GENEVA
National Catholic Reporter
John L. Allen Jr. | Jan. 17, 2014 All Things Catholic
Geneva was the setting for a riveting bit of theater Thursday as two Vatican heavyweights sat before a panel of independent experts who compose the United Nations’ Committee on the Rights of the Child to field tough questions about the sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic church for more than a decade.
The U.N.’s Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted in 1989, and the committee has held regular hearings since 1991 to monitor implementation in the 193 counties that have ratified it. In that sense, there was nothing exceptional about Thursday’s session, since the Holy See is just one more signatory nation. Yet the fact that this was the first time senior Vatican personnel have appeared in full public view (the session was webcast around the world) to talk about the abuse scandals in a venue where they couldn’t set the tone or control the conversation made it undeniably fascinating.
Heading into the event, anyone familiar with the Vatican’s history of occasionally tone-deaf commentary on the abuse crisis had to be holding their breath. If nothing else, Thursday seemed to demonstrate that they’ve learned something.
Rome dispatched two figures well suited to engage criticism: Italian Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, a career diplomat who represents the Vatican to the U.N. in Geneva, and Maltese Auxiliary Bishop Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s former top prosecutor on abuse cases who is widely seen as a leading voice for reform. (It was Scicluna who provided the day’s sound bite by insisting that the Vatican now “gets it.”)
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