UN blasts Vatican over child sex abuse

In a devastating report hailed by victims, the UN committee severely criticised the Holy See for its attitudes towards homosexuality, contraception and abortion and said it should change its own canon law to ensure children’s rights and their access to healthcare are guaranteed. The Vatican promptly objected.

The report puts renewed pressure on Pope Francis to move decisively on abuse and make good on pledges to create a Vatican commission. The commission was announced on the spur of the moment in December, but few details have been released.

The committee issued its recommendations after subjecting the Holy See to a day-long interrogation last month on its implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the key UN treaty on child protection, which the Holy See ratified in 1990.

Critically, the committee rejected the Vatican’s long-standing argument that it does not control bishops or abusive priests, saying the Holy See was responsible for implementing the treaty not just in the Vatican City State but around the world “as the supreme power of the Catholic Church through individuals and institutions placed under its authority”.

The committee blasted the “code of silence” that has long been used to keep victims quiet, saying the Holy See had “systematically placed preservation of the reputation of the church and the alleged offender over the protection of child victims”. It called on the Holy See to provide compensation and hold accountable not just the abusers but also those who covered up their crimes.

“The committee is gravely concerned that the Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, has not taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted policies and practices which have led to the continuation of the abuse by, and the impunity of, the perpetrators,” the report said.

It called for Pope Francis’s nascent abuse commission to conduct an independent investigation of all cases of priestly abuse and the way the Catholic hierarchy has responded over time, and urged the Holy See to establish clear rules for the mandatory reporting of abuse to police and to support laws that allow victims to report crimes.

No Catholic bishop has ever been sanctioned by the Vatican for sheltering an abusive priest, and only in 2010 did the Holy See direct bishops to report abusers.

The committee’s recommendations are non-binding and there is no enforcement mechanism. Rather, the UN asked the Vatican to implement the recommendations and report back by 2017. The Vatican was 14 years late submitting its most recent report.

While most attention has focused on child sex abuse, the recommendations extended far beyond, into issues about discrimination against children and their rights to healthcare, issues that touch on core church teaching about life and sexual morals.

The Vatican said it would study the report and in a statement reiterated its commitment to defending and protecting children’s rights. But Austen Ivereigh, co-ordinator of Catholic Voices, a church advocacy group, said the report was a “shocking display of ignorance and high-handedness”.

Victims’ groups hailed the report as a wake-up call to secular law enforcement officials to investigate the abuse and cover-up.