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SAN CRISTOBAL, Venezuela (AFP) — Family members have joined the search for nearly two dozen people reported missing after going on a religious retreat in Venezuela two weeks ago, civil protection authorities said Tuesday. Between 16 and 20 people are believed to be missing, civil protection official Yesnardo Canal told AFP, though local media have reported it could be even more. An eight-day-old baby and other children are part of the group. They went missing […]
MONTREAL, Canada (AFP) — Canadian cardinal Marc Ouellet, who has a high-ranking position within the Vatican, has been accused of sexual assault in a class action suit that targets more than 80 members of the clergy in the Quebec diocese, court documents showed Tuesday. The accusation over the alleged abuse of a female intern in 2008 comes just weeks after Pope Francis visited Canada, where he apologized for the decades-long abuse of Indigenous children in […]
by Natsuko Fukue Agence France-Presse TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — The assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe by a man resentful of the Unification Church has resurfaced years of controversy over the group. Police say Tetsuya Yamagami targeted Abe because he believed the former prime minister supported a “certain group” to which the man’s mother had made large donations. In a letter published by local media, Yamagami accused Abe of supporting the Unification Church […]
At least 600 young people were documented as having been abused by Catholic priests in the German diocese of Muenster, but the actual number of victims could be 10 times higher, a report published Monday said. The diocese has official records on 610 abuse victims, according to the report by the University of Muenster — around a third more than indicated by a previous study from 2018. However, historian Natalie Powroznik, who was involved in […]
A Russian court sentenced four members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the US-based evangelical movement, to six years in prison for “extremism”, investigators said Tuesday. The four adherents of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who hail from the city of Chita in eastern Siberia, were found guilty of organising “extremist” activities between 2017 and 2020, the Investigative Committee said. They organised meetings, collected donations and distributed religious literature, investigators said in a statement. The court sentenced two of […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the United States’ largest Protestant denomination, published a 205-page list on Thursday of ministers and other church workers who have been accused of sexual abuse. The public release of the list comes days after an independent investigation said the church had for years suppressed reports of sexual abuse against priests and church staff. “This list is being made public for the first […]
NEW DELHI, India (AFP) — At least 11 people including three minors were killed Wednesday after a temple chariot procession came into contact with a high-voltage wire in India, police said. Initial indications suggested that the crowd used water to contain an initial fire after the top of the chariot touched the wire in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. At least 15 other people were hospitalised after the incident at around 3:00 am (2130 […]
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 […]
by Femke COLBORNE Agence France Presse BERLIN, Germany (AFP) — A potentially explosive report into the handling of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church will on Thursday be published in Germany, with former pope Benedict XVI among those in the spotlight. The report by law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW) will analyse how abuse cases were dealt with in the archdiocese of Munich and Freising between 1945 and 2019. The Munich archdiocese, which […]
by Francois Picard All four people taken hostage in a more than 10-hour standoff at a Texas synagogue have been freed unharmed, police said late Saturday, and their suspected captor is dead. The hostage siege in the small Texas town of Colleyville — in which the suspect was apparently demanding the release of a convicted terrorist — had sparked an outpouring of concern from US Jewish organizations as well as from the Israeli government. Colleyville […]
by Karine PERRET Agence France Presse LOURDES, France (AFP) — Catholic bishops in France agreed Monday to sell part of the Church’s extensive real estate holdings to compensate thousands of victims of child sex abuse at the hands of clergy. Church officials have been under intense pressure to recognise and indemnify victims after a landmark French inquiry confirmed extensive sexual abuse of minors by priests dating from the 1950s. An independent commission will evaluate […]
