All scandals
The full index.
31 documented episodes on file. Each entry carries a verification status; contested items are flagged in the entry itself.
B
The Boston Globe Spotlight Investigation
A six-month investigative project exposed systematic sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in the Archdiocese of Boston and the institutional cover-up that protected the abusers for decades.
FILED · 1971–1982 · CATHOLIC · FINANCIALBanco Ambrosiano, Roberto Calvi, and the Vatican Bank
The 1982 collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, then Italy's largest private bank, exposed a network of Vatican-Bank-controlled offshore shell companies that had concealed approximately $1.3 billion in missing assets; the bank's chairman Roberto Calvi was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in London weeks before the collapse.
C
COINTELPRO Surveillance of Black Churches and the SCLC
The FBI's *Counter Intelligence Program* conducted extensive surveillance and disruption operations targeting the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr personally, and the broader American Black church network from 1956 to 1971; the Church Committee Final Report of 1976 established the institutional record on the public side of US government.
FILED · 1950–2020 · CATHOLIC · SEXUALCIASE — The Sauvé Commission on French Catholic Abuse
A three-year independent commission established by the French Catholic episcopate estimated in October 2021 that approximately 216,000 minors had been sexually abused by clergy in France between 1950 and 2020, with an additional ~114,000 abused by lay personnel of Catholic institutions.
FILED · 1831–1996 · CATHOLIC · INSTITUTIONALCanadian Indian Residential Schools
For 165 years, Catholic, Anglican, United Church, and Presbyterian institutions operated a network of federally-funded residential schools in Canada that separated approximately 150,000 Indigenous children from their families; the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report concluded the system constituted "cultural genocide."
E
Ensign Peak Advisors — SEC Sanction of the LDS Investment Arm
In February 2023, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission settled administrative proceedings against Ensign Peak Advisors and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over a 22-year scheme using thirteen shell LLCs to obscure the Church's investment portfolio, which had grown to approximately $32 billion by 2018.
FILED · 1553 · REFORMED · DOCTRINALThe Execution of Michael Servetus
The Spanish anti-trinitarian theologian and physician Miguel Serveto was burned at the stake at Champel, outside Geneva, on 27 October 1553, under the prosecution of the city's Reformed magistracy with the active participation of John Calvin. The case is the founding moment in modern Protestant arguments for religious toleration.
G
The Grassley Senate Finance Committee Televangelist Investigation
A four-year inquiry by the United States Senate Finance Committee under Senator Charles Grassley examined the finances of six major American televangelism ministries, concluding that the federal tax-exemption framework as applied to large religious broadcasters was insufficient to ensure ordinary nonprofit accountability.
FILED · 1633 · CATHOLIC · DOCTRINALThe Galileo Affair
The Roman Inquisition tried Galileo Galilei in 1633 for advocating Copernican heliocentrism, sentenced him to indefinite house arrest, and required him to publicly recant. The Catholic Church formally acknowledged the error of the verdict in 1992.
I
J
The Jimmy Swaggart Scandals
The Pentecostal televangelist Jimmy Swaggart was defrocked by the Assemblies of God in 1988 after the public disclosure of his use of prostitutes; subsequent IRS proceedings and a second 1991 disclosure further established the institutional record of one of the highest-revenue televangelism operations of the 1980s.
FILED · 1950–2023 · CATHOLIC · SEXUALJean Vanier and the L'Arche Disclosures
A 2020 internal investigation commissioned by L'Arche International established that its founder, the celebrated Catholic spiritual writer Jean Vanier, had sexually abused at least six women under his spiritual direction; a 2023 follow-up study documented at least 25 victims and revealed Vanier's lifelong concealment of L'Arche's origins in the abusive theology of his mentor Père Thomas Philippe.
FILED · 1950–2015 · JW · SEXUALJehovah's Witnesses — Australian Royal Commission Findings
The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse established in 2015 that Watchtower's internal records identified 1,006 alleged perpetrators of child sexual abuse within Jehovah's Witnesses congregations over six decades, none of whom had been reported to police.
K
M
Mount Cashel Orphanage
A 1989 Newfoundland royal commission established that the Christian Brothers of Ireland had subjected boys at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John's to systematic physical and sexual abuse over decades, and that two previous criminal investigations had been suppressed.
