Intercepted Emails Reveal Saints’ Role In Protecting Priests Who Raped Children Ahead Of Super Bowls LIX

The recent revelation of intercepted emails has exposed a disturbing truth about the New Orleans Saints’ involvement in protecting priests who have committed heinous crimes against children. These emails provide damning evidence that the organization actively participated in concealing the sexual abuse perpetrated by these clergy members.

The content of the emails details a shocking level of collaboration between the Saints’ officials and the Catholic Church hierarchy to shield these predator priests from legal repercussions. It is disheartening to learn that an esteemed professional football team, which is admired and supported by countless fans, was complicit in covering up such crimes.

As reported by The Associated Press, more than 300 internal emails have now shed light on the Saints’ role in protecting the local Archdiocese, which allegedly protected suspects credibly accused of abusing children. Specifically, Saints owner and devout Catholic Gayle Benson is seen offering up the team’s senior vice president of communications to the local Archdiocese to help navigate the scandal in 2018.

The emails obtained by AP sharply undercut assurances the Saints gave fans about the public relations guidance five years ago when they asserted they had provided only ‘minimal’ assistance to the church. The team went to court to keep its internal emails secret.

‘This is disgusting,’ said state Representative Mandie Landry (Democrat – 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 records, which the Saints and church had long sought to keep out of public view, reveal team executives played a more extensive role than previously known in a public relations campaign to mitigate fallout from the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The emails 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 long enjoyed a close relationship with the city’s embattled archbishop.

They also showed how various New Orleans institutions — from a sitting federal judge to the local media — rallied around church leaders at a critical moment.

Among the key moments, as revealed in the Saints’ own emails:

Saints executives were so involved in the church’s damage control that a team spokesman briefed his boss on a 2018 call with the city’s top prosecutor hours before the church released a list of clergymen accused of abuse. The call, the spokesman said, ‘allowed us to take certain people off’ the list.

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.

Dennis Lauscha, the team’s president and a member of the Super Bowl LIX host committee, drafted more than a dozen questions that Archbishop Gregory Aymond should be prepared to answer as he faced reporters.

The Saints’ senior vice president of communications, Greg Bensel, provided fly-on-the-wall updates to Lauscha about local media interviews, suggesting church and team leaders were all on the same team. ‘He is doing well,’ Bensel wrote as the archbishop told reporters the church was committed to addressing the crisis. ‘That is our message,’ Bensel added, ‘that we will not stop here today.’

The Saints told the AP last week that the partnership is a thing of the past. The emails cover a yearlong period ending in July 2019, when they were subpoenaed by attorneys for victims of a priest later charged with raping an 8-year-old boy.

In a lengthy statement, the team criticized the media for using ‘leaked emails for the purpose of misconstruing a well-intended effort.’

‘No member of the Saints organization condones or wants to cover up the abuse that occurred in the Archdiocese of New Orleans,’ the team said. ‘That abuse occurred is a terrible fact.’

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 retraumatized again.’

With the severity of this situation, we hope that all parties involved take responsibility for their actions and work towards creating a safer environment for children. The revelations in these intercepted emails serve as a wake-up call for the need to prioritize the protection of the most vulnerable members of our society.

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