VATICAN CITY
Telegraph (UK)
Pope Francis told to hand priests over to police as new Vatican child abuse commission starts work
Nick Squires By Nick Squires, Rome 06 Feb 2015
Pope Francis should immediately hand over to the police all the Vatican documents on Catholic priests accused of sexually abusing children and “cast out the vipers” who are still being protected by the Church, a British survivor of clerical abuse said.
The Catholic Church needs to end decades of obfuscation and cover-ups by fully cooperating with civil authorities around the world instead of protecting abusive priests, moving them from parish to parish or subjecting them only to canon law, said Peter Saunders.
Peter Saunders, who was sexually abused as a child in London by two Catholic priests and the headmaster of his Catholic primary school, was appointed by the Pope to a new Vatican commission on child protection, which will hold its first full meeting on Friday in Rome.
“The Pope should release all the documents the Vatican has on abusive priests,” he said in an interview shortly after arriving in Rome for the meeting of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
“The Holy Father is a supreme monarch and bishops around the world are answerable to him. “If he says they must give up the documents, they can’t argue with that. It’s one of the things I will be saying to the commission – unless they throw me out.
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