Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Deliver UsFebruary 28, 2019
(iStock photo)

Click here to listen on iTunes
Click here to listen on Android

 

In this episode of “Deliver Us” we ask: Is the church still covering up abuse? We talk to journalist Jason Berry, who reported on an abuser priest in the ’80s for National Catholic Reporter, as well as members of The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team, who broke the news of the sex abuse crisis in 2002. We ask them: how did the church cover up abuse?

Then, we fast-forward to today to see whether or not the church is still hiding sex abuse. What can we learn from the past? And why is full transparency so difficult to achieve? Peter Steinfels, who has written critically about the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report for Commonweal, helps us understand the data.

Further reading:

Jason Berry’s book, Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children

The original Spotlight reporting

Peter Steinfels on the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report

The theme music for Deliver Us is composed and produced by Kris McCormick. Additional music courtesy of APM.
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
J. Calpezzo
6 years 3 months ago

Roger Mahony got away with it. His crimes were worse than McCarrick's.

The latest from america

Pope Leo XIV waves to the crowd in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican as they join him for the recitation of the Angelus prayer and an appeal for peace hours after the U.S. bombed nuclear enrichment facilities in Iran on June 22. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)
“Let diplomacy silence the guns!” Pope Leo XIV told the crowd in St. Peter’s Square a few hours after the United States entered the Iran-Israel war by bombing three of Iran’s nuclear sites.
Gerard O’ConnellJune 22, 2025
Paola Ugaz, a Peruvian journalist who helped expose the abuse committed by leaders of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, gives Pope Leo XIV a stole made of alpaca wool during the pope's meeting with members of the media on May 12 in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)
Pope Leo XIV’s statement was read at the premiere of a play about the Peruvian investigative journalist Paola Ugaz, who was subject to death threats because of her reporting on sexual abuse.
Gerard O’ConnellJune 21, 2025
Bishop Micheal Pham, center, leads an inter-faith group as they enter a federal building to be present during immigration hearings on June 20 in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
About a dozen religious leaders from the San Diego area, including Bishop Michael Pham, visited federal immigration court on Friday “to provide some sense of presence.”
In a time of increasing disaffiliation from and disillusionment with the institutional church, a new theological perspective on the church is needed—one that places Jesus’ own teaching at the center.
Roger Haight, S.J.June 20, 2025