Leaked emails reveal the New Orleans Saints' extensive involvement in a public relations campaign aimed at mitigating the fallout from the Catholic Church's clergy sexual abuse scandal. Team executives, including the president and senior communications vice president, worked closely with church officials, providing strategic advice, drafting talking points, and leveraging media connections to manage the crisis.
When New Orleans church leaders prepared to publish a list of predatory Catholic priests, they turned to a well-oiled public relations machine: the city’s NFL franchise.Emails obtained through a public records request reveal a behind-the-scenes effort driven by the team’s devoutly Catholic owner and a close friend of the city’s embattled archbishop.
Team executives were so closely involved in the church’s damage control efforts that a Saints spokesman briefed his boss on a 2018 call with the city’s top prosecutor hours before the Archdiocese of New Orleans released a list of accused clergymen. The call, the spokesman reported to his boss, “allowed us to take certain people off” the list. The 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, Greg Bensel, provided fly-on-the-wall updates to Lauscha about media interviews. When the clergy abuse allegations came to a head, Bensel, the Saints’ senior vice president of communications, carried out a public relations campaign in which he called in favors, prepared talking points and leaned on long-time media contacts to “work” with the church through a “soon-to-be-messy” time. Bensel sent lengthy emails to local newspaper editors invoking the team’s impact on the community while asking them to keep their communications confidential. Far from freelancing, Bensel had the Saints’ backing and blessing, working on the campaign even as he traveled to road games in a 2018 season in which the Saints appeared in the NFC Championship. The Saints have stood behind Bensel and other team officials. In a lengthy statement issued last week, the team blasted the media for using “leaked emails for the purpose of misconstruing a well-intended effort.”The Saints drew criticism from fans and others in 2020 after the AP first reported on its alliance with the church in 2020
NFL New Orleans Saints Catholic Church Clergy Abuse Public Relations Archbishop Gregory Aymond Gayle Benson Greg Bensel Dennis Lauscha
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