After a damning United Nations’ report which criticised the handling paedophilia by the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican is not at all happy.
Maybe Italians and others should be questioning whether its a good idea to entrust the care of their children to the Roman Catholic Church.
The United Nations’ Committee on the Rights of the Child accused the Vatican of covering up child abuse on a massive international scale and of breaching the U.N.’s Convention on the Rights of the Child. It ordered the Vatican to hand over all records on abuse cases. Moreover, the U.N. told the Vatican to remove all abusers and those suspected of abuse immediately – an unprecedented demand. Such a request implies that the U.N. believes the problem is extremely serious and indicates that the Vatican has not being doing enough to clean up its act.
Noted within the concluding observations of the U.N. report is that while the Roman Catholic Church has passed laws designed to reduce crimes against children, these new laws were introduced very recently: in 2012 and 2013.
No Direct Response from the Vatican
Clearly shocked by the U.N. committee’s findings, the Vatican has yet to respond to the request to remove child abusers from within its midst and was not at all content to effectively be labelled as the hub of an international paedophile ring.
To keep the U.N. at bay, instead of saying it will act immediately, the Vatican is stating it will examine the full report in detail. It also attacked the U.N. for interfering with the Roman Church’s ideology on the topics of homosexuality, abortion and contraception. The Roman Catholic Church’s teachings on each of these subjects also came in for stern criticism by the U.N. committee.
That the Vatican attempted to delay the work of the U.N. Committee is evidenced by this comment from the U.N. report:
The Committee however regrets that the report was submitted with a 6 year delay and that the Holy See did not respond to questions relating to the implementation of the Optional Protocol by persons and institutions placed under its legal authority.
Furthermore, information requested by the U.N. committee on cases the Vatican dealt with concerning the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography was not provided.
Frightening
What the Roman Catholic Church is being accused of is frightening. This is an organisation which, on one hand, specialises in moral guidance, whereas on the other hand, has done all it can to hide ghastly cases of child sex abuse by members of the church.
Millions of Children Entrusted to the Care of the Church
What is even more shocking is that the very same institution is entrusted with the care of millions of children around the world every year.
In Italy alone, some 1.5 million children are placed in the care of Italy’s 6,500 ‘oratori’ – church run youth centres – which are run by clerics and volunteers.
Stop reading, start speaking
Stop translating in your head and start speaking Italian for real with the only audio course that prompt you to speak.
According to a 2012 article on the website of the Italian branch of Union of Catholic Christian Rationalists, the number of children attending Italy’s church run youth centres is growing at a rate of 10% a year. Many, though by no means all, of the children who frequent these youth centres come from low income families. Some of these children may fall into ‘at risk’ categories.
Nobody knows whether the priests running these centres have been accused of paedophilia or not because the Holy See hides this information.
And what about the volunteers? Does the Roman Catholic Church carry out background checks on those who volunteer to look after children?
Major Social Services Provider in Italy
The Rome Catholic Church is a major provider of social services in Italy and is involved in helping the vulnerable, the disadvantaged, the poor, young drug abusers and even caring for the odd errant politician. In other words, for predatory paedophiles and other deviants, church institutions offer a very fertile hunting ground. If the abusers are caught, they can be fairly certain they will be hidden from the police and sent elsewhere.
Few Church Child Sex Abuse Scandals in Italy
In Italy, unlike in Canada, the United States, Australia, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Norway, Belgium and Poland, few cases of child abuse have come to light, and certainly no massive scandals. Strange isn’t it? Well, it would be if you didn’t know Italy and the intimate links which exist between the nation’s notoriously corrupt political class and the Roman Catholic Church.
Have Italy’s Vatican-friendly politicians been helping the Vatican cover up cases of child abuse by clerics in Italy? One wonders.
Who is Looking After Your Children?
Perhaps parents in Italy and other nations should take steps to find out exactly who is looking after their children. By no means all priests are sexual predators, but surely everyone has a right to know who can and cannot be trusted to care for children?
Here’s a recent quote from the Pope himself:
Dear young people, Jesus gives us life, life in abundance. If we are close to him we will have joy in our hearts and a smile on our face.
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) February 4, 2014
Those young people who became close to Jesus’ ‘representatives’ and were abused them are unlikely to have joy in their hearts and smiles on their faces; probably for the rest of their lives.
Unless the Vatican acts very swiftly, the report by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child will serve to confirm that the Vatican plays a central role in an unholy international paedophile ring.
Over to you, Your Holiness. Mere prayer is not enough.
