GENEVA
The Hindu
The Catholic Church must be more transparent in dealing with child sexual abuse by its clergy and mete out fair punishments, a UN human rights panel said on Thursday, as a Vatican envoy said it has taken steps to eliminate such crimes in the future.
The Holy See had issued guidance to national churches, some of which had also drawn up their own guidelines, and Catholic non-governmental groups had set up educational programmes on sexual abuse, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi told the Committee on the Rights of the Child.
“The results of combined efforts taken by local churches and by the Holy See presents a framework that when properly applied will help eliminate the occurrence of child sexual abuse by clergy and other church personnel,” the Vatican’s Geneva envoy said.
More than 4,000 cases of sexual abuse of children had been reported to the Vatican in the past decade, US Cardinal Levada said in early 2012.
The UN committee’s vice-chairwoman, Sara De Jesus Oviedo Fierro, demanded that the Vatican provide more details on abuse cases and on the countermeasures as demanded previously by the UN body.
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