Showing posts with label Sexual abuse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sexual abuse. Show all posts

Saturday 12 April 2014

Catholic church asking for forgiveness and promising to take action against child-abusers

The Roman Catholic Church has received a very bad name in the last few years concerning its treatment of children abusers.

English: Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI who heard a lot about the abuse but did not do much (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In February the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child accused the Vatican of systematically turning a blind eye to decades of abuse and attempting to cover up sex crimes.
The scathing report urged the church to immediately hand over its records on the abuse of tens of thousands of children, immediately remove anyone suspected of abuse from their post and refer the matter to civil legal authorities. The Vatican called the report unfair and ideologically slanted.
Francis' words strike a different tone to comments he made in March to an Italian newspaper in which he defended the church's record.

It took many years before a pope was willing to admit there was something strongly wrong in his community of church leaders. But on Friday Pope Francis dared to speak a second time about the "evil" committed by priests who molested children. Now he made the first public plea of the Catholic Church for forgiveness for all that horror which was brought onto so many children.

The Argentine-born pontiff said the Church, which last month named a high-level group on the scandal including an abuse victim, had to take a stronger stand on a scandal that has haunted it for more than two decades, and indicated there would be repercussions for perpetrators.
"I feel compelled to personally take on all the evil that some priests - quite a few in number, (although) obviously not compared to the number of all priests - to personally ask for forgiveness for the damage they have done for having sexually abused children,"
he told members of the International Catholic Child Bureau.
"The church is aware of this ... personal, moral damage carried out by men of the church, and we will not take one step backward with regards to how we will deal with this problem, and to the sanctions that must be imposed.
"On the contrary, we have to be even stronger. Because you cannot interfere with children,"
 Francis said in unscripted comments as he addressed the children's rights body.

The many adults who got some nasty experiences in their life can look forward (perhaps) to a point where the church will not deny such allegations any more, and would sanction those who are still alive. Probably most men and woman damaged by actions done by priests or nuns shall have to come to terms that the person shall have died already. But they will be able to come more at ease knowing that the problem at lsat shall be recognised and handled by the church and that in the future such case will be treated sooner.

It would be wrong to think such things could only happen in the Catholic church or in very closed communities like the Jehovah's Witnesses were elders were overly protected by the organization of their church. The JW and Catholic church the last few years managed to silence all those who wanted to get out what happened in their community. It looked like no "sanctions" were church-enforced and no civil justice authorities were ever involved. Though they all should know that they should follow the legal requirements and bring to court any person who abuses an other person or animal.

Strange to hear the pope saying:
"The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution that has moved with transparency and responsibility. No one has done more, and yet the church is the only one that is being attacked,"
In Belgium we have seen none such thing and we only can see that everything is done to make it so impossible to pursue those who went against the rights of children or the weaker ones (invalids).
Criticism that Francis has not taken a bold enough stand on the issue, and did not meet sexual abuse victims in Italy and in a July trip to Brazil, has been a rare black spot in the overwhelmingly positive response to the pontiff in the 13 months he has been in office.
In particular, abuse groups have called on the church to discipline bishops accused of moving known child molesters from parish to parish, allowing abuse to continue.

"It's nice to have expressions of concern. But actions need to happen, and people have been waiting an awfully long time for that to occur,"
 said Terry McKiernan, founder of BishopAccountability.org, which documents abuse cases.
"The best thing he could have done today would have been to step up to the microphone and announce that he is beginning to remove bishops who have behaved criminally in keeping priests in ministries where they don't belong, moving them around so that they continue to be a danger to children."
Lots of Bishops, the one who you would consider to be high in rank and who should give the example,  are left untouched, while certain lower people were set out of the parish.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), which advocates for child protection and urges greater transparency in the church, said Francis' words should be received with caution.

