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GENEVA (AP) — "The Vatican revealed Tuesday that over the past decade, it has defrocked 848 priests who raped or molested children and sanctioned another 2,572 with lesser penalties, providing the first ever breakdown of how it handled the more than 3,400 cases of abuse reported to the Holy See since 2004.
The Vatican's U.N. ambassador in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, released the figures during a second day of grilling by a U.N. committee monitoring implementation of the U.N. treaty against torture.
Tomasi insisted that the Holy See was only obliged to abide by the torture treaty inside the tiny Vatican City State, which has a population of only a few hundred people.
But significantly, he didn't dispute the committee's contention that sexual violence against children can be considered torture. Legal experts have said that classifying sexual abuse as torture could expose the Catholic Church to a new wave of lawsuits since torture cases in much of the world don't carry statutes of limitations.
Tomasi also provided statistics about how the Holy See has adjudicated sex abuse cases for the past decade. The Vatican in 2001 required bishops and religious superiors to forward all credible cases of abuse to Rome for review after determining that they were shuffling pedophile priests from diocese to diocese rather than subjecting them to church trials. Only in 2010 did the Vatican explicitly tell bishops and superiors to
also report credible cases to police where local reporting
laws require them to..."
Bridget Mary's Response:
To get a comprehensive picture of the sexual abuse crisis in the world visit:
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/
It took the Vatican until 2010 to mandate this basic standard. The Catholic Church should be subject to civil laws that deal with crimes against children.This mind-blowing admission by the Vatican basically admits that the church acted as if it was above the law. The bishops who shuffled pedophiles from parish to parish should have been fired and prosecuted for the cover-up. Jesus would weep at the Vatican's behavior and disregard for victims and their horrific treatment by priests and bishops who covered up decades of abuse! What a tragedy! The entire clerical system that gives special status and privileges to the ordained in the pyramid model with the Vatican on top needs to be reformed. As beloved sisters and brothers, members of the baptized in the family of God, we are mutually accountable for our actions to all. As followers of Christ, we called to act as Jesus would have. Bridget Mary Meehan, ARCWP, www.arcwp.org
To get a comprehensive picture of the sexual abuse crisis in the world visit:
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/
It took the Vatican until 2010 to mandate this basic standard. The Catholic Church should be subject to civil laws that deal with crimes against children.This mind-blowing admission by the Vatican basically admits that the church acted as if it was above the law. The bishops who shuffled pedophiles from parish to parish should have been fired and prosecuted for the cover-up. Jesus would weep at the Vatican's behavior and disregard for victims and their horrific treatment by priests and bishops who covered up decades of abuse! What a tragedy! The entire clerical system that gives special status and privileges to the ordained in the pyramid model with the Vatican on top needs to be reformed. As beloved sisters and brothers, members of the baptized in the family of God, we are mutually accountable for our actions to all. As followers of Christ, we called to act as Jesus would have. Bridget Mary Meehan, ARCWP, www.arcwp.org
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