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Open Secret - Paedophile priest impregnates teen orphan girl
in northern Canada
A Roman Catholic priest accused of impregnating a Cree girl at a residential school in northern Manitoba in the 1940s was known in the area as a predator to multiple girls and women.
By Kate Adach
Nov 29, 2021
Randal Apetagon’s hands shake as he holds a nearly 100-year-old portrait of a Roman Catholic priest. The man’s eyes are familiar. Apetagon’s mom had the same stare.
“It sends chills right down my spine,” he said. “Feels like seeing a ghost.”
Apetagon, now 42, had spent decades imagining what the priest might look like, and how the cleric’s actions both created and disrupted his life. Only recently did Apetagon learn that the Saint-Boniface Historical Society archives in Winnipeg held photos of the light-eyed priest.
As a kid, Apetagon’s own green eyes made him a black sheep among his family. He, his sister and their late mother all shared a lighter complexion than their Cree relatives in Norway House, Man. As if that wasn’t enough to set them apart, Apetagon said relatives went out of their way to make them feel like outsiders. The siblings couldn’t understand why.
“I was always called ‘the bastard child,’” said Apetagon. Looking back, the slurs he says were hurled at him and his sister hinted at the source of the family’s rage.
“[An aunt] called me and my brother ‘dirty little Frenchmen,’” said Apetagon’s older sister, Camille.
Randal said others called him “Pahkwayis,” meaning “French” and “Catholic” in the local Cree dialect, Ininimowin.
It wasn’t until the siblings were well into adulthood that they learned the origin of the insults and animosity. “My mom finally told me everything when she was dying,” Camille said.
Mary Apetagon, centre, in an undated photo with her children Randal, left, and Camille.
(Submitted by Apetagon family)
On her deathbed, their mother, Mary Apetagon, revealed that “Grandpa Willy,” the man they’d been taught was their grandfather, wasn’t. Their biological grandfather, she said, was a French-Canadian named Rev. Father Albert Chamberland, a former principal at a residential school where their grandmother had been a student.
They were descendents, Mary Apetegon said, of a Roman Catholic priest.
A mother's secret
Therese Evans, Mary’s mother, was only a teenager when she got pregnant. Although her experience is central to this story, little is known about Evans’s early life.
She was born in Norway House in 1931, and her family today describes Evans’s childhood home as turbulent. They say Evans’s mother had to give her up to the Church, that she was “orphaned” and “raised by the nuns” at a residential school overseen by Rev. Chamberland.
Rev. Father Albert Chamberland in an undated photo. (Société historique de Saint-Boniface Archives, N2582)
More than 70 years later, the timeline and details surrounding the teen’s pregnancy remain unclear.
Records held by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation show that Evans attended a Norway House agency residential school from 1943 to 1946 — from age 12 to 15. Randal Apetagon said it was during those years that Chamberland “started molesting her.”
Multiple community members told CBC that Evans became pregnant by Chamberland while she was attending residential school, yet the birth certificate for her daughter, Mary Apetagon, is dated Aug. 9, 1949 — a few years after Evans was last recorded at the school.
The baby’s father is listed as William Apetagon. A note added to Evans’s baptism record, held at the Saint-Boniface Historical Society archive, says she and William married in 1949. Randal and Camille say the Church forced the pair to wed.
Church officials lied to William’s parents, Camille said, claiming he had impregnated Evans, “when it was the priest who got my grandma pregnant.”
Mary’s cousin, Mona Clarke, remembers attending the wedding, a ceremony at the Anglican Church, with a reception at William’s parents’ home. Clarke was just a young child then, but remembers the boat ride to the party, rows of men and women line-dancing together and the feeling of sitting in her nanny’s rocking chair while cradling her baby cousin, Mary.
“She was so cute,” said Clarke, 76.
Clarke grew up with the understanding that Mary’s biological father was Rev. Chamberland, but she said it was hardly spoken about outside of private conversations.
CBC News reached out to the Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas for an interview about these allegations. Archbishop Murray Chatlain declined an interview but replied to CBC by email, saying, in part, “I am profoundly saddened to read about these allegations – I had no awareness of this family’s concerns prior to your email. I take them extremely seriously.”
Do you know of a child who never came home from residential school? Or someone who worked at one? We would like to hear from you. Email our Indigenous-led team investigating the impacts of residential schools at wherearethey@cbc.ca or call toll-free: 1-833-824-0800.
Who was Chamberland?
A CBC investigation uncovered that the priest at the centre of this paternity question had a long career with the Roman Catholic Church, and was known in Norway House as a predator to multiple girls and women.
Rev. Chamberland was the head of the Roman Catholic mission in Norway House at the time of Evans’s pregnancy. He served for more than 50 years with the Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas as a mission director and residential school principal in communities across northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
There is much more on this disturbing story at CBC.
Bishop stripped of powers after marrying satanic erotica writer
12 Dec, 2021 15:28
The Spanish Catholic Church has formally stripped the country’s youngest bishop of his powers, months after he resigned from his clerical post to marry a “transgressive” author of erotica whose works contain satanic references.
In a statement issued on Saturday, the Spanish Episcopal Conference (SEC) said that Xavier Novell – once a high-profile bishop in the Solsona diocese – had forfeited his clerical privileges and powers after marrying novelist Silvia Caballol in a civil ceremony in Barcelona last month.
