Super Bowl week is a time for celebrating the game on the field.
This year that isn’t the case.
And now one NFL team got caught up in this awful sex scandal.
New Orleans Saints involved in damage control effort in Catholic Church sex abuse scandal
New Orleans is a regular Super Bowl hosting site.
This year New Orleans is home to Super Bowl 59 where the Kansas City Chiefs are seeking a historic three-peat in a rematch of Super Bowl 57 against the Philadelphia Eagles.
But the game isn’t the only focus.
The Associated Press obtained emails showing top New Orleans Saints officials were involved in helping the city’s Archdiocese navigate the fallout in 2018 of the publication of a list of pedophile priests who sexually abused altar boys.
Saints officials admitted their involvement in the matter allowed some priests’ names to remain secret.
“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,” ESPN reported.
Team President Dennis Lauscha and Senior Vice President of Communications, Greg Bensel, worked in tandem with the church to craft a message to weather the crisis of sexual abuse by priests becoming public knowledge.
“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,’” ESPN also reported.
The trove of emails also included one from U.S. District Court Judge Jay Zainey.
“You have hit all the points,” Zainey wrote to Bensel in praise of the Saints’ outreach to local newspapers. “By his example and leadership, Archbishop Aymond, our shepherd, will continue to lead our Church in the right direction — helping us to learn and to rebuild from the mistakes of the past.”
Local politicians and Saints fans who were also victims of the pedophile priests were horrified at the Saints’ involvement in the public relations effort to minimize the blowback against the church.
“This is disgusting,” State Representative Mandie Landry declared, “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.”
Former Saints season ticket holder and abuse victim Kevin Bourgeois said this bombshell made him question if there was still more wrongdoing covered up.
“We felt betrayed by the organization,” Bourgeois stated. “It forces me to question what other secrets are being withheld. I’m angry, hurt, and retraumatized again.”
The Saints attempted to downplay their involvement.
“No member of the Saints organization condones or wants to cover up the abuse that occurred in the Archdiocese of New Orleans,” a team statement read. “That abuse occurred is a terrible fact.”
But there is no question this story is a black eye for the team, the city, and the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
