VATICAN CITY (CNS): The religious orders and bishops’ conferences dealing with cases of clerical sexual abuse of children in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands are acting quickly, decisively and with transparency to uncover the truth and assist the victims, the Vatican spokesman said.
Vatican press office director Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi said on March 9 that the religious orders and bishops’ conferences not only “have proven their commitment to transparency, in a certain sense they have accelerated the uncovering of the problem by asking victims to come forward even when it involved cases from many years ago”.
The correct way to proceed, he said, was to recognise what happened and concretely demonstrate concern for the victims and the consequences the abuse has had on them.
The new revelations of abuse, mainly at Catholic schools, in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands as well as the recent report on abuse in Ireland “mobilise the Church to elaborate appropriate responses and should be inserted in the context of a problem that is wider and involves the safeguarding of children and youths from sexual abuse in society,” Fr Lombardi said.
Sexual abuse at the hands of a priest or other Church worker was “particularly reprehensible,” he said, but those who have the good of children at heart must recognise that the problem was present in many other sectors of society and “to concentrate the accusations only against the Church leads to falsifying one’s perspective”.
Fr Lombardi said German Chancellor Angela Merkel was right to convoke a round table of people involved in the fields of education and social services for children to examine the phenomenon of child sexual abuse from a broader perspective.
“The Church naturally is ready to participate,” he said.
The bishops’ conferences of the countries where the sex abuse scandal has returned to the headlines were reviewing all of their procedures and were setting up offices to help the victims, Fr Lombardi said.
“While no one can deny the seriousness of the turmoil the Church is going through, we cannot hesitate to do everything possible so that positive results are achieved for improving the protection of children and youth in the Church and in society, and for the purification of the Church itself,” he said.
