In 2009 the Catholic Church in Ireland was shaken by 2 reports of extensive assault from priests and employees against children and adolescents over many years.

The sex abuse Scandals in
the Catholic Church in Norway

-- A Belgian Catholic Church commission monitoring complaints about sexual abuse of children by priests disbanded on June 28 after police seized all its files and a computer.

-- The unprecedented raids on the commission's office in Leuven and a Church centre and former archbishop's home in Mechelen prompted a sharp reaction from Pope Benedict.

-- The raids embarrassed the Belgian Church still reeling from the resignation of Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe in April. Vangheluwe had admitted he had sexually abused a boy. That prompted a wave of abuse complaints to the commission.

The bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, resigned after admitting that he had sexually abused a boy when he was a priest and shortly after he was appointed at Bruges in 1984.

A Belgian Church commission set up in 2000 to deal with sexual abuse cases said some 20 people had come forward with allegations in recent months. (C) (D)

IRELAND

May 2009 - The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse issued a five-volume report saying that priests abused children for decades in Catholic-run institutions.

Nov 2009 - The government-commissioned Murphy report into abuse in Dublin from 1975 to 2004 said Church authorities covered up cases of child sexual abuse until the mid-1990s.

Feb 2010 - Benedict held crisis talks with 24 Irish bishops at the Vatican. The bishops promised him they were committed to cooperating with authorities.

March 2010 - Benedict apologised to victims of child sex abuse by Irish clergy, saying he felt "shame and remorse". He also announced a formal Vatican investigation of Irish dioceses, seminaries and religious orders. Irish victims accused the pope of evading the question of Vatican responsibility.

The pope accepted the resignation of Bishop John Magee of Cloyne, accused of mishandling reports of sexual abuse in his diocese on March 24. He later accepted the resignation of two other Irish bishops.

The Vatican on May 31 named two cardinals and three archbishops from England, the U.S. and Canada to lead its inquiry into sexual abuse by clergy in Ireland that is to begin in the autumn.. (C) (D)

A number of deaf men have come forward to say they were abused as children at the Antonio Provolo Institute for the Deaf in the northern city of Verona between the 1950s and the 1980s.

The allegations were first reported in the Italian press in January 2009.

Later last year the Associated Press news agency obtained a written statement from 67 of the school's former pupils naming 24 priests, brothers and lay religious men who they accused of sexual abuse, paedophilia and corporal punishment.

The diocese of Verona said it intended to interview the victims following a request from the Vatican to do so. (D)

NETHERLANDS

In March 2010, Dutch bishops ordered an independent inquiry into more than 200 allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests, in addition to three cases dating from 1950 to 1970.

Allegations first centred on Don Rua monastery school in the eastern Netherlands, with people saying they were abused by Catholic priests in the 1960s and 70s.

This prompted dozens more alleged victims from other institutions to come forward. (D)

-- The Swiss bishops' conference said on June 2 that between January and May 2010 it had received reports of 72 perpetrators abusing 104 victims, up from 14 perpetrators and 15 victims in 2009

A commission set up by the Swiss Bishops Conference in 2002 has been investigating allegations of abuse involving the Catholic Church there.

A member of the commission, Abbot Martin Werlen, said in a newspaper interview this month that about 60 people have said they were abused by Catholic priests. The alleged incidents are reported to have occurred over the past 15 years.

A priest in the canton of Thurgau was arrested on 19 March on suspicion of sexual abuse of minors, police said. (C) (D)

AUSTRIA

A series of claims of sexual abuse by priests has emerged in the Vorarlberg region.

Some 16 people have reported 27 alleged incidents there, spanning half a century.

Ten children are also alleged to have been abused at a monastery in Mehrerau in the 1970s and early 80s.

Meanwhile five priests at a monastery in Kremsmuenster in Upper Austria have been suspended after complaints of sexual and physical abuse of boys there.

Separately, the head of a Salzburg monastery, Bruno Becker, resigned after confessing to having abused a boy 40 years ago, when he was a monk.

A rash of reports of child sexual abuse in Austrian Catholic institutions was triggered by the resignation of the arch-abbot of Salzburg's St Peter's monastery in March after admitting to sexually abusing a boy 40 years ago. (C) (D)

July 2008 - On a visit to Australia, Pope Benedict apologised for sex abuse by clergy. At that time there had been 107 convictions for abuse in the Australian Catholic church. (D)

July 2000 - London Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor acknowledged making a mistake in a previous post in the 1980s by allowing a paedophile priest to continue working. The priest was jailed in 1997 for abusing nine boys. (D)

GERMANY

Since the start of 2010, at least 300 people have made allegations of sexual or physical abuse by priests across the Pope's home country.
Claims are being investigated in 18 of Germany's 27 Roman Catholic dioceses.

In March, Father Peter Hullermann , who was convicted of molesting boys during his time in the archdiocese of Munich and Freising, was suspended from his duties after breaching a ban on working with children.

