The e-mails shed new light on the Saints’ foray into a fraught topic far from the gridiron, a behind-the-scenes effort driven by the team’s devoutly Catholic owner who has a close relationship with the city’s embattled archbishop
As New Orleans church leaders braced for the fallout from publishing a list of predatory Catholic priests, they turned to an unlikely ally: the front office of the city’s NFL franchise.
Team officials were among the first people outside the church to view that list, a carefully curated, yet undercounted roster of suspected pedophiles. The disclosure of those names invited civil claims against the church and drew attention from federal and state law enforcement. “This is disgusting,” said state Rep. Mandie Landry, D-New Orleans. “As a New Orleans resident, taxpayer and Catholic, it doesn’t make any sense to me why the Saints would go to these lengths to protect grown men who raped children. All of them should have been just as horrified at the allegations.”
The team’s response did little to quell the anger of survivors of clergy sexual abuse. “We felt betrayed by the organization,” said Kevin Bourgeois, a former Saints season ticket holder who was abused by a priest in the 1980s. “It forces me to question what other secrets are being withheld. I’m angry, hurt and re-traumatized again.”
The e-mails, sent from Saints accounts, don’t specify which clergymen were removed from the list or why. They raise fresh questions, however, about the Saints’ role in a scandal that has taken on much larger legal and financial stakes since the team waded into it, potentially in violation of the NFL’s policy against conduct “detrimental to the league.”
Zainey later struck down a Louisiana law, vigorously opposed by the church, that would have allowed victims to bring civil claims irrespective of how long ago the alleged sex abuse took place. He declined to comment. The AP identified 20 clergymen who had been accused in lawsuits or charged by law enforcement with child sexual abuse who were inexplicably omitted from the New Orleans list – including two who were charged and convicted of crimes.
Public relations campaign The extent of the abuse remained largely unknown in 2018, a year the Saints won nine consecutive games on the way to an NFC Championship appearance. As the church prepped for a media onslaught, Bensel carried out an aggressive public relations campaign in which he called in favours, prepared talking points and leaned on long-time media contacts to support the church through a “soon-to-be-messy” time.
“We are sitting on that opportunity now with the Archdiocese of New Orleans,” he added. “We need to tell the story of how this Archbishop is leading us out of this mess.”
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