‘IMMENSE SORROW’: CLERGY HAVE ABUSED 216,000 CHILDREN IN FRANCE SINCE 1950, SAYS INQUIRY

Wed 06 October 2021:

Between 1950 and 2020, an independent commission found 216,000 cases of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church in France, according to a shocking report released on Tuesday.

A 2,500-page report prepared by an independent panel was released, detailing decades of abuse and cover-ups.

The report cited the French Catholic Church’s “cruel indifference” toward victims of “systematic” abuse.

Speaking at the release of the report, the commission president Jean-Marc Sauvé said the church showed “a profound and even cruel indifference towards the victims” of abuse, up until the early 2000s when the victims were “not believed, not heard”.

When non-religious people involved in the church are taken into consideration, the research claims that 330,000 children were victims of sex abuse.

Sauvé said about 80 per cent are male victims.

“The consequences are very serious,” Sauvé said. “About 60 per cent of men and women who were sexually abused encounter major problems in their sentimental or sexual life.”

The report says an estimated 3,000 child abusers — two-thirds of them priests — worked in the church during that period. Sauvé said the overall figure of victims includes an estimated 216,000 people abused by priests and other clerics.

The panel worked for two and a half years, listening to victims and witnesses and researching church, court, police, and newspaper archives, Starting from the 1950s.

A hotline set up at the start of the investigation got 6,500 calls from alleged victims or persons who claimed to know someone who was a victim.

‘Immense sorrow’

According to Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni, the Pope felt “immense sorrow” for the victims.

Speaking to reporters after the report’s publication, Bruni said Francis’s thoughts were with the victims, and with the Church of France, “so that, having become aware of this appalling reality…it can undertake the path of redemption.”

“With his prayers, the Pope entrusts to the lord the people of God in France, especially the victims, so that He may grant them comfort and consolation and so that, with justice, the miracle of healing may be accomplished,” the spokesman concluded.

Pope Francis approved a new church decree in May 2019 that requires all Catholic priests and nuns worldwide to disclose priestly sexual abuse and cover-ups to church authorities.

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