Rome, Italy, Feb 10, 2018 / 12:00 am (CNA).- Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University will begin offering a two-year licentiate course in protecting minors, a move Fr. Hans Zollner SJ, said is a sign of the progress the Church has made in terms of abuse-awareness and prevention.
“In most countries ten years ago, five years ago, there was no talk about safeguarding. Now you have degree programs, certificates, diplomas,” he told CNA in a Feb. 9 interview.
“Why has this developed? Because people realize it’s not only done by talking about it or by writing about it in articles or pointing the finger to this or that institution. What needs to be done is serious study.”
Fr. Zollner has been a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and heads the Center for Child Protection (CCP) at the Gregorian University, which is offering the new licentiate course.
The two-year course will launch in October 2018 as an interdisciplinary university degree. Classes will be taught in English, and those who enroll will also participate in an internship based on their respective academic backgrounds.
The first semester will be dedicated to exploring the work of safeguarding minors, while the second will dig deeper into more theoretical study of what ‘safeguarding’ fully means. In the third semester students will participate in internships, and the final semester will be dedicated to writing a thesis.
The new licentiate was announced Feb. 9 during the graduation ceremony for the university’s one-semester diploma course in safeguarding minors, which was launched by the CCP in 2016.
The objective of the diploma course is to form people who will eventually become child protection officers for dioceses, religious congregations, and similar organizations, as well as advisers and trainers in the field of safeguarding.
In his comments to CNA, Zollner said while other similar courses exist, the licentiate will be unique, because to his knowledge, it’s the “very first full time, two-year academic program that is multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary” while also taking into account Pope Francis’ new Apostolic Constitution “Veritatis Gaudium” on the nature and curriculum of ecclesiastical universities and institutions.
The licentiate, he said, is needed because although the diploma course gives a solid foundation child abuse prevention, “we also need people who are capable of adapting, inventing, creating new approaches to safeguarding in very different environments.”
While the diploma course allows students to gain the knowledge and experience needed in order to implement guidelines and policies when they go back to their countries and dioceses, the licentiate will take it a step further, he said.
“The scale of the problem and the breadth of the different issues that have to be tackled is enormous, and we Westerners don’t have very much understanding of what’s going on in some areas of the world,” Zollner said.
“We hope that we can get a real foot on the ground with people who are formed in-depth and know how to transmit a message that goes from head to heart. That’s for us a goal with this new licentiate.”
He said that from what he’s seen, the results of the diploma course have been largely positive, which is significant given the challenge of having people come together from various cultures with different attitudes in terms of talking about about child sexual abuse.
But despite the challenges, Zollner said “we have seen a transformation in a good number of them. I have been at the beginning and end of the semester with them and you see the difference not only in language, not only in how they use words, but in the whole attitude, how they talk about survivors of abuse.”
“It’s not anything threatening, anything disturbing, sort of difficult to talk about, it is, but now they have the capacity to really empathize, to be compassionate, to really do what they will be asked to do, which is to accompany victims and do whatever they need to do so that abuse is prevented.”
This year there were 18 graduates of the diploma course, which was coordinated by Prof. Dr. Karlijn Demasure, executive director of the CCP, and Dr. Katharina A. Fuchs. Diplomas were awarded by the Institute of Psychology of the Pontifical Gregorian University, which founded the CCP in 2012.
Students who received their diploma came from all over the world, including countries such as Czech Republic, Ghana, India, Japan, Lebanon, Mozambique, Nigeria, Slovakia, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand and the United States.
One of the graduates, Sr. Perpetua of the Congregation of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, who comes from the Bukoba diocese of Tanzania, told CNA that she signed up for the course “because there is a need to create awareness in my country because people are not aware about child sexual abuse.”
She said she feels “empowered” after taking the course, and that when she returns to her diocese, “I’ll create awareness by education, by educating the children at the school, at universities, parents and society at large.”
Similarly, Perla Freed, Director of the Safe Environment program for the Archdiocese of Atlanta, said “people don’t want to talk about child sexual abuse because it’s not a happy subject,” but she enrolled in the course because she wanted “more of an awareness of this problem and how to confront it.”
Not having background in topics such as theology or canon law, Freed said getting formation in these areas was “a very good model” to follow in studying the various aspects of abuse and prevention.
She said she is looking forward to returning to her diocese where she can implement what she’s learned, specifically in terms of prevention and victim assistance.
When it comes to abuse, “every case is heartbreaking and shouldn’t happen,” she said, but stressed that the Catholic Church “is making a lot of efforts to ensure that those people are taken care of.”
“I think the Catholic Church, in the U.S. and in other countries, is an example of what everybody should be doing on child safeguarding all over the world,” she said. “We have the programs for schools, we have the training for adults working with those children and young people, so we’re an example of what other public schools systems and other organizations working with youth should follow.”
In his comments to CNA, Zollner said the model of the course has been replicated by other entities throughout the world, including in Manila and in Mexico City, as well as in other institutions at the university.
