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Vatican statement on abuse statistics


Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ

Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ

The Holy See press office director, Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, made the following declaration on Wednesday afternoon: "Ecclesial authorities do not consider it within their competency to make general affirmations of a specifically psychological or medical character and therefore naturally must refer to the study of specialists and the inquiries they carry out."

"Concerning the competency of ecclesial authorities, in the area of the causes of abuse of minors on the part of priests, which the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith has faced in recent years, the statistical data related by Msgr Charles J Scicluna states that according to the data, 10% of abuse cases can be classified as pedophilia in the strict sense. 90% of cases are better defined as ephebophilia (ie attraction towards adolescents). Of these, approximately 60% are reported as same-sex attraction and 30% of a heterosexual nature. Obviously this data refers to the problem of abuse by priests and not to statistics regarding the general population"

Source: VIS

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