Portugal presented this Monday an investigation into sexual assaults against minors in the Catholic Church, a scourge that has also affected the institution in countries such as the United States, Chile or Australia, among many others.

The Catholic clergy of Portugal sexually abused at least 4,815 minors since 1950according to the report presented by a commission of inquiry.

Most of the crimes reported have already been statute-barred, but 25 charges have been forwarded to the judicial authority, which has opened the investigation.

The new revelations refresh the memory of the great scandals that have shaken the Catholic Church in various countries. Here, a review.

United States of America

Between 1950 and 2018, the Catholic Church in the United States received complaints from more than 20,000 minors who claimed they were victims of abuse by some 7,000 clergy, according to bishop-accountability.org, which compiles the cases.

In 2002, the newspaper Boston globe revealed that Boston’s Catholic hierarchy, including Archbishop Bernard Law, covered up the sexual assaults committed by nearly 90 priests over decades.

In 2019, Pope Francis expelled Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from the Church over allegations that he sexually assaulted teenagers in the 1970s.

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More than 200 Church members in Chile have been investigated for 150 cases of sexual assault. More than 240 victims have been identified, 123 of them minors.

The most publicized scandal was the one involving the priest Fernando Karadima for his assaults on minors between the 80s and 90s in a wealthy parish in the capital Santiago.

During a controversial visit to Chile in 2018, Pope Francis was accused of failing to act, supporting a bishop accused of covering up crimes attributed to Karadima. The pontiff intoned a mea culpa and in Rome accepted the resignation of seven Chilean bishops.

Germany

A 2017 survey found that at least 547 minors from a Catholic choir in Regensburg were abused between 1945 and the early 1990s.

In 2018, a study by academics concluded this 3,677 minors were victimized in Germany of sexual assault between 1946 and 2014.

Pope Benedict XVI, who died in December, was questioned when he was already emeritus in 2022 for his handling of pedophilia in Germany when he was archbishop of Munich.

According to a report from this diocese, between 1945 and 2019 at least 497 people, mostly children and adolescents, were victims of attacks.

France, Ireland and Poland

An independent commission presented in October 2021 an investigation into sexual violence within the French Catholic Church and estimated that 330,000 minors have been victims of priests, religious and people close to Catholic institutions since 1950. These figures are estimates.

In Ireland, the first allegations surfaced in the 1980s.

Beginning in 2008, the Church began a series of internal investigations on reports of sexual violence committed since 1975 by at least 85 priests.

Since 2018, the Catholic Church in Poland has received hundreds of complaints of sexual assaults against minors attributed to clergy.

In 2019, he admitted that nearly 400 priests sexually abused children over three decades.

After a series of scandals, between 2013 and 2017, a government commission investigated the Catholic Church and other institutions hosting minors.

The report concludes that 7% of Catholic clerics received allegations of assaults against minors between 1950 and 2010, without this implying a fact-finding.

Source: AFP