Hungarian President Katalin Novák has pardoned several convicted far-right terrorists on the occasion of Pope Francis’ trip to Budapest.

“The week of the Pope’s visit offers a special opportunity for the head of state to make use of her right of amnesty,” the presidential chancellery announced in Budapest on Thursday evening.

The amnesty affected the right-wing terrorist György Budahazy, whom an appeals court in Budapest sentenced to six years’ imprisonment in March this year, and nine other members of his far-right Hunnia group. Between 2007 and 2009, the gang carried out numerous arson and explosive attacks targeting the houses of left-wing and liberal politicians, planned an assassination attempt, and beat up and seriously injured a television producer.

The trials dragged on for more than ten years. Budahazy is considered an iconic figure of the far right, but also enjoys sympathy among supporters of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party, of which Novák is also a member. After the amnesty decree, he was able to leave the Vac prison north of Budapest early on Friday.

Budahazy had a horse brought to him and rode away shouting “Freedom!” Hungarian media reported. In addition, Budahazy told the tabloid Blikk that he would attend Pope Francis’ mass in Budapest on Sunday to offer a prayer of thanksgiving for him.

The head of the Catholic Church began a three-day visit to the Hungarian capital on Friday. The highlight will be a mass celebrated by Francis on Sunday morning in the square in front of the parliament.

Pope Francis landed in Kazakhstan on Tuesday to attend an international religious gathering, as part of his three-day visit to the central Asian country.

In the Kazakh capital Nur-Sultan, which was called Astana until 2019, the so-called Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions is taking place for the seventh time.

Francis is the first pope to attend the international meeting organized by the Kazakh government. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev deemed his presence an honour.

Until now, John Paul II had been the only pope to visit post-independence Kazakhstan, in 2001.

For the 85-year-old pope, who suffers from knee problems and spends most of his time in a wheelchair, it is his third trip abroad in 2022, following trips to Malta and Canada.

The pope described his trip as a “pilgrimage of dialogue and peace” as he addressed the faithful on Sunday.

The head of the Catholic Church landed in Nur-Sultan and was received by President Tokayev. Following the airport welcome, Francis attended a reception with the president and diplomats.

Upon his arrival, Francis stressed that his trip is in solidarity with all those seeking peace in the world. Calling himself a “pilgrim of peace,” Francis said he wishes to amplify the cries of those who advocate for peace around the world.

He addressed the war in Ukraine while at the reception, calling the Russian invasion tragic and senseless. Speaking of such conflicts threatening the globe, the pope said the world must find harmony.

Once again, the pope reaffirmed that Russia is responsible for the war in Ukraine. Francis was previously criticized for not doing so when the Russian invasion began.

The pope traditionally sends greetings to the capitals of the countries he flies over, however his outbound flight from Rome to Nur-Sultan avoided Russian airspace, sparing him a Telegram message to President Vladimir Putin.

The Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions starts on Wednesday. Around 100 delegations from 50 countries are due to attend the two-day meeting.

On the first day of the congress, Wednesday, a joint prayer and bilateral meetings are on the agenda. Francis also plans to celebrate a Mass. On Thursday, a final statement by the religious leaders is to be read, then his return flight is scheduled.

A meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, which the Vatican had hoped for, will not take place. The Russian religious leader, who has always defended the war launched by President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, recently bowed out from travelling to Nur-Sultan.

Kazakhstan, with a population of 19 million, is home to a small community of about 125,000 Catholics. Some 70% of Kazakhs are Muslim while 26% are Orthodox Christians. Pope Francis has praised the coexistence of the different religious groups there.

Pope Francis has called on Iraq’s Christians to forgive the injustices committed against them by Islamic extremists.

The call came as he visited the wrecked shells of churches and met ecstatic crowds in the community’s historic heartland, which was nearly erased by the so-called Islamic State group’s horrific reign.

At each stop in northern Iraq the remnants of its Christian population turned out, jubilant and decked out in colourful dress, though heavy security prevented Francis from plunging into the crowd as he would normally do.

Nonetheless, they seemed simply overjoyed that they had not been forgotten. It was a sign of the desperation for support among an ancient community uncertain whether it can hold on.

Traditionally Christian towns dotting the Nineveh Plains of the north were emptied as Christians – as well as many Muslims – fled the Islamic State group’s onslaught in 2014. Only a few have returned to their homes since the defeat of IS in Iraq, which was declared four years ago, and the rest remain scattered elsewhere in Iraq or abroad.

