UNITED STATES
Seattle Times
By Mary Dispenza
Special to The Times
A WEEK ago, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the Italian Episcopal Conference, defended the Vatican’s policy of not requiring clergy to report child sex abuse to the authorities. “The Vatican requires national laws to be respected, and we know that there is no such duty (to report abuse) under Italian law,” he told reporters.
It was a disappointment because Pope Francis had just appointed a commission to advise him on sex-abuse policy. Bagnasco’s comments sounded like business as usual.
The comments also ignore the scathing report issued by a United Nations human-rights committee in February, which rebuked the Vatican for its long-standing and systematic cover-up of sexual abuse of children around the world. The report made concrete suggestions for ways to protect children in the future.
I call on Pope Francis and his newly formed committee to respond to Bagnasco’s words by showing they take the U.N. report seriously. To do so, he must take action now to acknowledge the Vatican’s leadership role and initiate a worldwide process to end priest sexual abuse of children and to begin healing the Catholic Church.
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