A version of this article was first published in the State of Faith newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Monday night.
As the city of New Orleans prepares to host this weekend’s Super Bowl festivities, its NFL team is facing an unusual faith-related scandal.
Saints leaders are pushing back against reports that they helped shape the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans' response to its clergy sex abuse crisis, after newly released emails appeared to contradict previous claims about the team’s involvement.
“The emails shed new light on the Saints’ foray into a fraught topic far from the gridiron, a behind-the-scenes effort driven by the team’s devoutly Catholic owner who has long enjoyed a close relationship with the city’s embattled archbishop,” The Associated Press reported Monday.
Citing the emails, the AP reported that the Saints team president helped the archbishop prepare for interviews about the church’s response to sexual abuse and that “team officials were among the first people outside the church to view” the list of clergymen accused of abuse that was published in November 2018.
Although it has long been acknowledged that Saints leaders spoke with church leaders about the crisis ahead of the list’s release, team representatives have characterized their input as “minimal,” a description that’s now being challenged by news outlets that have obtained the emails.
“The several hundred pages of correspondence reveal the extent to which Saints leaders leveraged their influence in New Orleans to aid the archdiocese and offer a rare window into how powerful institutions can work together to shape public opinion,” The New York Times reported.
In statements to the AP, The New York Times and other outlets, Saints leaders reiterated that they did not influence the list of accused priests that was released in November 2018 and pointed out that the now-public emails are from 2018 and 2019.
They said that the partnership between the team and the archdiocese is “a thing of the past” and criticized reporters for putting a spotlight on what they feel is old news, per the AP.
“No member of the Saints organization condones or wants to cover up the abuse that occurred in the Archdiocese of New Orleans,” the team said. “That abuse occurred is a terrible fact.”
As The New York Times pointed out in its story, it’s common for NFL team leaders to have strong personal and professional connections to other community leaders. But it’s unusual for the team to so closely monitor and weigh in on another organization’s response to a crisis, the Times argued.

The Archdiocese of New Orleans remains embroiled in the sex abuse crisis that is affecting the Catholic Church around the world.
“The abuse accusations, which span decades (in New Orleans), have led to dozens of civil lawsuits and out-of-court settlements, more than 600 claims of abuse in the archdiocese’s ongoing bankruptcy case and a handful of criminal convictions,” The New York Times reported.
During a pre-Super Bowl media session on Monday night, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said that the league will not investigate the Saints' relationship with the archdiocese.
“(Team owner Gayle) Benson and the Saints are very involved in this community and they are great corporate citizens,” Goodell said, per The Athletic. “Mrs. Benson takes all these matters seriously, particularly for someone with the Catholic Church connections that she does. … This is a matter of the FBI. Local law enforcement — nationally and otherwise — are involved with this."
Fresh off the press
Controversy is brewing over the Super Bowl halftime show
Quebec banned teachers, police officers and others from displaying their faith. Will the law stand?
‘Duck Dynasty’ — and its many religion references — is returning to A&E
Term of the week: ‘Green and Gold’
“Green and Gold” is a new movie about a dairy farmer who puts his faith in the Green Bay Packers when he has few options left. If the Packers win the Super Bowl, he’ll get another year to come up with the money he needs to keep his farm afloat.
Sounds a little cheesy, right? Well, America magazine‘s review of the movie makes it sound much deeper than I would have guessed based on a basic plot summary.
The review points out that many aspects of the movie are inspired by Christian poet Wendell Berry and says that the filmmaker took care to show what faith and spirituality look like in real life, not in Hollywood.
“Ultimately, ‘Green and Gold’ is about paying attention to the sacred in the everyday,” America reported.
What I’m reading ...
If you’ll be in New York City this spring, consider visiting a powerful new exhibit on antisemitism and the Holocaust at the Center for Jewish History. The exhibit includes a full-scale replica of the annex where Anne Frank and her family hid during World War II, as Religion News Service reported.
My colleague Gitanjali Poonia brought a personal touch to her coverage of last week’s confirmation hearings and wrote about why Kash Patel bent down to touch his parents' feet before taking his place in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Your feel-good news for the week: A church in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, has opened a Little Free Sled Library for area children to ensure that everyone can have fun in the snow, according to the Pocono Record.
Odds and ends
For the past three years, I’ve reread part of all of the “Little House on the Prairie” series around Christmastime. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s stories about riding in sleds when it was 40 degrees below 0 and huddling around the cookstove drinking tea help me mentally prepare for my own long winters. That tradition helps explain why I was thrilled to hear about Netflix’s upcoming “Little House” series. Still, I had fun writing about folks who were less excited about the announcement.
Former President Jimmy Carter won a posthumous Grammy award on Sunday for his audiobook about teaching Sunday School classes.