Aniseed Balls

A friend of mine recently shared the following on Facebook: "Priests are like airplanes: one falls and it’s all over the news, but no one remembers those who are still flying". This is in danger of being read as a disgraceful and callous downplaying of the scale of abuse by Catholic priests. If we limit ourselves just to rape and sexual violence, and just to cases where people have managed to overcome the mental scars and been brave enough as adults and go through the trauma of describing what happened to them as children, and if we limit ourselves just to the cases that ended up being investigated, and just to the investigations that uncovered multiple abuse over a prolonged period, then the scale of the crimes is still too appalling for most to contemplate. Major abuse scandals have been uncovered in at least 200 towns and cities all over the world. Most of the abuse is of children between 11 and 14 years old, but with some as young as 3. To many, the most shockin