VATICAN CITY
Yahoo! News
Molly Jackson
February 11, 2016
Survivors of clergy sex abuse and their advocates are dismayed by a document for new Catholic bishops which suggests they do not need to report abuse to legal authorities, released this month after being used at a September training session for new church leaders.
“According to the state of civil laws of each country where reporting is obligatory, it is not necessarily the duty of the bishop to report suspects to authorities, the police or state prosecutors in the moment when they are made aware of crimes or sinful deeds,” the guidelines say, according to the Guardian.
Criticism of the document was first launched by the Crux, a Catholic-news website.
Associate editor John L. Allen, Jr. also questioned why prevention strategies – drafted by Pope Francis’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors in response to a sex abuse crisis that has shaken the Church over the past two decades – were not part of new bishops’ training.
Although there are no exact numbers of victims and abusive priests worldwide, the Vatican investigated about 3,000 claims of priestly abuse between 2001 and 2010. According to Crux, American bishops have spent more than $260 million since 2002 to prevent abuse.
For those who had hoped Francis’s popular empathy and “human touch” would bring new healing between Church leaders and laity, the guidelines reopened feelings of betrayal. The Pope had promised to bring a “zero tolerance” attitude to sex abuse claims
“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 … emerges,” said a statement from the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).
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