IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph

BY IAN ELLIOTT – 17 JULY 2014

Pope Francis has recently been quoted as saying that “2%” – that is, one in 50 – of the Catholic Church’s clergy is a paedophile involved in child-abuse cases.

This information has often been requested previously, but has never been provided by the Catholic Church.

For this reason I was shocked to see a figure being quoted by Pope Francis and the question immediately arose in my mind as to how he calculated it?

Previous experiences for me have taught me to be very wary of opinion stated as fact. This frequently happens when leading churchmen express their views about clerical abuse, but present them as if they were facts.

I recall the public statement made by Cardinal Pell in Australia, when the Government there announced the setting up of a Royal Commission to examine institutional abuse in that…