VATICAN CITY
Channel News Asia
VATICAN CITY: The UN’s damning report on the Vatican’s handling of child sex abuse cases has turned up the pressure on the Church to convince a sceptical international community it has adopted a zero-tolerance approach.
“The Vatican has taken some steps forward, but they have been largely symbolic: energetic words rather than actions. The UN is right to have spoken out so strongly,” Vatican commentator Paolo Flores D’Arcais told AFP.
The Church was denounced by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on Wednesday for failing to stamp out predatory priests, and urged to hand over known and suspected abusers for prosecution. …
“Publicly remove offenders from ministry”
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) dismissed as inadequate the Vatican’s tense response that it had “taken note” of the UN report and would submit it to “a thorough study and examination”.
“Bishops don’t move predators, shun victims, rebuff prosecutors, shred evidence, intimidate witnesses, discredit whistleblowers, dodge responsibility, fabricate alibis… because of inadequate ‘study’,” SNAP said.
“The quickest way to prevent child sexual violence by Catholic clerics is for Pope Francis to publicly remove all offenders from ministry…. But like his predecessors, he has refused to take even tiny steps in this direction,” it said.
The Vatican’s secretary of state Pietro Parolin spoke of the Church’s “desire to adhere to the commission’s needs”.
But frustration over the Vatican’s handling of the matter was expressed even by some Catholic groups.
“If the pope is serious about turning the page on this scandal, he should immediately dismiss any bishop who oversaw a diocese in which a priest who abused children was shielded from the civil authorities,” said Jon O’Brien, head of the US lobby group Catholics for Choice.
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