VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA News) [Hong Kong]
May 21, 2026
By Astrid Lobo Gajiwala
The toxic reality of survivors having to plead their cases before the same celibate men who make, interpret and enforce Church law creates a system of silence and complicity
On March 4, 2026, while the world was still reeling from the final disclosures of the Epstein files, another shocking document was released in the US – the Rhode Island Attorney General’s 284-page report.
This Report was a state-directed exposure of what had once been a closely guarded religious secret.
It aligned with the Epstein disclosure process, as the investigation spanned six years, beginning in 2019. It exposed 75 years of diocesan records dating back to 1950, which the Church claimed were ancient history.
The revelations in this Report make it clear that while the media often treats the Epstein Files as an unprecedented explosion of “elite” secrets, the Catholic Church has already ‘been there, done that.’
The parallels are striking, both in what was hidden and in how the information was eventually forced into the open.
In many ways, the “Epstein Files” of 2024–2026 are the secular counterpart to the Secret Archives and Legal Reports that have rocked the Church for decades.
The most direct precedent for the Epstein Files is not just the crimes themselves, which are the obvious eye-catcher, but also the meticulous documentation of these crimes, their concealment from the public eye, and the massive cover-up.
Systemic record-keeping
The Epstein documents released between 2024 and 2026 totaled more than 3 million pages, including 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. They included flight logs, “little black books,” emails, and depositions that exposed a machinery of power in which the elite weren’t just guests but, in some cases, active participants or strategic enablers.
This documentation was withheld from law enforcement and served as private records of a network that operated in the shadows.
Similarly, the Clerical files include the “Secret Archive” (archivum secretum), which every diocese is required to keep under Canon 489 of the Code of Canon Law. These files contain “documents of criminal cases in matters of morals” (Canon 489/2) that are to be “protected most securely” (Canon 489). Only the local bishop holds the key to it (Canon 490).
Protection of the elite
In both series of sexual abuse, a specialized form of silence was used to protect a brand or a hierarchy.
In 2008, Epstein received a highly controversial legal shield, in which powerful connections enabled a secret deal granting blanket immunity not only to him but also to his potential co-conspirators. As a result, this criminal network remained unnamed and unprosecuted for over a decade.
In the Catholic Church, this shielding was achieved through different, but functionally identical, mechanisms:
a] Global Settlements: When a diocese settles with a group of victims, the agreements often include “release of liability” clauses. These clauses don’t just protect the specific abuser; they often release the diocese, the bishop, and all involved parties from future claims.
b] Pontifical Secret: Until Pope Francis abolished its application to abuse cases on Dec. 17, 2019, the Pontifical Secret (Secretum Pontificium) was a confidentiality rule that often prevented victims from learning the outcome of their cases and kept secular authorities from accessing files.
When secular grand juries issued subpoenas for documents, the Church frequently invoked the Pontifical Secret as a legal basis for refusing to produce them, arguing that the documents were part of a “sovereign” and “sacred” process that civil courts had no right to access.
The Rhode Island Attorney General’s Report was only possible because of Pope Francis’s abolition of the Pontifical Secret. Without that, the Attorney General would likely have encountered a wall of “religious immunity.”
The Pontifical Secret was not merely a privacy policy; it was a binding oath. Anyone working within the Roman Curia or involved in a canonical trial was bound by this oath (Canon 1455).
Priests who violated this oath could face “privation from office” (Canon 1457), which entailed the stripping of all the rights, powers, and duties associated with their role (e.g., as a Judge, Notary, or Promoter of Justice). This loss of office was usually permanent because it signified the loss of the moral and legal standing required to handle such sensitive matters.
While this oath protected the victims’ privacy, it also shielded the abusers, because priests and bishops involved in the investigation could not report incriminating information to the police without betraying their oath to God.
This institutional silence — in which bishops prioritized avoiding scandal over the safety of children and vulnerable adults, and at times explicitly instructed people to keep quiet or counseled women to remain silent ‘for their own good’ — was similar to the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) and legal non-prosecution deals by Epstein’s high-profile figures to bury accusations.
