#ItalyChurchToo: Abuse survivors demand Italy church inquiry

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press

ROME (AP) — Advocates for victims of sex abuse by Italian clergy have launched a campaign to demand an national inquiry. A consortium of groups said they hoped recent inquiries in Germany and France, and planned ones in Spain and Portugal, would pressure the Italian Catholic Church to open its archives to independent investigators to ascertain the scope of the problem and to assign responsibility to the perpetrators. But they acknowledged the context is far more complicated in Italy given the outsized political, economic and social weight the church carries in the pope’s backyard. Organizers of the #ItalyChurchToo campaign said Tuesday that prosecutors and lawmakers have been reluctant to investigate clergy abuse cases,