U.n. Panel Blasts Vatican ...

By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post
February 5, 2014

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/un-panel-blasts-vatican-handling-of-clergy-sex-abuse-church-teachings-on-gays-abortion/2014/02/05/2a6f1b26-8e75-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html

BERLIN — A United Nations committee on Wednesday issued a scathing indictment of the Catholic Church’s handling of child sexual abuse cases involving clerics, releasing a report that went far beyond how the church managed abuse allegations to include criticism of its teachings on homosexuality, gender equality and abortion.

The scope of the report appeared to infuriate the Vatican -- which had dispatched its top official on sexual abuse to appear before a U.N. committee in Geneva last month. Vatican officials said they were still studying the findings, but responded angrily to what they described as recommendations that were ideologically biased.

“Trying to ask the Holy See to change its teachings is not negotiable,” Silvano Maria Tomasi, the Vatican’s permanent observer at the United Nations in Geneva, told Vatican Radio.

At a time when the Vatican has been riding a wave of positive publicity surrounding Pope Francis, the report once again shone a spotlight on the single largest stain on the Catholic Church’s global image: Its handling of allegations of sexual abuse by clerics.

The report by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child demanded that the Vatican take immediate action and turn over to criminal investigators any clerics who are known to have committed or suspected of committing of abuse.

It condemned a “code of silence” within the church against reporting acts of abuse to authorities, and called on the church to release a mountain of documents on internal investigations of abuse cases.

The “ Committee is gravely concerned that the Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, has not taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted policies and practices which have led to the continuation of the abuse by and the impunity of the perpetrators,” the report concluded.