UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
For immediate release: Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2016
Statement by Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 503 0003, bdorris@SNAPnetwork.org)
New Catholic bishops are NOT told to call law enforcement when abuse reports are made, according to a veteran Vatican reporter.
[Crux]
John Allen of Crux (formerly with the National Catholic Reporter) writes that the Vatican official who’s in charge of training new bishops
–“argued that bishops have no duty to report allegations to the police,” and
–“devoted just a few paragraphs” in a “long presentation” to “abuse prevention, using abstract language without concrete examples.”
Just troubling were the comments Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, who’s on the board of the Rome-based Gregorian University’s Centre for Child Protection. When asked “What should new bishops be told about sexual abuse?” Rossetti also made no mention of the need for church officials to call secular authorities.
In one sense, this isn’t surprising. As BishopAccountability.org has pointed out, “zero tolerance,” while often uttered by Catholic officials, isn’t even the official policy of the global church.
But it’s infuriating – and dangerous – that so many believe the myth that bishops are changing how they deal with abuse and that so little attention is paid when evidence to the contrary – like this disclosure by Allen – emerges.
(NOTE – the Vatican new bishops training was led by Paris-based Msgr. Tony Anatrella of the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, who Allen acknowledges is “a psychotherapist controversial for his views on homosexuality and “gender theory.”)
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