The emails show team executives played a more extensive role than previously known in a public relations campaign to mitigate fallout from the clergy sexual abuse crisis. Here are some key takeaways from the emails, which the team for years sought to keep secret :. Team executives were so closely involved in the church's damage control efforts that a Saints spokesman briefed his boss on a call with the city's top prosecutor hours before the Archdiocese of New Orleans released a list of accused clergymen.
Team officials were among the first people outside the church to view the list, a carefully curated yet undercounted roster of suspected pedophiles that invited civil claims against the church and drew the 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.
Meanwhile, the team's spokesman provided fly-on-the-wall updates to Lauscha about media interviews, the emails show. Bensel, the Saints' senior vice president of communications, sent lengthy emails to local newspaper editors invoking the team's impact on the community while asking them to keep their communications confidential. The Saints have stood behind Bensel and other team officials. Saints say team played no role in producing list of accused priests.
The Saints drew criticism from fans and others in after the AP first reported on its alliance with the church in The team insisted it had urged the church to be transparent even as it went to court to keep its internal emails secret. The team told the AP last week the partnership is a thing of the past. The team also reiterated denials it made in that it did not help shape the roster of clergy accused of sexual abuse that was published two years earlier by the church.
The AP's findings angered members of the New Orleans community. All of them should have been just as horrified at the allegations. A chilling twist emerged Friday in the death of Adan Manzano, a year-old TV reporter who traveled to cover the Super Bowl but mysteriously died in a hotel room. Horror swept through the crowd of onlookers in Tel Aviv's "Hostage Square" on Saturday as the three emaciated faces of hostages freed by Hamas in Gaza appeared on screen.
