priest

Polish priest raising world’s largest Jesus statue (AP)

November 5th, 2010

Workers struggling against wind to assemble a crane that is to lift 32-ton head and shoulders to top a giant concrete and metal statue of Jesus in Swiebodzin, western Poland, Friday, Nov.5, 2010. The 108 feet (33 meters) statue is to be the world's tallest and is supposed to attract pilgrims and boost business in the town. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)AP - Step aside, Rio de Janeiro. This town is building a Jesus bigger than yours. A Polish priest is on the verge of realizing his dream of erecting what…

Priest sex abuse linked to 13 suicides in Belgium (AP)

September 10th, 2010

File - In this Sunday, April 3, 2005 file photo Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels leans on his staff while leading a memorial Mass for Pope John Paul II, at the St. Michael church in Brussels. On Friday, Sept. 10, 2010 a Belgian commission looking into sexual abuse by Catholic clergy says it has received testimony from hundreds of victims and that witnesses say widespread abuse over decades led to at least 13 suicides. Cardinal Godfried Danneels, acknowledged Wednesday that damage control often took precedence over concerns for victims in sexual abuse cases involving clergy. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File)AP - Hundreds of sex abuse victims have come forward in Belgium with harrowing accounts of molestation by Catholic clergy that reportedly led to at least 13 suicides and affected…

Murdered Solidarity priest to be beatified (AFP)

June 5th, 2010

Polish priest Jerzy Popieluszko, chaplain of the Solidarity democracy movement who was kidnapped, strangled and drowned, 19 October 1984 by a communist SB security police commando led by Grzegorz Piotrowski. Pope Benedict XVI on December 19, 2009 approved the beatification of Popieluszko(AFP/File)AFP - Up to 250,000 faithful are expected Sunday in Warsaw for the beatification of Jerzy Popieluszko, a Roman Catholic priest and opposition activist murdered 25 years ago by Poland’s…

Bishop: 100 cases in 10 yrs for Italy priest abuse (AP)

May 25th, 2010

AP - Italy’s bishops’ conference provided the first ever statistics of clerical sex abuse in the country Tuesday, saying there had been about 100 cases over the past 10 years…

Polish priest detained in Brazil sex-abuse case (AP)

May 22nd, 2010

AP - A Polish priest accused of sexually abusing a former altar boy in Rio de Janeiro and turning his parish home into an “erotic dungeon” has surrendered and is…

Brazil orders Polish priest arrested in abuse case (AP)

May 21st, 2010

AP - A judge in Brazil has ordered the arrest of a Polish priest suspected of sexually abusing a teenager in a Rio de Janeiro suburb, authorities said Friday.

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Catholics sent predator priest to remote village (AP)

May 8th, 2010

In this May 2, 2010 photo, worshippers arrive for Sunday mass at St. Peter's Church in Kamakwie, Sierra Leone, where priest Rev. James Tully used to preach. This faraway corner of West Africa, where there is no electricity, no piped water and wretched poverty, is where the Roman Catholic Church sent Tully, twice. A 40-year-old schoolteacher now charges that Tully abused him and other boys repeatedly during his first stint in Sierra Leone, from 1979 to 1985. After a conviction in the U.S. for giving minors alcohol and groping them, the church sent Tully back to Sierra Leone for a second stint from 1994 to 1998. (AP Photo/Nazia Parvez)AP - A rutted red dirt track leads to the “bar,” a couple of homemade wood benches in the shade of an old tree dripping with wild mangoes. Within easy…

Brazil priest detained after pedophilia accusation (AP)

April 19th, 2010

AP - Brazilian police have detained an 83-year-old priest after a congressional hearing produced allegations he molested boys as young as 12, fueling a growing scandal involving Roman Catholic clergy…

New sex charges against French priest (AP)

March 26th, 2010

FILE - In this April 8, 2005 file photo, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI,  blesses the coffin containing the body of Pope John Paul II, during the funeral mass in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican.  The Vatican is facing one of its gravest crises of modern times as sex abuse scandals move ever closer to former Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI - threatening not only his own legacy but also that of his revered predecessor Pope John Paul II.  Benedict took a much harder stance on sex abuse than John Paul II when he assumed the papacy five years ago, disciplining a senior cleric championed by the Polish pontiff and defrocking others under a new policy of zero tolerance. But the impression remains of a woefully slowfooted church and of a pope who bears responsibility for allowing pedophile priests to keep their parishes. In an editorial Friday March 26, 2010, the National Catholic Reporter in the United States called on Benedict to answer questions about his role 'in the mismanagement' of sex abuse cases, not only in the current crisis but during his tenure in the 1980s as archbishop of Munich and then as head of the Vatican's doctrinal and disciplinary office. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, FILE)AP - A priest in a town southeast of Paris was hit with sexual assault and child pornography charges after a 22-year-old former choirboy accused him of abuse, and a…

US priest accused of molesting 200 deaf boys (AP)

March 26th, 2010

This 1974 photo shows Rev.  Lawrence Murphy. The Vatican on Thursday March 25, 2010 strongly defended its decision not to defrock Murphy, an American priest accused of molesting some 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin and denounced what it called a campaign to smear Pope Benedict XVI and his aides. (AP Photo/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ) MANDATORY CREDITAP - Arthur Budzinski says the first time the priest molested him, he was 12 years old, alone and away from home at a school for the deaf. He says…