A Louisa County judge yesterday sentenced a Henrico County man to 100 years in prison for five counts of soliciting sex from a child younger than 15 over the Internet. Circuit Judge Timothy K. Sanner imposed the jury’s recommended sentence against George H. Spiker Jr., 55. The jury convicted Spiker in January. According to prosecutors, Spiker entered Yahoo chat rooms in January and February 2009 and later drove to meet someone he thought was a 13-year-old girl.

Irish prelates and Pope Benedict XVI met Monday in an extraordinary summit that one bishop called a step toward repentance for Ireland’s history of sex abuse — but the former Dublin altar boy who exposed the scandal doubted that any real housecleaning would result.

The German news magazine Der Spiegel reports that the number of sexual abuse cases in Germany by Catholic clerics and laymen is much higher than was previously thought.

The Vatican says Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of Limerick’s bishop, who was heavily criticized by investigators looking into clergy sex abuse of children in Ireland.

Pope Benedict XVI is meeting with senior Irish clergy in the wake of a devastating report that found that the Roman Catholic church in Ireland covered up clerical child abuse for decades.

A high-profile sex abuse case that was set to start Monday against Delaware’s Catholic Diocese of Wilmington and a former priest will be delayed after the church filed for federal bankruptcy protection.

The young girl at the center of allegations of child sexual abuse by Virginia State Police Capt. Edward L. Hope Jr. endured “two to three years of almost daily molestation” beginning when she was 8, a prosecutor charged yesterday. Hope, now 52, committed various sex acts with the girl, now 12, between two and five years ago, Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney M. Duncan Minton Jr. said during a bond hearing for Hope yesterday in Chesterfield County Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court.