A bombshell report will tomorrow reveal that more than 3,000 paedophiles have operated in the French Catholic Church over the last 70 years.

On the eve of the publication of a 2,500-page dossier on the findings of a four-year inquiry into clerical abuse, Jean-Marc Sauvé (pictured), the chief of the investigating commission said the numbers of possible abusers was huge.

The inquiry, he told Le Monde newspaper and APF, had uncovered evidence of between 2,900 and 3,200 abusers hidden among 115,000 priests.

“That is a minimal estimate,” he said.

The full report is due to be launched at a press conference on Tuesday morning.

It was compiled following interviews with some 6,500 survivors of clerical sex abuse as well as trawling through police archives and church records.

The inquiry passed on evidence in 22 cases to prosecutors since some of the cases involve people who are still alive.

The inquiry investigated “the mechanisms, notably institutional and cultural ones” within the Catholic Church which allowed paedophiles to operate and its conclusions are expected to be damning. It will make a total of 45 recommendations.

A notorious recent case involved Bernard Preynat, who in 2020 was sent to jail for five years for repeatedly abusing boy scouts aged between seven and 14 between 1971 and 1991.

The scandal led to the trial and resignation of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the former Archbishop of Lyon, because he had allowed Preynat to continue to serve as a priest between 2010 and 2015 after learning of the abuse allegations against him.

The cardinal was given a six-month suspended sentence in March 2019 for failing to report the abuse but was cleared of criminal liability on appeal.

In England and Wales, the Catholic Church last year faced fierce criticism from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse for its mishandling of clerical abuse cases.

At the same, time the Elliott Review into safeguarding structures and arrangements within Church concluded it work and its recommendations were implemented within the first six months of 2021.

Principally, this involved the establishment of the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency under the chairmanship of Nazir Afzal, a former Chief Crown Prosecutor, replacing two safeguarding bodies with a single entity possessing considerably increased powers.

The Catholic Church in Scotland on Saturday announced the creation of a new independent safeguarding agency.

Speaking at the end of a national safeguarding webinar which attracted 450 participants from across Scotland, Bishop Hugh Gilbert, president of the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland, revealed plans for the establishment of the Scottish Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency as an independent private company.

“The SCSSA will operate entirely independently of the Church and will have its own staff and Board of Management who will work in close collaboration with dioceses and religious communities to ensure that they are able to meet national safeguarding standards,” he said.

“It will also develop a process that will provide an independent review of complaints about safeguarding practice and crucially, establish a forum in which those who have experienced abuse can contribute their own perspectives to the development of safeguarding.”

 Bishop Gilbert added: “We will shortly commence the recruitment process for the Chair and members of the Board of Management, followed by the recruitment of a Director and a Head of Safeguarding Training.

“It will take some time to establish the new agency and we ask for your patience and support while that process is underway.”

(Photo by ALAIN JOCARD/AFP via Getty Images))

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