While the United States is embroiled in a Catholic sex abuse scandal similar events are being revealed in other countries. In Ireland, a recent television show Suing the Pope discusses the decades long serial abuse by a Catholic priest. "The Catholic Church kept this knowledge to itself. Father Fortune soon ensnared young boys of the village, relentlessly abusing and blackmailing many of them into silence." As well the South African Catholic church admits to about a dozen abusive priests, although it insists that incidents took place in former years. While the case in the U.S. has generated the most attention, this has actually been a Global scandal, with incidents documented in many countries around the world, with the highest number of incidents seeming to take place in the strongest Catholic countries where the Church is held in the highest veneration, such as in Latin American countries. In Mexico the church was involved in a scandal over paying victims for silence, only made worse when the Archbishop stated that the church did not want to 'wash its dirty laundry in public'. Imigrant children were sexually abused for close to forty years in institutions in Australia. A similar scandal involving the abuse of orphans over a period of decades by a group of Catholic ministers took place in Canada, and was covered up for many years, before finally triggering a spate of lawsuits for abuse that covered a period of decades. Both police and political officials were involved in the cover up in the Canadian scandal, while these same officials were responsible for sending more orphans into that place, orphans that it turned out were betrayed and abadoned by the very people who were supposed to be protecting them, but were actually acting in collusion, leaving one to wonder just where an orphan was supposed to turn for help in a situation like that one. U.S. cardinals recently stopped short of adopting the 'zero tolerance' policy, fearing perhaps a 'witch hunt', and extremist responses. On the other hand, the previous reponses of 'rehabilitating' priests and then reassigning them does not seem to have worked, neither benefiting those priests themselves, or their future victims. Needless to say the policy of celibacy for priests, and even a discussion of whether or not such a thing is even necessary or benefits anyone (priest or church) in the least, is not on the agenda. While there may always be a molesting priest somewhere, what is so disturbing about all these incidents is the consistent pattern of serial abuse and coverups that suggest some systemic problem within the institution itself, a pattern that is replicated it seems, in many countries around the globe.

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