout is larger than the nearly $85 million settlement in […]
ORAN, Argentina (AFP) — A retired Argentine bishop seen as close to Catholic Church’s Pope Francis was sentenced on Friday to four and a half years in prison for sexually abusing two seminarians. A court in the northwestern town of Oran, where Gustavo Oscar Zanchetta was bishop from 2013 to 2017, ordered his immediate detention. The 57-year-old Zanchetta, who had traveled from the Vatican for the trial, was convicted of “simple, continued and aggravated […]
ROME, Italy (AFP) — Two priests were acquitted on Wednesday of charges linked with sex abuse at a school for altar boys in the Vatican City, in the first criminal trial of its kind. Gabriele Martinelli, a former pupil at the St Pius X pre-seminary and now a priest, was accused of assaulting a fellow altar boy — years before he joined the clergy. Martinelli, now 29, was tried alongside priest Enrico Radice, the […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — Thousands of pedophiles have operated inside the French Catholic Church since 1950, the head of an independent commission investigating the scandal told AFP, days ahead of the release of its report. The commission’s research had uncovered between 2,900 and 3,200 pedophile priests or other members of the church, said Jean-Marc Sauve, adding that it was “a minimum estimate”. The commission’s report is due to be released on Tuesday after two […]
by Michel COMTE Agence France Presse OTTAWA, Canada (AFP) — The Catholic Church apologized “unequivocally” on Friday to Canada’s indigenous peoples for a century of abuses at church-run residential schools set up by the government to assimilate children into the mainstream. But indigenous leaders are still awaiting a mea culpa from the pope himself. “We, the Catholic Bishops of Canada, express our profound remorse and apologize unequivocally,” read a statement, in which they said […]
NEW DELHI, India (AFP) — A priest and three other men have been charged with the gang rape and murder of a low-caste nine-year-old girl, Indian police said, in a case that sparked days of protests in New Delhi. The girl was allegedly assaulted by the priest, 53, and three workers on August 1 after she had gone to a crematorium to fetch water. The four men, who have been in custody since they […]
SANTIAGO, Chile (AFP) — The Jesuit congregation of Chile has acknowledged that its priests sexually abused 64 people, including 34 children, between 2005 and 2020, according to a report from the Catholic order obtained by AFP Tuesday. Eleven Jesuit priests were found guilty following an internal investigation of “abusive situations with a sexual connotation” involving underage victims, according to the report by the Society of Jesus, known colloquially as the Jesuits. Of the perpetrators, […]
By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press HOUSTON (AP) — When Cardinal Daniel DiNardo first met Laura Pontikes in his wood-paneled conference room in December 2016, the leader of the U.S. Catholic Church’s response to its sex abuse scandal said all the right things. He praised her for coming forward to report that his deputy in the Galveston-Houston archdiocese had manipulated her into a sexual relationship and declared her a “victim” of the priest, Pontikes said. […]
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 […]
MONTREAL, Canada (AFP) — A man who allegedly stabbed a priest in front of his congregation live on television during mass at Canada’s biggest church was charged Saturday with attempted murder and assault with a weapon. Vlad Cristian Eremia, 26, appeared briefly by video link in a Montreal court on Saturday afternoon, sporting a beard and wearing a checked shirt. He will remain in custody, with his next hearing on Monday. The suspect is […]
(Eagle News) — Authorities on Wednesday, March 20, arrested a National Democratic Front of the Philippines consultant and a retired priest in Cavite. Renante Gamara, 61, and Arturo Joseph Balagat from the Diocese of San Bernardino in California were nabbed after a search of their “safehouse” in Imus around 5:30 p.m. yielded two hand grenades, a 9-mm caliber gun, among others, National Capital Region Police Office director Guillermo Eleazar said. According to Eleazar, the police had been […]