Unlike the seal of confession, which remains absolute and inviolable, the Pontifical Secret was an administrative rule. By abolishing it for abuse cases, the Church finally made it clear that these crimes are not private religious matters but are subject to the same transparency as any other crime.
c] Manipulation of the Law: Another loophole the Church has exploited is the weak laws in some countries. The Church’s cover-ups have been so meticulous that survivors who were abused as children were too old to file charges when their abuse was uncovered.
In Pennsylvania, for instance, they had to be under 30 to file civil suits and under 50 to file criminal charges. That left little opportunity for justice for many of the victims, who were in their 60s and 70s when they testified before the Pennsylvania Grand Jury. The oldest victim was 83.
The Clerical Files
The Rhode Island Report identified 75 clergy (priests and deacons) who allegedly abused more than 300 victims over seven decades.
It detailed a recurrent pattern of shuffling accused priests between parishes to avoid scandal. Nearly 40 priests were transferred at least five times each, with some moved more than ten times.
The report also criticized the diocese’s reliance on “spiritual retreat-style facilities” and treatment centers in the 1950s and 1960s, where abuse was treated as a mental or spiritual lapse rather than a crime.
It brought to light the secret deals made by the Church that mirrored the deal brokered by Epstein’s lawyers in 2008, which was kept secret from his victims in direct violation of US law.
In both cases, the institution (the Church or the State) treated the victim as a litigation risk rather than as a person with rights. They used secrecy as a weapon to ensure that once the victim realized what had happened, the shield of the law was already firmly in place to protect the predator.
Another landmark document is the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report (2018) from a two-year investigation that detailed decades of alleged misconduct and cover-ups in six of the state’s eight Catholic dioceses.
Consisting of 1,400 pages and delivered in biting language, it described some of the alleged abuse in disturbing detail. This report set the precedent for the unsealing of the Epstein files. It served as a blueprint for how a government can use its subpoena power to bypass institutional laws and force internal secrets into the public record.
The 2018 Pennsylvania Report identified 301 predator priests and more than 1,000 child victims, though the Grand Jury noted the real number was likely in the thousands, but could not be ascertained because the abuse was so widespread and the cover-ups so thorough.
The report’s most famous finding was the “Secret Archive,” which was also mentioned in the 2026 Rhode Island Report. It proved that bishops kept a locked vault of “pedigree” files that documented every accusation, psychological evaluations, warnings that abusers would strike again, the logistics of moving them to new parishes, civil settlements, the costs of treating abusive priests, and every cent paid in “silence money” — while simultaneously telling the public and police that no such records existed.
The report described a pattern of abuse that has never before been seen “on this scale.” It’s condemnation of the architects of the system that fostered this abuse was strong: “Despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church have largely escaped public accountability. Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades, monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops and cardinals have mostly been protected; many, including some named in this report, have been promoted. Until that changes, we think it is too early to close the book on the Catholic Church sex scandal.”
What became clear was that the pattern of abuse, denial, and cover-up that these files revealed indicated that the system wasn’t failing; on the contrary, it was being managed extremely efficiently.
The manual for concealment
The Pennsylvania report exposed a statewide manual for institutional concealment, similar to the sophisticated, recurring strategy elite networks like Epstein’s use to avoid detection.
Rape and sodomy were recorded in files as “inappropriate contact,” “horseplay,” or “boundary issues.” Abuser priests were transferred to new parishes without notifying the new communities, often with favorable recommendation letters.
Victims were forced to sign confidentiality agreements as a condition of receiving help with counseling or medical bills. Care was taken to protect the “brotherhood.”
In the Epstein parallel, sexual trafficking was often referred to as “massages” or “recruiting” in logs and emails. Epstein, the recruiter, moved between New York, Florida, and Paris, often bringing the same “associates” to facilitate operations.
His 2008 deal and subsequent civil settlements used non-disclosure agreements to prevent victims from speaking to the FBI. His elite clientele was protected at all costs.
Another strategy common to both the Epstein and clerical files was the targeting of vulnerable individuals. Clerical files show the targeting of devout Catholic families who were less likely to believe victims within their own families when a venerated priest was accused. In the Epstein files, the targets were underage girls who were socioeconomically vulnerable and voiceless before their powerful abusers.
The Rhode Island report marks the piercing of the final, most insular “private law” systems in the Island state, America’s most Catholic state (40 percent). It offers the first close look at the financial and psychological machinery of the cover-up and marks the moment when the “sacred” became “secular” in the eyes of the law.
