QUEZON CITY (PHILIPPINES)
SunStar [Cebu City, Philippines]
January 28, 2025
By BishopAccountability.org
The first online database of Catholic clergy in and from the Philippines who are publicly accused of sexually abusing children will be launched Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025, in Quezon City, Metro Manila.
The Philippine database provides detailed summaries and hundreds of online sources about public allegations against around 75 priests and brothers. Most are Philippine clerics who allegedly abused children in the Philippines or the United States. The list also includes accused American priests who are working or have worked in active ministry in the Philippines.
The new resource was created by BishopAccountability.org, a respected research organization founded in 2003 and based in the US.
Our findings raise sobering questions about the Philippine hierarchy’s commitment to protecting children. We found that despite countless pledges to support victims and protect children, Philippine bishops still side with accused clergy and consistently withhold information about crimes from the public.
We will highlight five cases of active Philippine clergy who are ministering in parishes today despite serious public abuse allegations against them.
In the Philippines, most accused priests remain hidden. The 75 accused priests and brothers documented by BishopAccountability.org are a fraction of the actual number of accused Philippine clerics.
This statement will be substantiated with comparable data from countries where the Church has faced greater pressure to disclose.
Not one of the untold number of priests who have sexually assaulted children in the Philippines has been convicted. Some of these alleged perpetrators may be deceased, but many others surely are still on the job today around innocent children and unsuspecting families in parishes, schools and hospitals. Others are unsupervised, have left the priesthood and are living or working among neighbors and colleagues who have no idea of the child sex abuse allegations that have been levelled against them.
The bottom line: children are still at risk in the Philippine Catholic church.
The Philippine database is part of BishopAccountability’s long-term project to create a global database of accused Catholic clergy. The group maintains an online database of nearly 8,000 publicly accused US clergy, and has published accused priest databases for Argentina, Chile and Ireland.
The new Philippine database will be accessible from the homepage of BishopAccountability.org at the time of the news conference.