CHARLOTTE — Bishop Peter Jugis issued a statement Aug. 17 in response to recent allegations of sexual misconduct against Church leaders, including a retired archbishop of Washington, D.C., and the release of a Pennsylvania grand jury report detailing child sexual abuse by hundreds of priests in six dioceses of that state.
One of the 301 priests named in the Aug. 14 grand jury report, Spiritan Father Robert Spangenberg, served at St. James Church in Hamlet for about three years in the mid-1990s.
“Over the past few weeks we have been presented with a lot of shameful revelations about the conduct of leaders and others in the Catholic Church,” Bishop Jugis said. “I have been hearing from many people who feel betrayed and wonder what is going to happen next to our beloved Church.”
Bishop Jugis said he “fully” supports the statement by Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Read the statement.
In that Aug. 16 statement, Cardinal DiNardo called for an investigation into the allegations against Archbishop McCarrick, “an opening of new and confidential channels for reporting complaints against bishops,” and “better procedures” to resolve complains made against bishops.
“We are faced with a spiritual crisis that requires not only spiritual conversion, but practical changes to avoid repeating the sins and failures of the past that are so evident in the recent report,” the cardinal wrote. Those changes will include input from laity, experts and the Vatican, he said.
Details are expected to be considered at the U.S. bishops’ next meeting in November.
— Catholic News Herald
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