A paedophile initiation ceremony…

[KTJ]

New priests lie face down during an ordination ceremony on Sunday, April 22, 2018, presided over by Pope Francis in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican.
— Photograph: Tony Gentile/Pool/Associated Press.

[pim]

Troll post

[KTJ]

from The New York Times....

Australian Mining Town Breaks Its Silence About Grim Past of Sexual Abuse

Ballarat, once the center of Australia’s gold rush, is learning to talk about
a dreadful history: decades of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests.

By JACQUELINE WILLIAMS | 9:55PM EDT — Sunday, April 29, 2018


The ribbons tied to a fence outside St. Patrick's cathedral in Ballarat, Australia, are in support of victims of child sexual abuse at the hands of the Catholic clergy.
— Photograph: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/The New York Times.

BALLARAT, AUSTRALIA — Rob Walsh was outside Melbourne Magistrates' Court recently awaiting a pre-trial hearing for Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican's third-highest-ranking official, when, he said, he unexpectedly walked into the cardinal himself.

The encounter wasn't their first. They both were raised in the same old mining town, which could be why the cardinal extended his hand, inviting Mr. Walsh to shake it. Mr. Walsh declined — a gesture that signified the lasting impact of a decades-long sexual abuse scandal that has rocked this town, Ballarat, and sent shock waves around the world.

“The ripple is still on the lake and it's still occurring,” Mr. Walsh said from his home in Ballarat, referring to the lingering effects from that scandal, in which priests preyed on children, including Mr. Walsh, during the 1960s and 1970s.

“It's gone through families and generations.”

This town, officially a city of about 100,000 people, was once the center of Australia's gold rush, but is now better known as the epicenter of that pedophile ring, in which Catholic clergy preyed on those who depended on them the most — children from Ballarat's poor, blue-collar neighborhoods.

The scale of the abuse in Ballarat was staggering. Gerald Ridsdale, the former chaplain of St. Alipius Primary School in Ballarat, was imprisoned for sexually abusing 65 children from the early 1960s to late 1980s. He was only one of several priests convicted of abusing children.

About 45 victims were estimated to have committed suicide, prompting an outpouring of grief from once devout Catholic parents who said the church robbed them of their sons.


An open-air museum depicting Ballarat in the 1850s, during the gold rush. — Photograph: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/The New York Times.

Today, survivors speak of broken marriages, children being raised without fathers, lives spent in a haze of drugs and alcohol or in and out of institutional care.

What happened here is often likened to a big black cloud hanging over the city that has never fully lifted.

“It's a never-ending story,” said Mr. Walsh, whose two brothers and cousin were also abused at St. Alipius Primary School. In the years that followed, all three committed suicide.

“It just keeps going and going and going,” added Mr. Walsh, who has not alleged that Mr. Pell abused him.

Survivors in Ballarat remained silent for decades. The city has, until recently, prided itself on being a conservative community in which the Catholic Church was held in high regard. Some victims felt trapped — worried their families wouldn't believe them. Others feared the church's dominance here.

On the road into the city from Melbourne, the state capital, the red brick Gothic-like presbytery of St. Alipius immediately stands out. Further into town, ornate churches have an imposing presence on many main streets.

The Ballarat Diocese, one of the largest Catholic dioceses in Australia, is a major power center. With its property and other assets, the Catholic Church's holdings in and around Ballarat are estimated to be worth more than 175 million Australian dollars, or about $135 million, according to news reports.


“It's a never-ending story,” said Rob Walsh, an abuse survivor whose two brothers and cousin were also abused at St. Alipius Primary School.
In the years that followed, all three committed suicide. — Photograph: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/The New York Times.

Many of the city's Catholic families were descendants of poor Irish immigrants, most of whom were Catholic and came to Ballarat in the 1800s to work in its gold mines. Far from the mansions in other parts of town, they tended to gather in the working-class area of East Ballarat, seeking community in churches like St. Alipius after the mining industry slowed in the early 1900s.

