Nevin Manimala

Chico Harlan

Rome bureau chief covering southern Europe and sometimes parts beyond

Stefano Pitrelli

February 22 at 5:09 PM

VATICAN CITY — In the thick packet of materials the Vatican released leading up to its high-profile sex abuse summit, one kind of information was missing: statistics about abuse cases.

The Vatican does not publicize the new cases that it handles, though some experts say it might have among the most comprehensive abuse-related data sets in the world.

But on Friday, an Italian journalist said he was tipped off by a Vatican source that some statistics were hiding in plain sight — buried in a section of the Holy See’s website. The collection of pages shows hundreds of abuse cases annually being handed by bishops to the Vatican’s disciplinary body, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or CDF.

“Somebody must have thought it was important for the size of the phenomenon to be public,” the journalist, Emiliano Fittipaldi, said.

The data, described in an article published Friday by the news magazine L’Espresso, gives a partial glimpse of the volume of abuse cases being handled under Pope Francis — while also providing a pointed reminder of the church’s slow road to transparency. The church is devoting Saturday, the third day of the summit, to improving its openness, and survivors of clerical abuse have long asked the Vatican to release the names and case files of priests convicted of clerical abuse.

The obscure Vatican Web pages show year-by-year data on the number of new cases sent to the Holy See concerning clerics accused of “serious offenses,” including abuse of minors but also possession of child pornography and spiritual offenses. The information is contained in a series of annual summaries, from 2012 until 2017, about the activities of the CDF. Although there is no specific data about how many clerics faced accusations of abusing minors, the 2017 report said the “majority” of serious offense cases involved such accusations.

Pope Francis attends the second day of a historic summit on sexual abuse. (Handout/AFP/Getty Images)

The way the data is categorized varies slightly from year to year, making total tabulation difficult. But in most years under Francis, who became pope in 2013, the Vatican has seen between 400 and 500 new “serious offenses” cases.

In only one annual report did the Vatican discuss punishments, mentioning that the pope had defrocked or removed 16 clerics in 2016. No names of clerics were given in the reports.

The cases reported to the CDF represent only a fraction of clerical sex abuse, because many dioceses do not report cases to the Holy See. And scores of victims never disclose their experiences to criminal or church authorities.

A Vatican spokesman, Alessandro Gisotti, said the CDF information is “published every year” and that it is “no news.”

But several people who closely follow the Vatican’s handling of abuse cases said they had not previously seen the data.

Pope Francis prays during the opening of the second day of a Vatican’s conference on sexual abuse by clerics. (Giuseppe Lami/AP)

Anne Barrett Doyle, who runs BishopAccountability.org, a clearinghouse that tracks abuse cases, said the information was new to her. She said the last major public disclosure of Vatican abuse data came in 2014, when the Holy See’s ambassador to the United Nations reported to the committee on human rights that more than 3,420 credible abuse accusations against minors had been reported to the CDF over the previous 10 years. The Vatican defrocked 848 priests as a result of those cases.

“Numbers and names are better than just numbers,” Barrett Doyle said. “But when you even get just numbers, accountability begins. This all along has been a crisis about who controls the information about the crimes. It went from the church withholding it from everybody to now, where it’s a little less asymmetrical than it was. But still, the CDF is pretty much a black hole.”

This week, Vatican officials have been asked several times about their willingness to release statistics. Doing so could provide a clearer sense of where crimes are occurring, the ages of victims, and the punishments for those found guilty in church proceedings.

Archbishop Charles Scicluna, of Malta, said Friday that the CDF has “wider information” and is willing to consider releasing more.

“This is a legitimate question,” said Scicluna, a sex crimes investigator for the Vatican. “Where are the stats?”

The day before the summit began, Phil Saviano, an American who helped expose widespread church sex abuses in the United States, was among the victims who met with Scicluna and other organizers of the event. Saviano provided the Vatican investigator with a letter urging the church to release the names and files of priests reported to the Holy See for abuse. Such a step would require the church to reconsider its use of pontifical secrecy codes.

