title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In 1994, Micheal Ledwith resigned as President of St Patrick's College, Maynooth when allegations of sexual abuse by him were made public. The June 2005 "McCullough Report" found that a number of bishops had rejected concerns about Ledwith's inappropriate behavior towards seminarians "so completely and so abruptly without any adequate investigation", although his report conceded that "to investigate in any very full or substantial manner, a generic complaint regarding a person's apparent propensities would have been difficult".


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Fr Brendan Smyth was reported to have sexually abused and indecently assaulted 20 children in parishes in Belfast, Dublin and the United States, during the period between 1945 and 1989. Controversy over the handling of his extradition to Northern Ireland led to the 1994 collapse of the Fianna Fáil/Labour coalition government.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In December 2010, Archdiocese of Dublin "singing priest" Tony Walsh was sentenced to 123 years in prison for 14 child abuse convictions involving sex-related offences dating from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. However, the sentences were to be served concurrently, netting to a maximum of 16 years. By the time he pleaded guilty in December 2018 to indecently assaulting a teenage boy with a crucifix on a date in 1983, Walsh had already been in prison for 13 years.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Six reports by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church have up until 2011 established that six Irish priests were convicted between 1975 and 2011.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In August 2018, a list was published which revealed that over 1,300 Catholic clergy in Ireland had been accused of sexual abuse, and that by this time, 82 of them got convicted. In May 2020, it was revealed that prior to the 2004 merger with the Scout Association of Ireland (SAI) which formed Scouting Ireland, Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland (CBSI) covered up sex abuse committed by people who served in the organization. In a period spanning decades, both the CBSI and SAI shielded 275 known or suspected predators who abused children after becoming aware of the reported acts of abuse. Scouting Ireland backed the findings of the report and issued an apology.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In October 2018, Italian victim rights group "Rete l'Abuso" released a statement saying that since 2000 the Italian justice system had handled about 300 cases of abusive priests and nuns, with 150 to 170 convictions.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: After revelations by Norwegian newspaper "Adresseavisen," the Catholic Church in Norway and the Vatican acknowledged in 2010 that Georg Müller had resigned in July 2009 from the position of Bishop of Trondheim which he held from 1997 because of the discovery of his abuse of an altar boy two decades earlier. The Vatican cited Canon law 401 §2, but as is customary gave no details. The Norwegian Catholic Church was made aware of the incident at the time but did not alert the authorities. Norwegian law did not allow a criminal prosecution of Müller so long after the event.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: During 2013, the public in this deeply Catholic country became concerned about reports of child sex abuse scandals within the Church, some of which reached the courts, and the poor response by the church. The Church resisted demands to pay compensation to victims.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In October 2013, the Catholic Church in Poland explicitly refused to publish data on sexual abuse, but said that, "if the data were to be published, the scale would be seen to be very low". Bishop Antoni Dydycz said that priests should not be pressed to report sexual abuse to state authorities, invoking the ecclesiastical "seal of confession", which bans them from revealing what is said in the rite of confession.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: On 27 September 2018, Bishop Romuald Kamiński of the Warsaw-Praga Diocese issued an apology to those who had been sexually abused by priests in his Diocese and that church leaders in Poland had completed work on a document to address the abuse of minors and suggest ways to prevent it. According to Archbishop Wojciech Polak, the head of Poland's Catholic Church, the document will also include data on the scale of priestly sex abuse in Poland. By early 2019, however, the document still had not been made public. On 8 October 2018, a victims group mapped out 255 cases of alleged sex abuse in Poland.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Statistics were released on 14 April 2019, commissioned by the Episcopal Conference of Poland and with data from over 10,000 local parishes. It was found that from 1990 to mid-2018, abuse reports about 382 priests were made to the Church, with 625 children, mostly under 16, sexually abused by members of the Catholic clergy. There were opinions that the figures underestimated the extent of the problem, and failed to answer questions church officials had avoided for years. Marek Lisinski, the co-founder of "Don't Be Afraid", which represents victims of clerical abuse, said "Tell us how [the priests] hurt those children and how many times they were transferred to different parishes before you paid notice". The data were released a few weeks after Pope Francis had called for "an all-out battle against the abuse of minors". After pressure from the Pope, in the preceding years Poland's Church had publicly apologised for abuses, and accepted the need to report those accused of such crimes. In earlier times, clergy to whom sexual abuse of minors was reported were not required by their superiors to notify the police, but to investigate themselves, and if necessary inform the Vatican.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: On 11 May 2019, Polak issued an apology on behalf of the entire Catholic Church in Poland. The same day, "Tell No One", a documentary detailing accounts of sex abuse by Catholic Church clergy in Poland, went viral, reaching 8.1 million viewers on YouTube by 13 May. Among many, the film featured a priest known as Father Jan A., whose case is being reviewed by the Diocese of Kielce, who confessed to molesting many young girls. The film also alleges that Rev. Dariusz Olejniczak, a priest who was sentenced for molesting 7-year-old girls, was allowed to continue working with young people despite his conviction. On 14 May 2019, Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, which has long had an alliance with the nation's Catholic Bishops, agreed to increase penalties for child sex abuse by raising the maximum prison sentence from 12 years to 30 years and raising the age of consent from 15 to 16. Prosecutor and PiS lawmaker Stanislaw Piotrowicz, who heads the Polish Parliament's Justice Commission, has also been criticized for playing down the actions of a priest who was convicted for inappropriately touching and kissing young girls.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: On 25 June 2020, Pope Francis appointed Grzegorz Rys, Archbishop of Łódź, Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Kalisz, relieving its Bishop, Edward Janiak, age 67, of his responsibilities while under investigation for protecting priests who committed acts of sex abuse. On 17 October, Pope Francis accepted Janiak's resignation.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In February 2019, three protestors toppled a statue of Rev. Henryk Jankowski following revelations that he sexually abused Barbara Borowiecka when she was a girl. Jankowski, who also had a criminal investigation involving the sexual abuse of a boy dropped against him in 2004, had been defrocked in 2005. However, he died in 2010 without ever being convicted of sex abuse. It has also been acknowledged that Lech Walesa's personal chaplain Rev. Franciszek Cybula had been accused of committing acts of sex abuse while serving in the as well. On 13 August 2020, Pope Francis removed Gdansk Archbishop Slawoj Leszek Glodz, who was among those who covered up abuse committed by Jankowski and Cybula. Glodz had also presided over Cybula's funeral. Despite the fact that Glodz turned 75, the required age for Catholic Bishops to offer their resignation, the move was described as "cleaning house", as it is highly unusual for the pope to accept such a resignation on a prelate's actual birthday.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: On 6 November 2020, The Holy See's nuncio to Poland announced that following an investigation by the Holy See regarding sex abuse allegations, Cardinal Henryk Gulbinowicz was now "barred from any kind of celebration or public meeting and from using his episcopal insignia, and is deprived of the right to a cathedral funeral and burial." Gulbinowicz was also ordered to pay an "appropriate sum" to his alleged victims.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Gulbinowicz is the former archbishop of Wrocław, whose support of the trade union Solidarity played a critical role in the collapse of communism in Poland. On 16 November 2020, 10 days after the Vatican, Gulbinowicz, but, as a result of the Vatican displinary action, could not have a funeral in Wroclaw's Cathedral of St. John the Baptist or to be buried in the cathedral.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In 2013, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the Archbishop of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh, resigned following publication of allegations he had engaged in inappropriate and predatory sexual conduct with priests and seminarians under his jurisdiction and abused his power.<ref name="Devenney18/05/2013"></ref>


