Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

The Catholic sex abuse cases are a series of lawsuits, criminal prosecutions and scandals related to the sex crimes that are committed by some Catholic priests and members of religious orders, both under diocesan control and in orders which care for the sick or teach children, that first rose to widespread public attention in the last two decades of the 20th century. Although awareness of the widespread scope of these abuses first received significant media attention in Canada, Ireland and the United States, other cases were also reported in a number of other countries.

In addition to the actual abuse, much of the scandal focused around the behavior of some members of the Catholic hierarchy who did not report the crimes to civil authorities, and in many cases reassigned the offenders to other locations where they continued to have contact with minors, giving them the opportunity to continue their sexual abuse. In defending the church's widespread sheltering of pedophiles , some bishops and psychiatrists contended that the prevailing psychology of the times suggested that people could be cured of such behavior through counseling. In response to the widening scandal, Pope John Paul II failed to firmly declare that sex crimes are a criminal as well as a spiritual offense. He declared instead in 2003 that "there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young". With the approval of the Vatican, the hierarchy of the church in the United States instituted reforms to prevent future abuse including requiring background checks for Church employees and volunteers and, noting the preponderance of adolescent males (teenage boys) amongst victims of abuse, warned that a more searching inquiry is necessary for a homosexually oriented man; and the worldwide Church also prohibited the ordination of men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies".

Members of the church hierarchy have compared the church with the secular world, arguing that media coverage of the issue has been excessive given that abuse occurs in other institutions. Other commentators have said that the scandal highlights deep-seated problems with mandatory celibacy in the priesthood of the Catholic Church and how that institution deals with allegations of child abuse by its clergy while experts in the field of sexual abuse counseling contend that celibacy has no effect on rates of child abuse in the Catholic Church, as it has been shown that the rates of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is not higher than in society, other public institutions and other religious denominations. According to Thomas G. Plante "the available research (which is quite good now) suggests that approximately 4% of priests during the past half century (and mostly in the 1960s and 1970s) have had a sexual experience with a minor ... However, although good data is hard to acquire, it appears that this 4% figure is consistent with male clergy from other religious traditions and is significantly lower than the general adult male population which may double these numbers."

Scope and nature

Global extent

See also: Roman Catholic sex abuse cases by country

In a statement, read out by Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi in September 2009, the Holy See stated "We know now that in the last 50 years somewhere between 1.5% and 5% of the Catholic clergy has been involved in sexual abuse cases", adding that this figure was comparable with that of other groups and denominations. Additionally according to Newsweek the figure in the Catholic church is similar to that in the rest of the adult population.

In 2002, the John Jay report tabulated a total of 4,392 priests and deacons in the U.S. against whom allegations of sexual abuse were considered by their diocese to have been "substantiated". In 2001, major lawsuits emerged in the United States and Ireland, alleging that some priests had sexually abused minors and that their superiors had conspired to conceal and otherwise abet their criminal misconduct. Although the scandals in the U.S. and Ireland unfolded over approximately the same time period, there are some significant differences between them. In the United States, most of the abusers were parish priests under diocesan control. While there were also a significant number of abuse cases involving parish priests in Ireland, another major scandal involved criminal abuse committed by members of religious orders working in Catholic-run institutions such as orphanages and reform schools. In the United States, the abuse was primarily sexual in nature and involved mostly boys between the ages of 11 and 17; in Ireland, the allegations involved both physical and sexual abuse, and children of both sexes were involved, although a large majority were male.

Allegations of sexual abuse by clergy have been made in many other countries (see Roman Catholic sex abuse cases by country). After the United States, the country with the next highest number of cases is Ireland. A significant number of cases have been reported in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia. As a representative example, the organisation Broken Rites has detailed 71 cases where Catholic priests have been convicted and jailed for child sex offences in Australia, and others involving non-custodial sentences and inconclusive proceedings.

Some Church authorities have resigned their posts, but as of April 2010 none have been prosecuted for complicity (moving offenders to locations where they could continue abuse) or covering up, although published reports and apologies acknowledge that this has happened.

United States

Main article: John Jay Report

See also: Catholic sexual abuse scandal in the United States

The 2004 John Jay Report commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was based on surveys completed by the Roman Catholic dioceses in the United States. The surveys filtered provided information from diocesan files on each priest accused of sexual abuse and on each of the priest's victims to the research team, in a format which did not disclose the names of the accused priests or the dioceses where they worked. The dioceses were encouraged to issue reports of their own based on the surveys that they had completed.

The report found that 10,667 people had made allegations of child sexual abuse between 1950 and 2002. Of these, 3,300 were not investigated because the allegations were made after the accused priest had died; 1,021 survived at the date of the report. After investigating the remaining 7,700 allegations, the dioceses were able to substantiate 6,700 accusations against 4,392 priests in the USA, about 4% of all 109,694 priests who served during the time period covered by the study. The known number of abuses increased in the 1960s, peaked in the 1970s, declined in the 1980s and by the 1990s had returned to the levels of the 1950s.

