MOBILE (AL)
Lagniappe Mobile
September 12, 2018
By Gabriel Tynes
As a wave of new revelations concerning sexual abuse by priests in other parts of the country has come to light, questions about the Archdiocese of Mobile’s past remain mostly in the shadows. Whether churchwide calls for openness and even confession will be heeded here remains to be seen, but there is little doubt there is newfound interest worldwide in how the Catholic Church has handled sexual abuse over the years.
It’s been 16 years since reports of child sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston peeled back the curtains on a much broader problem in the Catholic Church, exposing abusive priests and complicit senior church officials nationwide. In response, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) adopted the 2002 Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, which, among other things, recommends immediately removing any accused priest from ministry pending an investigation and reporting all allegations of abuse involving clergy to civil authorities.
Subsequent reports commissioned by the same organization determined allegations of abuse in the church have fallen since peaking in the early 1970s. Its most recent numbers implicate 6,721 church officials in allegations of abuse from 1950-2016, representing at least 18,565 victims.
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