El Pais
INÉS SANTAEULALIA / WALTER OPPENHEIMER / MARÍA R. SAHUQUILLO / EVA SAIZ Mexico City / London / Madrid / Washington 26 FEB 2014
On January 16, a United Nations’ panel of human rights experts questioned Vatican representatives on the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the main international treaty ensuring minors’ rights. During the day-long interrogation, the committee’s members — all independent experts — accused the Holy See of adopting policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over several decades, charges to which the Vatican’s representatives avoided responding directly. The panel subsequently released a report urging Pope Francis to open Vatican files on the pederasts and the churchmen who concealed their crimes, and hand them over to the courts.
Victims’ organizations around the world have welcomed the UN’s initiative, but most point out that individual pain cannot be cured with a report. Men and women who have been sexually abused by people in positions of trust have often spent their lives living with a terrible secret, as well as feelings of guilt. Those who dared to speak out have largely been ignored, as well as being put under pressure to remain silent by the Roman Catholic Church.
The victims are fighting not just for the sex offenders to be brought to justice, but also those who systematically protected these criminals. The blanket of silence thrown over the issue has added to their suffering. As early as 1962, the Vatican ordered all Catholic Church members to say nothing about sexual abuse, under threat of ex-communication. Over the years, the Holy See has pressured Catholics who knew about abuse to say nothing.
Complaints were often dealt with by transferring priests to other dioceses, or even abroad. In the United States, churches paid out millions of dollars in hush money. In many other cases, pressure from the Church, or fear of the resulting publicity, were sufficient to prevent victims of sexual abuse from speaking out. There are no exact figures on the number of such cases around the world. The Vatican, which has accepted and expressed its sorrow over the child abuse that has taken place among its ranks, has nevertheless refused to provide any information that would help to assess the scale of the problem.
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