An independent commission said on Tuesday that French Catholic clergy sexually abused 330,000 minors from 1950 to 2020, covered up for decades by a "veil of silence."
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Prompted by outrage over abuse claims and prosecutions against Church officials worldwide, the commission's two-and-a-half-year investigation accuses the Catholic Church of turning a blind eye to abuse.
"Until the early 2000s, the Catholic Church showed a profound and even cruel indifference towards the victims," commission chief Jean-Marc Sauve told a press conference.
A "minimum estimate" of 2,900 to 3,200 clergy members had sexually abused children in the French Church since 1950, Sauve told AFP on Sunday. Yet only a handful of cases prompted disciplinary action under canonical law or criminal prosecution.
Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the Bishops' Conference of France (CEF) which co-requested the report, expressed his "shame and horror" at the findings.
"If the veil of silence covering the acts committed has finally been torn away... we owe it to the courage of these victims," Sauve wrote.
The report is the latest to rock the Catholic Church, following the murder of a Catholic priest in August as well as a series of child sexual abuse cases around the world.