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In 2020, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse released a report which stated that the Catholic Church of England and Wales "swept under the carpet" allegations of past child sex abuse by numerous Catholic clergy in England and Wales. According to the report "there was no acknowledgement of any personal responsibility" by Vincent Nichols, since 2014, a cardinal and the senior Catholic cleric in England and Wales. The report said that Nichols cared more about the impact of abuse on the Church's reputation than on the victims, and lacked compassion towards them.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry started in January 2014. It was the largest inquiry in UK legal history into sexual and physical abuse in certain institutions (including non-Catholic ones) that were in charge of children from 1922 to 1995. The De La Salle Brothers and the Sisters of Nazareth admitted early in the inquiry to physical and sexual abuse of children in institutions in Northern Ireland that they controlled, and issued an apology to victims. A 2017 report also stated that the local police, who had also poorly investigated claims of sex abuse at the non-Catholic Kincora Boys' Home, had played a role in assisting the local Catholic officials in covering up reported sexual abuse activity at four Catholic-run homes for boys in the Belfast area and that these four homes had contained the highest level of reported sex abuse of all the 22 homes which were investigated.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Catholic church in Australia had been criticised for mishandling of childhood sexual abuse cases which are severe in nature and widespread in extent. Catholic priests were charged by 2011 in over 100 cases of childhood sexual abuse in Australia. The Catholic Church had secretly paid equivalent of $276.1 million by 2017 in compensation to thousands of childhood sexual abuse victims of priests and religious brothers. Inquiries established that historically Australian Catholic church officials often, where cardinal George Pell knew about sex abuse in Catholic church as early as 1973, ignored or punished the child victim, did not investigate allegations, documents were destroyed or not kept, failed to prevent future abuse by clergy who had come to their attention by transferring clergy and religious members to new parishes or dioceses which did not know of their past and not stripping them of their religious status. John Paul II and Benedict XVI made apologies for abuse in Australia.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2015–17) found that 7% of all Catholic priests in Australia were "alleged perpetrators of child sex abuse", average age of victims was 11.5 for boys and 10.5 for girls. Royal Commission found that 46% (92 out of 201) of Catholic Churches had child sexual abuse cases. Royal Commission had 4,756 child sexual abuse cases from 4,444 victims against 1,880 accused, in 62% cases the accused were Catholic priests and religious brothers and the rest were members of church. Abuse victim Amber Louise criticized Church's "Towards Healing protocol", started in 1996 to "establish a compassionate and just system for dealing with complaints of abuse", who told the Royal Commission that the program delayed reporting her complaint. In June 2019, 18 months after being ordered to do so by the Royal Commission, the Australian Catholic Church published its National Catholic Safeguarding Standards closely mirroring Royal Commission's recommendations and government's National Principles for Child Safe Organizations.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In 2019, Fr Vincent Gerald Ryan, who had previously served 14 years in jail for sexually abusing 34 boys from 1973 to 1991, was jailed for at least 14 months for sex abuse he committed against two altar boys.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In September 2020, the Australian state of Queensland passed legislation which makes it so religious institutions, such as the Catholic church, and their members are no longer able to use the sanctity of confession as a defence against failing to report material information about the sexual abuse of children. Under the new Queensland law, clergy who refuse to report confessions of sex abuse will face a maximum sentence of three years in prison. In October 2020, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that the church had failed to intervene against Thomas Butler, a Marist Brother known as Brother Patrick, when students reported that he sexually abused them within the three-year period he taught at Queensland capital Brisbane's Marist College Ashgrove. Butler had received sex abuse complaints in between 1991 and 1993. Provincial of the Marist Brothers in Australia, Brother Peter Carroll, delivered an apology at the royal commission's public hearing.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In an address before the Irish parliament on 11 May 1999, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern announced a comprehensive program to respond to the scandal of abuse in the nation's Catholic-run childcare institutions. Ahern's speech included the first official apology to those who had been abused physically and sexually while they had been in the care of these institutions. The Taoiseach asked the abuse victims for forgiveness, saying: "On behalf of the State and of all citizens of the State, the Government wishes to make a sincere and long overdue apology to the victims of childhood abuse for our collective failure to intervene, to detect their pain, to come to their rescue."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In response to the furor aroused by the media reports of abuse in Irish government institutions run by religious orders, the Irish government commissioned a study which took nine years to complete. On 20 May 2009, the commission released its 2600-page report, which drew on testimony from thousands of former residents and officials from more than 250 institutions. The commission found that there were thousands of allegations of physical abuse of children of both sexes over a period of six decades. Over the same period, around 370 former child residents alleged they had suffered various forms of sexual abuse from religious figures and others. The report revealed that government inspectors had failed in their responsibility to detect and stop the abuse. The report characterized sexual molestation as "endemic" in some church-run industrial schools and orphanages for boys.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In the wake of the broadcast of a BBC Television documentary, "Suing the Pope", which highlighted the case of Seán Fortune, one of the most notorious clerical sexual offenders, the Irish government initiated an official inquiry into the allegations of clerical sexual abuse in the Irish Roman Catholic Diocese of Ferns. The inquiry resulted in the publication of the Ferns Report in 2005.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In response to the Ferns Report, Ireland's Prime Minister Brian Cowen stated that he was "ashamed by the extent, length, and cruelty" of child abuse, apologized to victims for the government's failure to intervene in endemic sexual abuse and severe beatings in schools for much of the 20th century. Cowen also promised to reform the Ireland's social services for children in line with the recommendations of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse report. Irish President Mary McAleese and Cowen made further motions to start criminal investigation against members of Roman Catholic religious orders in Ireland.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In November 2009, Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse reported its findings in which it concluded that:


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In 2009, The Murphy Report is the result of a three-year public inquiry conducted by the Irish government into the Sexual abuse scandal in Dublin archdiocese, released a few months after the report of the Ryan report. The Murphy report stated that, "The Commission has no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Church authorities". It found that, "The structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up." Moreover, the report asserted that, "State authorities facilitated that cover-up by not fulfilling their responsibilities to ensure that the law was applied equally to all and allowing the Church institutions to be beyond the reach of the normal law enforcement processes." The report criticized four archbishops – John Charles McQuaid who died in 1973, Dermot Ryan who died in 1984, Kevin McNamara who died in 1987, and retired Cardinal Desmond Connell – for not giving allegations and information on abusers to legal authorities.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, in early 2014, issued a report asserting that the pope and the Roman Catholic Church have not done enough and protect their reputation rather than protect children. A joint statement of the panel said,Committee chair, Kirsten Sandberg enumerated some major findings, that abusive priests were sent to new parishes or other countries without police being informed, that the Vatican never insisted on bishops reporting abuse to police, and that known abusers still have access to children. Barbara Blaine of SNAP said,


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The UN report prompted discussions of specific areas of controversy, including secrecy among bishops and Vatican statements denying responsibility which in canon law they have.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: British author and Catholic social activist Paul Vallely wrote that he felt the UN report had been hurt by the Commission having gone well beyond the issue of child abuse to issues such as contraception. However, he also felt the report did bring important pressure on the Vatican on important issues like reporting cases to police.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The Associated Press estimated the settlements of US Church sex abuse cases from 1950 to 2007 totaled more than US$2 billion. The figure was more than $3 billion in 2012 according to BishopAccountability.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In July 2003, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville paid $25.7 million to "settle child sexual-abuse allegations made in 240 lawsuits naming 34 priests and other church workers."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: According to "The Boston Globe", the Archdiocese of Boston secretly settled child sexual abuse claims against at least 70 priests from 1992 to 2002. In 2003, the Archdiocese of Boston also settled a large case for $85 million with 552 alleged victims.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In April 2007, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon agreed to a $75 million settlement with 177 claimants and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle agreed to a $48 million settlement with more than 160 victims.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In July 2008, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver agreed "to pay $5.5 million to settle 18 claims of childhood sexual abuse."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Addressing "a flood of abuse claims" five dioceses (Tucson, Arizona; Spokane, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Davenport, Iowa, and San Diego) got bankruptcy protection. Eight Catholic diocese have declared bankruptcy due to sex abuse cases from 2004 to 2011.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The cost to the Church increased rapidly. Taking into account sums awarded to victims by juries, out-of-court settlements and legal fees, estimates went from $0.5 billion by the late 1990s to more than $2.6 billion in 2009. Roman Catholics spent $615 million on sex abuse cases in 2007.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The number and size of these settlements made it necessary for the dioceses to reduce their ordinary operating expenses by closing churches and schools in order to raise the funds to make these payments. Several dioceses chose to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy as a way to litigate settlements while protecting some church assets to ensure it continues to operate. In some cases, the dioceses filed bankruptcy just before civil suits against them were about to go to trial. This had the effect of mandating that pending and future lawsuits be settled in bankruptcy court. The sexual abuse scandal costs each of the 195 dioceses "an average of $300,000 annually."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Several dioceses adopted the practice of first transferring the majority of their assets to their parishes and foundations before declaring bankruptcy, in the hope of decreasing considerably the amount to be awarded to victims. In some cases, the Vatican had to approve the transfer of large amounts to foundations in order to shield them from seizure; in other cases it guided and supervised such transactions.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Some of the accused priests were forced to resign. Some priests whose crimes fell within statutes of limitation are in jail. Some have been laicized. Others – because they are elderly, because of the nature of their offenses, or because they have had some success fighting the charges – cannot be laicized under canon law. Some priests live in retreat houses that are carefully monitored and sometimes locked.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Bernard Francis Law, Cardinal and Archbishop of Boston, Massachusetts, United States, resigned after Church documents were revealed which suggested he had covered up sexual abuse committed by priests in his archdiocese. On 13 December 2002, Pope John Paul II accepted Law's resignation as Archbishop and reassigned him to an administrative position in the Roman Curia, naming him archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, and he later presided at one of the Pope's funeral masses. Law's successor in Boston, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Seán P. O'Malley, found it necessary to sell substantial real estate properties and close a number of churches in order to pay the $120 million in claims against the archdiocese.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Two bishops of Palm Beach, Florida, resigned due to child abuse allegations. Resigned bishop Joseph Keith Symons was replaced by Anthony O'Connell, who later also resigned in 2002.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Hofstra University researcher Charol Shakeshaft, the author of a report on sexual offenses in schools, said sexual violence is much more prevalent in schools than in the Church. According to the report, up to 422,000 students from California will be victims of sexual violence in the future.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: A report which Christian Ministry Resources (CMR) released in 2002 stated that contrary to popular opinion, there are more allegations of child sexual abuse in Protestant congregations than there are in Catholic ones, and that sexual violence is most often committed by volunteers rather than by priests. It also criticized the way the media reported sexual crimes in Australia. The Royal Commission in Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse revealed that between January 1950 and February 2015, 4,445 people alleged incidents of child sexual abuse in 4,765 claims. The media reportedly reported that as many as 7% of priests were accused of being a child sexual abuser, but ignored the same report on the Protestant Churches and Jehovah's Witnesses; Gerard Henderson stated:


