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New Maciel Revelations on the Heels of Papal Visit to Mexico Underscore Need for Accountability at the Very Top of the Roman Catholic Church
By: Center for Constitutional Rights Friday March 23, 2012
By Pam Spees, Senior Staff Attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights
While nothing is being done to protect the children of Mexico still being assaulted by Catholic clergy, plenty of preparations have taken place for this weekend’s papal visit. According to Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Pope will not be meeting with survivors of sexual abuse by priests while in Mexico as he has done in previous visits to other countries. The reason given is that these meetings would have to take place in “a context in which the bishops asked the pope to do it because it was a problem felt in society and the church, and that it was something desired.” It seems that in the case of the many abuse survivors in Mexico, their suffering and the fact that the systematic sexual abuse of children continues does not feel problematic enough for church officials to ask the Pope to address it.
The Pope’s visit to Mexico comes on the heels of recent revelations about the Vatican’s decades-long knowledge and cover-up of rape and sexual violence by the Mexican priest Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, one of its most favored, and notorious. Maciel’s case illustrates once again the Vatican’s role in creating a culture of sexual violence within the Church—and the resulting need for accountability at the very top.
In an effort to ensure accountability for these widespread crimes and end the on-going crisis, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a complaint last year with the International Criminal Court on behalf of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests charging Pope Benedict XVI and three other high-level Vatican officials with crimes against humanity for the widespread and systemic rape and sexual violence against children and vulnerable adults by priests and others associated with the church. The complaint was supported by more than 20,000 pages of documents consisting of findings and reports of commissions of inquiry and grand juries, testimonies, and other evidence of sex crimes by Catholic clergy and of the policies and practices involved in enabling the crimes and in the cover-ups in different countries.
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