At the request of Pope Francis, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors is publishing this Tuesday, October 29, its first audit report on the implementation of procedures to better combat child crime in the Church. If it welcomes an awareness, it also gives the measure of the road that remains to be covered.
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With our correspondent in Rome, Eric Senanque
If the authors of the report welcome greater awareness in the Church of the scourge of pedophilia, regional disparities are still very strong, they note. “ For some Churches, the problem of abuse has been recognized and publicized for more than a generation, for others – this is the case in Africa or Asia in particular – the issue has not yet become a public issue within the company », Regrets the Commission, for example.
The commission is certainly an organ of the Vatican, but she does not hesitate to point out the lack of transparency within the Roman Curia itself. Thus, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, whose disciplinary section is responsible for the most serious cases of sexual crimes, is criticized for its lack of figures and the opacity of canonical procedures. “ A lack of transparency which only fuels the distrust of the faithful and in particular the victims » judges the report.
The Catholic Church must accelerate the procedures for the revocation of religious people implicated in child crime casesalso notes AFP. The report highlights “ the need to streamline and accelerate the process of resignation from office » assumed by the ecclesiastics concerned. It does not specify whether this process must take place in the event of suspicion and denunciation or at the end of a judicial process – canonical or civil -, simply adding: ” when justified “.
The Commission for the Protection of Minors should now publish a new report every year with these four priorities as a guideline: truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of the non-recurrence of pedophile crimes.
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