WASHINGTON, Sept 19 — The Catholic Church in America welcomes Pope Francis next week under a long shadow as one of the nations worst affected by the scandal of sexual abuse by clergy.

Becky Ianni was just eight when her parish priest, a family friend in Alexandria, Virginia started abusing her. She is one of 17,000 people who came forward within the US church to complain of abuse.

Ianni’s ordeal lasted two years. She revealed it 40 years later.

“I was told by the priest that if I told anyone, I would go to hell,” she said.

Some 6,400 Catholic clergy are accused of abusing minors in the United States between 1950 and 1980. However dizzying, the figures under represent the scale of what really happened, said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of bishop-accountability.org, which tracks such numbers. 

Experts speaking at the Vatican said in 2012 the number of abused American minors is probably close to 100,000.

It remains to be seen whether the 78-year-old pontiff will meet abuse victims while in the country September 22-27, but he sent out clear signals ahead of time on his determination to act.

Besides the abuse itself, a key concern is how sexual crimes were covered up, as bishops and other church officials protected suspected abuser priests, and ignored alleged victims. 

In June, Francis dismissed two US bishops accused of looking the other way: the archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, Msgr. John Clayton Nienstedt, and his aide Msgr Lee Anthony Piché. 

This week the Vatican replaced another departing bishop, Robert Finn of Kansas City. He had to resign in April for failing to report a priest accused of pedophilia. 

Francis has laid the groundwork for his trip, said Massimo Faggioli, a church historian at St. Thomas university in Minnesota.

The pedophilia scandal has had serious financial implications for the church in America.

Since the first revelations came out in the 2000s, the church has spent US$3 billion (RM12.7 billion) on legal costs and rehabilitation for offenders, according to bishop-accountability.org.

“One of the problems of the scandals is that the Catholic Church in the US is now running out of money because it has spent billions of dollars in legal fees and damages to victims,” said Faggioli.

The archdiocese of Los Angeles alone spent US$740 million on sexual abuse-related costs.

Nine dioceses — out of 145 — and three archdioceses — out of 33 — have filed for bankruptcy, faced with rising costs.

The archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis said in January the procedure would enable it to compensate victims more fairly.

But Jack Ruhl, a specialist in church finances and accounting professor at Western Michigan University, says the bankruptcies have resulted in lower settlements.

Ruhl argues that the church should be able to absorb even such tremendous costs. 

“It is a very wealthy church. It owns a tremendous amount of properties,” he said.

The Economist magazine estimated the US Catholic Church’s annual spending in 2010 at US$170 billion — more than the revenue of General Electric the same year.

David G. Clohessy, director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said the bankruptcy filings serve a wider purpose for the church.

“Catholic officials like bankruptcy filings because they stop all civil trials,” he said. 

Civil court cases are what bishops fear the most because “they publicly expose those who concealed abuse — not just those who committed abuse.”

His organization is also lobbying to have cases that have vanished with the statute of limitations brought back to life.

“Every victim would like to see the perpetrator put into jail,” agreed Ianni. “That means perpetrators can’t hurt another child.”

A law in Minnesota allowing for prosecution of suspects in cases where the statute of limitations expired led two priests to be dismissed by the archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis.

But Clohessy’s group says clergy are opposed to changing the statute of limitations (in California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York), arguing the evidence behind old cases would be too weak.

For Thomas McCarthy, director of the film “Spotlight,” which tells the story of church abuses in Boston, much remains to be uncovered.

“These guys were operating in some pretty dark waters,” he said. — AFP