East Ballarat “was really left over from the gold rush days,” said Maureen Hatcher, who has lived in Ballarat most of her life. “There would have been a lot of people that would have come here that were incredibly poor and never made any money but thought they would.”

Pubs have also played a major role in Ballarat life since the gold rush, say historians. And though they have dwindled in number, some residents said they have contributed to the malaise of alcoholism and depression that still lingers.

The abuse was particularly damaging because, without the basic social services prevalent today, residents of East Ballarat relied on the church for support, to serve as a bedrock for their community.

Ultimately, the priests betrayed those they were supposed to protect, say the victims.

“This community has been ravaged by the Catholic Church,” said Stephen Woods, who was abused as a child starting in the 1970s.

It wasn't until the 1990s that the dam finally broke, said Mr. Woods, whose abuse took place at St. Alipius, and later at the nearby St. Patrick's College, a Catholic day and boarding school.


“This community has been ravaged by the Catholic Church,” said Stephen Woods, who was abused as a child starting in the 1970s at his old school,
St. Alipius, above, and later at the nearby St. Patrick's College. — Photograph: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/The New York Times.

He publicly revealed his abuse in 1994 and was among those who led the way for others to share their truths.

But he added that it was the Loud Fence movement, which began about three years ago, that finally gave this community a voice to speak about its dark past.

The movement began as thousands of residents and people from across Australia began hanging colorful ribbons on the fence outside St. Alipius and St. Patrick's to show support for the victims.

Ms. Hatcher, the movement's founder, said though ribbons had at times been stripped from the fences by parishioners, they tied people together and now served as a symbol of speaking out against abuse.

“There are more ribbons on the fence now than there was before,” said Frank Sheehan, a former state lawmaker from Ballarat.

Finding its voice has helped Ballarat become something even more. Just as the rush to find gold transformed Ballarat from a small sheep station into a major mining settlement, the new willingness to speak out about the abuse scandal has turned Ballarat from a closed, conservative former mining town and industrial city into a more tolerant and inclusive community.

Belinda Coates, the city's former deputy mayor, said she had seen a shift, with many major organizations here now choosing female leaders.


Some say the new willingness to speak out about the abuse scandal has turned Ballarat from a closed, conservative former mining town
and industrial city into a more tolerant and inclusive community. — Photograph: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/The New York Times.

Ballarat is the first city in Australia to join the Council of Europe's Intercultural Cities Network, a statement of intent to become a more culturally diverse and welcoming community, as also seen in Ballarat's acceptance of a growing number of new immigrants from countries including Sudan and Afghanistan.

“There's a bit of a quiet revolution going on in Ballarat,” Ms. Coates said.

“When you start to challenge the status quo, it ripples out into the community,” she added. “More people are finding their voices.”

But this transformation is in large part because of a great tragedy. Residents and former victims hope an impending court decision on whether Cardinal Pell should stand trial for “historical sexual offenses” will help Ballarat find some closure.

“We're all waiting on a decision,” said Mr. Walsh, who refused to shake the cardinal's hand on the street. “The Catholic Church has just really got to change. It's as simple as that.”

__________________________________________________________________________

• This article appears in the Monday, April 30, 2018 print edition of The New York Times with the headline “A Gold Rush City Coming to Grips With the Sins of its Clergy”.

• Jacqueline Williams reports for The New York Times from the paper's Sydney bureau. Previously she was a N.Y. Times correspondent based in Mexico City, then Miami. Jacqueline was born in Canberra, Australia and graduated from the University of Hawaii, where she was a scholarship tennis player.

__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

• Australian Court to Decide Whether Cardinal Pell Faces Trial

• Australian Court Hears Public Testimony in Cardinal Pell Abuse Case

• Cardinal George Pell Appears in Court Over ‘Historical’ Sexual Abuse

www.nytimes.com/2018/04/29/world/australia/ballarat-church-sexual-abuse-pell.html

[pim]

Therefore, according to your "logic", all Catholic priests are paedophiles. Is that how you work things out? Your slander regarding all of the Catholic clergy is as bigoted as the ongoing slanders levelled against all Muslims.

