UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
“The Holy See gets it,” Bishop Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s former sex-crimes prosecutor, this week told the UN child protection committee in Geneva. Under an intense grilling, he hesitatingly added ”Let’s not say ‘too late’ or not. But there are certain things that need to be done differently.”
But will things be done differently by the Vatican? There is little evidence of positive changes underway. The Vatican continues to deny responsiblity for many of the abuse cases and to try to handle many of the remaining cases secretly in Vatican courts that impose minor penalties. Less than two years ago, Scicluna at a large public symposium criticized the Vatican’s approach to priest child sexual abuse as being characterized by “omerta”, the Italian word for the Mafia’s code of silence. For that surprising candor, Scicluna apparently was “promoted out” to become a bishop in Malta. Omerta seems alive and well at the Vatican.
What is much clearer after the UN hearings, as indicated below, is that the Vatican will most likely continue to try to operate above the law that applies to everyone else, unless compelled by outside governments to act according to international legal rules that protect children.
A potentially last hope for protecting children from this clique of self interested celibates, who are a law unto themselves, appears now to be President Obama, who as discussed below appears to be on a collision course with Pope Francis on several fronts. Many have already asked the President to act on priest child abuse by signing the active online petition available here, see:
The UN, the International Criminal Court, Ireland and other European governments to date have been thwarted in protecting children adequately from predatory priests by a really ruthless, fully funded and well connected Vatican hierarchy of childless men. Even the highly regarded and well funded Australian Royal Commission now investigating institutional child sexual abuse is apparently beginning to show signs of bending to new political and media pressure.
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