Counter Pedophilia Investigate Unit

VATICAN CITY—Cases of clerical child abuse in the ultra-conservative Legionaries of Christ movement dating back decades have been reported to the Vatican, spokesman Federico Lombardi said Friday.

Informed sources said that the Vatican was investigating seven priests from the movement, whose late founder Father Marcial Maciel was accused of having an illegitimate daughter and abusing eight seminarians. (more…)

THE Vatican’s chief investigator has insisted that Ireland’s most senior cleric has no case to answer over renewed allegations of mishandling of allegations against the paedophile Brendan Smyth.

Monsignor Charles J Scicluna (pictured) defended Cardinal Sean Brady’s role in secret interviews with a 14-year-old victim in 1975 in which he was told it was likely the late priest was abusing five other named children. (more…)

The Vatican has called for the training of priests in Ireland to be overhauled and for child protection practices to be reformed in a report on sexual abuse by clerics.

Details were published on Tuesday by the Catholic Church in Ireland, which is struggling amid a decline in public support, financial pressures and tensions with the Dublin government over how it has mishandled sex abuse inquiries. (more…)

Roman Catholic Church leaders unveiled an Internet teaching project on Thursday to help clergy around the world root out pedophiles in their ranks and protect children from potential abusers.

Ending a four-day conference on child abuse in Rome, Father Francois-Xavier Dumortier said the 1.2 million euro ($1.60 million) project would provide multilingual advice and access to research on pedophilia and how to respond to the problem. (more…)

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican’s top prosecutor on Wednesday called for stricter accountability for bishops who cover up child abuse crimes and said 1,000 cases had been reported to him in the past two years alone.

“Ecclesial accountability has to be further developed. How do you sanction a bishop? That is something that Canon law reserves for the pope personally,” Charles Scicluna said on the sidelines of a Vatican summit on the issue. (more…)

A senior Vatican cardinal has revealed how more than 4,000 cases of sex abuse by priests on children have been investigated during the last ten years.

The shock figure was announced by American cardinal Joseph William Levada as he opened a conference on the wide scale phenomenon which has rocked the Roman Catholic church with cases reported all over the world.

Cardinal Levada, who is head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, described the figure as a ‘dramatic increase’ and came in the face of global indignation at the scale of the problem and which has forced Pope Benedict XVI to apologise for previous cases during papal visits as he meets victims. (more…)

Roman Catholic leaders from across the globe have opened an unprecedented Vatican-sponsored summit on ways to detect and prevent sexual child abuse by clergy.

Organizers say the four-day, closed-door symposium, hosted by Rome’s Jesuit-run Gregorian University, includes bishops from 100 countries and representatives of more than 30 religious orders.

(more…)

In Belgium, the association of victims of clergy sexual abuse (Snap) denounces an attempt by the Catholic Church to hide its crimes through private negotiations.

In the 90s and in the following decade, the ecclesiastical hierarchy conducted secret negotiations to pay for silencing the scandal of pedophile priests. (more…)

Vatican -Benedict XVI made an unusual decision to favor moral renovation of the Church in Ireland,after pedophilia scandals.

The Pope chose one of the assistants of Monsigneur Charles Sciucluna, promoter of justice in the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, as the new Apostolic Nuntio assigned to Ireland. (more…)

LONDON — The Vatican has ordered an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse at an abbey in London, the local diocese said Tuesday.

Certain monks and lay preachers at Ealing Abbey in west London have been linked to abuse dating from the 1960s to as recently as two years ago.

The apostolic visitation of high-level figures in the Catholic Church in England follows abuse scandals that have rocked the Church in Ireland, the United States, Germany and other countries in recent years. (more…)