Child Abuse by French Catholic Clergy Exposed

[Rowan M.]

Lead story on BBC News today:

French Church abuse: 216,000 children were victims of clergy - inquiry

So according to this story, the just-released findings of an inquiry into abuse within the French Catholic Church show that about 216,000 children, most of whom were boys, have been abused in the Church since the 1950s. The number of abusers is estimated at 2,900-3,200. If abuse by lay members of the Church is counted, the number of victims could be as high as 330,000.

The inquiry was an independent one commissioned by the French Catholic Church in 2018. It ended up being some 2,500 pages in length. Some findings of the report (and I now quote directly from the article):

"It said the Church had not only failed to prevent abuse but had also failed to report it, at times knowingly putting children in contact with predators.

"'There was a whole bunch of negligence, of deficiency, of silence, an institutional cover-up,' the head of the inquiry, Jean-Marc Sauvé, told reporters on Tuesday.

"He said that until the early 2000s, the Church had shown 'deep, total and even cruel indifference' towards victims.

"'The victims are not believed, are not listened to. When they are listened to, they are considered to have perhaps contributed to what they had happen to them,' he explained.

"He added that sexual abuse within the Catholic Church continued to be a problem. (Ya think?)

"While the commission found evidence of as many as 3,200 abusers - out of a total of 115,000 priests and other clerics - it said this was probably an underestimation.

"'The Catholic Church is, after the circle of family and friends, the environment that has the highest prevalence of sexual violence,' the report said." (Emphasis mine)

France is a deeply Catholic country. As BBC analyst Hugh Schofield notes, "This was over 70 years and more than half the cases were before 1970. But still - for many French this will be the moment they wake up to the sheer scale of the phenomenon of Church sexual abuse. What was once anecdotal and prurient is suddenly a defining feature of society." (My emphasis again.) He adds, "There has to be recognition that sexual abuse of youngsters by priests was systematic. It was the Church - not rogue individuals - that was responsible." (Well, I think it was a bit of both - everyone is responsible for their own sins, but without doubt, the Catholic Church had a big part to play in covering it up and sometimes facilitating it.)

So a bit of a bombshell there, although given the Catholic Church's track record elsewhere in the world, not in the least bit surprising. Let's hope that some people in France will wake up to what an evil institution it is and that this will lead them to discover the real Jesus Christ rather than the false wafer one they have been serving.