Jim Mustian

Authorities have expanded an investigation of clergy sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans to include senior church officials suspected of shielding predatory priests for decades and failing to report their crimes to law enforcement.

A state grand jury has charged a now-91-year-old disgraced priest with sexually assaulting a teenage boy in 1975, an extraordinary prosecution that could shed new light on what Roman Catholic Church leaders knew about a child sex abuse crisis that persisted for decades and claimed hundreds of victims.

A federal judge donated tens of thousands of dollars to New Orleans’ Roman Catholic archdiocese and consistently ruled in favor of the church amid a contentious bankruptcy involving nearly 500 clergy sex abuse victims, The Associated Press found, an apparent conflict that could throw the case into disarray.

The FBI has opened a widening investigation into sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans going back decades, a rare federal foray into such cases looking specifically at whether priests took children across state lines to molest them.

A bankruptcy filing by New Orleans' Roman Catholic archdiocese freezes sexual abuse lawsuits and could help bury the details of alleged coverups of predator priests and thousands of internal emails documenting a behind-the-scenes alliance with the New Orleans Saints.

An attorney for New Orleans' Roman Catholic archdiocese Feb. 20 strongly defended the New Orleans Saints' public-relations help in dealing with the clergy sex abuse crisis, saying the legal effort to unseal hundreds of confidential emails between them is aimed at trying to shame those "who had the audacity" to back the church.

The owner of the New Orleans Saints said Monday that the NFL team played no role in determining which priests would be named in the list of "credibly accused" clergy published by the area's Roman Catholic Church.