Sister Veronica Openibo says leaders must accept they have brought disgrace upon church A nun has condemned the Catholic church’s hierarchy for its failure to tackle the scourge of clerical sexual abuse, saying leaders must concede that their “mediocrity, hypocrisy and complacency” has brought the church to a “disgraceful place”. In her speech, delivered at […]
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Vatican under pressure to show it is serious about dealing with crisis at Rome meeting More than 100 senior Roman Catholic bishops from around the world will gather in Rome this week for a summit Pope Francis has called to address clerical sexual abuse – the most serious crisis in the church since the Reformation, according to […]
Read MoreSpokesman says guidelines for those who break celibacy vows will not be made public The Vatican has acknowledged for the first time the existence of secret guidelines for priests who break their vows of celibacy and father children. However, it declined to make its advice public, saying it was an internal matter. Alessandro Gisotti, a Vatican spokesman, told […]
Read MorePope Francis hands out 21 ‘reflection points’ at Vatican summit but survivors groups say church still has a long way to go Activists for survivors of clerical sexual abuse have criticised a list of proposals laid out by Pope Francis to address paedophilia within the Catholic church on the first day of an unprecedented summit at the […]
Read MorePope yet to implement crucial reforms to canon law one year on from summit The Vatican has done little to seriously address the problem of clerical sexual abuse one year on from an unprecedented summit at which bishops and cardinals heard the testimony of victims, activists have said. Pope Francis closed the four-day summit last February promising that the […]
Read MoreUnofficial estimates say country may have highest number of victims of paedophile priests in world Pressure is mounting on the Catholic church in Italy to face a reckoning on child sexual abuse amid unofficial estimates that the country could have the highest number of victims of paedophile priests in the world. Damning investigations into the scale of […]
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An extraordinary summit on the issue of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church opens at the Vatican on Thursday, with survivors calling for zero tolerance. Bishops from around the world have gathered for the four-day conference, along with Vatican officials, experts and heads of male and female religious orders. The theme of the meeting […]
Read MorePope Francis has publically expressed ‘pain and shame’ over the rape and molestation of children by priests in Chile. His remarks came during his visit to the Latin American country which has been gripped by a scandal scarring the credibility of the Church. The pontif also had a private meeting with some of the victims […]
Read MoreHundreds of children have been sexually abused since 1975 in the Catholic diocese of Cologne, according to a long-awaited report which showed, in dozens of the cases, high ranking officials neglected their duties. The 800-page report found 314 children, mostly boys under the age of 14, were sexually abused between 1975 and 2018 by 202 […]
Read MoreA newly released report by a law firm said the former pope mishandled at least four cases of sexual abuse accusations in Germany. A report released on Thursday faulted Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI for what the authors called misconduct in his handling of at least four cases of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests when […]
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