News / France

Thousands of paedophiles active in French Catholic Church since 1950, commission reveals

Sunday, 03 October 2021 5:30 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 03 October 2021 5:47 PM ]

Former French vice-president of the State Council Jean-Marc (Photo by AFP)

An independent commission probing sexual abuses of minors by church members has revealed that thousands of paedophiles have operated inside the French Catholic Church since 1950.

Jean-Marc Sauve told the AFP news agency on Sunday that the head of the commission found evidence of between 2,900 to 3,200 paedophile priests or other members of the church, adding that the figure is “a minimum estimate”.

The 2,500-page report, which took two and a half years of investigation, is expected to be released on Tuesday. The research was based on church, court and police archives, as well as interviews with witnesses.

The commission’s report will attempt to quantify the number of offenders and the number of victims, Sauve said.

It will also look into “the mechanisms, notably institutional and cultural ones” which allowed the paedophiles to operate in the Church, he added.

The commission consists of 22 legal professionals, doctors, sociologists, theologians and historians and has been tasked with investigating allegations of child sex abuse by clerics dating back to the 1950s.

The independent commission was set up in 2018 by the French Catholic Church in the wake of a number of scandals that shook the Church in France and across the world.

Before the formation of the commission, Pope Francis passed a landmark measure making it mandatory for those who know about sex abuse in the Catholic Church to report it to their superiors.

The move came after a series of assault allegations against the Catholic Church spanning several continents.

Papal visit to Ireland dominated by calls for action on church abuse

Pope Francis

People in Australia, Europe, and North and South America have charged they were sexually assaulted by clergymen.

Also in 2018, a press report revealed that more than half of the Netherlands' senior clerics were involved in covering up sexual abuse of minors for nearly seven decades.

In August same year, Pope Francis refused to comment on allegations by an ex-Vatican diplomat that the head of the Roman Catholic Church had helped cover up a serial of sexual abuses by a US cardinal, who was forced to resign the month before.

The German Catholic Church said it was "dismayed and ashamed" by decades of child sex abuse by priests, after a report was leaked showing that thousands of minors were assaulted.

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