An independent commission probing sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests has found thousands of paedophiles operated inside the French Catholic Church since 1950, according to a media report. Research uncovered between 2,900 and 3,200 paedophile priests or other members of the church, head of the commission Jean-Marc Sauve, said. The figure was “a minimum estimate,” news agency AFP quoted Sauve as saying.

The commission will release its report on Tuesday after two and a half years of research based on church, court and police archives. The commission also conducted interviews with witnesses.

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The nearly 2,500-page report will attempt to quantify both the number of offenders and the number of victims, according to AFP.

It will also look into “the mechanisms, notably institutional and cultural ones” which allowed the paedophiles to operate within the Church. 

The commission was set up in 2018 by the French Catholic Church in wake of a number of scandals that shook the Church in France and worldwide. That year, Pope Francis passed a landmark measure making it mandatory for those who know about sex abuse in the Catholic Church to report it to their superiors.

Made up of 22 legal professionals, doctors, historians, sociologists and theologians, the commission had been tasked to investigate allegations of child sex abuse by clerics dating back to the 1950s.

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It reported having received thousands of messages on a telephone hotline in the months that followed regarding the scandal.

Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the Bishops’ Conference of France, has urged his “confreres to humbly accept the inquest’s findings,” according to Roman Catholic newspaper, LaCroix International.

“For us, priests, bishops, we should not focus on, nor contest, the first reactions. One thing is certain, we must accept it,” he said on September 29 in Rome at an event hosted by the French Embassy to the Holy See.