Police were contacted regarding 1,021 of the surviving 1,092 priests, of whom 384 were prosecuted, resulting in 252 convictions and 100 prison sentences. Thus, 6% of all priests against whom allegations were made had been convicted and about 2% sentenced to prison at the date of the report.

According to the John Jay report, one-third of the accusations were made in the years 2002 and 2003, and another third between 1993 and 2001.

An overwhelming majority of the victims, 81 percent, were males. A majority of the victims were post-pubescent adolescents, with a small percentage of pre-pubescent children.

Some sources have asserted that most of the victims were between the ages of 16 and 17, making the sexual abuse instances of hebephilia rather than pedophilia. These sources argue that, by failing to make this distinction, the media has fostered a misconception of the problem. In fact, 15% of the victims were 16 or 17 years of age, while 51% were between the ages of 11 and 14. The John Jay Report determined that just under 6% of victims were 7 years of age or younger. 16% were between 8 and 10. The vast majority of the victims (around 80%) were male, aged between 11 and 17.

In the United States, half of the 4,392 priests who were found to have been credibly accused of abusing minors were 35 years of age or younger at the time of the first instance of abuse. Fewer than 7% of the priests were reported to have themselves been victims of physical, sexual or emotional abuse as children. Although 19% of the accused priests had alcohol or substance abuse problems, only 9% were reported to have been using drugs or alcohol during the instances of abuse. Almost 70% of the abusive priests were ordained before 1970.

Based on a database of 3,000 priests accused of sexual abuse that it had compiled, the group BishopAccountability.org said in 2009 that one-third of the abusive priests in the United States had links to Ireland.

Of the priests in the United States who were accused of sexual abuse, 59% were accused of a single allegation. Just under 3% of the priests were the subject of ten or more allegations. The 149 priests who had more than 10 allegations against them accounted for 2,960 of the total number of allegations.

The John Jay report identified the following factors contributing to the sexual abuse problem: 1. Failure by the hierarchy to grasp the seriousness of the problem, 2. Overemphasis on the need to avoid a scandal, 3. Use of unqualified treatment centers, 4. Misguided willingness to forgive, 5. Insufficient accountability.

The John Jay Report contains actual statistics against which some less detailed opinions can be tested. For example the report found that 4.0% of all priests active between 1950 and 2002 had allegations of abuse and additionally states "It is impossible to determine from our surveys what percent of all actual cases of abuse that occurred between 1950 and 2002 have been reported to the Church and are therefore in our dataset. Allegations of child sexual abuse are made gradually over an extended time period and it is likely that further allegations will be made with respect to recent time periods covered in our surveys" (the possibility of some cases never being reported is not discussed); the figure of 4% is sometimes quoted as a total figure. The Report finds that 50.9% of victims were aged between 11 and 14 and some even younger; it is sometimes stated that the majority were aged 16 and above.

BBC documentary in 2006

Main article: Sex crimes and the Vatican

A documentary entitled Sex Crimes and the Vatican, produced by a victim of clerical sex abuse for the BBC in 2006, 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." The documentary quoted the 2005 Ferns Report: "A culture of secrecy and fear of scandal that led bishops to place the interests of the Catholic Church ahead of the safety of children".

Canon lawyer Thomas Doyle, who was included in the documentary as supporting the picture that it presented, later wrote with regard to the 1962 Crimen sollicitations and the 2001 De delictis gravioribus, and the Church's formal investigation into charges of abuse: "There is no basis to assume that the Holy See envisioned this process to be a substitute for any secular legal process, criminal or civil. It is also incorrect to assume, as some have unfortunately done, that these two Vatican documents are proof of a conspiracy to hide sexually abusive priests or to prevent the disclosure of sexual crimes committed by clerics to secular authorities."

However, two years later in 2008 Doyle said of attempts to reform the Catholic Church that it was like "trudging through what can best be described as a swamp of toxic waste".

The Church was reluctant to hand over to the civil authorities information about the Church's own investigations into charges. In the BBC documentary, Rick Romley, a district attorney who initiated an investigation of the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, stated that "the secrecy, the obstruction I saw during my investigation was unparalleled in my entire career as a DA...it was so difficult to obtain any information from the Church at all." He reported archives of documents and incriminating evidence pertaining to sex abuse that were kept from the authorities, which under the law could not be subpoenaed. "The Church fails to acknowledge such a serious problem but more than that, it is not a passiveness but an openly obstructive way of not allowing authorities to try to stop the abuse within the Church. They fought us every step of the way."

Diocesan response

A major cause of the scandal surrounding clerical sexual abuse was criticism of the actions of Catholic bishops in responding to allegations of clerical abuse. For the most part, responding to allegations of sexual abuse in a diocese was left to the jurisdiction of the bishop or archbishop. Writing in a peer reviewed article Dr. Thomas Plante, a psychiatrist specializing in abuse counseling, and considered an expert on clerical abuse contends that it is clearly a myth that the Catholic hierarchy was clueless about the best way to manage cases of sexual abuse by priests. He writes that: "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."

