Pope Francis to Set up Vatican Task Force to Tackle Sex Abuse of Children

By Nick Squires
Telegraph
December 5, 2013

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/10498982/Pope-Francis-to-set-up-Vatican-task-force-to-tackle-sex-abuse-of-children.html

Benedict has previously acknowledged that the scandal was the result of sin within the church and that the church as a result must repent for it and make amends with victims Photo: REUTERS

Pope Francis set up a special task force to tackle sex abuse by Catholic priests on Thursday — two days after the Vatican rebuffed requests to provide information to the United Nations on how it was addressing the problem.

The Vatican said the Pope had decided to establish a “specific commission for the protection of minors” on the advice of a group of eight cardinals, whom the Jesuit pontiff has given the task of helping him to reform the Catholic Church.

The new commission would “advise Pope Francis on the Holy See’s commitment to the protection of children and in pastoral care for victims of abuse”, but the move was condemned as “meaningless” by victims’ groups.

The initiative — the first concrete action against the scandal of paedophile Catholic priests of Pope Francis’s nine-month-old papacy - was announced by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston and one of the eight members of the council of cardinals.

The sex abuse scandals, which have severely tarnished the image of the Church around the world and shaken the faith of ordinary Catholics in countries from Ireland to Australia, first erupted in Boston more than a decade ago.

Exactly who will serve on the committee has yet to be decided but it could vet future priests, as well as increasing cooperation between Church officials and civil authorities - a key bone of contention in many abuse scandals, where the Church was accused of covering up allegations and protecting predatory priests by withholding crucial evidence.

While the move was welcomed by some Catholics as a significant crackdown, groups representing the victims of clergy sex abuse criticised the “toothless” group as a “meaningless” publicity stunt.

“It’s like offering a Band Aid to an advanced cancer patient,” said David Clohessy, the director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), the biggest and most outspoken of the groups.

“Only decisive action helps, not more studies and committees and promises. No institution can police itself, especially not an ancient, secretive, rigid, all-male monarchy. Yet that’s what Catholic officials have long claimed and tried to do. This move is more of the same.” Mr Clohessy, himself a survivor of abuse, added: “Like his predecessors, the Pope knows precisely what must be done to protect kids and expose the truth. Like his predecessors, he lacks the strength of character to do it.”

The Vatican’s highly ambivalent attitude to greater disclosure about the scandals was illustrated on Tuesday when it refused to answer questions put forward by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.

The Vatican insisted that it could not hand over information about priests, monks and nuns accused of sex crimes because they fell under the jurisdiction of the countries in which the offences were committed.

Vatican officials insisted that the Holy See in Rome is “related to but separate and distinct from the Catholic Church”. That was dismissed as a legal technicality by the National Secular Society in the UK, which criticised the Church’s refusal to disclose information.

The society’s Keith Porteous Wood said the Vatican operated “a firm 'command and control structure’ over the worldwide Church, particularly over the handling of clerical rape and sexual violence offences”.

He added: “The Holy See’s brazen failure, on arcane legal technicalities, to provide the information sought by the Committee is a new low point in the Church’s lamentable record over child abuse.”

He said the refusal to hand over information was a “slap in the face” to the tens of thousands of victims who had suffered from “the huge scale of rape and sexual violence in Catholic institutions worldwide over the last 50 years”.

The UN committee is trying to establish whether the Catholic Church has respected the Convention on the Rights of the Child, including on issues such as whether clergy convicted of sexual crimes were allowed to remain in contact with children and what legal action had been taken against them.

Vatican officials are due to be questioned by the committee in Geneva on Jan 16.

After his election in March, Pope Francis declared that the Vatican would “act decisively as far as cases of sexual abuse are concerned, promoting measures to protect minors, help for those who have suffered such violence in the past (and) the necessary procedures against those who are guilty”.