Vatican Facing Un Showdown on Sex Abuse Record

News 12
January 15, 2014

http://www.cbs12.com/template/inews_wire/wires.international/3c009e85-www.cbs12.com.shtml

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Vatican faces a stiff challenge of its abuse record tomorrow as it defends itself publicly for the first time against allegations it enabled the rape of thousands of children by protecting pedophile priests.

The Holy See will be grilled by a U.N. committee in Geneva on its 1990 implementation of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Holy See submitted a first implementation report in 1994. But it didn't provide progress reports for nearly a decade.

Victims groups and human rights organizations are providing written testimony and other evidence outlining what they say is the global scale of the problem.

They say, for example, that Vatican documents show its officials knew about a notorious Mexican molester decades before taking action, and correspondence from a Vatican cardinal praised a French bishop's decision to protect his abusive priest.