The numbers that emerge from the report of the Ciase (Commission on sexual abuse in the Church) on pedophilia in the French church are shocking numbers.

At least 216 thousand victims since 1950, according to the commission headed by Sauvé, a top French executive formerly a member of the Council of State and the EU Court of Justice. All minors victims of abuse, violence or aggression when they were minors by Catholic priests or religious.

This number rises to "330 thousand if we add the lay aggressors who work in the institutions of the Catholic Church as sacristans, teachers".

In these 70 years the pedophile priests have been between 2,900 and 3,200.

"These figures - said Sauvè illustrating the data - are much more worrying, they are chilling and in no case can they remain without consequences". They are the result, he specified, "of a statistical estimate including a margin of about 50 thousand people".

The Church "since the beginning of the 2000s has shown a profound and even cruel indifference towards the victims", added Sauvè. "The victims are not believed, listened to, they are believed to have contributed a little to what happened to them".

Sauvè has launched an appeal to the Church to "compensate the damage suffered by the victims", hoping that the compensation "will not be considered a gift, but as something due".

Silences and "systemic" failings on the part of a Church that "has not been able to see, has not been able to hear, has not been able to pick up the signals".

The president of the French Bishops' Conference, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, expresses "shame" and "fear" and asks the victims for "forgiveness". "My desire, today, is to ask for forgiveness, forgiveness from each and every one of you", Moulins-Beaufort declared in front of the press, adding that the voice of the victims "upsets us, their number devastates us".

(Unioneonline / L)