There have been many cases of sexual abuse of children by priests, nuns, and other members of religious life in the Catholic Church. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the cases have involved many allegations, investigations, trials, convictions, acknowledgement and apologies by Church authorities, and revelations about decades of instances of abuse and attempts by Church officials to cover them up. The abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as three years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14. Criminal cases for the most part do not cover sexual harassment of adults. The accusations of abuse and cover-ups began to receive public attention during the late 1980s. Many of these cases allege decades of abuse, frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse continued.
Theodore Edgar McCarrick is a laicized American bishop and former cardinal of the Catholic Church. Ordained a priest in 1958, he became an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New York in 1977, then became Bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, in 1981. From 1986 to 2000, he was Archbishop of Newark. He was created a cardinal in February 2001 and served as Archbishop of Washington from 2001 to 2006. Following credible allegations of repeated sexual misconduct towards boys and seminarians, he was removed from public ministry in June 2018, became the first cardinal to resign from the College of Cardinals because of claims of sexual abuse in July 2018, and was laicized in February 2019. Several honors he had been awarded, such as honorary degrees, were rescinded.
The Diocese of Springfield in Illinois is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in south central Illinois in the United States. The mother church is the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Springfield.
The Diocese of Charlotte is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in western North Carolina in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Atlanta.
The Diocese of Knoxville is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in eastern Tennessee in the United States. It was founded on May 27, 1988, from the eastern counties of what was then the Diocese of Nashville. The diocese is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Louisville.
Michael Joseph Bransfield is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. Bransfield served as bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston in West Virginia from 2005 to 2018.
This page documents Catholic Church sexual abuse cases by country.
Alan J. Placa is an American Catholic priest of the Diocese of Rockville Centre employed by Giuliani Partners, a management consulting and security consulting business founded by high school friend Rudy Giuliani, a former New York City Mayor.
Richard Joseph Malone is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who served as bishop of the Diocese of Buffalo in New York, from 2012 to 2019. He previously served as bishop of the Diocese of Portland in Maine from 2004 to 2012 and as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston in Massachusetts from 2000 to 2004.
Richard Frank Stika is an American prelate of the Catholic Church who served as the third bishop of the Diocese of Knoxville in Tennessee from 2009.
Peter William Ingham was an Australian bishop. He was the fourth Roman Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Wollongong, serving from 2001 to 2018. From March 2020 until December 2020, he served as apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Broome.
Joseph Hubert Hart was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Cheyenne in Wyoming from 1978 to 2001 and as auxiliary bishop of the same diocese from 1976 to 1978.
Carlo Maria Viganò is a schismatic bishop of the Catholic Church who served as the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States 2011 to 2016. He previously served as secretary-general of the Governorate of Vatican City State from 2009 to 2011. He is best known for having publicized two major Vatican scandals. These were the Vatican leaks scandal of 2012, in which he revealed financial corruption in the Vatican, and a 2018 letter in which he accused Pope Francis and other Catholic Church leaders of covering up sexual abuse allegations against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
There have been many lawsuits, criminal prosecutions, and scandals over sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy in the United States of America.
From the late 1980s, allegations of sexual abuse of children associated with Catholic institutions and clerics in several countries started to be the subject of sporadic, isolated reports. In Ireland, beginning in the 1990s, a series of criminal cases and Irish government enquiries established that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of children over decades. Six reports by the former National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church established that six Irish priests had been convicted between 1975 and 2011. This has contributed to the secularisation of Ireland and to the decline in influence of the Catholic Church. Ireland held referendums to legalise same-sex marriage in 2015 and abortion in 2018.
Catholic sexual abuse cases in Australia, like Catholic Church sexual abuse cases elsewhere, have involved convictions, trials and ongoing investigations into allegations of sex crimes committed by Catholic priests, members of religious orders and other personnel which have come to light in recent decades, along with the growing awareness of sexual abuse within other religious and secular institutions.
Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in Canada are well documented dating back to the 1960s. The preponderance of criminal cases with Canadian Catholic dioceses named as defendants that have surfaced since the 1980s strongly indicate that these cases were far more widespread than previously believed. While recent media reports have centred on Newfoundland dioceses, there have been reported cases—tested in court with criminal convictions—in almost all Canadian provinces. Sexual assault is the act of an individual touching another individual sexually and/or committing sexual activities forcefully and/or without the other person's consent. The phrase Catholic sexual abuse cases refers to acts of sexual abuse, typically child sexual abuse, by members of authority in the Catholic church, such as priests. Such cases have been occurring sporadically since the 11th century in Catholic churches around the world. This article summarizes some of the most notable Catholic sexual abuse cases in Canadian provinces.
The Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Europe has affected several dioceses in European nations. Italy is an exceptional case as the 1929 Lateran Treaty gave the Vatican legal autonomy from Italy, giving the clergy recourse to Vatican rather than Italian law.
The parish transfers of abusive Catholic priests, also known as priest shuffling, is a pastoral practice that has greatly contributed to the aggravation of Catholic Church sexual abuse cases. Some bishops have been heavily criticized for moving offending priests from parish to parish, where they still had personal contact with children, rather than seeking to have them permanently returned to the lay state by laicization. The Church was widely criticized when it was discovered that some bishops knew about some of the alleged crimes committed, but reassigned the accused instead of seeking to have them permanently removed from the priesthood.
Edward Joseph Weisenburger, J.C.L., is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, serving as the bishop of the Diocese of Tucson in Arizona since 2017. He previously served as the bishop of the Diocese of Salina in Kansas from 2012 to 2017.
