Vatican Insider
December 1, 2011
http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/world-news/detail/articolo/chiesa-church-iglesia-pedofilia-paedophilia-10421/
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| The Pope during his visit to London in 2010 |
It is the manner in which the Vatican handled the cases of pedophilia in the Benedictine abbey of Ealing that one understands that much has changed in the approach to the problem by the hierarchies. Until a few decades ago the most difficult cases were managed in secrecy, often by simply shifting the guilty party from one diocese to another, today everything is different.
Today, if there are suspicions, it is the Vatican that orders inspections, requests that the archives be opened and demands absolute transparency. This is a sharp change. In Ealing, the Vatican had ordered a high-level investigation on sexual abuses after it was uncovered that in an ecclesiastical institution in London children had been mistreated for decades. The monks and lay teachers at Ealing Abbey and the nearby independent school of «St. Benedict» were accused of long-term abuse between the sixties and 2009. The former Holy Office had arranged a visit: the first investigation of child abuse in Britain. This change goes hand in hand with a more severe law enacted in Great Britain. The latest news is that the High Court in London ruled that the Catholic Church can be held responsible for acts committed by priests, paving the way to claims for damages by abuse victims.
The ruling concerns a woman aged 47, who reported to have been raped for years by a priest when she was only a child and had made ??a claim for damages, but it could apply to all lawsuits involving the Catholic Church in Great Britain. The violence against this woman appears to have been perpetrated in a home for children in the diocese of Portsmouth, in the Hampshire region, run by an order of nuns. Judge Alistair MacDuff ruled that «legally» the Church «can be considered indirectly responsible» for the actions committed by the accused priest, Father Wilfred Baldwin. The crackdown imposed by the Holy See goes hand in hand with the Pope’s thoughts. During a meeting held just three days ago with some U.S. bishops, Benedict XVI urged them to face the scandal of sexual abuse. It was the first time that Benedict XVI met with American bishops after his U.S. visit in 2008, at the height of the accusations and scandals involving pedophile priests and the responsibilities of Bishops in covering the facts.
The pontiff recalled the days of his visit, in which he wished to "personally recognize the suffering of the victims and the honest efforts made both to ensure the safety of our children and to treat the allegations raised in a proper and transparent manner”. The Pope said he hoped that «the conscientious efforts made by the Church to deal with this reality, will help the broadest community [social] to recognize the causes, the spread and devastating consequences of sexual abuse, responding effectively to this scourge that touches all levels of society». However, he asked that « from this point of view the standards required by the Church be required and maintained by all other institutions, without exception».
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