The Catholic Church must make it easier to remove priests who have abused minors while giving victims “access to the truth”, a papal commission at the Vatican said Tuesday in its inaugural report on protecting children.
The detailed global report from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors was the first since the body was set up by Pope Francis in 2014 to try to tackle widespread abuse within the Church.
While not an audit of sex abuse cases, the 50-page document sought to identify shortfalls and promote effective policies across the breadth of the Church to protect children and vulnerable adults.
The commission’s head, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, told a press conference Tuesday that the Church was emerging from a “dark period” in which “leaders tragically failed those we are called to shepherd.”
Acknowledging that effecting change within the institution was an “uphill climb”, he said a transition had begun “where accountability, care, and concern for victims is beginning to bring light to the darkness.”
Abuse scandals have rocked the church around the world and the decade-old commission has faced criticism itself over its role and organisation, with several top members having quit in frustration, citing obstacles.
In 2022, Francis incorporated it into the Roman Curia — the government of the Holy See — asking for an annual account of what was being done “and what needs to change”.
Commission member Juan Carlos Cruz, an abuse survivor, thanked “survivors known and those unknown” as well as “those who tragically are not with us today.
“Many have committed suicide or left this world without any hope. To them this day is important,” said Cruz, adding that the report was important for its inclusion of formerly taboo words like “trust, justice, reparations”.
Progress on protecting children and vulnerable adults varied dramatically around the world, however, the report found.
In some regions, clerical abuse was not yet a “publicised issue”, while safeguarding resources were “inadequate” in parts of Central and South America, Africa and Asia. It cited as an example Papua New Guinea, where medical kits to prove rape are prohibitively expensive.
Among its recommendations, it said victims should be given more access to information to avoid “opaque canonical processes as a source of re-traumatisation”.
“It re-traumatizes people to have to tell their story a hundred million times and feeling that it goes nowhere,” said Cruz.
The commission said it was considering the idea of an ombudsman to help victims and said reparations would be more deeply studied in the next report.
To cut through bureaucracy and speed up cases, the report also called for clearer responsibilities of individual Vatican dicasteries, or departments, which deal with abuse cases.
Moreover, the Church needs to streamline its process to remove abusing priests, with the report citing a “need for a disciplinary or administrative proceeding that provides an efficient path for resignation or removal from office”.
But it provided no further details on how this should be done, nor did it specify whether action would be taken against priests convicted of abuse or just suspected.
Francesco Zanardi, founder of Italian survivors group Rete L’Abuso (The Abuse Network), said that while “many truths emerge” in the report, it was “a house of cards built on sand”.
