Abuse commission will focus on pastoral help

The new Vatican commission on the protection of minors would, among other things, be developing models of pastoral assistance for abuse victims, the head of the International Centre for Child Protection at the Gregorian University, Fr Hans Zollner SJ, told the German weekly Die Zeit, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.

Fr Zollner, who is one of the initiators of the new commission, emphasised the need to “sensitise church employees so that they recognise abuse more easily and stop it.”

Asked whether he considered the UN’s criticism of the way the Vatican had handled clerical sexual abuse was justified, Fr Zollner replied, “Yes and no.” Greater transparency – as the UN recommended – was imperative in inner-church court procedures and above all as far as help for the victims was concerned, he said. Where the UN was wrong was in thinking that the Vatican was a “government above all governments in the Church which can control Catholics in all fields.” The UN had “failed to mention” that in 2010 Benedict XVI had obliged all bishops to abide by the laws of their own countries in such matters. His centre in the Gregorian aimed to take the abuse debate to countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa where discussion had not begun, Fr Zollner said.