BREVARD COUNTY (FL)
Florida Today
October 19, 2018
By John Byron, Community columnist
You’d have to be living off the grid to not know the Catholic Church is going through tough times — of the church’s own making:
• Sexual abuse of children by priests;
• Senior clergy coercing seminarians into sexual relations;
• Sex crimes by priests routinely covered up by church officials;
• U.S. Catholic Church membership down 20 percent;
• Church membership plummeting in Catholic strongholds such as Ireland, Brazil and the rest of Latin America;
• Over 3,000 sex-abuse lawsuits filed against the Catholic Church in the United States;
• Eight Catholic dioceses gone bankrupt paying restitution to victims;
• More than 1,000 Pennsylvania children found to have been abused by hundreds of priests;
• Recent report of 3,600 sexual abuse cases involving Catholic clergy in Germany;
• State investigations of the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Florida and a new federal investigation in Pennsylvania;
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.