VATICAN CITY
Irish Times
Paddy Agnew
The Holy See’s handling of the clerical sex abuse crisis that has rocked the Catholic Church for much of the last 20 years has come in for unprecedented criticism from the UN’s Geneva based Committee on the Rights of the Child.
In a report released today, following on a Vatican deposition in Geneva two weeks ago, the UN body says that the Church has failed to “acknowledge the extent of the crimes committed”.
Attempts to silence victims of abuse, the regular transferring of abuser priests from parish to parish and the “code of silence” imposed on clergy all form part of a corporate church culture which leads the committee to conclude:
“The Committee is particularly concerned that in dealing with allegations of child sexual abuse, the Holy See has consistently placed the preservation of the reputation of the Church and the protection of the perpetrators above children’s best interests, as observed by several national commissions of inquiry.”
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