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Roman Catholic Church sexually abused children rather than caring for them
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Roman Catholic Church sexually abused children rather than caring for them
The Vatican claims former pope John Paul II was among a range of high-ranking clerics misled by disgraced ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was found guilty of sexual crimes and abuse of power.
McCarrick, rose up the Catholic Church hierarchy in America despite having multiple allegations of sexual abuse against adults and children known at the time of his appointments.
The release of the Vatican’s long-awaited report came as a UK independent inquiry found Britain’s Roman Catholic Church betrayed its moral purpose over decades by protecting those who sexually abused children rather than caring for their victims.
In the Vatican, the 460-page document with testimony from 90 witnesses and dozens of documents, letters and transcripts from Vatican and US church archives, offers a remarkable reckoning by an institution known for its secrecy, protecting known pedophiles within the church and whilst portraying a man long able to convince superiors of his innocence.
In November, 2000, Pope John Paul II appointed McCarrick archbishop of Washington DC — one of the most prestigious posts in the US church — despite having the Vatican ambassador to the US confirm to him that he “shared a bed with young men” in an earlier investigation.
The report also found John Paul II’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI, rejected further investigations into the cardinal as he had sworn on his oath as a bishop that he had not sexually abused anyone and “there was no indication of any recent misconduct [with adults]”.
After he was elected in 2013, Pope Francis became aware of “allegations and rumours” concerning McCarrick’s past behaviour, but only acted on them following new allegations surfacing in 2017, the report said.
McCarrick has said he had no recollection of child abuse and has not commented publicly on allegations of misconduct with adults.
Now aged 90, he is living in isolation. The two lawyers who represented him did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The publication of the Holy See’s two-year investigation into McCarrick coincided on Tuesday with the findings of the UK’s Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse, which examined child abuse across British institutions and society.
The inquiry found the Catholic Church — as it did the Church of England — had consistently prioritised its own reputation, moving abusive priests and monks to different parishes where some continued to prey on children, and resisting any external intervention.
“Child sexual abuse was swept under the carpet,” the report said, describing “appalling” attacks including sadistic beatings driven by sexual gratification, often perpetrated by deeply manipulative people in positions of trust.
The Catholic Church received more than 900 complaints involving over 3,000 instances of child sex abuse in England and Wales between 1970 and 2015, and there have been more than 100 reported allegations a year since 2016.
The report said actual figures are likely to be far higher.
The catholic church is guilty of many atrocities, but the most heinous one of all is their continual coverups of child sex abuses by the priest, bishops and cardinals, a truly sickening organization that see their own sexual gratification of young boys as their right. When will governments finally step in and arrest those who are guilty of the crimes and the coverup, this goes al the way back to Rome and the pope himself.
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