Rehabilitation efforts

A major focus of the lawsuits and media attention since 2002 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. According to the US John Jay report, nearly 40% of priests accused to have committed sexual abuse 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 were made against a priest, the more likely he was to participate in treatment. Some bishops repeatedly moved offending priests from parish to parish after abuse counseling, where they still had personal contact with children.

In response to these allegations, defenders of the Church's actions have suggested that in re-assigning priests after treatment, bishops were acting on the best medical advice then available.

According to the USCCB, Catholic bishops in the 1950s and '60s viewed sexual abuse by priests as "a spiritual problem, one requiring a spiritual solution, i.e. prayer". However, starting in the sixties, 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 proper 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 many feel cannot be cured but which can be treated and restrained. 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, NM, and St. Louis, MO; John Vianney Center in Downingtown, PA.; the Institute of Living in Hartford, CT; and the Southdown Institute near Toronto, ON .

This approach continued to be practiced by the bishops well 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". The Servants of the Paraclete were ministering to sexually abusive priests at their center in Gloucestershire, England as late as 1998.

According to Paul Isley research on priest offenders is virtually nonexistent, and the claims of unprecedented treatment success with clergy offenders have not been supported by published data.

Criticism of non-removal

The Catholic hierarchy has been criticized for not acting more quickly and decisively to remove, defrock and report priests accused of sexual misconduct. In response to such criticism, contemporary bishops have asserted that the hierarchy was unaware until recent years of the danger in shuffling priests from one parish to another and in concealing the priests' problems from those they served. For example, 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."

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 defrocked immediately.

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.

Late Bishop Manuel D. Moreno of Tucson, Arizona, USA repeatedly attempted to have two local abusive priests defrocked 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 of them, who was first suspended in 1990 and convicted by the church in 1997 of five crimes including sexual solicitation in the confessional, defrocked. The two were finally defrocked in 2004. Bishop Moreno had been heavily criticized for failing to take action until details of his efforts became public.

In a 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."

Criticism of secrecy

It was revealed that some bishops had facilitated compensation payments to victims on condition that the allegations remained secret. For example, 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 November 2009, the Irish Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse reported its findings in which it concluded that:

"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".

Civil society

Outside Church circles most cases of sex abuse are subject to the law of each state. As of April 2010 many sex abusers associated with the Church in several countries have been tried by secular authorities and, where appropriate, convicted and sentenced to imprisonment. In earlier times the Church itself could punish offenders under canon law by imprisonment, sequestration of property, and worse, but now only the secular system of criminal justice is suitable. As of April 2010 no members of the Catholic Church at any level had been prosecuted for being an accessory to abuse by covering up, or for moving offenders to locations and situations where they could reoffend.

Pope Benedict is due to make what is categorised as a state visit to Britain from 16 to 19 September 2010, and campaigners are planning a "legal ambush" to have him arrested for "crimes against humanity" for his alleged personal cover-up in 1985 of sexual abuse in the Catholic church, in a similar way to the arrest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998. They believe that the Vatican is not actually a state in international law as it is not recognised by the United Nations, it does not have borders that are policed, and its relations are not of a full diplomatic nature, so that the Pope would be unable to claim diplomatic immunity from arrest, although on a state visit.

Responses to the proposal to arrest the Pope have ranged from "lunatic" and "a mischievous attempt to create an air of criminality around the Pope", to "Picture the pope awaiting trial in British prison, and you begin to grasp the implications of the radical idea that has never been applied: equality before the law".

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi responded "This is a bizarre idea to say the least. It looks like the intent is to make a public opinion splash. I think they should look for something more serious and concrete before we can respond to it."

Vatican positions and procedures

In 1962, 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. In addition, it instructed that the same procedures be used when dealing with denunciations of homosexual, paedophile 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.

In 1983, 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.

In April 2001, Pope John Paul II issued Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela (Safeguarding the Sanctity of the Sacraments). This replaced the Crimen sollicitationis. All priestly sex crimes cases were to be placed under the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which, in most cases, would authorize the bishops to conduct trials themselves. In May 2001, a letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in line with the 1983 Code of Canon Law and the 1990 Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, was sent to the Catholic bishops..

Criticism of secrecy in Vatican proceedings

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 get a reply.

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, 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 Lucetta Scaraffia described the conspiracy involved in hiding the offence 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".

Some parties have interpreted the Crimen sollicitationis as a directive from the Vatican to keep all allegations of sexual abuse secret, leading to widespread media coverage of its contents. Lawyers for some of those making abuse allegations claimed that the document demonstrated a systematic conspiracy to conceal such crimes. 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.

International public awareness

Although nation-wide enquiries have only been conducted in the United States and Ireland, cases of clerical sexual abuse of minors have been reported and prosecuted in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and other countries.

In 1994 allegations of sexual abuse on 47 young seminarians surfaced in Argentina.

In 1995 Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër resigned from his post as Archbishop of Vienna, Austria over allegations of sexual abuse, although he remained a Cardinal.

In Australia more than 12 priests of the dioceses of Canberra and Goulburn, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Townsville, Ballarat, Bunbury, Wagga Wagga and Marist Fathers of Tasmania were convicted for sexual abuse.

