GENEVA
The New York Times
LAURIE GOODSTEIN, NICK CUMMING-BRUCE and JIM YARDLEY
FEB. 5, 2014
In a hard-hitting report applauded by victims as a landmark in the Roman Catholic Church’s clerical sex-abuse scandal, a United Nations committee on Wednesday called on the Vatican to remove all child abusers from its ranks, report them to law enforcement and open the church’s archives so that bishops and other officials who concealed crimes could be held accountable.
The report, issued by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, is likely to put pressure on Pope Francis to make concrete changes in the way the church handles abuse cases and put some muscle into the commission on abuse that he announced in December, whose members and mission have not yet been specified.
The Vatican responded on Wednesday that it had already made many of the changes called for in the report, and that the report’s conclusions were out of date.
The report, however, was harshly critical of the church’s current practices, not just those of the past. “The committee is gravely concerned that the Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, has not taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted policies and practices which have led to the continuation of the abuse by and the impunity of the perpetrators,” the report concluded. …
But the Vatican press office said in a statement that it regretted to see the United Nations committee “attempt to interfere” with Catholic teaching and the church’s “exercise of religious freedom.”
Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a blog post that the report was “weakened” by the panel’s decision to include objections to Catholic teaching on culture war issues. …
Barbara Dorris of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, who was abused by a priest as a child, said the report was “long overdue.”
“It is wonderful that the U.N. has spoken so clearly about what the Vatican has done — and what it has failed to do,” said Ms. Dorris, who is based in St. Louis, Mo. “To us, it is a call for the civil authorities to step in. Church officials have proved they cannot police themselves.”
But Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the pope’s permanent observer to the United Nations in Geneva, characterized the United Nations report in a radio interview as “a rather negative approach” to steps the Vatican had already taken, and said the report “in some ways is not up-to-date.” He said a Vatican delegation had told the committee about “concrete measures” that were being taken, including the new papal commission.
Ashley McGuire of The Catholic Association, a lay organization founded to help defend the church in the news media, called the report a “stunning and misguided attack” that “overlooks the fact that the Catholic Church is the leading advocate for women and children and human rights in general around the world,” on issues like sex trafficking and child hunger.
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