NEW ORLEANS (LA)
Catholic News Service
June 12, 2018
By Peter Finney Jr.
Despite groundbreaking steps the U.S. Catholic Church has taken to prevent the sexual abuse of minors in the past 16 years, a potential “complacency” in following safety protocols could pose a challenge to those hard-won advances.
Francesco Cesareo, chairman of the National Review Board, shared that view with diocesan safe environment and victims’ assistance coordinators attending the Child and Youth Protection Catholic Leadership Conference in New Orleans.
The 13-member lay board advises the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on safe environment protocols for children in Catholic parishes, schools and organizations.
In his talk June 6, Cesareo that because a large percentage of abuse claims deal with incidents that happened many years and even decades ago, the issue may appear now to be less urgent.
“The church has responded very concretely to this question and very proactively, but one of the issues now is that because it is now historical — you have newly ordained priests who were children when this broke out — the urgency of it is not there,” he said. “You have bishops who are new. They weren’t there in 2002. The urgency is not there.”
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