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: One of the authors of an investigation by "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution" drew parallels between the handling of sexual assaults in the Church and how medical authorities handled similar abuse and assaults by doctors and psychologists. In both systems, the abusers are in positions of trust, admiration, and authority; the abuse is treated as an illness; the perpetrator is allowed to return to practice following an apology or rehabilitation program; and the incidents are hidden from the public for the good of the organization.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Opinion seems divided on whether there is any definite link or connection between the Roman Catholic institution of celibacy and incidences of child abuse by Catholic clergy.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: A 2005 article in the conservative Irish weekly the "Western People" proposed that clerical celibacy contributed to the abuse problem by suggesting that the institution of celibacy has created a "morally superior" status that is easily misapplied by abusive priests: "The Irish Church's prospect of a recovery is zero for as long as bishops continue blindly to toe the Vatican line of Pope Benedict XVI that a male celibate priesthood is morally superior to other sections of society." Christoph Schönborn and Hans Küng have also said that priestly celibacy could be one of the causes of the sex abuse scandals within the Catholic Church.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said, "We don't see the Catholic Church as a hotbed of this or a place that has a bigger problem than anyone else. I can tell you without hesitation that we have seen cases in many religious settings, from traveling evangelists to mainstream ministers to rabbis and others." Philip Jenkins, a long-time Catholic turned Episcopalian, asserts that his "research of cases over the past 20 years indicates no evidence whatever that Catholic or other celibate clergy are any more likely to be involved in misconduct or abuse than clergy of any other denomination—or indeed, than non-clergy. However determined news media may be to see this affair as a crisis of celibacy, the charge is just unsupported."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Church authorities are often accused of covering up cases of sex abuse. In many cases, as discussed in the sections on different countries, clergy discovered by Church authorities to be criminally offending are not reported to civil authorities such as the police. They are often merely moved from one diocese to another, usually without any warning to the authorities or the congregations at the destination. While offending clergy could be subject to action such as laicization, this is rare; the intention of the Church until recent times has been to avoid publicity and scandal at all costs.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In some cases offenders may confess their wrongdoing to a priest under the Sacrament of Penance. Church canon law unconditionally prohibits a priest hearing such a confession from making any disclosure about the existence or content of the confession to anybody, including Church and civil authorities—the "Seal of the Confessional". This obligation is taken very seriously throughout the Catholic Church; for example all serving archbishops in Australia told the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that they would not report to police a colleague who admitted in the confessional to child rape. This is not always in contradiction with civil law; the law in many, but not all, countries confers confessional privilege, a rule of evidence that forbids judicial inquiry into certain communications between clergy and members of their congregation.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: According to the John Jay Report, 80.9% of the abuse victims in the United States were male, and a study by Dr. Thomas Plante found the number may be as high as 90%. A number of books, such as "The Rite of Sodomy: Homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church", have argued that homosexual priests view sex with minors as a "rite of passage" for altar boys and other pre-adult males. William Donohue of the Catholic League said that the Church's child sexual abuse problem was really a "homosexual crisis", which some have dismissed as unwarranted by stating a lack of correlation between a man identifying as homosexual and any particular likelihood he will abuse children. Research on pedophilia in general shows a majority of abusers identify themselves as heterosexual, and the Causes and Context Study of the John Jay Institute found no statistical support for linking homosexual identity and sexual abuse of minors. Additionally "The New York Times" reported "the abuse decreased as more gay priests began serving the church."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Some bishops and psychiatrists have asserted that the prevailing psychology of the times suggested that people could be cured of such behavior through counseling. Thomas Plante, a psychologist specializing in abuse counseling and considered an expert on clerical abuse, states "the vast majority of the research on sexual abuse of minors didn't emerge until the early 1980s. So, it appeared reasonable at the time to treat these men and then return them to their priestly duties. In hindsight, this was a tragic mistake."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Robert S. Bennett, the Roman Catholic Washington attorney who headed the National Review Board's research committee, identified "too much faith in psychiatrists" as one of the key problems concerning Catholic sex abuse cases. About 40% of the abusive priests had received counseling before being reassigned.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In 2019, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI published a letter (in German and then translated into English) in which he provided a unified perspective on several issues that, together, he believes contributed to the sexual abuse scandal. One of the chief reasons put forth by the Pope was the push by several prominent theologians for relativistic perspectives on morality where "there could no longer be anything that constituted an absolute good, any more than anything fundamentally evil; (there could be) only relative value judgments."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In "Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention", Cimbolic & Cartor (2006) noted that because of the large share of post-pubescent male minors among cleric victims there is need to further study the differential variables related to ephebophilia (sexual interest in mid-to-late adolescents, generally ages 15 to 19) versus pedophilia (sexual interest in prepubescent children, generally those 13 years of age or younger) offenders. Cartor, Cimbolic & Tallon (2008) found that 6 percent of the cleric offenders in the John Jay Report are pedophiles, 32 percent ephebophiles, 15 percent attracted to 11- and 12-year-olds only (both male and female), 20 percent indiscriminate, and 27 percent mildly indiscriminate. Professor of psychology Thomas Plante (2004) criticized these findings, citing a report by Stephen Joseph Rossetti which found that only about 1% of Catholic priests have had a sexual experience with a child, while an additional 1% has had a sexual experience with an adolescent - totaling 2% of all Catholic clergy. This report also found that 80 percent to 90 percent of sexual abuse of children perpetrated by Catholic priests is directed towards adolescent boys; therefore, pedophilia among Catholic clergy appears to be rare with ephebophilia being more typical.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: They also found distinct differences between the pedophile and ephebophile groups. They reported that there may be "another group of offenders who are more indiscriminate in victim choice and represent a more heterogeneous, but still a distinct offender category" and suggested further research to determine "specific variables that are unique to this group and can differentiate these offenders from pedophile and ephebophile offenders" so as to improve the identification and treatment of both offenders and victims.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: All victims in the John Jay report were minors. Using a non-standard definition of "pre-pubescent", the Causes and Context Study of the John Jay College estimated that only a small percentage of offender priests were true pedophiles. The study classified victims as pre-pubescent if they were age 10 or younger, whereas the age bracket specified in the current guidelines issued by the American Psychiatric Association is "generally age 13 or younger". A recent book estimates that if the latter definition were used instead of the former, the percentage of victims classified as prepubescent would have been 54% rather than the 18% figure cited by the Causes and Context report, and that a higher percentage of priests would therefore have been classified as pedophiles.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In July 2014, Pope Francis was quoted as having said in an interview that about 8,000 Catholic clergy (2% of the total), including bishops and cardinals, were pedophiles. The Vatican indicated the interview had not been recorded nor notes taken during it and that quotes may have been misattributed in a deliberate attempt to manipulate readers. They stated that Pope Francis had not indicated that any cardinal abusers remained in their position.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: It has been argued that a shortage of priests caused the Roman Catholic hierarchy to act in such a way to preserve the number of clergy and ensure that sufficient numbers were available to man their congregations despite serious allegations that some of these priests were unfit for duty.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In "The Courage To Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church", author George Weigel claims that it was the infidelity to orthodox Roman Catholic teaching, the "culture of dissent" of priests, women religious, bishops, theologians, catechists, Church bureaucrats, and activists who "believed that what the Church proposed as true was actually false" was mainly responsible for the sexual abuse of parishioners' children by their priests. Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick, a retired Archbishop of Washington who was himself later laicized due to sexual misconduct, blamed the declining morals of the late 20th century as a cause of the high number of child molestations by priests.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The hypothesis that a purported decline in general moral standards was associated with an increase in abuse by clergy was promoted by a study by John Jay College funded by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The study claimed that the liberal 1960s caused the increase in abuse, and the conservative Reagan years led to its decline. The study was branded the 'Woodstock Defence' by critics who said that the study's own figures showed a surge in abuse reported from the 1950s, and the passage of time meant that reports of abuse from earlier decades were unlikely.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The 2004 John Jay Report, a report commissioned by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, stated "the problem was largely the result of poor seminary training and insufficient emotional support for men ordained in the 1940s and 1950s." A report by the National Review Board issued simultaneously with the "John Jay Report" pointed to two major deficiencies on the part of seminaries: failure to screen candidates adequately, followed by failure to "form" these candidates appropriately for the challenges of celibacy. These themes are taken up by a recent memoir by Vincent J. Miles that combines a first-hand account of his life in a minor seminary during the 1960s with a review of the scientific literature about sexually abusive behavior. Miles identifies specific aspects of seminary life that could have predisposed future priests to engage in such behavior.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Italian academic wrote in "L'Osservatore Romano" that a greater presence of women in the Vatican could have prevented clerical sexual abuse from taking place.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: This view has been challenged and severely criticized by several scholars for denying the cases of nuns implicated in sexual abuse and pedophilia. In 1986, a history scholar from Stanford University recovered archival information about investigations from 1619 to 1623 involving nuns in Vellano, Italy, secretly exploiting illiterate nuns for several years. In 1998, a religious research national survey on revealed a very high number of nuns reporting childhood victimizations of sexual abuse by other nuns. It was further noted that the majority of nun-abuse victims are of the same sex. In 2002, Markham examined the sexual histories of nuns to find several cases of nuns sexually abusing children.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The responses of the Catholic Church to the sex abuse cases can be viewed on three levels: the diocesan level, the episcopal conference level, and the Vatican. Responses to the scandal proceeded at levels in parallel, with the higher levels becoming progressively more involved as the gravity of the problem became more apparent. For the most part, responding to allegations of sexual abuse in a diocese was left to the jurisdiction of the local bishop or archbishop. According to Thomas Plante, a psychologist specializing in abuse counseling and considered an expert on clerical abuse, "unlike most large organizations that maintain a variety of middle management positions, the organizational structure of the Catholic Church is a fairly flat structure. Therefore, prior to the Church clergy abuse crisis in 2002, each bishop decided for himself how to manage these cases and the allegations of child sexual abuse by priests. Some have handled these matters very poorly (as evidenced in Boston) while others have handled these issues very well."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: After the number of allegations exploded following "The Boston Globe" series of articles, the breadth and depth of the scandals became apparent in dioceses across the United States. The U.S. bishops felt compelled to formulate a coordinated response at the episcopal conference level. Although the Vatican did not respond immediately to the series of articles published by "The Boston Globe" in 2002, it has been reported that Vatican officials were, in fact, monitoring the situation in the U.S. closely.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: John L. Allen Jr., senior correspondent for the "National Catholic Reporter", characterized the reaction of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) as calling for "swift, sure and final punishment for priests who are guilty of this kind of misconduct." In contrast to this, Allen characterized the Vatican's primary concern as wanting to make sure "that everyone's rights are respected, including the rights of accused clergy" and wanting to affirm that it is not acceptable to "remedy the injustice of sexual abuse with the injustice of railroading priests who may or may not be guilty."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: On 26 March 2019, Pope Francis made public an apostolic letter titled "Communis Vita" (Community Life). The letter, which was issued on 19 March 2019, amends Canon Law and requires superiors to a local religious to dismiss any member of their "religious house" if they have been absent for 12 months and out of contact. Canon Law already required superiors to track them down and encourage them to return to their local order after they have been absent for six months. The policy officially came into effect on 10 April 2019. Parish transfers of abusive priests have existed in numerous Catholic sex abuse cases.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In 2009, eighteen religious orders agreed to pay €1.2 billion compensation to childhood victims of sexual abuse, a 10 times increase from the €128 million compensation agreed in 2002, on the condition that the identities of abusers must be kept secret, and victims will forgo the right to sue church and government. Money was raised mainly by selling church property to government.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Catholic Church Commission on Child Sexual Abuse (Ireland), also known as the Hussey Commission, was established by church in 2001 to investigate how complaints about clerical abuse of minors have been handled over the last three decades. In 2010 Vatican announced an investigation into Irish Catholic Establishment's handling of the sex abuse and subsequent scandal.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: After the media in Philippines began reporting on sexual abuses by local catholic priests, the year 2002 Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines apologized for sexual misconduct committed by its priests over the last two decades and committed to drafting guidelines on how to deal with allegations of such offenses. President of this conference, Archbishop Orlando Quevedo, stated that over the previous two decades nearly 200 of country's 7,000 catholic priests may have committed "sexual misconduct including child abuse, homosexuality and affairs".


