It's not something that's easy for me to talk about and its sad that it's even an issue. It also concerns me. What you need to keep in mind however is while even one case of a child being hurt by any cleric is too many the actual number is low proportionally to the number of people served by thousands and thousands of priests over centuries of the Catholic Church existing. Currently the number of reported abuse is 1-5% of all the priests, which is actually equal to or lower than any other denomination or academic institution. So what I'm trying to say is even though in a perfect world there would never, ever be sinful priests, they do exist in our world but they are few and far between. The media will always highlight the bad over the good. I don't know why the Church thought sweeping it under the rug for so long was a good idea. But she has in recent years made steps to prevent abuse through various programs for clergy and laity ( regular people) just about everywhere classes must be taken by anyone in contact with children on protective measures and reporting abuse. Laws have been enacted within the church. The training of priests is more stringent and homosexual men are no longer allowed entry into the priesthood (part of the problem that caused the abuse ) I'm not going to give statistics here unless you want me to but all in all a very small number of priests are bad and should be treated as criminals and will have to answer to God for their sins. But MOST priests in the Church are genuine and upright men trying to do the Lord's work. I hope that helps. :)
