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Ronald Stores, a convicted rapist, was placed in temporary housing in Centereach in February by Suffolk County.  Police were required to go door-to-door to tell neighbors that a sex offender was in their area but police and angry neighbors could do nothing about where the county had found him housing, across the street from North Coleman Road Elementary School.  Legislator Joseph Caracappa (R-Selden) announced yesterday a resolution designed to prevent the scene in Centereach from repeating itself.  It would prevent the county from providing housing to sex offenders within 1,000

Calls for the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law are building amid evidence that he knowingly protected suspected pedophile priests and repeatedly allowed them access to children.  Local Catholic power brokers are distancing themselves from the cardinal.  Lay organizations and even a group or priests say they’re undertaking church reform on their own.  Such national figures as former Education Secretary William Bennett and fellow Catholic conservative William F. Buckley have appealed for the cardinal to resign.

(Boston, Massachusetts)

Nassau District Attorney Denis Dillon, the second law enforcement official on Long Island to acknowledge serving a subpoena to the diocese, said his office has subpoenaed information from the Diocese of Rockville Centre about sexual abuse complaints made against Long Island priests.  Two weeks ago, Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota noted that his office had subpoenaed information.

(New York)

Rev. James Smith, a pastor at St. Kevin’s Church in Flushing since 1989, has been stripped of his pastoral duties amid allegations of sexual misconduct with three children two decades ago.  He was asked to step down and was placed on administrative leave.  Michael Dowd, an attorney representing one of the alleged victims, said last night that Smith is accused of sexual misconduct toward three boys between 10 and 13 years old from 1970 to 1973.  At the time, Smith was assigned to Holy Trinity Church in Whitestone.  The alleged

Cardinal Desmond Connell, the leader of Ireland’s 4 million Catholics, apologized yesterday for the unspeakable harm inflicted by pedophile clergymen as alleged victims picketed outside, demanding his resignation.  He also sought God’s forgiveness and healing at a Mass honoring the man who founded the Christian Brothers religious order, which is embroiled in the unfolding sex-abuse scandal in the predominantly Catholic country.  Among those attending yesterday’s ceremony was Bishop Eamonn Walsh, appointed by the Vatican on Saturday to run Ireland’s southeast diocese of Ferns after its popular bishop, Brendan Comiskey, resigned

The late Rev. Joseph Birmingham, whose nickname was Father B, is accused of sexual abuse by a growing list of boys, including 13 who on Thursday joined in a lawsuit against the Boston archdiocese and church officials, including Cardinal Bernard Law.  The suit charges the church with covering up Birmingham’s sex crimes, shuffling him among six parishes and ignoring parents who told church officials about the abuse.  Birmingham started in Our Lady of Fatima Parish in Sudbury, Mass., in 1961 before moving to Salem, Lowell and then Boston.  He passed