Justice for Worldwide Survivors of Clerical Child Sex Abuse.
Today, Good Friday, members of ‘We are Church Ireland‘ staged a dramatic presentation on
Grafton Street, Dublin 2, calling for ‘Justice for Worldwide Survivors of Clerical Child Sex
Abuse‘ and for members of the Catholic Hierarchy involved in the cover-up of these heinous
crimes through not reporting them to the civil authorities, to be brought to justice both in the
Civil and Church courts.
There is ambivalence and no clear direction from the Vatican on the reporting of clerical child
sex abuse to civil authorities worldwide.
A training course organised by The Vatican Congregation for Bishops for newly appointed
Catholic bishops from around the world held in September 2015, was told that they had no
obligation to report abuse charges to civil law enforcement agencies. The Pontifical
commission for the Protection of Minors set up by Pope Francis in 2014 had not been invited
by the organising Congregation of Bishops to address the new bishops with their alternate
view that all bishops had a moral and religious responsibility to report all child sexual abuse
charges to the civil authorities.
The maintenance of secrecy for the crimes of clerical sex abuse is imposed by Article 25 of
Pope John Paul II’s motu proprio, Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela of 2001 and by Article
30 of its revision by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 , which impose the pontifical secret on all
allegations and proceedings relating to child sexual abuse by clerics. The footnotes to Article
25 and Article 30 apply Article 1(4) of Pope Paul VI’s instruction, Secreta Continere, which
defines the pontifical secret as the church’s highest form of secrecy, and like the secret of the
confessional, is a permanent silence. Since becoming Pope, three years ago, Pope Francis
has made no attempt to change this maintenance of secrecy. This makes it impossible for the
tribunal set up in 2015 within the CDF to censure any members of the hierarchy involved in
the cover ups.
‘Pope Francis must lift this maintenance of the veil of secrecy and the ambivalence
surrounding this crime of clerical child sex abuse by demanding that all Catholic Church
authorities must be held accountable and irrespective of circumstances must report all clerics
accused of clerical child sex abuse to the civil authorities’ stated Brendan Butler, We are
Church Ireland.