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The Roman Catholic sex abuse cases are a series of accusations of child sexual abuse made against Roman Catholic priests in the second half of the 20th century. They garnered widespread media attention in the mid-to-late 1990s.

The incidents involved diocesan priests (who are all male) and members of the various Roman Catholic religious orders (both male and female). Cases involved seminaries, schools and orphanages, where children were in the care of clergy. Some allegations have led to successful prosecutions of the accused. Criticism of the Church and its leadership followed, especially as some high-ranking clergy covered-up abuse cases; see the Ferns report.

Reports came from the United States and Ireland. The John Jay Report found accusations against 4,392 priests in the USA, about 4% of all priests.

One book publicized the abuse of pre-pubescent children. The "overwhelming majority" of the abused children were male.

There had been charges that a minority of the clergy had been practicing such behavior for decades, alleging that a "homosexual collective" within the priesthood viewed child sex abuse as a "religious rite" and "rite of passage" for altar boys and young priests. While the reported sexual abuse dates primarily from the 1960s to 1980s, some cases occurred in the 1990s and sexual abuse has also happened in past centuries: it was the topic of Pope Benedict XIV's apostolic constitution Sacramentum Poenitentiae in 1741.

The Catholic League has argued that the abuse figures in the Catholic Church are similar to abuse in other institutions: in U.S. public schools, up to 5% of all teachers are responsible for sexually abusing 15% of all students. A 2003 survey reports that 6.7% of U.S. students had experienced educator sexual misconduct involving physical contact. A U.S. Department of Education report issued in 2004 examined a number of American studies into the prevalence of sexual misconduct by school staff. They found that instances of sexual misconduct in schools can range anywhere from 3.5% and 50.3%. They found that teachers, coaches, substitute teachers were the most common offenders.