LA JOLLA (CA)
National Catholic Reporter
August 10, 2018
By Peter Feuerherd and James Dearie
Richard Sipe, a psychotherapist and former Benedictine priest who warned about the sex abuse crisis enveloping the Catholic Church, died Aug. 8 in La Jolla, California. He was 85.
According to the New York Times, the cause was multiple organ failure.
Sipe’s full name was Aquinas Walter Richard Sipe (the Aquinas was added during his years as a Benedictine). He became alarmed at the sex abuse crisis after hearing stories of both abusive priests and their victims in his role as a psychotherapist.
Beginning in the 1960s, he wrote and spoke to bishops and the general public on the topic. The author of scores of articles and books on celibacy and sexuality, Sipe concluded that only about half of priests in the United States were at any one time practicing celibacy, and that about six percent sexually abused children, a number he later raised to nine percent.
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