A sweeping grand jury report has found credible allegations against more than 300 predator priests and identified over 1,000 victims in decades of child sex abuse covered up by the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania. It was not immediately clear how many fresh charges could be brought following what the report called the most comprehensive to date about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church, investigating all but two of the US state's dioceses.

Testimony from dozens of witnesses and half a million pages of internal church documents contained credible allegations against more than 300 predator priests and more than 1,000 child victims were identifiable, the report found yesterday.