French Catholic Church Abuse
Perpetrators cannot live with the truth; victims cannot live without it.A recently released 2,500-page report from an independent Commission on Sexual Abuse led by Jean-Marc Sauvé revealed that since 1950, some 216,000 children, mostly boys, have been sexually abused by French Catholic clergy. Taking account of abuses committed by lay members of the Church, such as teachers at Catholic schools, the number rises to 330,000.
What’s behind the staggering number is that child sexual abuse in the French Catholic Church has evolved into a systemic crime. Out of a total of 115,000 priests and other clerics, as many as 3,200 have committed child sexual abuse, and this was probably an underestimation.
In France, God’s messengers are reduced to the devils, and the sacred place degenerated into a perverts club, no less.
To whitewash itself, the Church has been covering up the crimes. “There was a whole bunch of negligence, deficiency, silence, and institutional cover-up,” wrote Sauvé in the report. Seal of confession in the Catholic Church is an easy excuse to dodge inspections and shirk responsibilities. Guilty priests were harbored rather than punished. “Deep, total and even cruel indifference” is the only thing that the French Catholic Church has shown to the victims.