BOSTON (MA)
Boston Globe
By Lisa Wangsness
| Globe Staff
Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday appointed a Boston canon lawyer with extensive experience handling sexual abuse complaints to be the Vatican’s chief prosecutor of sex crimes against minors.
The Rev. Robert W. Oliver, 52, will become promoter of justice — a title akin to prosecutor in the American legal system — for the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, the Vatican office charged with protecting church doctrine. It oversees all serious crimes against the church, including the sexual abuse of children by priests.
Oliver is a longtime professor of theology and canon law who since 2002 has served in a variety of capacities in the church’s internal legal system, or canon law system, in Boston – as judge, promoter of justice, chief of investigations, and member of the archdiocesan review board that handles sexual abuse complaints. …
The Boston tribunal, as the archdiocesan court is known, is still struggling to adjudicate a backlog of sexual abuse cases against priests. Fifteen cases have been languishing since 2004 or earlier.
Mitchell Garabedian, who has represented many sexual abuse victims in Boston, said he wondered whether Oliver’s departure would further delay some of those cases.
“Closure in these cases is such an important part of the healing process for sexual abuse victims,” he said.
Donilon said concluding the cases was a church priority. “Closure and the care of survivors and their families is important to the cardinal,” he said.
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