The issue of sex abuse of children by priests has accompanied me throughout my mission here since I arrived in Rome in August 2011. As I was preparing to take up the role, it was clear to me that nothing had done more in recent years to damage the credibility of the Holy See, and to undermine its values-based message, in the UK and elsewhere, than its failure to understand the seriousness of the problem, and to grasp the need to do so much more to stop it. Despite Pope Benedict’s meetings with victims on his visits, including in the UK and Malta, and the recognition by some within the Church that much more needed to be done, the collective response still appeared to be one of denial.
There has been so much progress since. In 2011, for the first time, the Holy See asked all bishops’ conferences around the world to draw up guidelines for handling cases of sexual abuse of minors by clerics (96% have now done so). In 2012, the Pontifical Gregorian University organised a landmark conference that listened to victims and focused on what the Holy See had to do to respond to their demands. Pope Francis established a new Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors in March 2014, and last July met victims in the Vatican and heard their stories. As the Pope wrote last week in a letter to Church leaders around the world, the only proper response is to focus on the victims and their needs: “priority must not be given to any other kind of concern, whatever its nature, such as the desire to avoid scandal, since there is absolutely no place in ministry for those who abuse minors”.
The progress is welcome. But it is clear that it needs to go further, and faster. There is no room for complacency. I have sometimes been told that this is essentially an historical problem and that now that better controls on the selection of candidates for the priesthood have been implemented, it should not reoccur. That’s neither the right answer, nor the right message, as members of the Commission including Peter Saunders, an abuse victim and CEO of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, and Baroness Hollins from the UK have told me. So much more needs to be done, to help those victims who are still coming forward, and to ensure that future generations of children are safe. It is good that the Pope has called on all Church leaders, especially diocesan bishops, to provide “close and complete cooperation with the Commission for the Protection of Minors”. That is the least that they can do.