VATICAN CITY
Orange County Register
By NICOLE WINFIELD / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis’ sex abuse advisory committee voted Saturday to sideline one of its members, a high-profile abuse survivor who had clashed with the commission over its mission.
Peter Saunders, a British advocate for victims, had been highly critical of the Vatican’s slow progress in taking measures to protect children and punish bishops who covered up for pedophile priests. He also wanted the commission to intervene immediately in individual cases, rather than just craft long-term policies to fight abuse.
During a commission meeting Saturday, “it was decided that Mr. Peter Saunders would take a leave of absence from his membership to consider how he might best support the commission’s work,” the Vatican said.
The decision is a blow to Francis’ efforts to show that he is tough on abuse, since the presence of Saunders and another abuse survivor, Marie Collins, had given the commission credibility.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Saunders said commission members, with one abstention, asked had him to step aside after concluding they could no longer trust him to work within the scope of the commission’s mandate. …
The commission had been highly critical of Francis’ decision to appoint a Chilean bishop despite allegations from abuse survivors that he had covered up for the country’s most notorious pedophile, the Rev. Fernando Karadima.
One of Karadima’s victims, Juan Carlos Cruz, joined Saunders on Saturday in Rome in hopes of speaking to the commission but was refused. Cruz had been proposed as a possible commission member but emails published in the Chilean media showed how the Chilean church hierarchy worked to keep him off the panel.
The head of the commission, Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, said after Saturday’s vote that Saunders had been asked to consider forming an external group of survivors to help advise the commission.
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