On April 7, 2010, it was revealed that a former bishop of the Norwegian Catholic Church, Georg Müller, had confessed to the Norwegian Police in early January 2010 that he had sexually abused an underaged altar boy 20 years earlier. The Norwegian Catholic Church was made aware of the incident but did not alert the authorities. Müller was made to step down as a bishop in July 2009. As a reaction to this news, the Bishop of Oslo, Bernt Eidsvig, admitted to the Norwegian Press that he was aware of a total of four cases of pedophilia in the Norwegian Catholic Church.

Canada

Main article: Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Canada

Although the sheer number of sexual abuse cases in the United States has focused public attention on that country, there had been a smaller-scale scandal in Canada more than a decade before the US scandal. In the late 1980s allegations were made of physical and sexual abuse committed by members of the Christian Brothers, who operated the Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John's, Newfoundland. The government, police and church colluded in an unsuccessful attempt to cover up the allegations, but in December 1989 they were publicized in the St. John's Sunday Express. Eventually more than 300 former pupils came forward with allegations of physical and sexual abuse at the orphanage. The religious order that ran the orphanage filed for bankruptcy in the face of numerous lawsuits. Since the Mount Cashel scandal a number of priests across Canada have been accused of sexual abuse.

Ireland

Main article: Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Ireland

Starting in the 1990s a series of criminal cases and Irish government enquiries established that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of impressionable children in previous decades. In many cases the abusing priests had been moved by senior clergy to other parishes to avoid embarrassment or scandal. By 2010 a number of in-depth judicial reports had been published, but with relatively few prosecutions. The abuse was occasionally made known to staff at the Department of Education, the police and other government bodies, who have said that prosecuting clergy was extremely difficult given the "Catholic ethos" of the Irish Republic.

In 1994 Micheal Ledwith resigned as President of St Patrick's College, Maynooth when allegations of sexual abuse were made public. In June 2005 Denis McCullough reported 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”.

One of the most notorious cases of sex abuse in Ireland involved Brendan Smyth, who, between 1945 and 1989, sexually abused and indecently assaulted twenty children in parishes in Belfast, Dublin and the United States. Controversy over the handling of his extradition to Northern Ireland led to the 1994 collapse of the Fianna Fáil/Labour coalition government.

United States

Main article: Catholic sexual abuse scandal in the United States

Although bishops had been sending sexually abusive priests to facilities such as those operated by the Servants of the Paraclete since the 1950s, there was scant public discussion of the problem until the mid-1960s. Even then, most of the discussion was held amongst the Catholic hierarchy with little or no coverage in the media. The first public discussion of sexual abuse of minors by priests took place at a meeting sponsored by the National Association for Pastoral Renewal held on the campus of Notre Dame University in 1967, to which all U.S. Catholic bishops were invited. Various local and regional discussions of the problem were held by Catholic bishops in later years.

However, it was not until the 1980s that discussion of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clerics began to be covered as a phenomenon in the news media of the United States. According to the Catholic News Service public awareness of the sexual abuse of children in the United States and Canada emerged in the late 1970s and the 1980s as an outgrowth of the growing awareness of physical abuse of children.

In 1981 Father Donald Roemer of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles pled guilty to felonious sexual abuse of a minor. The case received widespread media coverage. In September 1983, the National Catholic Reporter published an article on the topic.. The subject gained wider national notoriety in October 1985 when Louisiana priest Gilbert Gauthe pled guilty to 11 counts of molestation of boys. After the coverage of Gilbert Gauthe subsided, the issue faded to the fringes of public attention until the mid-1990s, when the issue was again brought to national attention after a number of books on the topic were published.

In early 2002 the Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of sexual abuse cases involving Catholic priests drew the attention, first of the United States and ultimately the world, to the problem. Other victims began to come forward with their own allegations of abuse resulting in more lawsuits and criminal cases. Since then, the problem of clerical abuse of minors has received significantly more attention from the Church hierarchy, law enforcement agencies, government and the news media.

Response of the Irish government

Main article: Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Ireland

See also: Sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin, Ferns Report, Ryan report, and Murphy Report

In an address before the Irish parliament on May 11, 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.”

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 May 20, 2009, the commission released its 2600 page report, which drew on testimony from thousands of former inmates 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 there were also around 370 allegations of children who had suffered various forms of sexual abuse from religious and others. The report also 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.

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.

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.

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

"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".

In 2009, The Murphy Report is the result of a three-year public inquiry conducted by 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 handing over information on abusers to legal authorities.

Church responses

Main article: Ecclesiastical response to Catholic sex abuse cases

The Catholic Church's responses to the scandal can be viewed on three levels: the diocesan level, the episcopal conference level and the Vatican. Responses to the scandal proceeded at all three levels in parallel, with the higher levels becoming progressively more involved as the gravity of the problem became more apparent.

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. Over time, it became more apparent that the problem warranted greater Vatican involvement.

