WARSAW (POLAND)
Reuters
February 18, 2019
Representatives of a Polish NGO helping victims of child abuse committed by Catholic priests left Warsaw early on Monday hoping to deliver a report to Pope Francis in the Vatican about Polish bishops neglecting paedophilia cases.
Their trip comes just days before an unprecedented Vatican conference on sex abuse gathering senior bishops from around the world to discuss how best the 1.3 billion-member Church can tackle a problem that has decimated the Church’s credibility.
The four-day meeting, starting on Thursday with the theme of “prevention of abuse of minors and vulnerable adults”, is intended to help faltering attempts to coordinate a global response to a crisis that is now more than two decades old.
The “Have No Fear” organisation, led by a former victim Marek Lisinski, hopes that the report, which accuses some bishops in devoutly Catholic Poland of failing to report crimes, will trigger resignations from top positions in the Church.
Such a development happened in Chile in 2018, where the Pope accepted resignations of several bishops after abuse scandals.
“Our report contains the neglect of bishops over the past years. … We hope that the Pope, after reading this report, will react in the same way as in Chile,” Lisinski told Reuters at Warsaw airport as he was just about to get onto the plane.
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