Catholic Abuse: Facts & Statistics

A Wounded Body: Facing the Truth of Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church

To approach the topic of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is to touch a wound. It is a wound on the Body of Christ, a source of powerful pain, anger, confusion, and betrayal for millions of the faithful around the world. For many, reading about this subject is not an academic exercise; it is a deeply personal and spiritual struggle. It forces us to ask agonizing questions: How could this happen in our Church? How could those consecrated to God commit such evil? How could our leaders, our shepherds, fail so catastrophically to protect the most vulnerable among us?.¹

These questions are not signs of weak faith. They are the cries of a heart that loves the Church and is horrified by the sins that have scarred her. This is a journey into a dark valley, one that many would rather avoid. But the path to healing, for both survivors and for the Church itself, does not go around this valley—it goes directly through it. It requires courage, honesty, and a faith strong enough to look upon the Cross and not turn away.

This report is offered in that spirit. It is not an attack an unflinching examination of the truth, presented with a pastoral heart. It seeks to provide the faithful with the facts, the context, and the understanding needed to grapple with this crisis. By confronting the darkness with the light of truth, we can begin to understand the depth of the wound, pray for the grace of purification, and work together to build a Church where every child is safe and the trust of the faithful is restored. This is our home, and we must not let evil destroy it.¹

How bad is the abuse crisis, really? A look at the numbers.

To understand the depth of this wound, we must first confront the staggering numbers. These figures are not mere statistics; each number represents a human being, a child of God whose life was shattered by a powerful betrayal of trust. The data, collected over decades through painstaking investigations, reveals a crisis of devastating scale, both within the United States and across the globe.

The Crisis in the United States

The modern reckoning with clergy abuse in the U.S. Began in earnest with the 2002 media exposure of the crisis in Boston, which led the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to commission a comprehensive study. The resulting 2004 report, known as the John Jay Report, was a landmark moment of truth. It found that between 1950 and 2002, a total of 4,392 priests had been accused of sexually abusing minors. This figure represented approximately 4% of all priests who had served during that 52-year period, with some 11,000 allegations made against them.⁴

More recent data collection has continued to paint a grim picture. A 20-year study released in 2024 by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University, which surveyed dioceses from 2004 to 2023, identified a total of 16,276 credible allegations of abuse of minors by clergy in the U.S..⁶

A crucial point to understand from this data is the difference between when the abuse occurred and when it was reported. The CARA report found that an overwhelming 92% of the credible allegations it tracked were for abuse that began in 1989 or earlier, with the peak of incidents happening in the 1960s and 1970s.⁵ But the peak of

reporting came much later, spurred by events like the 2002 Boston Globe investigation and the 2018 Pennsylvania Grand Jury report.⁷

This time lag explains a painful paradox. Although the rate of new abuse has fallen dramatically since reforms were enacted, the crisis feels intensely present and ongoing for the faithful. This is because the Church is not dealing with a long-healed scar; it is still in the process of uncovering a deep, festering wound. The “ongoing problem,” as a 2019 Pew Research survey found most Catholics perceive it, is one of truth, accountability, and healing for past sins that are still coming to light.⁸

A Global Pandemic of Abuse

The tragedy is not confined to America. As investigations have been launched in other countries, a similar, heartbreaking pattern has emerged, refuting any notion that this was an isolated problem.

• France: A 2021 independent inquiry delivered a shocking conclusion, estimating that about 216,000 children had been victims of sexual abuse by clergy between 1950 and 2020.⁹
• Germany: A 2018 study by the German Bishops’ Conference found that 1,670 clergymen had committed sexual attacks against 3,677 minors between 1946 and 2014, with researchers acknowledging this was almost an underestimate.⁹
• Australia: The country’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that 7% of all Catholic priests were alleged perpetrators between 1950 and 2010. In some dioceses, the figure was as high as 15%.⁹
• Ireland: The scale of abuse in Ireland has been described as “endemic,” particularly in Catholic-run institutions. Reports have estimated nearly 15,000 underage victims in the two decades from 1970 to 1990 alone.⁹
• United Kingdom: Between 1970 and 2015, the Church received over 900 complaints related to more than 3,000 instances of abuse. Since 2016, there have been over 100 new allegations reported each year.¹³

