By Riazat Butt
The Observer
April 11, 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/11/pope-uk-visit-abuse-victims
The Vatican is being urged to arrange meetings between victims of clerical sexual abuse and Pope Benedict XVI when he comes to the UK later this year.
Victim support groups, including the Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests (Snap) and One in Four UK, said such encounters would help defuse anger and demonstrate the church's concern for its wounded congregation.
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| A poster announcing Pope Benedict XVI's forthcoming visit to Malta has been defaced with a Hilter-style moustache and the word "pedoflu" (paedophile). Photo by Ben Borg |
The call comes after the papal spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said that the pope had "written of his readiness to hold new meetings" with abuse victims in the "context of his concern" for them. Lombardi's statement is the strongest indication so far that the Vatican will continue to reach out to victims of clerical sexual abuse through papal visits. The pope's British visit in September would be a high-profile opportunity to do so.
There was further embarrassment for the Roman Catholic church in England yesterday, when it was reported that a paedophile priest was allowed to continue abusing victims despite being investigated by a child protection commission chaired by the archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols. Catholic officials denied that Nichols knew any details of the case involving the London priest, Father David Pearce, who was eventually arrested in 2008.
Church officials said last week that the papal itinerary had yet to be finalised and would neither confirm nor deny that the Vatican was looking at arranging meetings with abuse victims.
Snap, which is opening a UK office to cope with the demand for support from victims, said it "fully expected" meetings with abuse victims to happen in the UK. But victims' groups warned that such meetings must be open and transparent. Similar meetings in Australia and the US had been clandestine and orchestrated, they said, with church leaders selecting suitable candidates for encounters that, despite their secret and unofficial nature, attracted positive headlines.
Maeve Lewis, from One in Four, said: "In Australia and the USA, there was no opportunity for victims to set their own agenda. There was no chance to ask difficult questions."
Last month one abuse victim, Bernie McDaid, from Peabody, Massachusetts, revealed how he was chosen to attend a secret meeting with the pope during the 2008 papal visit to the US. McDaid was abused by a Boston-based priest who molested at least 40 boys in the area.
Cardinal Sean O'Malley, the archbishop of Boston, arranged the meeting in Washington DC between a mass and a papal address to Catholic educators after the pope declined an invitation to go to Boston, one of the areas worst affected by clerical sexual abuse.
McDaid told Associated Press he had left the chapel believing Benedict had grasped the scale of the problem and the pain caused by it. But two years of subsequent inaction by the church left him disillusioned. "Was it a PR move? Looking back at that now, I have to say it was. Everything they do is not about the children. It's about the church. It's always the church first," he said.
The past few months have seen devastating revelations about clerical sexual abuse and its concealment in churches and Catholic-run institutions across Europe, prompting outrage from the public, and profuse apologies and promises of investigations from the most senior Catholics on the continent.
Next weekend Benedict visits Malta, itself shaken after botched handling of abuse claims. It was reported this month that 45 priests had been accused of sexual offences since the creation of a church response team in 1999. None of the cases has been referred to the police – the retired judge who heads the project said that was the responsibility of victims and parents. The island, which has a population of 400,000, is 98% Catholic and abortion and divorce are banned.
Amid the expressions of regret from bishops about paedophile priests in their ranks, there is also quiet fury about the €750,000 bill for the two-day trip.
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