CANADA
Montreal Gazette
JANET BAGNALL
The Gazette
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Whoever succeeded Pope John Paul II was going to get stuck with the problem of pedophile priests. What first surfaced as dark hints a quarter-century ago has become a scandal that will not fade, much less go away.
The church, especially in the United States, stands accused of shifting pedophiles from one parish to the next in the vain attempt to protect its reputation - all the while ignoring its duty to defend the innocent in its care. As many as 100 of the 43,300 priests in the U.S. are alleged to have sexually abused the children and youths they came into contact with. Their victims number in the thousands. The U.S. Catholic church faces having to pay hundreds of millions in legal damages.
Canada has also been affected. In Ontario, for example, the church and the province signed a $40-million package in 1992 to compensate 1,600 men who were abused as children at two training schools. Both church and government were aware of the abuse for years but did not act to end it.
Pedophiles, with their all but incurable sexual fixation on pre-pubescent children, seek out positions that put them in contact with the objects of their desire. They show up in summer camps, schools, after-school activities, daycare centres and, it should not have come as a surprise, in the Roman Catholic Church.