VATICAN CITY—An internal Catholic church report on the frequency of institutionalized sexual abuse of minors by authority figures revealed Wednesday that there is a high probability that Pope Francis has, in fact, molested at least one child. “Given what we are learning about the proportion of priests who have engaged in sexual acts with children, we really can’t say for sure that, during his long and storied career in the Catholic Church, His Holiness never engaged in the sexual predation of a young boy or boys,” the document read in part, noting that with the additional 1,000 cases of molestation recently uncovered in Pennsylvania, the odds of any given Catholic clerical figure being implicated in some manner of sexual abuse was rapidly approaching certainty. “When considered as a purely mathematical problem, it would be rather surprising if the Vicar of Christ was innocent of the type of abuse rampant within the church. He’s already known to associate with these people, since sheer numbers indicate he must do so while overseeing an organization that willingly employs thousands of them. And even in the statistically unlikely scenario that he personally molested no children, it’s a lead-pipe cinch that Pope Francis helped cover up child sexual abuse at some level.” The authors of the study, a group of cardinals responsible for monitoring and reporting on corruption within the church, were unavailable for comment as they were arrested Wednesday morning on charges of sexually abusing several preteen boys after manipulating them with alcohol.

Advertisement