Citing Canon Law, the SEC – a collection of bishops from dioceses across the country – noted that Novell was now prohibited from “exercising any of the rights and duties inherent to the episcopal office” and cautioned that “other possible consequences” could follow.
Although Novell has been allowed to retain his status as bishop, he cannot conduct any of the functions and roles related to the position – such as “administering the sacraments or engaging in any teaching activity, whether public or private.”
Why would they allow him to keep his title, or does removing such have to come from the Pope?
In 2010, Novell had become Spain’s youngest bishop when, as a 41-year-old, he was appointed to Solsona, a small municipality in the country’s northeastern Catalonia. He gained prominence after supporting independence for the region. According to the BBC, Novell had also backed so-called conversion therapies for gay people and carried out exorcisms.
At the end of August, Novell came into the national spotlight after reports surfaced about how he had withdrawn from his post on what was described as “strictly personal grounds.” However, local media outlets reported that he had confided to friends about having “fallen in love with a woman, for the first time in [his] life and [wanted] to do things right.”
Caballol, a 38-year-old clinical psychologist who became a novelist in 2015, was then identified as the object of his affection. Her publisher describes Caballo as a “dynamic and transgressive author.” Her works include titles such as the ‘Amnesia’ trilogy and ‘The Hell of Gabriel’s Lust’, which delves into the “crude struggle between good and evil, between God and Satan, and between the angels and demons.”
Neither Novell nor Caballol has yet commented about their marriage or the suspension of his clerical powers.
Pope Francis blames Satan instead of paedophile priests
for sex abuse in Catholic church
Richard Hartley-Parkinson
Tuesday 9 Oct 2018 6:46 am
Pope Francis has said that the devil is alive and well and working overtime to undermine the Roman Catholic Church.
Where is Flip Wilson when you need him?
Instead of pointing the finger at perverted paedophile priests, he says that Satan is to blame for the sexual abuse crisis and deep divisions within the church.
To help combat child abusing priests, he wants Catholics to recite a special prayer every day in October.
VATICAN CITY, VATICAN - SEPTEMBER 26: Pope Francis waves to the faithful as he arrives in St, Peter's square for his weekly audience on September 26, 2018 in Vatican City, Vatican. In a 'Message to Catholics of China and to the Universal Church,' Pope Francis explains the reasons for signing the Provisional Agreement with the People??s Republic of China: to promote the proclamation of the Gospel, and to establish unity in the Catholic community in China. (Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty Images)
He said: ‘(The Church must be) saved from the attacks of the malign one, the great accuser and at the same time be made ever more aware of its guilt, its mistakes, and abuses committed in the present and the past.’
Since he was elected in 2013, Francis has made clear that he believes the devil to be real. In a document in April on holiness in the modern world, Francis mentioned the devil more than a dozen times.
Forgive me, Lord, for agreeing with this Pope, but, at least on this point, he is correct. Jesus mentioned the devil many, many times in the New Testament. I have encountered his demons on many occasions. They are for real.
‘We should not think of the devil as a myth, a representation, a symbol, a figure of speech or an idea. This mistake would lead us to let down our guard, to grow careless and end up more vulnerable,’ he wrote in the document.
The Church has recently been hit by one sexual abuse scandal after another, from Germany, to the United States, to Chile. At the same time, a deepening polarisation between conservatives and liberals in the Church has played out on social media.
Francis’ use of the term ‘the great accuser’ to describe Satan hit a raw nerve with one of the pope’s harshest conservative critics, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the Vatican’s former ambassador to Washington.
The prayer to fend off paedophile priests
St Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defence against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of heavenly hosts, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan, and all evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.’
FILE - In this Nov. 16, 2015 file photo, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, Apostolic Nuncio to the U.S., listens to remarks at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' annual fall meeting in Baltimore. Vigano accused Pope Francis last month of covering up the sexual misconduct of ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and rehabilitating him from sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict XVI. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
In an 11-page statement published on August 26, Viganò launched an unprecedented broadside by a Church insider against the pope and a long list of Vatican and U.S. Church officials.
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| Cardinal McCarrick |
Viganò, concluding that his former boss had singled him out as the devil in disguise, complained in his next statement that Francis ‘compared me to the great accuser, Satan, who sows scandal and division in the Church, though without ever uttering my name’.
On Sunday, a top Vatican official issued a scathing open letter accusing Viganò of mounting a ‘political frame job devoid of real foundation’ and contesting his accusations against the pope point by point.
When accusations are true, they are most likely not Satanic. Francis' accusing Vigano may be Satanic in origin. Francis still has the wagons circled and cannot see the evil that permeates so many priests and bishops. Satan certainly is involved in the temptations of paedophile priests and bishops, however, He could not get such license to tempt them if they were not already living outside of the grace of God.
Francis is so convinced that Satan is ultimately to blame for both the sexual abuse scandals and the divisions within the Church that he has enlisted the aid of spiritual big gun – St. Michael the Archangel. Michael is mentioned several times in the Bible as the leader of the angels who ousted Lucifer, the fallen angel, from paradise.
True, but he is never called a saint. He's an angel, or. more accurately, an Archangel.
Catholics are being asked to recite the rosary daily in October and conclude it with a prayer to St Michael that was said after Mass until 1964 but then fell into disuse.
But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Matt 6:7.
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