Saviano said that before the meeting was over, Scicluna took him aside and said he would be in favor of that.

Saviano remembered Scicluna saying, “We should release that information.”

Read more

Pope Francis calls for ‘concrete and effective measures’ against clerical sexual abuse

‘The pope ignored them’: Alleged abuse of deaf children on two continents points to Vatican failings

The world’s Catholics react to the Vatican’s abuse summit

Cardinal describes ‘universal’ problem on second day of Vatican abuse summit

A review of the Catholic Church’s recent abuse scandals

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Americans’ love for their pets is apparent in dog parks and grooming parlors, on cat videos and pet food price tags. But just how many pets we love is less clear.Google the U.S. pet population, and you’re quickly confronted with two oft-cited, and contradictory, sources. The American Pet Products Association found that 68 percent of U.S. households owned some sort of pet in 2016 — “equal to the highest level ever reported,” it gushed in the executive summary. Among those pets were about 90 million dogs and 94 million cats, the group said.The American Veterinary Medical Association recently reported that 57 percent of households had a pet at the end of 2016, a figure the group characterized as having only “inched up” from its previous survey in 2011. The overall pet population, AVMA said, included 77 million dogs and 58 million cats — significantly lower than what the pet trade group cited.These dueling digits matter nothing to the kitties and doggies that occupy our sofas and our hearts. But they’re important to many humans. Pet companies want to how much they might be able to sell. Veterinarians need to know how many patients to expect, and veterinary schools must determine enrollment numbers and course offerings. Whether people own pets can influence where they decide to live, or even whether they have children.“For me, as an academic, I’m offended by the fact that everyone is running around using numbers” that vary so much, said Andrew Rowan, a former chief executive of the Humane Society International and a longtime scholar of pet demographics. “You can’t really make public policy decisions in the absence of data.”It turns out there are other, stronger data from surveys that don’t appear at the top of search engines, and they find far lower pet ownership rates than the pet industry group’s record high figures. The Simmons National Consumer Study, which surveys households annually, found last year that 53 percent owned pets, figures that suggested at least 77 million dogs and 54 million cats, or about the same as the veterinary association.And the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Housing Survey, which asked about pet ownership in 2013 and 2017, most recently reported that 49 percent of households included pets.Why the discrepancies? Methodology matters. Both the industry and veterinary groups publish population figures in enormous tomes that drill deep into spending on pets, where people get pets and what kinds of pets they have. And both recruit respondents using internet “opt-in” panels, an increasingly common method that’s cheaper than randomized mail, telephone or in-person methods. Yet even though responses are typically weighted to match U.S. demographics, experts say such samples may not produce a representative picture. In addition, surveys focused heavily on one topic can also have a bias that’s hard to shake — in this case, toward pet owners, who are more likely to take a survey on pet ownership.“When it comes to opt-in online surveys, you never really know what you are going to get,” said Robert L. Santos, chief methodologist at the Urban Institute, a think tank. He noted that in 2013, the American Association for Public Opinion Research warned that researchers should avoid this method for estimating populations.The pet products association, which performs its survey every two years and had 22,000 respondents in 2016, used mail surveys until 2010 — and that’s when its ownership estimate jumped from 62 percent to 68 percent. Although its most recent report advises readers against “direct comparisons” between the mail and online data, its executive summary and news release do just that, touting record levels of pet-owning households and “significant” increases in dog ownership between 1988 and 2016.Anne Ferrante, APPA’s senior vice president for member relations and business development, said the association believes the switch from mail to web was responsible for the large increase and added that researchers sought to combat bias by tracking which types of people completed the survey. The over time comparisons were highlighted because members wanted them, “so we included it to ensure accuracy in data interpretation,” she said.The veterinary association, which conducts its survey every five years and had 41,000 respondents in 2016, switched from mail to internet in 2011. But the group’s chief economist, Matt Salois, said the most recent report is “more sophisticated” than the previous one because it targeted non-pet owners and weighted better for factors like geography and gender.

