A Chilean appeals court ruled on Wednesday that the Catholic Church should pay compensation to three victims in a sex abuse case involving former Santiago parish priest Fernando Karadima, a decision that could open the floodgates to similar lawsuits.
Former Vatican treasurer Cardinal George Pell was sentenced to 6 years in jail on Wednesday by an Australian court for sexually abusing two choir boys in Melbourne in the 1990s. Pell, a former top adviser to Pope Francis, is the most senior Catholic worldwide to be convicted for child sex offences.
Pope Francis on Thursday opened a landmark Vatican summit on fighting child sex abuse, calling for “concrete measures” and handing top Catholic bishops a roadmap to tackling paedophilia in the church.
The Catholic church in New York has reached a record US$ 27.5 million settlement with four men who said they were sexually abused as children, attorneys said on Tuesday. The Diocese of Brooklyn, one of the city's boroughs, agreed to make the payments to the four, who were sexually abused between 2003 and 2009 by their religion teacher, their lawyers said.
Pope Francis vowed Monday that no effort must be spared to root out priestly sex abuse and cover-up from the Catholic Church, but gave no indication that he would take action to sanction complicit bishops or end the Vatican culture of secrecy that has allowed the crisis to fester.
Pope Francis publicly expressed pain and shame on Tuesday over the rape and molestation of children by priests in Chile and later listened, prayed and cried at a private meeting with victims. Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said the meeting took place in the Vatican embassy in Santiago.
The BBC agreed to pay 185,000 pounds to a former treasurer of Britain's Conservative Party wrongly accused of child sex abuse as a result of one of its reports. The settlement came as media reports said one of the BBC's former stars had been arrested as part of an ongoing police investigation into sex crimes centred on the publicly funded broadcaster.