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In August 2011, after women's activist group "Gabriela" assisted a 17-year-old girl in filing sexual abuse allegations against a Catholic priest in Butuan province then bishop of Butuan, Juan de Dios Pueblos, took the accused priest under his custody without handing him over to civil and church authorities. This behaviour was also heavily criticized by retired Archbishop Oscar V. Cruz, who blamed Pueblos for showing his priests the "wrong way".


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: According to the John Jay Report, one in four child sex abuse allegations were made within 10 years of the incident. Half were made between 10 and 30 years after the incident and the remaining 25% were reported more than 30 years after the incident. The Report points at: failure by the RCC hierarchy in the United States to grasp the seriousness of the problem, overemphasis on the need to avoid a scandal, use of unqualified treatment centers for clergy removed for rehabilitation, a sort of misguided willingness by bishops to forgive sexual misconduct as a moral failing and not treat it a crime, allowance of recidivism upon reassignment of the priest, and insufficient accountability of the hierarchy for inaction.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Since 2002, a major focus of the lawsuits and media attention has been criticism of the approach taken by bishops when dealing with allegations of sexual abuse by priests. As a general rule, the allegations were not reported to legal authority for investigation and prosecution. Instead, many dioceses directed the offending priests to seek psychiatric treatment and for assessment of the risk of re-offending. In 2004, according to the John Jay report, nearly 40% of accused priests participated in psychiatric treatment programs. The remaining priests did not undergo abuse counseling because allegations of sexual abuse were only made after their death. The more allegations made against a priest, the more likely he was to participate in treatment.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Some bishops repeatedly moved offending priests from parish to parish after abuse counseling, where they still had personal contact with children. According to the USCCB, Catholic bishops in the 1950s and 1960s viewed sexual abuse by priests as "a spiritual problem, one requiring a spiritual solution, i.e. prayer".


