Nearly 4,400 people have been abused by Catholic priests in Italy in reported cases since 2020, a victims’ group said on Friday, renewing pressure on bishops to address a crisis that has long plagued the world’s largest Christian faith.
The unofficial count by Rete l’Abuso, Italy’s largest group of victims of ecclesiastical abuse, is based on victims’ complaints, judicial sources and cases reported by the media, the association’s founder Francesco Zanardi said.
Rete l’Abuso did not provide the date on which the alleged cases of abuse occurred.
The Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI), criticized last week by the Vatican’s child protection commission, did not comment on the revelation, a spokeswoman said.
The global Catholic Church has been rocked for decades by scandals involving pedophile priests and the cover-up of their crimes, but local church leaders in Italy have been less open in addressing the issue.
Pope Leo XIV, who met with survivors of clergy sexual abuse for the first time this week, told the church’s new bishops not to hide allegations of misconduct. His predecessor, the late Pope Francis, made addressing the issue a priority of his 12-year papacy, but with mixed results.
In an extraordinarily critical report on the issue published on October 16, the Vatican’s child protection commission said that only 81 of Italy’s 226 dioceses responded to a questionnaire on protection practices it drew up.
Rete l’Abuso said it had documented 1,250 suspected cases of abuse – some with multiple victims – of which 1,106 were allegedly committed by priests, while the rest were attributed to nuns, religious teachers, lay volunteers, educators and members of the Boy Scouts.
The report contained cases relating to 4,625 victims – or survivors, as the association calls them – including 4,395 cases of abuse by priests.
The report said 4,451 of the survivors were under the age of 18 and an almost equally high number – 4,108 – were men, Rete l’Abuso said, adding that the victims also included five nuns, 156 vulnerable adults and 11 people with disabilities.
According to the association, of the 1,106 priests suspected of predators, only 76 were subjected to ecclesiastical trials, 17 of whom were temporarily suspended, seven were transferred to other parishes and 18 were fired or dismissed from the priesthood. Five died by suicide, he added.
Source: Terra
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