Argentine Bishop Bargallo quits over 'amorous ties' row
Monsignor Bargallo had been leading the diocese of Merlo-Moreno since 1997
26 June 2012 Last updated at 20:03 ET
The Pope has accepted the resignation of an Argentine bishop after the publication of pictures showing him embracing a woman on a Mexican beach.
Bishop Fernando Bargallo, 57, was photographed in the sea, hugging a woman in a bikini.
He initially said she was a childhood friend, but later admitted to having had "amorous ties" with her.
Bishop Bargallo was in charge of the diocese of Merlo-Moreno, in the province of Buenos Aires.
The scandal broke last week, when an Argentine television station broadcast pictures of Monsignor Bargallo on holiday at a beach resort in Mexico in the company of a woman.
'Childhood friend'
In one of the pictures, he is seen half-submerged in the water, embracing a woman in a bikini.
Shortly after the pictures were published, Monsignor Bargallo gave a public statement saying that the woman was a childhood friend, whom he had known all of his life.
He said the situation in which he had been photographed was "imprudent, as it could lead people to jump to the wrong conclusion".
He asked his flock to forgive him for "the ambiguity of the pictures" and urged them to view the photos "in the context of a long friendship".
But later that same week, Monsignor Bargallo convened the priests of his diocese and told them he had had "amorous ties" with the woman and would resign.
The Vatican said he would be replaced by Monsignor Alcides Jorge Pedro Casaretto.
Paraguay president Fernando Lugo recognises another son
Fernando Lugo is constitutionally barred from running for a second term
Narcisa Delacruz said she has kept quiet for years to avoid a scandal
5 June 2012 Last updated at 15:05 ET
Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo has said he will recognise that he fathered a 10-year-old child born when he was still a Roman Catholic bishop.
The mother, Narcisa Delacruz, is a nurse who said she met Mr Lugo after separating from her husband.
She is the fourth woman to come forward with similar allegations since Mr Lugo, 61, renounced the priesthood and was elected in 2008.
This is the second child he has acknowledged.
Narcisa Delacruz, 42, said Mr Lugo informally recognised paternity of her younger son, Angel, soon after his birth in the northern town of Santani.
"I approached him when the baby was 10 months old and showed him the baby. He said it was a beautiful child and from that day he began helping financially to support the baby."
She said she avoided filing for formal recognition before to avoid a scandal that could damage the Paraguayan president's political prospects.
But she changed her mind after her son demanded to have his father's surname.
Narcisa Delacruz had four children when she met Mr Lugo and was divorcing her husband.
Mr Lugo's lawyer, Marcos Farina, says the president has acknowledged the paternity "without any problems" and asked him to file the paperwork to have the child's name changed.
DNA tests
Mr Lugo served as a Roman Catholic bishop of the diocese of San Pedro, one of Paraguay's poorest areas, until stepping down in December 2006, saying he felt powerless to help the country's poor.
He took office as president two years later, ending 61 years of conservative rule in Paraguay.
But in 2009, the country was shocked when he acknowledged he was the father of a three-year-old child, Guillermo Armindo.
Two other women - Benigna Leguizamon and Hortenzia Moran - have since filed paternity suits against the former cleric.
DNA tests have shown that he had not fathered a child with Hortenzia Moran.
Ms Moran said her son, Juan Pablo, was conceived while she was working for one of the left-wing parties that supported Mr Lugo's candidacy for president in 2008.
Ms Leguizamon, who has three other children, said she had relations with Mr Lugo when she worked as a cleaner in San Pedro region, where he was a bishop.
Philadelphia monsignor imprisoned for covering up child sex abuse
Monsignor William Lynn (L) walks to the courthouse to hear the verdict in his sexual abuse trial in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 22, 2012. Credit: Reuters/Tim Shaffer
By Dave Warner PHILADELPHIA | Tue Jul 24, 2012 6:07pm EDT
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Monsignor William Lynn, the highest-ranking clergyman convicted in the U.S. Roman Catholic Church scandal, was sentenced on Tuesday to up to six years in prison for covering up child sex abuse by priests in Philadelphia.
Judge M. Teresa Sarmina told Lynn, 61, the former secretary of the clergy for the Philadelphia Archdiocese, that he protected "monsters in clerical garb who molested children."
Sentenced to three to six years in prison, Lynn had faced the possibility of a slightly longer maximum sentence of up to seven years behind bars for his conviction on a single count of child endangerment.