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: However, starting in the 1960s, the bishops came to adopt an emerging view based on the advice of medical personnel who recommended psychiatric and psychological treatment for those who sexually abused minors. This view asserted that with treatment, priests who had molested children could safely be placed back into ministry, although perhaps with certain restrictions such as not being in contact with children. This approach viewed pedophilia as an addiction, such as alcoholism which can be treated and restrained.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Some of the North American treatment facilities most frequently used for this purpose included the Saint Luke Institute in Maryland; centers operated by the Servants of the Paraclete in Jemez Springs, New Mexico, and St. Louis, Missouri; John Vianney Center in Downingtown, Pennsylvania.; the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut; and the Southdown Institute near Toronto, Ontario, in Canada. This approach continued into the mid-1980s, a period which the USCCB characterizes as the "tipping point in the understanding of the problem within the church and in society". According to researcher Paul Isley, however, research on priest offenders is virtually nonexistent and the claims of unprecedented treatment success with clergy offenders have not been supported by published data.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The USCCB perceived a lack of adequate procedures for the prevention of sexual abuse of minors, the reporting of allegations of such abuse and the handling of those reports. In response to deficiencies in canonical and secular law, both ecclesiastical and civil authorities have implemented procedures and laws to prevent sexual abuse of minors by clergy and to report and punish it if and when it occurs. In June 2002, the USCCB adopted a zero tolerance policy to future sex abuse that required responding to allegations of sexual abuse. It promulgated a Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People that pledged the Catholic Church in the U.S. to providing a "safe environment" for all children in Church-sponsored activities.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The Charter instituted reforms to prevent future abuse by requiring background checks for Church employees. The Charter requires dioceses faced with an allegation to alert the authorities, conduct an investigation and remove the accused from duty. A "Dallas Morning News" article reported nearly two-thirds of the bishops attending the conference had covered for sexually abusive priests. According to "Catholic News Service" by 2008, the U.S. church had trained "5.8 million children to recognize and report abuse," run criminal checks on volunteers and employees and trained them to create a safe environment for children.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: A 2006 study by Jesuit Georgetown University Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) found lay Catholics were unaware of the specific steps that the church has decided to take, but 78% strongly approved reporting allegations of sexual abuse to civil authorities and 76% strongly approved of removing people credibly accused of sexual abuse of a minor.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In 2005, Kathleen McChesney of the USCCB said "In 2004, at least 1,092 allegations of sexual abuse were made against at least 756 Catholic priests and deacons in the United States... What is over is the denial that this problem exists, and what is over is the reluctance of the Church to deal openly with the public about the nature and extent of the problem."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In early 2009, the sexual impropriety including molesting boys by Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legion of Christ, a Roman Catholic congregation of pontifical right made up of priests and seminarians studying for the priesthood, was disclosed publicly. In March, the Vatican ordered an apostolic visitation of the sexual abuse scandal in the Legion of Christ. In June 2009 Vatican authorities named five bishops from five different countries, each one in charge of investigating the Legionaries in a particular part of the world.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The 2001 Lord Nolan recommendations, accepted in full by the bishops, became model guidelines for other bishops' conferences around the world, and a model for other institutions in Britain. One guideline was that in each parish there should be a "safeguarding officer", a lay person who would vet through the Criminal Records Bureau, a government agency, anyone in the parish who had access to young people or vulnerable adults, and would be a contact for anyone with any concerns.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In June 2002, the USCCB established the "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People", a comprehensive set of procedures for addressing allegations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy. The charter includes guidelines for reconciliation, healing, accountability, reporting, and prevention of future acts of abuse.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The USCCB's National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Young People now requires dioceses faced with an allegation of child sexual abuse (where the victim is currently a minor) to alert the authorities, conduct an investigation, and (in the case of an admission of guilt or finding of guilt by an appropriate investigation) remove the accused from duty.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The Board also approached John Jay College of Criminal Justice to conduct a descriptive study of the nature and scope of the problem of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church as well as the costs to the church of the scandal. Data collection commenced in March 2003, and ended in February 2004. The findings of this study are discussed elsewhere on this page.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: John L. Allen Jr., Vatican correspondent for the "National Catholic Reporter", commented that many American Catholics saw the Vatican's initial silence on "The Boston Globe" stories as showing a lack of concern or awareness about the issue. However, Allen said that he did not know anyone in the Roman Curia who was not at least horrified "by the revelations that came out of the "Globe" and elsewhere" or who would defend "Cardinal Law's handling of the cases in Boston" or "the rather shocking lack of oversight that revealed itself" though "they might have different analyses of what should have happened to him". Allen described the Vatican's perspective as being somewhat skeptical of the media handling of the scandal. In addition, he asserted that the Vatican viewed American cultural attitudes toward sexuality as being somewhat hysterical as well as exhibiting a lack of understanding of the Catholic Church.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: According to Allen, cultural differences between the Vatican and American Catholics complicated the process of formulating a comprehensive response to the sexual abuse scandal: "there is a lot about the American culture and the American Church that puzzles people in the Vatican, and there is much about the Vatican that puzzles Americans and English speakers generally."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: On 9 May 2019, Pope Francis issued the Motu Proprio "Vos estis lux mundi" requiring both clerics and religious brothers and sisters, including Bishops, throughout the world to report sex abuse cases and sex abuse cover-ups by their superiors. Under the new Motu Proprio, all Catholic dioceses throughout the world are required to establish stable mechanisms or systems through which people may submit reports of abuse or its cover-up by June 2020. All metropolitan Archdioceses are also required to send reports to the Holy See on the progress of the investigation, whether in their Archdiocese or suffragan dioceses, every 30 days and to complete the investigation within 90 days unless granted an extension. The law is effective for a three-year experimental period with a "vacatio legis" of 1 June 2019. According to Canon law professor Kurt Martens:


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: On 17 December 2019, Pope Francis issued a canon law instruction "On the confidentiality of legal proceedings" lifting the "pontifical secret" in the cases relating to: violence or abuse of authority in forcing sexual acts, sexual abuse of minors or vulnerable persons, crimes of paedophilia involving children under 18 years of age or with incapacitated subjects and the concealment of those conducts from ecclesiastical or civil inquiries. Under the new provisions, are excluded from the pontifical secret all the stages of the canonical trials, from the denunciation, to the phase of the preliminary investigations, to the phase of the proper debate, and up to the final decision, as well as any witness statements and documents produced in trial. It concerns both the procedures that take place at the local level, and those that take place in Rome, at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The instruction provides however that the information obtain in a canonical trial be treated in such a way as to ensure its security, integrity and confidentiality with a view to protecting the good name, image and privacy of all persons involved. According to Archbishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts: "the fact that knowledge of these criminal actions is no longer bound by the "pontifical secret" does not mean that it provides the freedom to make it public by those in possession of it, which in addition to being immoral, would undermine the right to a good reputation". Moreover, the Instruction does not in any way counter the absolute duty of the Priest to observe the sacramental seal nor the duty of observe the confidentiality of information acquired outside of confession within the whole forum called "extra-sacramental".


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The professional secrecy of those involved in a canonical trial should not constitute an obstacle to "the fulfilment of the obligations laid down in all places by the laws of the State, including any reporting obligations [of possible news of a crime], and the execution of the enforcement requests of the civil courts" which, naturally, could oblige the delivery of documentary material to the civil courts. In this regard, Prof. Giuseppe Dalla Torre, former president of the Vatican City State Tribunal, observed that:


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: According to Archbishop Charles Scicluna, adjunct secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the abolition of pontifical secrecy means that:


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Prof. Dalla Torre underlined that this instruction is a canonical instrument which does not affect the application of the civil laws, as it regards the conduction of the trials and the cooperation with ecclesiastica authorities:


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, sent a letter which became known as the Crimen sollicitationis. In this letter, addressed to "all Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops and other Local Ordinaries, including those of Eastern Rite", the Holy Office laid down procedures to be followed in dealing with cases of clerics (priests or bishops) of the Catholic Church accused of having used the sacrament of Penance to make sexual advances to penitents; its rules were more specific than the generic ones in the Code of Canon Law.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In addition, it instructed that the same procedures be used when dealing with denunciations of homosexual, pedophile or zoophile behaviour by clerics. It repeated the rule that any Catholic who failed for over a month to denounce a priest who had made such advances in connection with confession was automatically excommunicated and could be absolved only after actually denouncing the priest to the Ordinary of the place or to the Holy Congregation of the Holy Office, or at least promising seriously to do so.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The Vatican promulgated a revised Code of Canon Law which included a canon (1395, §2) which explicitly named sex with a minor by clerics as a canonical crime "to be punished with just penalties, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state if the case so warrants." According to De delictis gravioribus, the letter sent in May 2001 by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who later became Pope Benedict XVI) – Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and according to Father Thomas Patrick Doyle, who has served as an expert witness on Pontifical Canon Law, Crimen Sollicitationis was in force until May 2001.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In April, Pope John Paul II issued a letter stating that "a sin against the Sixth Commandment of the Decalogue by a cleric with a minor under 18 years of age is to be considered a grave sin, or 'delictum gravius.'" In the letter, "Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela" (Safeguarding the Sanctity of the Sacraments), "§1 Reservation to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) is also extended to a delict against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue committed by a cleric with a minor below the age of eighteen years. §2 One who has perpetrated the delict mentioned in §1 is to be punished according to the gravity of the offense, not excluding dismissal or deposition." In other words, the CDF was given a broader mandate to address the sex abuse cases only from 2001 – prior to that date, the 1917 Code of Canon Law permitted sexual abuse cases by the clergy to be handled by the Congregation, for the Congregation to open cases itself, or for the Ordinary to handle judgement. All priestly sex crimes cases were placed under the CDF which, in the majority of cases, then recommended immediate action.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The "Guide to Understanding Basic CDF Procedures concerning Sexual Abuse Allegations" explain briefly the procedures which have been derived from the 1983 Code of Canon Law and put in place since 30 April (the same day). Among the points made:


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In May, in line with the 1983 Code of Canon Law and the 1990 Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, a letter from the CDF was sent to the Catholic bishops.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The Vatican instituted reforms to prevent future United States abuse by requiring background checks for all church employees who have contact with children. Since then, in the US, over 2 million volunteers and employees; 52,000 clerics; 6,205 candidates for ordination have had their backgrounds evaluated.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In June, the USCCB established the "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People", a comprehensive set of procedures for addressing allegations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy. (More details in the Episcopal Responses section above.).


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Pope John Paul II stated that "there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young".


