POLAND
The News
Former Polish prime minister Hanna Suchocka has been nominated by Pope Francis as a member of an eight-strong group to fight sexual abuse of minors within the Roman Catholic Church.
There are four women and four men in the group, including Marie Collins, who was abused by priests in her native Ireland in the 1960s and has campaigned for the protection of children and for justice for victims of clerical pedophilia.
Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, Baroness Sheila Hollins, a British psychiatrist, French child psychiatrist Catherine Bonnet, Italian canon law professor Claudio Papale and two Jesuit priests, Argentine moral theologian Humberto Miguel Yanez and German psychologist Hans Zollner also make up the group.
Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi has said that the group would examine options such as criminal action against offenders, education on child exploitation, most effective practices to screen priests and a clear definition of civil and clerical duties within the Church.
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