GENEVA
National Catholic Reporter
Brian Roewe | Feb. 5, 2014
A United Nations watchdog group for children’s rights chastised the Vatican Wednesday for a series of substandard policies that fall short in protecting children, specifically from sexual abuse.
The condemnation came from the U.N. Committee on Convention of the Rights of the Child, which is made up of 18 independent experts that monitor the implementation of the 1989 U.N. treaty — ratified by the Vatican in 1990 — related to child protection and children’s rights.
While it welcomed the Vatican’s recent “open and constructive dialogue” and the Vatican’s willingness “to change attitudes and practices” related to child protection, the committee noted that the Vatican’s response to the U.N. body came “with a considerable delay” of 14 years. The U.N. committee said that most of its recommendations following its initial 1995 review had not fully addressed.
Though the latest U.N. report addresses a range of issues, such as the Vatican’s use of discriminatory terms like “illegitimate children,” or its handling of children born of priests, the U.N. child’s rights committee held its “deepest concern” for the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy, estimating that clergy have “been involved in the sexual abuse of tens of thousands of children worldwide.
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