In the US, Catholic priests have corrupted thousands of children.

More than 300 Catholic priests who worked in the US state of Pennsylvania over the past 70 years have corrupted more than a thousand children. Their actions were covered by the church authorities, according to a report by a grand jury, published on Tuesday.

Фото: Depositphotos

This is one of the largest investigations conducted in the United States. With his help, it was possible to establish more than a thousand victims of pedophiles, writes Air force.

The report indicates that, in fact, the figures may be several times higher than the investigators were able to figure out.

The investigation lasted a year and a half and involved six of the largest dioceses in the state - Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton. It was there that the most widespread centers of corruption of minors were discovered, which were actively covered up by the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church.

The grand jury examined the so-called secret archives - 2 million internal memos and reports about allegations of illegal actions by priests that church leaders hid from the general public.

“Priests raped little boys and girls, and then the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing, but covered up these acts for decades. Despite a series of institutional reforms, church leaders have generally managed to avoid public accountability,” the report says.

Horror report

The report itself—1400 pages—describes in detail cases of child abuse, such as the story of a priest who molested a seven-year-old boy and immediately advised him to repent of his “sin” and confess to the abuser himself.

Another is about a priest who regularly raped another teenager for two years - the man attacked the child with such force that he inflicted numerous spinal injuries on him: he was subsequently forced to take painkillers, on which he eventually became dependent.

Another boy was stripped naked and forced to pose as Christ while a group of Catholic church officials took Polaroid pictures of him. Priests gave children gold crosses to mark those who had already been molested.

According to the report, the clergy raped the girls in the hospital - one of them had just had her tonsils removed. Another priest managed to retain his position and remain in the parish even after he possessed a young girl, forged the bishop's signature on a marriage certificate, and then divorced her when she became pregnant.

Many victims claimed that they were soldered or otherwise manipulated. Some recalled that their relatives beat them because they refused to believe their stories.

The report also criticizes Washington's arikhishop Cardinal Donald Wurl, formerly Bishop of Pittsburgh, for his role in hiding child abuse.

Ahead of the report's release, the senior cardinal defended himself, saying he had acted "with all diligence, with concern for victims of abuse and with the goal of preventing future abuse of children."

“This report will serve as a reminder of serious shortcomings for which the Church is obliged to acknowledge and for which it is obliged to ask forgiveness,” the cardinal wrote.

Among the victims of pedophiles is current Democratic Congressman from Pennsylvania Mark Rozzi, who told a grand jury that he was raped by a priest at a Catholic school in Berks County. The same priest, according to Rozzi, corrupted one of his school friends, who committed suicide in 2009.

Rotstsi called on his colleagues in the Legislative Assembly to make appropriate amendments to the legislation in order to toughen the criminal responsibility for the abuse of minors.

What does the law say?

Although the report lists the names of hundreds of Catholic priests, some names were removed because of claims that the order would violate their constitutional rights.

State Prosecutor General Josh Shapiro told a news conference on Tuesday that his department was working to ensure that the list was presented without exemption.

In addition, some cases of violence will be removed from the general large investigation due to the expiration of the statute of limitations for such crimes.

In Pennsylvania, people who are molested before reaching adulthood can file civil claims until age 30 and criminal claims until age 50.

The oldest person who fell victim to violence in the church at a young age turned 83.

According to representatives of the prosecution, it is loopholes in local state law that allowed many pedophiles to shirk responsibility.

The grand jury, in turn, called for a change in the law to allow older victims to file lawsuits against dioceses for actions and injuries inflicted on them in childhood.

This investigation was a new round in a long series of scandals related to the embezzlement of minors by Catholic priests - one of the loudest and most massive occurred about 20 years ago in Boston.

How does the church react?

Фото: Depositphotos

A month before the grand jury's report was made public, Cardinal Theodore MacCarrick, one of the key figures in the American Catholic Church and the former Archbishop of Washington, who was repeatedly accused of molesting children and adults for several decades, resigned.

In turn, the episcopate of the Catholic Church of Pennsylvania issued a statement asking to pray for the victims of the violence and for the church itself; it also promised greater openness and noted that institutional changes in recent years have made the church a much safer place.

According to the report of the grand jury, many priests, whose names are named in the report, covered the higher leadership, many were promoted.

The document also talks about the so-called guidelines for hiding the truth: for example, the terms “sexual abuse” and “rape” were proposed to be replaced by the softer “misbehavior”, and the investigation of such cases was recommended to be trusted to those priests who had not undergone appropriate training.

If a minister of the Catholic Church still needed to be recalled, the parish could not be told the real reason. Convenient versions were presented as “illness,” “nervous exhaustion,” or simply silence.

The current report, which was prepared over the past two years, saw the light against the background of renewed proceedings regarding the abuse of children in the Catholic Church.

Earlier this year, Pope Francis apologized to the victims of abuse in Chile for the “grave mistakes” that he made when dealing with statements about the alleged violence over children.

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