Clergy Abuse

In an unprecedented gesture, Pope Benedict XVI met privately Thursday with a small group of men and women who were sexually abused as youths by their clergy, an emotional encounter of prayer and tears. Participants said later that they had experienced a long-overdue sense of "fulfillment." Inside the chapel of the Apostolic Nunciature, the pope spoke to the victims individually and as a group, and they prayed together, said Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman.

Only one religious order refused to join the $660-million settlement the Los Angeles Archdiocese reached with hundreds of sexual abuse victims last summer: the Salesian Society. Across the country, the Roman Catholic order of priests has aggressively fought legal culpability for mishandling predatory priests, victims' advocates say. They continue to fight accusations as a civil lawsuit heads to trial over alleged abuse in the 1960s at St. John Bosco High School, a Salesian school in Bellflower.

Pope Benedict XVI has raised expectations that he will apologize to victims of clergy sexual abuse while he is in Australia this week. The 81-year-old pontiff told reporters during a flight to Australia for a nine-day visit starting Sunday that he would do everything possible to achieve "healing and reconciliation with the victims."

Oakland's new Cathedral of Christ the Light stretches skyward, sheathed in gleaming glass that reveals a delicate skeleton of wood and steel. Terrie Light has spent more than three years thinking about the elegant structure. She has attended more meetings than she can count about the $190-million cathedral complex while helping to design its most famous garden.

Sexual abuse victims of a defrocked priest can seek punitive damages from the Diocese of San Diego in a lawsuit that alleges officials knew the priest was abusive and did not protect them, a judge ruled Tuesday. Former priest Edward Anthony Rodrigue was convicted of sexual abuse of children and has admitted to molesting five or six boys a year over 15 years. Twenty people claim in a lawsuit against the San Diego diocese that Rodrigue, 69, abused them in the 1960s and 1970s.

A Los Angeles judge Tuesday ordered the release of secret church files on a late Orange County priest convicted of molesting children, ruling the documents show that "priests with known sexual proclivities have been handed off from one location to another without regard to the potential harm" to children. Superior Court Judge Peter D.

"Deliver Us From Evil," a documentary about pedophile priest Oliver O'Grady and his devastating California legacy, has earned its filmmaker multiple awards and an Oscar nomination. Now the film is kicking up new controversy and litigation from L.A. to Ireland, where O'Grady now lives. Released in the U.S.

A threat by the Roman Catholic diocese to file for bankruptcy in the face of lawsuits by people alleging they were sexually abused by priests is an attempt to prevent disclosure about the diocese covering up for such priests, an attorney representing victims said Monday. "It's a bad idea for the church," said attorney Irwin Zalkin. "It's nothing but a way to protect this bishop and his predecessors -- to keep the truth from coming out."

The Catholic Diocese of San Diego announced Tuesday that it was filing for bankruptcy protection rather than face lawsuits from 150 people who alleged that they were sexually abused by priests. The first court case was set to begin today. The diocese decision came despite a request Monday from a settlement judge to not file for bankruptcy until after a negotiating session set for Friday.

At least six months after Cardinal Roger M. Mahony told his superiors at the Vatican that a videotape provided proof of a priest's criminal misconduct with high school boys, the head of the Los Angeles Archdiocese told the public that the tape showed no sexual activity between Father Lynn Caffoe and the boys, according to court records.