GENEVA
Wall Street Journal
U.N. Panel Criticizes Vatican Over Child Abuse Scandals
By LIAM MOLONEY
Feb. 5, 2014
ROME—A United Nations panel Wednesday praised the Vatican’s commitment to change practices that resulted in clergy being able to sexually abuse children. It rejected, however, the Holy See’s main argument in its own defense: that it has limited jurisdiction to tackle such exploitation.
The rejection is a blow to the Catholic Church’s attempts to deal with a number of abuse scandals that have driven away many of the faithful.
The Geneva-based Committee on the Rights of the Child, which ensures that signatories implement the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, said, in very strong terms, that Vatican policies, such as not reporting sexual abuse cases to local law enforcement agencies or transferring suspected perpetrators of sexual abuse to other parishes or abroad to avoid confronting the problem, lead to tens of thousands of children world-wide being molested. …
One of the Vatican’s main arguments as to why it hasn’t reported abuses to local authorities is that the convention applies only to the Vatican City State—the world’s smallest country and nestled in the center of Rome. The Vatican’s view is that abuses conducted by the clergy fall under the jurisdiction of the country where these were alleged to have been committed.
On Wednesday, however, the U.N. committee totally rejected this argument.
“While being fully conscious that bishops and major superiors of religious institutes do not act as representatives or delegates of the Roman Pontiff, the Committee nevertheless notes that subordinates in Catholic religious orders are bound by obedience to the Pope” under cannon law, it wrote.
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