Unearthed emails detail how the sports franchises’ owner and PR team counseled archdiocese on how to respond to unfolding clergy-abuse case
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Efforts to shape narrative pulled in or targeted government officials, local media figures
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Emails detail the efforts made by Saints team officials to assist New Orleans church leaders in handling the fallout from a sexual abuse crisis within the archdiocese.
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High-level executives with the NFL’s
New Orleans Saints football team and the NBA’s
Pelicans basketball team had a deeper role than previously known in connection with a list of priests and deacons faced with credible allegations of child molestation while the clergymen worked with their city’s Roman Catholic archdiocese, the Guardian and reporting partner WWL Louisiana can reveal.
According to highly sensitive emails that were obtained by the outlets, one top executive even described a conversation with the
New Orleans district attorney at the time that allowed them to remove clergy names from the list – though the clubs deny their official participated in that discussion, and the prosecutor back then vehemently denies he would ever have weighed in on the list’s content.
The emails call into question prior and newly issued statements by New Orleans’ two major professional sports franchises as they denied being overly entwined in the archdiocese’s most damning affairs – while fighting to keep their communications with the church out of public view.