CANADA
Toronto Star
A tough new United Nations report challenges the Vatican to move decisively to curb clerical sex abuse, and advance child rights.
It’s a scathing report, bound to shake up Catholics who are comfortable in their pews. But the United Nations committee that has just lambasted the Vatican for letting clerical sex abusers get away with their crimes will help amplify Pope Francis’ message that the church in its entirety needs to clean up its act because its credibility is on the line.
Three popes now have forcefully condemned clerical abuse of children. John Paul II denounced it as “appalling sin” and outright “crime.” Benedict XVI promised to rid the church of such “filth.” And Francis has ordered Vatican prosecutors and bishops to “act decisively” to make sure that minors are protected and abusers are held to account. The Church’s moral witness and credibility is riding on this, he warned.
It is indeed, and the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child has forcefully reminded Catholic clerics and laity alike of just how harshly the wider world judges the church’s tragic failings in this area, including here in Canada, and its slowness to come to terms with past abuses. Stinging as it is, the high-profile UN report issued this past week serves to highlight some of what remains to be done. It stems from a routine review of how signatories to the Convention on the Rights of the Child are living up to their obligations. The Holy See signed on in 1990.
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