A committee that has been examining historic child sex abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church said Monday that 512 alleged victims have come forward.
Senior Portuguese church officials had previously claimed that only a handful of cases had occurred.
The Independent Committee for the Study of Child Abuse in the Catholic Church, set up by Portuguese bishops just over a year ago, looked into alleged cases from 1950 onward. The panel produced its final report yesterday. Portuguese bishops are due to discuss the report next month.
The statute of limitations has expired on most of the alleged cases. Only 25 allegations were passed to prosecutors, the panel said.
The report came four years after Pope Francis gathered church leaders from around the world at the Vatican to address the sex abuse crisis in the church. That meeting was held more than 30 years after the scandal first erupted in Ireland and Australia and 20 years after it hit the United States.
Bishops and other Catholic superiors in many parts of Europe at the time continued to deny that clergy sex abuse existed or insisted on giving little weight to the problem.
Pedro Strecht, a psychiatrist who headed the panel in Portugal, said it estimates the true number of victims during the period is at least 4,415.
