Vatican Grilled by Un over Child Sex Abuse: ‘the Holy See Gets It’

By John Heilprin
Toronto Star
January 16, 2014

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/01/16/vatican_grilled_by_un_over_child_sex_abuse_the_holy_see_gets_it.html

Vatican's UN Ambassador Monsignor Silvano Tomasi, left, speaks with former Vatican chief prosecutor of clerical sexual abuse Charles Scicluna prior to the start of a questioning over clerical sexual abuse of children at the headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, on Thursday in Geneva.

The Vatican came under blistering criticism from a UN committee Thursday for its handling of the global priest sex abuse scandal, facing its most intense public grilling to date over allegations that it protected pedophile priests at the expense of victims.

The Vatican insisted it had little jurisdiction to sanction pedophile priests around the globe, saying it was for local law enforcement to do so. But officials conceded that more needs to be done and promised to build on progress already made to become a model for others, given the scale of the problem and the role the Holy See plays in the international community.

“The Holy See gets it,” Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican's former sex crimes prosecutor, told the committee. “Let's not say too late or not. But there are certain things that need to be done differently.”

He was responding to a grilling by the UN committee over the Holy See's failure to abide by terms of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which, among other things, calls for signatories to take all appropriate measures to keep children from harm. Critics allege the church enabled the rape of thousands of children by encouraging a culture of coverup to defend its reputation.

Groups representing victims of clerical abuse, who have been active in civil litigation against the church, gave the UN committee hundreds of pages of documents that informed the questioning. The groups have welcomed the hearing as the first time the Vatican has had to publicly defend its record in what amounted to a courtroom cross-examination where no limits were placed on the questioning.

But Barbara Blaine, president of the Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said Thursday that the Vatican's responses seem like “more of the same.”

The scene inside the conference room at UN headquarters in Geneva was remarkable by UN standards, with committee members themselves marveling at how such a powerful institution as the Holy See could be hauled before a relatively obscure UN human rights committee to answer uncomfortable questions before a packed audience.

It also was remarkable by Vatican standards. Traditionally the Holy See has insisted that the Vatican as an institution bore little or no responsibility for the problem, blaming scandals and cases on individual priests or their bishops over whom the Vatican has no real control.

While insisting on that legal separation, though, the Vatican did respond to questions about cases even where it had no jurisdiction or involvement, and on many occasions welcomed recommendations on ways to make children safer.

“I'm with you when you say, 'All these nice words will not mean anything . . . if there is not more transparency and accountability on the local level,'“ Scicluna told committee member Benyam Mezmur, an Ethiopian academic who asked what it would take for the Holy See to sanction bishops who fail to report pedophiles to police.

Scicluna has been credited even by victims with helping bring the Vatican around over the past decade, overhauling its internal norms to make it easier to defrock abusers and calling for greater accountability by bishops who allowed priests to roam free.

He said local criminal prosecutors must go after anyone — “whoever these people are” — who obstructs justice.

The UN committee is made up of independent experts — not other UN member states — and it will deliver final observations and nonbinding recommendations on Feb. 5.