Catholic Church sexual abuse cases

[25][26] In June 2021, a team of U.N. special rapporteurs for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) criticized the Vatican, pointing to persistent allegations that the Catholic Church had obstructed and failed to cooperate with domestic judicial proceedings to prevent accountability for abusers and compensation for victims.

[56] In 2014, the Permanent Representative of the Holy See to the UN, Silvano Maria Tomasi, appeared before the Committee against Torture and reported that during the previous ten years, 3420 cases of abuse against minors had been investigated and 884 priests had been removed from their positions and reduced to lay status.

[85] In 2018 Pope Francis accepted the resignation of auxiliary bishop Juan José Pineda, a close aide of Cardinal Maradiaga, following revelations of sexual abuse of the seminarians and financial scandal.

[96] On 30 April 2020, the Canadian Supreme Court rejected an appeal from the Basilian Fathers of Toronto to not give Marshall victim Rod MacLeod a required payment of just over $2.5 million, including $500,000 in punitive damages, stemming from a sexual-assault case in the 1960s.

A 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 the University of Notre Dame in 1967, to which all U.S. Catholic bishops were invited.

[163] In 2022, the AFP news agency reported one of the most serious cases revealed to date in the country, involving a network of pederasty that would include at least 38 abusive priests in the city of Villavicencio,[164] of which 19 of them had been suspended two years before by the Vatican in the midst of the canonical investigation.

[169] In 2002, Mathew N. Schmalz noted that Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in India are generally not spoken about openly, stating "you would have gossip and rumors, but it never reaches the level of formal charges or controversies.

[184] In November 2010, an independent group in Austria[185] that operates a hotline to help people exit the Catholic Church released a report documenting physical, sexual, and emotional abuse perpetrated by Austrian priests, nuns, and religious officials.

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the Archbishop of Lyon, was convicted on 7 March 2019 of failing to report sex abuse allegedly committed by priest Bernard Preynat and was given a six-month suspended prison sentence.

[209] On 16 December 2020, former Apostolic nuncio to France Luigi Ventura received a suspended eight-month prison sentence for sexually harassment, which includes probation and a required payment of €13,000 to the victims, as well as €9,000 in legal fees.

[231][232] 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.

[244] 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.

[245] 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.

[258][259] 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.

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.

[283] 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.

[347] 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.

[348] 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.

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.

[396] 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.

"[400] 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.

'"[377] 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.

[411] 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.

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".

[423] 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.

[24] On 26 March 2019, one month after the summit was held,[444] Pope Francis adopted: According to Andrea Tornielli, these: are very specific laws, norms and indications destined, first of all, for those to whom they are addressed: in fact, they concern only Vatican City State, where a large number of priests and religious work, but where there are very few children.

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.

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.

[462] 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.

[479] Walter V. Robinson, an American journalist and journalism professor, led The Boston Globe's coverage of the Roman Catholic sex abuse cases, for which the newspaper won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.