GENEVA
Telegraph (UK)
Vatican claims ‘progress’ on child sex abuse at UN Committee against Torture hearing
Vatican officials tell United Nations Committee against Torture they have made progress stamping out paedophilia in Catholic Church
By Nick Squires 05 May 2014
The Catholic Church has seen a decline in cases of paedophilia after turning a corner in its efforts to tackle sex abuse of children by priests, the Vatican said on Monday.
Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s ambassador to the United Nations, told the UN Committee against Torture the Church had made significant progress in the last decade in stamping out the problem.
“There has been a stabilisation, even a decline in cases of paedophilia in the Church,” he said. “That shows that measures taken in the last 10 years by the Holy See and local churches are bringing about a positive result.”
The claims came as Vatican officials were hauled in front of the United Nations Committee against Torture in Geneva for the first time since the Holy See signed the UN’s convention against torture in 2002. Just four months earlier the Vatican was castigated for its handling of sex abuse scandals by the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child.
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