VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter
April 23, 2018
by Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service
ATICAN CITY — In its efforts to help advise the pope, the Roman Curia, bishops’ conferences and local churches on protecting minors from abuse, a Vatican commission listened to abuse survivors from Great Britain and discussed the results of Australia’s public inquiry into its country’s institutional responses to abuse.
The plenary assembly of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (PCPM) April 20-22 was the first gathering with a group of new members appointed in February.
Pope Francis met with the commission members in a private audience April 21 and had met the day before with Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who is president of the 17-member commission. The commission secretary is U.S. Msgr. Robert Oliver, a Boston priest, canon lawyer and former promotor of justice at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The pope said he wanted to confirm the commission’s statutes, which were issued April 21, 2015, “ad experimentum” for a period of three years, according to a press statement by the commission April 22.
During their meeting, according to the statement, members “heard presentations on ‘The outcome of the Australian Royal Commission,’ on ‘The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child,’ and on ‘The role of faith communities in overcoming abuse trauma.’ ”
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