Bells rang out in the town of Qaraqosh as the Pope arrived. Speaking to a packed Church of the Immaculate Conception, Francis said “forgiveness” is a key word for Christians.

“The road to a full recovery may still be long, but I ask you, please, not to grow discouraged. What is needed is the ability to forgive, but also the courage not to give up.”

The Qaraqosh church has been extensively renovated after being vandalised by IS militants during their takeover of the town, making it a symbol of recovery efforts.

For the Vatican, the continued presence of Christians in Iraq is vital to keeping alive faith communities that have existed there since the time of Christ. The population has dwindled from around 1.5 million before the 2003 US-led invasion that plunged the country into chaos to just a few hundred thousand today.

Francis’s visit to Iraq aimed to encourage them to stay and help rebuild the country and restore what he called its “intricately designed carpet” of faith and ethnic groups.

In striking images earlier on Sunday, Francis, dressed in white, took to a red carpet stage in a square in the north’s main city, Mosul, surrounded by the grey hollowed-out shells of four churches, nearly destroyed in the war to oust the Islamic State group from the city.

It was a scene that would have been unimaginable years earlier. Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, was at the heart of the IS so-called “caliphate” and witnessed the worst of the group’s rule inflicted on Muslims, Christians and others, including beheadings and mass killings.

“How cruel it is that this country, the cradle of civilisation, should have been afflicted by so barbarous a blow,” Francis said, “with ancient places of worship destroyed and many thousands of people – Muslims, Christians, Yazidis – who were cruelly annihilated by terrorism – and others forcibly displaced or killed.”

He deviated from his prepared speech to address the plight of Iraq’s Yazidi minority, which was subjected to mass killings, abductions and sexual slavery at the hands of IS.

“Today, however, we reaffirm our conviction that fraternity is more durable than fratricide, that hope is more powerful than hatred, that peace more powerful than war,” he said.

The square where he spoke is home to four different churches – Syriac Catholic, Armenian-Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox and Chaldean – each left in ruins.

IS inflicted atrocities against all communities, including Muslims, during its three-year rule across much of northern and western Iraq. But the Christian minority was hit especially hard.

The militants forced them to choose among conversion, death or the payment of a special tax for non-Muslims. Thousands fled, leaving behind homes and churches that were destroyed or commandeered by the extremists.

Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, became IS’s bureaucratic and financial backbone. It was from Mosul’s al-Nuri mosque that then-IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made his only public appearance when he gave a Friday sermon calling on all Muslims to follow him as “caliph”.

It took a ferocious nine-month battle to finally free the city in July 2017, during which between 9,000 and 11,000 civilians were killed, according to an AP investigation at the time. Al-Baghdadi was killed in a US raid in Syria in 2019.

The war left a swath of destruction across Mosul and the north, and many Iraqis have been left on their own to rebuild amid a long financial crisis.

The Rev Raed Kallo was among the few Christians who returned to Mosul after IS was defeated.

“My Muslim brothers received me after the liberation of the city with great hospitality and love,” he said on stage before the pontiff.

Before IS, he had a parish of 500 Christian families. Most emigrated abroad, and now only 70 families remain, he said. “But today I live among two million Muslims who call me their Father Raed,” he said.

Gutayba Aagha, the Muslim head of the Independent Social and Cultural Council for the Families of Mosul, encouraged other Christians to return.

“In the name of the council I invite all our Christian brothers to return to this, their city, their properties and their businesses,” he said.

Throughout his four-day visit, Francis has delivered a message of inter-religious tolerance and fraternity to Muslim leaders, including in an historic meeting on Saturday with Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

At Qaraqosh, Francis urged its residents to continue to dream, and forgive.

“Forgiveness is necessary to remain in love, to remain Christian,” he said.

Public health experts had expressed concerns ahead of the trip that large gatherings could serve as super-spreader events for coronavirus in a country suffering from a worsening outbreak where few have been vaccinated.

Later, thousands of people filled a sports stadium in the northern city of Irbil for Francis’ final event in his visit to Iraq: an open-air mass featuring a statue of the Virgin Mary that was restored after Islamic militants chopped of the head and hands.

The statue was transported from the church in Keramlis, a Christian village on the Nineveh Plains, to a place of honour on the altar for Sunday’s mass.

Keramlis, an ancient Assyrian town less than 18 miles from Mosul, fell to IS in August 2014, two months after the extremists took Mosul and its surrounding areas, sending most inhabitants fleeing. In Keramlis, they destroyed the interior of St Adday church and decapitated the statue of the Madonna.

