Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League, who is American's number one apologist for the Catholic church's sexual predators and scandals, tweeted out that the Pennsylvania story of sexual abuses over seven decades is a myth.

This is a twisted man.

There is no on-going crisis—it's a total myth. In fact, there is no institution, private or public, that has less of a problem with the sexual abuse of minors today than the Catholic Church. https://t.co/XUoIjVGU7h pic.twitter.com/bX0FTJ00YF

The Vatican has responded to the new report by calling the abuses, reprehensible.

The Vatican responded on Thursday to the horrors of a Pennsylvania grand jury report on clergy sex abuse, saying it felt shame and sorrow over the findings that more than 1,000 children had been abused by hundreds of priests over decades while bishops covered up their crimes.

“The abuses described in the report are criminal and morally reprehensible,” the Vatican statement said of the report, which was released on Tuesday, shocking Catholics with lurid tales of abusive priests and superiors who turned a blind eye. “Those acts were betrayals of trust that robbed survivors of their dignity and their faith. The church must learn hard lessons from its past, and there should be accountability for both abusers and those who permitted abuse to occur.”

“Victims should know that the pope is on their side,” the statement said. “Those who have suffered are his priority, and the church wants to listen to them to root out this tragic horror that destroys the lives of the innocent.”