DUTCH Catholic bishops have ordered an independent inquiry into alleged sexual abuse of children by priests. The investigation, according to the BBC, would be launched “as soon as possible” into more than 200 reported cases of abuse.
Earlier, the Vatican defended its response to child sex abuse allegations in a number [...]
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TWO South Australian Anglican bishops have brought formal charges of disgraceful and scandalous behaviour against a third.
Charges, according to this report, include Bishop Ross Davies’ alleged protection and promotion of a senior priest accused of sexual abuse. Other charges include repeated displays of anger, involving threatening and abusive language.
In a nine-count charge lodged with the [...]
A SPANISH priest has gone into hiding after he was exposed as a male prostitute who splashed out church funds on telephone sex and internet pornography.
Samuel Martin Martin, 27, the priest at two small Catholic parishes in the central province of Toledo, posted images of himself posing in grey underpants and said he was available [...]
WHILE the Irish press was giving blanket coverage to this week’s meeting between the Pope and bishops summoned to Rome in the wake of the Irish church’s vast paedophilia scandal, theatre-goers scrambled for seats to see a play which unflinchingly tackles the issue of clerical abuse and hypocrisy.
Irish playwright Thomas Kilroy’s new [...]
JUST days after a Stoke-on-Trent imam – Mohammed Hanif Khan, 41 – was remanded in custody after being charged with serious sexual offences against two young boys, an imam from a small Spanish mosque in El Algar (Murcia) has gone missing after being accused of sexually abusing minors.
According to this report, a nationwide police hunt [...]
Continue reading about Police in Spain launch hunt for imam accused of sexually abusing children
THE Catholic Church has become mired down in yet another child abuse scandal – this time in Pope Ratzinger’s native Germany.
The widening public scandal began last month with allegations that three priests at the elite Canisius Jesuit high school in Berlin had sexually abused students in the 1970s and ’80s.
In the midst of a steadily [...]
Continue reading about Catholic Church hit by a new child abuse scandal – this time in Germany
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