Read more: Pope says it is wrong to identify Islam with violence

Pope Francis apologised to the faithful for not being able to greet them and shake their hands as Italy posted a record spike in coronavirus infections that is threatening to once again spiral out of control.

Instead of wading into the crowd to embrace the sick and kiss babies during his weekly general audience on Wednesday, Francis walked in through a back door directly onto the stage to begin his catechism lesson.

At 83 and with part of a lung removed when he was in his 20s due to illness, the pope would be at high-risk for Covid-19 complications.

And yet he has been reluctant to wear a face mask and appeared without one again on Wednesday, even though many of his entourage and all of the Swiss Guards were using them.

He told the crowd on Wednesday: “I would like to come down as usual and get close to you to greet you, but with new prescriptions, we would better keep our distances.”

Francis often seems out of breath and speaks in a whisper because of his lung condition, suggesting that wearing a mask might be particularly uncomfortable for him.

This week, four Swiss Guards tested positive for Covid-19 and were in isolation.

All told there have been 19 cases in the Vatican, and the tiny city state amended its mask mandate last week to conform to that of Italy to require them indoors and out.

Italy is seeing a sharp resurgence in Covid-19 cases, with the Lazio region around the Vatican among the worst-hit in this new wave of the pandemic, with more people in the hospital than any other region.

On Wednesday, the country as a whole recorded its single biggest single-day jump in infections since the start of the outbreak, adding another 7,332 cases.

Public health officials are warning that hospitals are starting to fill up and Italy’s contact-tracing system is starting to crumble under the weight of the new infections.

“No health system is able to do contact tracing for more than a few thousand infections,” said virologist Andrea Crisanti, who as a regional adviser was credited with helping to keep Veneto’s infections down during the peak of Italy’s outbreak with aggressive testing and tracing.

Speaking to RAI TG24 on Wednesday, Dr Crisanti said the spike threatened to create a “vicious circle” of too many infections to trace, allowing the virus to spread uncontrolled.

He suggested that a Christmastime lockdown would help stop the chain of transmission and give enough breathing room to “reset” the contact tracing system.

Read more: Terrorists look for different targets as Coronavirus cuts crowds, says MI5 chief

Pope Francis starts a trip on Sunday to Bulgaria and North Macedonia where he will have to tread carefully because of sensitive relations with the dominant Eastern Orthodox Church in the two Balkan countries where Catholics are a tiny minority.

Bulgaria, a country of 7.1 million people, is home to just 58,000 Catholics, while North Macedonia, with a population of 2 million, has just 15,000 Catholics, less than some single neighbourhood parishes in Rome.

One purpose of the three-day trip is to improve relations with the Orthodox churches as part of the Vatican’s push for eventual unity between the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity that split in 1054.

But that task is delicate because Orthodox churches in both countries are caught up in their own internal conflicts, which have spilled over into official relations with Catholics.

Bulgarian Orthodox leaders have ordered clergy not to take part in prayers or services with the pope, saying its laws do not permit it. But the pope will meet Orthodox Patriarch Neophyte and visit an Orthodox cathedral in Sofia.

“Receiving the pope but not praying with him is a contradiction in terms,” said Tamara Grdzelidze, professor of Ecumenical Theology and visiting fellow at St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto. She suggested that the choice was due to internal disputes among Bulgarians.

A statement from the Bulgarian Orthodox Church last month explaining its position emphasised that the invitation for the pope’s visit was made by state authorities, suggesting it had been given only a secondary role in the planning.

DIFFICULT DIALOGUE

Bulgaria’s Orthodox community is one of the most hardline in relations with the Catholic Church.

It is the only Orthodox community that has boycotted the most recent meetings of the official Orthodox-Catholic dialogue and also boycotted the 2016 Pan-Orthodox Council, citing differences on preparatory texts.

The Orthodox world considers North Macedonia’s Church to be in a state of schism since it declared itself autocephalous, or independent, from the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Apparently in an effort not to upset other Orthodox Churches, the pope will not be meeting privately with North Macedonian Orthodox Primate Stephen.

It will be only the second visit by a pope to Bulgaria – Pope John Paul visited in 2002.

It is the first by a pope to North Macedonia and comes just three months after its name was changed from Macedonia, ending a decades-old dispute with Greece and opening the way for the ex-Yugoslav republic to join the European Union and NATO.