It signaled that no amount of religious prestige or historical influence could sustain a private legal system when children are the cost of that secrecy.
Patriarchy: The devaluation of the ‘other’
The widespread crisis of sexual abuse and its institutional cover-up cannot be reduced to a collection of “bad apples.” It is fundamentally enabled by a patriarchal system that entitles men to power without accountability.
While Epstein’s associates were shielded by wealth and influence that bred obsequious fear, the men in the Clerical Files are protected by a “Holy Privilege” that demands reverence.
Both systems teach men that authority is their birthright and that the vulnerable can be exploited with impunity.
In these gender-discriminatory systems, women are often seen as deficient humans. In her book Trash: Encounters with Ghislaine Maxwell, Christina Oxenberg recounts Maxwell’s response when asked about the girls she recruited for Epstein’s “massages”: “They’re nothing; they’re trash.”
In the Church, the devaluation of women is subtler. The ban on women’s ordination, while presented as a theological issue, in reality reinforces women’s subordinate status, suggesting that women are created in the image of a ‘lesser God’.
By maintaining that women are incapable of representing Christ at the Eucharistic table, the Church devalues them as human persons, rendering them permanently subordinate to priests and structurally vulnerable to abuse.
Cultic priesthood: Autocratic patriarchy
In the Church, patriarchal power, coupled with the cult of priesthood, grants priests a unique ‘holy privilege.’ By virtue of their office, priests are often treated as sharing in Christ’s absolute authority.
This power of governance is often framed as a divine mandate rather than as a service delegated by the community. In this theocratic framework, the priest stands in God’s place, creating a permanent, untouchable hierarchy.
Thus, the priest is not only set apart but also set above the people of God to rule, teach, and admonish without transparency. This relationship is codified in the title “Father,” which is frequently weaponized as a form of autocratic patriarchy.
In this patriarchal hierarchy, bishops and priests often act as though they are above civil law. The global history of cover-ups, in which secular courts have been forced to use search warrants to seize incriminating documents from Secret Archives, provides stark evidence of this perceived sovereignty.
This theology also creates a brotherhood of religious elites and results in a closed loop in which priests answer only to other priests, similar to the Epstein case, in which the billionaire class believed it was accountable only to its peers, never to the “common” legal system.
In the Church, survivors must plead their cases to the same celibate men who make the law, adjudicate it, and execute it. This ‘locker room’ element ensures that high-ranking officials identify more with the ‘brother’ perpetrator — whose life they fear will be ruined — than with the victim, whose lifelong and life-threatening trauma is dismissed as “manageable.”
This toxic theology also creates a network of silence and complicity. Bishops protect one another and the abuser priest because their own status is tied to his standing. If bishops and priests fall, the ‘body’ loses its divine prestige; thus, the system chooses to sacrifice the abuse victim to save the institution.
It also fosters a toxic clericalist culture that underpins implied immunity. Grounded in the erroneous belief that clerics possess inherent rights to power and privilege by virtue of their ordained status, this culture gives rise to an elitist sense of entitlement that creates a vacuum of accountability and places the institution’s prestige above the well-being of the faithful. This provides a “sacred shield” that mirrors the secular “elite immunity” seen in the Epstein files.
Ontological change: The “Persona Christi” shield
A crucial pillar of clericalism is the magisterial teaching that ordination brings about an “ontological change,” thereby endowing the ordained with the power to act in the person of Christ (persona Christi). The priest is ‘configured to Christ,’ so basically becomes God. He not only acts and speaks for God, but as God.
This creates a psychological barrier for the faithful, making it nearly impossible for them to believe a priest is capable of sexual crimes. It is the reason children and women are frequently not believed when they report the abuse.
For the victim, the “persona Christi” creates a shattering spiritual gaslighting effect: reporting a crime feels like betraying God. Predator priests commonly manipulate religious beliefs, sacred texts, or spiritual authority to make a victim doubt their own reality, sanity, and relationship with the Divine.
A victim is told that their suffering is a “test from God” or a “cross to bear.” By framing a crime as a spiritual challenge, the abuser reframes the victim’s natural desire for justice as a “lack of faith” or “spiritual pride.”
