Bishops" Summit on Sex Abuse: an Asian Perspective

By Virginia Saldanha
LaCroix International
April 10, 2019

https://international.la-croix.com/news/bishops-summit-on-sex-abuse-an-asian-perspective/9866

Activists in St. Peter's Square at the end of Pope Francis’ historic Vatican summit on clerical sex abuse. Feb. 24. (Photo by EFE/EPA/Giuseppe Lami/MaxPPP)

The voices of survivors and advocates rallying against clerical sex abuse echoed around newsrooms and living rooms the world over when bishops met in Rome from Feb. 18-26, making it a hallowed ground of the wounded.The 190 bishops at the summit heard the testimonies of a few survivors, live-streamed into the hall. The organizing committee had a face-to-face meeting with 12 survivors in Rome a day before the summit.Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster and Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich (also a member of Pope Francis' council of cardinal advisors) accepted the invitation of the survivors' group Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA) to interact with victims and advocates from all over the world.At the group's invitation, I joined the ECA in Rome from Feb. 17-25, representing India and Asia where the voices of abuse survivors are muzzled, muffled and sporadic.At a press briefing on the first day of the summit, not surprisingly, it was reported that the bishops of Asia and Africa stated that sex...