File | Pedophile priests | Vatican justice still criticized (3 articles)

(Vatican) In mid-December, Pope Francis participated in a meeting not included in his official agenda, which shows the total dysfunction of the process established by the Catholic Church to deal with the global scandal of sexual assault committed by the clergy.

In a room in the Vatican palace, where he resides, the pope listened for an hour to a Spaniard who, when he was a young seminarian, was touched by his spiritual director. The ex-seminarian was desperate.

In 2009, he filed a complaint with the archdiocese of Toledo, Spain, and visited the Vatican several times to file incriminating documents and demand sanctions against his attacker and the bishops who allegedly covered him up. But for 15 years, the Church did not act.

Pope Francis’ decision to hear her story is laudable and pastorally sound, but it demonstrates the dual failure of the Church’s internal process to bring abusers to justice and help victims. If it means having friends in the Vatican and getting a papal audience, how many countless victims will still feel like the Church cares little about them or the need for justice?

In 2019, Francis called an unprecedented summit of bishops to emphasize that sex crimes committed by clerics were a global problem and needed to be addressed. For four days, these bishops heard the harrowing stories of the victims and learned how to investigate and punish pedophile priests. They were warned that they too would be punished if they continued to protect sex offenders.

Five years later, despite new canonical laws supposed to make bishops accountable and the firm intention to do better, the Church’s internal judicial system and its pastoral response to victims are failures.

A destructive process

In fact, a growing number of victims, outside investigators and even Church lawyers say the process developed and modified over 20 years of unceasing scandals is inflicting new harm on those already harmed, the victims. When they find the courage to denounce their attacker, they risk further trauma in the face of the silence, inaction and obstruction of the Church.

“It’s a horrible experience. I don’t recommend this to anyone unless they’re prepared to have their world and even their self-perception turned upside down,” warns Brian Devlin, a former Scottish priest whose internal, then public, accusations of sexual assault at the The encounter with the late Cardinal Keith O’Brien marked the downfall of this Scottish prelate.

In 2001, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger revolutionized the Catholic Church’s handling of child abuse cases, persuading John Paul II to order that all cases be sent to him for review.

M^gr Ratzinger, after nearly 25 years at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had noticed that bishops were contravening Church law and moving predators from one parish to another instead of punishing them.

At the end of the 2019 summit, Pope Francis promised to act with “the wrath of God” towards pedophile priests. He issued a new law requiring all cases to be reported to the Vatican (but not to the police) and set out a procedure for investigating child molestation bishops or those who protected predatory priests.

But five years later, this process remains opaque: the Vatican does not reveal how many bishops have been the subject of investigations or sanctions. Even the papal commission on child welfare says structural problems in the system harm victims and obstruct justice.

“Recent public cases have revealed tragic gaps in the standards intended to punish child molesters and hold accountable those who have the duty to punish misconduct,” says the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. “We have been very slow to correct procedures that do not help victims and do not inform them during and after the trial of cases. »