SNAP Raises New Concern's Over Priest's Link To Controversial Organization
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Members of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests held a silent protest in front of archdiocesan headquarters in Center City Monday afternoon to demand that Archbishop Charles Chaput explain why a member of a highly controversial Peru-based society is providing pastoral services to the university communities in West Philadelphia.
St. Agatha and St. James pastor Father Carlos Keen is a member of SCV (Sodalitium Christianae Vitae), an organization whose founder and top aide were found to have engaged in longtime pattern of sexual abuse and other human rights violations. They no longer run the group. SNAP president Barbara Blaine wants answers from the archbishop.
"He's allowing this extremely dangerous organization into the Archdiocese of Philadelphia," Blaine said. "We need assurances that those who have been brought in with this organization are not perpetrators themselves."
In an email, archdiocesan spokesman Ken Gavin said, "Like all other clergy, employees and volunteers, the individual was required to go through criminal background checks and obtain child abuse clearances before starting service. To judge the one clergyman of the SCV serving in Philadelphia based on the actions of what other members may have done overseas would be unfair."
