Sexual Abuse Controversy
Main article: Catholic sex abuse cases See also: Roman Catholic sex abuse cases by countryIn January 2002, allegations of priests sexually abusing children were widely reported in the news media. It became clear that the officials of various Catholic dioceses were aware of some of the abusive priests, and shuffled them from parish to parish (sometimes after psychotherapy), in some cases without removing them from contact with children. A survey of the 10 largest U.S. dioceses found 234 priests from a total 25,616 in those dioceses, have had allegations of sexual abuse made against them in the last 50 years. The report does not state how many of these have been proven in court.
Some of these reassignments were egregious, the worst leading to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law from the Boston archdiocese. Victims of such abuse filed lawsuits against a number of dioceses, resulting in multi-million dollar settlements in some cases. Similar allegations of abuse in Ireland led to the publication of the Ferns report in 2005, which stated that appropriate action was not taken in response to the allegations.
In response, in June 2002, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops initiated strict new guidelines ("zero tolerance") for the protection of children and youth in Catholic institutions across the country. The Vatican revisited the issue of homosexuality and a gay subculture within the clergy, because the vast majority of the cases consisted of males preying on male adolescents (over 90% of the sexual abuse victims were teenage boys rather than girls or prepubescents).
Read more about this topic: Criticism Of The Catholic Church, Criticism of Catholic Actions in History
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