"We beg the world's Catholics: be impressed by deeds, not words. Until the pope takes decisive action that protects kids, be skeptical and vigilant,"
 SNAP Outreach Director Barbara Dorris said.
"This may be the first time a pope has talked of sanctions against complicit bishops. But that is all it is: talk."
Under Francis' direction, the Vatican announced in December the creation of a new dedicated group to help the church deal with the abuse crisis. Its members were named in late March.
The body of clerics and lay people includes Marie Collins, a survivor of abuse in Ireland in the 1960s who has campaigned for the protection of children and for justice for victims.
Collins, a founding trustee of the Irish abuse victims' organization One in Four, has in the past pushed for punishment for bishops who failed to implement church rules on the protection of children.
Child abuse litigation has cost the Catholic Church some $3 billion in settlements in the United States alone, and shaken the moral authority of leaders of the world's largest religious denomination.

It is a pity the church had first come so much under fire before she took appropriate action. The pope had come under fire for taking no action since the commission itself was announced in December. In March Pope Francis named the commission members but still told newspapers that the church had been unfairly attacked for its abuse record. His defensive tone, coupled with the perceived languishing of the commission, led survivors and church commentators to question whether he “got it” on sex abuse.

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Television view (Washington Post): Pope asks for forgiveness for ‘evil’ of priest child abuse
Reuters video: Pope asks for forgiveness for evil of priests

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Monday 8 April 2013

The new pontiff ask to to act decisively in sexual abuse charges


English: Pope Benedict XVI
English: Pope Benedict XVI (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The new man: Cardinal Bergoglio will become Pope Francis ISoon after he was ordained, he was appointed novice master, in charge of training the newest recruits. He went on to become provincial, or national leader, before joining the church hierarchy as a bishop in Buenos Aires. Francis has chosen a papal coat of arms featuring the Jesuit seal: a sunburst containing a red cross and the "IHS" abbreviation for Jesus Christ.


When first elected, Benedict XVI had promised to obviate his Church of the "filth" of clerical sex abuse. But nothing much changed and the world could see proofs that the Pope from Germany continued covering up abuse and failed to protect children from paedophile priests.

Former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, last month, stepped out on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica – the first Jesuit to be elected pope.
Jesuits swear an oath of obedience to the papacy and have been dubbed "God's Soldiers" for their readiness to (Jesuits brought Christianity to 16th-century Japan. A 19th-century Belgian Jesuit was a peace negotiator between the U.S. government and Sioux Indians.)

Historic: Two Popes met for the first time in historyWhen he appeared on the balcony and the day afterwards we could see for the first time a pope who was not afraid to make jokes or to do things at the spirit of the moment, improvising with a smile on his face.

Soon he was to be confronted with a serious problem which took the smile on many their face and brought a black page in the history of the Catholic Church.

Victims of sex abuse by clergy had called for a strong response from the new pontiff to the crisis which has rocked the Church.

The new pontiff Francis I called on the Church's office that is tasked with investigating sexual abuse charges to "act decisively" in these matters, according to a Vatican statement.
The Church must enact "measures to protect minors, help for those who had suffered such violence in the past, [and] due process in confronting the culprits," the pope said.


Francis, in a meeting with the Holy See's  head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Gerhard Mueller, had declared that combating sexual abuse was important "for the Church and its credibility", a statement said.
Francis inherited a Church mired in problems and a major scandal over priestly abuse of children. It was believed to be the first time he had taken up the issue of sex abuse with a senior member of his staff since his election on March 13.

Francis I said the Vatican department which includes the office of the "promoter of justice", or sex crimes prosecutor, which investigates cases of sexual abuse and decides if priests are to be defrocked. It should continue to "act decisively as far as cases of sexual abuse are concerned, promoting, above all, measures to protect minors, help for those who have suffered such violence in the past (and) the necessary procedures against those who are guilty," a statement said.

It said the pope wanted Catholic bishops around the world to promote and put into place "directives in this matter which is so important for the witness of the Church and its credibility".

A victims' group, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said the statement did not go far enough and criticized it for saying that the Church's stance against sexual abuse was "a continuation" of the line wanted by Francis' predecessor, Pope Benedict.

"Action, not discussion, is needed," SNAP said in a statement.
"We can't confuse words with actions. When we do, we hurt kids. We must insist on new tangible action that helps vulnerable children protect their bodies, not old vague pledges that help a widely-discredited institution protect its reputation," it said.

SNAP and other victims groups say there is much still to be discovered about how the Church behaved in the past and want more bishops who were aware of abuse to be held responsible.

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