Saint Joseph Catholic Church

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At Pope Francis’s invitation, Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle is one of 20 American delegates at the upcoming Synod of Bishops.

“I have spent the past several weeks renewing my prayer life, longing for greater receptivity to the voice of the Holy Spirit, to better discern in communion with the other synod delegates and our Holy Father, Francis, how best to carry out the mission of the Church today,” he writes.

Archbishop Etienne recently asked all the archdiocese’s pastors to resign and then rescinded his request. He lives in a $2.4-million home purchased for him by the archdiocese.

Father Russell Pollitt, SJ, director of the Jesuit Institute of South Africa, publicly called on Cardinal-designate Stephen Brislin of Cape Town to become more “prophetic” and willing to challenge those in power.

“He must courageously make his voice known, challenging those in political power forthrightly and prophetically, as his predecessors did,” Father Pollitt wrote in an op-ed. “The usually introverted archbishop will be challenged to take the public stage more than before.”

“Brislin is not a ‘culture warrior,’ but will have to find his place and make a stand in a College of Cardinals divided by ideology,” added Father Pollitt.

A leaked Vatican canonical investigation found that Bishop Christopher Saunders, now 73 years old, “likely sexually assaulted four youths while potentially grooming another 67.”

In 2016, Bishop Saunders told a royal commission that “I would agree that there has been a massive failure on behalf of the Church to respond appropriately to the issues and the matters and the allegations of sexual abuse throughout Australia.”

“We have all of us, I think – certainly myself, anyway – sat with victims of child abuse, and it strikes deeply into your heart to listen to the story of a person, somebody that you know, even somebody that you have just met,” the prelate added at the time.

Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was established in 2013 and issued its final report in 2017.

“The great disappointment in the situation in Knoxville, this present situation, is that we can’t look back at all that’s happened and say that we saw red flags, we reported them, and the hierarchy responded appropriately,” Father Brent Shelton said three months after the resignation of Bishop Richard Stika.

“I can’t say that because, sadly, that’s not how things unfolded,” he continued. “There were the issues with the bishop, and then priests and others who protected the bishop, by making it harder to raise concerns — who got sucked into a poisonous culture.”

CUNY for Abortion Rights, a student group that advocates for free abortion, protested Brooklyn Bishop Robert Brennan’s appearance at Mass on the Queens College campus on September 11.

Queens College “recognizes and respects the right of the bishop and his staff to visit and perform services at the invitation of the Newman Center as well as the right of those who disagree with their views to peacefully protest,” a college spokesman said.

Three years after the release of the Vatican’s McCarrick Report, Professor Robert George of Princeton University has called for a new investigation into the disgraced former cardinal.

“Of course the report is deficient!” said George. “It’s deficient because it doesn’t provide the faithful with the information they are entitled to have: 1) how McCarrick acquired and maintained over decades the extraordinary influence he had — especially in respect to episcopal appointments and advancements; and 2) on whose behalf he brought that influence to bear, and why.”

“On top of that we need to know who in the hierarchy knew of McCarrick’s crimes and when they knew it,” George added. “How high up the chain was it known that Theodore McCarrick was a predator and a fraud?”

CWN editor Phil Lawler is among those who offered comments for the article.