Lynn, who oversaw the work of 800 priests, was convicted of covering up sex-abuse allegations, often by transferring predatory priests to unsuspecting parishes. His case, which was closely watched by the Vatican, followed a series of child abuse scandals that hit the church in the United States and in Europe.
"He was the master of deception," said lead prosecutor Patrick Blessington at the sentencing in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court. "We're talking about children being raped."
Lynn worked for the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, the longtime archbishop of Philadelphia who died in January. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia is the nation's sixth largest with 1.5 million members.
Problems with abusive priests in the Philadelphia diocese had been flagged in a 2003 grand jury report that found church leaders failed to report abuse to the authorities.
Among Lynn's job responsibilities was investigating sex abuse claims from 1992 to 2004. "I tried to serve God. I tried to help people," Lynn told the judge before the sentence was handed down.
Turning to the family of a former altar boy who testified he had been assaulted by a priest assigned to a church by Lynn, the monsignor said: "I hope someday they will accept my apology."
LIST OF PREDATORS
Lynn, wearing his clerical collar, showed little emotion as he was sentenced but his defense attorney, Thomas Bergstrom, later called the sentence "grossly imbalanced".
"All of a sudden (Lynn) is being held responsible for all of the abuse that occurred over 30 to 40 years, none of which he participated in," Bergstrom said.
The defense argued that Lynn tried to handle cases of pedophile priests, making a list in 1994 of 35 accused predators and writing memos to suggest treatment and suspensions.
"He is being punished for things he did and did properly," Bergstrom said. He said Lynn would appeal and he was seeking bail.
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia issued a statement saying "fair-minded people will question the severity" of what it called a "heavy" sentence. "We hope that when this punishment is objectively reviewed, it will be adjusted," it said.
Noting the "public humiliation" the church has undergone, it said the church has changed since the events at the center of the trial. "We have taken dramatic steps to ensure that all young people in our care are safe," it said.
Ahead of the sentencing, eight witnesses testified in defense of Lynn's character. One of them, the Reverend Joe Watson, said: "He taught me a lot about how to be a good man. He was always a role model."
District Attorney Seth Williams praised the sentence.
"I think you may have heard that he did a lot of good work as a parish priest, and I don't refute that," he said. "The issue for us is what he did as secretary of the clergy, and the scores, the hundreds of thousands of children who were placed in harm's way as a result of a culture, a bureaucracy, that protected pedophile priests instead of protecting children."
Key to Lynn's conviction on June 22, according to the jury foreman, was the monsignor's own testimony that he had followed the cardinal's orders to attribute priests' moves to health reasons but never to sex abuse accusations.
EPIDEMIC OF ABUSE
At his trial, Lynn testified that after a priest named Edward Avery was accused of sexually abusing a boy, Lynn reassigned him to St. Jerome's Church, which also housed an elementary school.
There, according to a grand jury report describing an epidemic of abuse in Philadelphia, Avery molested the altar boy, then 10, who testified at the trial.
Avery, who is defrocked, was scheduled to go on trial with Lynn but pleaded guilty and is now in jail.
Lynn's defense attorney said his client could not have known what would happen to the altar boy at St. Jerome's. "Every single priest that he investigated never ever abused again, except Avery, and we've dealt with that," Bergstrom said.
Lynn's sentence was for a minimum of three years in prison, after which a state parole board will decide whether he must serve more time, depending on his behavior and other factors.
(Reporting by Dave Warner; Editing by Barbara Goldberg, Ellen Wulfhorst and David Storey)
PHILADELPHIA, July 25 (UPI) -- The Archdiocese of Philadelphia suggested Tuesday that its former secretary for clergy was given an overly harsh sentence for enabling clerical sexual abuse.
The Catholic leadership reacted after Lynn was sentenced, saying the church has learned from the sex abuse scandal and the "public humiliation" it has endured.
"Since the events some 10 years ago that were at the center of this trial, the archdiocese has changed," the statement said. "We have taken dramatic steps to ensure that all young people in our care are safe, and these efforts will continue even more forcefully now and in the years ahead."
Lynn, the first church official to be tried for allowing priests suspected of pedophilia to continue in ministry where they had access to children, was found guilty after a lengthy trial.
"Fair-minded people will question the severity of the heavy, three to six year sentence imposed on Msgr. Lynn today," the archdiocese said. "We hope that when this punishment is objectively reviewed, it will be adjusted."
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