Vatican Defrocked 848 Priests for Child Abuse

By Liam Moloney
Wall Street Journal
May 6, 2014

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By LIAM MOLONEY May 6, 2014ROME—The Vatican said Tuesday it has defrocked hundreds of priests and has punished thousands more for sexual abuses against children over the last decade, as it sought to demonstrate to a United Nations panel its commitment to tackling a scandal that has shaken the church.

In comments to the U.N.'s Committee Against Torture, a Vatican delegation also halted the practice of protecting clerics found to have abused children, such as by transferring them to other parishes, and has granted victims financial compensation for their crimes.

"There's no climate of impunity [within the Catholic Church], there's total commitment to clean the house, to work so not have a repetition of abuses," Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's chief envoy in Geneva, told U.N. panel members in a second day of questioning as part of the group's process to monitor the Holy See's implementation of the treaty against torture.

The archbishop for the first time provided a clear year-to-year breakdown of defrocking as a result of sexual crimes against minors. The Holy See laicized a total of 848 priests between 2004 and 2013 for sexual abuses, while 2,572 received other punishments, such as accepting a life of penance and prayers or a ban on public ministries.