Catholic Church Sexual Abuse: The Numbers From the Inquiries

Official inquiries in four countries put the share of Catholic clergy accused of abusing children, or estimated to have done so, at 2.5% to 7%, and two call their counts a minimum. France’s commission estimated 216,000 child victims of clergy and religious in 1950–2020. US dioceses had 1,070 new allegations in the year to June 2025, mostly about old abuse.

If you were abused, it was not your fault, and you can report it to the police. If a child is in danger now, call 911 in the United States or 999 in the UK; elsewhere, contact the police. In the United States you can call or text the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453, or call RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline, free and open around the clock, at 800-656-4673. In the UK, NAPAC’s free support line for people abused in childhood is 0808 801 0331. Every Catholic diocese in the United States has a victim assistance coordinator. Abuse or cover-up by a US bishop can be reported to the Catholic Bishop Abuse Reporting Service at reportbishopabuse.org or 1-800-276-1562, and you do not have to give your name.

How many priests have been accused of abuse?

Each inquiry counted something different: priests named in files, people who came forward, or victims estimated from a national survey. Most count accusations, not convictions, and two call their figures a lower limit, because some people abused as children never tell anyone and others wait decades. The table gives each inquiry’s main finding in its own terms.

How many US priests were accused, according to the John Jay report?

In 2004 the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York published a national study for the bishops’ National Review Board. Dioceses and religious orders reported allegations against 4,392 priests for the years 1950 to 2002, leaving out allegations that were withdrawn or known to be false. That was 4% of the 109,694 priests who served in those years, with a range of 3% to 6% between regions. In all, 10,667 people made allegations. (The figure is sometimes quoted as 10,667 allegations, but the report counts people.)

Of the victims named in the allegations, 81% were boys, and the largest group, about half, were aged 11 to 14. More than half of the accused priests, 56%, had one alleged victim; 149 priests with more than ten allegations each accounted for 26% of all the allegations. The police had been contacted about 1,021 of the accused priests; 384 cases led to criminal charges, 252 priests were convicted and at least 100 imprisoned.

The report also showed how slowly the truth came out. More abuse was alleged in the 1970s than in any other decade. Fewer than 13% of allegations were made in the year the abuse began, and more than a quarter were made more than 30 years later. Two-thirds of all the allegations had come in since 1993, so before then Church officials knew of only a third of the cases.

Is abuse still being reported in the US Church?

Yes. Most new reports concern abuse from decades ago, and some concern children today. The bishops publish an audit each year. In the year from 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025, 1,070 allegations were reported by 973 people in the 194 dioceses and eparchies that supplied figures, and 837 clerics were accused. About 60% of the allegations came through lawsuits, compensation programmes and bankruptcies, which let people who had never come forward seek compensation.

Twenty-four allegations involved children who were minors that year. By 30 June 2025, 4 had been substantiated, 13 were still being investigated and 7 were unsubstantiated. In the same year dioceses judged 117 allegations against their priests and deacons credible; of the 103 of those that could be dated, 38% concerned abuse that began before 1975, 60% abuse that began between 1975 and 1999, and 2% abuse since 2000. Across every year of the audits since 2004, the figures are 55%, 41% and 4%.

The same report counted 2,320,143 clergy, staff and volunteers given background checks in 2025, and 2,803,250 children who completed safe-environment training. In his preface Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the bishops’ conference, wrote to survivors: “The abuse was not your fault. No one had a right to hurt you.”

What did Pennsylvania’s grand jury find?

A statewide grand jury, convened in 2016 by Pennsylvania’s attorney general, investigated six of the state’s eight Catholic dioceses. Its report, released in 2018, identified more than 300 “predator priests” by name and also described those who concealed them. Pope Francis’s Letter to the People of God, dated 20 August 2018, opens with a report made public “in recent days” that “detailed the experiences of at least a thousand survivors” over about seventy years. He wrote: “We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them.”

What did Ireland’s Ryan and Murphy reports find?

