seminaries and as recruiters for seminaries. The elevation of child molesters to these positions helps explain why so many child-molesting priests were protected by the Defendant Doe Archdiocese, how so many child molesters became priests, and how so many seminarians and priests became child molesters.”
Jeffrey Anderson, a Minnesota attorney who specialized in sexual abuse civil suits, was aware of more than three hundred civil claims against Catholic priests in forty-three states through 1991, and had handled eighty cases himself. Catholic reporter Jason Berry had tracked at least one hundred civil settlements by the Catholic Church in the years 1984–90, totaling $100 million to $300 million. Roman Catholic canon attorney Father Thomas Doyle estimated that about 3,000 Roman Catholic priests had been pedophiliac abusers of children (an average of sixteen priestly sex abusers per diocese).
Baltimore psychotherapist and former priest A. W. Richard Sipe, author of A Secret World: Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy, made a comprehensive study of the sexual conduct of priests. He reported, “Estimated chances that a Catholic priest in the United States is sexually active: one in two.” Sipe studied 1,000 priests and 500 of their “‘lovers’ or victims.” He found that “20 percent of priests were involved in sexual relationships with women, 8 to 10 percent in ‘heterosexual exploration,’ 20 percent were homosexual with half of them active, 6 percent were pedophiles, almost 4 percent of them targeted boys.”
Offices of the national monthly Freethought Today in Madison, Wisconsin, reported receiving three to four newspaper clippings per week from readers detailing a new criminal or civil court accusation against a priest or Protestant minister. It had surveyed reported cases in North America during the years of 1988 and 1989 and found 250 reported cases of criminal charges involving child-molesting priests, ministers, or ministerial staff in the United States and Canada. Of the accused clergy, seventy were Catholic priests (39.5%) and 111 were Protestant ministers (58%).
Although priests made up only about 10 percent of North American clergy, they were 40 percent of the accused. With outcome unknown in about a fifth of the cases, the study found that “88 percent of all charged clergy were convicted (81 percent of priests were convicted)…. A majority of the cases did not go to trial…. Three quarters of all clergy who pleaded innocent were found guilty. About half of the Catholic priests pleading innocent were convicted.”
The study revealed that Catholic priests were acquitted or dismissed of child molestation charges at a higher rate than Protestant ministers. Similarly, Catholic priests received a higher rate of suspended sentences when convicted, and when sentenced, spent considerably less time in jail or prison.
Angela Bonavoglia, author of the book Good Catholic Girls: How Women Are Leading the Fight to Change the Church, noted that many Catholic priests around the world—in Mexico, Latin America, Africa, and the United States—were involved in consensual relationships with women. Many other priests were involved in consensual relationships with adult men. “It is obvious that the crisis in the Church is much larger than pedophilia or the sexual abuse of minors,” she wrote. “It is about crimes and criminals, sex and power, yes. But fundamentally, it is about hypocrisy. By forbidding priests who choose to be sexual in mature ways that include commitment, responsibility and respect, and by protecting them from the costs of their sexual exploits, the Church has effectively condoned a clerical sexual free-for-all. That heterosexual and homosexual behavior may thrive in the Catholic priesthood does not reflect anything inherent about homosexuality or heterosexuality but is rather an indictment of the hypocrisy and duplicity of an elite, closed, all-male system, a secret society of sorts that condones, indeed, demands, lying about the reality of one’s sexual life at all costs.”
Asserting that Pope John XXIII’s 1962 document remained in force until May 2001, the authors of the book Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes by Thomas P. Doyle, A.W.R. Sipe, and Patrick J. Wall, presented their account of what they called the Catholic Church’s 2000-year paper trail of sexual abuse. They wrote that the letter was “significant” because it reflected the Church’s “insistence on maintaining the highest degree of secrecy.”
Forty-six years after Pope John XXIII signed De Modo Provedendi di Causis Crimine Soliciciones and pledged the Church to secrecy about sex abuse of youths by the clergy, Pope Benedict XVI in his tour of the United States and in Australia apologized privately to individuals who were abused by priests and frequently spoke publicly on the subject. To a World Youth Day audience in Sydney, Australia, he declared, “These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation. They have caused great pain and have damaged the Church’s witness. I ask all of you to support and assist your bishops, and to work together with them in combating this evil. Victims should receive compassion and care, and those responsible for these evils must be brought to justice. It is an urgent priority to promote a safer and more wholesome environment, especially for young people.”
CHAPTER 5
Murder in Holy Orders
The archives of the Vatican contain evidence that being pope has been one of history’s most dangerous jobs. Through the centuries many have been murdered or assassinated. The first was Pope John VIII. In 882, he was poisoned and then clubbed to death by scheming members of the papal court. According to Matthew Brunson’s The Pope Encyclopedia: An A to Z of the Holy See most murders of pontiffs occurred in the Middle Ages, especially in a period described by Cardinal Cesare Baronius in Annales ecclesiastici as “the Iron Age of the Papacy,” from 867 to 964, when powerful families had popes elected, deposed, and murdered to advance political ambitions, or as vengeance. Of the twenty-six popes during this era, sixteen died by violence.
The most tantalizing of the murders was that of John XII (955–964). “Just 18 years old when he was elected pontiff, John was a notorious womanizer and the papal palace came to be described as a brothel during his reign. He died of injuries after he was caught in bed by the husband of one of his mistresses. Some legends say that he died of a stroke while in the act of love.”
Theories and claims of murderous cabals blossomed following the death of Pope Clement XIV in 1771. He “was reportedly so racked with guilt over disbanding the Jesuits that he spent his last years terrified of being poisoned.” Following his death, there were so many stories about his possible murder that a postmortem was conducted. It found nothing to implicate the Jesuits.
The following is a list of murdered pontiffs and the manner in which they are thought to have been removed from The Pope Encyclopedia:
John VIII (872–882): Poisoned and clubbed to death
Adrian III, St. (884–885): Rumored poisoned
Stephen VI (896–897): Strangled
Leo V (903): Murdered
John X (914–928): Suffocated under a pillow
Stephen VII (VIII) (928–931): Possibly murdered
Stephen VIII (IX) (939–942): Mutilated and died from injuries
John XII (955–964): [Killed while caught in the act with a mistress by the woman’s outraged husband] or suffered a stroke while with a mistress or murdered by an outraged husband
Benedict VI (973–974): Strangled by a priest
John XIV (983–984): Starved to death or poisoned
Gregory V (996–999): Rumored to have been poisoned
Sergius IV (1009–1012): Possibly murdered
Clement II (1046–1047): Rumored poisoned
Damasus