Before the Boston Globe coverage of the sexual abuse scandal in the Boston archdiocese, handling of sexual abuse allegations was largely left up to the discretion of individual bishops. After the number of allegations exploded following the Globe's series of articles, U.S. bishops felt compelled to formulate a coordinated response at the episcopal conference level.

In 2008, the Church asserted that the scandal was a very serious problem but, at the same time, estimated that it was "probably caused by 'no more than 1 per cent' (or 5,000) of the over 500,000 Roman Catholic priests worldwide.

In 2009, 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.

Diocesan responses

Many of the accused priests were forced to resign or were defrocked. In addition, several bishops who had participated in the cover-up were also forced to resign or retire.

Dioceses in the United States have paid more than 2.6 billion US dollars in abuse-related costs since 1950.

As of March 2006, dioceses in the United States had made financial settlements with the victims totaling over 1.5 billion dollars The number and size of these settlements made it necessary for the dioceses to reduce their ordinary operating expenses by closing churches and schools. Several dioceses chose to declare chapter 11 bankruptcy as a way to litigate settlements while protecting some church assets to insure it continues to operate.

Ireland

In June 2001, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Ireland established the Catholic Church Commission on Child Sexual Abuse (Ireland), also known as the Hussey Commission, to investigate how complaints about clerical abuse of minors have been handled over the last three decades.

In February 2002, 18 religious orders agreed to provide more than 128 million Euros (approximately $128 million) in compensation to the victims of childhood abuse. Most of the money was raised from church property transfers to the State; in fact the actual value of the settlement is estimated to be about half that, and the Archbisop of Dublin in 2009 accused the orders of falling short even on the amount promised, and said the church's failure to complete transfers of cash, property and land worth at least €128 million over the past seven years "is stunning". The agreement also stipulated that any victims who accepted monetary settlements would waive their right to sue both the church and the government, and that the identities of the accused abusers was to be kept secret. In 2009 the orders agreed to increase their contribution; it was learned that total compensation paid to victims was about €1.2 billion, so that until then the promised €128 m had only been about 10% of the total.

The Philippines

When sexual scandals involving Catholic priests in the US came to light in 2002, the Philippines media began reporting on abuses by local priests. In July of that year, the 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. According to Archbishop Orlando Quevedo, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference, about 200 of the country's 7,000 priests may have committed "sexual misconduct" – including child abuse, homosexuality and affairs – over the past two decades.

Effects of lawsuits on dioceses and parishes in the United States

Compensation payments, bankruptcies and closures

Main article: Settlements and bankruptcies in Catholic sex abuse cases

According to Donald Cozzens, "by the end of the mid 1990s, it was estimated that [...] more than half a billion dollars had been paid in jury awards, settlements and legal fees." This figure grew to about one billion dollars by 2002. Roman Catholics spent $615 million on sex abuse cases in 2007.

The dioceses in which abuse was committed or in which abuse allegations were settled out of court found it necessary to make financial settlements with the victims totaling over $1.5 billion as of March 2006, have had a significant impact on the finances of many dioceses. The number and size of these settlements made it necessary for the dioceses to reduce their ordinary operating expenses by closing churches, parishes and schools in order to raise the funds to make these payments.

In many instances, dioceses were forced to declare bankruptcy as a result of the settlements. At least six U.S. dioceses sought bankruptcy protection. 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.

Resignations, retirements and defrockings

Many of the accused priests were forced to resign or were defrocked. In addition, several bishops who had participated in the cover up were also forced to resign or retire.

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 December 13, 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) Séan 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.

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.

Church responses in the United States

As the breadth and depth of the scandals became apparent in dioceses across the United States, it became apparent to the American bishops that a joint response was warranted at the episcopal conference level. John F. Allen Jr. characterized the reaction of the 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.”

Prevention efforts

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 2002, the USCCB adopted a policy for responding to allegations of sexual abuse. The USCCB characterized this policy as being "zero tolerance". Catholic News Service reported that, by 2008, the U.S. church had "trained 5.8 million children to recognize and report abuse. It had run criminal checks on 1.53 million volunteers and employees, 162,700 educators, 51,000 clerics and 4,955 candidates for ordination. It had trained 1.8 million clergy, employees and volunteers in creating a safe environment for children."

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (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 June 2002, the USCCB moved to address these deficiencies by promulgating 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. The thrust of the charter was the adoption of a "zero tolerance" policy for sexual abuse. 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 claimed nearly two-thirds of the bishops attending had themselves at one point covered for sexually abusive priests.

Reception by the laity

A study conducted by Georgetown University Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) in 2006 found that, although many Catholics were unaware of the specific steps that the church has taken, when informed, large majorities approve these actions. 78% strongly approved of reporting allegations of sexual abuse by clergy to civil authorities and cooperating in civil investigations. 76% strongly approved of removing from ministry people credibly accused of sexual abuse of a minor.

Ongoing investigations

While the Church in the United States claims to have addressed the issue, some disagree. In 2005, Dr. Kathleen McChesney of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said that the crisis was not yet over because hundreds of victims across the country were still reporting past episodes of abuse. She 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. Most of the incidents occurred between 1965 and 1974. 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."

