c. 2003 Religion News Service
Pedophile Priest Slain in Prison
BOSTON (RNS) The pedophile priest whose case opened the floodgates for a national clergy abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church was found dead in his prison cell Saturday (Aug. 23), apparently murdered by another inmate.
John J. Geoghan, 68, was serving his second year of a nine-to-10-year sentence for assault and battery on a child under age 14. Guards at Souza Baranowski Correctional Center, a maximum-security facility in Shirley, Mass., found him beaten and strangled shortly before noon Saturday.
Worcester County District Attorney John J. Conte said he would bring murder charges against Joseph L. Druce, a 37-year-old inmate serving a life term at the same prison. Druce reportedly has a record of committing hate crimes, having killed a gay man who made a pass at him in 1986 and having targeted more than 30 Jewish lawyers in a 2001 anthrax hoax.
In the pecking order of prison culture, inmates commonly target convicted pedophiles, such as Geoghan, who stood accused of molesting nearly 150 children over three decades as a parish priest in Massachusetts. For this reason, officials kept him in a protective custody unit with two guards for 24 inmates.
“He was there based on the inability to ensure his safety in the general population,” said Massachusetts Corrections Department spokesperson Kelly Nantel. She declined to comment on reports that Druce had used sheets and shoes to kill Geoghan in a matter of minutes while both guards were distracted.
Geoghan’s case touched off the national scandal in January 2002, when news reports of systemic sexual abuse and cover-ups led swiftly to his conviction and to a deluge of fresh allegations against dozens of other priests. At the time of his death, plaintiffs were still pursuing criminal cases against him for rape and indecent assault and battery against a minor.
“My clients have mixed emotions,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Mitchell Garabedian. “They are shocked. … A small number of my clients felt that it was time for him to meet his maker and thought judgment day had arrived, but they were by no means happy about his death.”
The 26 pending civil suits in which Geoghan is named will continue, Garabedian said, in order to seek a negligence judgment against supervisors who allowed him to continue in ministry.
_ G. Jeffrey MacDonald
Car Bombs in India May Mark New Round of Religious Violence
(RNS) Car bombs killed at least 42 people and wounded more than 100 in Bombay on Monday (Aug. 25). One exploded in a crowded jewelry market near a Hindu temple and another ripped through the Gateway of India, a popular tourist attraction.
No organization has claimed responsibility for the attacks, which took place just five minutes apart during lunchtime.
In both places, shop windows were shattered and cars were smashed amid blood and broken glass, according to wire reports.
“There were hands and legs flying in the air, blood everywhere,” Anil Punjabi, whose jewelry shop was next to the market, told Reuters. “I saw some bodies thrown 10 to 15 feet away from the blast site.”
The Indian government said it does not know who is responsible for the attacks, but government officials hinted that outlawed student Islamic groups could be involved, the BBC reported.
Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani said the Student Islamic Movement of India (Simi), acting with Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba, was responsible for a series of other attacks in Bombay in recent months.
“Earlier these blasts were in buses and in almost all cases the organization involved has been Simi and acting in conjunction with Lashkar-e-Toiba,” Advani said, according to the BBC.
Pakistan, which has clashed with India over the northern state of Kashmir, quickly condemned the attacks as “acts of terrorism.”
The blasts which shook India’s financial capital, also known as Mumbai, are the worst the city has seen since 1993, when a series of bomb blasts killed 260 people. Those attacks followed Hindu-Muslim riots sparked by the destruction of a 16th century Muslim mosque by Hindu zealots in the northern town of Ayodhya. The riots killed 3,000 people, mostly Muslims.
Monday’s explosions, the latest in a series of deadly attacks in Bombay in the last eight months, coincided with the release of a controversial report by Indian archaeologists that says there is evidence of an ancient Hindu temple beneath the ruins of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya.
Hindu nationalists have long pushed for the construction of a temple at the site, which they believe marks the birthplace of the god Rama, while Muslims dispute the existence of an ancient temple and have campaigned to have the mosque rebuilt.
_ Alexandra Alter
Riley’s Biblically Inspired Tax Package `Just,’ Sharpton Says
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (RNS) Gov. Bob Riley gained another unlikely ally Friday (Aug. 22) when Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton endorsed his $1.2 billion tax and accountability package, calling it “good and just for the people.”
“It is rare that I would endorse an initiative of a Republican governor,” Sharpton said before meeting with black ministers gathered at Bethel Baptist Church. Sharpton was in town to organize his presidential campaign.
Sharpton said he’d be talking about Riley’s plan while campaigning in the state. Voters will decide the fate of Riley’s package Sept. 9.
“We will be touring this state registering voters,” Sharpton said. “I have not talked to Gov. Riley and I’m not seeking to talk with him.” But Sharpton said he was rising above partisan differences to do what’s right. “I’m supporting the children.”
The tax plan is inspired in part by biblical principles that a tax law expert applied to the Alabama tax system.
Riley spokesman David Azbell compared Sharpton’s endorsement to the opposition being voiced by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas, who was a congressional colleague of Riley’s.