The Staggering Financial Cost

The financial toll of the crisis offers another concrete, albeit heartbreaking, measure of the harm done. In the United States alone, dioceses have spent more than $5 billion on costs related to abuse allegations just between 2004 and 2023. About three-quarters of that amount, or $3.⁷⁵ billion, was paid in settlements to victims.⁷

The total cost since the crisis broke open in the 1980s is estimated to have surpassed $4 billion, and that figure could double as states pass “lookback laws” that give survivors more time to file lawsuits.⁴ The settlements by individual dioceses are staggering. In 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles reached a $660 million agreement with over 500 victims; in 2024, it agreed to another settlement of $880 million to compensate 1,350 victims.⁴ These are not just abstract financial figures; they represent the Church’s resources—money that could have funded schools, hospitals, and ministries to the poor—being diverted to pay for the consequences of these terrible sins and crimes.⁷

Who were the victims and who were the abusers?

Behind the large-scale numbers are the personal stories of the children who were harmed and the clergy who betrayed them. Understanding the profiles of both victims and perpetrators helps to illuminate the dynamics of this tragedy and the specific vulnerabilities that were exploited.

Profile of the Victims

The data reveals a consistent and heartbreaking pattern in who was targeted.

The overwhelming majority of victims were boys. In the landmark U.S. John Jay Report covering 1950-2002, 81% of the victims were male.⁴ More recent data from CARA, covering allegations from 2004-2023, found a nearly identical figure of 80% male victims.⁶ This pattern holds true in other countries as well, such as Germany, where 63% of victims were male.¹⁰

The abuse was overwhelmingly directed at the young and vulnerable, with a particular focus on early adolescents. The largest single group of victims in the John Jay study was between the ages of 11 and 14, accounting for 51% of the total.⁴ Similarly, the CARA study found that 56% of victims were between 10 and 14 years old when the abuse began.⁶ A deeply disturbing number of children were even younger; about one in five victims (22% in the John Jay study, 20% in the CARA study) were 10 years old or younger.⁴

For these children, the path to telling their story was incredibly long and difficult, a testament to the deep shame, fear, and psychological manipulation involved in this type of abuse. In Australia, the Royal Commission found that it took survivors an average of 33 years to make an official complaint.¹¹ This powerful silence, lasting for decades, speaks volumes about the heavy burden carried by those who were harmed in what should have been the safest of places.

Profile of the Abusers

The men who perpetrated these crimes were primarily priests serving in local parishes. The CARA report found that 80% of alleged abusers were diocesan priests, with another 15% being priests from religious orders.⁶

While a majority of accused priests in the U.S. (55.7%) had a single allegation made against them, a major and deeply troubling minority were serial predators who went unchecked for years. Nearly 18% of accused priests had between four and nine allegations against them, and a hardened core of 3.5% had ten or more allegations.⁴ This points to a systemic failure to identify and stop repeat offenders, allowing them to destroy numerous lives across multiple assignments.

The problem was not limited to priests. The data shows that religious brothers and deacons were also perpetrators.⁶ The Australian Royal Commission uncovered shockingly high rates of alleged abuse within certain orders of religious brothers. In one order, the St John of God Brothers, an astonishing 40.4% of members were accused of perpetrating abuse.¹¹

The demographic data—overwhelmingly male perpetrators and overwhelmingly male victims—had a major and unfortunate consequence within the Church. As the scandal broke in 2002, many commentators and some Church leaders quickly framed the crisis as being “principally homosexual pederasty”.⁴ While this conclusion may have seemed logical on a superficial level, it proved to be a damaging oversimplification. It tragically shifted the focus away from the universal and fundamental sins at the heart of the crisis: the criminal abuse of power, the powerful violation of sacred trust, and the utter failure of chastity.

