Italy’s bishops cite more abuse victims in past two years

ROME: Italian Catholic Church dioceses documented 69 cases of alleged abuse of minors or vulnerable adults in the past two years, most within the parish setting, the Bishops Conference said on Wednesday.

In a 98-page report -- designed to track progress in tackling clerical sex abuse within dioceses -- it said the 69 cases over 2023 and 2024 involved 118 alleged victims, nearly a third of whom were between 10 to 14 years old.

In 2022, the survey documented 54 potential victims in 32 cases of abuse.

Eleven of the cases identified in Wednesday´s report involved sexual relations, with 19 involving sexual molestation and 25 cases of touching.

Out of 67 alleged perpetrators, 44 were clerics, 15 were defined as other religious people and the rest were lay people working in the parish.

They had an average age of 50 and all bar two were men.

Confronting a tide of revelations around the world about paedophile priests and cover-ups by senior clergy, the late Pope Francis vowed an “all-out battle” against paedophilia within the Church in 2019.

But critics say not enough is being done, and in Italy, lament the absence of a national inquiry.

The Italian Bishops Conference said the rise in potential victims and perpetrators “can be interpreted as the emergence of facts and situations that were hidden in the past”. “But it must still be noted as a wound that is still present in the ecclesial and social life of the Christian community,” it said.

Last year, only 373 people sought information, counsel or other services at one of the Italian dioceses´ 103 “listening centres” to support victims.

Those centres are mainly run by lay women, many of whom are psychologists or educators.

The centres reported only 14 cases in which they were aware of an abuse case being reported to secular judicial authorities.

The Vatican does not require bishops to automatically refer abuse cases to police.

For internal Church investigations, respondents said 16 cases were subject to a preliminary investigation and 11 cases resulted in penalties or other restrictions.

Six cases were forwarded to the Vatican´s powerful Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, whose duties include disciplinary matters involving sexual abuse cases. One case resulted in a conviction and in five others the process was pending, the report found.