Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) has shaken the Catholic Church to its foundation — and he is not finished yet.
It has been nearly eight weeks since a Pennsylvania grand jury released a bombshell report alleging that more than 300 priests across the state sexually abused children over seven decades, and that the church hierarchy in six Pennsylvania dioceses was complicit in covering it up.
Since then, Shapiro has been sought out by attorneys general in more than 40 other states seeking advice on how they might conduct similar probes. A dozen have already announced publicly that they are pursuing investigations.
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There may be others. In Maryland, for instance, Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D) won’t confirm or deny whether an inquiry is underway. But shortly after the Pennsylvania report came out, his office put this notice on its website: “If you were a victim of an abuser associated with a school or place of worship, or you have knowledge of such abuse, please provide the information you want to share about it in the link below.”
Shapiro — who is a graduate of Jesuit-run Georgetown Law School — says what his investigation exposed in the Catholic Church was nothing short of “a national criminal enterprise. It was not just limited to Pennsylvania.”
But few of the other attorneys general have anything close to the kind of sweeping power that Pennsylvania law grants Shapiro, starting with his ability to convene a statewide investigative grand jury for this kind of undertaking.
Read more at The Washington Post