GENEVA
The Guardian
Lizzy Davies in Rome
theguardian.com, Thursday 16 January 2014
The Vatican has come under intense pressure from a United Nations panel to explain its handling of clerical sex abuse as representatives of the Holy See were questioned on the global scandal for the first time at length and in public.
International experts from the UN’s committee on the rights of the child grilled a delegation from the Holy See, which is regarded as a sovereign state, on Thursday, as victims of sexual abuse by priests flew in to Geneva to watch the highly unusual proceedings.
As the hearing got underway, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See’s envoy to the UN, made it clear that there was no excuse for violent or exploitative behaviour towards children. “Such crimes can never be justified, whether committed in the home, in schools, in community and sports programs, in religious organisations structures,” he said.
But he kept to the line that the Holy See was distinct from the global Catholic church and had little jurisdiction in countries beyond the Vatican city state. The guidelines already put in place by the Holy See and Catholic churches around the world had, “when properly applied”, presented a way of eliminating the scourge of abuse, he said.
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