ROME
Catholic Herald (UK)
By CAROL GLATZ on Wednesday, 9 July 2014
The crisis of child abuse by clergy is not a thing of the past — it will linger until the Church humbly and courageously reaches out to all people still suffering in silence, said Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin.
“To some it might seem less than prudent to think that the Church would go out of its way to seek out even more victims and survivors,” opening up further possibilities for lawsuits, anguish and “trouble,” he told representatives from bishops’ conferences from around the world.
However, when Jesus tells pastors to leave behind their flock to seek out the one who is lost, that mandate “is itself unreasonable and imprudent but, like it or not, that is precisely what Jesus asks us to do,” he said in an introductory address on July 7.
The archbishop was one of a number of speakers at an annual meeting of the Anglophone Conference on the Safeguarding of Children, Young People and Vulnerable Adults. The 2014 conference was being held July 7-11 at the Pontifical Irish College in Rome and was hosted by bishops from Ireland and Chile. Every year, two different countries organize the conference.
Founded in 1996, the conference is an informal gathering bringing together delegates from the church in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, to share best practices and develop solid norms in the prevention and handling of the scandal of sexual abuse.
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