New Bishops Are Not Told to Call Police about Abuse, Crux Reports

SNAP
February 11, 2016

http://www.snapnetwork.org/vatican_new_bishops_are_not_told_to_call_police_about_abuse_crux_reports

New Catholic bishops are NOT told to call law enforcement when abuse reports are made, according to a veteran Vatican reporter.

[cruxnow.com]

John Allen of Crux (formerly with the National Catholic Reporter) writes that the Vatican official who’s in charge of training new bishops

--“argued that bishops have no duty to report allegations to the police,” and

--“devoted just a few paragraphs” in a “long presentation” to “abuse prevention, using abstract language without concrete examples.”

Just troubling were the comments Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, who’s on the board of the Rome-based Gregorian University’s Centre for Child Protection. When asked “What should new bishops be told about sexual abuse?” Rossetti also made no mention of the need for church officials to call secular authorities.

In one sense, this isn’t surprising. As BishopAccountability.org has pointed out, “zero tolerance,” while often uttered by Catholic officials, isn’t even the official policy of the global church.

But it’s infuriating – and dangerous – that so many believe the myth that bishops are changing how they deal with abuse and that so little attention is paid when evidence to the contrary - like this disclosure by Allen – emerges.

(NOTE – the Vatican new bishops training was led by Paris-based Msgr. Tony Anatrella of the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, who Allen acknowledges is “a psychotherapist controversial for his views on homosexuality and “gender theory.”)

SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. SNAP was founded in 1988 and has more than 20,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)

Contact - David Clohessy (314-566-9790 cell, davidgclohessy@gmail.com), Barbara Dorris (314-503-0003 cell, bdorris@SNAPnetwork.org), Barbara Blaine (312-399-4747,bblaine@snapnetwork.org)

What new Catholic bishops are, and aren’t, being told on sex abuse

by John L. Allen Jr., Associate editor February 7, 2016

Given what a cancer the clerical sexual abuse scandals have been for the Catholic Church, one would imagine the Vatican would want new bishops to get a state-of-the-art presentation on best practices in terms of preventing such meltdowns in the future.

The Vatican has been running just such a training course since 2001 for newly appointed bishops around the world, and . . .