Email messages details of the help of the saints of New Orleans in the sexual assault scandal
New Orleans – As the leaders of the New Orleans Church, prepared them for its repercussions from publishing a list of predators Catholic priests, who turned into an unlikely ally: the front office of the American Football Association concession in the city.
This was a period for months, and the communications are the crises published by the President of New Orleans and senior officials of the team, according to hundreds of internal emails obtained by the Associated Press.
The records, which the saints and the church have long sought to preserve public opinion, revealed that the team’s executives played a more comprehensive role than previously known in the public relations campaign to alleviate the repercussions of the sexual assault crisis on clerics. Email messages have threw a new light on the invasion of the saints on a grudged topic away from the network, an effort behind the scenes led by the religious Catholic owner who has long enjoyed a close relationship with the city’s bishops.
They also showed how the various New Orleans’ institutions – from a federal judge sitting to the local media – gathered around the church leaders at a critical moment.
Among the main moments, as shown in my Qudsi emails:
• Executive managers of the saints participated in controlling the church’s damage until a spokesman for the team briefed his president in the 2018 call with the largest public prosecutor in the city before the church issued a list of clerics accused of abuse. The spokesman said the call “allowed us to take some people to take out”.
• Team officials were among the first people outside the church to look at that list, and it is carefully sponsored by, but it was installed from the suspects. The disclosure of these names called for civil claims against the church and drew attention from the application of federal law and law enforcement.
• The team leader, Dennis Lucha, formulated more than ten questions that bishops must be Gregory Amon
• The First Vice President of Communications, Greg Pitsel, presented the Fly-The-Wall updates to Lauscha about local media interviews, indicating that the church leaders and teams were all in the same team. “He is fine,” Petsel wrote while the bishops told reporters that the church is committed to addressing the crisis. “This is our message, we will not stop here today.”
The emails obtained by AP reduce the assurances that gave the fans of public relations guidelines five years ago when they confirmed that they only provided the “minimum” assistance to the church. The team went to the court to maintain the secrecy of internal emails.
“This is disgusting,” said Mandy Landri, de Nuwaiu Orleans. “As a population of New Orleans, taxpayers, and Catholic, it is not logical to me why the saints will go to these lengths to protect men who grew up those who raped children. All of them should have been terrified of these allegations.”
The saints AP told last week that the partnership is something of the past. Email messages cover a period of one year ending in July 2019, when they were summoned by lawyers for a priest who was later accused of raping an 8 -year -old boy.
In a lengthy statement, the team criticized the media to use “emails that were leaked for the purpose of misunderstanding a goodwill effort.”
“There is no member of the Saints Organization to condone or want to cover up the abuse that occurred in the Diocese of New Orleans,” the team said. “This abuse happened is a terrible fact.”
The team did not respond much to alleviate the anger of the survivors of the sexual assault on the clergy.
“We felt betrayed by the organization,” said Kevin Burgua, a ticket holder in the season of the saints who were offended by a priest in the eighties. “He forced me to ask about the other secrets that are blocked. I am angry, harm and review again.”
Email messages reveal the extent of help
After I first informed AP about the coalition in early 2020, the owner of the saints denied that anyone “associated with our organizations had made recommendations or obtained inputs” in the list of children’s priests.
The saints repeated this denial in their statement on Saturday, saying that there are no employees in the saints, “They bear any responsibility for adding or removing any names from that list.” The team said that he did not provide any employees “any inputs, suggestions or opinions about who should be included or deleted from” the list.
Lyon Candaro, the provincial lawyer at the time, last week, denied any role in shaping the list of clerics accused of credibility, saying statements made in 2020. He told AP that he “had no participation at all to remove any names from any list.” Cannizzaro said he did not know the reason for reporting a spokesman for the saints that he was on a list related to the list.
Do not specify emails, sent from the accounts of the saints, that is, the clergy were removed from the list or why. However, they are raising new questions about the role of saints in a scandal that has taken much greater legal and financial risks since the team has been in it, and perhaps in a violation of the US Football Association policy against the “harmful” behavior.
A group of New Orleans institutions
The executive role of holy executives can draw new attention from the US Football Association Commissioner Roger Godel, who is scheduled to address the correspondents on Monday as New Orleans is preparing to host the eleventh Super Bowl. The messages requested to comment to the American Football Association were sent.
Completely, emails depict a group of New Orleans institutions. The US Jay Zini Partial Court judge, who was copied by the saints, chanted public relations efforts, with offspring from his personal email account, and thanked the team spokesman for “for the wonderful advice.” Thanks to the Similar Newspaper Editor, Bnsel for the participation.
