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 MoreCategory: Christanity
A teen was accused of abuse inside Vatican City. Powerful church figures helped him become a priest.
Catholic 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 MoreRome (AFP) – Victims of paedophile priests in Italy unveiled Tuesday a campaign dubbed “Beyond the Great Silence”, pushing for an independent investigation into clerical abuse carried out on the Vatican’s doorstep. Inquiries across the United States, Europe and Australia have exposed the scale of abuse within the Catholic Church — and a decades-long cover-up — […]
Read MoreThe BBC has uncovered how a culture of complicity and denial conceals the true scale of clerical sex abuse in Italy. One shocking case that we delved into exposes how abusers in the Church can escape justice. This account contains descriptions which readers may find upsetting. We’ll call him “Mario”. He pulls back slightly as […]
Read MoreVATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Nine members of a defunct, cult-like Roman Catholic religious order in Italy’s Tuscany region are under investigation for alleged sexual abuse of two brothers when they were minors, authorities said on Wednesday. The nine, including five priests and three other men, were members of a religious order called the Disciples of […]
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 MoreROME — Catholic groups and abuse survivors on Tuesday called on the Roman Catholic Church in Italy, which has yet to reckon with the scourge of sexual abuse by priests, to create an independent commission to investigate how the crisis has been handled. In a number of countries — including Australia, France, Ireland and the […]
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 More