More than half of the Netherlands Catholic bishops and cardinals were aware of cases of sexual abuse between 1945 and 2010, the NRC reported at the weekend, on the basis of its own research.

The paper accuses the Church of covering up the abuse, allowing the perpetrators to make more victims after making an inventory of the known and less-well know abuse cases which have come to light since 2010.

It linked lists of names of church officials to sources of information about the abuse, including the abuse hotline and the official government commission.

Among the conclusions: four of the 39 cardinals, bishops and assistant bishops named by the NRC had themselves abused children and 16 had moved paedophile priests to other parishes where they went on to abuse again.

None are still active within the church and all the cases are too old to be prosecuted, the paper said.

The church told the paper in a statement that the story by and large is accurate. Since the abuse scandal broke in 2010/2011, the church has taken many preventative measures, including double checks on priest credentials, the statement said.

For a full list of the cases, see the NRC

Scope

In total, 3,712 people have reported being victims of sexual abuse within the Catholic church to a special hotline set up in 2010 and the cost of dealing with the eight-year scandal could be as much as €60m, officials said at the end of last year.

Of all the reported cases to the hotline, 2,062 became official complaints and 1,002 cases were declared justified. Several hundred were not accepted because of a lack of supporting evidence.

In 941 cases, the victims were given financial compensation, taking total payouts to €28.6m. Sixty-five victims who went through the most serious forms of abuse were given the maximum payout of €100,000.

Secret deals

The NRC said at the time, the real bill to the Catholic church is far higher. It says 403 victims reached secret deals with the church authorities, and received an estimated €12.8m in compensation.

At least 800 Catholic priests and monks were involved in abusing children in their care between 1945 and 1985, according to a comprehensive report into the church sexual abuse scandal published on December 16, 2011.

Disappearing churches

Meanwhile, the AD reports that the Catholic church is disappearing from the Netherlands at high speed. Archbishop Wim Eijk told the Gelderlander in an interview he expects just 10 to 15 churches to remain open for mass in the Utrecht region alone. There are currently 280 churches in the Utrecht diocese.

The number of people visiting Catholic churches is declining by 5% to 6% a year as the population ages.

Although the Netherlands officially has 3.5 million Catholics, few are regular churchgoers and the average number of attendees at mass has fallen to 173,500 in total, according to figures from Nijmegen research group Kaski.