VATICAN CITY
Inquisitr
Are the slew of defrocked priests just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the latest Vatican sex abuse scandal?
In a related report from The Inquisitr, a recent report revealed that 400 priests had been defrocked by Pope Benedict. This comes right on top of the Vatican banking scandal.
The hits just keep on coming for the Catholic church, and the report of the defrocked priests was confirmed by Vatican reps. While it’s good that Pope Benedict put some energy towards cracking down on sex abuse within the Catholic church before he resigned from the Papacy, the documentation seemed to show an inexplicable explosion of sex abuse cases in 2011, possibly related to increased reporting from 2010.
The Vatican’s ambassador to the UN, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, was likely sweating bullets under the pointed scrutiny of the Geneva committee this week. The annual reports from the Church revealed the 384 priests had left, voluntarily or otherwise, in 2011 and 2012. The information came from the “Activity of the Holy See,” what is essentially a Vatican yearbook, showing 125 priests were defrocked for sexual abused allegations from children in 2011 and 135 were “dispensed,” meaning they voluntarily resigned. Basically,t they got off scot-free for sexual abuse of children. In 2012, 57 priests were removed and 67 resigned from the priesthood.
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