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hide captionFormer Vatican Chief Prosecutor of Clerical Sexual Abuse Charles Scicluna, appearing at the UN's office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva, on Thursday.
Martial Trezzini/EPA/Landov
Former Vatican Chief Prosecutor of Clerical Sexual Abuse Charles Scicluna, appearing at the UN's office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva, on Thursday.
Martial Trezzini/EPA/Landov
The Vatican is coming in for tough scrutiny on its handling of the priest sex abuse scandal from a United Nations committee meeting in Geneva on Thursday.
The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) took church officials to task during what The Associated Press described as a "grilling" that insisted the Holy See "take all appropriate measures to keep children out of harm."
The Vatican ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, but as the BBC reports, it failed to submit any progress reports until 2012, well after revelations of child sex abuse in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.
"The Holy See gets it," Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican's former sex crimes prosecutor, told the committee. "Let's not say too late or not. But there are certain things that need to be done differently."
NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports from Rome that Scicluna was the Holy See's chief sex crimes prosecutor for the past decade. He's credited "with overhauling Vatican procedures to prosecute pedophile priests, but the Vatican has refused to instruct its bishops to report suspected cases of abuse to police whether required to do by local law or not," she says.
Archbishop Silvano Tomasi told the committee that sex crimes could "never be justified" and that every child should be "inviolable."
"Abusers are found among members of the world's most respected professions, most regrettably including members of the clergy and other church personnel," Tomasi said. "This fact is particularly serious since these persons are in positions of great trust and they are called to levels of service that are to promote and protect all elements of the human person, including physical, emotional and spiritual health."
Poggioli reports that "Victims groups and human rights organizations have presented documentation from across the world showing the Vatican was fully aware of the extent of clerical sex abuse long before the cases were made public."
The BBC says:
"While Thursday's questions were numerous and far-ranging, they were asked in blocs, with the Vatican delegation given time to retire to prepare its answers."
"Observers vented frustration at the lack of specific answers."
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hide captionBishop Francis Kane, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Chicago, at a news conference on Wednesday in Chicago.
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP
Bishop Francis Kane, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Chicago, at a news conference on Wednesday in Chicago.
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP
"'Holy See: 'We get it' in UN review on child sexual abuse Catholic Church,' wrote the children's rights watchdog CRIN in a tweet. 'Do you? Why then don't you make statistics public?'"The U.N. committee is expected to issue its non-binding recommendations on February 5.
The questioning in Geneva comes as thousands of pages of documents were turned over Wednesday pertaining to sexual abuse by priests in the Chicago Archdiocese.
NPR's David Schaper reports that the information, set to be released to the public next week, is part of a settlement agreement with victims.
"The information is upsetting. The information is painful. It's difficult to read even without the benefit of hindsight," said John O'Malley, lawyer with the Archdiocese of Chicago.
The reports of sexual abuse and the responses of church leaders include files on 30 abusive priests, Schaper says.
Bishop Francis Kane, vicar general of the archdiocese, apologized on Wednesday to the victims for what he calls, "terrible sins and crimes."
"You know, it's humiliating as a priest to know that there were other priests that did something like that," he said. "It's a terrible thing. And I think one of the things we have to do is re-earn the trust of people."
