A number of locally influential civic figures and organizations are involved in emails showing how top officials at the NFL’s Saints and NBA’s Pelicans closely coordinated with New Orleans’ Roman Catholic church in a campaign to soften media coverage of a decades-old clergy-abuse scandal in their city.
The Saints and Pelicans as well as the church fought in court to keep the emails hidden from the public. One of the primary justifications cited in favor of keeping the emails confidential was to protect the identities of clergy-abuse victims. Yet none of more than 700 pages of emails reviewed by the Guardian and reporting partner WWL Louisiana named any such victims.