“It’s a big political gesture on the part of the pope towards countries that have struggled to open themselves up both religiously and politically after the fall of communism and the Socialist bloc,” Grdzelidze told Reuters.

“It could also be an encouragement for the local Catholic churches, despite their size, to be more active in contributing to public life and introducing Western values while not being in contrast to the Orthodox,” said Grdzelidze, a former Georgian ambassador to the Vatican.

Francis is most eagerly awaited in Rakovski, Bulgaria’s largest predominantly Roman Catholic town.

“It is a great joy, a great spiritual experience, a feast of faith for the whole community here in Rakovski as well as for the whole country,” said Sister Elka Staneva, a nun who has been preparing local children to receive their first communion from the pope.

He will spend Tuesday in the North Macedonian capital of Skopje, where the late Mother Teresa was born Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu to Albanian parents in 1910 when it was still part of the Ottoman Empire.

Known as the “saint of the gutters” for her work among the poor in India, she died in 1997 and was officially made a saint by Pope Francis in 2016. He is due to visit her memorial and meet poor people helped by the order of nuns founded by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Pope Francis told the tiny Catholic community in predominantly Muslim Morocco on Sunday that their mission was not to covert their neighbours but to live in brotherhood with other faiths.

Francis has used his two-day trip to stress inter-faith dialogue. He has also backed Moroccan King Mohammed VI’s efforts to spread a form of Islam that promotes inter-religious dialogue and rejects violence in God’s name.

Morocco’s 23,000 Roman Catholics – most of them French and other European expatriates and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa – make up less than one percent of the population of 35 million.

“Christians are a small minority in this country. Yet, to my mind, this is not a problem, even though I realise that at times it can be difficult for some of you,” he said at a meeting with Catholic community leaders in Rabat’s cathedral.

Conservative Catholics have criticised the pope’s opposition to organised or aggressive recruiting of potential converts.

“The Church grows not through proselytism but by attraction,” Francis said to applause.

“This means, dear friends, that our mission as baptised persons, priests and consecrated men and women, is not really determined by the number or size of spaces that we occupy, but rather by our capacity to generate change and to awaken wonder and compassion,” he said.

Moroccan authorities do not recognise Moroccan converts to Christianity, many of whom worship secretly in homes. Conversion from Islam to Christianity is banned, as it is in many Muslim countries, and proselytising is punishable by up to three years in prison.

“The problem is not when we are few in number, but when we are insignificant,” Francis said, adding that Catholics were called to be an integral part of inter-religious dialogue in a world “torn apart by the policies of extremism and division”.

At a Mass for about 10,000 catholics in a sports arena before he was due to return to Rome, the Pope also stressed the need for inter-religious dialogue, saying people should resist “classifying ourselves according to different moral, social, ethnic or religious criteria”.

On Saturday, Francis and King Mohammed VI visited an institute the monarch founded to train imams and male and female preachers of Islam.

Morocco promotes itself as an oasis of religious tolerance in a region torn by militancy. It has offered training to Muslim preachers from Africa and Europe on what it describes as moderate Islam.

At Saturday’s event, Francis praised the king for providing “sound training to combat all forms of extremism, which so often lead to violence and terrorism, and which, in any event, constitute an offence against religion and against God himself”.

Also on Saturday, Jewish leaders joined Christian representatives in the front row at two events presided over by the pope and the monarch on interfaith dialogue.

Francis’ appeal for inter-religious dialogue was made more poignant on Sunday by the presence in Rabat cathedral of Father Jean-Pierre Schumacher, a 95-year-old French monk who survived what is known as the Tibhirine massacre in Algeria.

In March 1996, seven French monks were kidnapped in a monastery in the central Algerian village of Tibhirine during the civil war between the government and Islamist rebel groups.

The monks were held for about two months and found dead, except Schumacher, who managed to escape.

Pope Francis on Sunday (October 7) asked faithful to pray to St. Michael the Archangel, “to repel the attacks of the devil who wants to divide the Church” during his weekly Angelus at the Vatican.

The leader of the 1.2 billion Catholics ordered a “thorough study” of all documents in Holy See offices concerning disgraced former U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Vatican said on Saturday (October 6) in its first response to accusations that have shaken the Catholic Church.

In a statement, the Vatican appeared to be committing itself to examine the paper trail on the McCarrick case, quoting from speech Francis made in 2015 in which he said “We will follow the path of truth wherever it may lead”.