FILED · 1978–2024 · ANGLICAN · SEXUALThe Makin Review and the John Smyth Abuse Cover-up
A November 2024 independent review established that the Church of England's senior leadership had known of barrister John Smyth's serial abuse of boys at conservative-evangelical Iwerne camps since 2013 and had failed to act; Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby resigned five days after publication.
FILED · 1944–2006 · CATHOLIC · SEXUALMarcial Maciel and the Legionaries of Christ
The Mexican Catholic priest Marcial Maciel Degollado founded the Legionaries of Christ in 1941, served as its director until 2005, and over six decades sexually abused at least sixty seminarians and an unknown number of other minors, fathered at least six children by at least two women, and embezzled substantial sums; Benedict XVI imposed canonical sanctions on him in May 2006.
FILED · 1922–1996 · CATHOLIC · INSTITUTIONALThe Magdalene Laundries
For most of the twentieth century, four Catholic religious orders operated commercial laundries in Ireland that held women and girls in unpaid, indefinite confinement under conditions formally acknowledged by the Irish state in 2013.
P
Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report on Clergy Abuse
A two-year statewide investigating grand jury in Pennsylvania identified more than 300 credibly accused priests and over 1,000 child victims across six Catholic dioceses, naming each priest individually in the public record.
FILED · 1987 · PENTECOSTAL · FINANCIALPTL Ministries and the Jim Bakker Fraud
The collapse of the PTL televangelism empire after the disclosure of a payoff to Jessica Hahn led to a federal fraud prosecution of Jim Bakker for the oversale of lifetime-partnership memberships in PTL's Heritage USA resort.
S
The Southern Baptist Convention Abuse Crisis
A 2022 independent investigation commissioned by the Southern Baptist Convention itself established that senior denominational leaders had for two decades systematically ignored, belittled, and intimidated survivors of sexual abuse while maintaining a secret internal list of credibly accused ministers.
FILED · 1950–1989 · LUTHERAN · INFILTRATIONStasi Infiltration of the East German Lutheran Churches
The East German Ministry for State Security operated extensive agent networks within the EKD-bloc Evangelical-Lutheran churches throughout the 1950–1989 period; the BStU archive opening after 1990 made the operation publicly documentable down to individual *Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter* identities.
FILED · 1948–1989 · ORTHODOX · INFILTRATIONSecuritate Operations Against the Romanian Churches
The Romanian Communist secret police (Securitate) operated agent networks within both the Romanian Orthodox Church and the suppressed Greek Catholic (Uniate) Church from 1948 to 1989; CNSAS file openings after 1999 documented both extensive clergy collaboration and the imprisonment-deaths of resisting bishops.
FILED · 1945–1989 · CATHOLIC · INFILTRATIONSB Operations Against the Polish Catholic Church
The Polish Communist secret police (*Służba Bezpieczeństwa*, SB) operated agent networks within Catholic clergy ranks from 1945 to 1989, surveilled the institutional church continuously, and killed several outspoken priests including Father Jerzy Popiełuszko in 1984; the IPN file openings after 1999 documented both the operations and the scale of clergy collaboration.
FILED · 1692 · REFORMED · HISTORICALThe Salem Witch Trials
A nine-month panic in colonial Massachusetts produced more than 200 accusations of witchcraft and the executions of twenty people — nineteen by hanging and one pressed to death — before the colonial governor halted the proceedings.
FILED · 1572 · CATHOLIC · HISTORICALThe St Bartholomew's Day Massacre
Beginning before dawn on 24 August 1572, an organised killing of French Huguenot Protestants by Catholic mobs and royal troops in Paris spread over six weeks to provincial cities, killing an estimated 5,000 to 30,000. Pope Gregory XIII struck a commemorative medal of celebration.
FILED · 1478–1834 · CATHOLIC · HISTORICALThe Spanish Inquisition
A 356-year ecclesiastical tribunal system established by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain in 1478, with papal authorisation, to enforce religious orthodoxy. Approximately 150,000 cases survive in the tribunal records; estimates of executions range from 3,000 to 5,000.
FILED · 1209 · CATHOLIC · HISTORICALThe Sack of Béziers
On 22 July 1209, crusader forces under papal legate Arnaud Amalric massacred the entire population of the Languedocian city of Béziers — Catholic and Cathar alike — as the opening atrocity of the Albigensian Crusade authorised by Pope Innocent III.
