GENEVA
National Catholic Reporter
John L. Allen Jr. | Jan. 16, 2014 NCR Today
Rome
Facing a virtually unprecedented examination of its record on child sexual abuse by a U.N. panel, a senior Vatican official today asserted that the Catholic church wants to be “an example of best practice” in the prevention of abuse.
Italian Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative to the United Nations in Geneva, spoke this morning to the Committee on the Convention of the Rights of the Child, a 1989 United Nations treaty which the Vatican ratified in 1990.
Although the U.N. panel has no power to compel the Vatican to do anything, its body of independent experts is expected to make recommendations after the day-long hearing.
The seriousness with which the Vatican is taking the process is reflected in the fact that it dispatched not only Tomasi but also Maltese Bishop Charles Scicluna, who served for ten years as the Vatican’s top sex abuse prosecutor and is widely seen as a leading reformer.
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