Pope Francis yesterday opened a red-letter global child protection summit for reflections on the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church as victims tired of hearing pledges for change clamored for incisive reforms.
The pontiff has set aside three-and-a-half days to convince Catholic bishops to tackle pedophilia in a bid to contain a scandal that hit an already beleaguered Church again last year, from Chile to Germany and the US.
Francis, 82, hopes to raise awareness through prayers, speeches, working groups and testimonies from victims. The idea is that the 114 heads of bishops’ conferences will return home with clear ideas on how to spot and deal with abuse.
Photo: Reuters
The task is made difficult by some churches, in Asia and Africa in particular, denying that problems exists.
“My hope would be that people see this as a turning point,” said US Cardinal Blase Cupich, one of the pope’s trusted allies in the US and one of the summit’s four organizers.
The US Catholic Church has been shaken by one of the gravest crises in its history, with the defrocking last week by Pope Francis of a US former cardinal — Theodore McCarrick — over accusations that he sexually abused a teenager 50 years ago.
“It’s not the endgame, no one can ever say that ... [but] we’re going to do everything possible so people are held responsible, accountable and that there is going to be transparency,” Cupich told reporters ahead of the meeting.
The three themes — responsibility, accountability and transparency — were to form the backbone of the summit and provide its 190 participants with the keys to ensuring child safety, he said.
There are reforms in the pipeline, such as the “tweaking” of certain canon laws, said Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, another of the organizers.
However, the suggestion that Church laws need only fine-tuning has angered many, including Anne Barrett Doyle, codirector of BishopAccountability.org, a public database that documents cases of proven or suspected clerical sex crimes.
“Canon law has to be changed — not tweaked, not modified, but fundamentally changed, so that it stops prioritizing the priesthood ... over the lives of children, and vulnerable adults who are sexually assaulted by them,” she said.
Scicluna said that summoning Church leaders from all continents to Rome “is in itself a very important message”.
Scicluna spent 10 years as the Vatican’s top prosecutor on pedophilia cases and was picked by Francis to travel to Chile last year to hear from victims whose voices had previously been silenced by an internal Church cover-up.
He has called for an end to the code of silence and culture of denial within the centuries-old institution.
“Silence is a no-go, whether you call it omerta or simply a state of denial,” he said this week. “We have to face facts, because only the truth of the matter, and confronting the facts, will make us free.”
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia