The
reality of child molestation by the Roman Catholic Church has surfaced
time and time again, and yet, somehow, it continues to happen. If you
watched the movie Spotlight, perhaps you have an idea of just how things are going down. But let’s break it down to date.
While you can’t put a price
on the innocence of a child, you can put a price on just how much the
Roman Catholic Church has paid out in lawsuits over the never-ending
epidemic of child molestation wreaking havoc in its ranks.
According to Jack and Diane Ruhl of the National Catholic Reporter, who decided to research this particular topic, since 1950, the Vatican has spent a disgusting $3,994,797,060.10.
That’s nearly $4 billion to keep things hush hush. That number may even
be a bit conservative, as we cannot know for sure the agreed upon
“under the table” amount.
The figure is based on a three-month investigation of data, which includes a review of over 7,800 articles from LexisNexis Academic and NCR databases and information from BishopAccountability.org. Reports from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops were also used.
If the amount of money dished
out was divided evenly amongst the U.S.’s 197 dioceses, each one would
get almost $20 billion. An incredible amount of cash from hard working
people who support the good faith and intentions of the Church — people
who are parents to little boys being sexually abused — is being used to
cover up unfathomable crimes executed by priests.
In the early nineties, a monk who worked at the Vatican opened up to The New Yorker,
admitting: “You wouldn’t believe the amounts of money the church is
spending to settle these priestly sexual-abuse cases.” By 1992, U.S.
Catholic dioceses had given 400 million dollars to settle hundreds of
molestation cases. That was a shocking chunk of change then, and that
figure has only risen exponentially since. The men running the Vatican
are well aware of the problem, and yet they refuse to provide justice.
When Pope Francis addressed hundreds of bishops on the issue, he said:
I realize how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you, and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims — in the knowledge that in healing we too are healed — and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated.
His words of “generous
commitment” only further show just how tightly knit the Church truly is —
worried more about reputation than morality.
“The people he was talking to are the people who moved the pedophiles around to prey on kids,” said John Salveson,
a 59-year-old Philadelphia businessman who was abused as a child by a
priest. “If you gave me 100 years to pick a word to describe the U.S.
bishops’ reaction to this crisis, ‘generous’ would never make the list.”
Terry McKiernan, who
runs BishopAccountability.org, noted that Francis overlooked the fact
that many dioceses around the country haven’t disclosed the names of
abusers, and furthermore, continue to lobby against reforming statute of
limitations laws that shield priests from prosecution for crimes from
the past.
David Clohessy, executive director of
the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, was once
optimistic that Francis would push for change in how the Church handled
the scandal, but has since lost hope. “There’s nothing he could say that
would be helpful, because Catholic bishops have said it all before —
‘I’m sorry, we didn’t know, we’ll do better.’ We’ve heard that for
decades,” he said.
“This is a pope who has refused to take steps to expose one predator or
punish one enabler. . . . He could simply defrock, demote, discipline,
or even clearly denounce just one complicit bishop. He refuses, not
one.”
Spanning many hundreds of years,
children have suffered at the hands of child predators who remain safe
in the authority and integrity of an honorable faith, yet organizations,
investigators, reporters, etc. continue to raise awareness, while the
Catholic Church continues their fight to block bills that would extend
the statute of limitations for reporting sex abuse.