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In April, the Pontifical Academy for Life organized a three-day conference, entitled "Abuse of Children and Young People by Catholic Priests and Religious", where eight non-Catholic psychiatric experts were invited to speak to near all Vatican dicasteries' representatives. The panel of experts overwhelmingly opposed implementation of policies of "zero-tolerance" such as was proposed by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. One expert called such policies a "case of overkill" since they do not permit flexibility to allow for differences among individual cases.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In June, Louisville, Kentucky lawyer William McMurry filed suit against the Vatican on behalf of three men alleging abuse as far back as 1928, accusing church leaders of organizing a cover-up of cases of sexual abuse of children.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In August, Pope Benedict was personally accused in a lawsuit of conspiring to cover up the molestation of three boys in Texas by Juan Carlos Patino-Arango in Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. He sought and obtained immunity from prosecution as head of state of the Holy See. The Department of State "recognize[d] and allow[ed] the immunity of Pope Benedict XVI from this suit." See International position of the Pope for information on head-of-state immunity of a pope.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In November, the Vatican published "Criteria for the Discernment of Vocation for Persons with Homosexual Tendencies", issuing new rules which forbid ordination of men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies". While the preparation for this document had started ten years before its publication, this instruction is seen as an official answer by the Catholic Church to what was seen as a "pedophile priest" crisis. The US National Review Board cited the preponderance of adolescent males among the victims of clerical sexual abuse of minors in its report. The document was criticized by the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries for what some see as its implying that homosexuality is tied to the sexual abuse of children.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Archbishop Csaba Ternyak, secretary of the Congregation for Clergy, put the following question to the experts: "[T]o what degree one can talk about the rehabilitation of the offender, what are the most effective methods of treatment, and on what grounds we can say that a person who has never offended is at risk to sexually molest someone?"


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Ternyak spoke about the way that the crisis had damaged the priest-bishop relationship. He noted that there was a "sense of gloom" felt by the overwhelming majority of priests who had not been accused of any abuse but nonetheless who perceived that their bishops had turned against them and therefore had "become disillusioned about the effectiveness of the laws of the Church to defend their dignity and their inalienable rights". Ternyak also noted that "there have been more than a few suicides among accused priests."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In April, during a visit to the United States, Pope Benedict admitted that he was "deeply ashamed" of the clergy sex abuse scandal that has devastated the American church. Benedict pledged that pedophiles would not be priests in the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Benedict also apologized for child abuse scandal in Australia.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In November, the United States Court of Appeals in Cincinnati denied the Vatican's claim of sovereign immunity, and allowed a lawsuit against the Catholic Church government by three men who claim they were sexually abused as children by priests in the Louisville, Kentucky, US archdiocese to proceed. The Vatican did not appeal the ruling.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Two researchers reported that abuse cases had "steeply declined" after 1985 and that responses to abuse had changed substantially over 50 years, with suspension becoming more common than reinstatement.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In a statement, read by Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi at a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on 22 September 2009, the Holy See stated that the majority of Catholic clergy who had committed acts of sexual abuse against under-18-year-olds should not be viewed as pedophiles, but as homosexuals who are attracted to sex with adolescent males. The statement said that rather than pedophilia, "it would be more correct to speak of ephebophilia; being a homosexual attraction to adolescent males ... Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: However, Margaret Smith and Karen Terry, two researchers who worked on the John Jay Report, cautioned against equating the high incidence of abuse by priests against boys with homosexuality, calling it an oversimplification and "an unwarranted conclusion" to assert that the majority of priests who abused male victims are gay. Though "the majority of the abusive acts were homosexual in nature ... participation in homosexual acts is not the same as sexual identity as a gay man." She further stated that "the idea of sexual identity [should] be separated from the problem of sexual abuse... [A]t this point, we do not find a connection between homosexual identity and the increased likelihood of subsequent abuse from the data that we have right now." Tomasi's move angered many gay rights organisations, who claimed it was an attempt by the Vatican to redefine the Church's past problems with pedophilia as problems with homosexuality.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Empirical research shows that sexual orientation does not affect the likelihood that people will abuse children. Many child molesters cannot be characterized as having an adult sexual orientation at all; they are fixated on children.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In April 2010, in response to extensive negative publicity and criticism of the Pope, the Vatican entered what the Associated Press called "full damage control mode". Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, during a visit to Chile, linked the scandal to homosexuality. In response to widespread criticism of that statement, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said Bertone's statement went outside the remit of "church authorities", while maintaining that "the statement was aimed at 'clarifying' Cardinal Bertone's remarks and should not be seen as the Holy See 'distancing' itself from them." He also noted that 10 per cent of the cases concerned paedophilia in the "strict sense", and the other 90 per cent concerned sex between priests and adolescents. Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of "L'Osservatore Romano", the Vatican's official newspaper, said the continuing criticism of Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican in handling the clerical sex abuse crisis is part of a media campaign to sell newspapers. The Pope issued a statement that the "Church must do penance for abuse cases".


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna explained in an interview with the Italian newspaper "Avvenire": "Between 1975 and 1985 I do not believe that any cases of pedophilia committed by priests were brought to the attention of our Congregation. Moreover, following the promulgation of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, there was a period of uncertainty as to which of the "delicta graviora" were reserved to the competency of this dicastery. Only with the 2001 "Motu Proprio" did the crime of pedophilia again become our exclusive remit... In the years (2001–2010) the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) had "considered accusations concerning around three thousand cases of diocesan and religious priests, which refer to crimes committed over the last fifty years."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Pope Benedict issued an apology to those who had suffered from child abuse in Ireland in March 2010. The letter stated that the Pope was "truly sorry" for what they had suffered, and that "nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity violated." Nevertheless, the letter was not enough to satisfy many critics, who felt that the letter failed to address their concerns, and mistakenly presented the abuse as an issue within the Church in Ireland, rather than acknowledging that it was a systemic problem.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In July 2010, the Vatican issued a document to clarify their position. They doubled the length of time after the 18th birthday of the victim that clergymen can be tried in a church court and to streamline the processes for removing abusive priests. However, the new rules that applied globally were criticized as being less strict than those that were already in place in the United States.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In May, the Vatican published new guidelines, drawn up by Cardinal William Levada, the head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, on dealing with the clergy sexual abuse cases. The guidelines tell the bishops and heads of Catholic religious orders worldwide to develop "clear and coordinated" procedures for dealing with the sexual abuse allegation by May 2012. The guidelines instruct the bishops to cooperate with the police and respect the relevant local laws in investigating and reporting allegations of sexual abuse by the clergy to the civic authorities, but do not make such reporting mandatory. The guidelines also reinforce bishops' exclusive authority in dealing with abuse cases. Victims advocacy groups criticized the new guidelines as insufficient, arguing that the recommendations do not have the status of church law and do not provide any specific enforcement mechanisms.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors () was instituted by Pope Francis on 22 March 2014 for the safeguarding of minors. It is headed by Boston's cardinal archbishop, Sean P. O'Malley, O.F.M. Cap.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In November 2014, Pope Francis laicized and excommunicated abusive priest Father Jose Mercau of Argentina.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: At the beginning of 2018, Francis denied overwhelming reports of widespread sexual abuse by priests in Chile. In the face of the resulting outcry, he introduced an investigation that led to every bishop in Chile submitting his resignation; only a few of these were accepted, however.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: At mid-year, amidst a series of abuse scandals in many countries, including the revelation that over a 50-year period, more than 300 priests were plausibly accused of abuse in the state of Pennsylvania alone, Pope Francis spoke of his "shame", without however offering concrete steps to remove abusive priests or sanction those who took part in cover-ups.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: From 21 to 24 February 2019, a four-day Catholic Church summit meeting was held in Vatican City, called the Meeting on the Protection of Minors in the Church () with the participation of the presidents of all the episcopal conferences of the world to discuss preventing sexual abuse by Catholic Church clergy.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Law No. CCXCVII requiries Vatican City officials, including those in the Roman Curia, and diplomatic personnel of the Holy See, such as the Apostolic Nuncios, to report sex abuse. Failure to do so can result in a fine of up to 5,000 euros (about $5,600) or, in the case of a Vatican gendarme, up to six months in prison. In addition, all crimes related to child abuse, including mistreatment, are persecutable "ex officio", even when the purported victim does not file an official report. The law also extends the statute of limitations to 20-year prescription that, in the case of and offence against a minor, begin to count from on his or her eighteenth birthday. In addition, the Governorate of the Vatican City State is required to set up, within the Vatican Department of Health and Welfare, service to support and assist the victims of abuse, providing them with medical and psychological assistance and informing them of their rights and of how to enforce them.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The motu proprio extends the application of the Vatican law to the Roman Curia and its personnel. It requires that, when recruiting staff, the candidate's suitability to interact with minors must be ascertained.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The Guidelines for the Vicariate of Vatican City are addressed to the canons, parish priests and coadjutors of the two parishes located within the Vatican, as well as to the priests, deacons and educators of the Saint Pius X Pre-Seminary, to all the religious men and women who reside in the Vatican, and to all those who work within the ecclesiastical community of the Vicariate of Vatican City. The guidelines require that, in the course of pastoral activities, those persons must always be visible to others when they are in the presence of minors, and that it is strictly forbidden to establish a preferential relationship with a single minor, to address a minor in an offensive way or to engage in inappropriate or sexually allusive conduct, to ask a minor to keep a secret, to photograph or to film a minor without the written consent of his parents. The Vicar of Vatican City has also the obligation to report to the Promoter of Justice any news of abuse that is not manifestly unfounded, and to remove the alleged perpetrator of the abuse from pastoral activities as a precautionary measure.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In 2010, the BBC reported that the major causes of the scandal were the cover-ups and other alleged shortcomings in the way in which the church hierarchy has dealt with the abuses. Particularly, the actions of Catholic bishops in responding to allegations of clerical abuse were harshly criticized.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In September 2010, Pope Benedict XVI lamented that the Roman Catholic Church had not been vigilant enough or quick enough in responding to the problem of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. Pope Benedict laicized 400 priests for abuses in two years of his papacy. A representative of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a group representing abuse victims, criticized the pope's remarks as "disingenuous" because, in her opinion, the church had in fact been "prompt and vigilant" in concealing the scandal. After Benedict's resignation in 2013, he was criticized by SNAP for allegedly protecting the church's reputation "over the safety of children". Representatives from the Center for Constitutional Rights (at the time engaged in an International Criminal Court case against Pope Benedict in which they were acting for SNAP), alleged that Pope Benedict had been directly involved in covering up some of the crimes.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Mary Dispenza further states that crimes against children took place in the past, they take place now and they will continue to take place in the future unless Pope Francis and the bishops act decisively to ensure that child safety has higher priority than protecting priests and the image of the Catholic Church.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: A Vatican spokesman stated, "When individual institutions of national churches are implicated, that does not regard the competence of the Holy See...The competence of the Holy See is at the level of the Holy See."<ref name="BostonGlobe11/2/1013"></ref>


