GENEVA
Irish Independent
NICK SQUIRES IN ROME – PUBLISHED 06 MAY 2014
The Roman Catholic Church has seen a decline in cases of paedophilia after turning a corner in its efforts to tackle sexual abuse of children by priests, the Vatican said yesterday.
Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, its ambassador to the United Nations, told the UN Committee against Torture that the church had made significant progress in the past 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 brought before the committee in Geneva for the first time since the Holy See signed the UN’s convention against torture in 2002. Just four months ago, 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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