This misdiagnosis obscured the true nature of the problem. The core issue was not the sexual orientation of priests rather the actions of men who exploited their positions of spiritual authority to prey on the vulnerable. This framing also created a culture of fear and secrecy for the many chaste priests with same-sex attraction, who are not abusers, potentially making them even less likely to report misconduct for fear of being unjustly targeted.¹⁴ The real cancer was a culture of clericalism and secrecy that protected predators, regardless of their orientation or the gender of their victims.

Why did this happen? Understanding the roots of the crisis.

To ask “why” this crisis happened is to search for answers in a landscape of sin, systemic failure, and cultural brokenness. The evil actions of individual men are at the heart of every case of abuse the crisis grew to such catastrophic proportions because the institutional culture of the Church provided fertile ground for this evil to grow, fester, and hide.

The Culture of Clericalism

Pope Francis, along with many theologians and observers, has identified a toxic culture of “clericalism” as a primary root of the crisis.¹⁵ Clericalism is not the same as having proper respect for the priesthood. It is a distorted mindset in which clergy come to see themselves as a privileged caste, separate from and superior to the laity, and therefore exempt from the normal standards of behavior and accountability that apply to everyone else.¹⁷

This culture creates a dangerous power imbalance. It fosters an environment of secrecy and a misguided desire to protect the reputation of the institution at all costs.¹⁵ In a clericalist culture, an accusation against a priest is not seen as a call to protect a child as an attack on the Church itself, to be defended against and silenced.¹⁹ This turns the Church inward, protecting its own, rather than outward in service and protection of the flock.

Failures in Priestly Formation

For many decades, the way priests were formed in seminaries was deeply flawed and contributed to the crisis. Many programs failed to adequately screen candidates for psychological and emotional maturity, and did not properly prepare them for a life of healthy, integrated celibacy.²⁰

Some seminaries became isolated, unhealthy environments that fostered either a culture of sexual license or one of severe repression, rather than teaching men how to integrate their sexuality into a chaste and holy life.¹⁴ The separation of seminarians from the daily life of lay people, especially women, could lead to a distorted understanding of relationships, boundaries, and power.¹⁴ Compounding this was a warped understanding of obedience, in which a priest was taught to surrender his will and judgment entirely to his superior. This made it nearly impossible for good men to challenge corrupt authority from within the system.²³

The Perversion of Sacred Authority

The crisis represents a tragic and satanic paradox of Catholic theology. The very doctrines that are meant to express the sacredness of the priesthood were twisted by this culture of clericalism into a shield for horrific, anti-Christian behavior. Catholic teaching holds the priesthood in the highest esteem, seeing the priest as acting in persona Christi, in the very person of Christ.²³ This is a powerful and beautiful spiritual reality.

But when this sacred idea is corrupted by sin and a clericalist culture, it becomes a weapon. The priest is no longer seen as just a man, accountable for his actions as an untouchable symbol of God, beyond reproach.¹⁹ This created a “mystique” around the priesthood that made it incredibly difficult for victims to understand what was happening to them, or for their parents and other adults to believe that “Father” could do such a thing.²⁴ The abuser was not just a man; he was a spiritual father, a representative of God. This exploitation of sacred trust is precisely what makes the crisis so deeply faith-shattering for believers. The path to healing, therefore, requires not a rejection of the theology of the priesthood a radical purification of it—a stripping away of the arrogant corruption of clericalism to rediscover the true meaning of the priesthood as humble, sacrificial service.

How could Church leaders let this happen? The story of the cover-up.

The sexual abuse of children was the first and most terrible scandal. But the second scandal, the one that shook the faith of millions and destroyed the Church’s credibility, was the systematic, decades-long cover-up by bishops and other religious superiors. This was a betrayal of trust on a monumental scale, a conscious choice by shepherds to protect the institution rather than their flock.

