Sex abuse files are destroyed

A leading Roman Catholic cardinal admitted yesterday that files on priests who had sexually abused children had been destroyed as it emerged that more than 2000 ‘‘credible’’ cases had been reported to Rome since the accession of Pope Francis in 2013.

Speaking on the third day of a Vatican summit on paedophilia in the clergy, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, one of nine advisers to the Pope, expressed regret about the cover-up.

‘‘Files that could have documented the terrible deeds and named those responsible were destroyed or not even created,’’ Marx told 200 senior church officials convened by Francis. ‘‘Instead of the perpetrators, the victims were regulated and silence imposed on them.’’

Marx, head of the German bishops’ conference, called for changes to the legal code of secrecy imposed by the Vatican on sex abuse cases and for the publication of statistics about them to try to restore trust in the Catholic hierarchy.

The Vatican has been reluctant to quantify the extent of abuse, which came to light three decades ago in Ireland and Australia and has since emerged as a problem in many other countries.

Yet an Italian journalist has now found relevant figures on the Vatican’s website. They show that more than 2200 reports of abuse were received by the Vatican from March 2013, when Francis became pope, until the end of last year.

They include 518 cases in 2015, 415 in 2016 and 410 in 2017 – the majority involving alleged sex with minors – that were termed credible by local bishops, who were obliged to pass them to Rome. – The Times