Catholic Sexual Abuse Crisis Deepens As Authorities Lag In Response

A two-year grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania resulted in what the state’s attorney general, Josh Shapiro, called “the largest, most comprehensive report into child sex abuse in the Catholic Church ever produced in the United States.”

But the report, released Tuesday, was not the first. In 2002, The Boston Globe revealed that Catholic authorities in the Boston Archdiocese had engaged in a massive cover-up of sex crimes committed by area priests, and investigations in other parts of the country have since uncovered similar patterns of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy. The ongoing scandals amount to a deepening church crisis.

“Each new report of clerical abuse at any level creates doubt in the minds of many that we are effectively addressing this catastrophe in the Church,” Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, warned last month.