Sex abuse scandal causes Catholics to lose faith in pontiff

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A new survey by Pew Research Center shows that the majority of American Catholics no longer have confidence in the Pontiff.

Why Amercian Catholics have lost faith in Pope Francis

This decline in confidence is based on how the pope has failed to manage the ongoing crisis, according to the respondents.

Catholics lose faith after sexual abuse scandal ece-auto-gen

The research, conducted from September 18 to September 24, 2018, was done on 1,754 adults. 336 of these adults are Catholics, the majority of whom disapprove of the Pontiff's management of the scandal while only three in 10 Catholics (34%)say they approve.

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Faced with the same question concerning Pope's management of clerical sex abuse in 2015, 67% said he was doing either an "excellent" or "good" job.

Concerning overall favorability, things are also not looking so well for the pope as this has also dropped. Only 30 percent of American Catholics still hold an overall favorable view compared to the 52 percent in 2015.

Pope Francis' numbers drop because of sex abuse scandal ece-auto-gen

Pope Francis' ratings are now the same as his immediate predecessor, Pope

Sex abuse in the Catholic church

Recently, a new report discovered that 1,670 priests, which is 4.4 percent of the Catholic clergy in Germany, have sexually abused 3,677 people between 1946 and 2014.

According to this research, the victims were mostly underage boys under the age of 13 with one in six cases related to accusations of rape.

Recent Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Pennsylvania ece-auto-gen

It was also discovered that priests in over 60 percent of these cases went unpunished as a lot of perpetrators were simply moved to other parishes.

This is after a recent grand jury report accused 300 priests from six different Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania of sexually abusing at least 1,000 children. The report added that this has probably lasted for over seven decades.

"Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades," the grand jury wrote in its 800-page report which took two years to compile.