Ireland published two state reports in 2009. The Ryan report, from the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, looked at the industrial and reformatory schools to which the courts committed children, run by Catholic religious orders and congregations such as the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy, and at other institutions. Its Confidential Committee heard from 1,090 men and women who reported being abused as children in 216 settings, among them industrial and reformatory schools, children’s homes, hospitals, ordinary schools and foster care. They reported physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect by religious and lay adults responsible for their care. More than 90% reported physical abuse, and about half reported sexual abuse.

The Murphy report looked at how the Archdiocese of Dublin and the state handled complaints against priests from 1975 to 2004. It received information about 172 named priests, found 102 within its remit and examined a sample of 46, against whom more than 320 children had complained; 11 of the 46 had pleaded guilty or been convicted. Until at least the mid-1990s, it found, the archdiocese’s concerns were “the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets.”

In March 2010 Pope Benedict XVI wrote to the Catholics of Ireland. To those who had been abused he said: “You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry.”

What did inquiries in Germany, Australia and France find?

Germany’s MHG study, published in 2018, read 38,156 personnel files for 1946 to 2014 from all 27 dioceses, which had signed contracts to take part. It found accusations of abuse against 1,670 clerics, 4.4% of those whose files they read, and 3,677 children and young people affected, 62.8% of them boys. The researchers called these figures a lower estimate.

Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard 6,875 survivors in private sessions by May 2017, and 4,029 of them spoke of abuse in religious institutions. It asked Catholic dioceses and religious institutes to count their members who ministered from 1950 to 2010: allowing for the length of each ministry, 7% of the priests in that survey were alleged perpetrators. Catholic Church authorities had received claims from 4,444 people between 1980 and 2015, and the average claim came 33 years after the abuse began. Of the alleged perpetrators in those claims, 30% were priests, 32% religious brothers, 5% religious sisters and 29% lay people.

France’s Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church, the CIASE, reported in October 2021. From a survey of 28,010 adults, it estimated that about 216,000 people (between 165,000 and 270,000) had been abused as children by priests, deacons and members of religious orders between 1950 and 2020, and 330,000 when lay people working for the Church are included. From the Church’s archives, court records and the press it estimated between 2,900 and 3,200 abusers, 2.5% to 2.8% of the roughly 115,000 clergy and religious of the period, and called that a lower limit. According to the commission, eight leaders of the Académie catholique de France circulated a critique of the report in November 2021, questioning in particular its surveys; in February 2022 the commission replied that the questions were legitimate and defended its work.

Is abuse more common in the Catholic Church than elsewhere?

Two inquiries made the comparison directly. In France, the CIASE’s survey found that most childhood sexual abuse happened within families and circles of friends: 3.7% of adults had been abused as children by a family member, 2% by a family friend and 1.8% by a friend or acquaintance. Of the roughly 5.5 million people in France abused as children, abuse by clergy and religious accounted for just under 4%. But 1.16% of adults had been abused by someone connected to the Catholic Church, 0.82% by clergy and religious, against 0.36% in holiday camps, 0.34% in state schools and 0.28% in sports clubs. Leaving aside family and friends, the commission concluded, the Church was “the environment in which the prevalence of sexual violence is by far the highest.”

In Australia, of the survivors who spoke of abuse in religious institutions, 61.8% named Catholic institutions, 14.7% Anglican ones and 7.3% the Salvation Army; the Commission heard more allegations about the Catholic Church than about any other religious body. The Commission also noted research suggesting that, compared with abusers in the wider community, “Catholic clergy perpetrators are an atypical group”: they tend to begin offending later in life and to be better educated.

Why did Church leaders fail to stop it?

The inquiries describe the failure in their own words. The Dublin commission found that the archdiocese “did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the State.” The French commission called the abuse a “systemic phenomenon”: not that the institution organised or accepted it, though that happened in a very small number of communities, but that “the Church did not have any clear idea how to prevent such violence or indeed even see it, let alone deal with it in a fair and determined manner.”

