Vatican Receives Yearly 600 Claims Against Abusive Priests; Pope Francis Seeks Determined Action vs Sex Abuse Cases
The Vatican receives about 600 claims yearly against abusive priests. Some of the charges go all the way back to the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Under the previous popes, most of the accusations were swept under the rug and the Roman Catholic Church imposed silence both on the victims and perpetrators.
However, Pope Francis is taking the first step in stopping the culture of silence by ordering the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the body tasked to handle such cases, to act with determination on the complaints.
He ordered the change in policy after meeting on Friday with Archbishop Gerhard Mueller, the head of the congregation. Pope Francis said that battling sex abuse is important for the Church to regain its credibility.
The pontiff's new policy is a reversal of a secret document that the Vatican wrote in 1962 titled Crimen Sollicitationis which imposed silence on sex abuse victims, the abusers and even witnesses on the pain of excommunication for violators.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has been criticised for not doing anything about the sex abuse cases when he still headed the congregation as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and when he became pope in 2005. When he retired on Feb 28, 2013, he left a thick folder about the sex abuse cases for his successor to deal with.
However, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a victims' group, criticised Pope Francis's statement for not going far enough and just merely continuing the line of Pope Benedict.
"Action, not discussion is needed ... We can't confuse words with actions. When we do, we hurt kids. We must insist on new tangible action that helps vulnerable children protect their bodies, not old vague pledges that help a widely discredited institution protect its reputation," SNAP said in a statement.
The pope's order came on the same day that DreamWorks, a movie company, announced it has acquired the rights to the Boston Globe story about sex abuses committed by Catholic clergy and would make a film about the controversial subject.
