Child & Youth Protection

Catholics have lauded the recent signing of a state law that makes it a felony to procure sex from a 16- or 17-year-old minor in the state of California.

With Pope Leo XIV prioritizing the issue of artificial intelligence, one expert warned OSV News that generative AI poses serious — and largely unaddressed — threats to child safety, by accelerating the creation and distribution of child sex abuse material, or CSAM.

The remains of former Bishop Eamonn Casey of Galway, who resigned from office in 1992 after it was revealed he had fathered a child in 1974, have been removed from their burial place in Galway Cathedral in the wake of a number of allegations of child abuse that came to light in 2024.

Archbishop Thibault Verny of Chambéry, France, made international headlines as he succeeded one of the most acclaimed figures of church safeguarding in the world, Cardinal Sean O’Malley — retired archbishop of Boston — in his role as president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.