UNITED STATES
Daily Hampshire Gazette
As he takes on the issue of clergy sex abuse, Pope Francis must break with the past and move to resolve, once and for all, a scandal that has plagued the Catholic Church for years. The new pope will meet soon with a group of sex abuse victims at the Vatican and has said he will not tolerate any instance of a priest raping or molesting a child. Those are only words.
The planned meeting with a half-dozen victims will mark the first such encounter for the new pope. The session comes after the Vatican has been severely criticized by two recent United Nations reports. Twice this year, the Vatican has been forced to appear before a UN committee in Geneva and be peppered with questions about its handling of abuse cases.
The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child concluded in February that the Vatican systematically placed its interests over those of victims by enabling priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children through a code of silence.
And on May 23, the U.N. Committee Against Torture concluded that Vatican officials failed to report sex abuse charges properly, moved priests rather than discipline them and failed to pay adequate compensation to victims. That report found that the Vatican, despite its claims to the contrary, exercises worldwide control over its bishops and priests and must comply with the U.N.’s anti-torture treaty.
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