A Pattern of Deception and Secrecy

The single greatest aggravating factor in the crisis was the deliberate action of bishops to keep these crimes secret.⁴ Instead of removing abusers from ministry and reporting them to the police leaders “obsessively” worked to conceal the abuse, prioritizing the reputation of the Church over the safety of children.⁹

The primary method of this cover-up was sickeningly simple: they would quietly move a “predator priest” from one parish to another, often with no warning to the new community that they were receiving a dangerous man.¹² This practice, repeated thousands of time across the globe, guaranteed that abusers would have a fresh supply of unsuspecting victims.

Grand jury reports, most famously the 2018 report from Pennsylvania, exposed this systematic cover-up in horrifying detail. The Pennsylvania report documented over 300 “predator priests” and a clear conspiracy of silence among Church leaders that allowed the abuse to continue for decades.⁴

Institutional Resistance to Truth

This culture of concealment was deeply ingrained. For years, allegations of abuse were almost never investigated by the Church in any meaningful way.⁹ When outside authorities tried to intervene, they often met resistance. In Ireland, the Vatican itself was accused of actively obstructing investigations into abuse by priests.⁹ The Holy See’s lack of cooperation with a major independent inquiry in the United Kingdom was also cited as a major failure of leadership that was at odds with Pope Francis’s own calls for action.¹³

This pattern of behavior was not just a series of poor decisions by a few bad leaders. It was the logical and tragic outcome of a deeply flawed institutional culture. Within this culture, the “Church” was wrongly identified with its clerical hierarchy and its public image, rather than with the People of God, especially its most vulnerable members. An abused child, therefore, was not seen as a soul to be protected as a problem to be managed—a threat to the institution’s reputation and stability. An abusive priest, on the other hand, was often seen as an asset to be protected, a cleric whose public disgrace would bring scandal upon the Church.¹⁵

This reveals a powerful spiritual sickness, a failure of faith at the highest levels of leadership. Instead of trusting that God could sustain His Church through the humiliation of public repentance and purification, these leaders trusted in human means: secrecy, legal maneuvering, and the shuffling of personnel. In doing so, they only compounded the original sin, deepened the wound, and delayed the inevitable, painful reckoning that the Church is still undergoing today.

What is the Catholic Church’s official stance on sexual abuse?

In the midst of so much sin and failure, it is essential for the faithful to hold fast to a critical distinction: the difference between the sinful actions of the Church’s members and the pure, unchanging teaching of the Church herself. The scandal is not that the Church taught the wrong thing that so many of its leaders failed to live and enforce what they knew to be true.

Unwavering Condemnation in Teaching

The teaching of the Catholic Church is, and always has been, absolutely and unequivocally opposed to the abuse of any person. At its very core, the Christian faith is founded on Jesus’s new commandment to love one another, with a special care for the poor, the weak, and the vulnerable.²⁶

Jesus himself gave the most severe and terrifying warning imaginable to those who would harm children. He said, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).²⁶ This verse has been cited repeatedly by bishops and popes in their response to the crisis, acknowledging the gravity of the sin in the eyes of God.

In modern times, popes have consistently condemned this evil. Pope St. John Paul II called the sexual abuse of young people “an appalling sin in the eyes of God” and a crime in the eyes of society.² Pope Benedict XVI spoke of his “shame” and called for perpetrators to be brought to justice.²⁵ Pope Francis has repeatedly called for a “zero-tolerance” policy and has enacted new laws to hold leaders accountable.⁹

The Painful Contradiction

The heart of the scandal, and the source of so much pain for believers, lies in this stark and terrible contradiction. The actions of abusive priests and the bishops who covered for them stand in violent opposition to the clear teachings of Jesus Christ and His Church.²⁵

This is not a complex theological debate where doctrines were misunderstood. It is a moral and spiritual catastrophe in which a clear moral law—protect the children—was flagrantly violated and ignored by the very men entrusted to be its guardians. This devastating failure is what has led to a powerful crisis of credibility. If the Church’s leaders could not be trusted to follow the most fundamental moral teachings on protecting the innocent, many of the faithful began to ask, how can they be trusted on other matters of faith and morals? This question goes to the very heart of the disillusionment and loss of trust felt by so many Catholics around the world.¹

What has the Church done to stop the abuse and protect children now?

