A long-awaited grand jury report on sexual abuse by Pennsylvania’s Catholic Clergy has been released.
It is not the complete report.
Legal challenges by Priests named in the report have been successful in having it redacted. Still, these same Priests have expressed problems with how the Attorney General’s office made redactions to it.
The report covers six of the Commonwealth’s eight Catholic dioceses: Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton. Abuse in the Philadelphia and Altoona-Johnstown dioceses have been covered in previous reports.
In anticipation of the report, several of the Bishops who are presently in office as well as others, most notably Cardinal Wuerl (who once headed the Pittsburgh Diocese) made public statements in defense of the actions they took to punish abusers and assist victims.
In future posts, I shall attempt to juxtapose those statements with the actual findings of the report.
The report and contains "devastating" evidence against Church leadership.
I believe that we shall see many other State Attorneys General follow in the footsteps of Pennsylvania.
Bishops across the country should be aware that they have been put on notice that the deference once shown them has all but disappeared and can expect unprecedented investigations regarding past and present practices adopted within their dioceses to respond to allegations as well as proven cases of sexual abuse of minors.
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