VATICAN CITY
Catholic Herald (UK)
By CINDY WOODEN on Wednesday, 16 April 2014
The Vatican’s scheduled May appearance before a United Nations committee monitoring adherence to an anti-torture treaty is being done willingly and not because Church officials were ordered to appear for questioning, a Vatican spokesman has said.
Jesuit Fr Federico Lombardi told reporters yesterday that as a signatory of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the Vatican promised to file periodic reports about its laws and efforts to fight torture.
Along with representatives of seven other states, Vatican representatives are scheduled to review the periodic report with committee members from May 5-6 in Geneva.
“This is part of the ordinary procedures to which all state parties to the convention adhere,” Fr Lombardi said. “It is not that the Holy See was convoked in a way outside the normal procedures.”
In addition, he said, the treaty was signed in 2002 “in the name of Vatican City State – not for the universal Church – because the convention has juridical characteristics” that apply to a geographical nation-state.
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