Despite the National Review Board's own estimates that there have been some 5,000 abusive priests in the US, to date only 150 have been successfully prosecuted. Some critics of the Church such as Patrick Wall attribute this to a lack of cooperation from the church. In California, for example, the archdiocese has sought to block the disclosure of confidential counseling records on two priests arguing that such action would violate their First Amendment right on religious protection.

Vatican's responses

John F. Allen Jr., Vatican correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, has 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 doesn't 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.

No one [in the Vatican] thinks the sexual abuse of kids is unique to the States, but they do think that the reporting on it is uniquely American, fueled by anti-Catholicism and shyster lawyers hustling to tap the deep pockets of the church. And that thinking is tied to the larger perception about American culture, which is that there is a hysteria when it comes to anything sexual, and an incomprehension of the Catholic Church. What that means is that Vatican officials are slower to make the kinds of public statements that most American Catholics want, and when they do make them they are tentative and halfhearted. It's not that they don't feel bad for the victims, but they think the clamor for them to apologize is fed by other factors that they don't want to capitulate to.

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."

2001

On April 30, 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, "§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.

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:

• Every allegation of sexual abuse of a minor by a priest is investigated by the local diocese and, if there is even a “semblance of truth” the case is referred to the Vatican CDF. “The local bishop always retains power to protect children by restricting the activities of any priest in his diocese.”
• The CDF may authorise the local bishop to try the case. If a priest (whose has the right of appeal to the CDF) is found guilty, a number of canonical penalties are possible, including dismissal from the clerical state. “The question of damages can also be treated directly during these procedures.”
• Some cases can be referred directly to the Pope, who can issue a decree of dismissal from the priesthood ex officio.
• Other disciplinary measures short of dismissal are available where the priest has undertaken to live a life of prayer and penance, but he can be dismissed if he breaks the conditions imposed.
• The CDF is continuing to update the 2001 law (Motu Proprio Sacramentorum Sanctitatis tutela) in the light of special faculties granted to the CDF by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

2002

The Vatican instituted reforms to prevent future United States abuse by requiring background checks for Church employees.

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. The Charter includes guidelines for reconciliation, healing, accountability, and prevention of future acts of abuse. It also directs action in the following matters:

• Creating a safe environment for children and young people;
• Healing and reconciliation of victims and survivors;
• Making prompt and effective response to allegations;
• Cooperating with civil authorities;
• Disciplining offenders;
• Providing for means of accountability for the future to ensure the problem continues to be effectively dealt with through a national Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection and a National Review Board.

In other words, the US National Review Board now requires dioceses faced with an allegation to alert the authorities, conduct an investigation and remove the accused from duty.

2003

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

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.

2004

See also: John V. Doe v. Holy See and Juan Carlos Patino-Arango

In June, a 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.

2005

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 diplomatic immunity from prosecution. Some have claimed that this immunity was granted after intervention by then US President George W. Bush. The Department of State "recognize[d] and allow[ed] the immunity of Pope Benedict XVI from this suit."

In November, the Vatican published an "Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders", issuing new rules which disallow ordination of men with "deep–seated homosexual tendencies". The US National Review Board cited the preponderance of adolescent males among the victims of clerical sexual abuse of minors in its report.

2007

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?"

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."

2008

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

In November, the United States Court of Appeals in Cincinnati denied the Vatican's claim of sovereign immunity and allowed the case to proceed. The Vatican did not appeal the ruling.

2009

In a statement, read out 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 paedophiles, but as homosexuals who are attracted to sex with adolescent males. The statement said that rather than paedophilia, "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."

The move angered many gay rights organisations, who claimed it was an attempt by the Vatican to redefine the Church's past problems with paedophilia as problems with homosexuality.

2010

The Pope formally apologized again on March 18, 2010, for "stray priests" and called for both forgiveness by the victims and penitence by the accused priests. This occurred as new cases came to light in Germany, Ireland and Italy.

In April 2010, in response to extensive negative publicity and criticism of the Pope, the Vatican entered what Associated Press claimed to be "full damage control mode". Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, linked the pedophile scandal to homosexuality during a visit to Chile. 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".

Criticism of media coverage

Some critics of media coverage have claimed there has been an excessive focus on incidences of abuse and that equal or greater levels of child sexual abuse in secular contexts or other religious groups have been ignored or given minimal coverage.

According to Jenkins (1995), the emphasis upon sexual abuse committed by the clergy is a result of a shift in media coverage beginning during the 1980s. As a result, the image of the “pedophile priest” (Jenkins, 1996) was created and endorsed by the media and special interest groups in order to further their causes. While the media has portrayed this “crisis” as being centered solely in the Catholic Church, Jenkins offers evidence through the citation of liability insurance that illustrates that there were several hundred cases of sexual abuse involving non-Catholic clergy.

In the spring of 2002, when the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church was receiving unprecedented attention, the Christian Science Monitor reported on the results of national surveys by Christian Ministry Resources. The conclusion: “Despite headlines focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant, and most of the alleged abusers are not clergy or staff, but church volunteers.”

