Priests persecuted for failing to break seal of confession?

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Brassring

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I hope this is the correct subforum for this question:

I know we hear that priests are prepared to suffer tremendously rather than break the seal of confession, and I believe it. That being said, does anyone know of any individual priests who currently are or recently were arrested/prosecuted/imprisoned or similarly persecuted for refusing to break the seal?

I would like to add them, by name, to my daily prayers if that is so.
 
Father Jeff Bayhi in Louisiana was threatened with jail and involved in a court case that went for years, for allegedly not reporting something an alleged sex abuse victim told him in confession. I believe the Church ended up winning the case and he is now off the hook.

Priests have pretty strong protection under US law regarding what they are told in confession, so I’m a bit surprised this even spent so much time going through the courts, but Louisiana is a little unusual legally.

catholic.org/news/hf/faith/story.php?id=71751
 
Yeah, I didn’t figure there would be any in the U.S.

I thought there might be some in China, Vietnam, or more totalitarian areas of the world.
 
The big focus is on sex abuse cases in US and Australia. Australia is considering some law to make it mandatory for priests to report any child sexual abuse of which they become aware, including breaking the seal of confession if necessary.

A priest in that situation would probably try to get the victim (or perp, if a perp is confessing) to talk to him outside the confession context, after which he could report without having to worry about breaking the seal.
 
The Louisiana case that has already been posted is the most high-profile case in recent times that I can think of, but the priest was legally absolved (pun intended) in that one, thankfully.

I expect more cases to emerge with more frequency in the future. The public is generally not in favor of the seal of confession and I expect there to be legal efforts in some countries and jurisdictions to carve out exceptions to the seal and attempt to force priests to reveal details about confessions for certain crimes (most likely sexual abuse crimes involving minors).

This might merit another thread on its own, but after doing a quick Google search, apparently some high ranking clergy in the Church disagree on whether the seal applies to anything said during a confession or whether it applies only to sins confessed:

ncregister.com/daily-news/seal-of-confession-tested-in-australian-clergy-sex-abuse-debate

This was news to me (that the seal only applies to sins revealed in confession) but every other source I’ve read seems to contradict these bishops’ statements.
 
The public is generally not in favor of any sort of privilege that keeps information from being disclosed, including lawyer-client privilege. Privileges exist for reasons that the non-legally-trained public do not fully grasp (similar to the previous discussion on statute of limitations). Let us hope and pray that the courts continue to preserve the necessary and common-sense (if you understand the legal purpose) privileges regardless of what the public, including politicians running for office, goes looking to do.
 
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