More than 270 Catholic clerics sexually abused nearly 1,000 children across three Massachusetts dioceses over decades, according to an investigative report the state's attorney general released on Wednesday.
Page B1From§Eachthe late evening edition — 30 September 2026
Vatican creates panel barred from bishops' files; it turns twelve the same week report counts nearly 1,000 victims.
As it ran on the front
It was conceived by Pope Francis, in his first major action on the matter, to advise the Catholic Church on how dioceses and seminaries ought to handle the sin and the crime of clergy abusing children. It was not conceived with the power to do anything about a bishop. That job — removing a cleric, laicizing him, opening his file — stayed where it had sat at the signing: with the dioceses themselves, and with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a body that answers to Rome and, on the record so far, to little else.
It is survived, this week, by a report from the Massachusetts attorney general counting more than 270 Catholic clerics who sexually abused nearly 1,000 children across three dioceses over decades. The commission had no authority to open a single one of those files. Twelve years of advising, and the advice apparently never reached the filing cabinet.…
…(cont) It was preceded in death, in July 2022, by a different promise in a different country: a three-year independent inquiry into Telford, Shropshire, found more than 1,000 children sexually exploited since the 1980s, teachers and youth workers discouraged from reporting it, and police nervous that investigating the abusers would inflame racial tensions. Different institution, same arithmetic — a four-digit count of children, and the people positioned to stop it choosing the institution's comfort over the count.
This was malarkey dressed as reform, filed under good letterhead, and the filing cabinet this week came up short three dioceses and nearly a thousand children. A commission can advise for twelve years running and still never touch a bishop's personnel file, and that is not an oversight; it is the design working as built. There is a difference between an institution that failed once and an institution that has now failed on two continents with the same number, and the difference is twelve years of a tribunal that was never given a key to anything.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that every diocese that has not yet opened its personnel files to an independent civil authority do so now, and that no advisory commission be mistaken for an enforcement one again.
“They built a commission to watch the bishops and didn't give it a key to a single file — twelve years in, it still can't touch one. England ran the same count four years back, over a thousand kids, same institutional cold feet, different building. That's not an oversight on two continents, that's the design working exactly as funded.”
“Look, the commission was billed as advisory, not an enforcement body — that was the design from day one, and design isn't — okay, saying "design" twice in a row sounds worse than I meant it. The dioceses run their own review boards, which is the same model plenty of institutions use to look into themselves. I'm not going to stand here and defend three dioceses and twelve years with no file opened, but technically the charter never promised a subpoena.”
The receipts
· A three-year-long independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation finds that over 1,000 children in Telford, Shropshire, England, were sexually exploited beginning in the 1980s. Teachers and youth from the morgue, 12 Jul 2022
· Pope Francis, in his first major action on the still very pressing issue, gives his assent during meetings on reform of the Roman Curia to the creation of a permanent expert-member Pontifical Commissi from the morgue, 5 Dec 2013
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.