The New Orleans Saints played a more extensive role than previously known in local church leaders’ damage control during a crisis brought on by clergy engaged in an alleged systemic campaign of sexual abuse,

For years the New Orleans Saints have worked to suppress information about its extraordinary relationship with the Catholic Church, and now everything is spilling out on the week the city is hosting the Super Bowl.

New reporting from multiple major news outlets has uncovered hundreds of emails documenting the New Orleans Saints' involvement in an ongoing clergy abuse crisis within the Catholic archdiocese -- a scandal that has led archbishop Gregory Michael Aymond to fire the board and CEO of Second Harvest food bank after they balked at using the nonprofit's resources to pay for tens of millions of dollars the archdiocese owes to hundreds of child sex abuse survivors.