Panama Catholic Church reports dozens of clerical abuse cases

PANAMA CITY, Panama (AFP) — The Catholic Church in Panama has recorded dozens of complaints alleging sexual abuse of minors and other vulnerable people by priests, according to a report released Tuesday.

Prepared by two Catholic universities at the request of the church, the report found 37 complaints for sexual abuse were filed against clergy members between 2001 and 2025.

The Archbishop of Panama City, Jose Domingo Ulloa, said in a presentation of the report that it sought to determine how the church had managed "this entire reality of sexual abuse against minors."

He repeated an apology he made in 2023 to the victims and said five clergy members were defrocked after being convicted of sexual abuse.

Around the world, the Catholic Church has been tainted by scandals involving decades of child sexual abuse by pedophile priests.

The Panama report found no evidence of a deliberate policy of concealment of abuse by the church in the Central American country, but did flag problems in how the complaints were handled.

The report was compiled by Spain's Villanueva University with the University of Notre Dame in the United States.

Maria Jose Valero, one of the authors, noted that the number of complaints made did not necessarily reflect the scale of the abuse, given the reluctance of some victims to come forward.

A 2019 report by the Child Rights International Network showed that while Latin America was the world's most Catholic continent it had the lowest rates of reporting of clerical sexual abuse.