ROME
Manila Standard (Philippines)
ROME—A culture of silence across Asia may be keeping many victims of clergy sex abuse there from coming forward, a top Asian church official told a Vatican-backed conference on Thursday.
Monsignor Luis Antonio Tagle, the archbishop of Manila, said Asian deference to church authorities in places like the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Philippines might also have contributed to keeping a lid on reports. He said more and more victims had spoken out in the past five years in the Philippines, but the incidents of priests keeping mistresses still far outpaced the reports of priests preying on children.
Tagle addressed priests and bishops from 110 dioceses and 30 religious orders around the world who came to the four-day conference in Rome to learn how to craft guidelines on how to care for victims, investigate abuse allegations, and keep pedophiles out of the priesthood. The Vatican has set a May deadline for the policies to be submitted to Rome for review.
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