As noted in the 2026 Rhode Island Report, predators often used spiritual language during the abuse itself, claiming the act was ‘sacred’ or ‘ordained.’ This severely distorts the victim’s moral compass, making them feel that reporting the crime is an act of sacrilege.
Worse, the institution often flips the script, making the victim the ‘sinner’ for reacting to the abuse. If a survivor expresses anger, they are told they are ‘unforgiving’ or ‘bitter.’ Within a clericalist structure, ‘forgiveness’ is often co-opted to enforce “silence.”
In both the Epstein and Clerical files, the ‘system’ participates in the gaslighting to protect itself. Just as Epstein’s lawyers portrayed victims as “gold-diggers” or “unstable,” Church officials often label complaining parents or victims as “troublemakers” or “emotionally disturbed.”
While standard gaslighting makes you question what you saw, spiritual gaslighting makes you question who you are in God’s eyes. This can be devastating and can even lead to a loss of faith, replacing the image of a loving God with that of a predator.
Grievance redressal: Initiatives of Pope Francis
Redressal of sexual abuse has many components, but begins with empathetic, non-judgmental listening to the victim, belief in her story, and acknowledging the crime.
In the Church, some positive steps were taken by Pope Francis, who expressed “shame and sorrow” at the sexual abuse in the Church and publicly apologized on a number of occasions in different parts of the world.
He defrocked Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a former archbishop of Washington DC, following allegations of sexual abuse, including one involving an 11-year-old boy.
In May 2018, all 34 active Chilean bishops offered their resignations to Pope Francis following a Vatican summit. He accepted the resignations of 9 of them after admitting he had made “grave mistakes” in defending Bishop Juan Barros, who had been accused of being an accomplice of that country’s most notorious pedophile priest, Fernando Karadima. Subsequently, two more Chilean bishops were laicized.
In February 2019, following a Vatican meeting on the Protection of Minors in the Church, Pope Francis issued the apostolic letter Vos estis lux mundi, establishing new procedural norms to combat sexual abuse and ensure the accountability of religious authorities.
Prior to this, there was no clear, written path for victims of abuse to report a bishop. In March 2023, he released an updated version of this letter, making these norms permanent. Now, every diocese must have a “public, stable, and easily accessible” system for reporting abuse.
As mentioned earlier, Pope Francis also decreed that pontifical secrecy does not apply to abuse-related accusations, trials, and decisions, thereby facilitating coordination with civil law enforcement and opening lines of communication with victims.
Roadblocks
Despite these efforts, advocates for survivors of abuse claim that little has changed.
Critics of the updated norms have objected to the absence of a mandatory police notification requirement in cases of abuse. Furthermore, there is no obligation to inform the public, including complainants and their families, of the canonical proceedings or their outcomes, making it difficult to assess the law’s effectiveness.
Andrew Small OMI, Secretary Emeritus of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, admitted in 2023, that more than two-thirds of bishops’ conferences do not have the resources to implement the process in any meaningful way.
After Pope Francis’s death, Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA) issued a statement declaring that “Under [Francis’s] leadership, the church failed to hold bishops accountable for their roles in enabling, concealing, and perpetuating abuse. Systemic change remained elusive.”
It pointed out that Francis’ “refusal to remove or discipline those complicit in cover-ups betrayed the Church’s moral obligation to protect the vulnerable.”
Shaun Dougherty, president of the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said: “The bishops of the world … collectively possess knowledge of thousands of abusive priests still serving in parishes and schools. A true zero-tolerance policy would mean removing these offenders immediately and holding bishops accountable for keeping them in ministry.”
Is the Church willing to take such stringent measures?
The end of holy privilege
Honestly examining the “Clerical Files” in all their depravity is part of the radical transparency urgently needed to restore trust in the Church. Instead of hiding our scars, it is time for us to courageously expose the systems that created them.
Toxic theology and statutes in the Code of Canon Law that promote and perpetuate the ‘holy privilege,’ which leads to a dysfunctional Church, must be recognized, condemned, and eliminated.
By dismantling the structures of clericalism and patriarchal entitlement, we are doing more than seeking historical justice; we are creating a society where no one—regardless of wealth, connections, or sacred status—is beyond the reach of the law.
For this to happen, however, survivor testimony must be made central to the discourse and treated not as a threat to the institution but as the only foundation for rebuilding a truly just, compassionate, and safe Church.