More than 450 pedocriminal priests identified in the US state of Illinois since 1950

Some 451 clergy have committed child crimes against nearly 2000,1950 minors in Illinois since the <>s, far more than the Church previously admitted, the attorney general of this northern US state revealed Tuesday.

His office opened an investigation into predatory priests in 2018, after the publication of a report on the Church of Pennsylvania that had sent shockwaves through the United States, and delivered their findings Tuesday in a document of nearly 700 pages.

Desire for transparency and appeasement

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Prior to this investigation, the Catholic dioceses of Illinois had made public a list of 130 proven pedophiles. By comparison, this report reveals the names and detailed information of 451 priests and brothers who abused at least 1,997 children," prosecutor Kwame Raoul wrote in the preamble.

These attackers, many of whom have died, "may never be held accountable in a court of law but by naming them, we want to bring transparency and some healing to the victims who have long suffered in silence," he added. In a preliminary report, his predecessor Lisa Madigan had already indicated that he had been notified of "charges against at least 500 priests" who were not on the list published by the six dioceses of the state. The work of his successor has refined the count.

His report contains many terrifying testimonies, including of a woman who, when she was ten, was repeatedly raped by a priest employed as a mathematics teacher in a Catholic school; or men, abused as children, who then struggled for years with suicidal thoughts and addictive behaviors. He also insists on the responsibility of the hierarchy which, for a long time, was content to transfer to other dioceses priests accused of paedocriminality, without denouncing them.

Read the dossierPedophilia: understanding everything about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church

The American Catholic Church was shaken by a series of articles in the Boston Globe in 2002 about clergy abuse in the eastern city. These revelations, popularized in the film Spotlight, have freed the voices of victims across the country. Since then, many priests have been expelled from the clergy and prosecuted. The Church has also paid large sums to compensate the victims.

In 2018, the Pennsylvania District Attorney's Office dealt a new blow to the Church by detailing the sexual abuse perpetrated by more than 300 priests on a thousand children over several decades. As a result, several States have conducted similar surveys. In April, Maryland published a list of 150 predatory priests guilty of "horrific and repeated" pedocriminal acts on at least 600 children from the 1940s to 2002.