Pedocriminality: the Catholic Church faced with thirty years of scandals in the world – archyde

Representatives of the Catholic Church in France have one month to study the report given to them on Tuesday, October 5, by the independent commission on sexual abuse in the Church (Ciase). In November, the Conference of Bishops of France and the Conference of Religious, at the origin of the creation of Ciase, should decide what they retain from its 45 recommendations. Before France, sexual violence in the Catholic Church became a public problem in several countries. What lessons have been learned from these crises?

• Ireland leads the way in the 1990s

Ireland led the way in the early 1990s, with a series of revelations, public inquiries and trials involving hundreds of priests and religious. Sexual assault has claimed thousands of lives over decades. The attacks committed in hundreds of religious schools, and systematically covered or denied by these institutions and the Irish State, have led to several large public inquiries.

In 2009, one of them (the Ryan commission), conducted among 250 religious institutions, concluded that the rapes and assaults were “Endemic” in these orphanages and vocational schools and had made thousands of young victims. The government has also launched inquiries into the many religious institutions for unmarried mothers. These scandals have largely contributed to the secularization of one of the most deeply Catholic societies in Europe.

• In the United States, the names of “predatory priests” published

The American Catholic Church has grappled with the subject for nearly twenty years. The first case, revealed by the Boston Globe in 2002, culminated in the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law, who had to admit covering up pedophile priests for years. Thousands of cases were then reported across the country. In 2019, Pope Francis defrocked Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, accused of sexual abuse of an altar boy and who requested sexual favors during confession.

Several other dignitaries were forced to resign for turning a blind eye. If many priests were convicted by justice, it was not until 2012 that the first bishop, William Lynn, of Philadelphia, was tried for covering up religious. The Church committed itself in 2002 to a policy of zero tolerance and to oblige priests to denounce the facts to the civil authorities. In August 2018, an investigation conducted by a grand jury in six dioceses of Pennsylvania reported assaults on 1,000 children between 1940 and 2010. Accused: more than 300 religious described as “Predatory priests”. In the process, the bishops had to accept the creation of a commission of inquiry into the concealment maneuvers of the hierarchy.

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