VATICAN CITY
International Business Times
By Sounak Mukhopadhyay | July 14, 2014
Pope Francis said that one in every 50 clergymen is a paedophile.
The revelation came from the pontiff as he was quoted saying the around two per cent of all the clergymen in the Catholic Church are paedophiles. The claim is apparently based on reliable data. According to the pope, paedophilia is contaminating the church like “leprosy.” However, he claimed to have vowed to deal with it with “severity.” The pope’s claim also indicated that there were 8,000 paedophile priests in the world.
The pope’s statement appeared on Italian newspaper La Repubblica. He said in the interview that he would follow what Jesus did and “use the stick against the paedophile priests.” Paedophilia exists even among bishops and cardinals, he said. The pope said that the corruption of a child was the most terrible one. He also said that most of the child-victims came from the church family or from the community of old friends.
Father Federico Lombardi, one of the spokesmen from the Vatican, on the other hand, said that it was not exactly what the pope had said. The pope was interviewed by the editor of the newspaper, Eugenio Scalfari, on Thursday, July 10. It was presented more like a tête-à-tête rather than an official interview. Scalfari apparently does not have the habit of recording his interviews in digital recorders. On the other hand, Father Lombardi claimed that the pontiff had not checked how accurately the interview was presented before it got published. He also denied that Pope Francis had said that there were paedophile cardinals.
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