A watchdog group on Wednesday accused the Catholic Church in the Philippines of a culture of impunity, saying it had found scores of priests who had been accused of sexually abusing children and that many remain in active ministry.

The group, Bishop Accountability, said it had identified 82 priests and brothers with links to the Philippines who had been accused of abuse in recent decades. It said it compiled the list from reputable media reports, court records, church documents and other public sources.

The men were local priests or those from abroad who were accused of abuse in the Philippines, or Filipino clerics who served at home before facing accusations overseas. But not one priest has been convicted of sexual abuse in the Philippines, the group said, citing Bishop Buenaventura Famadico. The country has the third-highest number of Catholics in the world, about 85 million, after Brazil and Mexico.

It was the latest sign that the Catholic Church’s global abuse scandal is still ricocheting, this time in Asia, a region that the Vatican is eyeing for growth. Pope Francis has ordered clergy to report allegations of abuse and cover-up, saying every diocese must have a system that allows the public to submit reports easily.

“He sent them forth to really change things up,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of Bishop Accountability. “None of this is evident in the Philippines.”

She added that her group’s list almost certainly did not cover all abuse because it often goes unreported. The group was established in Boston in 2003, and has compiled similar lists of priests publicly accused of abuse in the United States, Argentina, Chile and Ireland.

At a news conference in Quezon City, Ms. Doyle talked about six priests and displayed their pictures.

One of them was the Rev. Jose Belcina, who was charged by prosecutors in the city of Cebu in 2006 with rape and child abuse. The church removed him from his parish and made him undergo “a process of spirituality,” Ms. Doyle said.

But when the police tried to arrest Father Belcina they could not find him. According to Ms. Doyle’s group, when a journalist asked the spokesman of the Archdiocese of Cebu about Father Belcina’s location, he responded that he was not the priest’s custodian.

Father Belcina denied the charges, which were later dropped by the accuser over reasons of “reconciliation and peace.” The priest was then reassigned to another parish in the province in 2008. He remains in active ministry.

The Archdiocese of Cebu did not respond to a request for comment on the status of the cases of Belcina and other priests listed by Bishop Accountability.

“We hear about these cases because the victims were courageous enough to go to law enforcement. The church is never the source of information. Never,” Ms. Doyle said.

The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines said it has established the Office for the Safeguarding of Minors in response to Rome’s mandate. Every diocese is also now required to establish its own Office for the Safeguarding of Minors and Vulnerable Adults, which is under the bishops’ supervision.

“The C.B.C.P. has no direct authority as a conference to conduct such investigations. As a conference of bishops, we merely build a consensus among ourselves about common policies to be adopted,” said its president, Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David.

He added that only Rome, represented by the Nuncio, has direct disciplinary authority over individual bishops.

“As long as the problem is contained within the Church, there is no justice,” Ms. Doyle said. “The Church cannot self-police when it comes to abuse.”



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