Data Suggests Florida May be Home to the Most Secretive Catholic Clergy Abuse and Cover Up

On Behalf of | Sep 2, 2020 | Catholic Church

 

What’s wrong with Florida Catholic officials?

Though we at Horowitz Law handle cases all across the United States, we are headquartered in Florida — possibly the most secretive state in terms of the Catholic abuse and cover up crisis.

The largest Catholic jurisdiction in Florida is the Archdiocese of Miami. According to the impartial and extremely accurate archive BishopAccountability.org, there are 41 publicly accused child molesting Miami clerics.

But look at the ten dioceses with roughly the same Catholic populations as Miami. You’ll find that only two of them (San Bernardino and Dallas) have fewer such clerics listed.

The two similarly-sized dioceses with the largest numbers are Pittsburgh (109 accused) and St. Paul (79 accused).

(The others include San Diego, Milwaukee, Trenton, Cleveland, Brownsville and Seattle.)

The second largest Catholic jurisdiction in Florida is the Diocese of St. Petersburg.  BishopAccountability lists 23 publicly accused child molesting St. Pete clerics.

But look at the ten dioceses with roughly the same Catholic populations as Miami. You’ll find that only two of them (San Bernardino and Dallas) have fewer such clerics listed.

The two similarly-sized dioceses with the largest numbers are Albany (100 accused) and Portland Oregon (87 accused).

(The others include Paterson, Bridgeport, Austin, Ft. Worth, Arlington, Corpus Christi and Atlanta.)

Later, we’ll examine the other five Florida dioceses and the reasons why Catholic officials in our home state are more secretive than their colleagues are in other states.