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Official finding Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Zurich, Switzerland · 2023

Switzerland: University of Zurich pilot study finds 1,002 cases of abuse in the Catholic Church since 1950

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Record class

Institutional event

Evidence status

Official finding

Authority role

clergy and religious of the Roman Catholic Church in Switzerland, mid-20th century to 2023

Organization

Historisches Seminar, Universität Zürich, Swiss Bishops' Conference

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The pilot study documents that priestly and religious authority over parishioners and institutional wards was the structural condition enabling the abuse it catalogued, and that church archival control had itself obstructed earlier discovery.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority
  • Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2023-09-12 · commissioned independent pilot report

    Independent academic pilot study commissioned in 2022, University of Zurich. A team from the University of Zurich's Historical Seminar, led by Professors Monika Dommann and Marietta Meier, presented its final report on 12 September 2023 at a press conference in Zurich alongside Catholic Church representatives. The one-year pilot project, for which the church opened previously secret archives to researchers, identified 1,002 cases, 510 accused and 921 affected persons, spanning problematic boundary violations to severe, sustained systematic abuse. The study became UZH's most-covered press release of 2023.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • priestly and religious pastoral authority
  • diocesan archival practices that the study found had concealed cases prior to the Church opening its secret archives for the research

Cited record

Sources

academic peer reviewed inquiry report Historisches Seminar, Universität Zürich, press release on the pilot study. German: summarises the study's scope, method and headline figures. English gloss: 'Pilot study on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Switzerland tops UZH's 2023 press releases.'

Primary institutional source from the researching university.

religious affiliated press background katholisch.de, 'Studie: 1.002 Missbrauchsfälle in katholischer Kirche der Schweiz.' German: reports the headline case, accused and victim figures. English gloss: 'Study: 1,002 abuse cases in the Catholic Church of Switzerland.'

Corroborating press report on the study's release.

national newspaper court reporting background SRF, 'Neue Pilotstudie: Missbrauch in römisch-katholischer Kirche — Studie zeigt Ausmass.' German: national broadcaster's report on the study's scale. English gloss: 'New pilot study: abuse in the Roman Catholic Church — study shows the scale.'

Corroborating national-broadcaster report.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis
https://hist.uzh.ch/de/ueberuns/news/Pilotstudie-zum-sexuellen-Missbrauch-in-der-katholischen-Kirche-in-der-Schweiz-an-der-Spitze-der-Top-Ten-Medienmitteilungen-der-UZH-2023.html Corpus classification: academic-peer-reviewed; evidentiary role: inquiry-report. SHA-256 9673ceeba7af99e32ef333a0742efedac882ad575fb246f46af076fe48505cbe
Retrieval
2026-07-20 · Preserved
Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis
https://katholisch.de/artikel/46983-studie-1002-missbrauchsfaelle-in-katholischer-kirche-der-schweiz Corpus classification: religious-affiliated-press; evidentiary role: background. SHA-256 86031200b39cef7a347410d337f8a43abf3917c81651ae88903611cf42bdcf97
Retrieval
2026-07-20 · Preserved
Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis
https://www.srf.ch/kultur/gesellschaft-religion/neue-pilotstudie-missbrauch-in-roemisch-katholischen-kirche-studie-zeigt-ausmass Corpus classification: national-newspaper-court-reporting; evidentiary role: background.
Retrieval
2026-07-27 · Retrieval failed
Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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