If the High Court fails to overturn the verdict of a 12-person jury that found him guilty of four counts of sexual assault and one count of child rape, Pell, 78, will spend at least 32 more months in prison.

The New Orleans Saints football team is the subject of an investigation by the Associated Press for its ties to the Catholic Church in New Orleans and how it has run "interference" for the heavily Catholic city when it comes to dealing with sex abuse and other issues.

ProPublica is advancing the painfully slow disclosure of the names of sexual abusers, writes Kathleen McChesney, who headed the U.S. bishops’ Office of Child and Youth Protection.

Father O’Connor is the first non-Mexican to lead the order that was founded in 1941 by the Mexican priest, the Rev. Marcial Maciel. Benedict XVI removed Father Marcial from public ministry in 2006, after finding him guilty of sexually abusing minors, and ordered him to spend the rest of his life in prayer and penance.

The crisis is one of "institutional traumatization" in which wrongdoings have been perpetrated by an institution upon individuals dependent on that institution, according to Father Zollner, who said "steps forward" to address it globally are being made in Rome.

As early as 1994, while McCarrick was archbishop of Newark, a woman expressed concerns about McCarrick to the papal nuncio in Washington, Agostino Cacciavillan.