An independent panel is investigating a scandal involving pedophiles inside the church. (Representative)
Paris:
The head of an independent commission probing the scandal said days before the release of its report that thousands of pedophiles had operated inside the French Catholic Church since 1950.
Jean-Marc Sauve said the commission’s research had revealed between 2,900 and 3,200 pedophile priests or other members of the church, adding that this was a “minimum estimate”.
The commission’s report is due to be released Tuesday after two and a half years of research based on church, court and police archives as well as interviews with witnesses.
The report, which Sauve said runs to 2,500 pages, will attempt to measure both the number of perpetrators and the number of victims.
It will also look at “tantras, especially institutional and cultural ones” within the church that allowed pedophiles to remain, and will offer 45 resolutions.
The independent commission was set up in 2018 by the French Catholic Church in response to several scandals that rocked the church in France and around the world.
It was formed even after Pope Francis passed a landmark measure to force those who knew of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church to report it to their superiors.
Composed of 22 legal professionals, doctors, historians, sociologists and theologians, its brief was to investigate allegations of child sexual abuse by clerics in the 1950s.
When he began his work he sought statements of witnesses and set up a telephone hotline, then reported receiving thousands of messages in the months that followed.
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