The countries most affected are Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa and Papua New Guinea, according to the Friday edition of the US newspaper.
At least ten priests and missionaries who have proven or probably committed abuse have been transferred to Papua New Guinea in recent decades, which Pope Francis is visiting as part of his trip to Asia from today until Monday.
According to the New York Times, it refers to court records, government information, reports from victims and statements from church leaders.
The transfer of clerical perpetrators from countries such as Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand and the USA to remote island states in the Pacific Ocean appears to have been part of a system of abuse cover-ups.
In recent decades, at least 24 priests and missionaries have been transferred to countries in the Pacific region other than Papua New Guinea. In at least 13 cases, the priests were accused of abuse or had already been convicted.
In this way, the clerics were spared further prosecution, as the police and judiciary in their countries of origin had little influence on the remote islands.
This transfer practice meant that some perpetrators were able to continue committing abuse, as the members of the parishes were not informed of the priests' offences.
"We transfer paedophiles to the poorest countries in the world"
The Pacific Islands were "dumping grounds" for abusive priests, the newspaper quotes Michelle Mulvihill, a former nun and psychologist who advises the Australian church on the prevention of abuse.
"We are sending paedophiles and pederasts to the poorest countries in the world," said Mulvihill.
The church did not want to deal with abuse and therefore "discarded" the perpetrators.
For those affected by abuse, it is a serious problem that they have no specialists nearby on the remote islands who can help them come to terms with and overcome their suffering, says Felix Fremlin, who was the victim of an abusive priest in Fiji and coordinates a network of victims.
"The only help we get is when we sit down together and talk to each other."
In other church contexts, too, international transfers of priests and religious who had committed abuse turned out to be part of a church strategy to cover up the abuse.
In Germany, for example, global aid organisations such as Adveniat played a major role in this.
German priests were deliberately transferred to other continents as so-called "fidei bonum priests" in order to keep them out of the reach of the German justice system.