Among various reports countering a fresh spate of intense media coverage on this subject in March and April this year, Newsweek noted that "The priesthood is being cast as the refuge of pederasts. In fact, priests seem to abuse children at the same rate as everyone else." Based on the surveys and studies conducted by different denominations over the past 30 years, experts who study child abuse say they see little reason to conclude that sexual abuse is mostly a Catholic issue. "We don't see the Catholic Church as a hotbed of this or a place that has a bigger problem than anyone else," said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "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." Since the mid-1980s, insurance companies have offered sexual misconduct coverage as a rider on liability insurance, and their own studies indicate that Catholic churches are not higher risk than other congregations. Insurance companies that cover all denominations, such as Guide One Center for Risk Management, which has more than 40,000 church clients, does not charge Catholic churches higher premiums. In fact, schools are 100 times more likely for sex abuse to take place.

The Canonical Judge in the Murphy trial, Fr. Thomas Brundage, JCL, wrote an article trying to clear up some of the facts in the case, "..my name and comments in the matter of the Father Murphy case have been liberally and often inaccurately quoted in the New York Times and in more than 100 other newspapers and on-line periodicals, I feel a freedom to tell part of the story of Father Murphy’s trial from ground zero."

Catholic New Service reported that according to the Vatican watcher at the Italian newspaper Il Foglio, Paolo Rodari, "The computer-generated English version would support the NYT’s allegations against Bertone and Ratzinger, but that same conclusion is not possible if a correct review of the sources is done, in other words, if (the story) is based in the official text written by the CDF in Italian. And it is here, in the Italian version, that many important things are said. It is explained that either Fr. Murphy gives ‘clear signs of repentance’ or the canonical process will go to the end, including his dismissal from the clerical state. But in the English version used by the NYT, instead, not only are some passages omitted, but frequently the contrary is said."

Jimmy Akin, giving a blow-by-blow account of the Murphy case, pointed out, "Back in 1996 the CDF did not have a mandate to handle cases of sexual abuse by priests... The reason that Weakland notified the CDF was not because the abuse of minors was involved but because the abuse of the sacrament of confession was involved." Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna explained this in an interview with the Italian newspaper "Avvenire". "Between 1975 and 1985 I do not believe that any cases of paedophilia 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 paedophilia 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."

Debate over causes

Main articles: Debate on the causes of clerical child abuse and Criteria for the Discernment of Vocation for Persons with Homosexual Tendencies

Seminary training

Clergy themselves have suggested their seminary training offered little to prepare them for a lifetime of celibate sexuality. Rome's Congregation for Catholic Education issued an official document, the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocation for Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in 2005, which attracted criticism based on an interpretation that the document implies that homosexuality leads to pedophilia.

Declining standards explanation

In The Courage To Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church, 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 this problem. Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, retired Archbishop of Washington, blamed the declining morals of the late 20th century as a cause of the high number of sexually abusive priests.

Some Roman Catholics claimed that the Second Vatican Council itself (1962–1965) fostered a climate that encouraged priests to abuse children. The council directed an opening of the doors to meet the world. However traditional Roman Catholics believe that this led to a conversion of Roman Catholics to secularism rather than vice versa. Others respond that abuse by priests was occurring long before the start of Vatican II and that many of the Roman Catholic sex abuse cases did not involve pedophilia.

Rise in reporting

Others have asserted that the increased reporting of abuse in child-care institutions during this time was concomitant with rising police interest, investigation and prosecution of such crimes. As such it is not certain that a sudden "crisis of abuse" ever existed; instead the dramatic increase in reported abuse cases may simply have heralded the end of a long-term endemic problem found throughout a number of institutions, both secular and religious, prior to the introduction of quality control measures specifically aimed at preventing such abuses from occurring.

Supply and demand explanation

It has been argued that 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 serve the congregation despite serious allegations that these priests were unfit for duty. Others disagree and assert that the Church hierarchy's mishandling of the sex abuse cases merely reflected their prevailing attitude at the time towards any illegal or immoral activity by clergy.

Celibacy explanation

A 2005 article in the 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."

Sexual scandals among priests, the defenders say, are a breach of the Church's discipline, not a result of it, especially since only a small percentage of priests have been implicated. Furthermore there is no data supporting a higher rate of child-oriented sexual activity among the unmarried Roman Catholic clergy than that of the married clergy of other denominations and of schoolteachers. However, for those cases for which data is available, molestation of pre-pubescent children was found to be rare. Consequently opinion remains 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.

Philip Jenkins 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." Both supporters and many detractors of clerical celibacy state that Roman Catholic priests suffering sexual temptations are not likely to turn immediately to children simply because Church discipline does not permit clergy to marry.

On 11 March 2010 Christoph Schonborn, Archbishop of Vienna, said priestly celibacy could be one of the causes of the sex abuse scandals to hit the Catholic Church. A spokesman clarified that he was "in no way" seeking to question the celibacy rule or call for its abolition. Theologian Hans Küng had made the same assertion.

