Please help me out

before saying anything, I want to say I am not asking all of this to try and disprove Catholicism, but to be reassured that the Church upholds it’s moral beliefs. So, as a Catholic, I have a problem with the Church Abuse Scandal. Here is my problem: I love the Church, and I love the Pope. it is not that the Church should do more to prevent abuse and to punish the abusers, or that some priests may be abusers.that is obvious. The thing that troubles me is that the Church SYSTEMATICALLY protects abusers. Here are my two main problems:

  1. negligence The times the Church fails to recognize, prevent or sanction abuse in the Church. These are like: -Pope Francis defender Fr.Julio Grassi, an abuser. -Bebedict XVI covered up and failed to act on abuse cases as Archbishop of Munich. His is defensible as simply failing to act, not being malicious. -in the Provolo Institute, priests systematically raped deaf kids there, and 16 of them are still free and still say mass. -Father Salvatore Domodo accused the Church of permitting sexual abuse, and decided to renounce to his priestly obligations and to renounce to his baptism and annull it. He says that he was raped when he was 8 by a Priest. He also says, that he decided to become a priest, and tried to separate the institution from the individual who hurt him, but he said he found out that the Church was complicit in all of this : he was censored, accused priests were sent elsewhere, the Church remained silent about abuse scandals... He decided he couldn't live his spirituality inside of a Church that accepted and covered up clerical pedophilia. He said priests accused him of having the fault of ruining his priest's reputation. -Fr.Silviero Mura and Maurizio Palmieri were never condemned by the Church for the terrible abuses they carried -Fr.Mario Galli was condemned for abuse, his victim tried to suicide, and yet the Church didn't sanction him -in Naples, an abuse victim contacted the Curia to report the Abuse, they gave him 250€ for medical coverage and didn't do anything for the Priest.
  • the Shalom community in Italy. It is an isolated community for recovery from drug addiction. Nothing wrong, right? But the truth is that it's almost a prison. Nobody leaves. There are barred windows, tall fences, cameras everywhere. When entering, people are searched, even in their private parts. There are video proofs and testimonies that show severe abuse in these camps. Psychological abuse, phisical abuse, people being hit with long metal sticks, even in the testicles, nuns calling people slurs, people getting spit in their faces and denigrated, people being prevented from fleeing with force, people were drugged with psychotropic drugs. How does someone justify the Church for not reacting?
  1. defence In many cases, the Church has actively defended Abusers, not just ignored them. -Pope Francis created a job for Fr.Zanchetta in the Vatican, to flee from Argentina. He later was found guilty of raping his seminarians. -This happened so many times (you abuse / I send you to a third world country or to the Vatican) that the UN actually denounced the Vatican, asking to hand out all abusers. The Vatican still refuses to this day.

My problem is: how can I be part of an institution that systematically defends abuse? This happens so many times. The UN denounced them. I am asking exactly because I love the Church, what it teaches and I love the Pope. but this is really putting my faith to test. how can the same community that makes me feel at home do these things? Thank you to everyone who will answer.

Posted Apr 1, 2026, 8:30 PM UTC

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