IRELAND
Irish Examiner
By Nicole Winfield, Vatican City
In a damning report, the UN committee also severely criticised the Holy See for its attitudes toward homosexuality, contraception, and abortion and said it should change its own canon law to ensure children’s rights and their access to healthcare are guaranteed.
The UN blasted the “code of silence” that has long been used to keep victims quiet, saying the Holy See had “systematically placed preservation of the reputation of the Church and the alleged offender over the protection of child victims”. …
Executive director of abuse survivor group One in Four Maeve Lewis said: “This vindicates absolutely what survivors of abuse have been saying over the past decade. The Vatican has always tried to lay responsibility for child sexual abuse on the individual offenders and on local bishops.
“It has never admitted that its policies and regulations ensured that priests were protected at the expense of children’s safety. This falsehood is now exposed.
“If the Vatican is to retain any credibility it must immediately abide by the committee’s recommendations, hand over all its records and immediately put in place a policy of mandatory reporting of sexual crimes.”
The report urged the Holy See to establish clear rules for the mandatory reporting of abuse to police and to support laws that allow victims to report crimes even after the statute of limitations has expired.
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.