MALTA
Times of Malta

Wednesday, February 19, 2014, 00:01 by Martin Scicluna

The United Nations Committee on Rights of the Child has recently delivered a swingeing report on the systemic and long-standing sexual abuse of children by the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, the committee undermined the impact of this important report by straying beyond its terms of reference to areas like women’s rights, abortion and contraception, allowing those in the Church so minded to cast doubt on the credibility of the report.

This is a pity because the main thrust of the committee’s 16-page report contains a damning indictment of the Vatican’s “systematic” adoption of policies allowing priests to abuse children sexually. The report urges the Holy See to “immediately remove” all clergy who are known or suspected of having abused minors and to report them to the civil authorities.

It also states that it should hand over its…