Pope Francis appealed to Sicily’s Mafia on Saturday to abandon a life of crime and violence, saying the island needed “men and women of love, not men and women ‘of honour,'” using the term mobsters apply to themselves.

Francis, in the Sicilian capital, said organised crime members – many of whom go to church and worship openly – “cannot believe in God and be Mafiosi” at the same time. In his appeal, he referred to them as “dear brothers and sisters”.

He visited Palermo to commemorate Father Giuseppe “Pino” Puglisi, a priest shot dead by Mafia hit men in 1993 because he challenged the organisation’s control over one of the city’s toughest neighbourhoods.

Puglisi was killed on his 56th birthday during a bloody Mafia offensive against the state and anyone else who threatened the group’s existence. Magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were killed in twin bomb attacks in Palermo in 1992.

“A person who is a Mafioso does not live as a Christian because with his life he blasphemes against the name of God,” Francis said in the sermon of a Mass from some 80,000 people in the port area of the Sicilian capital.

The crowd interrupted his sermon with applause each time he denounced the Mafia.

The Catholic Church in southern Italy has had a chequered history of relations with the mob. Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini, who was archbishop of Palermo from 1945-1967, denied the Mafia’s existence, considering communism the Church’s biggest threat.

“I say to Mafiosi: Change, brothers and sisters! Stop thinking about yourselves and your money … Convert yourselves to the real God, Jesus Christ, dear brothers and sisters,” he said in his dockside sermon.

“I say to you, Mafiosi, if you don’t do this, your very life will be lost and that will be your greatest defeat,” he said.

“Today, we need men and women of love, not men and women of honour; men and women of service, not of oppression.”

Later, on his way to the airport, Francis made an unscheduled stop to pray and lay flowers at the spot on the highway where Falcone, his wife and three police agents were blown up as their motorcade passed on May 23, 1992.

LIKE A RELIGIOUS CULT

Many members of organised crime groups in Italy, such as Sicily’s Cosa Nostra and Calabria’s Ndrangheta, see themselves as part of a religious, cult-like group, invoking the help of saints for their activities.

Particularly in smaller towns and cities in the south, they take part in Catholic sacraments and in some cases have also found complicity by some churchmen.

Puglisi refused to play along. With little support by the Church hierarchy in Sicily, he preached against the Mafia from the pulpit of his church in the rough Brancaccio neighbourhood, then controlled by the Graviano family.

He helped young people in an area with high unemployment avoid the snare of the Mafia, asked parishioners to help police investigations, refused donations from mobsters and banned them from joining traditional religious street processions.

Puglisi’s murder was ordered by local bosses Filippo and Giuseppe Graviano. The bothers and four men who planned or carried out the killing were convicted in 1998. All but one received life sentences.

One of the killers, who later turned state’s evidence, said that as Puglisi was dying he said: “I’ve been expecting you”.

In 2012, former Pope Benedict decreed that Puglisi died as a martyr in “hatred of the faith,” and ordered that he be beatified, the last step before sainthood in the Church.

The Vatican expressed “shame and sorrow” on Thursday over revelations that Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania sexually abused about 1,000 people over seven decades, vowing to hold abusers and those who protected them accountable.

In a long statement that broke the Vatican’s silence over a damning U.S. grand jury report that has shaken the American Church, spokesman Greg Burke said the Holy See was taking the report “with great seriousness”.

He stressed the “need to comply” with civil law, including mandatory reporting of abuse against minors and said Pope Francis understands how “these crimes can shake the faith and spirit of believers” and that the pontiff wanted to “root out this tragic horror”.

The grand jury on Tuesday released the findings of the largest-ever investigation of sex abuse in the U.S. Catholic Church, finding that 301 priests in the state had sexually abused minors over the past 70 years. It contained graphic examples of children being groomed and sexually abused by priests.

“The abuses described in the report are criminal and morally reprehensible. Those acts were betrayals of trust that robbed survivors of their dignity and their faith,” Burke said.

“The Church must learn hard lessons from its past, and there should be accountability for both abusers and those who permitted abuse to occur,” he said.

His statement came hours after U.S. bishops called for a Vatican-led probe backed by lay investigators into allegations of sexual abuse by former Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who resigned last month.. The Vatican did not directly address their request.

Pope Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation in July after American church officials said allegations that he sexually abused a 16-year-old boy almost 50 years ago were credible and substantiated.