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (WEAU) — As drug overdose deaths continue to impact the Chippewa Valley, local experts have formed a team to help tackle the growing problem.

The Eau Claire and Dunn County Overdose Death Review Team, headed by the Eau Claire City-County Health Department, is made up of various health care organizations and law enforcement officers.

Nationally, drug over doses caused more than 70,000 deaths nationwide in 2017, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and more than 1,100 of those deaths were in Wisconsin, according to the CDC.

Local health officials say the Chippewa Valley is no exception to the growing statistics, “We are at the state rate, which some counties are higher and some counties are lower,” says Chelsie Smith, a public health nurse with the Eau Claire City-County Health Department.

“Our philosophy is that overdose deaths are preventable,” says Toni Simonson with HSHS Sacred Heart Hospital.

Some of those involved in the team include the health department, HSHS Sacred Heart Hospital and the Eau Claire County Sheriff’s Office.

“It’s important that organizations don’t work in isolation because we all have different areas of expertise,” says Simonson. “So bringing together all of the different groups that have different perspectives on things really helps us to take a look at all of the nuances that are occurring.”

In a death-by-death case format, the team is looking for trends in overdose deaths, gaps in services, and identifying new data.

“We’ll be able to then pull additional data to have more concrete information on what are some of those upstream approaches for the prevention strategy,” says Smith.

As the team is in its early stages, members say they hope to learn from other teams around the state, all committed to a goal of reducing overdose deaths in the future.

Last week, LMU men’s basketball (17-10 overall, 5-8 WCC) suffered two home losses in a pair of close games, falling to Gonzaga on Thursday, 73-60, and BYU on Saturday, 70-62. Here are statistics from the two games in comparison to the team’s season averages.

LMU vs. Gonzaga (Thurs.):

Points: 60

Rebounds: 36

Assists: 14

Steals: 5

Blocks: 3

Turnovers: 5

Field Goal Percentage: .379 (25 of 66)

Three-Point Percentage: .071 (1 of 14)

Free Throw Percentage: .563 (9 of 16)

Fouls: 19

LMU vs. BYU (Sat.):

Points: 62

Rebounds: 25

Assists: 14

Steals: 12

Blocks: 4

Turnovers: 13

Field Goal Percentage: .451 (23 of 51)

Three-Point Percentage: .400 (4 of 10)

Free Throw Percentage: .857 (12 of 14)

Fouls: 20

LMU Season Averages per Game:

Points: 67.4

Rebounds: 33.1

Assists: 14.0

Steals: 7.3

Blocks: 2.9

Turnovers: 13.0

Field Goal Percentage: .452 (24.1 of 53.4)

Three-Point Percentage: .321 (5.0 of 15.6)

Free Throw Percentage: .736 (14.1 of 19.2)