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Citing canons 331 and 333 of the "1983 Code of Canon Law", James Carroll of "The Boston Globe" asserted that "On the question of how far papal authority extends, the canon law of the Catholic Church could not be clearer" and alleged that the Holy See's denial of competency contravenes canon law. Canon 331 states that "The vicar of Christ... possesses full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church, which he is always able to exercise freely", and canon 333 states that "...By virtue of his office, the Roman pontiff not only possesses power over the universal church, but also obtains the primacy of ordinary power over all particular churches and groups of them."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See's permanent observer to the U.N. stated that the Vatican was not responsible for abusive priests because "priests are citizens of their own states, and they fall under the jurisdiction of their own country" but the United Nations report differed claiming that since priests are "bound by obedience to the pope" under canon law, then the Holy See is accountable. The report also urged the Vatican to insist that priests and bishops involve the police in all abuse reports and end a "code of silence" leading to whistleblowers being "ostracized, demoted and fired".


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: To place the cases under the competence of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has been criticized by some as making the process more secretive and lengthening the time required to address the allegations. For example, in his biography of John Paul II, David Yallop asserts that the backlog of referrals to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for action against sexually abusive priests is so large that it takes 18 months to merely get a reply.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Vatican officials have expressed concern that the church's insistence on confidentiality in its treatment of priestly sexual abuse cases was seen as a ban on reporting serious accusations to the civil authorities. Early in 2010 Cardinal Claudio Hummes, the head of the Congregation for Clergy, finally said that instances of sexual abuse by priests were "criminal facts" as well as serious sins and required co-operation with the civil justice system. Italian academic described the conspiracy involved in hiding the offense as "omerta", the Mafia code of silence, and said that "We can hypothesise that a greater female presence, not at a subordinate level, would have been able to rip the veil of masculine secrecy that in the past often covered the denunciation of these misdeeds with silence".


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Some parties have interpreted the "Crimen sollicitationis" – a 1962 document ("Instruction") of the Holy Office (which is now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) codifying procedures to be followed in cases of priests or bishops of the Catholic Church accused of having used the sacrament of Penance to make sexual advances to penitents – as a directive from the Vatican to keep all allegations of sexual abuse secret, leading to widespread media coverage of its contents. Daniel Shea, the US lawyer who found the document, said that the document "proves there was an international conspiracy to hush up sex abuse issues". The Vatican responded that the document was not only widely misinterpreted, but moreover had been superseded by more recent guidelines in the 1960s and 1970s, and especially the 1983 Code of Canon Law.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The Catholic hierarchy has been criticized for not acting more quickly and decisively to remove, laicize and report priests accused of sexual misconduct. Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said: "We have said repeatedly that ... our understanding of this problem and the way it's dealt with today evolved, and that in those years ago, decades ago, people didn't realize how serious this was, and so, rather than pulling people out of ministry directly and fully, they were moved."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: One early opponent of the treatment of sexually abusive priests was Father Gerald Fitzgerald, the founder of The Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete. Although Fitzgerald started the Servants of the Paraclete to assist priests who were struggling with alcohol and substance abuse problems, he soon began receiving priests who had sexually abused minors. Initially, Fitzgerald attempted to treat such priests using the same spiritual methods that he used with his other "guests". However, as he grew convinced of the futility of treating sexually abusive priests, Fitzgerald came to oppose vehemently the return of sexual abusers to duties as parish priests. He wrote regularly to bishops in the United States and to Vatican officials, including the pope, of his opinion that many sexual abusers in the priesthood could not be cured and should be laicized immediately.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Eventually, Fitzgerald lost control of the Servants of the Paraclete. The center began to employ medical and psychological professionals who added psychiatry and medical treatment to the spiritual regimen of treatment favored by Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald continued to oppose these modifications to his treatment regimen until his death in 1969.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Bishop Manuel D. Moreno of Tucson, Arizona, United States repeatedly attempted to have two local abusive priests laicized and disciplined, pleading unsuccessfully in a letter of April 1997 with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to have one laicized; he was first suspended in 1990 and convicted by the church in 1997 of five crimes, including sexual solicitation in the confessional. The two were finally laicized in 2004. Bishop Moreno had been strongly criticized for failing to take action until details of his efforts became public.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In a "The New York Times" article, Bishop Blase J. Cupich, chairman of the United States Bishops Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, is quoted explaining why Father Fitzgerald's advice "went largely unheeded for 50 years": First, "cases of sexually abusive priests were considered to be rare." Second, Father Fitzgerald's, "views, by and large, were considered bizarre with regard to not treating people medically, but only spiritually, and also segregating a whole population with sexual problems on a deserted island." And finally, "There was mounting evidence in the world of psychology that indicated that when medical treatment is given, these people can, in fact, go back to ministry." This was a view which Cupich characterized as one that "the bishops came to regret".


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In 2010, several secular and liberal Catholics were calling for Pope Benedict XVI's resignation, citing the actions of then Cardinal Ratzinger's blocking of efforts to remove a priest convicted of child abuse. The pope did eventually resign in 2013, although he said that he did so because of his declining health.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In 2012, William Lynn of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia was found guilty of one count of endangering the welfare of a child and sentenced to three to six years in prison. Lynn became the first United States church official to be convicted of child endangerment because of his part in covering up child sex abuse allegations by clergy.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: As reported by the "Boston Globe," some bishops had facilitated compensation payments to victims on condition that the allegations remained secret. For example,


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In November 2009, the Irish Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse reported its findings in which it concluded that:


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: the Dublin Archdiocese's pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The Archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the State.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In April 2010, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins wanted to prosecute the Pope for crimes against humanity due to what they see as his role in intentionally covering up abuse by priests. In a CNN interview a few days later, however, Dawkins declined to discuss the international crime law court's definition of crimes against humanity, saying it is a difficult legal question.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In April 2010, a lawsuit was filed in the Milwaukee Federal Court by an anonymous "John Doe 16" against the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI. The plaintiff accused Ratzinger and others of having covered up abuse cases to avoid scandal to the detriment of the concerned children.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In February 2011, two German lawyers initiated charges against Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court. As one of the reasons for the charges they referred also to the "strong suspicion" that Joseph Ratzinger, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, covered up the sexual abuse of children and youths and protected the perpetrators.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Internal division became public, with Christoph Cardinal Schönborn accusing Cardinal Angelo Sodano of blocking Ratzinger's investigation of a high-profile case in the mid-1990s.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In the trial of the French bishop Pierre Pican, who received a suspended jail sentence for failing to denounce an abusive priest, the retired Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos wrote a letter to support Pican in his decision. Exposed to heavy critiques, Hoyos claimed to have had the approval of Pope John Paul II.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In 2011, Hoyos was heavily criticized again. This time, the Congregation for the Clergy was blamed of having opposed in 1997 to the newly adapted rules of the Irish bishops, demanding the denouncement of every abusive priest to the police. The Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin described the cooperation with the Congregation for the Clergy as "disastrous".


