In New Orleans' Priest Scandal, NFL Team Did Damage Control

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. What came next was a crisis-communications blitz orchestrated by the New Orleans Saints' president and other top team officials, according to hundreds of internal emails obtained by the AP. 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. And they shed new light on a behind-the-scenes effort driven by the team's devoutly Catholic owner, Gayle Benson, a close friend of the city's embattled archbishop. Some takeaways:

• "This is disgusting," said state Rep. Mandie Landry, D-New Orleans. "As a New Orleans resident, taxpayer, and Catholic, it doesn't make any sense to me why the Saints would go to these lengths to protect grown men who raped children." Kevin Bourgeois, a survivor of sexual abuse by a priest, said he "felt betrayed by" the Saints.

• Team execs 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, "allowed us to take certain people off" the list.
• Team officials were among 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 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.

• When the clergy abuse allegations came to a head, the team's spokesman, Greg Bensel, 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, the Saints' senior VP 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. 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 last week, the team blasted the media for using "leaked emails for the purpose of misconstruing a well-intended effort." The Saints say the team played no role in producing the list of accused priests.

(More New Orleans Saints stories.)