The statistics for 2011 and 2012 show a dramatic increase over the 171 priests removed in 2008 and 2009, when the Vatican first provided details on the number of priests who have been defrocked. Prior to that, it had only publicly revealed the number of alleged cases of sexual abuse it had received and the number of trials it had authorized[.]
The document was obtained by the Associated Press and was prepared from data the Vatican collected to help the Holy See defend itself before a U.N. committee this week in Geneva.
However, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's U.N. ambassador in Geneva, referred to just one of the statistics in the course of eight hours of questioning from the U.N. human rights committee.
While it's not clear why the numbers spiked in 2011, it could be because 2010 saw a new explosion in the number of cases reported in the media in Europe and beyond. » | Agencies | Friday, January 17, 2014
