WARSAW (POLAND)
Catholic News Service
March 16, 2019
By Jonathan Luxmoore
A top Polish Catholic leader, named the first bishops’ conference delegate for child protection, welcomed a church report on sexual abuse by clergy in his country and vowed efforts to combat it.
Archbishop Wojciech Polak of Gniezno spoke at a March 14 news conference launching the abuse report, compiled from dioceses and religious orders by the Polish church’s Statistics Institute and Child Protection Center. The report listed 382 cases of sexual abuse between 1990 and 2018, involving 625 minors: 58 percent boys and 42 percent girls.
“Every one of these victims should awaken pain, shame and guilt, both among clergy and in me as a leader,” said Archbishop Polak. “We can never do enough.”
The report said canonical procedures had been followed by the church in 95 percent of instances, with three-quarters of cases brought to completion. However, it added that only a quarter of cases had seen the defrocking of abusers; 40 percent ended in restrictions on priestly ministry.
Work transfers, suspensions and acts of penance had been ordered in 12 percent of cases, while 13 percent of cases had been discontinued and 10 percent of suspected abusers acquitted.
The report said “differences of reliability” among Polish dioceses and religious orders in responding to enquiries had necessitated “additional monitoring and data verification,” while there had been “a certain ignorance” about church rules on abuse.
Last September, Poland’s bishops responded to accusations of failure to tackle clerical abuse by setting out plans for new child protection guidelines, as well as prevention programs and data collection.
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