BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun [Baltimore MD]
April 4, 2023
By Jonathan M. Pitts and Lee O. Sanderlin
An judge approved the release of a Maryland Attorney General Office’s report on clergy abuse within the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, and the office will release the report to the public Wednesday, a spokesperson said.
The attorney general’s office found during its four-year investigation that 158 Catholic priests and brothers sexually abused or tortured more than 600 children during an 80-year period beginning in the 1940s.
Aleithea Warmack, of the attorney general’s office, said Tuesday the report would be released on Wednesday.
On Monday night, the Most Rev. William E. Lori, the archbishop of Baltimore, told Catholics in Central and Western Maryland that he expected “the Baltimore City Circuit Court will soon authorize the Maryland Office of Attorney General to release its report into child sexual abuse by some ministers of the Church and the Archdiocese’s own past failures in responding to such allegations.”
Lori warned the archdiocese’s half-million Catholics in his emailed message that it will be “devastating to read.”
“Though the Archdiocese has made great strides over the last three decades to rid the Church of the scourge of abuse and to set the standard for how institutions should respond to allegations of child sexual abuse, the report covers a period in the Archdiocese’s past when our response to such allegations was woefully inadequate,” Lori wrote, again offering apologies and prayers for victim-survivors of child abuse.
“More than anything, in this moment, though, I want to pause to recognize and validate that the vile and horrifying abuse that is the subject of the Attorney General’s investigation represents a grave betrayal, and that it has had devastating consequences for victim-survivors,” Lori added.
The archdiocese covers Baltimore City and the counties of Allegany, Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Frederick, Garrett, Harford, Howard and Washington.