Report: over 300 ‘predator priests’

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania officials released a landmark grand jury report Tuesday that identifies more than 300 “predator priests” who molested children in six dioceses.

The grand jury investigation identified more than 1,000 child victims, but said it believes the “real number” of abused children might be “in the thousands” since some records were lost and victims were afraid to come forward.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said the probe found a systematic cover-up by senior church officials in Pennsylvania and at the Vatican. The report emerged from one of the nation’s most exhaustive investigations of clergy sexual abuse.

The investigation echoes the findings of many earlier church investigations around the country in its description of widespread sexual abuse by clergy and church officials’ concealment of it.

The grand jury scrutinized abuse allegations in dioceses that minister to more than half the state’s 3.2 million Catholics.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the former longtime bishop of Pittsburgh who now leads the Washington archdiocese, said ahead of the report’s release that he expected to be criticized in it.

Wuerl wrote to priests late Monday that he acted diligently to protect children while bishop of Pittsburgh for 18 years through 2006.

Wuerl is already dealing with allegations that a predecessor, disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, allegedly sexually abused boys and adult seminarians. He said last month that archdiocesan records showed no complaints about McCarrick.