United States | News & Politics

According to highly sensitive emails that were obtained by the outlets, one top executive even described a conversation with the New Orleans district attorney at the time that allowed them to remove clergy names from the list – though the clubs deny their official participated in that discussion, and the prosecutor back then vehemently denies he would ever have weighed in on the list’s content.

The emails call into question prior and newly issued statements by New Orleans’ two major professional sports franchises as they denied being overly entwined in the archdiocese’s most damning affairs – while fighting to keep their communications with the church out of public view.

After first seeing the so-called Saints emails in 2019 through a subpoena, abuse survivors’ attorneys alleged that the two franchises’ top officials had a significant hand in trying to minimize what was then a public-relations nightmare for the city’s archdiocese – but has since triggered a full-blown child sex-trafficking investigation aimed at the church by law enforcement.