Sexual Abuse Scandals Continue to Cast a Long Shadow

In 2002 the Boston Globe published a series of articles exposing the scale of child sexual abuse in the local Catholic church.

- Harriet Sherwood

It shone a spotlight – the title of a later movie based on the investigation – on the church’s dark, shameful secrets.

Eleven years later, Francis became pope. Wave after wave of abuse revelations continued to crash at the Vatican’s doors amid mounting anger and revulsion among the faithful and beyond. The issue threatened to derail Francis’s papacy and dominate his trips abroad. He was slow to grasp the scale and systemic nature of the issue and apparently reluctant to take firm action to deal with abusers and those who covered up abuse.

Within hours of Francis’s death, survivors of clerical sexual abuse sounded a discordant note amid the lavish tributes. They said the pope failed to fundamentally change the culture of deference that allowed abusers to flourish and failed to deliver decisive action. It was the “tragedy of his papacy”, one organisation said.