Pope Francis to Meet British Victims of Clergy Sex Abuse

By Nick Squires
The Telegraph
June 27, 2014

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/the-pope/10929780/Pope-Francis-to-meet-British-victims-of-clergy-sex-abuse.html

Pope Francis has been criticised by some Catholics for failing to address the issue of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy Photo: Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters

Pope Francis will for the first time meet victims of clerical sex abuse, including British victims, at the Vatican next week.

Sources confirmed to The Telegraph that the encounter, which will also include Irish, Polish and American victims, will take place at his private residence, Casa Santa Martha, a Vatican guesthouse in the shadow of St Peter’s Basilica.

It will be the first such meeting of Francis’s pontificate, after he was elected in March last year as the successor to Benedict XVI, who also met groups of victims.

It will be a private meeting and the Vatican is keen to keep the exact date and time under wraps.

Such encounters could help the process of healing for people left traumatised by their childhood experiences, one former victim of sex abuse said.

“People go with different expectations but I think it can only be a good thing for a survivor,” said the woman, who asked not to be named.

“It gives them the opportunity to speak to the Pope and to recount their experiences.”

While the Argentinian Pope has been applauded for his more inclusive and compassionate approach, he has been criticised by some Catholics for failing to address the issue of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.

He has announced wide-reaching plans to reform the Holy See’s governance and clean up its finances, but has said little about the shame of predatory priests.

Earlier this year he established a committee to address the issue, but victims’ groups described the initiative as “toothless” and “like offering a Band Aid to a cancer patient.”

The eight-member committee said last month that it would develop “best practices” for Catholic parishes to combat child sex abuse by priests.

The panel includes Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley, the prominent and popular Archbishop of Boston, as well as Marie Collins, an Irish abuse victim and campaigner.

Campaign groups said the last thing the Vatican needed was another commission, and that instead it should take concrete action to dismiss bishops who covered up the crimes of priests and transferred them from parish to parish to evade justice.

“In a Church with thousands of rules, no new rules are needed to fire officials who enable child sex crimes,” SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in a statement.

“Every single Catholic prelate on Earth has plenty of power, right now, to demote, discipline, denounce and defrock, clerics who conceal crimes.”

The Vatican was castigated this year by two United Nations panels – the Committee Against Torture and the Committee on the Rights of the Child – for its failure over decades to punish abusive clergy and its refusal to cooperate with law enforcement agencies in the countries where the crimes took place.