«In the following pages we will share the results of a collective work on the sexual abuses by members on the Catholic clergy, conducted by a group of historians who have been questioning the very notion of abuse, the duty to denounce, the various forms of silence, the reactions of ecclesiastical au-thorities at the Roman level and that of the male religious orders, as well as the literary narrating of abuse by priests. We aimed to present case studies, but also to propose different working methods, with multiple epistemological references, in order to contribute to a collective thinking about these objects of enquiry. The case studies selected - cases of paedophilia, but also abuse of women and men - cover an extended period, from the sixteenth century to the long nineteenth century, including a contribution that analyses the Holy See's position in the forties of the twentieth century. This chronology is born of the conviction that, as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, there is a coherent approach to modernity and contemporary issues from the Council of Trent (1545-1563) to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).» (Silvia Mostaccio)