Articles by CNA Daily News

Vatican City, Feb 20, 2019 / 04:40 pm (CNA).- While studying at an African minor seminary at the age of 14, Benjamin Kitobo says he was abused by a Belgian priest, who had been sent to Africa after previously abusing children in Europe.

Now as an adult, Kitobo is one of the many sex abuse victims who traveled to Rome to share his story on the sidelines of the Vatican’s Feb. 21 – 24 sex abuse summit where bishops will meet in the presence of Pope Francis to discuss the protection of minors.

Kitobo told CNA at a gathering of victims and advocates from across Africa, Asia, and Latin America outside St. Peter’s Square Wednesday that he is calling for “zero tolerance” for bishops who cover-up sexual abuse, as well as the abusers themselves.

“Zero tolerance … for the people playing into the mechanism of covering up and the people abusing children,” he said, emphasizing that this needs to be “enforceable.”

“I’m addressing Pope Francis to not let the bishop go back home in Africa without any universal law against abusers and bishops who cover up for abuse,” he said.

After Kitobo complained about his abuser at his minor seminary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he found out that this priest continued to work with children in Rwanda.

“They didn’t act on this abuser. That is why I am here to complain. Many were treated the same way,” he told CNA Feb. 20.

“Abuse thrives under that kind of taboo when you can’t speak about it,” Kitobo reflected.

Kitobo was joined by sex abuse victims from Jamaica, New Zealand, Great Britain, Mexico, Chile, the United States, and elsewhere, who called for zero-tolerance for both perpetrators and bishops.

Sex abuse victims also spoke to how different countries’ cultures can exacerbate the stigma of speaking about sex abuse and cultivate a culture of silence.

“The culture that exists in society and within the Church in India makes it very difficult for survivors of abuse to come out and tell their stories,” Virginia Saldanha, an advocate for female sexual abuse victims in India explained.

Victims who do speak out “have been effectively silenced,” she continued.

“That is why I … questioned my own cardinal’s place on the organizing team of this summit because in his own diocese, he has not addressed a single case successfully,” she said, referring to Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Bombay, one of four members of the Vatican sex abuse summit’s organizing committee.

“I know that the victims that our group has brought to Cardinal Gracias have been silenced,” Saldanha told CNA.

Saldanha began working for the Archdiocese of Bombay in 1991 and later went on to serve as the diocesan secretary for the commission for women, where she particularly tried to get the Church to speak out about societal violence against women.

“I tried to raise awareness but I kept coming up against a wall. I felt that the Church was not serious about this,” she said.

In the years since, the diocese has created a gender policy. “And what do they do with their gender policy? I teach it every year to our seminarians, but that is about it. How effective is it? Not at all,” Saldanha said.

“In India, we’ve had so many cases of all these great religious teachers abusing women, Hindus also, they have been abusing women,” she said.

“It is not just India, it is all of Asia, the culture is that way … people will not speak out because Confucian culture also says, ‘you have to save face’ you know? Protect the name of the Church, so when a victim has to speak out, they have to think first how they are going to be affected,” she explained.

“It is a global problem. We know this from survivors around the world,” Peter Isle, director of Ending Clergy Abuse told press before meeting with the Vatican organizing committee for the summit.

“The same obstacles, the same non-transparency, the same irresponsibility that we’ve seen over and over again by Church officials, that is happening all over the world,” he continued.

“If you had to pick one form of zero tolerance it is this one: zero tolerance for any bishop or cardinal who has covered up for child sex crimes,” Isle said.

[…]

Vatican City, Feb 20, 2019 / 03:30 pm (CNA).- Catholic bishops around the world need to combat the homosexual agenda in the Church, two cardinals said in an open letter addressed to the presidents of the world’s conferences of bishops.

C… […]

Vatican City, Feb 20, 2019 / 03:10 pm (CNA).- About a dozen victims of clergy sexual abuse met Wednesday with the organizing committee of the Vatican sex abuse summit, expressing their desire that the week’s meeting yield action on the part of Church leaders.

Evelyn Korkmaz, an abuse victim from Canada and a member of “End Clergy Abuse” (ECA) told journalists after the Feb. 20 meeting, which lasted more than two hours, that she was happy their voices were listened to, but “we don’t want more meetings, we we want decisive action.”

The Church already knows their story, she stated: “They don’t need our story, they need to take action and they need to take action now.”

In comments to journalists after the dialogue, victims noted that on Feb. 25, the day after the sex abuse summit is to conclude, a meeting of top Vatican officials will take place to debrief and discuss next steps.

Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said Feb. 20 the meeting will be an “interdicasterial meeting” of members of the Vatican offices connected to the issue of abuse, though he did not say exactly who would be present. It was noted that the meeting will also include experts on the protection of minors.

Victims said the four members of the summit’s organizing committee present at their encounter Wednesday — Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago; Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Bombay; Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta, adjunct secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; and Fr. Hans Zollner, a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (PCPM) — will also be present at the follow-up Feb. 25.

Fr. Federico Lombardy, who is acting as moderator during the child protection summit, was also present at Wednesday’s meeting with victims.

Mary Dispenza, a national representative for and leader of SNAP in Seattle, Washington, said her hope is that the follow-up meeting of Vatican leaders will be able to give specific points of action: that they “are going to do one, two, three, and four.”

While the Vatican had said Pope Francis would not be a part of the meeting between victims and summit organizers, several victims expressed disappointment he did not make a surprise appearance.

According to Phil Saviano, several of the victims made requests to meet the pope, but no promises were made that they would be able to do so.

A board member of “Bishop Accountability” and a partner of the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team back in 2001, Saviano during the meeting read aloud a letter stressing the importance of transparency.

In the letter, which was made available to the press in advance, he said what is taking place in the Church today is a “tipping point,” and that without total transparency, “people’s faith and trust in the Vatican is rapidly washing away.”

In particular, Saviano’s letter, which was addressed specifically to Scicluna, called on the Vatican to release the names and files of any priests who have been reported to the Vatican for child abuse, in order to, he told journalists later, prevent future abuse and out of respect for victims.

“These four men seemed to agree with what I had to say about transparency about releasing the records,” he said to journalists. Saviano also said Scicluna approached him privately after the meeting to say he “agrees with me completely on what I was asking him to do.”

The caveat, however, was what several victims described as an expression of powerlessness on the part of the cardinals and archbishop present, who said, according to the victims, that they agreed with their suggestions, but that they themselves do not have the power to put these ideas into action.

The encounter with victims took place in the Maria Santissima Bambina Institute, a guest house situated on Vatican property just outside St. Peter’s Square.

Other victim survivors present included Italian Francesco Zanardi, the founder of Italy’s only network of clerical abuse survivors, Spaniard Miguel Angel Hurtado, leader of the organization Infancia Robada [“Stolen Childhood”], and members of the French association, La Parole Libérée, François Devaux and Olivier Savignac.

Also present was Chilean Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of the notorious abuser Fr. Karadima. He told journalists he is calling on bishops “to do what they have to do for this [meeting] to be successful.”

“The bishops cannot continue getting it wrong because as it is, the Church is on borrowed time.”

A woman from Jamaica who is a victim of clerical abuse was also present.

The one non-victim to join the meeting with summit organizers was Pedro Salinas. A Peruvian, he is a former member of the lay Catholic organization Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV) and co-author of the book “Half Monks, Half Soldiers.”

Saviano noted that the intended purpose of the meeting on the protection of minors is very clear — educating bishops — so he hopes action will take place in the follow-up.

The meeting itself is “for those that understand what’s going on, to make sure they’re all on the same page. And for those that don’t understand, to bring them up to speed and let them know that there’s going to be expectations that they’ll be expected to live up to,” he said.

Dispenza, a former religious sister, emphasized that in her opinion, “this is the moment for the Catholic Church; that it’s either going to survive or not. And a lot is going to depend on how Pope Francis handles these days and the actions he takes,” adding: “So we’ll have to see.”

Saviano, who said he’s been public with his story of abuse since December 1992, said he thinks there’s been progress in the last decades: “I do think [the abuse summit] is a milestone and I hope that I’m not going to be really disappointed six months from now.”

“If there was ever a time for transparency, now is it. And maybe, if you do it properly, some of the Catholics who are at this point bailing out of the sinking ship, might reconsider and come back,” he stated. “But you have to give concrete signs that you’re really coming up with a good plan to address this. And it can’t be just talk.”

[…]

Vatican City, Feb 20, 2019 / 01:00 pm (CNA).- The Vatican has continued to downplay expectations ahead of a summit meeting of bishops in Rome to discuss the ongoing sexual abuse crisis, noting that practical steps in handling abuse will come from subse… […]

Vatican City, Feb 20, 2019 / 04:09 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Despite the best efforts of human beings, it is only God the Father who will never fall short in loving his children, Pope Francis said Wednesday.

“No one must doubt that he is the recipien… […]