Un Committee Blasts Italy for Complicity in Church’s Abuse Scandals

By Claire Giangrave
Crux
February 12, 2019

https://cruxnow.com/church-in-europe/2019/02/12/un-committee-blasts-italy-for-complicity-in-churchs-abuse-scandals/

The Vatican flag flies with the flags of nations outside the U.N. headquarters in New York. (Credit: Bob Roller/CNS.)

A United Nations commission has published a scathing report of Italy’s handling of clerical sexual abuse, stating its concern with numerous cases of children being sexually abused by Catholic priests in the country and calling for an independent and impartial commission of inquiry.

“The committee is concerned about the numerous cases of children having been sexually abused by religious personnel of the Catholic Church in the State party and the low number of investigations and criminal prosecutions,” said a Feb. 7 report of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.

The committee had summoned the Italian government Jan. 22-23 before the UN’s High Commissioner in Geneva regarding the implementation of the 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child. Among the main topics was Italy’s alleged complicity in the Catholic Church’s child abuse scandals.

Italy was called to answer about its protection of the rights of minors regarding immigrant and refugee children and awareness campaigns throughout the territory, but the commission left ample space for the issue of clerical abuse.

The committee asked for a national plan to prevent and combat sexual exploitation of children and asked that the country “establish an independent and impartial commission of inquiry to examine all cases of sexual abuse of children by religious personnel of the Catholic Church.”

Other recommendations include “the transparent and effective investigation of all cases of sexual abuse allegedly committed by religious personnel of the Catholic Church, the criminal prosecution of alleged perpetrators, the adequate criminal punishment of those found guilty, and the compensation and rehabilitation of child victims, including those who have become adults.”

The UN panel, composed of experts in the protection of the rights of the child, invited the Italian government to establish safe channels for children to report abuse and to ensure their protection by preventing perpetrators who have been found guilty from having further access to minors.

During the hearing in late January, the committee addressed the fourth article of the 1929 Lateran Treaty between the Italian state and the Vatican, which, according to its analysis, allows clerics to skirt reporting clerical abuse to Italian authorities.

This issue surfaced in the UN committee’s final conclusions, which asked Italy to “undertake all efforts vis-a-vis the Holy See to remove obstacles to effective criminal prosecutions of religious personnel of the Catholic Church suspected of sexual abuse of children, in the 1985 revised Lateran Pacts, in order to fight impunity for such acts.”

In February 2014, the Committee on the Rights of the Child issued another blistering report accusing the Vatican of fostering a “code of silence” that “systematically” put the reputation of the Church and offending priests over the protection of child victims.

At the time, the panel also called for changes in Catholic teaching on issues such as abortion, contraception and gay marriage.

In its new report, the committee stressed the importance of making it mandatory for religious personnel “to report any case of alleged sexual abuse of children” to the Italian government.