Worldwide Call for Action: Stop Child Abuse in the Catholic Church, Part 1 of 2

An investigation into the French Catholic Church has uncovered shocking revelations about child sexual abuse. An independent commission leading the investigation says between 2,900 and 3,200 pedophiles held positions within the Church since the 1950s. On the 13th of February, the final report of the Independent Commission for the Study of Sexual Abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church will be released. In October, the Commission had already validated 424 testimonies, but most had already expired in legal terms. In 2018, when p. Francis visited South America on a trip that was touted as being about peace, unity, and hope, he was met with large protests, especially in Chile. “The Vatican still covers up abusers, and to boot, in Chile, it rewards them with promotions and positions abroad.”

In April 2023, the Spanish newspaper El País published part of a diary by the late Jesuit priest Alfonso Pedrajas, detailing his practice of child sexual abuse while working in Bolivian boarding schools between the 1970s and 1990s. In May, hundreds of people protested in several Bolivian cities, demanding “justice over sexual abuse allegations within the country’s Catholic Church institution.” Also in Washington DC, in September 2018, demonstrators protested outside Saint Matthew’s Cathedral, calling for cardinal Donald Wuerl to resign over his handling of allegations against his predecessor, cardinal Theodore McCarrick, as well as other abuser priests when he was the bishop of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Donald Wuerl was one of the 300 clergy members’ names mentioned in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report that exposed the systematic abuse of more than 1,000 victims over a span of seven decades. Now that protest is set to get underway at 11 o’clock this morning and similar protests like it are happening in eight cities across the country.