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“Time is running out” (Pope Francis). Misplaced priorities? “We have to face God’s judgment for our failure to protect” the millions upon millions of infants entrusted to our care, to us, the Church, who are being slaughtered by abortionists and advocates Jeffrey Sachs recently appointed to a Vatican Dicastery. My penultimate addition to Francis’ most urgent concern for the welfare of planet Earth [no need to supplement my comment with a helpful response since I’m well aware of John Paul II’s fine, balanced concern with the environment].
Developmental economist Sachs’ appointment to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, a strong advocate for population control via contraception, abortion, abortifacients makes a statement. Does it not? Where is there as herculean an effort [Francis’ message to save our planet persistently pounds our ears] to save life created in God’s image. Which creation has the greater value? Perhaps it will be thought a cheap shot if I mention devotion to Pachamama, goddess of the Andes protector of Mother Earth enshrined at the Vatican as having more influence with Pope Francis than the silent screams that keep pounding my ears so I won’t mention it here. I’ll be reverently silent.
A sequence of five points, here, adding to Fr. Morello who acknowledges John Paul II’s “balance” versus the less-so presentation by team Francis.
All to make the point that the moral witness of the Church, in future decades, depends upon telling the whole truth. As Pope John XXIII still taught on the eve of the Second Vatican Council: “But WHATEVER THE SITUATION, we clearly affirm these problems should be posed and resolved in such a way that man does not have recourse to methods and means CONTRARY TO HIS DIGNITY. . .” (Mater et Magistra, 1961, n. 191, caps added).
FIRST, the care for God’s creation is accurately defended when clearly presented as not only a moral issue (Pope Francis), but as also fully within Catholic Social Teaching. That is, as comprehended by “moral theology” (Centesimus Annus, n. 55)—rather than a mongrelized and possibly double-speak message as might be misunderstood by an “integral ecology.”
SECOND, the moral issue, then, is one of solidarity, foresight, and prudential judgment—ever careful not to be skewed by the urgency for some kind of action, e.g., uncertainties over the share of climate change (etc.) due to anthropological causes, the crafting of needed programs, the temptation to cast these kinds of issues in ideological terms.
THIRD, adding to #2, the problematic risk that the finite natural-resource baseline supporting a globalized industrial cultural is limited and subject to now-foreseeable exhaustion. In terms of solidarity, are future populations subject to indeliberate triage, say, as water tables decline, or as food source species are endangered or overharvested?
FOURTH, adding to #3, nature is not as “fragile” as is portrayed, but the resilience of ecosystems and food chains do work within boundaries (there really are boundaries!) beyond which irreversible collapse is likely, e.g., the risk to all oceanic life (and human food sources) if the surface-layer microscopic plankton are compromised by even slight atmospheric changes.
FIFTH, complexity and urgency of foresight, such as the above, invites slogans and blunt-instrument solutions. The Catholic Social Teaching, on the other hand, is charged, with articulating and bringing to bear the moral issues without fully identifying them with particular proposals.
Too much cognitive dissonance as moral theology and incremental science are too-much mingled together. As Fr. Morello points out, it is simply insufficient and misleading to spotlight traumatic ecosystem scenarios for tomorrow (and our indirect sins of omission, or lack of foresight) while discounting, it seems, the traumatic killing of innocent lives today (our direct sins of commission). Another of the “great moral issues of out time.”
What ever happened to the personal moral absolutes affirmed in Veritatis Splendor alongside the global concerns flagged in Laudato Si? To get all of this stuff right is a tough assignment for the apostolic Church, even for those clerical and lay witnesses to Christ who might be so inclined.
Valid points. Meeting the future successfully requires a coherent State Church effort [political moral coherence]. Pope Francis’ global involvement would be promising if it weren’t for his distancing as alluded from Veritatis Splendor and those irritating moral absolutes. Amoris and Laudato Si are designed to amalgam not revitalize. Maybe next papacy.
And the care of souls???
It’s sarcasm Ramjet.
In Genesis 2:15, we read: “The Lord took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and the keep it.” Yes, to Till it and to Keep it.
In the same book, (1:28), we are told: “And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’”
So, what Pope Francis teaches is exactly what God wanted Adam and Eve to do in the world He created. Being well endowed (created in the likeness of God) we have the capacity to follow the instructions in our Creator’s “manual”.
Does this mean that we have to accept the unfounded belief that our CO2 is causing global warming and, hence, climate change?
No, but it does mean that we should not pollute our environment (air, land, and water), and greedily, wastefully exploit our resources.
The Vicar of Christ is right in telling the Christians in Scotland (and us): “In these challenging times, may all Christ’s followers in Scotland renew their commitment to be convincing witnesses to the joy of the Gospel and its power to bring light and hope to every effort to build a future of justice, fraternity, and prosperity, both material and spiritual,”
This is accompanied by studying, working, raising children and so on. Francis means something else. Do you really believe that he speaks to “Climate Change Conference” about studying, job, marriage, children?
… there is a really fitting article on CWR:
“makes a sharp distinction between the ‘Jesus of history’ and the ‘Christ of faith’, the ‘historical Jesus’ being a mere man whose ‘ethical teaching’ somehow just happens to agree with the latest leftist shibboleth”
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2021/11/11/new-book-tells-the-story-of-the-secularization-of-sacred-scripture/
You should read it and maybe even get copy of the book.