DENVER (CO)
Crux
Nov. 13, 2019
By Shannon Levitt and Ines San Martin
[Editor’s note: This is part one of an hour-long interview with Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, a member of Pope Francis’s commission for the protection of minors. Part two will be published tomorrow.]
Last week, Father Hans Zollner, a German Jesuit who is a member of Pope Francis’s Commission for the Protection of Minors, showed an uncharacteristic moment of impatience during a Q&A when he was asked by a priest why he wasn’t focusing on homosexuality as the real cause of clerical sex abuse.
The moment came after one of the talks he gave during a Nov. 6-8 conference on abuse prevention in Latin America organized by the interdisciplinary center for child protection of Mexico’s Pontifical University, CEPROME.
In an interview following the event, he explained that he was a bit under the weather so he was off his game somewhat, however, he stood by the core of his response to the priest: “There are things that you can repeat over and over again and people don’t get it. As I said in my response to him, it’s the same when people repeat over and over again that it is celibacy that causes the abuse.”
“You can quote whatever scientific report and government report out there stating that it is not the case, but people still think so,” Zollner said.
Some people continue to insist that the root cause for clerical sex abuse is either celibacy or homosexuality, but having reviewed the evidence, the priest – who also heads the Center for Child Protection at Rome’s Gregorian University – believes both of these ideas demonstrate that “people ask for simple answers to very complex problems, and they cling to a certain kind of idea simply because it seems to explain very easily where the problem is and how you can get rid of it.”
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