WASHINGTON — Roman Catholic Church leaders said Feb. 27 that 4,392 priests have abused 10,667 minors in the past half-century, with at least $657 million paid in legal settlements and treatment costs.
The findings, by researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, show that 4 percent of the 109,694 priests who served the church between 1950 and 2002 were credibly accused of abuse.
The data shows, in stark detail, the contours of the clergy sex abuse scandal that erupted two years ago in Boston, but which has lurked in the shadows of the church’s life for decades.
“To our people, as far as it is humanly possible to know such things, I assure you that known offenders are not in the ministry,” said Bishop Wilton Gregory of Belleville, Ill., president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Gregory said in 2002, as bishops mapped out reforms to crack down on the problem, some 700 priests were pulled from their pulpits because of abuse allegations, most of them decades old.
A third of all abuse cases were reported to church officials after the scandal broke in 2002. The highest spike of cases came between 1970 and 1980, with 10 percent of priests ordained in 1970 eventually accused of abuse.
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