A TOTAL of 85 priests are said to have abused children across all the dioceses in Ireland between 1975 and the present– and the Bishop of Raphoe, Philip Boyce has apologised for “poor judgements” in managing priests accused of “horrific acts of abuse”. Yet bizarrely, the same bishop is said in this report to have [...]
A DEVOUT Christian’s horror of bare boobies has set the blogosphere alight this week – but a much more disturbing story, concerning the Catholic Church’s cover-up of a the abuse of children with learning difficulties, has just emerged from Australia. The first tale concerns Northern Ireland farmer Alan Graham. He apparently got all of a [...]
IT SEEM that not a day goes by without Pope Ratzinger blundering into fresh controversy. Remember the statement plucked recently from the old fool’s book The Light of the World? That created the impression that he was giving the thumbs up to condom use for male prostitutes. But ever since, Vatican officials, according to this [...]
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AUSTRALIA gained its first saint at the weekend after Pope Ratzinger intoned some arcane nonsense at a ceremony in Rome at the weekend. The creation of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop was immediately followed by a call to make the nun -who was briefly excommunicated for blowing the whistle on a paedophile Catholic priest [...]
THE Catholic Church was hoping, no doubt, that its planned canonisation of an Australian nun would serve to divert attention from all the bad press it’s been attracting in recent years over clerical child abuse. No such luck. Oz’s National Broadcaster ABC, according to this report, intends screening a documentary on October 10 which reveals [...]
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ERIC MacLeish, a US lawyer whose work for abuse victims helped secure the resignation of Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law in 2002, later suffered a breakdown, stopped practicing law and got divorced. For MacLeish, the clergy abuse cases reawakened memories of being sexually abused as a child. MacLeish and other lawyers won an $85 million settlement [...]
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The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 