Zitat

---

Church leaders protected more than 300 "predator priests" in six Roman Catholic dioceses across Pennsylvania for decades because they were more interested in safeguarding the church and the abusers than tending to their victims, says a scathing grand jury report released Tuesday.

More than 1,000 young victims were identifiable from the church's own records, the report says.

“The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid scandal,” the report says. "Priests were raping little boys and girls and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing: They hid it all.”

The redacted report details the latest in a decades-long series of claims of abuse and protection leveled against the church across the nation and around the world. Last month, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a prominent Vatican official, amid claims of sexual abuse almost 40 years ago.

The Pennsylvania report accuses church leaders in the state of discouraging victims from reporting the abuse, which allegedly spanned more than 60 years.

“Several diocesan administrators, including the bishops, often dissuaded victims from reporting abuse to police, pressured law enforcement to terminate or avoid an investigation or conducted their own deficient, biased investigation without reporting crimes against children to the proper authorities,” the report says.

---

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018...ests/980687002/

The depths of depravity in this story cannot be measured. I didn't add it to bash Catholics but because it's topical.

"If anyone causes one of these little ones-those who believe in me-to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." (Matt 18:6)