GENEVA
Irish Times
Paddy Agnew
The Holy See appeared to emerge with a clean bill of health from a hearing of the UN Committee for the Rights of the Child in Geneva yesterday.
The 5½-hour session ended with a deal of mutual back slapping as one UN delegate expressed satisfaction about a “positive dialogue”, while another said that the Vatican’s presentation indicated that “new steps” were being taken, steps which represented a “new era, a new dawn for the Holy See”.
The Holy See was not on trial yesterday. Rather the Vatican, like all other countries which have signed up to the 1989 Convention for the Rights of the Child, had been asked to report on just how it implements that Convention.
Obviously, in the case of the Vatican, this meant turning a potentially uncomfortable spotlight on the Catholic Church’s clerical sex abuse crisis.
High moral character
That the spotlight never actually became uncomfortable was a tribute both to the skill of the Vatican delegation and to the UN Committee’s modus operandi.
For example, the 18 independent experts – “persons of high moral character” – who make up the Committee were much too busy asking, not always relevant, questions to ever get answers.
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