COMPERE: In a shocking admission, the Vatican has acknowledged that many of its priests are serial rapists and all too often their victims are nuns under the authority of the priests who perpetrate the violence.
The Vatican made the admission after a story broke in The National Catholic Reporter alleging abuse in 23 countries. One source told the story of a priest who presided over the funeral of a nun who died after undergoing an abortion at his insistence. It's also alleged that rather than risk catching AIDS from prostitutes, priests in Africa have sexually assaulted nuns, who are considered to be safe partners.
Rebecca Carmody reports.
REBECCA CARMODY: The allegations are as startling as they are damning for the Catholic Church. They include nuns being sexually abused in 23 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the United States. Australia is not among them.
In extreme cases there are also allegations of priests impregnating nuns and then forcing them to undergo abortions. Tom Roberts is the editor of The National Catholic Reporter, the US-based newspaper which broke the story. He says the report is based on five separate church studies.
TOM ROBERTS: The impression I get from the reports that we used to base the story on is that it was something more than isolated incidents, that it has become in some ways a practice in some places.
The exact - how widespread it is, we're not sure, and nor were those people who were, who didn't really quantify in a scientific way the dimensions of the problem.
REBECCA CARMODY: The author of one of the reports obtained by The National Catholic Reporter is Sister Mary O'Donohue, formerly the AIDS coordinator for the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development.
Her report compiled seven years ago links the sexual abuse of nuns to the prevalence of AIDS in Africa and concerns about contracting the disease.
