Study: Up to 10% of Catholic seminarians are victims of sexual harassment, abuse

COLUMBUS (OH)
The Columbus Dispatch

September 29, 2019

By Danae King

A new study reveals that 10% of Catholic seminarians in the U.S. experienced or may have been subject to sexual misconduct. The study comes on the heels of last’s year’s scandal involving disgraced ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., who was accused of abusing seminarians at a beach house.

After news emerged in 2018 that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had been accused of sexually abusing fellow students while studying to be a Catholic priest, John Cavadini came up with an idea.

“There were so many rumors about what’s going on in seminary culture and was what happened with McCarrick the norm,” said Cavadini, a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and director of its McGrath Institute for Church Life. “People were scared. I decided to try to find some objective data.”

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