On Sunday, January 6, 2002, the Boston Globe's Spotlight team published a 3,500-word article titled 'Church allowed abuse by priest for years.' The priest was John J. Geoghan. The diocese was Boston. The cardinal who had transferred him among parishes despite knowing of allegations since 1984 was Bernard Law. What began as a Boston story became, over the next two decades, a global accounting: Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania again, Ireland, Australia, Germany, France. The French Sauvé Commission in 2021 estimated that 330,000 children had been abused by clergy and lay members of the Catholic Church in France alone since 1950.
Religion, Cults & Spirituality
1950-2024
