Portugal on Monday will become the latest country to issue an independent report into clerical sexual abuse, an issue that has dogged the Catholic Church for years and undermined its moral authority.

From Australia to Ireland via the United States, thousands of priests, bishops and cardinals have been caught up in abuse scandals, as well as lay members of the Church such as Catholic school teachers or youth group leaders.

United States

The moment of reckoning in the US came in 2002 when the Boston Globe newspaper published a major investigation into abuses committed by scores of Boston priests, which were covered up by their bishops. Cardinal Bernard Law was forced to resign over the revelations.

Between 1950 and 2018, the US Catholic Church received credible complaints of child sex abuse involving 7,002 members of the clergy, according to the website bishop-accountability.org.

In a first for the Church, Pope Francis…