“I hit all points,” Zinaini, a Catholic colleague, wrote in another email letter to Bnsel, “I hit all points,” praising a lengthy viewer sent a spokesman for the saints to local newspapers. “Through his example and his leadership, bishops, the head of Archbishop, will continue to take care of our church in the right direction – which helps us to learn and rebuild from the mistakes of the past.”
Zaini later abolished the Louisiana law, which the Church strongly opposed, and which would have allowed victims to make civil claims regardless of the period when the alleged sexual assault occurred. He refused to comment.
The moment of the water gatherings of the Catholic Church
The list of water gatherings in New Orleans Catholic Catholic-which is a long-awaited Colle for the parish people who intend to enter the local healing and accountability. This came at a time when the church leaders were seeking to maintain public trust – and financial support – as they calculated generations of escalating abuse and litigation that ultimately prompted the Diocese of New Orleans to bankruptcy.
This litigation, presented in 2020, includes more than 600 people who say they have been abused by clerics. The case produced a group of church records that are still secret, which are said to be documenting years of abuse calls and a pattern of church leaders who transport the clergy without reporting their law enforcement crimes.
While expanded since then, the list of accused priests was missing a number of clerics when it was originally released.
AP 20 of the clerics who were accused of lawsuits or accused them of law enforcement of sexual assault on children and who were incomprehensible from the New Orleans list – including two were charged and convicted of crimes.
However, the list was a road map of the FBI and Louisiana Police, which launched comprehensive investigations into my training to lead the New Orleans Church for predators.
Last spring, the state police conducted a large -scale inspection note at the Diocese of New Orleans, as it seized records that include communications with the Vatican.
Since the saints began helping Parish, at least seven current and former members of the local clerics have been accused of crimes ranging from rape to possession of pornography for children.
Public Relations Campaign
The extent of ill -treatment remained largely unknown in 2018, the year in which the saints won nine consecutive matches on their way to the emergence of the NFC championship game. While the church was back to an attack on the media, Pellows carried out an aggressive public relations campaign in which he called for services, prepared the conversation points and headed in media communications long ago to support the church through “you will soon” time.
Away from self -employment, Bensel had the support of the saints and blessing through what he called “Galileo Moment”, indicating that Aymond would be Trailblazer in launching a list of clerics accused of credibility at a heat time for the church. In emails to the editing plates, “Something Ain Harja” warned against the head of the bishops “neither beneficial nor true.”
He urged the city’s newspapers to “work with” the church, to remind them of the saints and the New Ryles Bilikans – the American Professional League team in the city, also owned by Benson – thanks, in part, to support them.
“We did this because we are buying from you,” Bensel wrote to the Times Bicheun editors and New Orleans. “
“We are sitting on this opportunity now with the Diocese of New Orleans,” he added. “We need to tell the story of how the bishops lead us to this chaos.”
A close relationship between the saints and the Catholic Church
Benson and Ayimand, the head of bishops, were close to years. It was the head of bishops who presented Benson to her late husband, Tom Benson, who died in 2018, leaving his widow in the control of New Orleans privileges in the American Professional League.
The Benson Foundation gave tens of millions of dollars to the diocese and other Catholic reasons. Along the way, Amond flew on the owner’s private plane and became almost part of the team, often celebrating the pre -fans.
When the abuse of clerics reached the clergy, Bnsel worked on his communications in the local media to help form the story. He had friendly email exchanges with Times-Picayune, who praised the head of the bishop for the release of the clergy list. He also asked the newspaper leadership to keep their communication “secret, not to publish or participate with others.”
His emails revealed that the lawyer – after AyMond complained of the private sector of the publisher – was removed from one article on the Internet that called for the victims of the abuse of clerics.
Kevin Hall, President and publisher of George Media, who owns the newspaper, said that the post welcomes the participation of community leaders, but communication “does not reduce our press criteria or prevents us from following the truth.”
“Nobody gets a preferential treatment in our coverage of the news,” he said in a statement. “Over the past six years, we have constantly published in-depth stories that highlight the ongoing issues surrounding the sexual assault crisis on the diocese, as well as investigation reports on this matter by WWL-TV and Associated Press.”
It was the lawyer’s reports that prompted Bnsel to help the church, as emails showed. First offered the “Chat Crisis Telecom” with the church leaders after the newspaper revealed a scandal that included a disgraceful deacon, George Brijnak, who remained an ordinary minister even after he made allegations that he had raped an 8 -year -old girl.
“We have passed enough in the saints to be an auxiliary or exploring painting,” Bensel wrote. “But I don’t want to go beyond! “