PARIS, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) -- A French report has revealed a staggering number of child victims of clerical sexual abuse in 70 years since 1950, leading French President Emmanuel Macron to call for truth and compensation.

On the sidelines of a European meeting in Slovenia on Wednesday, Macron said "behind the figures and terrible situations that are described, there are broken lives."

"There is a need for truth and compensation," he added.

Pope Francis on Wednesday at the weekly general audience expressed shame at the Church's "too long failure."

"This is a moment of shame," said the Pope, urging the French bishops and religious superiors to "continue to make every effort so that similar tragedies will not be repeated," according to Vatican News.

Based on a general population survey, a report released on Tuesday by the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church found that from 1950 to 2020, 216,000 children in France suffered sexual abuse by priests, deacons, monks or nuns.

That figure rises to 330,000 when lay people connected to the Church, such as the staff of Catholic schools and organizers of scouts, are included.

Most victims were "pre-adolescent boys from all social backgrounds," the report said, but the French Church had long covered up the abuses across the country for self-protection.

"Canon law is entirely inadequate with regard to fair trial standards and human rights in a matter as sensitive as the sexual abuse of children," it said.

The number of the perpetrators over the 70 years is estimated to be between 2,900 and 3,200, reflecting research showing that "a sexual predator can effectively assault a great number of victims," the report said.

Sexual abuse in the French Church peaked in the period between 1950-1970, after which it appeared to decline, and saw an "apparent resurgence" in the early 1990s, according to the report, while the Church leadership, for a long time, was not unaware, but turned a blind eye while it should have taken action.

"Faced with this scourge, for a very long time the Catholic Church's immediate reaction was to protect itself as an institution and it has shown complete, even cruel, indifference to those having suffered abuse," Jean-Marc Sauve, president of the commission, said in the report.

From the 1990s, the Church started to take on board the existence of the victims, but it was only from 2010, the report said, that it began to report cases to the judicial system, impose sanctions and realize that the issue should not be dealt with internally.

"The Church must establish a procedure for the recognition of abuse, even in time-barred cases, and provide compensation for the harm suffered," it said.

Established in 2018 and consisting of 21 voluntary members excluding Church members or victims, the commission conducted the investigation by distributing questionnaires, interviewing victims and church members and analyzing data from archives such as those of the Ministry of Justice. Enditem

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