For any parent, parishioner, or person of faith, a critical question is: “Is it safe now?” In the wake of the horrific revelations, the under immense public and legal pressure, has implemented major and wide-ranging reforms aimed at preventing abuse and protecting children. Although the process has been slow and imperfect, the policies in place today are vastly different from the culture of secrecy that allowed the crisis to fester for so long.

The “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People”

The watershed moment for reform in the United States came in 2002, when the U.S. Bishops gathered in Dallas and created the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, often called the “Dallas Charter.” This document established, for the first time, a nationwide “zero tolerance” policy for clergy abuse.²

The Charter is a comprehensive set of procedures that mandates action in several key areas 29:

• Creating Safe Environments: Requiring training and background checks for those working with minors.
• Healing and Reconciliation: Providing outreach and support for victims and survivors.
• Prompt Response: Establishing clear procedures for how to respond to an allegation of abuse.
• Cooperation with Civil Authorities: Mandating that all allegations be reported to law enforcement.
• Disciplining Offenders: Ensuring that any cleric with a credible allegation of abuse is permanently removed from ministry.
• Accountability: Creating structures like diocesan review boards (with lay involvement), victim assistance coordinators, and annual audits to ensure compliance.

Vos Estis Lux Mundi (“You Are the Light of the World”)

Although the Dallas Charter addressed the actions of priests, a major gap remained: holding bishops accountable for covering up abuse. In 2019, Pope Francis addressed this directly by issuing a new, universal Church law called Vos Estis Lux Mundi (“You Are the Light of the World”).⁹

This law established new global norms and procedures for combating abuse and, crucially, for ensuring that bishops and religious superiors are held accountable for their actions or inaction.³⁰ It mandates that every diocese in the world must establish a “public, stable and easily accessible” system for anyone to report allegations of abuse or cover-up by a bishop.³¹ It also places a legal obligation under Church law for all priests and religious to report any information they have about abuse or its concealment by their superiors.³⁰

Practical Safeguards in Your Parish

These high-level policies have translated into concrete changes that affect every parish and Catholic school. The Church in the U.S. Has spent nearly $728 million on these prevention efforts over the last two decades.⁶ These safeguards include:

• Mandatory Background Checks: All clergy, religious, employees, and volunteers who have any regular contact with children must undergo a thorough criminal background check.³³
• Safe Environment Training: Adults are required to complete training programs, such as the VIRTUS “Protecting God’s Children” course, which teaches them to recognize the warning signs of abuse, understand healthy boundaries, and know the procedures for reporting any concerns.³⁵ In 2024 alone, over 2.² million adults and 2.⁸ million children in the U.S. Received some form of this training.³⁷
• Codes of Conduct and Policies: Parishes now have strict rules, such as requiring two adults to be present with minors, policies for bathroom use, and guidelines for transportation and technology use.³³

Although these reforms are major and data shows they have contributed to a dramatic decrease in the number of new cases of abuse, their effectiveness is still a subject of intense debate and skepticism.⁶ Experts rightly caution that a drop in recent allegations does not mean abuse has been eliminated, only that it may not be reported for many years.⁶ reports from countries like the United Kingdom have shown that the implementation of reforms can be slow and meet with resistance from a lingering culture of defensiveness.¹³ The continued calls from survivor advocacy groups for even greater transparency and a universal “one strike” policy show that many feel the current measures, while a step forward, are not yet sufficient to truly transform the culture that allowed the crisis to happen.³⁹ Policy change is a crucial first step it is not the same as the deep and lasting culture change the Church so desperately needs.