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

Abuse in literature and films and popular culture

Publications

A number of books have been written, see List of books portraying pedophilia or sexual abuse of minors, about the abuse suffered from priests and nuns including Andrew Madden in Altar Boy: A Story of Life After Abuse, Carolyn Lehman's Strong at the Heart: How it feels to heal from sexual abuse and the bestselling Kathy's Story by Kathy O'Beirne 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" according to Kathy's Real Story, a book by Hermann Kelly, a Derry born journalist on the Irish Daily Mail and former editor of The Irish Catholic.

Films

The Magdalene laundries caught the public's attention in the late 1990s as claims of widespread abuse from some former inmates gathered momentum and were made the subject a controversial film called The Magdalene Sisters (2002). In 2006, a documentary called Deliver Us From Evil was made about the sex abuse cases and one priest's confession of abuse.

Several other films have been made about sex abuse within the Church, including:

• Doubt (2008), based on the eponymous play
• Hand of God (2006), documentary filmed for Frontline
• Sex Crimes and the Vatican (2006), documentary filmed for the BBC Panorama Documentary Series that purports to show how the Vatican has used Crimen sollicitationis to silence allegations of sexual abuse by priests.
• Our Fathers (2005), a Showtime movie based on the book by David France
• Twist of Faith (2004), an HBO film
• The Boys of St. Vincent (1992)
• Song for a Raggy Boy (2003)
• Bad Education, film by Pedro Almodovar.

See also

• Abuse
• Child abuse
• Child sexual abuse
• Religious abuse
• Sexual abuse
• Sexual misconduct
• Spiritual abuse

Church related

• Roman Catholic sex abuse cases by country
• Abuse by members of Roman Catholic orders
• Criticism of Pope John Paul II
• Media coverage of Catholic sex abuse cases
• Lavender Mafia a conspiracy theory
• Sexual abuse scandal in the English Benedictine Congregation

Vatican documents

• De delictis gravioribus letter sent from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by its prefect, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, to Bishops of the entire Catholic Church
• Pontifical secret

Church prevention efforts

• The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has a Committee on the Protection of Children and Young People and a Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection. In 2002 the USCCB promulgated a Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.
• Virtus (program)

Cardinals and abuse cases

• Bernard Cardinal Law
• Roger Cardinal Mahony

Anti-abuse

• Ferns Report
• Walter V. Robinson
• Sex Crimes and the Vatican (Panorama documentary Episode)
• Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

Sexual abuse in other environments

• Sexual harassment in education
• Jehovah's Witnesses
• Scouting

Further reading

• Groeschel, F. Benedict, From Scandal to Hope (OSV, 2002)
• Jenkins, Philip, Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2001). ISBN 0-19-514597-6.
• Lobdell, William, "Missionary's Dark Legacy; Two remote Alaska villages are still reeling from a Catholic volunteer's sojourn three decades ago, when he allegedly molested nearly every Eskimo boy in the parishes. The accusers, now men, are scarred emotionally and struggle to cope. They are seeking justice," Los Angeles Times, Nov 19, 2005, p. A.1
• Ranan, David, Double Cross: The Code of the Catholic Church (Theo Press Ltd., 2007) ISBN 978-0-9554133-0-8.

External links

• Voice Of The Faithful- Keep the Faith, Change the Church
• Sexual Abuse in Social Context – a Catholic League report
• Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP)
• Living the Truth

Bishop-accountability.org

• Bishop Accountability
• "International Traffic in Catholic Priests Who Abuse" by Richard Sipe and K. K. Murray, SNAP [United States], April 17, 2007.
• De delictis gravioribus, a letter sent from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by its prefect, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, to Bishops of the entire Catholic Church

Ireland

• Bishop Brendan Comiskey's resignation

United States

• BBC Timeline: US Church sex abuse casesl
• 3000 pages from 9000 page transcript of the 1997 liability trial against the Dallas Diocese
• Cardinal Law's statement on child sex abuse in the Church
• "Pope responds to sex abuse cases", CNN, 22 March 2002.
• Experts: Tucson diocese settlement a bankruptcy model
• "Los Angeles Files Recount Decades of Priests' Abuse", The New York Times, October 12, 2005.
• Philadelphia Grand Jury Report on Pedophile Priests archived at The Memory Hole
• Sexuality, the Modern World, and the Catholic Church
• Change of law to make reporting sex abuse mandatory
• "Hand of God"—Frontline episode about one family's tale of clerical abuse
• Most Controversial Highlights in the 1962 Ottaviani Directive (English)
• Abuse of Children by Priests in the Boston Archdiocese: Violations of Applicable Standards of Care Eli H. Newberger, MD
• Dissident Female Catholic Bishop Calls for Pope to Resign over Sex Abuse Scandal - video by Democracy now!

John Jay Report related

• "The Experience of the Victim of Sexual Abuse:" A Reflection by Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea, Ph.D., U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops June 14, 2002
• Vatican-U.S. Mixed Commission on Charter and Norms for Protection of Children
• National Review Board, John Jay, and Audit Reports
• http://www.usccb.org/nrb/johnjaystudy/litreview.pdf