“It is a free country and people have a right to speak on the issues, but I’m sure they have something else to do and should let us decide these issues,” he said. “This is an issue that affects Alabamians and should be decided by Alabamians.”
It’s hard to tell whether Sharpton’s embrace will hurt or benefit Riley’s proposal, but the effect either way will likely be minimal, said University of Alabama political science professor David J. Lanoue.
“It’s a double-edged sword for Riley,” Lanoue said. “It tends to associate his plan with liberal politics, but there is clearly no way that Riley wins this thing without a large African-American turnout, and with that Sharpton could be helpful.”
Facing a $675 million shortfall in state budgets, Riley’s proposed tax increases would fill the budget hole in 2004. When fully implemented, the plan would raise $1.2 billion annually, with money pledged toward the expansion of the Alabama Reading Initiative and Math Science Initiative and the creation of a college scholarship program.
The plan is designed to cut taxes for low-income taxpayers. It eliminates the deduction for federal income taxes and raises taxes on property.
Riley’s plan has drawn its strongest opposition from the same people who were among his biggest supporters in the race for governor. The Alabama chapter of the Christian Coalition, the Alabama Farmers Federation, the Alabama Forestry Association and Republican Party leaders are fighting the plan, while the state’s Democratic Party has endorsed it and the national Christian Coalition came to Alabama to support Riley’s proposal.
_ Thomas Spencer
King Speech Anniversary Marked in Washington
WASHINGTON (RNS) Nearly 40 years after Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream Speech” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, about a thousand people rallied in the same spot to commemorate the 1963 March on Washington and voice hopes that King’s dream of racial equality may one day be realized.
“Despite the progress we’ve made during the last four decades, people of color are still being denied a fair share of employment and educational opportunities in our society,” King’s son, Martin Luther King III, told a crowd gathered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday (Aug. 23), according to news reports.
Two days of celebrations culminated in teach-ins and speeches by organizers from an array of groups, from homosexual and civil rights organizations to labor and anti-war groups.
To kick off the weekend’s events, a marker was unveiled Friday (Aug. 22) to commemorate the spot where the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous speech.
“The Lincoln Memorial was a poignant place of pilgrimage even before the great March on Washington and my husband’s `I Have a Dream’ speech,” said Coretta Scott King, King’s widow, in keynote remarks at the unveiling ceremony.
King, flanked by three of her children, thanked Tom Williams, of Louisville, Ky., for suggesting to Rep. Anne Northup, R-Ky., that a suitable marker be placed at the site.
Williams, a Louisville attorney, said he visited the Lincoln Memorial in 1997 with his wife, Sarah, and they were unable to find the spot from which King had delivered his famous message.
“Wouldn’t it be right to celebrate the 40th year of Martin Luther King’s `I Have a Dream’ speech with a ceremony and a marker at the footsteps of the Lincoln Memorial?” he asked Northup in a November 1998 letter.
Northup introduced a law to that effect and hundreds of people gathered in the afternoon heat Friday to see the result of its passage: a granite slab with carved letters reading “I HAVE A DREAM; Martin Luther King Jr.; The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; August 28, 1963.”
Two leaders of the march who now work at the other end of the National Mall in the U.S. Capitol remembered King’s 1963 speech.
“Dr. King was not preaching to the choir,” said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C. “He was trying to win converts. On Aug. 28 on this spot he succeeded as no one had before him.”
Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., followed on the same theme.
“Martin Luther King Jr. transformed these steps, these very steps into a modern-day pulpit,” he said. “It will become a sacred ground. In the days and the months and the years to come, people will point to this spot and say, `That’s where he stood.”
_ Adelle M. Banks
London’s `The Tablet’ Gets First Woman Editor
LONDON (RNS) The Tablet, the independent English Roman Catholic weekly review founded in 1840, is getting its first woman editor.
She is 44-year-old Catherine Pepinster, currently executive editor of The Independent on Sunday.
Pepinster will take up her post at the start of the new year.
She succeeds John Wilkins, who became editor in 1982, and will be only the fourth editor since the weekly returned to lay hands after 68 years of clerical ownership. It was bought in 1868 by the Rev. Herbert Vaughan, later bishop of Salford and then cardinal archbishop of Westminster, under whose control it took a fiercely partisan Ultramontane line in support of papal supremacy at the time of the First Vatican Council.
A group of laymen led by Douglas Woodruff, who became its editor, acquired the paper from the archdiocese of Westminster in 1936. Woodruff was succeeded by Tom Burns, another of the group, in 1967.
_ Robert Nowell
Quote of the Day: Bishop David Hemphill Sr. of Faith Temple Church of the Apostolic Faith in Milwaukee
(RNS) “We were asking God to take this spirit that was tormenting this little boy to death. We were praying that hard, but not to kill.”
_ Bishop David Hemphill Sr. of the Faith Temple Church of the Apostolic Faith, following the death of an autistic 8-year-old during an exorcism ritual at the Milwaukee church.
DEA END RNS
