VATICAN CITY
New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
FEB. 6, 2016
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis’ sex abuse advisory committee voted Saturday to sideline one of its members, a high-profile abuse survivor who had clashed with the commission over its mission.
Peter Saunders, a British advocate for victims, had been highly critical of the Vatican’s slow pace of progress in taking measures to protect children and punish bishops who covered up for pedophile priests. He had also wanted the commission to intervene immediately in individual cases, rather than just craft long-term policies to fight abuse.
During a commission meeting Saturday, “it was decided that Mr. Peter Saunders would take a leave of absence from his membership to consider how he might best support the commission’s work,” the Vatican said.
The decision is a blow to Francis’ efforts to show that he is tough on abuse, since the presence of Saunders and another abuse survivor, Marie Collins, had given the commission credibility.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Saunders said commission members, with one abstention, asked had him to step aside after concluding they could no longer trust him to work within the scope of the commission’s mandate.
“I do not want to prevent the work of the commission, the good work that the commission is doing from going ahead, so I had no choice but to step aside,” he said.
He said the Vatican’s inaction in the face of continuing cases of children being raped and molested “made me lose faith in the process and lose faith in Pope Francis.”
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