What has this crisis cost the Church?

The cost of the clergy abuse crisis is immense and can be measured in two ways: the staggering financial price and the even more devastating moral and spiritual price. Both have profoundly damaged the Church and its ability to carry out its mission in the world.

The Financial Cost: Billions of Dollars and Bankruptcies

As detailed earlier, the financial cost of settling abuse claims and paying for legal fees is astronomical, running into the billions of dollars globally.⁴ In the U.S., dioceses have spent over $5 billion since 2004 on costs related to allegations.⁷ A crucial detail is that only 16% of these costs, on average, were covered by insurance companies.⁷ This means the vast majority of the funds had to come from other diocesan sources.

This financial drain has had a direct and crippling impact on the Church’s work. Dozens of U.S. Dioceses and religious orders have been forced to declare bankruptcy to manage the flood of lawsuits, including the Archdioceses of Portland and Santa Fe and the Dioceses of Camden and San Diego.⁴ Bankruptcy often involves selling off Church property—churches, schools, and administrative buildings—to create funds to compensate survivors.²⁴ This is money that was given by the faithful over generations to build up the Church and serve the community, now being used to pay for the sins of abusers and the failures of their leaders.

The Moral Cost: A Shattered Trust

As devastating as the financial cost has been, the moral and spiritual cost is far greater and harder to repair. The crisis has caused “enormous pain, anger, and confusion” for the entire Catholic community.² It has shattered the sacred trust that the faithful placed in their shepherds and has severely damaged the Church’s moral credibility in the public square.

A 2019 Pew Research survey quantified this loss of trust. In response to the scandal, about one in four U.S. Catholics reported that they have scaled back their Mass attendance (27%) and reduced the amount of money they donate to their parishes (26%).⁸ For many, the betrayal was too much to bear, leading them to leave the Church altogether, feeling that the institution they loved was irredeemably corrupt.¹

The financial and moral costs are deeply intertwined, creating a painful dilemma for those who remain. The act of paying billions in settlements, while a necessary act of justice, creates a new moral problem for parishioners. When the collection basket is passed, faithful Catholics are now forced to wonder if their donations, meant to support their local community, pay the parish staff, and fund charitable works, might instead be used to pay the legal bills for the sins of the past. This reasonable fear, voiced by many Catholics, strikes at the heart of stewardship and creates a painful rift between the laity and a hierarchy they no longer fully trust.¹

How does this compare to abuse in other churches or in society?

When grappling with the scale of the Catholic crisis, a common and understandable question arises: Is this problem unique to the Catholic or is it just as bad in other institutions? The answer is complex, and while context is important, comparisons must be handled with great care to avoid making excuses for the Church’s specific and catastrophic failures.

Public Perception and Available Data

The American public is divided on this question. A Pew Research survey found that 48% of U.S. Adults believe sexual abuse is more common among Catholic clergy, while a nearly identical 47% believe it is equally common among leaders of other religions.⁸ Catholics themselves are more likely to see the problem as not being unique to their faith, with 61% stating it is just as common elsewhere.⁸

The statistical data is mixed and can be used to support different arguments. Some research suggests that the percentage of Catholic priests who have abused is not proportionally higher than the rate of abuse among the general male population or even among clergy of other Christian denominations.²⁵ A 2002 report from a Christian ministry resource group even stated that most American churches being accused of child sexual abuse at that time were Protestant.²⁵

But other comprehensive, government-led investigations have painted a different picture. In Australia, the Royal Commission found that of all people who reported being abused in a religious institution, more than two-thirds said it occurred in a Catholic one.¹¹ A major study in France found that after the family, the Catholic Church was the next most common setting for child sexual abuse.¹¹

