What Saints and church officials said, and what their emails say

Excerpts from emails in which officials from the sports teams tried to finesse coverage of a clergy-abuse scandal

‘Crisis communications’: emails show how NFL’s Saints and NBA’s Pelicans helped New Orleans church spin abuse scandalHere are the people revealed to be involved in the Saints clergy-abuse emailsThe Saints clergy-abuse emails: five takeaways from our investigation

Greg Bensel, our senior vice president of communications, was asked if he would help the Archdiocese prepare for the media relative to the release of clergy names involved in the abuse scandal.

I like Sarah – his PR person a lot – but if he ever wants to chat crisis communications – with him and Sarah – we have been through enough at Saints to be a help or sounding board – but I don’t want to overstep!

Thank you Greg, I will pass this on to him. I am certain he will appreciate it. Many thanks.

No one associated with our organizations made recommendations or had input on the individual names of those disclosed on the list – rather our suggestion was to be completely transparent.

No.

He was not consulted about the composition of the archdiocese’s ‘credibly accused’ list nor did he or anyone from [his] office have input into its assembly.

I did not at any time ask the archdiocese or tell the Saints to tell the archdiocese … ‘remove this name from the list’.

No one from the Saints organization or the New Orleans District Attorney’s Office had any role in compiling the list or had any say in adding or removing anyone from the list.

Had a cc w Leon Cannizzaro last night that allowed us to take certain people off the list.

The Archdiocese reached out to a number of community and civic minded leaders seeking counsel on handling the pending media attention that would come with the release of the clergy names in November of 2018. Greg Bensel, Senior Vice President of Communications for the New Orleans Saints, was contacted and offered input on how to work with the media.

In the weeks leading up to the Nov. 2, 2018, release of clergy names, Greg met with the Archbishop and communications staff.

I have been talking to the Archbishop on numerous occasions and was on … Benson’s boat in Florida with [Aymond in July 2018, months before the church announced plans to release a list of credibly accused clergy].

I don’t get paid enough – Helping the Archbishop prep for his 9 am meeting.

I said, ‘Greg [Bensel] may be a really good guy to help you get out the message you want,’ … that … [the archdiocese] can’t change the sins of the past, but that [we] sympathize with the victims and let the public know what we’re doing to safeguard people.

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