A report into sexual abuse of Dutch minors by Roman Catholic priests showed the Netherlands ranked second only to Ireland in the known extent of the scandals rocking the Church in Europe.
Here are some details of the major developments in the Roman Catholic Church scandals in Europe this year.
* AUSTRIA
--
Aug 10 - A record 100,000 Austrians expected to leave the Catholic
Church in 2010 because of sexual abuse scandals rocking the Church in
Europe, a newspaper reports.
--
June 28 - Pope Benedict rebukes Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn for
accusing a senior Vatican official, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, of covering
up sexual abuse cases.
* BELGIUM
--
Sept 10 - Widespread child sexual abuse in Belgian Church drove at
least 13 victims to suicide, a Church commission reports. Of the 475
cases it recorded, two-thirds of the victims were male, with boys aged
about 12 most vulnerable.
-- Sept 8
- Cardinal Godfried Danneels, who stepped down as Brussels archbishop
in January, admits he made mistakes dealing with abuse cases. He came
under heavy criticism after a tape of him urging a victim to keep quiet
was published.
-- June 24 - Police
raid Church offices and Danneels's flat and confiscate files and
computers from panel probing abuse cases. The raid occurs during meeting
of country's bishops, who are held by police for nine hours. The
Vatican sharply criticizes Belgian authorities for the raids.
--
April 23 - Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe resigns and goes into hiding
after admitting he had sexually abused his own nephew for years.
* BRITAIN
--
Sept 18 - Pope Benedict makes one of his strongest apologies to abuse
victims while on state visit to Britain, expressing his deep sorrow to
innocent victims of "these unspeakable crimes."
--
April 22 - Bishops in England and Wales apologize for abuse cases
worldwide, saying "terrible crimes" had been committed and Church
response has been mostly inadequate. The local Church had a series of
scandals about a decade ago but introduced reforms since then.
* GERMANY
--
Dec 3 - Munich archdiocese inquiry reports that at least 159 priests
were involved in or suspected of sexual abuse cases from 1945 to 2009
and 26 had been tried and found guilty. It says there were probably more
cases that had been hushed up or whose files had been destroyed.
-- Sept 23 - Catholic bishops agree to compensate victims of clerical sexual abuse.
-- Aug 31 - The German Church unveils new,
tougher guidelines on dealing with sexual abuse of minors, obliging
church authorities to report suspected cases to police.
--
June 24 - Former Augsburg Bishop Walter Mixa gives up his fight to be
reinstated after resigning in April amid allegations of physical abuse
of minors, homosexual advances to seminarians and misusing Church funds.
Mixa accuses fellow bishops of tricking the Vatican into accepting his
initial resignation.
-- May 27 - Jesuit investigation cites 205 allegations of sexual abuse against priests at Jesuit schools in Germany, revealing decades of systematic abuse and cover-ups by the order.
--
April 12 - Church report says hundreds of minors were physically abused
and some sexually abused at Ettal monastery school in Bavaria over
several decades up until about 1990.
--
March 17 - German Chancellor Angela Merkel demands "truth and clarity"
about clerical sexual abuse but says any official inquiry should not be
limited to the Catholic Church.
--
March 12 - Munich archdiocese says Pope Benedict, when he was Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger and archbishop of the Bavarian city, approved therapy
for pedophile priest but did not know he was later transferred to
parishes where he continued to sexually abuse minors. U.S. media report
on the case says the future pope must have known these details about the
case.
-- March 9 - Pope Benedict's
priest brother Georg admits to administering corporal punishment to
members of his boys choir in Regensburg but denies this was physical
abuse.
-- Feb 2 - The Jesuit order
reports 25 cases of sexual abuse of pupils by priests at three boarding
schools between 1975 and 1984, with most cases in Berlin.
* IRELAND
--
May 31 - The Vatican names two cardinals and three archbishops from
England, the United States and Canada to lead its inquiry into sexual
abuse by clergy in Ireland.
--
March 24 - Pope Benedict accepts the resignation of Bishop John Magee
of Cloyne, accused of mishandling reports of sexual abuse in his
diocese. He later accepts the resignation of two other Irish bishops.
--
March 20 - In rare letter to Ireland's Catholics, the pope tells abuse
victims he felt "shame and remorse" over the scandals and announces an
official Vatican probe of Irish dioceses, seminaries and religious
orders.
-- Feb 16 - Pope Benedict
holds crisis talks with 24 Irish bishops at the Vatican after two
government-commissioned reports in 2009 exposed widespread physical and
sexual abuse of minors in Church-run institutions and systematic
cover-ups by the local hierarchy of abuse by priests.
* ITALY
-- Feb 18 - Italy
has had dozens of cases of clerical sexual abuse involving about 80
priests over the past decade, a priest who runs an anti-pedophilia
organization tells Vatican Radio.
* MALTA
-- April 18 - Pope Benedict prays and cries
with eight Maltese sexual abuse victims during his first meeting with
victims in Europe.
* NETHERLANDS
--
Dec 9 - A Church-commissioned report said 1,975 people had declared
themselves victims of sexual and physical abuse while minors in the care
of the Dutch Church and criticized the
Church for not responding to the
scandals more promptly.
-- Nov 26 -
The Salesian order of priests admitted to paying 16,000 euros in hush
money in 2003 to a victim of sexual abuse by seven priests between 1948
to 1953.
-- April 16 - The
Rotterdam diocese reported a Dutch priest to the police for alleged
sexual abuse and barred him from ministry, making him the fourth to be
suspended this year.
-- March 9 - The Dutch Church launched an independent commission to study reports of alleged sexual abuses by priests.
--
March 2 - Dozens of Dutch Catholics have come forward to report sexual
abuses by priests, encouraged by media reports about abuse by priests
from the Salesian order decades ago.
*NORWAY
--
April 9 - The Church in Norway reported four cases of sexual abuse of
minors by priests and revealed that a bishop who resigned in 2009 did so
after abusing an altar boy.
* SWITZERLAND
--
June 2 - Swiss bishops say they received reports between January and
May of 72 perpetrators abusing 104 victims, up from 14 perpetrators and
15 victims in 2009.
SIC: Reuters/INT'L