Ramon Antonio Vargas

A priest in Alabama is under investigation, church officials say, after a woman alleged to his superiors that he traded financial support for "private companionship" including sex, beginning when she was 17.

At a June 6 deposition, a Jesuit said the order would not have needed to let the accused priest minister at any of their institutions if they had ousted him or reported the allegations to law enforcement.

In an email to community members at the archdiocese-run school from which he was dismissed, Mark Richards said that he had been fired because a parent notified officials about an obituary for his husband, who died in 2023.

A federal jury in New Orleans has ordered a Catholic religious order to pay nearly $2.4 million in damages to a man who reported being sexually abused by one of its members in the late 1960s.

The Roman Catholic archdiocese of New Orleans is planning to default on paying a nearly $1m interest payment on more than $41m in bonds it sold in 2017, leading lawyers for the people who purchased the church's debt to allege in open court that it had engaged in "the definition of securities fraud".