VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis told prelates Saturday to shun the “logic of human power,” pressing his campaign to root out corruption and other wrongdoing from the Vatican’s scandal-tainted power structures. The admonition came a day after the latest embarrassment for the Vatican hierarchy — the arrest by Italian authorities of a Vatican accountant, in […]
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A teen was accused of abuse inside Vatican City. Powerful church figures helped him become a priest.
VATICAN CITY — The warnings started coming eight years ago, sent to some of the most powerful figures in the Roman Catholic Church, alerting them to a potential sex abuse crime that stood out from other church cases. The profile of the alleged abuser, by itself, was unusual: not a priest, but rather a teenage […]
Read MoreCatholic groups on Tuesday accused Italy’s Church of an “institutional failure” to confront clergy sexual abuse, and demanded an independent national inquiry mirroring ones conducted in France and Germany. A collective of nine groups – seven headed by women – issued the demand during the launch of a campaign called “Beyond the Great Silence” and […]
Read MoreAt a trial under way in Sicily, a 28-year-old Italian is seeking justice against a man he accuses of forcing him to perform sex acts before going on to become a priest. The victim says the alleged abuse, committed more than a decade ago when he was a minor and the accused was a seminarian […]
Read MorePressure groups say there could be a million victims Italy is a “Pandora’s box” of hidden sex abuse by priests, a senior Vatican official has claimed as activists press for an inquiry into Italian clergy they suspect of assaulting up to a million victims. Father Hans Zollner, who is the Pope’s main expert on abuse, […]
Read MoreItalian activists fighting sexual abuse by Catholic clergy decry the ‘conspiracy of silence’ between the Italian church and state. VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Recent reports on the clerical sexual abuse scandals in France and Germany have put the spotlight once again on the Catholic Church in Italy, which has so far avoided confronting the history of abusive priests in […]
Read MoreSister 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 […]
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 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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