VATICAN CITY
3 News (New Zealand)
[Read the list of questions from UN Committee on the Rights of the Child here.
Read the Vatican’s response here.
Read the SNAP-CCR report here.]
By Nicole Winfield
The Vatican has dodged a series of questions posed by a UN committee about clerical sexual abuse by noting that the Holy See doesn’t control the actions of every Catholic in the world, much less regulate every Catholic priest, parish or school.
Rather, the Vatican asserted that local bishops are ultimately responsible for keeping children safe from paedophile priests, and that schools and workhouses where abuse occurred in Ireland and elsewhere are subject to local civil laws and regulations, not Vatican jurisdiction.
The Vatican’s position was laid out in a response to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child about its implementation of the 1989 UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, the main UN treaty guaranteeing a full range of human rights for children.
The Holy See ratified the convention in 1990 and submitted a first implementation report in 1994. But it didn’t provide progress reports for nearly a decade, and only submitted one last year after coming under renewed pressure following the 2010 explosion of child sex abuse cases in Europe and beyond.
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