ROME (ITALY)
Crux
November 16, 2018
By Claire Giangravè
Italian bishops have concluded their Nov. 12-14 extraordinary assembly. New guidelines on the question of clerical sexual abuse were discussed and presented, with the creation of a National Advisory Center to aid bishops and the promise to make a “more radical evangelical choice” in terms of prevention.
“Woe to whoever touches children!” said Italian Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, President of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), during a press conference Nov. 15, adding that clerical sexual abuse “is a problem that the Italian Church intends to resolve in radical terms.”
At Pope Francis’s request, the Italian episcopacy was asked to create new guidelines on clerical sexual abuse to be added to the already existing ones published in 2014 and focusing primarily on prevention, information and education.
Italian bishops were presented with the new guidelines, which were created by an ad hoc commission, and will take them back to their dioceses to evaluate them until the next episcopal gathering in May 2019.
The guidelines will not be made public until the bishops approve them by vote, though Bassetti said that he intends to bring some of its content to the February 21-24 summit of representatives from episcopal conferences from around the world that will focus solely on the clerical sexual abuse crisis.
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