UNITED STATES
Catholic Online
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – A long-awaited UN report on the Vatican abuse scandals of decades past fires harsh criticism at the Church. The report, as well as victims and their advocates, all cite traditional Vatican secrecy as a key reason why many child abusers were left to repeat their crimes.
The report serves as a literal rap on the knuckles for the Vatican, by the UN, for the sins of its recent past.
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For its part, the Catholic Church, particularly under Benedict and Francis, has accepted its culpability in these cases, and continues to take steps to prevent the abuse of more children by unfit clergy.
Benedict made public apologies for the acts committed by members of the clergy in decades past and defrocked hundreds of offenders during the last two years of his pontificate. Pope Francis doesn’t appear to be letting up either. Pope Francis has said that Catholics should be ashamed of these incidents, and that everything possible to protect children must be done.
In the past, bishops notoriously discouraged victims from going public with her accusations, and generally handled the problems internally. In some cases, that meant discreetly moving priests to monasteries, or into treatment programs. In other cases priests were simply moved to neighboring parishes, and in most cases those priests continued to repeat their crimes.
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