The Unique Nature of the Catholic Crisis

Regardless of the comparative rates, it is undeniable that the crisis in the Catholic Church is uniquely conspicuous and has had a unique impact. This is due to several factors: the sheer global scale of the institution, the centralized hierarchy that enabled a coordinated and worldwide pattern of cover-up, and the powerful violation of the particularly sacred trust that Catholics place in their priests as spiritual fathers and mediators of God’s grace.⁴ As a result, public awareness of the Catholic scandal is far higher than that of any other institution.⁸

For a person of faith, the statistical “what-about-ism” debate can become a distraction from the core spiritual tragedy. The problem is not whether the Church was statistically worse than the world that it failed so completely to be better. The Church is called by Christ to be a “light of the world” and a “city on a hill” (Matthew 5:14), a beacon of holiness and a sanctuary from the world’s brokenness. The source of the deepest pain for believers is that in this instance, the institution meant to mediate God’s grace was instead used to perpetrate and conceal the most powerful evil. The betrayal is not that priests were sinners like other men that the Church failed to be the holy institution it is called to be. The proper pastoral response, therefore, is not to say, “we are no worse than anyone else,” but to say, “we were called to be holy, and we failed. That is our sin, and that is what we must repent for.”

What is the path to healing for survivors and the Church?

After confronting the darkness of the abuse and the cover-up, the path forward must be one of healing, justice, and hope. This journey requires a radical shift in the Church’s posture—from one of defensiveness and self-preservation to one of humble listening, accompaniment, and reparation. This healing must begin by centering the voices and experiences of those who were harmed.

Listening to the Voices of Survivors

For decades, the voices of survivors were silenced, ignored, and disbelieved. The first step on the path to healing is to finally listen. This means creating safe spaces for survivors to tell their stories and having those stories received with compassion and belief. The personal testimonies of survivors, like those of Mike Hoffman, who found a way to remain in the and Peter Gahlinger, who fought to hold the institution accountable, reveal that the journey of healing is long, arduous, and unique to each person.⁴³

Survivor-led advocacy groups like SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) and ECA (Ending Clergy Abuse) have played a prophetic role in this process. For years, they have been a voice for the voiceless, demanding accountability, pushing for reforms, and providing a network of support for survivors when the institutional Church failed to do so.⁴⁰

Restorative Justice: Repairing the Harm

Healing requires more than just apologies and financial settlements. A growing movement within the Church is exploring the principles of restorative justice as a path toward deeper healing. Unlike a purely punitive system that asks, “What law was broken and what is the punishment?”, restorative justice asks a different set of questions: “Who was harmed, what are their needs, and whose obligation is it to repair the harm?”.⁴⁸

This approach, which is deeply aligned with Catholic social teaching on human dignity and reconciliation, seeks to bring together those who have been affected by the harm—survivors, their families, community members, and even offenders who are willing to take accountability—to find a path toward repairing the broken relationships and healing the wounds.⁵⁰

Innovative and Creative Healing Ministries

Across the country, dioceses and lay groups are finding new and creative ways to minister to the unique and powerful wounds of abuse survivors. These ministries recognize that for many survivors, traditional parish life can be a source of trauma, and new approaches are needed.

• Healing Gardens: In the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, an abuse survivor helped create the first of several planned outdoor “Gardens of Healing.” These are quiet, beautiful, sacred spaces where survivors and their families can come for prayer, reflection, and remembrance, knowing that their pain is acknowledged.⁵³
• Therapeutic Arts and Creativity: Some ministries have recognized that trauma can be so deep that words are not enough to express it. They use therapeutic arts—painting, writing, music—to help survivors process their pain and find a voice for their experience, co-creating a new masterpiece of their lives with God’s grace.⁵⁴
• Specialized Pastoral Care: Recognizing that many survivors feel a deep hunger for the Eucharist but find it too painful to step inside a church building, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis created a unique ministry where trained Eucharistic ministers, some of whom are survivors themselves, bring Holy Communion to the homes of other survivors.⁵³
• Trauma-Informed Support: In the Diocese of Kalamazoo, a professional trauma counselor and a priest developed the Trauma Recovery Program, which uses clinically-proven therapeutic models within a faith context to help groups of people heal from all forms of trauma, including clergy abuse.⁵⁵

