International extent
of issue
Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has been reported as far
back as the 11th century, when Peter Damian wrote the treatise Liber
Gomorrhianus against such abuses and others. In the late 15th century,
Katharina von Zimmern and her sister were removed from their abbey to live in
their family's house for a while partly because the young girls were molested
by priests. In 1531, Martin Luther
claimed that Pope Leo X had vetoed a measure that cardinals should restrict the
number of boys they kept for their pleasure, "otherwise it would have been
spread throughout the world how openly and shamelessly the Pope and the cardinals
in Rome practice sodomy."
The sexual abuse of children below the age of consent by
priests has received significant media and public attention in the United
States, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Belgium, France,
Germany, and Australia. Cases have also been reported in other nations
throughout the world. Many of the cases span several decades and are brought
forward years after the abuse occurred.
Although nationwide inquiries have been conducted only in
the United States and Ireland, as well as an Australian inquiry into
institutional responses, cases of clerical sexual abuse of minors have been
reported and prosecuted in New Zealand, Canada and other countries. In 1995,
Austrian Cardinal Hans Hermann Groƫr resigned from his post as Archbishop of
Vienna over allegations of sexual abuse, although he remained a Cardinal. Since 1995, more than 100 priests from various
parts of Australia were convicted of sexual abuse.
In Ireland, the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse
issued a report that covered six decades (from the 1950s). It noted
"endemic" sexual abuse in Catholic boys' institutions, saying that
church leaders were aware of abuses and that government inspectors failed to
"stop beatings, rapes and humiliation." The report noted the "centrality of
poverty and social vulnerability in the lives of the victims of abuse."
In Australia, according to Broken Rites, a support and advocacy
group for church-related sex abuse victims, as of 2011 there has been over one
hundred cases in which Catholic priests have been charged for child sex
offenses. A 2012 police report claimed that 40 suicide
deaths were directly related to abuse by Catholic clergy in the state of
Victoria. In January 2013, an Australian
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was called
to investigate institutional sexual abuse of minors related, but not exclusive,
to matters concerning clergy of the Catholic Church.
Of the Catholic sexual abuse cases in Latin America, the
most widely known is the sexual scandal of Father Marcial Maciel, the founder
of the Legion of Christ, a Roman Catholic congregation. The revelations took place after the Legion
spent more than a decade denying allegations and criticizing the victims who
claimed abuse.
In Tanzania, Father Kit Cunningham and three other priests
were exposed as pedophiles after Cunningham's death. The abuse took place in the 1960s but was only
publicly revealed in 2011, largely through a BBC documentary.
Church officials and academics knowledgeable about the Third
World Roman Catholic Church[who?] say that sexual abuse by clergy is generally
not discussed, and thus is difficult to measure. This may be due in part to the more
hierarchical structure of the Church in Third World countries, the
"psychological health" of clergy in those regions, and because Third
World media, legal systems and public culture are not as apt to thoroughly
discuss sexual abuse. In the
Philippines, where as of 2002 at least 85% of the population is Catholic, the
revelations of sexual abuse by priests, including child sexual abuse, followed
the United States' widespread reporting in 2002.
Academic Mathew N. Schmalz notes India as an example:
"you would have gossip and rumors, but it never reaches the level of formal
charges or controversies." Traditionally, the Roman Catholic Church has
held tight control over many aspects of church life around the globe, but it
left sex abuse cases to be handled locally. In 2001, the church first required that sex
abuse cases be reported to Rome. In July
2010, the Vatican doubled the length of time after the 18th birthday of the
victim in which clergymen can be tried in a church court. It also streamlined
the processes for removing abusive priests.
According to a 2004 research study by the John Jay College
of Criminal Justice for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 4,392
Catholic priests and deacons in active ministry between 1950 and 2002 have been
plausibly (neither withdrawn nor disproven) accused of under-age sexual abuse
by 10,667 individuals. Estimating the number of priests and deacons active in
the same period at 110,000, the report concluded that approximately 4% have
faced these allegations. The report noted that "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. The Augustin
Cardinal Bea, S.J. specializes in abuse counseling and is considered an expert
on clerical abuse; he states "approximately 4% of priests during the past
half century (and mostly in the 1960s and 1970s) have had a sexual experience
with a minor." According to
Newsweek magazine, this figure is similar to the rate of frequency in the rest
of the adult population.
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. Allegations of
and convictions for sexual abuse by clergy have occurred in many countries.
There are no accurate figures available on the number of sexual abuse cases in
different regions. But, in 2002 The Boston Globe reported, "clearly the
issue has been most prominent in the United States." The US is the country with the highest number
of reported Catholic sex abuse cases.
After the United States, the country with the next highest
number of reported cases is Ireland. A
significant number of cases have also been reported in Australia, New Zealand,
Canada, and countries in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
In response to the attention, members of the church
hierarchy[who?] have argued that media coverage has been unfair, excessive, and
disproportionate failed verification] According to a Pew Research Center study,
in 2002 the media coverage was focused on the US, where a Boston Globe series
initiated widespread coverage in the region. However, by 2010 the focus had
shifted to Europe.
In September 2011, a submission was lodged with the
International Criminal Court alleging that the Pope, Cardinal Angelo Sodano
(Dean of the College of Cardinals), Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone (Cardinal
Secretary of State), and Cardinal William Levada (then-current Prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) had committed a crime against
humanity by failing to prevent or punish perpetrators of rape and sexual
violence in a "systematic and widespread" concealment which included
failure to co-operate with relevant law enforcement agencies. In a statement to the Associated Press, the
Vatican described this as a "ludicrous publicity stunt and a misuse of
international judicial processes." Lawyers and law professors emphasized
that the case is likely to fall outside the court's jurisdiction.
On 13 May 2017, Pope Francis acknowledged that the Vatican
had a 2,000 case backlog of sex abuse cases.
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