clerical sexual abuse

McCarrick’s legal team filed the report Feb. 27 in Massachusetts’ Dedham District Court based on a medical evaluation that found McCarrick, 92, is suffering from impaired cognition.

One of the church’s leading experts on safeguarding and clerical sexual abuse has said the exclusion of women from seminary formation has had “extremely harmful consequences,” and this “needs to change.”

The German Catholic news agency KNA said the study found that, until recently, officials had neglected to conduct adequate monitoring of clerics after they had been removed from their posts following accusations of abuse.

The Belgian bishops’ conference issued a statement June 16 announcing the decision and thanking Bishop Van Looy for making the request.

A statement from the conference said the archives of the doctrinal congregation will allow the bishops “to know and analyze, quantitatively and qualitatively, the data kept at the congregation while ensuring the appropriate confidentiality.”

Cardinal O’Malley encouraged the bishops “to undertake a constructive process of review, of reform and of reconciliation” in view of calls for a national study on clerical sexual abuse.

In a statement May 3, the Jesuit province in Chile said a complaint was received April 28 “from an adult woman against Jesuit Father Felipe Berríos for acts of sexual connotation.

Proceedings before a criminal trial involving former Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick will continue March 3 in Massachusetts, where he faces three counts of sexually assaulting a teenager in the 1970s.