The Catholic Church has been rocked by new sex abuse allegations, with victims in Switzerland identifying ten paedophile priests who abused children between the 1950s and 1990s.

Jean-Marie Lovey, the bishop of the Swiss city Sion, apologised this week to the victims for the suffering they endured.

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Around 220 victims came forward with allegations between 2010 and 2016, according to Swiss news agency SDA.

Last year, several victims accused ten priests of being paedophiles.

Three of the accused clergymen are still alive. In February, the Swiss Bishops Conference set up a commission to award compensation to victims abused by Swiss priests.

One of the victims, who chose to remain anonymous, told Radio Rhône FM that the church in Sion had covered up the abuse and moved priests who had been caught abusing children to other parishes.

He said that he had met around 50 victims in Sion, but believed that there were many more.

Bishop Lovey, who was appointed by Pope Francis in 2014, has denied that the church in Sion covered up abuse allegations. He said priests were moved to other parishes as a preventive measure.

Last month, Cardinal Bernard Law, who was at the heart of the Boston sex abuse scandal, died in Rome, having never faced punishment for covering up the clerical abuse.

Law became the symbol of clerical sex abuse when the Boston Globe's Spotlight team published its damning exposé into widespread child abuse in the US' largest Catholic archdiocese.

Spotlight journalist Mike Rezendes previously told IBTimes UK that Law had shuffled around accused priests, moving them between parishes.

"He moved some into other [parishes] and some into the military where they served as chaplains, which fell under federal jurisdiction," he said.

As the accusations mounted, Law was forced to resign and fled to Rome where he found a safe haven behind the walls of the Vatican.

Pope Francis