McCarrick was possibly the first cardinal to resign since French theologian Louis Billot, who according to the National Catholic Reporter, a US newspaper, left over a disagreement with Pope Pius XI in 1927.

“The overarching goal in all of this is stronger protections against predators in the Church and anyone who would conceal them, protections that will hold bishops to the highest standards of transparency and accountability,” Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement.

The bishops said they would create a new way to report accusations of sexual abuse by clergy members and for claims to be investigated without interference from bishops overseeing priests accused of sex abuse. They said it would involve more church members who were not clergy but had expertise in law enforcement or psychology.

Nick Ingala, a spokesman for Voice of the Faithful, a group formed to promote parishioners’ voices after the abuse scandal surfaced, said it was heartening that bishops wanted to set up an independent review process but he expressed scepticism that it would be successful.

“I don’t know how they are going to work that out,” Ingala said in a telephone interview. “I’m always hesitant to give 100 percent credence to any plan the bishops put forth based upon experiences in the past.”

The Pennsylvania grand jury report was the latest revelation in a scandal that erupted onto the global stage in 2002, when the Boston Globe newspaper reported that for decades, priests had sexually assaulted minors while church leaders covered up their crimes.

Similar reports have emerged in Europe, Australia and Chile, prompting lawsuits and investigations, sending dioceses into bankruptcy and undercutting the moral authority of the leadership of the Catholic Church, which has some 1.2 billion members around the world.

]]> 7782 https://www.faith-matters.org/us-pennsylvania-report-details-decades-of-sexual-abuse-by-priests/ Thu, 16 Aug 2018 11:17:19 +0000 https://www.faith-matters.org/?p=7754

Roman Catholic priests in Pennsylvania sexually abused thousands of children over a 70-year period and silenced victims through “the weaponization of faith” and a systematic cover-up campaign by their bishops, the state attorney general said on Tuesday.

An 884-page report made public by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro after a two-year investigation contained graphic examples of children being groomed and sexually abused by clergymen. It was largely based on documents from secret archives kept by the dioceses, including handwritten confessions by priests, he said.

“It was child sexual abuse, including rape, committed by grown men – priests – against children,” Shapiro told a press conference.

Representatives of the six Pennsylvania dioceses included in the report could not be reached for comment.

The attorney general said it was the most comprehensive report on Catholic clergy sex abuse in American history, nearly two decades after an expose of widespread abuse and cover-up in Boston that rocked the Roman Catholic Church.

Several of the dioceses issued statements apologising to victims and saying they were taking steps to ensure any criminal behaviour was stopped. “The grand jury has challenged us as a Catholic diocese to put victims first and to continue to improve ways to protect children and youth,” Bishop Lawrence Persico of the Erie Diocese said in a statement.

As accusers wept behind him, Shapiro described alleged abuse by priests in six of the state’s eight dioceses, including a group of Pittsburgh clergymen accused of ordering an altar boy to strip naked and pose as Christ on the cross while they photographed him.

“The pattern was abuse, deny and cover up,” Shapiro said, adding that church officials sought to keep abuse allegations quiet long enough so they could no longer be prosecuted under Pennsylvania’s statute of limitations.

“Priests were raping little boys and girls,” Shapiro said. “They hid it all for decades.”

The report cited 301 priests, some of whom have died. Only two of the priests are still subject to prosecution.

A few of the clergymen accused in the report succeeded in having their names redacted, and Shapiro said he would argue at a Sept. 26 court hearing for making all the names public.

He said the grand jury identified about a thousand victims, but believed there may be many more.

Shapiro said that one priest had molested five sisters in one family, he said. The diocese settled with the family after requiring a confidentiality agreement, he said.

The attorney general said that Catholic bishops covered up child sexual abuse by priests and reassigned them repeatedly to different parishes. “They allowed priests to remain active for as long as 40 years,” he said.

Describing the “weaponisation of faith” to silence victims, Shapiro cited several examples including one priest who allegedly told children “how Mary had to lick Jesus clean after he was born” to groom them for oral sex.

“Children were taught that this abuse was not only normal but that it was holy,” Shapiro said.

Since the Boston abuse scandal erupted in the 1990s, accusations involving American clerics have sporadically surfaced.

Theodore McCarrick, a former archbishop of Washington, resigned as a cardinal last month after accusations resurfaced that he abused a 16-year-old boy decades ago.

In recent months, Pope Francis accepted a number of resignations from Chilean bishops in a sex abuse scandal that has rocked that country.