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The person in charge of the committee investigating the scandal said it found 2,900 to 3,200 pedophile pastors or other members of the church.
The head of the independent committee investigating the scandal stated a few days before the release of its report that thousands of pedophiles had been active in French Catholic churches since 1950.
Jean-Marc Soff told AFP on Sunday that the committee’s research had found 2,900 to 3,200 pedophile pastors or other members of the church, adding that this was the “lowest estimate.”
After two and a half years of research on church, court, and police files and interviews with witnesses, the committee’s report will be released on Tuesday.
Sauve said the 2,500-page report will attempt to quantify the number of offenders and the number of victims.
It will also study the “mechanisms, especially institutional and cultural mechanisms” that allow paedophiles to stay in the church, and will make 45 recommendations.
This independent committee was established by the French Catholic Church in 2018 in response to a series of scandals that shocked the churches in France and around the world.
Prior to its establishment, Pope Francis passed a landmark measure requiring those who knew about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church to report to their superiors.
The committee is composed of 22 legal professionals, doctors, historians, sociologists, and theologians. Its task is to investigate allegations of sexual abuse of children by clergymen dating back to the 1950s.
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