IRELAND
Irish Examiner
Former President Mary McAleese has criticised Pope Francis’ comments on smacking children, warning it could signal a turning back of the clock in the church’s attitude to corporal punishment and children’s rights.
Earlier in the week, the Pope reaclled a conversation he had with a father who told him he sometimes hit his children, condoning the punishment.
In a letter to the Irish Independent, the former professor of law at Trinity highlights the Vatican is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
“Is the Holy See now doing what it claimed not to be doing a year ago, namely actively and internationally promoting the corporal punishment of children,” she wrote.
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