VATICAN CITY
Crux
By Ines San Martin
Vatican correspondent May 9, 2016
ROME — When the Catholic Church in the United States, Australia, and Ireland was hit by sexual abuse scandals during the first decade of the new millennium, many in the global south looked on with dismay, describing it as “an Anglo-Saxon obsession” and a media-driven campaign to discredit the Church.
Today, it’s far more difficult to deny the widespread scope of the problem, which affects not only the Church but society: According to the Centers for Disease Control in the U.S., approximately 1 in 6 American boys and 1 in 4 girls are sexually abused before the age of 18.
A 2014 report from the United Nations estimated that globally, 1 in 10 women are abused before they reach their 20s.
New developments in Pope Francis’ own backyard in Latin America offer additional confirmation of the global nature of the challenge, and also appear to show that in many places, media exposure leads to the Church cleaning house.
In Uruguay, a country with a population of just 3.3 million, the local church recently received 20 allegations of clerical sexual abuse of minors, something which the Archbishop of Montevideo, Cardinal Daniel Sturla, defined as a “human tragedy.”
The alleged survivors came forward after church authorities opened a phone line for people to do so.
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