These innovative ministries point to a powerful theological truth. For the Church to truly heal, it must undergo a conversion. It must stop acting like a defensive corporation and learn to act like its founder, Jesus Christ. It must be willing to enter into the suffering of the abused and see the face of the crucified Lord in their wounds. Theologian David Tombs has even done groundbreaking work exploring the crucifixion of Jesus itself as a form of public, state-sanctioned sexual abuse, arguing that the Church cannot reckon with its own history of sexual violence until it first acknowledges the sexual violence inflicted upon Christ on the cross.⁵⁶ This is the painful, humbling path of redemptive suffering—the path the institutional Church avoided for so long which is the only true way to healing and resurrection.

How can I stay faithful when the Church is so broken?

This is perhaps the most painful and personal question of all, one that countless Catholics have wrestled with in the dark night of this scandal.¹ When the sins of the Church’s leaders are so grievous and the betrayal so deep, how is it possible to remain faithful? There are no easy answers there is a path of hope, grounded in a faith that is deeper than any institution and stronger than any human failure.

Acknowledge the Struggle and the Anger

It is vital to know that you are not alone in your struggle. Your feelings of anger, hurt, and betrayal are valid. They are the natural response of a heart that loves God and His Church. This crisis is a call from the Holy Spirit to reject false and sentimental notions of the Church and to embrace a more mature faith—one that can hold in tension the powerful holiness of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ and the powerful sinfulness of its human members.¹⁵

The Church is More Than Its Leaders’ Sins

It is crucial to remember that the Church is not just the hierarchy. The Church is the entire People of God, the community of saints and sinners, stretching back 2,000 years. Jesus’s promise to be with His Church until the end of time was not a promise that its leaders would always be perfect. It was a promise of His enduring presence, even and especially in the midst of our human weakness and sin. As many theological reflections on the crisis have noted, the Church has always been a field where the wheat and the tares grow together until the harvest.⁵⁷ Our task is not to abandon the field because of the weeds to tend the wheat.

Many who have chosen to stay do so with the conviction that the Church is their home, their family. And when evil threatens your home, you do not abandon it; you plant your feet, you stay, and you fight to purify it from within.¹

A Call to Action and Reform

This crisis is a powerful call for the laity to embrace their own baptismal calling to be priests, prophets, and kings. It is a call to action. Staying faithful in this time does not mean staying silent. It means becoming an agent of change and reform.

This can take many forms. It means insisting that your own parish and diocese are rigorously following all safe environment protocols.³⁵ It means supporting survivor advocacy groups and healing ministries. It means praying and offering penance for the purification of the Church. It means raising your voice to demand transparency and accountability from your bishop. It means supporting and encouraging the thousands of good and holy priests who are also wounded by this crisis and are striving to live their vocations with integrity. Lay-led reform movements like Voice of the Faithful have been a critical part of this effort, providing a platform for the laity to actively participate in the governance and guidance of the Church.⁵⁹

Hope in the Resurrection

The Church today is living through a “Calvary time of desolation and pain”.³ The Body of Christ is wounded, scourged by the sins of its own. It is easy to despair. But we are a people of the Resurrection. Our faith is founded on the unshakeable belief that God can bring the greatest good out of the most terrible evil. The cross is not the end of the story.

The powerful pain of this crisis can be the very thing that leads to the deep conversion and reformation the Church so desperately needs.³ It is an agonizing purification one that can burn away the dross of clericalism, arrogance, and secrecy, leaving behind a humbler, holier, and more Christ-like Church. This is our prayer and our hope. The path forward is one of honesty, penance, and a courageous commitment to building a Church where the sacred trust is never again broken, and where every child is safe in the arms of their Mother, the Church.