VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
La Croix International [France]
February 22, 2024
By Loup Besmond de Senneville, Matthieu Lasserre, Céline Hoyeau, and Alice d’Oléon
Pope Francis convened an unprecedented Vatican summit on sexual abuse in 2019 aimed at making the Catholic Church “a safe haven”. We look at what has happened since then.
Five years have passed since Pope Francis called the historic Vatican summit on preventing clergy sexual abuse. The event — which took place on February 21, 2019 –gathered presidents of bishops’ conferences, heads of religious orders and top officials of the Roman Curia.
The message was clear: there would be zero tolerance for sexual crimes perpetrated by the Catholic clergy. The Church would be a safe haven where victims could be heard, and anyone concealing such abuses would be punished.
Since then, the Holy See has issued several directives on preventing abuse. The pope published a “moto proprio” in May 2019 called Vos estis lux mundi (“You are the light of the world”), which mandates all clergy and religious to report all instances of sexual and spiritual abuse to their superiors. The document also requires the establishment of offices worldwide where anyone who believes they were victims of sexual abuse can seek help.
But in practice the implementation of these protocols varies greatly. Some bishops haven’t seen fit to translate the directives into their native language. Others have created offices run by clergy to respond to allegations of abuse, which compromises any denunciation of a crime committed by a priest or a religious. In Rome, where the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors is expected to submit its findings next October, no one seems to have an overview of how these standards have been applied – or misapplied.
Nevertheless, laypeople, priests, and religious around the world have continued to fight against the scourge of sexual abuse. Today, La Croix wants to give them a voice. It’s a lifelong battle as they work tirelessly for the Church to become, as Pope Francis wishes, “a safe haven” for all believers.
—
Fighting the inertia of the Church in the Philippines
Shay Cullen
Irish priest, Missionary Society of Saint Columban
Despite being 80 years old, Shay Cullen has no intention of giving up. The Irish priest, a Columban Missionary, has been working the past several decades in the Philippines. And it was there, in 1974, that he founded the Preda Foundation. The organization supports victims of sexual violence, particularly in Olongapo City, where the presence of an American naval base fueled human trafficking, a scandal he helped expose in international press.
“I’ve made significant progress in child protection, fighting drug trafficking, and combating sexual abuse,” Cullen says. “But when it comes to crimes within the Church, nothing has changed. Everything is covered up, and guilty priests never face justice.”
Nominated four times for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work benefiting nearly 20,000 children in the Philippines, the Irish priest says he regularly challenges the Catholic Church in the country. He expresses “sadness” at its inertia and notes that, despite the summit at the Vatican, the pope’s documents on the issue “are largely ignored in the Philippines.”
The only slight change, he adds, is that “there are now five or six more bishops open to the cause, whom I can trust.” Cullen is currently working to raise awareness among Filipino politicians about creating a specific court to judge crimes committed against children.
Transforming the culture of abuse into a “culture of care”
Ianire Angulo Ordorika
Religious sister, Servants of the Most Blessed Sacrament
Hailing from the Spanish Basque Country, the 48-year-old Ianire Angulo Ordorika is one of the leading voices in the fight against abuse within the Spanish Church. As a Servant of the Most Blessed Sacrament, she first encountered this issue while leading spiritual retreats for other sisters, some of whom confided in her about being abused in childhood or within the convent.
As a theologian and biblical scholar, Ordorika initially sought training on the matter to “avoid causing even more harm”. Unaware of her interest in the subject, the dean of the theology faculty where she taught in Granada invited her to join an interdisciplinary research group, created at the request of the Jesuit provincial for issues pertaining to abuse.
Through closely working with numerous victims, she has witnesses “a lot of resistance” to allegations of sexual abuse in Spain, and “a very superficial perception of the problem, based on preconceived ideas, which shows there has been no real listening to their stories”.
There is still “a long way to go to see this abuse crisis as an opportunity for the Church to grow”, Ordorika insists.
“It requires taking seriously the theological, structural, and spiritual challenges it presents to us,” she says. “We must admit that we are immersed in a culture of abuse and must undertake the long and complex task of transforming it into a culture of care.”
“Making the Church better” from within
Juan Carlos Cruz
Whistleblower in Chile
Juan Carlos Cruz, 60, is one of the whistleblowers who helped uncover sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Chile, which led to the collective resignation of the country’s bishops in 2018.
Cruz was a victim of Fernando Karadima, an infamous priest who was removed from clerical state and has since died. As a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Cruz has the ear of the pope and continues his mission to “make the Church better” from within.
In recent years, he says he has witnessed a change regarding the Church’s handling of clergy sexual abuse due to the efforts of Francis, whom he praises highly. But this change is not uniform and affects some countries more than others.
“Too many abuse survivors do not receive the justice they deserve, it’s incredibly frustrating,” Cruz laments, adding that he’ss heard countless such stories, sometimes spending entire nights talking to victims on the other side of the world.
Cruz believes the commission Pope Francis set up is making progress and has managed to establish abuse protocols with many episcopal conferences. But it must “be even more aggressive”,he insists. “In too many places around the world and in the Curia, including within the pope’s circle, the cancer of clericalism hampers the fight.”
A voice for consecrated women who are abused
Mary Lembo
Togolese religious, Sisters of Saint Catherine of Alexandria
“I call things as I see them,” says Mary Lembo, who endeavors to break the silence surrounding abused religious sisters in Africa.
The 54-year-old member of the Sisters of Saint Catherine of Alexandria is a prominent advocate for the voices of consecrated women. Listening to their testimonies as an educator and mentor during research conducted in five sub-Saharan African countries, Lembo has observed “a pastoral context where the imbalance of power was very clear, unfortunately leading to situations of spiritual and sexual abuse.”
With a master’s degree in clinical psychology and a doctorate from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, her 2019 thesis on the abuse suffered by consecrated women at the hands of priests has been widely praised. She continues to work on abuse prevention with students at the university.
“We help them identify the types of abuse and the preventative mechanisms that can be put in place based on their own cultural context,” Lembo explains.
While she believes that awareness work has significantly progressed in Africa, she also insists that “much remains to be done” to improve the support of victims.
“Crying out in the desert”
Jean-Guy Nadeau
Professor Emeritus of Theology, University of Montreal
Jean-Guy Nadeau, 73, felt like he was “crying out in the desert” when he first began fighting abuse in the Church. In 1990, he taught a course on sexual abuse and pastoral care at the University of Montreal in Canada – but it seemed it had little effect.
“At the time, my colleagues listened to me and applauded, but that didn’t change anything in their work. I believe that many still haven’t fully grasped the impact of abuse,” he says.
The French Canadian first realized this impact nearly ten years earlier while participating in a support program for trafficked women when he discovered that 80 percent of them had been victims of incest. This became the starting point for his doctoral thesis in practical theology. He then taught for thirty years at the University of Montreal. He also taught psychotherapy and spirituality at the University of Saint Paul in Ottawa.
As the author of Une profonde blessure: les abus sexuels dans l’Église catholique (2020), a book that analyzes the Church’s sexual abuse crisis, Nadeau is regularly sought after for his knowledge by bishops in Canada. He is also a member of the Center for Services in Restorative Justice (CSJR) in Montreal.
He believes that repairing the damage done by abuse is a significant task for the Church in Canada.
“While Canadian dioceses are more aware of their responsibilities since the Vatican summit on abuse, victims feel that the reparations are slow in coming.”