Abuse survivor joins protection body

FIVE LAYPEOPLE, four of them women, have been named by Pope Francis to the new Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

The eight members include Marie Collins, an Irish survivor of clerical abuse who has campaigned vigorously on behalf of fellow victims. Another member is Baroness (Sheila) Hollins, a British psychiatrist and life peer who with Ms Collins took part in a groundbreaking symposium at the Gregorian University in Rome on child sexual abuse in 2012. Poland’s former Prime Minister and Ambassador to the Holy See, Hanna Suchocka, and French child psychologist, Dr Catherine Bonnet, are the other two women on the commission. The fifth lay member is Claudio Papale, an Italian civil and canon lawyer who works at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

Ms Collins, who was sexually abused at the age of 13 by a chaplain while a patient at a Dublin hospital, has long called for church action against bishops who protect abusive priests. This week she said her priority on the commission is the creation of “a strong worldwide child protection policy, which would include sanctions for any member of the church in a position of authority who ignored these rules”. She is also demanding a sea change in the Church’s response to abuse survivors and their families.

“The concentration on often-abusive legalistic responses instead of caring for those hurt needs to end,” she told the Catholic News Service adding that the cultural attitude within the Church and laws that “categorised child abuse as a moral lapse rather than a criminal offence also have to be tackled.”

Pope Francis announced on 5 December that he had accepted a request from his eight-member Council of Cardinals (C8) to set up the new child-protection commission. One of the C8, Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston, who has been appointed to the commission, has a reputation as one of the bishops with most credibility in dealing with abuser priests.

Two Jesuits at the Gregorian University -  Humberto Miguel Yáñez from Argentina and Hans Zollner from Germany — complete the initial line-up. Fr Yáñez heads the department of moral theology and is an old friend of Pope Francis. Fr Zollner is chairman of the Centre for Child Protection at the university’s Institute of Psychology. He told Vatican Radio on Monday that the commission would examine whether canon law is effective in protecting children, promote awareness and sensitivity on the issue of abuse and disseminate best practice between different areas of the Church.

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi SJ said the Jesuit Pope was “continuing the work undertaken by his predecessors”, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and had set up the new commission on the “advice of a number of Cardinals, other members of the College of Bishops, and experts in the field”.

A Vatican communiqué said more members “from various geographical areas of the world” would eventually be added to the commission. Asked who else she would like to see appointed to it, Marie Collins named Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin and Bishop Charles Scicluna, an auxiliary in Malta, credited with constructing Vatican norms on abuse.

n The German bishops’ conference has launched a new clerical sexual abuse research project that will investigate sex abuse cases back to the year 2000 in 18 of Germany’s 27 dioceses, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt. The remaining nine dioceses have agreed to open their files back to 1945.

A team of seven scientists from the Institute of Forensic Psychiatry at Mannheim University and the Institutes of Criminology and Gerontology at Heidelberg University will carry out the project.