UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage
William D. Lindsey
United Nations Releases Scathing Report on Handling of Abuse Crisis by Catholic Authorities
The United Nations Committee on Protection of the Rights of the Child has now released its report (pdf file) following the Vatican’s grilling (and here) by that committee in mid-January. The report is scathing. The committee report urges the Vatican to act immediately to remove from ministry all priests known to have abused or suspected of having abused children, and to report them to civil authorities.
In dry, understated statements, the committee notes (e.g., I.2) that the Vatican has stonewalled the U.N. for years now, as that body has sought to call the Vatican (and the Catholic hierarchy as a whole) to accountability for its handling of the abuse crisis in the Catholic church. As the report suggests, at the recent hearing before the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Vatican continued its obfuscation, refusing to answer direct questions in any direct manner:
The Committee regrets that most of the recommendations contained in the Committee’s concluding observations of 1995 on the initial report of the Holy See (CRC/C/15/Add.46) have not been fully addressed (IV.9).
The committee flatly rejects (III.8) the argument that Archbishop Silvano Tomasi and Bishop Charles Scicluna sought to float at their recent hearing before the U.N. committee–that is, that the Vatican has no effective authority over bishops in dioceses around the world, or over the superiors of religious communities. The committee also rejects the Vatican argument that it has complied with the concerns of the U.N. about children’s rights and safety, when canon law continues to ignore the provisions of the U.N. about these matters, “in particular those relating to children‘s rights to be protected against discrimination, violence and all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse” (IV.13)
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.