Sex Abuse, Child Sex Abuse | featured news

The Vatican said on Tuesday it would prove it cannot be held legally responsible for the actions of a priest at the center of a sexual abuse scandal in the United States.

The pope criticized the “lamentable methods” of Belgian police who last week confiscated files, detained bishops and drilled into the tomb of at least one cardinal in the Brussels cathedral in a search for documents.

A controversial cardinal who was scheduled to deliver an elaborate Latin Mass this weekend in Washington at one of the nation's most prominent Catholic churches is being replaced after clergy sex-abuse victims and activists expressed ...

Pope Benedict said the sexual abuse scandal shaking Roman Catholicism showed the Church needed to do penance for its sins, in a rare public reference by the pope to pedophilia in the priesthood.

The Vatican sought to distance itself from comments by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, its secretary of state, that homosexuality is “a pathology” and linked to sexual abuse.

With the Roman Catholic Church facing a series of pedophilia scandals, some observers have begun to ask whether the tradition of celibacy in the priesthood has contributed to child abuse.

The Vatican says there was no cover-up in the sexual abuse case by an American priest accused of molesting 200 deaf boys and denounces what it calls attempts to smear Pope Benedict XVI.