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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.
Crimen sollicitationis is the title of a 1962 document ("instruction") of the Holy Office codifying procedures to be followed in cases of priests or bishops of the Catholic Church accused of having used the sacrament of Penance to make sexual advances to penitents. It repeated, with additions, the contents of an identically named instruction issued in 1922 by the same office.
Brendan Comiskey, is the Roman Catholic Bishop Emeritus of the Diocese of Ferns. He was born in Clontibret, County Monaghan, Ireland.
Seán Fortune was a Catholic priest from Ireland, and child molester, who allegedly used his position to gain access to his victims. He was accused of the rape and sexual molestation of 29 different boys. He committed suicide while awaiting trial.
The pontifical secret, pontifical secrecy, or papal secrecy is the code of confidentiality that, in accordance with the Latin canon law of the Catholic Church as modified in 1983, applies in matters that require greater than ordinary confidentiality:
Business of the Roman Curia at the service of the universal Church is officially covered by ordinary secrecy, the moral obligation of which is to be gauged in accordance with the instructions given by a superior or the nature and importance of the question. But some matters of major importance require a particular secrecy, called "pontifical secrecy", and must be observed as a grave obligation.
The Ferns Report (2005) was an official Irish government inquiry into the allegations of clerical sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ferns in County Wexford, Ireland.
Colm O'Gorman is an Irish activist and former politician. He was the executive director of Amnesty International Ireland from 2008 to 2022. He is founder and former director of One in Four.
Sacramentum Poenitentiae was an apostolic constitution promulgated by Pope Benedict XIV on 1 June 1741, discussing the offense of solicitation, which is the crime of making use of the Sacrament of Penance, directly or indirectly, for the purpose of soliciting sexual activity.
Paul McGennis, a priest of the Archdiocese of Dublin, pleaded guilty in 1997 to two charges of sexually assaulting a child, Marie Collins, at Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin, Dublin, when he was chaplain there in 1960. He also pleaded guilty in 1997 to two charges of assaulting a nine-year-old girl in County Wicklow between 1977-79. He continued to serve as a priest until 1997 in Edenmore, Dublin.
Noel Reynolds was a priest of the Archdiocese of Dublin who died in 2002. He served as curate in eight parishes including Rathcoole, parish priest of Glendalough, County Wicklow and then chaplain at the National Rehabilitation Hospital, Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin.
Deliver Us from Evil is a 2006 American documentary film that explores the life of Irish Catholic priest Oliver O'Grady, who admitted to having molested and raped approximately 25 children in Northern California from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. Written and directed by Amy J. Berg, it won the Best Documentary Award at the 2006 Los Angeles Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, though it lost to An Inconvenient Truth. The title of the film refers to a line in the Lord's Prayer.
The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States, commonly known as the John Jay Report, is a 2004 report by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, based on surveys completed by the Roman Catholic dioceses in the United States. The initial version of the report was posted on the Internet on February 27, 2004, with corrections and revisions posted on April 16. The printed version was published in June 2004.
This page documents Catholic Church sexual abuse cases by country.
Hand of God is a 2006 independent documentary that was acquired for national airing in the United States by Frontline. The film was directed and edited by Joe Cultrera and tells the story of how his brother Paul was molested in the 1960s by their parish priest, Father Joseph Birmingham, who allegedly abused nearly 100 other children. Cultrera tells the story of faith betrayed and how his brother Paul and the rest of the Cultrera family fought back against a scandal that continues to afflict churches across the country.
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.
The media coverage of Catholic sex abuse cases is a major aspect of the academic literature surrounding the pederastic priest scandal.
The Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Europe has affected several dioceses in European nations. This article summarises reported cases of sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy and representatives of the Catholic Church by country and diocese.
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.
The Curial response to Catholic sexual abuse cases was a significant part of the Church's response to Catholic sexual abuse cases. Its policies have shifted from favoring secrecy in the 20th century to active reform and apologies in the 21st century. Under the current leadership of Pope Francis, the issue has been addressed through direct instructions to report cases of sexual abuse and revoking the former policies of secrecy.
The Vatican sexual abuse summit, officially the Meeting on the Protection of Minors in the Church, was a four-day Catholic Church summit meeting in Vatican City that ran from 21 to 24 February 2019, convened by Pope Francis to discuss preventing sexual abuse by Catholic Church clergy.
References
- ↑ "Sex crimes and the Vatican". BBC News. 29 September 2006. Retrieved 23 May 2010.
- ↑ Crimen sollicitationis, §§ 71-73, CDF, 16 March 1962
- ↑ "BBC - Radio 4 - Today - Paedophilia in the Catholic Church". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 24 November 2022.
- ↑ "BBC News | UK | Archbishop defends paedophile move". news.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 24 November 2022.
- ↑ McDonald, By Helen Studd, Ruth Gledhill and Claire. "Child abuse 'hotspots' uncovered in five Catholic dioceses". ISSN 0140-0460 . Retrieved 24 November 2022.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ↑ "Church failed to act on child sex abuse". Daily Telegraph . London, UK. 20 May 2009. Archived from the original on 2 June 2010. Retrieved 27 May 2010.
- ↑ Bowcott, Owen (10 November 2020). "Child sexual abuse in Catholic church was 'swept under the carpet', inquiry finds". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 10 November 2020. Retrieved 10 November 2020.
- ↑ Catholic Church abuse: Cardinal Vincent Nichols criticised over leadership Archived 10 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine BBC
