VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Agency
By Elise Harris
Vatican City, Feb 7, 2015 / 12:47 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- One survivor of priestly sexual abuse says that despite a common perception that clerical celibacy can lead to sex abuse of minors, most perpetrators likely had issues before entering the seminary.
“People don’t enter the priesthood and become child abusers, I don’t think that’s the case. I think that they had serious issues before entering Holy Orders,” Peter Saunders told journalists in a Feb. 7 press briefing.
Although there are “far too many” clerics who have committed sexual abuse of minors, “the vast majority of priests and religious will never hurt a child. I think it’s important to acknowledge that.”
Saunders said that the term “pedophile” is overused, and that the priests who abused him, rather than having any illness, “were very lonely.”
One of the 17 members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Saunders spoke alongside the commission’s head, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, giving journalists an update on the work they’re doing during their Feb. 6-8 meeting in Rome.
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