Vatican summit raises hope for turnaround on child abuse

Catholic leaders voiced hope yesterday that the Vatican’s first-ever summit on clerical child abuse will mark a radical turnaround for the Church after decades of cover-ups.

The four-day meeting had opened with a message from Pope Benedict XVI, who has faced thousands of abuse scandals in Europe and the United States since becoming pontiff, calling for “profound renewal of the Church at every level”.

Bishops, cardinals and heads of religious orders gathered for frank discussions which stressed the importance of applying the Church’s experience in Western countries in recent years to other parts of the world.

Vatican prosecutor Charles Scicluna said he had received over 4,000 reports of abuse over the past decade, including 1,000 in the last two years, and he warned bishops would be held to account if they ignored new anti-abuse rules.

He said no one will be able to hide behind omertà, or a code of silence, any longer.

The Vatican stressed that national bishops’ conferences should speed up efforts to come up with guidelines for dealing with sexual abuse in individual countries by May.

The emotional highlight of the conference was a speech by Irish victim Marie Collins on Tuesday in which she recounted the horrifying detail of her abuse at the hands of a hospital chaplain in Dublin when she was just 13 years old.

Ms Collins, now 64, told the conference that multiple apologies from the Catholic hierarchy were “not enough” and that Church leaders should ask for forgiveness for destroying the lives of victims and covering up the abuse.

Victims’ groups dismissed the conference as “a public relations exercise” by the Vatican, saying the fact that only one survivor had been invited showed the Church was not ready for a full debate on the issue.

The conference concluded yesterday with the launch of an internet-based Centre for Child Protection which will be in Germany but will have an international reach to raise awareness on best practices against abuse.

“Having a symposium of this magnitude organised and having such a representation from so many parts of the world is a good sign,” Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila told reporters after the meeting.

“I think when we go back home to our respective countries what each one will try to see is how we can move in the same direction of caring for the victims and making sure they are justly and compassionately treated,” he said.

Bishop Joseph Ekuwem, a pastoral agent of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, said: “Like many others, I have learnt a lot by being here.”

“We need to help prepare for any moment that this might surge up in the Nigerian Church. It shouldn’t be seen by any standard as an American or a European problem,” he said.

Bishop Ekuwem said the issue was not widely known about in Nigeria.

Father Edenio Valle, a psychologist who advises the National Conference for Brazilian Bishops (CNBB), said the clergy in Brazil had “no idea” about what could or should be done against abuse.

“Effective measures and procedures on the part of the Church in the short, medium and long term, as far as I know, are not being planned,” he added.