Pope Benedict XVI told Ireland’s bishops that some of them and their predecessors “failed, at times grievously, to apply the long-established norms of canon law to the crime of child abuse.” The American bishops’ Charter says that they “apologize and take responsibility again for too often failing victims and the Catholic people in the past.” Pope Francis traced the abuse to “a peculiar way of understanding the Church’s authority”, clericalism, whether fostered by priests or by lay people: “To say ‘no’ to abuse is to say an emphatic ‘no’ to all forms of clericalism.”

What does the Catholic Church teach about the abuse of children?

It treats it as both a sin and a crime. The Catechism says that when adults sexually abuse children or adolescents entrusted to their care, the offence is “compounded by the scandalous harm done to the physical and moral integrity of the young”. It adds that scandal “takes on a particular gravity by reason of the authority of those who cause it”, and it cites the warning Jesus gave about anyone who leads a little one astray: “whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6). The American bishops quote the same verse in their Charter and call it “prophetic for this moment”.

Church law makes the sexual abuse of a minor by a cleric a crime, and the Charter adopts the words of Pope John Paul II: “There is no place in the priesthood or religious life for those who would harm the young.”

What has the Church changed since 2002?

In the United States, the bishops adopted the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in June 2002, and revised it in 2005, 2011 and 2018. Under it, a priest or deacon who has committed even a single act of sexual abuse of a minor, admitted or established, is permanently removed from ministry. Each diocese must report allegations involving minors to the public authorities “with due regard for the seal of the Sacrament of Penance”, tell victims of their right to go to the police themselves, keep a review board with a lay majority, offer help through a victim assistance coordinator and not make settlements that bind victims to silence unless the victim asks for it. The bishops’ conference audits dioceses against the Charter every year. On-site audits are voluntary, but by the end of the 2025 audit year all 196 dioceses and eparchies had taken part in at least one, the first time every diocese had. In 2025 the auditors visited 61 dioceses and eparchies, in person or remotely, and found one case of non-compliance; from another 133 they only collected data.

For the whole Church, Pope Francis issued Vos estis lux mundi in May 2019 as a three-year experiment. A revised version dated 25 March 2023 replaced it from 30 April 2023, with no time limit. It requires every diocese to have an office where the public can easily make a report. It obliges clergy and members of religious orders who learn of abuse to report it promptly to “the local Ordinary”, usually the bishop of the diocese where it is said to have happened, so the duty runs to a Church authority, not to the police. It excepts what a cleric learns in the internal forum (the sphere of conscience, including confession). It forbids anyone to impose silence on a person who says they were harmed, or on witnesses, with regard to “the contents of their report”. It also covers bishops who interfere with an investigation, and it leaves in force every state law on reporting to the civil authorities.

The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors advises the Pope and helps bishops and religious orders write safeguarding guidelines. Since 2022 it has sat within the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. It published its first annual report on Church safeguarding in 2024 and its second on 16 October 2025, drawing on survivors’ testimony and on reports from local churches; a third, covering 2025, was due for publication in October 2026.

For anyone who wants to pray, there are prayers for people hurt by abuse, and a list of Christian prayer and support lines.

How much has abuse cost the Church?

In the United States, the surveys behind the John Jay report counted $472 million already paid to victims, for treatment of priests and in legal costs, and more than $500 million with an $85 million settlement that no diocese had reported. The Economist put settlements in the United States at more than $3.3 billion over the fifteen years to 2012. In the year to June 2025 alone, dioceses and eparchies paid $389,961,007 in costs related to allegations, 61% more than the year before, including $276 million in settlements; three dioceses paid more than $199 million of that. Insurance covered 14.4%. Of the 70 dioceses that said how they paid these costs, 20 named insurance pay-outs, six restructuring of debt, four the sale of property and two a bankruptcy filing. With religious orders included, the year’s allegation-related costs came to $483,534,316, against $36,853,017 spent on child protection.

Related reading

• Prayers for emotional healing
• Prayers for justice and fairness
• Facts and statistics about the Roman Catholic Church