AN international clerical abuse survivors group is calling on Irish bishops to release secret files as it pursues the Vatican for crimes against humanity at the Hague.

The Pope and three top Vatican officials have been accused of crimes against humanity in a formal declaration lodged with the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Surrounded by 15,000 white-robed priests the pope begged forgiveness from clerical abuse victims today and promised to “do everything possible” to protect the world’s children.

THE US-based cardinal appointed to investigate paedophile priests in the Dublin archdiocese “silences” any controversy over child abuse in the dioceses he joins, it has been claimed.

The Vatican issued new psychological screening guidelines for future priests today – the latest effort by the Catholic Church to be more selective about who it recruits following a series of sex scandals.

Pope Benedict XVI prayed with tearful victims of clergy sex abuse in a chapel, in an extraordinary gesture from a pontiff who has made atoning for the great shame of the US church the cornerstone of his first papal trip to America.

The pope today told of his deep shame at the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and promised to work to keep paedophiles out of the priesthood.

CARDINAL Bernard Law celebrated Mass for Pope John Paul II in St Peter's Basilica yesterday, ignoring protests that his handling of the sex abuse scandal in the US Catholic Church should disqualify him from the honour.

A small but symbolic protest staged by two victims of sex abuse at the hands of American priests was stymied today when police escorted one of them off St. Peter’s Square as she was preparing to distribute leaflets.

THE Catholic Diocese of Orange in California is to pay out $100 million (€76m) in the largest single settlement in the Church's child sexual-abuse scandal.

DEPENDING on whom you believe, Gerald Robinson is either a quiet, somewhat remote, balding cleric who has faithfully served the Catholic Church for the past 40 years, or a sexual pervert and participant in bizarre satanic rituals who killed a 71-year-old nun and covered up the crime.

AMERICAN bishops were blamed yesterday for failing to stop widespread clerical sex abuse which resulted in almost 11,000 abuse claims against Catholic clergy over the past 50 years.

NEARLY all US Roman Catholic bishops are carrying out a new mandatory policy they adopted to prevent sex abuse by priests, according to a church audit released yesterday.

POPE John Paul II named Bishop Sean Patrick O'Malley to lead the Boston Archdiocese yesterday, sending a recognised leader in the battle against clerical sex abuse into the epicentre of the scandal in the United States.

A FORMER US governor yesterday refused to withdraw his remarks likening Roman Catholic bishops to the Mafia.

US victims of sex abuse by clergy have said the new policy to discipline priests does not go far enough.