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As the sports world turns its eyes to New Orleans this week ahead of Super Bowl LIX, a cloud has emerged over the city’s NFL franchise.
Members of the Saints organization helped guide the Archdiocese of New Orleans through its public child sex abuse scandal in 2018 and 2019, records newly obtained by the Associated Press show.
Saints staff became a quasi-public relations agency for the archdiocese, according to the report, including by urging local media outlets to cover Archbishop Gregory Aymond’s leadership through the crisis, earning praise from a district court judge, and asking newspapers to keep their email exchanges confidential. The emails are more than 700 pages long, according to The Guardian, which also obtained the records.
The AP went to court with the Saints and the church over the confidential emails, which were originally gathered during a lawsuit against the archdiocese. The Saints had publicly said they weren’t very involved in the church’s PR through this time, primarily helping with “messaging” and handling media requests, but victims’ attorneys said the emails showed the team was more involved than that.
Members of the Saints organization were some of the first people who got to see the list of clergymen accused of abuse, according to the AP. Not all the clergy who faced allegations, charges, or convictions appeared on the published list, and the emails show a Saints spokesperson said that a call with the district attorney shortly before the list went public “allowed us to take certain people off.” The Saints and district attorney both deny that they had any role in trimming down the list (the district attorney denies he spoke to Saints staff about this).
Team owner Gayle Benson, who also owns the Pelicans, has a close relationship with Archbishop Aymond, who introduced Benson to her late husband, Tom. The church leader has flown on the Bensons’ private jet and celebrated pregame Masses with the team. Along the way, the Bensons have donated tens of millions of dollars to Catholic causes and the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Benson herself denied that anyone from the team had any say in the lists of accused abusers.
Saints president Dennis Lauscha sent more than a dozen questions to prepare Aymond for meeting with reporters, according to the AP. Lauscha received updates on the archbishop’s media gatherings from Saints SVP of communications, Greg Bensel, who said Aymond was “doing well” at conveying “our message” that the church “will not stop here today” at addressing the clergy abuse issue.
Bensel arguably played the largest part in the Saints’ involvement, and he had support from the team to do so, the AP reported. Following a scandal exposed by the New Orleans Advocate in 2018, he reached out to church officials to “chat crisis communications.”
“We have been through enough at Saints to be a help or sounding board,” Bensel said, “but I don’t want to overstep!”
Bensel communicated with newspaper staff, including editors and a columnist, about the scandal. “We need to tell the story of how this Archbishop is leading us out of this mess,” he told the editors of The Times-Picayune and The Advocate, asking them to “work with” the church. He also asked the newspapers to keep their emails private, and his emails show that The Advocate took down a call for victims to reach out to the outlet after Aymond complained. Bensel still holds the same role for the Saints, according to the team website.
“No member of the Saints organization condones or wants to cover up the abuse that occurred in the Archdiocese of New Orleans,” the team said in a statement to the AP. “That abuse occurred is a terrible fact.”
A representative for the Saints did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We felt betrayed by the organization,” former Saints season ticket holder Kevin Bourgeois, who suffered abuse from a priest in the 1980s, told the AP. “It forces me to question what other secrets are being withheld. I’m angry, hurt and re-traumatized again.”
U.S. District Court Judge Jay Zainey was copied by Saints staff on emails, and sent Bensel a message from his personal address thanking him “for the wonderful advice” (as did one of the newspaper editors, the AP reported).
“You have hit all the points,” Zainey wrote. “By his example and leadership, Archbishop Aymond, our shepherd, will continue to lead our Church in the right direction—helping us to learn and to rebuild from the mistakes of the past.”
