Dorian Breh
Veteran
Emails detail Saints' aid to archdiocese in scandal
Emails detail the efforts made by Saints team officials to assist New Orleans church leaders in handling the fallout from a sexual abuse crisis within the archdiocese.
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.
• The team's president, Dennis Lauscha, 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."
