VATICAN CITY
Religion News Service
David Gibson | February 6, 2015
VATICAN CITY (RNS) When Marie Collins first joined a new Vatican commission to fight sex abuse set up by Pope Francis, she had high hopes for quick action despite a wariness of church promises made in the decades since she was raped by a priest as a girl in Ireland.
Francis had been shaking up the church in remarkable ways almost since the moment of his election nearly two years ago, and last May he finally set his reformist sights on the clergy sexual abuse scandal: he named Collin and seven others —mainly lay people and experts — to an unprecedented commission tasked with giving him recommendations for changes.
In December, he doubled the commission’s membership, adding including another prominent abuse victim.
Yet it’s only now, as the full commission begins a critical three-day Vatican meeting on Friday (Feb. 6), that Collins thinks advocates have a chance to really shake things up – though there are still no guarantees.
“I find it very frustrating how slowly the church moves, as a lay person coming in from the outside,” Collins, 68, said in an interview on the eve of the meeting, which runs through Sunday.
“It’s a shock to the system really how slowly they move,” she said. “I would definitely like to see things moving more quickly. But you have to try and achieve what you can achieve. All we can do is get in there and try and move as fast as we can. But I personally do have a great frustration with the speed of the church.”
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