Fouls: 17.9

The South Korean government is seeking to assist North Korea in generating the economic statistics required to join international financial institutions (IFIs), documents seen this week by NK News showed.In a public bid seeking private sector assistance in the project, Statistics Korea (KOSTAT) said the demand for reliable North Korean statistics had increased amid growing inter-Korean cooperation and plans for Pyongyang to join IFIs like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.Subcontractors in the scheme are being asked to come up with measures designed to complement the KOSTAT’s current systems and to generate “credible statistics of North Korea in accordance with a change in circumstances” over the course of the seven-month-long project.KOSTAT cites a speech delivered by South Korean President Moon Jae-in in September last year, in which he confirmed that Pyongyang is willing to “engage in reform and opening” by becoming a member of the IMF and the World Bank.Moon also in that speech emphasized the need for support from international agencies including the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) due to there being “a number of limitations” should Seoul work to help Pyongyang’s “national economic development.”In the Korean-language proposal this week, KOSTAT asks potential subcontractors to collect and propose data on the significance, conditions, and procedure for joining IFIs, including the IMF.The KOSTAT is allocating around KRW79.9 million (USD$71,134) to the project, for which bidding is open until March 5.To achieve these policy goals, Seoul also plans to enhance its cooperation with Pyongyang and review the possibility of updating its roadmap for inter-Korean statistical cooperation, taking changes in the international situation and developments on the Korean peninsula into consideration.South Korea has in recent months expressed an interest in helping the North join the IMF | Photo: International Monetary Fund (IMF) FlickrThe South Korean national statistical office says it will devise a “concrete plan of cooperation,” with Pyongyang to help generate the necessary statistics to join the IFIs.Seoul also plans to review Pyongyang’s current statistics to assess how many of the indicators needed to join these organizations are already produced by the country.Researchers are being asked to propose a list of necessary statistics indices, along with an explanation for each index, as well as a plan for cooperation with the North Koreans.A line-up of indicators, which should be generated in order of priority, will be also provided by the ROK side, including information on the standards that Seoul would apply when assessing the statistics.If the necessary statistics do not exist, instructions on how to generate the statistics using existing data will be provided by Seoul.Should major progress in North Korean denuclearization and North-South relations take place, the phased plan to promote inter-Korean statistical cooperation will go ahead.The KOSTAT says it also seeks to “strengthen North Korea’s statistical capacity including statistics education.”As an outcome of the research project, “concrete procedures to collaborate with international organizations” will be provided, with researchers being asked collect and analyze cases of statistical cooperation between a transition country and lesser-developed country before and after joining IFIs.The KOSTAT research project is in line with the 2019 economic policy course announced by the South Korean government in December last year, in which Seoul said it planned to garner widespread support from the international community for North Korea’s entry into the IMF and the World Bank.Then-finance minister Kim Dong-yeon last May said Seoul would seek to fast-track Pyongyang’s entry into some IFIs.His successor Hong Nam-ki earlier this month asked the World Bank to provide assistance for North Korea’s economic growth, in a meeting with David Malpass — the current U.S. Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs and a current nominee for the Presidency of that organization.In a press statement, the ministry said Hong had requested that the World Bank “play a pivotal role in supporting North Korean development if there is any progress in Pyongyang’s denuclearization.”Edited by Oliver HothamFeatured Image: Joint Inter-Korean Summit Press CorpsThe South Korean government is seeking to assist North Korea in generating the economic statistics required to join international financial institutions (IFIs), documents seen this week by NK News showed. In a public bid seeking private sector assistance in the project, Statistics Korea (KOSTAT) said the demand for reliable North Korean statistics had increased amid growingNo subscription? You’re missing out.Join the influential community of members who rely on NK News original news and in-depth reporting.Subscribe to read the remaining 682 words of this article.EXISTING MEMBER?

Jagex should be more than proud with their efforts they have thrown into Old School RuneScape. The game has taken off once more and has reached a new all-time high popularity wise, and now we have the statistics to prove it.

Since Jagex decided to re-roll the RuneScape servers back to the glory days of 2007, the Old School RuneScape community has been on nothing but an upswing player-base wise. The classic game powered by a democracy of community decisions recently debuted to mobile as well, which resulted in the title catapulting itself through records set back in 2008 for ‘most total paid memberships at once‘.

Now, Jagex has is currently sitting at new heights with Old School RuneScape and has taken this moment to release some in-game statistics regarding activities players constantly do. According to Jagex’s statistics, there are 200,000 quests completed on average per day, 25.1 million fish caught per day, 198.2 million logs chopped per day, 32.2 million weapons and armor forged each day and 2.3 million bosses slain. Each of these activities are achieved by quite a large amount of dedicated players. Old School RuneScape is currently available on the PC, iOS and Android devices. A link to the website for more information can be found here.