Rome, Italy, Jun 11, 2025 /
10:46 am
The head of a sex abuse survivors’ group in Italy expressed his doubts that a recent report on safeguarding efforts published by the Italian bishops’ conference presents a complete picture of the scale of the abuse crisis in the local Church.
Francesco Zanardi, a survivor and founder of Rete L’Abuso, told CNA that the conference (known by the Italian acronym CEI) has only published “partial reports every year or every two years” since 2020, which makes it hard to make an accurate assessment.
“It’s difficult to make a comparison because we don’t know which cases they are talking about or which geographical area in Italy they are talking about when they give these numbers,” he said. “It’s a bit like if there’s a hole in the middle of the road and instead of repairing the hole, you’re just there counting how many people fall into that hole, but you don’t fix it.”
“Let’s just say this report says nothing,” he added.
Titled “Protect, Prevent, Train: Third Survey on the Territorial Network for the Protection of Minors and Vulnerable Adults,” the nearly 100-page report, published May 28, highlighted current and developing safeguarding practices within the Italian Church between 2023 and 2024.
Among them is the establishment of listening centers for clerical abuse victims in the country. According to the report, there are currently 103 centers serving 130 Italian dioceses.
In a statement released the same day, Archbishop Giuseppe Baturi of Cagliari, secretary-general of the CEI, said the report was part of a path of transparency meant “to overcome the cultural and operational resistances still present.”
“We are called to do our part, with full awareness and responsibility,” especially in promoting “institutional hubs at the local level, as well as a deeper cultural awareness, in particular within universities.”
While the report noted “significant progress in training and awareness,” it noted an increase in abuse cases, the majority of which were committed within a “parish setting.” An estimated 115 (64 male and 51 female) past and current victims reported their abuse between 2023 and 2024. Comparatively, in 2022, 54 victims reported abuse, while 89 victims reported being abused in 2020.
The abuses were committed by “67 alleged perpetrators,” including “44 clergy members, 15 religious, and eight laypersons,” the report stated.
Chiara Griffini, president of the CEI’s Office for the Protection of Minors, said the increase in cases was “concerning because, as we have always said, even a single case, for what the Church is and represents, will always be too many.”
“There are 69 reported cases, 37 of which are current — which tells us that there is clearly an ongoing phenomenon — and 32 are from the past,” she said in an interview with CNA on June 11. “So, looking at these 32 from the past, I think that the prevention work we have put in place is, in some way, sowing some seeds.”
Griffini added that making those reported abuses public was a sign that the bishops’ conference is aiming for transparency and that “the path we have undertaken is certainly an important one and there is no turning back.”
“Child protection must be an integral part of the Church’s mission,” she said.
However, Zanardi told CNA that although the report states the number of victims who have come forward in the past year, it doesn’t state what the Church has done to assist them.
“It says there are 115 victims. Fine. Have you compensated them? Have you given them psychological assistance? Nothing is known about this,” he said.
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Griffini told CNA that while the task of the listening centers is to collect reported abuses and to inform ecclesiastical authorities about those cases, compensation to victims “concerns a procedural phase and therefore does not fall within the scope” of the centers.
She also noted that the report highlights the various means of support offered to victims and their families by the listening centers, including “psychotherapeutic support, spiritual support, and other forms that have not been detailed but which represent a form of support and closeness that the listening center offers to victims.”
Among the other concerns Zanardi expressed were that Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Milan, president of the CEI, did not keep his word that the reports would examine cases from 2000 onward.
At a 2022 press conference, Zuppi announced the publishing of the annual reports and said it would only analyze cases dating back to 2000 and no further because “judging something from 80 years ago by today’s criteria, something that was was judged by other criteria at the time, creates difficulties of evaluation.”
However, the first report released in November 2022 only published information on cases from 2020.
On its website, Rete L’Abuso compiled its own list of abuse cases in Italy dating back to 2000. Zanardi said that based on the data and files they have collected from victims, “we count 1,035 pedophile priests who have abused 4,267 victims. That is a real figure.”
During the press conference two years ago, Zuppi publicly offered to meet with Zanardi and told him: “If you have a case, tell us.”
The head of Rete L’Abuso told CNA that he met with Zuppi on several occasions and had brought the cases his network had collected.
“I brought them, but then he never wanted to take them,” he said. “Now, they [the Italian bishops’ conference] have declared that they will not take data from associations or anyone else but only data that arrives at their help desks.”
For this reason, he added, the current report most likely contains incomplete data since not all victims, especially those “who no longer believe in the Church,” would report their abuse to a diocesan listening center.
However, Griffini clarified that the annual survey is meant as a “monitoring and accountability tool” for the safeguarding policies adopted by the CEI in 2019.
“Therefore, the surveys start from 2020 precisely because their purpose is to monitor whether the system that was created, both to generate safe ecclesial environments and to intercept alleged abuses, is working,” she said.
Griffini also told CNA that a “pilot study” dealing with “verified cases of abuse against minors in the 20-year period between 2001 and 2021” is still in progress and expected to be published “in the first months of 2026.”
She added that the study is being compiled by “two third-party and completely independent bodies”: the Center for Victimology and Security at the University of Bologna and the Istituto degli Innocenti (Institute of the Innocents) based in Florence.
“Researchers will deliver the data to a commission appointed by the bishops’ conference, which will carry out interpretations at the ecclesial level, and the study will be published in its entirety, just as they have reported it,” she explained.
Zanardi expressed doubts that the Italian Church could be trusted to monitor itself and said he had filed a request with Italian prosecutors to conduct an independent investigation, like those conducted in Spain and France. However, he noted, it was doubtful such an inquiry would happen because of the relationship between church and state.
“Let’s say that Italy is a very distinct country, where in fact they are letting the Church do everything, but the state doesn’t interfere,” he said. “It doesn’t meddle, as they say, like the Mafia.”
Griffini argued that the pilot study “is an independent investigation because the two bodies are clearly not of an ecclesial nature; they are academic bodies that have received a mandate, just as other independent commissions had mandates, and they will respond according to scientific criteria.”
Once completed, she said, the 2026 study will develop further research “that can truly shed more light on this phenomenon to help us, in the present day, to make non-repetition possible and, at the same time, find what may be the best practices for justice and reparation.”
Junno Arocho Esteves is a freelance journalist based in Malmö, Sweden. Born and raised in the United States, he covered the Vatican as a correspondent for 12 years for several news outlets, including ZENIT, Vatican News, and Catholic News Service. He has also served as a communications officer for the Institute of Anthropology at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University and communications consultant for the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
