Crossing Broad
Remember that story from a few years ago about how the New Orleans Saints were accused of helping the local branch of the Catholic church do damage control for the pedophile priest scandal? Here’s an update from The Associated Press:
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — 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.
What followed was a months-long, crisis-communications blitz orchestrated by the New Orleans Saints’ president and other top team officials, according to hundreds of internal emails obtained by The Associated Press.
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.
The story lays out a few bullet points, saying that team officials were “among the first people outside the church” to see a list of clergy that were accused of abuse. Allegedly, that access allowed them to take some of those people off the list. It’s also written that the Saints’ team president “drafted more than a dozen questions that Archbishop Gregory Aymond should be prepared to answer as he faced reporters.” A Senior VP of Communications is also said to have provided media updates to the Archbishop.
The short version here is that Saints and Pels owner Gayle Benson is super-Catholic has a close relationship with the NOLA archdiocese and has given millions of dollars to it. Back in 2020, when the story first came out, Saints attorneys disputed the notion that the team was helping to cover up sex abuse crimes. Both the team and the archdiocese fought the release of these emails, which were intended to be private.
Obviously these are serious allegations and the only recourse here is to fold the Saints franchise. First Bountygate, then a bunch of whining about a pass interference call. There’s no way Kellen Moore can take that job now. He needs to turn down the NOLA head coach opportunity. “Thank you but I’m good, I need to focus on the Super Bowl and defeating Spags on the gridiron.” And, on a less-pithy note, you don’t know if some punishment is coming down the pike from the NFL. What’s the fallout from this? Loss of draft picks? Fines? Who knows.
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