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: An article in "The Washington Post" published 27 December 2019, accuses former American Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick of paying bribes totaling US$600,000 to Pope John Paul II ($50,000) and Pope Benedict XVI ($291,000) and 100 Vatican employees to cover-up sexual misconduct accusations against him.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In 2002, the discovery that the sex abuse by Catholic priests was widespread in the U.S. received significant media coverage. For the first 100 days, "The New York Times" had 225 pieces, including news and commentary, and the story appeared on its front page on 26 occasions.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Walter V. Robinson, an American journalist and journalism professor, led "The Boston Globe" coverage of the Roman Catholic sex abuse cases, for which the newspaper won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Robinson was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Investigative Reporting in 2007.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In Ireland, television journalism similarly played a key role in helping public awareness of widespread sexual abuse of children by priests.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) produced the documentary "Sex Crimes and the Vatican" by a victim which included the claim that all allegations of sex abuse are to be sent to the Vatican rather than the civil authorities, and that "a secret church decree called 'Crimen sollicitationis' ... imposes the strictest oath of secrecy on the child victim, the priest dealing with the allegation, and any witnesses. Breaking that oath means instant banishment from the Catholic Church – excommunication." Documentary also quoted the 2005 Ferns Report.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Some critics have stated that the oversaturation of Church sex abuse stories has led to the perception that the Catholic Church is more rife with pedophilia than in reality. A "The Wall Street Journal"-NBC News poll found that 64 percent of those queried thought Catholic priests "frequently" abused children; however, there is no data that indicates that priests commit abuse more often than the general population of males.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Anglican writer Philip Jenkins supported many of these arguments stating that media coverage of the abuse story had become "...a gross efflorescence of anti-catholic rhetoric."


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Commentator Tom Hoopes wrote that during the first half of 2002, the 61 largest newspapers in California ran nearly 2,000 stories about sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, mostly concerning past allegations. During the same period, those newspapers ran four stories about the federal government's discovery of the much larger – and ongoing – abuse scandal in public schools.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Santa Clara University professor Thomas Plante states that the extensive media attention sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has spread many myths and misconceptions, such as the belief that Catholic priests are more likely to be pedophiles than laic men in general. His research found out that the percentage of Catholic priests who sexually abuse minors is not greater than the percentages of male clergy from other religious traditions who sexually victimize minors. However, he notes that the Catholic Church has historically acted in a highly defensive and arrogant manner regarding this topic, which could have provoked excessive media coverage.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: A number of memoirs and non-fiction books have been written about these issues, including Andrew Madden's "Altar Boy: A Story of Life After Abuse", Carolyn Lehman's "Strong at the Heart: How it Feels to Heal from Sexual Abuse", Larry Kelly's "The Pigeon House" which deals with abuse in the Pigeon House TB Sanatorium at Ringsend;, and Kathy O'Beirne's bestseller "Kathy's Story", which details physical and sexual abuse suffered in a Magdalene laundry in Ireland. Writing in "The Daily Telegraph", Ed West has asserted that Kathy Beirne's story is "largely invented", based on Hermann Kelly's "Kathy's Real Story", a book by the journalist on the "Irish Daily Mail"; Kelly is also former editor of "The Irish Catholic".


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: The Magdalene laundries were the subject of a drama film called "The Magdalene Sisters" (2002), which generated controversy as it was early in the revelations about abuses at Catholic homes. In 2006, a documentary called "Deliver Us From Evil" directed by Amy Berg and produced by Berg and Frank Donner was made about sexual abuse; it primarily focused on one priest and his crimes. It showed how far some clergy went in order to cover up the many reports of sexual abuse. In Ireland, the documentary series, "Suffer the Children" (UTV, 1994), was released.


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: Many other feature films have been made about the continuing revelations of sex abuse within the Church, including:


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: A daily updated list of films and documentaries is available at the "Literature List Clergy Sexual Abuse" composed by journalist and author .


title: Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

text: In 2005, Limp Bizkit released the album "The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1)", which focuses on dark lyrical subject matter, including Catholic sex abuse cases, terrorism and fame. Comedian Tim Minchin has the songs "The Pope Song", and "Come Home (Cardinal Pell)".


title: Mandarin orange

text: The mandarin orange ("Citrus reticulata"), also known as the mandarin or mandarine, is a small citrus tree fruit. Treated as a distinct species of orange, it is usually eaten plain or in fruit salads. Tangerines are a group of orange-coloured citrus fruit consisting of hybrids of mandarin orange with some pomelo contribution.


title: Mandarin orange

text: Mandarins are smaller and oblate, unlike the spherical common oranges (which are a mandarin–pomelo hybrid). The taste is considered sweeter and stronger than the common orange. A ripe mandarin is firm to slightly soft, heavy for its size, and pebbly-skinned. The peel is thin, loose, with little white mesocarp, so they are usually easier to peel and to split into segments. Hybrids usually have these traits to a lesser degree. The mandarin is tender and is damaged easily by cold. It can be grown in tropical and subtropical areas.


title: Mandarin orange

text: According to genetic studies, the mandarin was one of the original citrus species; through breeding or natural hybridization, it is the ancestor of many hybrid citrus cultivars. With the citron and pomelo, it is the ancestor of the most commercially important hybrids (such as sweet and sour oranges, grapefruit, and many lemons and limes). The mandarin has also been hybridized with other citrus species, such as the desert lime and the kumquat. Though the ancestral mandarin was bitter, most commercial mandarin strains derive from hybridization with pomelo, which gives them a sweet fruit.


title: Mandarin orange

text: The name "mandarin orange" is a calque of Swedish "mandarin apelsin" ["apelsin" from German "Apfelsine" ("Apfel" + "Sina"), meaning "Chinese apple"], first attested in the 18th century. The Imperial Chinese term "mandarine" was first adopted by the French for this fruit. The reason for the epithet is not clear; it may relate to the yellow colour of some robes worn by imperial China's mandarin dignitaries.


title: Mandarin orange

text: "Citrus reticulata" is a moderate-sized tree some in height. The tree trunk and major branches have thorns. The leaves are shiny, green, and rather small. The petioles are short, almost wingless or slightly winged. The flowers are borne singly or in small groups in the leaf-axils. Citrus are usually self-fertile (needing only a bee to move pollen within the same flower) or parthenocarpic (not needing pollination and therefore seedless, such as the satsuma). A mature mandarin tree can yield up to of fruit.


title: Mandarin orange

text: Mandarin orange fruits are small . Their colour is orange, yellow-orange, or red-orange. The skin is thin and peels off easily. Their easiness to peel is an important advantage of mandarin oranges over other citrus fruits. Just like with other citrus fruits, the endocarp (inner flesh) is separated into segments, which in their turn consist of a large number of elongated cells. The fruits may be seedless or contain a small number of seeds. Mandarin orange fruits are sweet to taste and can be eaten as whole or squeezed to make juice.


title: Mandarin orange

text: In 2020, world production of mandarin oranges (combined with tangerines, clementines, and satsumas in reporting to FAOSTAT) was 38.6 million tonnes, led by China with 60% of the global total. Spain produced more than two million tonnes in 2020, while other significant producers with around one million tonnes each were Turkey, Egypt and Morocco.


title: Mandarin orange

text: Mandarins are generally peeled and eaten fresh or used in salads, desserts and main dishes. Fresh mandarin juice and frozen juice concentrate are commonly available in the United States. The number of seeds in each segment (carpel) varies greatly.


title: Mandarin orange

text: The peel is used fresh, whole or zested, or dried as chenpi. It can be used as a spice for cooking, baking, drinks, or candy. Essential oil from the fresh peel may be used as a flavouring for candy, in gelatins, ice cream, chewing gum, and baked goods. It is also used as a flavouring in liqueurs. In Chinese cuisine, the peel of the mandarin orange, called chenpi, is used to flavour sweet dishes and sauces.


title: Mandarin orange

text: Canned mandarin segments are peeled to remove the white pith before canning; otherwise, they turn bitter. Segments are peeled using a chemical process. First, the segments are scalded in hot water to loosen the skin; then, they are bathed in a lye solution, which digests the albedo and membranes. Finally, the segments are rinsed several times in plain water. Once orange segments are properly prepared, mandarin oranges undergo heat processing to remove bacteria that can cause spoilage. The oranges are then packed in airtight sealed containers. Ascorbic acid may also be added.


title: Mandarin orange

text: In traditional Chinese medicine, the dried peel of the fruit is used in the regulation of ch'i and to enhance digestion.


title: Mandarin orange

text: A mandarin orange contains 85% water, 13% carbohydrates, and negligible amounts of fat and protein (table). Among micronutrients, only vitamin C is in significant content (32% of the Daily Value) in a 100-gram reference serving, with all other nutrients in low amounts.