ROME
National Catholic Reporter
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome
To all those critics who have clamored for greater accountability for bishops who drop the ball on sex abuse cases, the Vatican’s top prosecutor this morning had a simple message: You’re absolutely right.
“We need to be vigilant in choosing candidates for the important role of bishop, and we also need to use the tools that canonical law and tradition give us for the accountability of bishops,” said Maltese Monsignor Charles Scicluna.
As a case in point, Scicluna bluntly said it is simply “not acceptable” for bishops to ignore anti-abuse protocols established by the Vatican or by their bishops’ conference. He said the church in Ireland, to take one example, “has paid a very high price for the mistakes of some of its shepherds.”
Sciculuna was apparently referring to a damning government report in 2011 which found that in the Irish diocese of Clone, which founded that both civil laws and church procedures on handling sex abuse complaints were flouted as recently as 2009.
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