[pim]

Is this guy a paedophile?


Threatened: Gosford Anglican priest, Father Rod Bower.

Granted he's not a Catholic priest, but, hey, would you really draw a distinction there?

Let's read some more about him ...

Threat to church after Anzac Day message echoing Abdel-Magied's post

www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/threat-to-church-after-anzac-day-message-echoing-abdel-magied-s-post-20180430-p4zcgg.html

When Father Rod Bower, the rector of the Gosford Anglican Church, posted a pro-refugee Anzac Day message on Facebook, he knew he would cop abuse.

But he didn't expect to see "I'll set that church on fire" in the comments, especially not from a man who was wearing what appeared to be an Australian Defence Force uniform.

The threat, made on Anzac Day, has been investigated by the Australian Defence Force Investigation Service, who told Father Bower that the person was "not a current serving member of [the] ADF".

However, Father Bower said the man's profile on the LinkedIn website still has him as a current ADF member.


The person who made the threat against the Gosford Anglican Church on its Facebook page. The church obscured the man's identity.

Father Bower had written a message on the church's outdoor sign that read "Lest we forget Manus & Nauru", a deliberate echo of the controversial Facebook message posted by engineer and Muslim feminist activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied on Anzac Day last year, which led to her receiving a barrage of abuse and threats, eventually contributing to her leaving the country to work in Britain.

"The bulk of the abuse, while aimed at what I had written ... said that 'you're just like her,' " Father Bower said.

"It seemed easier for them to abuse me through Yassmin. I found that fascinating. When a white male Christian says that sort of thing, it's bad enough, but when a brown female Muslim does, that's totally unacceptable. Even while abusing me, they still felt the need to channel that through Yassmin.

"We have had other occasional threats of arson, always from the extreme right of our nation's political spectrum, ironically from the very same people who warn that Muslims will 'burn your churches down'," Father Bower said in a follow-up post on Facebook.



"A Muslim has ... never threatened me in any way."

In the Facebook post that precipitated the threat, Father Bower honoured war veterans, including his own relatives, and called for the "cessation of the degradation of some of the world's most vulnerable people for political purposes".



He wrote that "we must remember what we are doing to refugees and asylum seekers on #Manus and #Nauru".

Father Bower's church, which often posts messages and writes signs calling for better treatment of refugees, the rejection of racism and reconciliation with Aboriginal people, regularly receives threats of violence through Facebook, email and on its answering machine.

Father Bower believes right-wing extremists feel empowered by a political environment that promotes nationalism.

In August 2016, about 10 members of the anti-Islam, anti-immigration group Party for Freedom stormed the church in mock Muslim garb, disrupting a sermon by Father Bower.

The intruders said mock prayers and blasted a recording of the Koran being recited.

The far-right group's website calls for the abolition of "state sponsored multiculturalism" and a return to assimilation.

The website features the slogan "Make Australian Great Again". Its founder Nick Folkes has stated his support for Pauline Hanson and One Nation.

Father Bower said the threats and abuse would not stop him from communicating his views on behalf of the church.

"I have some serious concerns about the shift in culture in Australia, towards a more nationalistic, exclusive culture that marginalises the vulnerable," he said.

"It's the job of the church to scream at the top of our voice: 'Don't forget the poor.' "

The Defence Department has been contacted for comment

But he'd be a paedophile according to you. Right?

[KTJ]

I note the name of Ballarat is mentioned in THIS ARTICLE published by The Washington Post about the no.3 paedophile (in seniority) in the world's largest organised paedophile ring.

And.....the no.3 paedophile also FEATURES in The New York Times as well.

[KTJ]

Question: If you had a large organised paedophile ring operating in your town or city or state, do you agree it should be shut down?

So what about the world's BIGGEST organised paedophile ring, the Roman Catholic Church?

Should that also be shut-down? After all, it IS a paedophile ring, as proved by court cases all over the world.