Days earlier, the Pope's former diocese said Benedict had unwittingly approved housing for Fr Hullermann when serving as archbishop of Munich; the Vatican denounced what it called "aggressive" efforts to link the Pope to the scandal.

The Regensburg diocese confirmed on 22 March new allegations of child sexual abuse against four priests and two nuns, saying most of the incidents occurred in the 1970s.

Two days later the German government announced it was forming a committee of experts to investigate all the abuse claims.

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, Germany's top Catholic bishop, apologised in March for mistakes he made in failing to report to authorities one case of suspected abuse by a priest in the Freiburg diocese nearly 20 years ago.

Pope Benedict accepted the resignation of Mixa of Augsburg in Bavaria on May 8. Mixa became the first bishop to quit in the pope's native Germany over church scandals.

Prosecutors in Freiburg said on June 2 charges of aiding and abetting sexual abuse had been filed against Zollitsch.

A Jesuit investigation, commissioned in January, last month cited 205 allegations of sexual abuse against priests at Jesuit schools in Germany, revealing decades of systematic abuse and attempts at a cover-up by the Roman Catholic order. (C) (D)

UNITED STATES
Over the past two decades, the Roman Catholic Church in the US - with the archdiocese of Boston in particular - has been embroiled in a series of child sex scandals.

There was public outrage after abuses in the 1990s by two Boston priests, Paul Shanley and John Geoghan , came to light, with suspicions that Church leaders had sought to cover up their crimes by moving them from post to post.

June 2002 - The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops agreed to bar paedophile priests from ever again acting as clerics, but not necessarily to expel them from the priesthood.

In 2002 the then-Pope John Paul II called an emergency meeting with US cardinals, but allegations continued to emerge.

Despite an apology and pledge to take a tougher line, Archbishop Bernard Law resigned over the scandal at the end of the year.

In September 2003, the Boston archdiocese - the fourth-largest in the US - agreed to pay $85m to settle more than 500 civil suits accusing priests of sexual abuse and church officials of concealment.

A report commissioned by the Church the following year said more than 4,000 US Roman Catholic priests had faced sexual abuse allegations in the last 50 years, in cases involving more than 10,000 children - mostly boys.

Feb 2004 - Independent researchers said 10,667 people accused U.S. priests of child sex abuse from 1950 to 2002. More than 17 percent of accusers had siblings who were also abused.

July 2007 - The Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to pay $660 million to 500 victims of sexual abuse dating as far back as the 1940s, the largest compensation deal of its kind.

A series of huge payouts has been made by US diocese to alleged victims of abuse - the largest being some $660m from the Los Angeles Archdiocese in 2007.

During a tour of the US in 2008, the Pope met privately with victims of abuse by priests and spoke of "the pain and the harm inflicted by the sexual abuse of minors

March 2010 Documents emerged suggesting that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he became Pope, failed to respond to letters from US clergy about cases of alleged child sex abuse by a priest in WisconsArchbishops had complained about Fr Lawrence Murphy in 1996 to a Vatican office led by the future Pope, but apparently received no response.

Fr Murphy, who died in 1998, is suspected of having abused some 200 boys at St John's School for the Deaf in St Francis, Wisconsin, between 1950 and 1974.

One of his alleged victims told the BBC the Pope had known for years about the accusations yet failed to take action.

The Vatican criticised The New York Times for its coverage of the scandals. The Vatican denied any cover-up in the abuse of 200 deaf boys by Reverend Lawrence Murphy from the 1950s to 1960s after the newspaper reported he was not defrocked despite warnings sent to the Vatican and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then the church's top doctrinal official, now Pope Benedict. (C) (D)

MEXICO

In March 2009 Pope Benedict ordered an inquiry into the Legionaries of Christ priestly order, whose founder was discovered to be a sexual molester. In 2006, the pope told the founder, Father Marcial Maciel, to retire to a life of "prayer and penitence". Maciel died in 2008.

Pope Benedict visited the island in April and held an emotional meeting with victims, pledging to bring those responsible to justice and to protect young people in the future. (C)

The commission found that leaders knew that sexual abuse was "endemic" in boys' institutions.

It also found physical and emotional abuse and neglect were features of institutions.

Schools were run "in a severe, regimented manner that imposed unreasonable and oppressive discipline on children and even on staff".

Cardinal Sean Brady said:
"It documents a shameful catalogue of cruelty: neglect, physical, sexual and emotional abuse, perpetrated against children." (A)

The report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin has said it has no doubt that clerical child abuse was covered up by the Archdiocese and other church authorities.

The report accuses gardaí of connivance with the Church in effectively stifling one complaint, and allowing the perpetrator to leave the country.

The report details a litany of abuse perpetrated by priests against more than 300 victims. It says that Archbishop Desmond Connell's strategies in refusing to admit liability often added to the hurt and grief of many victims of abuse.

The preservation of the good name, status and assets of church institutions was the first priority, according to the report, which states that priests were seen as the most important members of the institution. (B)