Vatican Claims Progress in Abusers-punishing
Voice of Russia
The Vatican has dismissed more than 800 priests for sexual abuse of children in the past decade and paid billions of dollars in compensation, senior Vatican officials told a United Nations panel on Tuesday, NYT reports. The Vatican came under hostile investigation by a United Nations committee on Monday, May 5, over its handling of sex abuse scandals that have surfaced more than a decade ago. The Holy See had to "show us that, as a party to the convention, you have a system in place to prohibit torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment when it is acquiesced to by anyone under the effective control of the officials of the Holy See and the institutions that operate in the Vatican City state," Felice Gaer, the US chief rapporteur of the Against Torture Committee, told the Vatican delegation, The Guardian reported. Signed over a decade ago, the anti-torture treaty reflects the international convention that bans torture as well as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The Vatican was accused by the Against Torture Committee of covering up crimes by the clergy and lay personnel falls. The extraordinary disclosures were made on the second day of hearings in Geneva. Church officials faced blunt questions about the measures taken to punish priests who abuse children and the church's willingness to cooperate with civil authorities in punishing such crimes as well as its previous policy decisions, the juridical distinction between the Holy See and Vatican City, and information on specific cases. "We all know that the Catholic Church is against violence," fellow committee member George Tugushi was quoted by AFP. "Yet we can see that child abuse cases have not been addressed for decades," he added. The committee questioned the delegation over the "suppression of evidence" of crimes by the Vatican. "We have received numerous allegations of intimidation of witnesses and shifting of finances to avoid payment (of compensation)," Gaer said. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's representative in Geneva, stuck resolutely to a narrow interpretation of the treaty on torture, saying it applied to the Holy See only in the case of the few hundred residents of Vatican City. But he spoke of a new culture in the church over tackling sexual abuse. He told the panel that in addition to 848 priests dismissed between 2004 and 2013, 2,572 members of the clergy had been disciplined for sexual abuse, putting children beyond their reach. Compensation by Catholic dioceses and religious orders to victims since 1950 has amounted to about $2.5 billion, Archbishop Tomasi said, detailing about $125 million in other payments for therapy and other expenses related to investigations and litigation. To protect children, the church has spent $260 million in the past decade on background checks of priests, he said. "We must not be fossilized in the past," he said after being asked about transfers of priests from diocese to diocese that enabled them to escape investigation and prosecution. "This was a policy practiced decades ago, mostly." "It's clear that the issue of sexual abuse of children, which is a worldwide plague and scourge, has been addressed in the last 10 years by the church in a systematic, constructive, effective way," he told the panel. The archbishop also mentioned "some divergence of opinion" about whether child sexual abuse legitimately falls under the concern of the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment. Felice D. Gaer, the panel's vice chairwoman, suggested that the Vatican's narrow view of the scope of its responsibilities risked "creating gaps in the coverage of the convention." Another panel member, George Tugushi, said he found the compensation figures "very impressive" but added that "on the other hand, we have received many reports of people that did not receive redress." The archbishop's responses also drew mixed reviews from representatives of nongovernmental organizations in the audience. Ashley McGuire, a member of Catholic Voices USA's advisory board, said the archbishop had made clear that "the church is a very different place". "It was good to hear questions that have needed to be asked for far too long, but it was hard to hear the deflections of responsibility," said Katherine Gallagher, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, in New York. "I heard nothing about high-level officials who facilitate acts of torture being held accountable. That's facilitating the commission of more crimes and placing more children at risk." The delegation has also asked if the Holy See was taking steps to eliminate the "chemistry that creates the conditions" for sexual abuse of children by priests. It also urged the church to immediately hand over its records on the abuse of tens of thousands of children, immediately remove anyone suspected of abuse from their post and refer the matter to civil legal authorities. In April, Pope Francis made his first public plea for forgiveness for the "evil" committed by priests who molested children. Yet, the UN panel asserted that the international committee, formed by Pope Francis to offer consultancy in handling sexual abuse, has not been "effective". "The commission may need help to ensure all cases are reported properly and begin to change the climate of impunity but it cannot be considered in our opinion as a substitute for a functioning investigation system," Tugushi, the committee member from Georgia, told the Vatican delegation. Human rights activists have also criticized the Vatican for "ducking responsibility". "They are splitting hairs when they should be embracing the victims and stopping the sexual violence," said Barbara Blaine of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). But the delegations didn't paint everything black - it claimed that abuse has declined over the past ten years as most of abusing priests have been defrocked. Challenges to the Holy See's affirmation in fulfilling its treaty obligations, are that it has direct jurisdiction only over the territory of Vatican City State and not over bishops, priests or other Catholics outside the Vatican, the archbishop told the committee. "It is one thing to be able to exercise jurisdiction and another to encourage a certain type of activity" or adoption of certain policies in Catholic communities around the globe outside Vatican City State. While it hopes to exercise moral influence over all Catholics, "persons who live in a particular country are under the jurisdiction of the legitimate authorities of that country and are thus subject to the domestic law and the consequences contained therein." The committee had also asked Archbishop Tomasi to provide statistics about cases of clerical sexual abuse reported to the Vatican and the outcome of those cases. Between 2004 and 2013, he said May 6, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - which is charged with investigating abuse claims against clergy - received "credible accusations" against 3,420 priests. In the majority of cases, he said, the abuse was alleged to have occurred between 1950 and 1989. Many of those priests are or have been jailed by civil courts for their crimes, he said. Between 2004 and 2013, he said, the Holy See dismissed 848 priests from the priesthood as a result of the allegations being found to be true. In another 2,572 cases - mainly involving priests of an advanced age - the men were ordered to have no contact with children and were ordered to retreat to a life of prayer and penance. The committee asked specifically about Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, the former nuncio to the Dominican Republic, whom the Vatican removed from his position in August after he was accused of paying for sex with boys in the Caribbean country. Archbishop Tomasi said that the accusations against the nuncio, a Vatican citizen as all nuncios are, are the subject of a canonical investigation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as well as a criminal investigation by the Vatican police and court. The process has been slow, he said, because Vatican investigators are waiting for documentation from police in the Dominican Republic. In the coming weeks, the Committee Against Torture will issue a written report of observations about the Vatican's adherence to the treaty and Archbishop Tomasi's response to committee members' questions.
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