Clergy Abuse Latin America
Over the past few years, several countries in Europe have launched new inquiries into the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests.
Most recently, following the release of new data by the El Pais newspaper, Spain’s parliament approved the creation of an investigative commission led by the country’s ombudsperson, marking an unprecedented move in a Catholic-majority country that had remained largely silent on the issue for years. In France, a national inquiry found last year that an estimated 330,000 children have been sexually abused in Catholic institutions since 1950. Germany held multiple inquiries on the subject in recent years, while Poland, Portugal and the United Kingdom have investigations continuing. In Italy, too, abuse survivors are asking their government to launch a national inquiry, echoing a call made by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2019.