384 Priests Defrocked Over Abuse in 2 Years
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN, NYT, JAN. 17, 2014
The Vatican defrocked 260 priests for the sexual abuse of children in 2011 and 124 more in 2012 after the scandal exploded in Europe and beyond and bishops forwarded hundreds of cases to the Vatican, according to statistics compiled by The Associated Press.
The numbers were confirmed by the Vatican on Friday, and were based on statistics published in its annual reference books. Two Vatican officials had the statistics in hand but never cited them when they defended the church’s handling of sexual abuse cases before a United Nations panel in Geneva on Thursday.
Experts on sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church say that the numbers represent a spike from previous years, but are not surprising given how the scandal has unfolded in a global organization with more than 412,000 priests.
In 2001, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, arranged for all abuse cases to be sent to his office at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome. After the sexual abuse scandal erupted anew in the United States in 2002, American bishops forwarded about 700 abuse cases to the Vatican during the next few years, said Nicholas P. Cafardi, the former dean of the Duquesne University School of Law, who wrote a book about the church’s response to sexual abuse.
(More here.)
The Vatican defrocked 260 priests for the sexual abuse of children in 2011 and 124 more in 2012 after the scandal exploded in Europe and beyond and bishops forwarded hundreds of cases to the Vatican, according to statistics compiled by The Associated Press.
The numbers were confirmed by the Vatican on Friday, and were based on statistics published in its annual reference books. Two Vatican officials had the statistics in hand but never cited them when they defended the church’s handling of sexual abuse cases before a United Nations panel in Geneva on Thursday.
Experts on sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church say that the numbers represent a spike from previous years, but are not surprising given how the scandal has unfolded in a global organization with more than 412,000 priests.
In 2001, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, arranged for all abuse cases to be sent to his office at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome. After the sexual abuse scandal erupted anew in the United States in 2002, American bishops forwarded about 700 abuse cases to the Vatican during the next few years, said Nicholas P. Cafardi, the former dean of the Duquesne University School of Law, who wrote a book about the church’s response to sexual abuse.
(More here.)
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