Skip to footer

Pope appoints abuse survivor to Vatican sex abuse commission

Pope Francis announces the first eight members of a new 'commission for safeguarding minors.' One was abused by a priest in the 1960s and has become a prominent activist working to hold the church accountable.

|
Andrew Medichini/AP
Pope Francis greets the faithful as he arrives at Rome's St. Gregorio VII church, just outside the Vatican, Friday, March 21.
  • By Nicole Winfield Associated Press

| VATICAN CITY

Pope Francis announced the initial members of a commission to advise him on sex abuse policy Saturday, tapping lay and religious experts – including an Irish activist assaulted as a child by a priest – to start plotting the commission's tasks and priorities.

The eight members were announced after Francis came under criticism from victims' groups for a perceived lack of attention to the abuse scandal, which has seriously damaged the church's reputation around the world and cost dioceses billions of dollars in legal fees and settlements.

The eight inaugural members of the commission include Marie Collins, who was assaulted as a 13-year-old by a hospital chaplain in her native Ireland and has gone on to become a prominent Irish campaigner in the fight for accountability in the church.

Also named was Cardinal Sean O'Malley, one of Francis' key advisers and the archbishop of Boston, where the US scandal erupted in 2002. Cardinal O'Malley has pioneered a more open approach to tackling sex scandals, including publishing online a database of Boston clergy accused of sexually abusing minors.

Two other members are professors at Rome's Jesuit Pontifical Gregorian University, which in 2012 hosted a seminar for bishops from around the world to educate them on best practices to protect children. Several participants from that conference are now founding members of Francis' commission, including Collins and Baroness Sheila Hollins, a British psychiatrist.

The Vatican in December announced that the pope had decided to create the commission to advise the church on best policies to protect children, train church personnel, and keep abusers out of the clergy. But no details had been released until Saturday, and it remains unknown if the commission will deal with the critical issue of disciplining bishops who cover up for abusers.

In a statement Saturday, the Vatican hinted that it might, saying the commission would look into both "civil and canonical duties and responsibilities" for church personnel. Canon law does provide for sanctions if a bishop is negligent in carrying out his duties, but such punishments have rarely if ever been imposed in the case of bishops who failed to report pedophile priests to police.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Pope appoints abuse survivor to Vatican sex abuse commission
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0322/Pope-appoints-abuse-survivor-to-Vatican-sex-abuse-commission
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe